Today I would like to share my good old days, when I didn’t have to worry about anything. My parents took care of my basic needs like food, clothes and shelter, and the almighty God took care of everything else. At that time, I only had one thing to worry about, and that was my studies. I was pretty good at it, thanks to my grandfather. He was a retired school teacher who was working as a librarian at that time. He used to help me with all my studies and never missed a chance to motivate me to do things better.

At that time, the carrom and sports kits were kept in the public library for anyone to use for free. My grandfather was in charge of it. He had told me and my friends that he would only allow us to play if we read a book for 30 minutes. Sometimes we used to just glare at a book to seem like we were reading, but sometimes we actually read.

But I always wondered one thing — for the man who forced us to read, even though we didn’t like it, he never told me to believe or not to believe in a God. In fact, I think — but I’m not sure, because I had never discussed this with him — he was an atheist himself. Later I realised he taught me everything that I needed to think and act on my own. I also strongly believe that he wanted me to study well so that I could make all these decisions on my own.

On the other hand, my mom and teachers used to push me towards believing in a God. At that time I also started believing in some form of spirituality to make peace with myself. So in my school days, I used to do pooja every Friday at home. I wanted to become a doctor at that time. So I blindly focused on my studies and thought God would take care of everything else. Even though I didn’t become a doctor due to some external factors, I still didn’t lose hope in God. I thought God was planning everything for a greater good. But the more I thought about it, the further I pulled away from the concept of God.

People used to say it was by God’s grace that I got to study in such a great college without any fee. After all, VIT University was and is a dream college for many. But I could never believe that. It was I who had studied hard for that. It was my grandfather, parents and teachers who had always believed in and supported me. It was the college founder who chose to give me free education. We could give all these credits to God, but why should we do that when there are people who should be credited for all these good things?

For a while, it was like I was angry with God, but slowly everything changed — my perspective about life changed gradually. Even though I believed in some form of higher power for some time, it was never convincing enough for me.

Then I used to wonder why other people believe in God. After all, there have been great wars, killings and miseries in the name of God. This is happening in today’s world and throughout our history. But still there are people who will do crazy things for God and in the name of God. There are people who use the name of God for their own advantage, but there are also true believers who do great things in the name of God. Why and how do they do it?

There are people who have got everything they want in their life. These people want to believe in God for two reasons: either out of gratitude for this miracle, or out of fear of losing it all.

Another reason could be that we want to believe that everything is in control. We don’t want to live in a world full of causal effects with a lot of randomness in it. Isn’t it nice to believe that someone above us is controlling everything for the greater good?

There are also people who believe there are scientific reasons behind all the spiritual rituals. If you want better health, don’t you think working out at the gym and eating healthy is the way to do it? If you want to score good marks in an exam, don’t you think learning and practising is all that you need? But the problem is, life has a lot of randomness and we need some form of control over it.

Above all, there is one more factor called the survival instinct — the fear of things that we don’t know or don’t understand. As is human nature, instead of accepting the things or events that we don’t understand, we need some kind of logic to define all the unknown. We are not ready to take responsibility for our ignorance and work on it. So we use the name of God for all these things.

You see, in all these cases, by believing in God, we relieve ourselves from the pressure of responsibility. We can shift all our responsibilities from our shoulders onto the shoulders of some higher power. If you can understand this feeling, then you know that this acceptance of a higher power will bring you the greatest relief. We all want to say that we have done everything we could, and that hereafter it’s in God’s hands.

After all, we all yearn for peace in our life, don’t we? This is one of the reasons I always ask myself — why can’t I just accept some higher power and be happy in my life?

But I couldn’t do that. I don’t want to blame some higher power for not becoming a doctor, not becoming a businessman, or anything else. It was I who was not responsible enough to adapt for the entrance exam, or strong enough to fight for my dream. It was the government that was not responsible enough to think about the situation of students like me. It had nothing to do with God or some higher power. The responsibility was in our hands.

There are a lot of people more miserable than me in this world. Compared to them, my problems are a grain of salt in the great ocean. Not all of us have the strength and willpower to take responsibility for all of our problems. So we need some form of higher power to let go of these responsibilities. There is nothing wrong with that. But there are also people like me who chose the hard path.

What I see as the real disadvantage of the concept of God is the inability to take responsibility for anything. We do all the irresponsible things and blame God for them. That is in no way good or helpful for us. If all of humanity could come together to solve the problems for ourselves and the people around us, the world would be a much better place to live in. It might even become the heaven that we all hope to reach one day. Don’t you think this is much better than believing someone will solve all of our problems?

I am not concluding anything here. I don’t say there is a God and I don’t say there is no God. All I say is that currently, I don’t really know. There might be a lot of possibilities that we as humans are incapable of understanding. But I don’t want to assume anything for my own comfort. I accept that I know very little about this world and life, and I am ready to explore.

Finally, I strongly believe that this is one way of thinking about atheism — the ability and strength to take responsibility for our choices, actions and outcomes. It has its own disadvantages, but at least there will be people who can take responsibility and do something about it.