Problem with Religion

After about 3 years of being actually skeptical about everything around me, I researched about philosophy, origin of the universe etc on my own accord (still a lot left to research) and I could see the question mark on the existence of god. This is the research I did and I answer questions that are difficult to answer without involving god as well playing role of Devil's Advocate.

Disclaimer: the author doesnt hate any specific religion, he dislikes them all.

1. Religion is belief in an omnipotent, omnipresent, Omniscient, loving god. If god is everywhere then why are places of religion important? There is no excuse to destroying someone else's place of worship other than establishing dominance and power which clearly is animalistic, self-centered behavior 

2. There is lack of evidence of Muhammad, Ram and Jesus. They may have been great people and they may or may not have been the people that started it but today their image is used as symbol of power, stupid people fall for it, get exploited thinking these great people are looking at them with pride from "Above". The lack of evidence of any god at all. Many preachers ask this question- "Have you seen an electron? You don't see it but it exist". I have a counter question to that- "Do you believe in a unicorn? Why? Just because you cannot see it?". This argument cannot be used in everything. If we think of god as an axiom then it gives inconsistent explanations to many things. God exists wherever ignorance exists. Lunar eclipse was a 'divine' event because magically the sun was hidden during daytime. IT MUST BE GOD!!11. Only after humans learnt that it was just moon shadowing some parts of the earth, their faith was reduced. And as science progressed, the faith of some countries plummeted. 40% of Americans (not that I like american culture or anything)do not believe in a god. Science is able to give very consistent answers to the mysteries of the universe; this is definitely better than saying "It must be god".  

"Belief is the death of Reason" and "Beliefs make it easier to go through hardships, even make them pleasant. Man can find a strong support in God and an encouraging consolation in His Name. If you have no belief in Him, then there is no alternative but to depend upon yourself. It is not child’s play to stand firm on your feet amid storms and strong winds.~ Bhagat Singh"

3."You are an atheist because of your ego". A. Big. Fat. NO! No one is an atheist because of vanity. Vanity is empty pride. Is standing on your feet empty pride? Is believing that there is no all powerful guardian figure protecting you from all harm Vanity? I have no problem bowing down to statues but i see no reason to do it so i don't. That my friends is not vanity 4."If god doesn't exist then how are my prayers being solved?". This is a class A example of the Placebo effect. When one thinks some object is extraordinary when it is just your mind not realising that it is just an ordinary object. Your mind remembers all the prayers that were "heard" but it does not remember all the prayers that weren't. It wants to confirm the existence of god. If prayers work then why did 6 Million jews die? Did they not pray. Did mothers of stillborns not pray for their child's well-being? Didn't hindus in pakistan pray that their sons and daughters return to india safetly during partition? It is not only a logical fallacy but also a Confirmation Bias. [the different coloured words/sentences are links to sources, writing this because people actually said that i didnt provide any source]

"Praying is just wishful thinking from desperation"

After some deep diving, I learnt that in Hinduism, praying is establishing a connection with the divine energy. However, along the same lines, during praying we are often encouraged to request something to god, which to most people is material possessions. Doesn't this contradict gita which says that we should not be indulging in material possessions?

5. Everything is a social construct. in Christianity, there are the 7 sins. These are 'sins' actually can destroy lives. Lust, Pride, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath . Now, how do you get an idiot to understand that indulging in these 7 things is detrimental? You call it a 'sin' and tell them that doing any of the 7 sins gets you to hell. Similarly in hinduism, hindus have a fast on ekadashi. Intermittent fasting is great for the body. Likewise meditation for mental health and inner peace, yoga for physical health. "All of these things get you connected to god". Can you spot the similarity? It is to uplift the not so smart people of society so that they do not become degenerates. And it does work,  you are seeing liberal societies slowly perish because of the plummet in faith (ill make an article on this as well). This obviously does not mean that you cannot have good habits as an atheist and it also does not mean that you can be an egoistic devote of god. This is the general trend becomes majority people are emotional minded and do not self reflect. When you add fear of an external power that is always watching, you bring integrity into your life. Having (metaphorical) guardian figure watching over you is comforting as well. 

"[by rejecting god] man will try to stand on his feet. Being realistic, he will have to throw his faith aside and face all adversaries with courage and valor"~Bhagat Singh, just before being hanged

 There are other examples as well. Essentially, all superstitions are social constructs. "dont cut your nails at night because some ghost will eat you up" was made because at that time there were no light bulbs so it was common to cut your skin and bleed yourself. After a havan when everyone eats food together and you have to drink a water enough to fit 1 palm because it lubricates your esophagus. This is amazing because taking any element of 'god' out of this, it becomes completely sensible advice and when its not, it was sensible advice whenever that superstition was made.

6. "How did something come from nothing". one of my favorite questions to answer. The first chapter of "brief answers to big questions" ~Stephen Hawking. Basically, there is a concept of virtual particles popping in and out of existence due to the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in a vacuum. So, there must have been such a low probable event where a lot of virtual popped into existence but did not annihilate each other. This is exactly the matter and anti-matter pair theory which has be experimentally proven correct. This means that matter and energy are interchangeable. Doesn't this sound like E=mc^2? There you have it. To summarize, due to quantum mechanics, in a perfect vacuum, particles will pop into existence and annihilate each other shortly afterwards however, the beginning of the universe must have been such a low probability event that the anti matter changed into dark energy and did not annihilate matter! This happened so much and so fast that inflation (there was no actual "bang")of the universe began. But Sid, how can  0 equal to anything other than 0 itself? So your theory is wrong. Nope, because 0 = -x + x (x belongs to R). You have heard of dark energy right? It exists because matter and energy exist (both of these are termed positive energy). Dark energy is the exact opposite of positive energy where dark energy and anti matter repels rather than attracts(gravity). Therefore, you do not need god to explain the origin of the universe at all! 

The 2 must read books on the topic

7,"How is the universe so perfect without a god". This is where I got introduced to the Anthrophic Principle. You know the theory of the multiverse and alternate histories right? Due to quantum mechanics, we cannot predict the future, but conversely how can we know the past for certainty? This is where the multiverse comes in. It says that in any probabilistic event, a new parallel(you cannot interact with it) universe is made. So to answer the question, this universe is perfect only by chance. There are universes where the strength of gravitation is reciprocal of r^3 rather than r^2 but life does not exist in that universe. Planets would have stable orbits very far from the star and so life would not get a chance to live (it would be too cold). There is also a universe where its the reciprocal of r^1 but life again cannot exist because for stable orbits the planet has to be too close to the star and so it would be too hot. We are in fact very lucky to live in such a perfect universe but then again, we do not need god to explain the perfection. There is also a new perspective my friend told me. 

"we were built for the universe, not the opposite. Like it could be entirely possible life exists out of the Goldilocks zone or where the laws of physics are completely different not carbon based life or life similar to on earth, cause that would be impossible but life completely different from what we see here we evolved to fit our natural conditions" 

Life can exist even where the cosmological constants are very different from our universes' and so the life form is also very different from ours.

8. Religions may or may not have been used to attain power but one things is for sure that today it is being used for power. Most of the politics played today and vote banks used today are dependent on religion. Can you imagine how much scientific development was slowed down due to christianity. The world would have been a much more advanced place. Today, so many time consuming, petty arguments everyone fights because some old book said "this place mine" and another different book contradicted it and now money, human labor and time is being wasted because of it? This sounds like the biggest troll in the history of trolling. However, I will not say that eastern religions were made to power grab even though their teachings are being manipulated for politics today. Non-Abrahamic religions are the most sensible group of religions and they promote scientific method, logic, reason and debate. In ancient India, this was called Shastrartha.  On the same note however, Hinduism critiques science saying "science is bounded by physical dimensions". There is also the culture of nature good, chemical bad. Doctor takes your money while natural and herbal is free in the world of Ayurveda where people promote using herbs to treat malaria rather than going to the doctor, as seen here.

People should educate themselves and take a step back and question who really stands for their religion and who is just using your devotion to become popular and to gain your loyal support in the name of god, calling themselves a messenger. Using anyone is morally incorrect but morality isn't a concrete concept in our minds because our brain is almost the same as that of prehistoric times. 

Devils advocate: My problem with Science: My issue with science is that it cannot be trusted. It ever-evolving nature makes it untrustworthy and therefore you cannot make since your faith. Look at this from an impartial view, what we knew 500 years ago is not even close to the science today. When newton made his laws, he was confident that it could explain the entire universe. Well, quantum mechanics and black holes kicked his ass. His laws break down that those 2 places and Einstein's laws and quantum mechanics take charge.

Today, some extremely self-centered and "I'm smarter than you" reddit atheists are as confident as newton today and think science explains the universe flawlessly. They are ignorant to the fact that we cannot explain any physical phenomena without objections. We know very little and we have no clue how much we don't know about things we know little about. Years ago we though microbes came in and out of existence like virtual particles. Definitely, the science today will be very different for the science 100 years ago. However, it is still better than being ignorant and calling everything we don't know god.

There is just 1 area where science just cannot explain itself is consciousness. Science embarrasses itself in this field and eastern religions have a good laugh at it. With that said, maybe advancements in AI could help us understand consciousness and secrets to life. Their developmental speed is speeding up exponentially so much today that they are able to reproduce on their own.

I am no expert in religion or science and this article is bound to be edited some time in the future. I may even look back at this page and cringe so hard that I may even delete it. Who knows?