Can atheists and theists come together to make a better world?
So, there are many points in this question, but I'll address some of them. See, first is that ultimately we want to live a meaningful good life.
So, can atheists come together in the pursuit of a good life? And sometimes atheists might also be very understanding with each other and they might care for each other and they might be able to live well. Yes, so, there's a question that can atheists be good people? And there's a different question, can atheism make people good? There are two different questions. So, can atheists be good people? Definitely.
There can't be because ultimately our world view or specifically our belief system, our world view, that is only one part of who we are. So, the Bhagavad Gita explains that there are three modes of material nature. Sattva, Rajas, Tamas, Goodness, Passion and Ignorance.
And broadly speaking, what does it mean? That some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, and some people wonder what happened. So, that is goodness, passion and ignorance. Atheists are thoughtful people, they think, they plan.
No, not atheists, people in goodness, they are thoughtful people, they think and make things happen. Those are in passion, they just run around doing this, doing that, and they don't think or plan. They do one thing but another thing goes wrong, another thing happens and they just make a mess of things.
And people are just lost in their own heads. Maybe drunk or… and basically they are just not even aware what is happening around them. So, now this division of human psychology, the Bhagavad Gita gives it independent of one's spiritual orientation.
So, you could have a theist who is in ignorance. That means somebody claims to believe in God, but they are violent, intolerant, they are irrational. And you can have an atheist who may be in goodness.
And they might be very calm, very reasonable, very sensitive, very nature loving. So, this we could talk about two terms over here. There are operational values and there are foundational values.
So, operational values means how we live in the world. Foundational values means what is it that we ultimately believe about the world. What is the foundation of our life.
So, one example to understand this could be that, say that if somebody is driving a car. So, operational value means how well do they drive the car. Foundational value means where are they going by driving.
So, if somebody is lost about where they are going. I mean they are driving very smoothly, following all the rules, taking excellent care of the car, not troubling the other drivers by haywire driving. They are driving very well.
So, in terms of the perspective on the road, say this person is a very good driver. That person is a terrible driver. Somebody might be a very poor driver, but they might be driving to the right destination.
Now, of course, whether they will get there or not, that's a different question. They are driving poorly, they might cause a break. So, like all of us, we have functional or functional operational values and we have foundational or fundamental values.
So, in terms of functional values, all of us fall somewhere in the spectrum of the three modes, goodness, passion, ignorance. So, to the extent people come to goodness, there can be reasonable discussion. And there can be also respectful disagreement.
As I said, we can agree to disagree. I was at an interfaith conference in Washington DC recently and there was a Muslim over there. So, he was telling me that I can communicate better with moderates from other traditions than with extremists from my own tradition.
So, extremists means those who are in passion or ignorance. They are intolerant. Although you might have one particular category, these are Hindus or these are Muslims or these are Christians or even these are atheists.
That is sometimes theism or religion is such a big category that it can be very unhelpful. Within religion, you can have the Amish people who, there was a movie called Amish Grace where there was a serial killer who rushed into an Amish school and killed the children. And the Amish chose to forgive him.
And he killed himself. They went, not only they forgave him, but they went and offered their support and assistance to his widow and his children. Now, they are also religious and we can have Jihadis who not only kill innocent children, but they use children to kill children.
Many of these terrorists were indoctrinated in 16, 17, 15 and they used them to kill others. So, religion is such a big category. What do you mean by religion? I may say, by religion I am talking about the Amish and somebody else might be talking about the Jihadis.
So, you are not talking about the same thing at all. That's why we have to look at what are the functional values. From the functional perspective, in the world when we are living, the functional values are very important.
And in that sense, an atheist might live more harmoniously if the atheist is in goodness. And the theist might live less harmoniously, more disharmoniously if the theist is in passion or ignorance. So, to the extent our consciousness arises, arises upwards, we become more thoughtful, more reflective.
To the extent we come to goodness, we all can live with our differences more harmoniously. And so, can atheists be good people? Definitely. But can atheism make people good? I'll talk about this more in the last EMORE.
But atheism itself does not contain any imperative for inner transformation. So, if theism is understood properly, if I understand that I am accountable to God and each of my actions I will be responsible for them, then there is an impetus for inner transformation. So, atheists can be good people and theists can be bad people.
That's possible. But if instead of comparing good atheists with bad theists, we compare bad atheists with bad atheists and we compare good theists with good atheists, then the impetus for transformation is more if we have a theistic worldview. The impetus and the capability, the resources also.
I'll come to that later. But yes, irrespective of our worldviews, if we come more to goodness, then we can all live more harmoniously.