In my previous post, I had written about how George Carlin had helped in forming my world-view. This is the story of how it actually started. It begins on an average day, sometime in the last quarter of 2010. It was a few hours past midnight when I had finished my work for the day and had some time to kill before I caught my ride back home. I went onto YouTube and started watching a string of videos, some of which were stand-up comedy. While some of them were funny but ultimately forgettable, one of them was about to send me down a rabbit hole that would change my life. The red pill was a stand-up routine by George titled “Religion is bullshit”.

I must confess that this was not the first time that I watched this piece in particular. It’s very likely that the reason I watched it that day was due to how much I enjoyed it the first time. On the surface, it was essentially poking fun at Christian beliefs, something which I didn’t have much knowledge of or any attachment towards. But while the first time watching this amused me, this time had a different effect: it made me think. Think back to my childhood at a very specific point in time.

Like most children, I had been told about gods and religion from a very young age by my parents. Whether it was about Lord Rama's exile and return during the Deepawali festival or Ganesha’s birth during Ganesh Chaturthi or other basic concepts in Hindu philosophy, I listened to them and accepted them as if it was true. I would accompany my parents and friends to temples, pray to the gods, take their blessings, donate some money and even eat prasad like everybody else did. Others would speak of their own experiences going to temples and performing similar activities, so all of it just seemed so normal. But despite all this, watching that video that night reminded me of a time when I questioned the concept of god.

I remembered a time in 6th grade when I was outside my classroom out on the corridor. As I waited for the next teacher to arrive and the next class to begin, my mind wandered off in its own train of thought. I was thinking about how god was supposedly all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving and everywhere. I remembered how I asked myself many questions about his nature:

“Is he really everywhere?” “Is he out here in the corridors right now, floating in the air all around me? Is it even possible? Surely he can’t be EVERYWHERE! He must be using assistants of some sort!” 

“Does he really know everything? Everything that we say or do? Does he keep a record of our actions? Is that even possible?”

“Do Muslims really have two angels on their shoulders, one who records all the good deeds and the other all the bad ones? Why doesn’t Hinduism have this system?”

I remembered how all these questions popped up in my head, but I almost never got a chance to ask them to anyone or get an answer. I remembered how none of my family or friends had ever asked such questions, thereby keeping me from asking them myself. I realised how I had taken them for granted and never really reflected on them beyond the surface. Not only that, but I realised how I had come this far in my life without really learning about any other religions in detail, or without even bothering to find out if any of them were really true. Suddenly, this subject became much more interesting.

In the following days, I watched Carlin’s video again and again. Not only this, but also the one where he dismantled the Ten Commandments. I would laugh at first, cos George is incredibly funny, but I’d also look up the Ten Commandments on Wikipedia and learn about them, along with other aspects of the Christian faith. I then read about Islam and this other religion called Judaism, and how they were considered “Abrahamic” religions as they all had a common god, sort of. Likewise, I read about Buddhism, Jainism, Mormonism and even Scientology, all the while trying to draw parallels with Hinduism. I would read all this in between my job and reflect on them when out on a break or when I get back home again late at night. I found myself rapidly spending more time not just reading about them but thinking through them. Thinking about how these religions make such grand claims, yet so little can be said to be really true at the core. About how people believe in these claims without thinking critically. Something wasn’t adding up, and it was driving me nuts! This was turning out to be the biggest elephant in the room that no one wanted to talk about. Or more aptly, an invisible pink unicorn.

As time went on, my obsession with this discrepancy only seemed to expand, like the universe it was a part of. Lucky for me, the new atheist movement was ready to cater to my obsessive needs. I progressed from Wikipedia articles to videos on YouTube where Richard Dawkins asked me “what if I was wrong about the great Ju-ju at the bottom of the sea?”, and Christopher Hitchens told me how “god is not great” and delivered brilliant Hitchslaps to people who thought otherwise. When I had specific questions that these people hadn’t answered, I discovered many channels within the atheist community that gave logical answers as well as their own take on the subject. When these short videos didn’t quench my immortal thirst, I watched debates that went on for hours. There were days when I would spend all my time engrossed in my laptop watching, reading, learning and thinking about god and religion, forcing me to crunch the pending work in the last few days of the week. As my interest in the subject grew, my interest in my job diminished. I was hanging in there, but this couldn’t go on for long.

The final nail in the coffin came when my interest in philosophy grew alongside god and religion. I had never studied it in school or college but had certainly seen my share of philosophical quotes under varying contexts. It’s a subject that became crucial for me to navigate the ocean of information, and one that I surprisingly seemed to have a decent grasp of despite never formally learning it before. As I learnt about epistemology, logic and ethics, among other things, I realised that I was well into the process of rethinking all the beliefs I had held until then. What started as a stand-up routine resulted in me questioning the very nature of our world and the purpose of my own existence in this gift or curse that we call life. In light of this existential crisis, a job related to computers was of no interest any more. When I couldn’t hang on any longer, I quit my job to take a break and work through this problem that I found myself deep in. How things change in a matter of a few years.

Looking back through all these years, it’s clear how this was a pivotal point in my life. What I learnt during this time gave me the tools to think through the complexities of life. To break out of the shackles forcing me to look at the old, shadowy narratives and see the real objects in front of the fire as I left the proverbial cave. It allowed me to look not just within myself but to look at this world we live in and form an opinion, strong but likely temporary. It’s a privilege to be in a position where I can think freely and express myself as I’m able to right now, and I only hope more people get the opportunity to experience the same.