Does God like atheists more than religionists because atheists don’t kill children?
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Hare Krishna. Question from Rishit Prabhu. I came across one of the posts in Facebook by a friend which said, God, dear atheists, thank you for not killing children.
You are doing great without religion. So does God appreciate atheists more than religionists because atheists don't kill children? Answer, religionists also don't kill children. It is barbaric people who are distorted by their own selfishness, by their own self-centered agendas who succumb to the brutality of killing children.
And such killing of children has got nothing to do with anyone's religious beliefs. So before I talk about the correlation between religion or one's beliefs and one's actions, let's first examine the content of this supposed post that is ascribed to God. So God is saying, dear atheists, thank you for not killing children.
You are doing great without religion. So now clearly this post is written by atheists and now atheists, the very definition is they don't believe in God. So now they don't believe in God, yet they imagine a non-existent God to be existent to congratulate themselves.
So the God who does not exist suddenly pops into existence to pat them on their backs. Oh, you atheists are all good people and those religionists, they're bad people. And after patting them on their back, then the God conveniently disappears back into non-existence.
So the perversity of the logic in invoking a God whose existence they don't believe in and imagining him into existence just to congratulate themselves is to compliment themselves. The logic would be, the absurdity of the logic would be ridiculous. But when this absurd logic is used to exploit the massacre of innocent children just for congratulating oneself, it is so sickeningly self-congratulatory.
That means rather than being concerned about the terrible suffering, what we are concerned about is my belief is right. And for that, even if I use logic that is wrong and even if I use a disposition of the heart that is completely off, that doesn't matter as long as my belief system is right. So actually speaking now, yes, certainly God doesn't want people to kill each other and what to speak of killing small children.
Now, what causes people to kill each other and especially to kill children like this? Now, anybody can do anything with any reason on their mouth, but our words are cheap, but our actions speak louder than our words. So now, first if we look at the certain people may say that they belong to a particular religion and according to their religious beliefs, for protecting their religion, they have killed their children. But now, even within Islam, Taliban claim to be protectors of Islam, but even most denominations of Islam have been horrified by the brutality of this killing.
And even Muslim clerics who earlier was supporting Taliban have turned against them after they perpetrated this brutality. So, if we look at the overall understanding of Islam, which most Muslims have, this sort of brutal killing of children is definitely not sanctioned. But apart from that, apart from getting into technicalities about the interpretation of a certain religious book, we can look at a broad interpretative framework for understanding human behavior that is given in the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedic literature.
Although this interpretive framework comes from the Bhagavad Gita, it is not sectarian, it is universal. It basically divides people according to their behavior into three modes, goodness, passion and ignorance. So, goodness, so these modes are basically, as we say modes are related moods, it's frames of disposition in which people behave in certain ways.
So, people in goodness are reflective, thoughtful, considerate, and they consider growth in knowledge and growth in wisdom as success in life. People in passion are want to achieve, want to possess, want to control, want to enjoy. And people in ignorance want to destroy, want to stamp on others.
And now, we by our choices can situate ourselves in any of these modes. And it's significant that the Bhagavad Gita classifies all activities in three modes. And even activities that might seem religious into three modes.
So, for example, doing sacrifice, doing giving charity, doing fasting. These are religious activities, and these are also classified into three modes. So, that means, somebody may do some religious activity, some activity that seems religious, but if that person is in the mode of ignorance, that person will do it for a destructive purpose.
And in the Vedic literature, there are examples of demons who try to get power. They do lot of austerity, lot of dapasya, but for what? Was it even Bhasmasur, just wanted to get the power that whoever I touch, that person will burn to ashes. So, similarly, today there are suicide bombers who may use the name of God.
So, their name, using the name of God is similar to the demons doing religious activities of dapasya in the past. And these modern demons, the terrorists, they don't have the power that whoever I touch, that person gets killed, but they have the power of putting bombs in themselves so that they, wherever they go, they blow themselves up and they blow others up also. They become suicide bombers.
Or as in this particular case, they take guns and shoot innocent people, innocent children. So, this is an activity in the mode of ignorance. And the Bhagavad Gita describes that ignorance, passion, goodness and transcendence.
God exists at the transcendental level and he extends his grace by which wherever we may be, we can rise upwards from the lower levels to the higher level. So, the purpose of religion is to raise people from the lower modes to the higher mode of goodness and beyond to godliness, beyond to transcendence. So, that is the purpose of religion.
Now, some people are in ignorance and in ignorance, they want to use religion as a masquerade, as a cloak for concealing and giving respectability to their own self-centered destructive agendas. So, this is gross abuse of religion and to blame religion for its abuse by certain people is like blaming science for its abuse by certain people. So, say, now these terrorists have used guns, sophisticated guns to kill the children.
Are we going about blaming the guns for killing the children? No, because the guns are tools and the guns have been abused. Actually speaking, guns are meant only for killing and even within that, now religion in and of itself is not meant for killing. And yet, the guns which are meant for killing and which have been used for killing, but they have been used for improper killing.
So, we are not blaming the guns, we are not blaming the scientific technology which led to the development of the guns. Religion is not meant for killing. So, the abuse of guns is that the killing has been improper instead of being proper.
Instead of killing attackers, innocent children have been killed. So, the use of guns is improper. But the point is guns are meant for killing.
And although guns are made for killing and made by science for killing, still, we don't blame science because we understand its abuse, which is to be blamed. It's not science to be blamed. Then religion is actually a force which is meant to assist, which is meant to help people become pure, become selfless.
And why should that be blamed if some people grossly misinterpret and misuse it for their own self-centered agendas? Now, actually speaking, there are thousands and thousands, millions of people who are inspired towards goodness and charity and nobility by their religion. But these acts are inconspicuous. In fact, they're so commonplace that they don't become news.
So many people give charity of food, clothing, shelter. Some people act more kindly and compassionately towards others because they see the spiritual divine connection of everyone. They see everyone as connected with God, as dear to God.
And that's why they help others. So, from the overall balance point of view, in the media coverage of the sensational newsworthiness, the destructive acts of a few distorted religionists may be more in the media. But overall, religion is a force which brings out the good within people.
And as far as killing children is concerned, it is most unfortunate. But it is by no means just the monopoly of perverted religionists. Anybody in ignorance can do ghastly things like this.
So, in the Mahabharata, Ashwatthama, he killed children and he killed children in their sleeping. And it was horrible and he was condemned for that. And similarly, throughout the history of wars, in Soviet Russia, the communists wiped out entire generations when they found that they could not be manipulated by them.
So, in the recent wars, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, actually, ethnic cleansing, so many children were killed. The number, according to United Nations statistics, ranked in tens of thousands. Same happened in some of the, what is called, ethnic cleansing in some of the African genocides.
So, this is all tragic. It is all the result of excessive ignorance where one becomes monstrously self-centered, not thinking of anyone else except one's own pleasure, one's own agenda. And what we need to free the world from such monstrous self-centeredness is actually genuine self-realization.
When we understand ourselves as spiritual beings, when we see our spiritual connectedness with all living beings through the supreme being who is our father, who is our lord, who is our protector, then that spiritual connectedness, that perception of spiritual connectedness will bring out the selflessness within people. That will raise people from lower selfish dispositions towards more noble, selfless dispositions. And that actually is the counter to such ghastly acts of barbaric terrorism and not just sickeningly self-congratulatory posts made by atheists which may just make them feel good about themselves but don't make anything good in any situation.
Thank you.