I have a copy each of a compilation of all the Vedas, Vishnu Puran, Geeta, Quran and Bible on my bookshelf and people visiting me get surprised to see these and ask me point blank, "You claim to be an atheist, yet why do you have all these religious books?" and I quickly reply, "To know the religions." And I believe that is the general trend about all the atheists on the globe. Conversely, I visit my religious friends and foes and find them boasting about their own religion and criticizing all others, without ever reading a book on the subjects. Their knowledge about religions remains limited to what they learn from their narrow communities.
Such an instance is confirmed by a recent survey wherein atheists and agnostics are found to surpass all other groups in their knowledge of religions. Now, we are here to survey what and why we must know about religions.
Whether one believes in some concept or refuses to believe, he/she is supposed to know it. Since, present human society has a majority of believers in religions and God, it s all the more important for the non-believers to know religions and God to counter the false beliefs of the majority. The survey also proves that mostly the ignorant people are believers in religions and God.
Knowledge is power of humanity over all other species of life, and through it only we come to differentiate between the right and the wrong. And surely, knowledge does not mean believing. It is all the more needed for not believing.
Believing in something distracts the person from knowing about the alternatives, and deeper the faith more is the distraction. Multiplicity of religions proves fallacy of universality of religions and God which every religion claims. I mean to say if religions are there to preach the universal facts of life, as they claim, why there should be so many versions. This proves that some religions are misleading the people and so the believers must try to know more of other religions.
Most of the religious persons know more of the history rather than the preachings and their basis of their own religions, while the latter must play more important role in developing faith in the religion. Through history, these religions create an alliance of followers with the pioneer of the religion and then prove the pioneer to be a great soul and make him their deity. While an atheist probes the teachings and judges the religion on their basis. For the religious persons, they develop a faith in the person rather than his teachings while their followers are supposed to follow the teachings. As a result, religious followers worship the pioneering persons ignoring their teachings in their lifestyles.
Converse to the above point, science is being adopted in everyday life of all of the humanity without knowledge of its fundamental principles and theories. This proves that science has more followers than the religions. And the atheism evolves from scientific analysis of religions and theism.
The Necessity of Atheism Thus, religions are being followed through ignorance of the teachings and their overall impacts on humanity while the atheism is being followed through application of scientific logic to lifestyles.
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