I do not believe in God.
I used to. I was born into an open-minded Hindu family. I remember praying. The last memory I have of praying is before a race in seventh grade. I think I came second. I remember raising my eyebrows about some opinions expressing religious belief in ninth grade. Something happened in eighth grade, I guess. I read Richard Dawkins in 10th, but he was preaching to the choir by then.
I have a lot of friends who do not believe in God. One thing I find peculiar about their experience in becoming an atheist is that at least for a lot of them, the transition was rough — a lot of introspection, a lot of internal conflict. This wasn’t the case for me. I think I just figured it out one day. It really wasn’t that big a deal. Maybe that’s because I already felt then that there are more pressing, attention-drawing things in this very world. Maybe that’s because of my tolerant family background, or because Hinduism itself is very open — you can literally be a Hindu atheist — but I lost my religion without any great emotional upheavals. I don’t think that noticing the departure of a personal, anthropomorphic, all-controlling, all-seeing, supernatural creator entity from my life was even much of an epiphany. I must have shrugged. Life moved on.
That’s when I found meaning in life itself, in things around me that I had already felt, but whose simple yet monumental sufficiency for giving affirmation I had not completely recognized. In my first few years of irreligion, I found that I could still get the awareness of miraculousness and sense of humility that theists get from God, simply from the marvels of life and the majesty of the cosmos. William Blake’s words, “To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower,” rang true for me. I had been brought up to appreciate and respect nature — my grandfather was a scholar of Romanticism, my father has a background in ecology. Now, though, my wonder for nature and good ol’ reality could reach its consummation, since I did not foremost have to devote my awe to an abstraction like God.
On the cusp of my 19th birthday, I got hit by a feeling that though I could regard the world with a non-divine sort of sacredness, existence held no appeal for me. It was less of a sudden deficiency of appeal caused by godlessness, and more of a realization that there were some times when I would be aware of an overbearing eagerness to be alive and others when there would be little.
But on thinking about it, I found that when I did find meaning in (my own) life, it was when I was aware of existing in social contexts with activity and belonging. When you belong somewhere, you realize your worth as a part of a greater whole, and when surrounded by action, you see yourself as an entity that acts in the world and influences it — which, when you feel connected to the world, brings meaning to your existence. Thus, never having realized to such an extent how meaningful life is and without invoking religion, I learned how to find enthusiasm for living merely through being in a wonderful world in which I can do things through my own agency.
I see why people are religious. Religion brings meaning to life, and it’s a channel through which to pay one’s due for one’s existence. But the way I’ve experienced it, life itself can bring meaning to life. The fact that we live in such an amazing world and in which we have the ability — whether out of free will or not — to consciously act and make a difference, is enough to fulfill both these purposes of religion. And this may just be me, but grounding such joy and reverence for my being alive in what is so evidently real and everywhere around us makes those sentiments stronger and keener than religion ever did.