But are they alive to take it as a challenge? Have they any validity to take it as a challenge? About all their fundamentals all that they can offer is “believe in it.” But the new humanity wants evidence, proof, rationality, a scientific approach.

Challenge is possible if you can provide a scientific approach, but in scientific approach they will be in trouble.

Then virgin birth becomes difficult to prove, then resurrection becomes difficult to prove, then a man walking on water becomes difficult to prove. These things can only be taken on faith. If they want a challenge, and accept the challenge, then they will have to learn the language of science, the language of reason – not of belief.

And I don’t see any possibility that Christianity can offer anything. It is doomed to die. The sooner it dies, the better – because it will free millions of people to think on their own, to search on their own. It will create a great revolution, the death of Christianity, because it is the biggest religion in the world, and it will not only be the death of Christianity, it will be the beginning of the death of other religions too. When the big brother dies, the others are going to follow.

In India when somebody dies his eldest son goes through an unnecessary torture – his head is shaved; his mustache, beard, everything is shaved. I have been asking Hindu scholars what is the reason for it. They said, “We don’t know, but this has been happening for centuries. The eldest son has to shave all his hair.”

I was talking to a shankaracharya and I asked him. He said, “I don’t know but there must be something in it. What do you think?”

I said, “My thinking is that this shaving of the head is the signal to the eldest son that now it is his turn. ‘Get ready! Your father is dead. Now you are in the front of the queue. Next your name is going to be called. This is the beginning!’”

He said, “From where did you get this idea?”

I said, “From nowhere. It is simply…you can see it, that the moment the father dies every responsibility comes to the eldest son; he becomes the head of the family. And certainly he is the next to follow. And whoever invented this strategy of shaving his head was doing a great service to make it known to the whole city that now this fellow is going to pop off any moment. And to this fellow also it was made clear that he should start getting ready, it is only a question of time. He has come to the first place in the queue.”

Christianity’s death, to me, is very significant.

Just the Catholics are seven hundred and fifty million in number – half of humanity is Christian. It will be a tremendous freedom. The pope is asking his followers to accept the challenge, but he himself is such a coward he cannot accept the challenge.