Atheism is a Truly Divine Science

May 29, 2004, 12.00am IST
Kailash Vajpeyi.

In ‘The Song Divine’, Krishna classifies nature as material nature and supernature. He says that supernature is incomprehensible to people who are not in tune with the subtlety of infinity. We think we choose to live, but the fact is we have no independent will to be born.


We only know how to defend or save this corporeal frame. But how many of us know that every second, a hundred million impulses assault our nervous system and that if we didn’t reject them, we would collapse? We think we’re special, but biology places humans alongside all other species. Beyond food, sex and terri-tory, animals are not aware of any other reality; they also do not have any aspirations towards immortality. Since there is no fear or idea of death in their lives, they have no concept of God or codified system of philosophy. They live by instinct and die without seeking to prolong their lives. Humans, however, have woven a complicated web of ideas in order to understand the implications of our ordinary and extraordinary states of consciousness. The lives of animals are governed by an unquestioning acceptance of the inevitable.

If we go through all the systems of Indian philosophy, we find a grand purposeful design and an invincible quest or effort to define the phenomena of germination and termination of life. The range of phenomeno-logy is so vast that it embraces every aspect of being and nothingness. India’s unique corpus of metaphy-sical doctrines has echoes of both theism and atheism. It is simultaneously centrifugal and centripetal and includes the purely spiritual, the purely material as well as the material-spiritual.

These schools of Indian philosophy are divided into two groups — the heterodox and the orthodox. The heterodox schools like Charvaka, Jainism and Buddhi-sm do not believe in the existence of God. Their well-structured logic is atheistic. The orthodox schools — sankhya, nyaya, yoga, vaisheshik and vedant — accept the authority of the vedas and believe in God. There is another school of Jaimini, known as mimansa, which makes no mention of God.

Traditionally, atheism is a system of views rejecting faith in the spirits, gods, life beyond death, etc. Atheism criticises religious dogmas from the standpoint of scientific study of the universe. It expresses the social role of religion and shows how religion has created misery from time immemorial. The philosophic basis of atheism is materialism and to a certain extent material spirituality. In Greek philosophy, Heraclitus, Demectrius, Epicurus and Thales are consi-dered to be staunch atheistic thinkers.

Brihaspati is seen as the propounder of atheism in Indian philosophy and this school is known as Charvaka or Lokayata School. We also have annihilationists and naturalists, who did not believe in the existence of God.

Jainism is another school of thought that practices atheism and follows the teachings of Mahavira. The Jains consider the arguments about the existence of God as being fallacious. The universe has no beginning, so the question of a creator has no logical basis. Every one of us is a reservoir of positive energy. Divinity is not somewhere out there.

So each one of us should strive for perfection and purity of consciousness.


Buddha’s argument is that if God is all-pervading, why is there so much evil all around? Like Charvaka, the Buddha also rejected the concept of soul but he did argue in favour of a conti-nuity through life and successive lives. Atheism strengthens the divine in man and generates an inexplicable joy. Whoever denies God asserts his own divinity.