It all started with the FB post by my friend
quoting Ernest Hemingway “All thinking men are atheist”. I was decently
surprised with such generalization on his part. I have great respect for Hemingway
as writer. I have thoroughly enjoyed his short stories like ‘Indian camp’, ‘The Short Happy
Life of Francis Macomber’ etc.
I am not against atheism and have little experience
in life to speak about God or spirituality. However I believe being theist or
atheist is not a question of choice like someone choosing the sexual
preferences. It’s about your belief and faith. There are some great atheist personalities
like Albert Einstein who became believer in god towards later part of his life.
If we were to consider ‘thinking men’ then Isaac Newton and Swami Vivekananda
were among the best known people believing in god. There are many million
such examples where strong atheist converted to staunch god believer.
Atheist is a great stage and it’s like true acceptance
of non-existence of god. It’s a stage where you question everything which a
religion and rituals offers. You reason with others to prove the corollary of god’s
existence. So we cannot convincingly say that “All thinking men are atheist”.
Yes thinking men try to create reasoning and probably create foundation of thoughts
about their beliefs.
