Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction

I used to be regular on multiple social networks, creating content around atheism, social justice, and culture. I left because I had nothing more to add to those areas and I needed to do more in other areas. But to this day, I get questions on those topics. Often, these are questions I have already answered multiple times, in multiple reels, live streams, and videos, in multiple ways. But the questions never stop coming, usually in the exact same form, occasionally in a slightly altered form.

I am creating this page to be a standing database of answers to those questions as well as a collection of resources to guide those who send me these questions for the first time. I will use it as a ready response in future correspondences.

Please note that many of these responses are my final word on the issue. They are the result of years of thinking and practical experience on these matters. So even though some people might not find them to their satisfaction, I have good reasons for holding these positions. They are not only satisfactory to me on an intellectual level, they have also proven useful as far as conducting my online and offline work is concerned.

Personal and Professional

Please recommend me some books.

I don’t know you and therefore have no way of determining what you will like and what you won’t. So I can’t make personal book recommendations. I do have a YouTube playlist where I talk about books I enjoy and you can watch it here. I also have an Amazon Influencer page where I maintain lists of books. You can access that page by clicking here.

Please don’t send me messages on social networks or separate emails with requests for book recommendations specific to you. I will be unable to reply to those.

Will you please read a story / novel / book I have written and give me feedback?

I’m afraid I neither have the time, nor the energy, nor the desire to read your writing and give feedback. Fortunately, there are people who do this professionally in exchange for a fee and I highly recommend that you get in touch with them. Editing and proofreading are jobs, and you shouldn’t ask people to do it for you for free. Besides, I am a writer just like you, not an editor.

Why are you not married / in a relationship / without kids?

This is a question I have tried to answer in the past. But in recent years, I have come to think that just because a question can be asked, doesn’t mean that it needs to be answered. Married people don’t get asked why they chose to marry. People with children don’t get asked why they chose to have kids. Therefore, unmarried or childless people deserve the same respect for their choices. Otherwise we are reinforcing the idea that anyone who doesn’t act in ways that society expects them to can be interrogated by anyone on the street or on the internet.

I recommend that you read The Mother of All Questions, a brilliant essay by Rebecca Solnit on social expectations and the necessity of normalising lifestyles that break away from them. She is writing about what she went through as a woman who chose to not have kids, but I think it adequately describes my position on marriage, children, and relationships as well.

So yes, the question does have an answer. But I don’t think it is anyone’s business except mine.

Where do you live? Will you meet me? Can I call you?

I’m touched but I cannot meet people personally. I do travel sometimes and attend events. When that happens, I post information in advance and you can come see me if you like.

As for phone calls, I don’t take calls from unknown numbers. This is a result of years of troubling calls after my number was leaked online by people with no regard for anyone’s privacy.

I am not active on social media and the best way to get in touch with me is by email. Please don’t repeatedly ask for personal interactions as it is borderline creepy.

I sent you an email. Why have you not replied?

If you have sent me an email and I have not gotten back to you, it’s most probably for one of the following reasons.

I have nothing to say to you.
Your email was abusive or impolite and I have assigned it to the trash or spam folder.
You have emailed before and I’ve told you I’m not interested in the conversation you wish to have.
I’m busy and don’t have time to reply.
Some combination of the above factors.

Generally speaking, it is considered polite to not be pushy. You are after all, requesting someone for their time and attention. If they cannot provide it, it is best to leave them alone. To not do so is not only annoying and creepy, it greatly reduces your chances of getting their attention on future occasions. Be polite, be respectful, and respect boundaries.

If you have been blocked or muted by me on the social web or on my YouTube channels or on my blog, it is probably due to one or more of the following reasons.

You violated my comment space rules on trolling, abuse, and misinformation.
Your comment encouraged casteism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, or sexism.
Your comment was off-topic and had nothing to do with the content it was on.
Your comment was designed to promote your channel or the channel of someone you support.
You were fighting with other commenters, causing me to drown in notifications.
You were copy-pasting the same comment under multiple videos.
Your username or display picture seemed supportive of disgusting behaviour.
You ignored not only the rules, but also repeated warnings from me.
I simply didn’t like you or your comment and wanted both gone.

I treat my online channels as my home. Therefore, I take serious care to make sure that my comment spaces remain clean and serve as a safe space for my community. The internet is full of places where people can say anything. I have no desire to turn my comment spaces into anything resembling those places.

This is not a violation of your freedom of expression. You are free to express your views on your own channels or blogs. It’s just that I don’t need to provide you with a platform and an audience. Grow your own, like I did.

You should make a video about X topic that is in the news. Why don’t you?

YouTube and the Internet are large places. Anything you are looking for is a search away. If you want to watch a video about a certain topic, look for it and you will find it.

My channel is a place where I publish content about matters I think are important. This doesn’t mean everything I don’t make videos about is unimportant, just that it is not something I choose to talk about at the moment.

Whenever something important happens, everyone and their aunt starts making hot takes about it. I usually avoid making a video about something unless I have something new to add to the discourse around it. So if a bad thing has been condemned by two hundred people already, don’t expect yet another condemnation from me. It’s not because I don’t hate it, it’s because everything I would have said has already been said by others. When I have something to add, I will. And if I don’t have anything to add, I won’t make a video.

Someone on the Internet is talking about you. Will you respond to them?

Probably not. The internet is vast and all kinds of people exist on it. Someone or the other is bound to disagree with me. Some of them are even likely to be less than polite in their conduct towards me. If I started responding to everyone who said anything about me on the internet, it would be all I ever do. I think my time is better spent focusing on putting new ideas into the world, creating art, and educating those who are looking for the kind of awareness I can provide.

With respect to negative stuff, trolling and abuse is always a risk that comes with any amount of online fame. At some point, your reputation becomes a tool for grifters and scammers to promote themselves. There is very little one can do to stop this. But there are some things one can do to make matters worse. Responding to abusive trolls is one of those things. When you respond to trolls, the message you send out is that the best way to get your attention is to abuse you or to lie about you. That is not a message that anyone mindful of their time would want to send. I prefer to save my time for my work and for those who deserve it. Abusive people are best ignored.

This also applies to praise by the way. If someone liked my work and has good things to say about me, I am grateful to them and glad that they found my work useful, but I am not going to respond to them. In general, I prefer to not look at videos about me.

So in short, if you find someone lying about me or abusing me on the web or even praising me, don’t tell me about it and move on. Spend your time doing something that is good for you and good for the world around you.

There were a number of reasons. The most prominent one is that it was a decision I took to protect my mental health and to free up my time for creative pursuits. I left Instagram most recently and I have written about that here, but before that I have also quit Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Quora. It’s all part of a longer plan to be less online and more offline. I am happy to report that I do not regret the decision. Right now, the only place I am regular on is my YouTube channel, where I publish vlog-like videos every week.

I also publish a weekly email newsletter that you can subscribe to here.

Atheism, Religion, and Society

How did you become an atheist?

I get this question at least once every month despite having talked about this in detail several times over the years. The most comprehensive resource answering the question of how I became an atheist and what the reasons were behind it is a live stream I did in 2021.

Do you claim that god does not exist?

No. I have never claimed this, even though there are many intellectually dishonest people who try to force this position on all atheists. I describe myself as an Agnostic Atheist and my definition of atheism is the same as the Oxford Handbook of Atheism, which understands atheism to be a lack of belief in god or gods but also as a wider cultural movement that may or may not include a rejection of religion and religious claims.

So what I mean when I say I am an atheist is that I don’t think there is sufficient evidence to prove that god or gods exist and therefore I lack belief in that claim. There is a difference between saying ‘I believe that gods don’t exist’ and saying ‘I do not believe that gods exist’. I am simply an atheist of the second variety.

I don’t think there is any value in being conservative about the definition of words like atheism. They are after all, just words and the meaning of words changes with time and circumstance. If a word has widespread utility, it gets added to dictionaries. To quote Matt Dillahunty, words don’t have meanings, they have usages. And usage can change.

I have spoken about this in greater detail in this video.

I am an atheist surrounded by a family or community that is religious or at least devotedly theist. How should I deal with them?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question because no two people are alike and no two families are alike. On top of that, if I do not know you or your family personally, it would be doubly hard for me to give you specific advice on the matter of how to deal with them.

A lot would depend on your personal tolerance level for their religiosity and their level of tolerance for you and your lack of belief. The best way to deal with your family can either be decided by you or by someone who knows you and your family.

I can answer this question using my personal experiences and the experiences of those I know, but I don’t think I should. It would be callous of me to assume that what worked for me will work for you. And if you did act upon the advice I gave, you might end up in an even worse place than you are now. I take this to be a serious matter as it is not uncommon for people to be ostracised by ther families or in rarer cases, get killed over such things. The web is full of people who will happily take on the role of advisor on your personal lives even as their own personal lives are in deep shit. I have no desire to be like them.

If you are looking for professional help, I would recommend you get in touch with iCall Helpline. They are a free service that you can access anonymously either by phone or email. And they are professional counsellors, unlike someone untrained like me.

How do atheists do X? How do atheists deal with sorrow? How do atheists handle rejection? How do atheists pursue success?

Questions that go “how do atheists do X?’ usually rely on the misunderstanding that atheists are some special category of human beings (either in a good way or a bad way). The truth is that they are not. Atheists, like any human being, deal with life the way any human being does. They talk to friends, they try to find answers in books, they entertain themselves, they seek help from professionals.

Somtimes this question is intended as a request for information on how ALL atheists act or what ALL atheists believe. Answering this in any way would obviously be overreach on my part as I do not speak for every atheist out there. I might even disagree with many of them on more than one issue. Atheists can come in many shades and no one atheist speaks for all of them. Yes, that includes famous pop atheists as well.

I think the reason many people ask “how do atheists do X?” or “how do I do X as an atheist?” comes from the false assumption that religion provides people with a way to do that particular thing. So a person who has always been told that religion provides meaning to life will wonder where they will get meaning as an atheist.

In many cases, religion does not actually provide the things it claims to provide. But due to the fact that religion’s status as a source of meaning and virtue and kindness has been drilled into people’s heads over and over again throughout their lives, people start believing it. What follows is that anyone opposed to or critical of religion (like atheists for example) get a reputation for being meaningless, evil, and unkind.

I have spoken about this in multiple videos. You can watch two of them here and here.

Do you think atheism is compatible with spirituality?

Considering that there is no one clear definition of spirituality, I would have to say it depends. To some people spirituality involves literal belief in spirits and supernatural beings and ghosts. To some, spirituality is just about living in joy. To yet others, spirituality may mean a way to find meaning and purpose.

Atheists lack belief in god or gods, so anything apart from that is up for debate I suppose. Spirituality being part of an atheist’s life depends on what they understand by it. After all, as I said in my answer on the definition of atheism, words don’t have set-in-stone meanings, they just have usages that can and do change with circumstances.

How can I bring my kids up to be atheists?

I don’t think it is a good idea to bring kids up religious. But I don’t think it makes sense to bring them up to believe that there is no god either. Both approaches are hindrances to the path of free thought.

Children should be exposed to the full range of beliefs and unbelief that exists in society. Let them know what Hindus believe, what Muslims believe, what Christians believe. Then tell them that there are also those who don’t believe in any of that. This will help them engage in honest inquiry without being burdened by parental or familial expectations. It will help them become thinking members of society and allow them to objectively evaluate their options.

The goal should be to teach them how to think. Not to tell them what to think. It is healthier for a child to see religion as one of many things in life instead of as the one true way. For the same reason, atheism shouldn’t be presented before them as the only right way either.

Give your kids the tools to deal with reality. Then trust them to do the rest.

I have talked about this many times in my videos. You can watch some of them here and here.

Should I read / not read, Gita / Quran / Bible / X religious text?

I think religious texts are just texts and have no more or no less value than any other text or book. They are products of human minds and have been added to or embellished by human minds. There is no reason you should or shouldn’t read them.

Please note that my problem is only with the should aspect. You can read them if you like but you don’t have to. They are merely options, like many other things in life. If you need to learn what is in these texts, you obviously have to read them. But if you need life lessons, or meaning, or a worldview to follow, these books have as much (or as little) value as any other book offering such things.

They’re just books. Read them if you like, or don’t. It doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to read them. I have talked about this many times in my live streams and videos. One of those videos can be watched here.

Why don’t you criticise Islam? / Why do you only talk about Hinduism?

This particularly clueless question often comes from people who are either not aware of my work, or from people who are just plain sealioning in hopes that if they repeat a lie enough times, others will assume it is the truth.

Truth is, I have made videos about Islam and its followers on several occasions. Here is a three episode playlist of me responding to a well-known Islamic content creator and his claims. Here is another clip of me in conversation with a Muslim man. Here is another, and another. In fact, merely searching for Islam on my live streaming channel gets you plenty of links to streams where I have debated and discussed theistic claims by Muslims.

Those who ask why I don’t criticise Islam are actually asking something else and hiding that intent in this question. What they are really asking is why I criticise Hinduism at all? This isn’t, in and of itself, hard to understand. Religious majorities all over the world ask this questions to atheists around them.

In USA, where the majority religion is Christianity, theists ask atheists why they don’t criticise Hinduism and Islam. On Pakistani atheist channels, Muslims ask atheists why they don’t criticise Christianity and Hinduism. It is not surprising therefore, that in India, atheists get asked by Hindus why they don’t criticise Islam and Christianity. A troubling aspect of religion is its hegemonic tendencies. Whenever a religion grows massive, it subdues, dehumanises, and oppresses people of other religions. And because atheists often critique religions, majoritarian theists try to weaponise them against religions they hate.

This question isn’t actually about Islam. It is about religious majoritarianism asserting itself and deflecting criticism by pointing at other religions.

Don’t you think Reservation is reverse-casteism? What are your views on caste? Do you support Reservation? Shouldn’t we have meritocracy?

I am opposed to the caste system and firmly in favour of annihilating it. I think Reservations are a good way to undo the effects of centuries of casteism. I myself belong to an oppressor caste and know what manner of casteist rhetoric pervades upper-caste / dominant caste / savarna households. I am also aware of the whole “meritocracy” argument” and think of it as a laughably weak joke in a country where both the education system and the job market are saturated with corrupt practices and disreputable agents working to push savarna people to the top of the social hierarchy.

To learn more about my views on the matter, you can watch the Caste Conversations playlist on my live stream channel or this playlist about Caste and Reservation Matters on my main channel. These playlists contain plenty of live conversations I have had with people about caste and should adequately inform you of my position. There is a lot of overlap in these conversations, but that is only because there aren’t really any new arguments coming from the other side. Please also note that I do not engage in these conversations anymore, mostly because there is never anything new in them and I feel like everything I had to say on the matter, I have already said.

You are an atheist but do you believe in Karma / ghosts / supernatural?

I am an atheist and this means I lack belief in claims about the existence of god or gods that are made by religions. But I also find no real reason to believe in religious or spiritual claims having to do with Karma, ghosts, the afterlife, or general supernatural elements. So no, I don’t believe in this stuff. I have talked about my position on my YouTube channel once. I think that though the idea of Karma may not point at a personal god, it is still assigning a moral dimension to the natural world and that makes it god-adjacent in my view.

The same skepticism marks my approach towards any claims of ghosts and the afterlife as well. If there is insufficient evidence for a claim, I am likely to call it make-believe or to withhold judgment until evidence does arrive.

Miscellaneous

Are you vegan / vegetarian? Why or why not?

I am not a vegan. I am not much of a meat eater though. I eat eggs and consume milk. Sometimes, I eat fish. However, I have had decades in my life when I did not eat eggs or fish either. My eating preferences keep changing. In this, I am like many other people.

I think what people eat is their personal matter and I don’t think I have the right to dictate anyone’s eating habits. We live in a country where vegetarian supremacism is a thing and people get discriminated against or even attacked for their eating habits. So the question acquires a socio-political colour as well.

That said, cruelty against animals is terrible and I appreciate the work of those who do advocate against it.

What are your views on anti-natalism?

I have no real view on the matter. I think that the question of whether one should have kids or not should be left to the individual. I myself do not have kids, but I don’t think I have the right to tell other people how they should live their lives. That’s all.