Skip to main content

Atheist before God


Fantasy

Atheist died and found himself before God.  God smiled at him more affectionately than any human being had ever done while he was on the earth.

“I never imagined you existed outside human illusions and delusions.”  Atheist said with his usual candour having overcome his surprise.

“On the earth,” God said slowly as if he was pondering over each word he uttered, “I don’t exist much except in human illusions and delusions.”

“Oh!”  God’s reply was another surprise for Atheist.

“Do you think if I actually existed on the earth as I really am there would be so much evil perpetrated in my name?”

“Evil,” said Atheist. “And that too in your name.  That is exactly what me lose faith in you.”

“I know. Because you had no faith in me, you were a good human being.  What if you had also started fighting in my name?”

“Where am I?”  Atheist looked around.

God laughed.  “In the presence of God.”

“Heaven?”

“Call  it what you wish.  Names matter little here.”

Atheist hesitated for a while and then asked, “I’m not sure I’d be happy here.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure I’d like to be with religious people.”

“There are no religious people here.  Very few reach here after death and most of them are atheists, agnostics and other genuine seekers.  Even here they go around finding their own ways of existence.  You are totally free here to do what you wish.”

“What about religious people then?  All those who fought, killed and died for you?”

“Everyone reaches the kind of hell or heaven that they have created for themselves.”

“Didn’t you create hell and heaven?”

God laughed.  “Illusions.”  He paused and then said, “Hell or heaven – it’s the individual’s choice.”

Atheist pondered a while.  “Why did you create human beings?”

“Creation is not a choice.  Creation is an unfolding of what lies within one.”

Atheist felt sympathy for God.

 Atheist Before God was my suggestion for Indispire Edition 139.  The topic found only one taker.  The topic lingered on in my mind and here’s the result.  


Labels:

Comments

  1. SaketOctober 15, 2016 at 2:43 PM

    The moment I noticed this prompt, I wanted to write on it, though I am not sure what I would have written.

    Good that you wrote on it. Good that I got to read a nice post on this.

    Recently I read something and saw some videos suggesting that the life, the world, and our consciousness itself , is just a virtual reality. The word "illusion" suddenly reminded me of that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 16, 2016 at 7:29 AM

      First of all, Saket, I'm grateful for that single vote. Thank you also for commenting here. After all, nobody else commented. Probably a sensitive topic :)

      My firm belief is that there's nothing after death except the funeral fire and its ashes or the maggots that will feast on your body underground. That fate is terrible. Hence we need fiction. We need illusions.

      Delete
  2. rifle range boyOctober 16, 2016 at 8:36 AM

    My take. Life is just a dash between two dates, that's all. We create our own understanding and projection of existence as if we are the centre of existence. Perhaps, the cosmos doesn't much about us. We are not even a minute speck in the dust of the universe!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 16, 2016 at 10:03 AM

      The real seekers go on searching, Farouk. They have no egos. The infinity belongs to them.

      [This is no claim that I have no ego. On the contrary, this is an effort to keep my ego under control.]

      :) :) :)

      Delete
  3. Durga Prasad DashOctober 16, 2016 at 9:55 PM

    And it is a beautiful and thought provoking encounter

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownOctober 17, 2016 at 6:38 PM

    Sir you believe that god is just an illusion.good keep that. But surely there will be a day when everyone seek the help of god.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Pranju chakrapaniNovember 6, 2016 at 12:14 AM

    Solipsism gives us the meaning to everything including this illusion of life and god or does it?

    Also, I would love to read your posts on Quora.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Truths of various colours

You have your truth and I have mine. There shouldn’t be a problem – until someone lies. Unfortunately, lying has been elevated as a virtue in present India. There are all sorts of truths, some of which are irrefutable. As a friend said the other day with a little frustration, the eternal truth is this: No matter how many times you check, the Wi-Fi will always run fastest when you don’t actually need it – and collapse the moment you’re about to hit Submit . Philosophers call it irony. Engineers call it Murphy’s Law. The rest of us just call it life. Life is impossible without countless such truths. Consider the following; ·       Change is inevitable. ·       Mortality is universal. ·       Actions have consequences. [Even if you may seem invincible, your karma will catch up, just wait.] ·       Water boils at 100 o C under normal atmospheric pressure. ·    ...
12 comments
Read more