We had gone to this football camp. Today was the last day. We had just had a match on a football field. It was the first time I had been on a football field. I had prayed to god so much yesterday. This time finally my dream had come true and I had gotten to be captain of my team. I just hoped that I would win one of the matches when I am captain. This is the last time I would be able to attend this football camp because next year I have my tenth and then obviously all the college and classes and what not.

I come from this very confusing background.

I am very interested in sports. My family wants me to do some kind of music also so just to satisfy my family I go to this singing class. But believe me, I am very bad at singing. I sang a few songs in this camp too and all those friends who I have made here, who have barely known me for fifteen days were wowed by hearing me but I don’t like my voice. Also my family is very religious. They are all strong god believers. Not like they disrespect any religion. They say no matter which, Ram, Krishna, Kali, Shiva, Saraswati, Prophet Mohomad, Agni dev, Jesus, Zeus Poseidon, Hades, thor all are the same. Everyone in my family says god is god and only god can be god.

I find this sentence pretty stupid. Isn’t it so very obvious?

Well but that's my family. All my friends are total anti-god people. Few of them talk about gods like they are using slang. My friends are very close to me. Sometimes they feel even closer than family. They say there is nothing like god. It's just as made up to scare us, like ghosts. I used to think, rather I still think ghosts are the opposite of god. But according to them it is the same and to some extent what they say is true. People scare kids using ghosts, like eat your salad or a ghost will come in your room tonight, and priests scare people using god like, stealing money is a sin and if you do so and even end up not getting caught by the cops, you can’t fool god.

Basically it means you will end up in hell and you will get this chair to sit on under which there is fire and on and on goes the story. According to my friends said, the smartest people in our society are priests, and we should make sure we don’t fall into their trap.

In this way there are two of my very close circle with two opposite thoughts and I am stuck in the middle trying to find the right and wrong. Every year I pass in science by just three or four marks and the two replies I get are...

Family: ‘Pray and study harder next time’

Friends: ‘Don’t waste your time praying, use it in studying harder instead.’

I was in the last row of seats, the third seat, in the bus. The seat with a full aisle view. That is the most wanted seat. As captain everyone had made me sit there. The second most wanted seats are the two aisle seats in the second last row. Those two seats were right in front of my nose. Two girls sitting there were fighting. One of them was a very good football player. She was one rowdy player, it felt like she was more gunda than smart innocent child (well she was smart). Her ego was as tall as Mt. everest. I really loved her attitude though. Her name is Neera The other girl was rather stubborn. She was muscular and the skin on her forehead was always folded. I only saw her smiling once in these 15 days. I think her name was Aashria

Apparently they were fighting about the big problem in my life. Does god exist?

Aashriya: ‘Because I prayed to god we won today.’

Neera:’Does your god not have more important stuff to do? So many people must be going to god saying “Oh please give me good marks in tenth or JEE or NEET what not.”

Aashriya: ‘God only does good to those who love him from the depth of his heart.’

Neera: ‘I don’t care about god, and if you want me to prove it to you...’

She took a deep breath and shouted ‘I HATE YOU GOD’

All the coaches were too tired so they just rolled their eyes and slept. I saw many of them saying a short prayer so god doesn’t do anything to the bus or to the group and they return safely. A few children had widened their eyes so much that I thought their eyes would pop out. A few just slept off not caring what is happening and the rest joined the discussion leaving theirs incomplete.

I felt really happy looking at Aashriya. She was so shocked. It looked like she would get up and start hitting Neera but she didn’t have the guts, Neither would I if I were her, because Neera had actually helped many people and had made really good friends within fifteen days, and all her friends were as ready as Aashriya to fight.

Neera: ‘Satisfied? See god didn’t do anything. There is no god. Nor is there any supernatural power’

Aashriya: ‘Then what is making all this happen? Why am I talking? Why were you able to assist in the golden goal? Why is our....

Neera: ‘SCIENCE!!!’

Aashriya: ‘ARE YOU SILENCING ME BECAUSE YOU ARE A LOSER AND YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE THIS DEBATE?’

Neera: ‘Not silence my dear. Science, s-c-i-e-n-c-e.

Aashriya: So now science, that very thing which proves god wrong is the god.

Neera: ‘Yes of course. When the king of a kingdom is defeated the one who defeats the king becomes the next king. Science is making all this happen. Because your larynx vibrates and your tongue moves in the right direction with the right amount of pressure you are able to talk. I was able to assist in our golden goal because I had practiced enough, because my legs were strong till the end of the ninetieth minute. If not any of this probably after our second last goal I got excited and got an adrenaline rush and that's why I was able to take the ball all the way ahead.’

Aashriya: ‘How did this whole thing start?’

Neera: ‘Have you heard of the big bang theory?’

Aashriya: ‘How did the big bang theory happen?’

Neera: ‘That is yet to be found. In case you are trying to say that god is why the big bang theory happened, it could be possible, because what happened before the big bang theory is yet to be found so you can consider, ONLY CONSIDER that there was god before the big bang theory.

Aashriya: ‘What do you mean by there was god. God can’t just die or disappear into nothing. If he disappeared into nothing then he can appear again whenever he wants.’

Neera: ‘Hey, chill, I am not saying that god disappeared into nothing. I am saying that he evolved into nothing. When we were apes we had tails. We needed those tails to help ourselves travel fast on the trees. After some time we started living on the ground, so now humans don’t have tails. Similarly god only had to start the universe by making the big bang theory happen. After the big bang theory happened everything started to work by itself. So poor god realised that it was pointless staying here. He had become useless for the world. That's why he started to fade away, and one day BOOM, the god is gone.

Aashriya: ‘Then why do good things happen to those who pray?’

Neera: ‘Good things also happen to those who don’t pray and bad things also happen to those who pray, but what happens in terms of God is selective thinking.

You thought that because you prayed to god yesterday that’s why we won the match today. But you weren’t able to defend properly four times today. You got scolded by the captain about that. You got teased by that guy today about how ugly you look, you had forgotten your bottle of water today. What about all the bad stuff that happened to you? What you did was selective thinking. You thought that because you prayed to god we won, but you didn’t think of all the bad stuff god did to you and if you only prayed for the match and not for yourself you are the biggest Idiot I ever met.’

Aashriya got angry and was about to start a fight when someone announced we’ve reached, and Neera conveniently left.

This left me with the question, does god exist, not exist, or has science taken the place of god

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