God Vs Religion: Why I can neither be an Atheist nor Religious !

As soon as we're born, we were assigned a label of religion, caste, sect and we live our entire life feeling great about, defending, fighting for that identity. While doing this, we believe we're defending God, rituals, way of life our God wanted us to live with. We follow our belief system and rituals because our parents inculcated those "values" into us. They inherited those beliefs from their parents and they got it from their parents and so on. But where did it all start ?

Why I can't be an atheist !

Let us back date certain events in history to the point when God presumably delivered a message to select human(s) whose teachings are being followed even today. Let me start with a brief history of our Universe.

13,700,000,000 years ago (that's 13.7 billion years ago), something mysterious happened and the space came into existence out of nothing. That event is, in scientific circles, called Big Bang. Three minutes after the occurrence of Big Bang, light elements were born and when they collided formed various elements (as we know in periodic table of chemistry) were born. Google Big Bang for more intricate details about how the numbers were derived, calculated. That would make your day for sure.

But it's out of even the finest of human minds to comprehend how the big bang occurred, what caused the sudden burst of particles, space and what was the status before Big Bang. So there could be something beyond the universe, which caused or triggered the cosmic events and that super-power which commands space, orbits, centripetal and centrifugal forces to balance the universe, theories of gravity, magnetism, electricity and other natural phenomena. That super-power can be called GOD, unless one has an alternate theory or explanation. But the GOD I'm referring to here is a formless phenomenon or nature as opposed to that benevolent entity responding to individuals' prayers. I firmly believe in my understanding of GOD and hence despite being a voracious reader of Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Richard Dawkins, I can't put myself into a category of atheists.

Now read ahead about what happened after the Big Bang.

• 8,900,000,000 (8.9 billion) years ago, Milky Way galaxy was born. 
• 4,600,000,000 (4.6 billion) years ago, Solar System was formed then. 
• 4,400,000,000 (4.4 billion) years ago, water was formed on Earth
• 4,100,000,000 (4.1 billion) years ago, earliest form of life was formed from non-living matter through a phenomenon called Abiogenesis. Google that.
• 3,500,000,000 (3.5 billion) years ago, traces of oxygen were formed but the oxygen as we see today was formed only 50 million years ago.
• 1,250,000.000 (1.25 billion) years ago, sexual reproduction of organisms began. Everything living existed only under water
• 400,000,000 (400 million) years ago, land life began with vegetation, flora and fauna
• 10,000,000 (10 million) years ago, first apes formed who would be ancestors to modern humans
• 4,000,000 (4 million) years ago, humans began walking on two legs
• 50,000 years ago, modern humans as we know began to live.

A bit of future: Earth will die in the next 1 billion years and Sun will die in the next 5 billion years. So the development of the universe, world, life went through and is going through multiple epochs, evolution, revolutions, changes very very slowly.

History of Religion

So as mentioned earlier, modern humans came into being 50,000 years ago and since then humans followed burials of dead and certain social ways of life. Sumerian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Chinese civilizations introduced organized religions in their respective areas but those religions were long extinct.

Indus Valley Civilization began around 3300 BC (that's around 5000 years ago). The civilization is considered to be precursor to Dravidian civilization and Vedic religion which formed earlier form of Hinduism later around 1500 BC.That was the same period when Abraham, patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam lived.

Vardhaman Mahavir founded Jainism and Gautama Buddha founded Buddhism in around 500-600 BC, Confucianism was founded around 500-600 BC, Zoroastrianism founded between 400-500 BC. Jesus Christ lived and founded Christianity between 4 BC and 30 AD. Prophet Mohammed lived and founded Islam between 570 AD to 700 AD. Guru Nanak ji founded Sikhism between 1450 to 1550 AD. 

Hinduism & Vedas

Me being a Hindu, would not and should not comment on other religions, their evolution and hence will back-date how exactly Hinduism came into existence and because it is the oldest religion being practiced today (along with Judaism, perhaps), other religions could have trodden a similar path.

To many devout Hindus, its astonishing to know that basic form of Hinduism began in Pakistan by ancestors of Dravidian (South Indian) folks in bronze age around 1500 BC. That's when the first religious text (still in use) was composed in the form of Rigveda, the cradle of Vedic religion and Hinduism. Rigveda is a collection of over 10,000 verses classified into 10 mandalas believed to be composed by 10 sages after whom the current gotra system is being practiced.

Though reading all vedas will take years, I have been skimming all 4 vedas for the last 10 months to understand the broad context and gist.

RigVeda is full of hymns and praises of Gods and the most revered gods were Indra (king of Gods) and Agni (Fire-God). Varuna (Rain-God) was revered too and was labeled as an asura the term which in later Hindu texts was demonized. To the surprise of many, Vishnu and Rudra (Shiva) who are pivotal Hindu Gods of the current era had very minor and marginal reference to in Rigveda on which entire Hinduism is based on. For example, Indra was the subject of Praise in 289 hymns whereas Vishnu was confined to 6 and Shiva to 5. Agni was treated as a messenger to all Gods (and hence carry prominence in hawans and poojas today). 

Another interesting fact is that the deities eulogized in Rigveda were extremely similar in traits and powers to Yamna Culture (of present day Ukraine), central Asian extinct religions like Bactria-Margiana (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan etc) and ancient Persian cultures (Indra, the most celebrated God in Rigveda is an uncanny replica of an older Persian deity called Verethragna) and the earliest inhabitants of Vedic age were also believed to be migrated from or via Central Asian regions.

Samaveda is a musical version and a subset of Rigveda. Yagurveda later built upon from the contents of Rigveda few centuries later comprises more about homam, hawan, poojas, vrathams, yagams and rituals. Most of the rituals followed by Hindus today are inherited from Yajurveda. Atharvaveda, a much later addition is also built upon extracts of Rigveda and comprises more about spells, charms and magical binds to counteract bad omen and diseases. Atharvaveda was not considered a major veda till many centuries.

Hinduism as we know today is not founded by any one person but is a result of multiple transformations since the last 4-5 millennia. In the bronze age of nomads, survivalists, few relatively intelligent human beings in flesh and blood envisaged / hallucinated / created ways to pacify, influence and turn the unknown Superpower to their benefit and composed hymns in their praise which formed Vedas. Fortunate to them, their fellow humans had unwavering faith in their divine connection enough to practice and transmit their teachings through generations. That was some feat worth commending.

The people who lived in vedic period were semi-nomadic folks who built and thrived on Indus valley Civilization (oldest along with Egyptian and Mesopotomian civilizations). While it's widely believed that Dravidian people who flourished in the Indus Valley Civilization could not withstand the drought, natural calamities and hence migrated southbound and later Aryan tribes inherited the vedic civilization, blended their own belief system to the preceding vedic culture to shape present-form Hinduism. Vedas were subsequently adapted and manipulated by their inheritors and descendants who have been transmitting their beliefs to their next generations and that is how we are today following those traditions because our forefathers and their forefathers believed what the sages spoke of God.

Much later other wise men born in the world had the vision and audacity to stand against the people around them to re-interpret the concept of God with a new way of life founded other religions. Religions thrive on people who are willing to follow and put their unflinching faith (sometimes faith enough to die or kill) in other person's vision of God.

Final Thoughts:

Now if you don't believe in the concepts like big-bang, theory of evolution, gravity, magnetism, cosmology, chemical reactions, periodic table etc, this article makes no sense to you. On the contrary, if you believe in all those and still believe what is being preached in religions, you must have a grand appetite to hold contradictory theories seamlessly. BTW God is the only common thread which can be possible in all science, history and theology (religions).

PS: Another interesting fact. If we compress the entire history of the universe into the last 24 hours, humans would enter this world only 4 seconds ago. Religions which claim to connect to the God would be formed only 2 seconds ago and here in this second, we are trying to prove superiority of our religion over others through debates, persecution, phobia and hatred. May God bless all of us.