The Life We were Searching for

THE LIFE WE WERE SEARCHING FOR mathematics,” he said. “It was an eternal world. It was a timeless world. It was a world where there was a possibility of a certain kind of perfection.” This British thinker had refused to make God the object of his devotion. But still, he could not remain free from the need for an object of devotion, and he placed mathematics where he had earlier placed God. Not only this, but he also accepted the mathematical attributes that only God can possess, such as eternality and freedom from the boundaries of time. He believed that through mathematics, he could obtain peace similar to that from religion—which his inner being was searching for. People who do not accept God and regard God’s worship as meaningless prostrate before their self-made idols to satisfy their inner desire for worship and devotion. It is a fact that worshipping something is a natural need of man. If man does not bow down before God, he will have to bow down before other ‘deities’ because his inner vacuum cannot be filled without a deity. People who make anything other than God the object of their devotion remain deprived of real peace in the same way as a mother who, deprived of her child, buys a plastic doll and seeks in vain to satisfy her motherly instincts through it. No matter how ‘successful’ an atheist may be in worldly terms, such moments are bound to come when he is compelled to think that reality is something other than what he thinks it is. Atheists, no matter how busy they may be, are sometimes forced to wonder what this world is all about, where they have come from, and where they will go