Who Outnumbers Whom : The Theists or the Atheists?

Who outnumbers whom? The atheist or the theist?

This is a great contention. It can be said with great amount of certainty that the number of the atheists are gradually on the rise. But the breed of theists is overwhelming and is in absolute majority. And in the long run they will remain so. The atheists will never be in a position to outnumber them. This is no beating about the bush.

Man is a spiritual being by nature. He has spiritual hunger of his own and is always hungry for spiritual food. He can fast on physical food but not on spiritual food without which he cannot survive. That 'manna' is quintessential for his essential being and self. There is no denying of the fact.

To say that man is essentially a spiritual being does in no way mean that it is all the way religiosity or belief in the existence of God is the prime mover of a man's existence, rather it is a way of his secular life and being and it is in no way akin to practising so-called god-fearing religion. And at the same time this spiritualism has no bearing on the pettyfogging spiritualism of the so-called god-men.

Actually man is the only animal who is always fearing of the fury of nature and has some amazing feeling for the beauty of nature or for that matter the mystery and wonder of nature which has in the process given rise to religion and science thereafter. Science has tried its best to demystify the nature by way of exploring deep into the realm of nature and has been successful to some extent to know the rules of law into its system. But science has failed miserably to get to the rock bottom of nature. It is no fault of science, rather it is its limitation. That limitation will always be there. And and that limitation always drags science from far to farther but not to the farthest.

It seems that the absolute rules of law into the very system of nature will remain elusive from the cognizance of human nature or science as such. That has created a void in the cognizance capacity of the human beings. And in that case religion or the concept of God has come to the fore to fill that vacuum. Marx has rightly said that religion is the opium of the masses. This oft-quoted saying of Marx is most oftenly misquoted by the Marxist proponents. What he actually intended to mean as regards religion is that the spiritual verves and flavours of religion allays the worries of uncertainty and existential pangs of the people and as such it brings about analgesia as and when human predicament finds no easy way to cathartic denouement.

Laymen who have generally have got nothing to do with the intricacies of science have managed to grasp the idea of God as an easy recourse and they have remained the theists as ever and taking to theism has come to good stead for them so far as the wonders and mysteries of this universe are concerned and this has its universal appeal. On the other hand, those who are atheists are neither god-fearing nor religious and they are few and far between but they too negotiate the universal mysteries and wonders by way of espousing the verves and flavours of spirituality. It stands to reason that this equation is not going to be changed in the foreseeable future.

It will be another wonder if this equation is ever changed?