Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, my first question to you is that we have a lot of people, in fact, an increasing number of people, who are saying that they are atheist, they do not follow any religion. They seem to be confused about what religion is. What according to you is the importance of religion? Whether somebody is born into it or is it by choice, whatever it is?
Acharya Prashant (AP): You see, there are two kinds of religions. The first one is the usual formal organised popular kind of religion that is generally known by that name. The word ‘religion’ has been appropriated by organised systems. So, in most of these organised belief systems, there is a story, a story concerning a particular God.
So, usually, when people say that they are not religious or that they are atheists, they mean that they do not subscribe to that belief system or any particular belief system. So, they say that they are religious or irreligious, and that was kind of bound to happen. Because every story is just that—a story, a product of the mind. And every belief system is just that. It’s something that you believe in. It does not really have any truth to it. So, all the religions that found themselves on belief were bound to lose charm one day and that’s what is happening.
Since the advent of science and right from the day, Newton showed the universe to be deterministic, and then you had Nietzsche who declared ‘God is dead.’ And you have today’s age when people can be cloned, and man is fighting death and disease and all the divine rights of the Gods are being usurped by Man.
There actually remains no need to belong to a belief system because the beliefs themselves are being very openly shown to be false. So that kind of atheism was waiting to dominate thought and society and that’s what is happening.
