convincing the adamant atheist CONVINCING ATHEIST

[dattaswami]

Convincing the Adamant Atheist

Shri Phani asked: How can we discuss and convince atheists, who are very adamant in their views?

Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! Such adamant behaviour of atheists is the result of the aversion that they have held in their mind towards spirituality and spiritual people for a long time. The reason for their aversion is the hypocrisy of theists who have been secretly doing sins while pretending to be righteous externally. These atheists are able to identify such hypocrisy and they react emotionally. Unfortunately, their emotion is misguided since they blame God, holding Him responsible for the hypocrisy of the theists. They should blame the sinful theists and not God. The atheists think that if the concept of God itself is removed, the hypocrisy based on God will be eliminated from its root. This conclusion of the atheists is quite foolish. Firstly, by removing the concept of God, the quality of hypocrisy is not removed. Secondly, the problem of sin increases even more since the public loses all fear and starts committing all types of sin fearlessly.

I agree that theists are committing sins in the name of God. If the concept of God is eradicated, let us say that the sins done in the name of God might stop. But, apart from the sins committed in the name of God, what about all the other types of sins committed by people in the world? Will they stop too? Not at all! In fact, the theists of today, upon giving up their faith in God, will commit a hundred times more sins in the world. They will not even fear the various controlling agencies like the police and courts since they would have already tilted them in their own favor through corruption and influence. They would have lost all fear of punishment. Luckily, the theists of today, are greatly controlled by the concept of existence of God. Even though they commit some sins, they are afraid of committing more sins because they believe that God is omniscient and omnipotent. They know that He can punish sinners, even if they manage to escape the law of the land through crooked ways. The omniscient and omnipotent God shows us the evidence of His punishment of sinners in this world itself. Souls are punished for the intense sins committed by them, even while they are alive. Similarly, intensely good actions also yield rewards in this world, while the person is alive.

Does Worship Cancel Sin?

There is one concept propagated by priests, which is certainly wrong. Priests claim that sin can be cancelled by worshiping God. This is not true. The reason why the priest promotes this false concept, is to make money. The theistic sinner, who is afraid of divine punishment and is eager to find a way to escape from it, gets carried away by this concept. The priest demands money from the theistic sinner in order to perform some ritual-worship. It is basically a form of fraud. We must indeed criticize such priests and eliminate such wrong concepts from society through the propagation of true spiritual knowledge. But the atheist’s insistence on demolishing the very concept of God, in order to solve the problem, is very foolish. If your house is infested with rats, do you find a way to drive away the rats or do you burn down your entire house? In the present context, atheists want you to burn down your entire house in order to permanently eliminate the problem. Let us say, you have a toothache. A dentist says that he can free you of the toothache, once and for all, by removing all your teeth! Would you go to such a dentist? Emotion always kills a person’s intelligence and this is the case of the atheist. Eliminating all the sins committed in the name of God by rejecting the very concept of God is indeed burning down your house to get rid of rats!

The Hypocricy of Atheistic Morality

The atheist says that sin can be controlled even without the concept of God through moral education or ethics education. But tell Me, will anybody listen to you if you simply instruct people to not commit sin because sin is bad and not committing sin is good? It will simply not work! That is why moral science classes are removed from education. They are simply a waste of time! Moral education must be combined with the spiritual knowledge of God. Then alone can the desired goal be achieved. Atheistic moral education is bound to fail. The people to whom you are preaching your atheistic morality will immediately point out to you that following morality will result in some materialistic loss to them. They will ask you if there is any harm in committing sin if it gives some material benefits. You will say that they must fear the punishment given by the police and the law. But, they will tell you that they already have found crooked ways involving bribery, influence and force to escape the punishment. You will say that those techniques are not good and ethical. But they will not care at all for your ethics. They will say, “How does it matter if the techniques are good or bad? If they help me in getting materialistic benefits and enjoyment in this world, without facing any punishment from the law, they are good for me!” What can you say to them?

Becoming an atheist is nothing but getting a free licence to commit any sin, whenever one gets the chance and whenever one can escape from the law. If you say that you will remain ethical and not commit any sin, even without accepting the existence of God, it is the biggest hypocrisy! If there is indeed such an atheist, God will congratulate him and declare him to be a far far better soul than the sinful theist. God’s maximum expectation from any soul in this world is for the soul to avoid sin. He never promotes devotion, asking souls to worship Him, since the path of devotion was discovered by devotees.

God Exists

Atheists need not pretend to be broadminded in allowing the concept of God just for its practical value in controlling sin, even though they do not believe it to be true. The concept of the existence of God is absolutely true. Hence, there is no need to create any concept merely for its practical utility in solving the problem of sin in the world. The concept of the existence of God is a million percent true! The atheist has to defend his position against miracles, which are practically experienced. God-in-human-form performs unimaginable events in the world, called miracles. They provide direct evidence of the existence of the unimaginable domain, which itself is God. But the atheist blindly dismisses even genuine miracles as magic tricks. Certainly, there are clever people who use magic tricks to cheat the innocent public into thinking that they are performing miracles. But the problem is that atheists consider all miracles as magic tricks. Shri Satya Sai Baba, the recent Human Incarnation, invited atheists and scientists to observe and disprove His miracles, showing them to be magic tricks, if they could. Several atheistic scientists became His disciples, after observing His miracles for a long time. If the atheist is a true scientist, he or she will have an open mind to study and accept the truth. Atheists without a scientific attitude are incapable of such a transformation. They will always remain adamant, adamant and adamant! Science studies any phenomenon without any prejudice and, at the end of the study, it accepts whatever conclusion follows. Atheism starts with a pre-determined adamant conclusion and using twisted logic, arrives at the same conclusion, at the end of the study! There is nothing you can do with such adamant atheists except saluting to them, falling at their lotus feet! God allows them to exist in this world since they are useful as examiners for testing the strength of devotees’ faith and devotion.