I asked my mother, ‘How do you know God exists?’
My mother could not answer immediately. After thinking about it for a while, she told me, ‘Look at the butterflies, how did they get so many beautiful colors? Look at the flowers, how do they get their fragrances? What about jackfruits? Who put all the small pieces so nicely inside the fruits? How did they become sweet? Who put water inside coconut? These prove that God exists.’
I was twelve years old. I was laughing at my mother. Yes, I know well that there are hundreds of proofs of God’s existence.
A group of believers showed me a tomato and a carrot as proof of God.
Another group of believers showed the pair of radish as a proof of God.
People find Jesus in everything. Virgin Mary cries. They see the name of Allah everywhere. Hindu God drinks milk. So, God has to exist.
There are evidences for evolution. And those evidences are the proofs of God’s non-existence. We really do not need any watermelon miracle to prove that there is no God. Believers need miracles to defend their stupidity.
What a wonderful statement. “Believers need miracles to defend their stupidity” May I use this?
Yes, you can use it.
But is it enough?
I lol’ed at the radish.
But the tomato? I don’t get that one. It looks like a butt or something? How does the existence of tomato-butts prove g0d?
It must be some long-forgotten pagan moon-god.
Ba-doum kssh.
Perhaps God is a pervert.
“It looks pretty, therefore God.”
“I don’t understand how it works, therefore God”
This is what it all boils down to, really. If it awes them with its beauty, or confuses them with its complexity, then it must have been made by God.
I’m pretty sure that “god” doesn’t exist, but that fear in people’s hearts, and the threats, covert and overt, they make toward anyone who doesn’t say “amen” or equivalent, certainly exist.
For now, until they see through the con. and choose to act honestly.
“They [christians] always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds [as proof of god]. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs.”
– David Attenborough, on why he rejects the fiction of “god”
Mhhh, vegetable porn
I plant a lot of vegetables and can tell you those radishes are just a farming mishap. When you don’t turn the soil deep enough before planting radishes and carrots you get all sorts of weird distortions. And when some idiot gets hold of those distortions you get – god!
Even with properly turned soil, misshapen vegetables occur now and then. Nothing special about that. I do wonder, though, why believers think an almight creator god would try to communicate to us using malformed turnips and burnt slices of toast.
Argh, when asked why he believed in God, one guy I knew would say, “Can you make a flower?”
I was ‘confronted’ with that one once. My answer: ‘Why yes. Yes I can. I just don’t feel like it right now. What’s that you say? You want evidence? Pfff… Have you no faith?’
The twentieth century saw attempts to formalise the notion of ‘proof’.
Kurt Godel proved an ‘Incompleteness Theorem’ back in the 1930s.
In the 1970’s Appel and Harken proved the 4-color conjecture for planar maps, but only with the extensive use of computers.
It could be argued that Buddha anticipated the work of Godel with a statement that existance or non existance of God was not important
in ethics.
Have you ever read Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series? They’re chock full of religion though not anything modern. It’s funny, however, to see parallels to how modern religious people think. Characters will be pondering a tough decision, and if they find an unusual rock or something they’ll take it as a “sign” that they made the right decision. And, of course, when things go bad it’s because somebody “angered the spirits” somehow.
The ‘Hundreds of Proofs’ link is priceless. I wish I’d seen it before.
To be a christian or muslim or a buddhist is to ask to follow the respective scriptures designated as holy in the religion. But is it the same to ask a follower of religion to be like its leader – like Jesus, Mohammed or Buddha ? The leaders of religions never followed any existing religions of their times. It was only after rejecting all existing religious discourses in their times, that these people set out to discover new ideas for their scriptures. This shows that even religions have the capability to mutate, and homosapiens need to continuously try and evolve newer and newer religions – after rejecting all existing ones. Else, it is quite possible that existing religions would become more and more vulnerable to be buried, when all existing species listed in the scriptures would have mutated completely to newer species – ie, no more humans, no more plants and animals listed in the scriptures. Beware believers of this scenario and start acting now. Reject all existing religions, and think afresh. Be another Jesus, Nabi or Buddha.
Two minutes ago, I was an atheist. But now that I’ve seen a tomato shaped like an arse…
That carrot is hilarious.
Devil’s Advocate question. Your mother obviously believed in God. You called believers in God “stupid,” that is, stupid for believing. Does that mean you are saying your mother, too, was stupid?
I don’t think “you are stupid” and “some of your beliefs are stupid” are quite the same thing.
My mother was an intelligent person. But like billions of people, her rationality did not work when she decided to believe in superstition called religion. Did I say religious people are stupid or I said about their particular stupidity?
Like the clergy looking through Galileo’s telescope, insisting they could not see the moons orbiting Jupiter. The firm believers in religion suffer the same blindness. When one is indoctrinated at a very young age, it is extremely difficult to unindoctrinate.
If I think it’s “stupidity” to believe, and if own parents were believers, I will say honestly that that my parents were also part of that “stupidity.” I will not use the word “stupidity” to describe the act of believing only when it comes to those who are not family. Are they not someone’s family also? Then why have one standard for them and another for my own? Why use words like “stupidity” to describe things they do but not allow such a word to describe things my own family does?
The point here is the double standard – unhesitating criticism of the actions of “others,” but very different language – the language of praise, affection and understanding even if not agreement – when talking of one’s “own.” I have immense respect and admiration for Taslima’s work and always will. Respect has to include debate, as Taslima would be the first to agree. That’s why it’s disconcerting to see that Taslima applies frank criticism to others, but evidently not to those she considers her “own.” In that case, we must not expect to see believers criticizing religion, or their believing in it, any time soon. They are probably just as loyal to their faith as Taslima is to her mother. That is the peril of unquestioning loyalty. It’s easy to not mince words about what “others” say and do, but when it comes to one’s “own,” then we hay – mince, mince, mince.
You know nothing about me. Please read My Girlhood or Amar Meyebela before accusing me of favoring my mother. I believe no writer ever criticized their own parents in their memoir the way I criticized.
Like other intelligent people who believe in religion, my mother was also intelligent. My mother was the best student in her class, she could solve hundreds of practical problems many people could not solve. There are scientists who are very intelligent but believe in religion. They are not stupid people. Believing in religion is their stupidity.
I do not of course mean that Taslima does not disagree with her mother – she does, obviously. What I’m pointing out is how blunt she is when describing the choices of others – using words like “stupidity” – yet, when describing her mother’s choice, she is so much more gentle and understanding. Why not be consistent? Either be as brutally feank about your own mother as you are about others, or be gentle and understanding of everyone. What I object to is the double standard. It’s like calling others alcoholics and calling out their delinquency but when it comes to me or my mum, well, we have “issues.”
Great blog, followed.
Just one more thing, take a look at a platypus, god must have been on crack.