Theism vs. Atheism - Great Teachers

Another problem that atheism fails to resolve is that of the life of the great teachers, sages and saints who have led a completely unselfish life devoted to the welfare of the others. These set of great figures in history, called great teachers or incarnations, appear only once in say about 500 years, Buddha, Christ, Sankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya, Nanak, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda-Sarada Devi being some of them who made a huge impact. If we study their lives carefully we find that these lives are remarkable. They devote considerable amount of time in preparing themselves for their roles and then once they have entered the stage of teaching they devote themselves wholeheartedly to it, setting new ideas and principles. They often bring huge, earth shattering changes in their wakes, changes which are felt quite a few years after they have left their mortal coils. They lead a life of purity, truthfulness, simplicity and attract hundreds during their lifetime and thousands, may be millions, as time passes by. They also change the course of the history and possibly influence the rise and fall of civilizations. The question is, how are these lives explained? Most of them lead a life of God consciousness and encourage their followers to do so. They are established in truth and in most cases their disciples and other people have got irrefutable proof of their exemplary lives. They are not tempted by name, fame, fortune. In fact, most of them dies rather poor, they renounce all worldly pleasures and wealth. Their only interest revolves round how to help others, how to save them from sorrows and miseries. They lead to silent revolutions that influence and change many lives for the better. Of course they may also give rise to sects but that is probably an unwanted consequence of a single pointed focus on their principles that their followers establish. All of the great teachers are non sectarian. They have one characteristic. They love fellow beings by rising above all narrowness. Their unbounded love draws others to them. Atheists may say that these are good people, but possibly a little bit crazy. May be their tendencies can be ascribed to some abnormalities in their brain function, just as the so called rational thinkers believed (and still believe) that Ramakrishna's trances and expression of ecstasy were probably signs of epilepsy or nervous disorder. But how could these crazy guys influenced and changed so many people, and also possibly created great events in history? There is no answer. Atheists will simply ignore that question. Also why couldn't other crazy people did the same thing? After all there is no dearth of craziness in this world! Again, no answer. Silence is golden.

Less than these great teachers but greater than ordinary mankind are the saints and savants - St. Francis of Assisi, Kabir, Tukaram, Ramana Maharishi, poet Rumi, Sai Baba of Shirdi and so many others like them who have changed the lives of thousands. Philosophers and mystics like Spinoza, Meister Eckhart, geniuses like Einstein who also believed in God - how do we explain such lives? They were neither crazy nor hypocrites. Again, atheists have no answer. Perhaps, according to them these people are aberrations, outliers for a "false" belief, may be a bit misguided, but nevertheless they are not to be taken seriously for their beliefs.

Crazy indeed is the way of the world. As Ramakrishna said - some people are crazy for money, some are crazy for women, some are crazy for power, fortunate indeed are those that are crazy for God, as they have realized the true purpose of life.