The belief system

Saw the attached picture on the net recently. Thought it was a pretty good synopsis of my belief system. From the time I can remember, I have always been gravitating towards atheism. I do not know what it was that set me off in that path.

I have a fairly religious family. Both sets of relatives (Dad's and Mom's side), are pretty devout. They go to temples, make offerings, have days on which they refuse to eat non veg/drink alcohol and make trips to distant religious places to tempt the Gods above to let the lead a happy life. In pockets there are also the usual "non your own religion haters." I can rest assured, the future of the religion is safe at least when it comes to the extended family.

Now to the immediate family; And this is where I can begin to see where the roots of my belief system (or as some would say the lack of one ... more on that later) came from. Mom is fairly religious, goes to temples once in a while, makes mandatory resolutions about donating money somewhere if such and such nice things happen to the family and probably prays a lot in her head too. Dad has one temple he goes to, on a yearly basis but I have never been able to find out if he actually believes in a God. He is probably more agnostic than atheistic. But what strikes me as very intriguing is the fact that since I was born till today, we have not had a "puja room" in the house. SO no customary idols, no reverential nook in the house, no gaudy calendars, no classically framed photographs of God, Goddesses and their consorts/children or any such related stuff.

It didn't occur to me till much later, that this was not your normal household. We were not forced to pray, invoke the Gods, tempt them with money, offerings or tramp down to temples. I guess it was only on our annual ritualistic visit to Kerala, once a year, that we would accompany the other relatives to some temple or the other where I would look around and notice the "bordering on crazy" fervor with which people used to pray. There is one uncle who makes a yearly trip from Delhi to Calcutta, only to visit a certain temple which he claims was responsible for seeing him through his dreary days and was dismissed in the immediate family as nutty! Only years later, when I did get to know that almost every household has a puja room, did I realize that not having one is not the norm.

Of the women in my life, I have again seen extremes. There was one who was equally "dismissive of religion", one who didn't believe in religion but believed in spirituality and the associated non sense that came with it (frankly do not understand either), one who believed in religion only on the important occasions and one who is deeply religious. As long as I haven't been asked to dismiss my beliefs and follow theirs, I have had no issues with any of them trampling through their own paths to nirvana!

But, what is it about religion, that forces people to negate their innate humanity and dissolve into rabid, hunting packs determined to prove their way is the ONLY way to the glory of mankind? Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert had once written that he atheism was proved by all the major religions in the world. He said, all religions believed that theirs was the true path and all else was false, so each of them was negating the other and hence all of them were false!

Part 2 shall follow!