Gita 09.14 The claim – religion is an agreeable illusion – is atheists’ agreeable illusion

Thank you. To treat religion as an agreeable illusion is to perpetuate one's own agreeable illusion. Here in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is telling that the serious devotees work extremely hard to, they endeavour with determination to practice their devotional activities.

There are psychologists, especially atheistic psychologists, who treat religion as an agreeable illusion. They say that although life is meaningless, but that is the reality. But religion gives a sense of meaning to people's lives.

It helps them to understand that actually there is some meaning to life. It helps them to believe like this. It helps them believe that there is a God who loves me, a God who is concerned about me and that I will have a happy ending eventually because that God will take care of everything.

They say this is an agreeable illusion which people want to believe and religion offers them that. However, such a conception neglects a major part of religion which involves accepting the unpleasant, not just basking in the pleasant. So, for example, religion involves doing difficult things, performing austerities.

So, there are so many saints who faced persecution from the world because of their devotion to God. There are so many saintly individuals who embarked on extremely difficult tasks just so that they could share their devotion to God. Now, in this case, it was their devotion which actually made life more difficult for them, did not make life easy for them.

So, if they had not been devotees, if they had not been devoted to God, then they would not have had to perform those austerities either for going closer to God or for bringing others closer to God and yet they did it all. So, the idea that religion exists because it offers an agreeable illusion to people, often the whole focus of religion is not just on God loves me, but that I am meant to love God and for me to love God, I often have to do activities that are not easy just as any kind of love involves commitment and commitment often entails doing things that are difficult to do. So, that way we can understand that love is itself not just a sentiment, a feel-good sentiment, certainly not when it has to be expressed through actions that are often demanding.

So, yes, bhakti is about bhakti me religion and specifically when we are talking about religion, we are talking about theistic religious feeling over here that may help us to feel good that in an insecure world, that in an insecure, uncertain, meaningless world, we find some security, certainty, meaning in God, but religion does not involve only that. It is, there is a whole not so pleasant part to it, which one needs to take into account. So, it is not just and everything about religious practice is not agreeable.

It requires us to purify ourselves, to discipline ourselves, to bring out our higher side. And secondly, is it an illusion? What is the proof that it is an illusion? Is there any objective mathematical test by which one can say that this is an illusion? Now, as far as its effects are concerned, the effects are positive. Survey study after study has conveyed, medical studies we are talking about here, have found a positive correlation between the religion and health that religious people tend to recover better from attacks of bad health.

They are less vulnerable to such attacks and not just at a physical level or even more so at the psychological level. They are less prey to addictions, suicide allergies and self-destructive psychological patterns. And even those who have already succumbed to them, they are more capable of recovery if they have some religious, not just affiliation, but also dedication, some commitment to practice.

So, of course, this does not in itself prove that a religious belief is either illusion or reality. But it definitely challenges the cursory dismissal or almost the presumptuous dismissal, the presumption that religion is an illusion. There is no scientific experiment that can prove the non-existence of God or the non-existence of soul.

And the transformational effect of religious practice have been proven to be true, not false. Now, we could very well turn this around and psychoanalyse the advances of this argument who say that religious belief is an agreeable illusion. Now, might this claim be an agreeable illusion for them? Now, even atheists have a worldview and within their worldview, they wish to perpetuate their worldview that there is no God, that the millions of people who believe in God are just sentimental at best or fanatical at worst, that skeptics like to pat themselves on the back saying how rational and intelligent they are.

And they would like to mock the believers saying that, oh, how gullible they are. But, you know, this itself, this is a priori assumption. It is not a conclusion of reasoned set of arguments.

As I said that God's existence cannot be empirically demonstrated or refuted, nor can it be scientifically proven or disproven. So, atheism is ideological position which may draw some points of support from science, but it is not a scientific conclusion. Atheism is an ideological position, not a scientific conclusion.

And so, what this means is that because atheists want to hold on to their worldview, because they want to believe that there is no God, they may come up with arguments which discount the evidence that does not agree with their worldview. That is how, say, they come up with the idea that religion is an agreeable illusion. So, this claim that religion is an agreeable illusion is an illusion that is agreeable for them.

It is their agreeable illusion. So, it agrees with the atheistic worldview that religious people are sentimental, gullible people, only in need of comfort. So, that is one way of looking at it.

It is definitely this particular conception is agreeable with the atheistic worldview. And it is itself is an illusion, especially for those who take up serious spiritual practice. And spiritual practice brings transformation and realization.

So, transformation in one's life where people start seeing that life has some higher meaning, some higher purpose. And that is the realization that they get. They see higher, start realizing higher spiritual realities.

And empirically, we can see the transformation that has happened in terms of people becoming benefited, people becoming elevated, people becoming, we could say even becoming better human beings free from the shackles of bad habits, more dedicated to the pursuit of virtue in their lives and sharing and caring for others in their lives. So, thus, if you look at the evidence of transformation that often adoption of religious worldview and practice brings about, then it could well be argued that the notion that religion is an agreeable illusion is itself an agreeable illusion for atheists. Thank you.