I frequently wonder as to why it took me almost 40-45 years to be completely distrustful of all religions and become a complete non-believer.
Here are few questions I should have asked to myself and thought about. If done with honesty, rationality and with due weightage to evidence, I would have reached this journey much sooner.
- Did I have a choice in choosing my religion (Hindu) or was it selected for me due to geographical accident (Richard Dawkins/Sam Harris argument) of being born in Maharashtra, India where Hindu religion is a majority ?
- I migrated from a country with 80% Hindu population to a country with 80% Christian population. Am I right or are they?
- Why did I believe in so called virgin birth of Pandavas and not virgin birth of Jesus ? In the same vein, why did I believe that Hanuman carried an entire mountain (weighing probably billions of pounds) on his arm and at the same time don’t believe Mohammed would have flown on a winged horse?
- In history of mankind, there have been hundreds of religions with contradictory claims of prophets, gods and deities. Is mine the only one that got it right ?
- Why did almighty god choose Greek/Aramaic/Hebrew for Jews/Christians Arabic for Muslims and Sanskrit for Hindus?
- While all the contradictory religion philosophies surely can’t be right at the same time, can they all be wrong ?
- Why did I believe in any kind of supernatural phenomena at all, considering the paucity of evidence in favor of it?
- There are 4 major religions and each rejects the other three, isn’t it just one step closer to truth by rejecting the 4th?
- If I believe my prayer to Vishnu/Devi/Shiva works for me, it also does for Muslims, Christians and Jews but prayer directed to different entities. What is special about me then? Also, does prayer really work – did I really count only the hits and forgot about the misses?
- Almost every religion has advocated horrendous discrimination & practices in the past with full scriptural support. If I cherry pick only the aspects which I find moral & approve thereof, why should I take crutch of a religion at all?