Where Did An Atheist Young Man's Morality Come From?
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
23 March
2023
Ill-Evolved And Terrified Humans Have Falsely
Projected All Religions As Providers And Sustainer Of Morality. This Is
Mankind's Biggest Blunder.
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Way back in
1971, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas paid a handsome tribute to Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and
Sukhdev on the 40th martyrdom of the trio who were hanged at Lahore Central
Jail on March 23, 1931. He asked a very relevant question in his popular column
' Last Page, ' " Where did a 23-yr-old atheist revolutionary Bhagat
Singh's sense of morality come from? " Bhagat Singh was an avowed atheist
who wrote a long essay, ' Why I'm an atheist.' Bhagat Singh's essay cursorily
discussed religion and morality. But it was Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, himself an agnostic,
who enumerated upon the role of religion and belief in god on an individual's
sense of morality.
Using
Bhagat Singh as a metaphor for religion and godless morality, Abbas concluded
that a sense of right or wrong comes from an individual's idea of propriety
which he learns and imbibes from his experiences, circumstances and
interactions with people. God and religion have no role to play in the
development of an individual as a morally sound human. Only a morally sound and
exceptionally sensitive person like Bhagat Singh could say before justice Sir
Len Carter that he was sad to kill a police officer, John P Saunders, but he
had no other option. Even in prison, young and atheist Bhagat Singh was
fighting for the basic rights of his fellow prisoners and went on a hunger
strike.
Ill-evolved
and terrified humans have falsely projected all religions as providers and sustainer
of morality. This is mankind's biggest blunder. Finland, the happiest country
in the world according to 2018 report on the World Happiness Quotient, has no
official religion and people of that country hardly care for a fictitious god
sitting in an obscure nook of the universe and checking who skipped his Namaz
and Roza. Yet, the country has minimum crime rate in the world. There's
no suicide bombing or killing in the name of god and religion. Japan is yet
another country where people are least bothered about god and religion. But
Japanese are morally sound people. They're arguably the most honest people in
the world despite the least interference of a religion and an imaginary god.
Nietzsche,
Schopenhauer, Sartre, Kant, Camus, among others believed in universal morality
and drew no inspiration from any religious book or out of fear of a non-existent
god. Believers often say that Nietzsche languished in a bedlam. They don't know
that it was not because of his rejection of god and religion. Lunacy ran in his
family. His devout uncle was a lunatic, who died in a lunatic asylum.
Nietzche's mother became deranged towards the fag-end of her life. She was a
great believer. According to 1993 Mental Health Report and Survey of India's
two biggest mental asylums, Ranchi ( Jharkhand) and Yerwada ( Poona,
Maharashtra), twenty four percent lunatics were pathologically religious
people. Their madness stemmed from over-religiosity. Most of them claimed to
talk to god just like Muhammad, Jesus,
Moses, among others used to 'converse' with the Semitic god. Mind you, the
Eastern god doesn't speak with his messengers and send down 'revelations' !
Only humans can think so foolishly.
To cut the
matter short, humans developed morality as they evolved. It's time for humans
to focus on much greater issues than remain entangled in religious morality,
god and scriptures.
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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul
is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He
has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several
languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/atheist-morality-/d/129380
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