Theism and Atheism - few perspectives

One of the numerous whatspp post that I received had been something like this:
A Friend: I have stopped believing in God, I think, God & Religion are all created to hoodwink people. These are like Narcotics.

Now the friend has an absolute right to become an atheist and state his personal beliefs, perhaps with an intention of instigating some of the non atheists for a debate. But the word "narcotics" is a very strong statement and here his hidden intentions are revealed. Quite sometime ago Marx had called religion to be an opium of the masses. It became a catchy phrase with the communists worldwide. This is also popular among the so called atheists and agnostics. However when a believer may turn unto them and speak out her mind saying that, may be, its just a may be, that their obsession with the world and the worldliness, the materialistic and pure sensual pleasures, is some kind of an addiction too as they are not really able to come out of it for a purposeful life, the atheists are often hurt. They tend to forget that their hidden intention was to hurt the so called believers into reaction or to prove their own superiority of intellect and knowledge over them. The very word addiction is a pointer to that. For one, many saints, savants and men of wisdom who were ardent believers in many paths to the same Ultimate Reality, dedicated their lives to serving the humanity selflessly. The most important thing that they taught is is not to fight over dogmas or religions but to serve humanity and the other conscious beings as the manifestation of divinity. For them, the work became the worship of the Supreme Reality. They taught us that we should have have pity for the sufferings of the other but instead should work compassionately towards alleviating the same. Certainly this is not the perspective of the "Narcotics addicted". So if religion was created to hoodwink people civilization greatly benefited of it because it led to creation of many better human beings who were no less intellectually superior to their so called "materialistic" counterparts who chose power, name, fame and fortune and other worldly things over selfless service. While it is true that among atheists and agnostics we have people who have led pure and selfless lives, the proportion of such greatness is extremely rare compared to the so called spiritual ones.

As Gita teaches, the true spiritual knowledge is seeing the one fundamental unity pervading the many, the manifold universe. When we regard the entire universe as one Self, one conscious entity, being projected into various manifestations through the prism of our limited puny mind-ego-intellect mirror, our every action becomes the worship of that Virat when done selflessly, with a spirit of renunciation and service. Besides, whom do we despise and whom do we love? It is the same Self who is ever present in you, me and the beggar outside on the street, in the sinner and in the saint. When we even try to intellectually comprehend this truth we are transformed. Religion does not become an assertion of ego, but a vehicle to expand ourselves by becoming one with the universe, by feeling for the sufferings of others, by helping and serving.

Sankhya, the philosophy of Kapila says that there are two parallel entities - Purusha, the eternal consciousness and Prakriti, the eternal nature. The material universe is created of a combination of the two, one cannot exist without the other. Gita in its 14th chapter on Gunas, says that all changes are in prakriti while purusha or pure consciousness is indivisible, immodifiable and not responsible for any action. All cause and effects are in prakriti. Vedanta takes it a step further to assert that it is pure indivisible consciousness that is the only existence and the fountain of eternal bliss. All joys and pleasures, even materialistic ones are but a fragment of that ocean of bliss, in varying degrees. The prakriti is really Maya - who cannot be said to exist or not to exist. Maya is the power of Brahman, the eternal existence-consciousness-bliss to project the universe which as an indivisible existence truly a projection of Brahman. Verily everything is then Brahman and every being is a manifestation of the Brahman in varying degrees. Maya is also the bewitching power to delude us from knowing our true nature. Only through renunciation or disdain for the world can one really overcome this "ignorance" about one's true self and then the knowledge dawns and sense of oneness is established. Therefore we are truly one conscious self - the existence itself, the fountain of joy is within us - Iswara saravabhutanam hriddeshe Arjuan tisthati etc. (Gita, chapter 18).

The modern atheists - Richard Dawkins and others have often accused religion of promoting mass murder and conflict among civilizations. It is as if the mankind could live in peace without anything called religion. They forget that it is politics that cause much more bloodshed and violence. Having a very poor notion about religion and spirituality (most of them have only known the Semitic view, and therefore has little or no respect for the Churchian dogma and Islamic fundamentalism which caused much bloodshed) they have no idea of the universal doctrines of Sankhya, Vedanta, Buddhism and other Indic schools of thoughts. Many wars have been fought over territories and resources, very few over religion. The ones who have disdainfully set aside religion have institutionalized their own power and authority over others and have subjugated people, eliminating those who opposed them.
They have also conveniently ignored the fact that many noted scientists and thinkers of modern age have infact acknowledged the necessity of religion and spirituality for establishing harmony, for ensuring moral and ethical foundations of society esp. among the masses. The new Science of quantum mechanics have revealed a world beyond classical thoughts and dogmas prevailing among some scientific sections, esp. the thoughts around quantum consciousness - postulated through Bell's theorem is one part. The other part is being investigated in neuroscience through the Hard Problem of Consciousness as Prof David Chalmers would name it - whether consciousness is a product of the brain or vice versa - there are many evidences that a pure materialist reductionist view of consciousness emerging from brain may not be tenable any more. There are strong arguments and evidences among scientific community to the contrary of the established dogmas which neuroscience is acknowledging.
Let the Truth reveal to the sincere enquirer is the eternal message of our Upanishads.