Atheism, a pure and a complete culture which performs exactly opposite to the god-culture present in every religion. Today, atheism is the only culture in all the religious systems which is increasing rapidly. An atheist is a person, normally we think, is who disbelieves in God and its existence and the person who always supports what truth is and think according to the modern scientific thinking. There are many pros in this culture of atheism as it does not at all supports some extremely rude and pathetic systems like casteism and of course idolatry. But unfortunately, we have always been told by our ancestors that an atheist is a person with complete impurities and an atheist can never become pure even after his or her annihilation. As far as I am concerned, I really support atheism but not in traditional way. Once I was discussing on the same topic with one of fanatic theists and he was telling me that an atheist is a complete zero and that person can never understand what the real purpose of his life is. I couldn't answer him back that day as I was completely unaware of this world. But I wish I can meet him again and answer him back on this. I think if you are a zero then it is nothing but excellent because as we see zero is the best figure to start from and that is why it is one of the most important gift given by India to the entire world.
So, who is an atheist??? Just forget all the things you knew till now on this topic. An Atheist is the only person, I think, can reach closer to the real divine power not because he completely rejects it but he thinks with the mature mind set and not beliefs in what have already written from long time. An atheism, in Hinduism, is considered as one of the important cultures of ancient Hindu philosophical systems. That is reason you can see many theories which are completely on side of atheism and have not even gone forward on the theory of so called God-culture. You will not belief that an atheist can also worship the God but in a better way. Atheism simply rejects idol-worshiping and we should agree with this because, I think it is not all required to worship someone who lives in only one place and can be worshiped by only some groups of people. I think we cannot restrict god for just one group and one place. More than that our ancient scriptures are also not in favour of idolatry. You will not belief but out of ten philosophical systems of Hinduism only one believes in theism. The other nine are clearly against this theory. Here is the description...
Hindu Philosophies...
- Samkhya, deals with theoretical exposition of consciousness and matter.
- Yoga, deals with meditation and liberation.
- Nyaya or logic, deals with sources of knowledge.
- Vaisheshikha, explores atomism.
- Mimansa, school of orthopraxy.
- Vedanta, the only philosophy which completely in favour of theism and current most dominant philosophy of and in Hinduism.
The others are atheistic philosophies, which we normally know -
- Charvaka
- Buddhism
- Jainism
- Ajivika
In this four atheistic schools we can't say that Jainism and Buddhism completely favours atheism as they also are more concerned with God-culture and that is why here comes the new term which we know as Agnosticism, neither disbelief nor belief in God-culture. On the other hand, Charvaka and Ajivika, we can say, fully follows atheism. In ancient times, Charvakas really had dominated a very small time. Charvaka believed that we have life for just one purpose and that is pure enjoyment. They had said that we should live our life not under pressure of any religious books and theories instead we should live in whichever style we like and that would be the real principle of living our lives. This theory was something completely new for that time's Vedanta domination and many people simply left the Vedanta schools and joined Charvaka side. However, after some time they were completely vanished and now there are no evidences why they were vanquished.
So as far as Hinduism is concerned, I think, it fully favours atheism. Yes there are several theories which were being made by some people who didn't want their domination in the society to be vanished and that is why they just stuck to the Vedanta system only and they even managed to mix up all the system in one and that is why we treat atheism as a forbidden kingdom. But, belief me, it is not all true. Hinduism always have walked hand in hand with the culture of atheism and have also given it a large importance. Many scholars have already accepted this principle and have also accepted the fact that atheism developed under the wings of Hinduism. Swami Shivayogi, Swami Vivekananda, V. D. Sawarkar are the few names are really famous in this matter. V. D. Sawarkar had gone further by describing himself as a Hindu atheist.
I think, we have not yet discovered what the actual importance of atheism in our lives is. We need to understand that if we want to sustain our ancient knowledge and want to spread it more quickly, we have to think with the concept of atheism as well and have to give it a flavour of today's modern scientific world. That will be the true worshiping of our religion.