A question to atheists and theists…
If you go to any public forums on the net like Orkut communities, Yahoo answers etc one of the common debates that you find is the atheist vs theist. Here is something that I found common in a lot of those discussions… (This is actually taken from one such debate in yahoo answers)
When the atheist says, "I am an atheist," the unspoken corollary is, ‘If you’re NOT also an atheist, then you are deluded, gullible, or a liar."
When the theist says, "I believe in (whatever)," it logically follows that, "I’m morally superior to you if you DON’T also believe; and you DESERVE to be infinitely punished for daring to disagree with me."
I am not going to oversimplify and generalize this comment to everyone in the above-said categories, one reason being that I am inthe latter but do not confrom to the statement, but I have seen a lot of them have this kind of arrogance attached to their statement
My question to them is that, what’s wrong with believing in what you believe and let others believe in what they believe? Whatever is said in the different religion, ultimately the common theme in most of them, as I understand, is that god is a source of strength for everyone, a marker of sorts to the "current" defined standards of morality and ultimately a source of meaning in life for those who search it. And most of the atheist’s, I know are "strong" people and also have a strong sense of morality within the society. Even if anyone deviates from this path there is still the law of our society which defines a minimum set of standards.
If people are able to find meaning in their life in what ever way they do….why is it necessary to fight with each other? Can’t we accept that there can be "multiple" right paths and if that’s too hard to digest cant the people just let the other people be, as long as the laws of the society are undisturbed?
And for people questioning the "origin" of these laws, Aren’t we at a good equilibrium to have laws that are flexible to most religions that exist today? I know its an uneasy equilibrium but not one that cannot be refined right?
