Unspecified Faith

It was a mixture of emotions, more of a pleasant contradiction as I realised while reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, I had "Thiruvasakam" by Ilaiyaraja playing in the background. The music was providing a beat (in my mind) to the words of Dawkins. I have heard that music brings people closer to God (the unspecified God; who knows what people really believe in) and I could not help but smile. Usually it is either a book or a song blaring from the earphones, but on this particular day I was engrossed in Dawkins's words about the ontological argument and this person sitting next to me proceeded to talk on her phone and as the conversation progressed she became excited and her voice levels grew to an alarming pitch. As Peter Finch said "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!", so I put on my earphones and chose random and what should play but Thiruvasakam (Thamizh hymns written by poet Manikkavasakar about worldly pleasures and sorrows and how everyone must attain liberation or Nirvana for you hipsters and well, the hippies). Was it an act of providence?

I am still not sure of God's existence or non-existence (yes I'm agnostic if you wish to label), but I hope "The God Delusion" will help clear my doubts just as an earlier book of Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) did for Douglas Adams. I was of the frame of mind that we should not bother about the God discussions; let him (or her?) be in his (or her?) own way and we should live our lives but as Dawkins has pointed out, religion plays a heavy hand in a lot of issues in the world today. Atheists have been vindicated (and maybe still are in some (or more?) parts of the world) and it is now the time to take a united front against the believers (more like truculent believers). I wish to know how many believers will be left if immortality of the soul is disproven (soul as a separate entity that would live forever)? No heaven, no hell and no purgatory. Would a large number of people lose faith if they were convinced that their souls will not survive death? Do we hold onto a shred of hope that heaven exists from hearsay? I hope "The God Delusion" answers my questions (it already has answered a few and I have only read a few pages so far).

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