Thinking has no strength, and anything that can be destroyed just by thinking must be very weak. Logic has no weight, it is only a game of words. A religion that is afraid of logic has no foundation. It is like a house of cards which can fall down with just a small breeze of logic. Are you afraid? Does your trust waver? Then know well that you have missed the first step – you have not contemplated rightly.

Ninety-nine people out of a hundred are just pseudo-religious. Once in a while only one in a hundred will gather courage to be godless. It needs great courage to be godless, and this is so because the whole system, the whole society is with the theist; all the values of life are supporting theism and all your selfish motives are supported by theism.

Godlessness creates insecurity in you. The godless man is an outsider, he belongs to no one. He becomes an outcast, nobody’s companion, nobody’s friend. He is not part of any society. There is no society of atheists, no traditions: an atheist does not belong to any temple or church, Koran or Bible or creed. He is stuck in a vacuum, in an emptiness. One person out of a hundred gathers the courage to become an atheist; ninety-nine people are just pseudo-theists. But then the person who has gathered the courage to be an atheist becomes stuck being an atheist.

Atheism is not an end, it is the first step. As it is, it is like a person raising one foot and then remaining in that position. That is why an atheist becomes very restless. Compared to the atheist, the pseudo-theist is less restless, less disturbed, because he has both feet firmly on the ground. He has not yet lifted his foot, he has not yet started the journey; he has just accepted what has been told to him by others. He has blindly said yes to whatsoever has been said to him by his parents, his teachers, his family, his society. He has never pondered over anything; otherwise it would be difficult for him to say yes.

And this is why the whole society is against thinking. If a child in your family is a thinker, all of you try to stop him from arguing because arguing is rebellious. And one who thinks will not say yes to everything; it will be rare when he says yes. Mostly, he will say no. So society is not in favor of authentic thinking. This is why you destroy the ability of children to think for themselves. You try your best to destroy your children’s intelligence, and you think that perhaps in this way you will be able to stop children from becoming atheists. On the contrary, you are stopping them from becoming authentically religious – they will become just pseudo-theists.

An authentic atheist is better than a pseudo-theist. But atheism is only the first step, it is not the end of the journey. And the one who stops after taking the first step will end up in great trouble.