This, it seems, is the season for debates on god and godlessness, faith and reason. So, I won’t pass up this opportunity to add my bit to the cacophony. If Richard Dawkins can write a polemical work, The God Delusion, to show up the mindlessness of Christian fundamentalists, and Sam Harris can write a Letter To A Christian Nation to explain why they may not even be truly Christian, I don’t see why we should not debate the same in India, steeped as we are in totally irreligious religions.

I must point out my biases upfront: I am an agnostic who has serious doubts about the real worth of organised religion; on the other hand, I have no problems with the idea of god if it is defined as a search for a deeper meaning in life, though one can never say where the search will ultimately lead. I am also very clear that if reason clashes with faith, I would take reason anyday. Even if what looks like reason today may, on closer examination, turn out to be something else.

Having got the disclaimers out of the way, let me state my propositions. I cannot believe in god as defined by any sectarian religion today for three simple reasons. One, all religions insist — in practice, if not in theory — that you have to start by believing. Since this is the very antithesis of reason, it is unacceptable. Two, I assert that all religions, without exception, have distorted what their founders tried to do. The third reason is actually devastating from my point of view: all religions have such narrow definitions of god, that I instinctively recoil from them. I know they cannot be right.

When my religion tells me that god behaves exactly like a human being, I find it abhorrent. If your religion asks you to think of yourself as part of a chosen people, it is by nature exclusionary. Any exclusionary religion cannot house a real god, if he/she/it exists. Religions that project god as someone who keeps tabs on your every act are essentially saying that god runs a totalitarian state, where there is no real freedom. Such gods cannot be gods. They can at best be human projections of group interests and narrow moralities.

Let’s take the first reason first. How can anyone in his right mind believe in anything, leave alone religion, by sheer faith? By this yardstick we might as well believe anything we want to believe in in any sphere. It might also follow that all people born in any religion should automatically develop faith in their religions.

This is not how modern religions, before they degenerated into dogmas, evolved. The Buddha did not develop his radical ideas by faith. He used reason to contradict the Brahminical orthodoxy of his day. One can say the same about Prophet Muhammad, Jesus Christ, Guru Nanak or Krishna.

If the seeds of today’s religions were sown by a serious thinker’s doubts, it follows that no religion should accept faith as the starting point; doubt should be the starting point for any spiritual journey.

Unfortunately, religions are not created by the giants whose names they are associated with it. They are created by the pygmies who followed them. For followers who lack the courage to think for themselves, it is holy books, dogma and orthodoxy that confer legitimacy. This is why organised religions atrophy very quickly.

If Krishna were to somehow surface in UP today, the Yadavs would be the first to disown him, since current-day politics does not favour truth-seekers. If Guru Nanak were to reappear, the Sikhs would probably declare him a tankhaiya, since he could well turn up without a kirpan or a turban, which today seems more important to some Sikhs than the real message of the Guru. If Allah were to send his prophet again to re-establish truth and justice, Wahabi fundamentalists might well see him as a heretic.

What then explains people’s fascination for formal religion? There could be two explanations. One is sheer laziness. We accept religion and dogma simply because we don’t want to reason things out for ourselves. Two, in an uncertain world, insecure people look for certainties, and religion is custom-built to exploit this need. Since all religions have at least some spiritual value embedded in them, people can easily convince themselves that all of it is good. By the time you realise religion has sold you a pup, you have invested too much ego and life in it to back out. We are unwilling to accept that the emperor has no clothes. Religion wins over reason always by default.

Email: r_jagannathan@dnaindia.net