If ever a God existed, He must have died already. The funeral must have taken place in His cosmic pyre/burial, unnoticed by us--the ordinary earthly mortals. It is open to believers to infer for themselves the cause of His untimely death, and also which of the two places, between Hell and Heaven, he has landed in, after His demise. I reserve my conclusions to myself, on both counts, for fear of committing what many followers call: blasphemy.

If I were to write the God's obituary, it would contain more harsh words than glorifying, fawning words for Him. During His lifetime, He has brought upon more mayhem than peace and prosperity in this world, where His followers of different religions fight against one another; all claiming to prove their loyalty and allegiance to Him. God's supposed commandments to followers to launch Jihaad against infidels, order Crusades to counter heathens, to spread Gospel to unreached people, to fling trishuls at religious enemies, among many others, have sabotaged the inherent goodness of man to live together in peace. If God is omniscient (all-knowing) and omnipotent (all powerful), then why doesn't He stop the carnage of hate and murder in this world? If God predetermines our destiny, as the Hindu Philosophy tells us, is He playing favourites with certain individuals, race, nationalities or geographical location, and letting down others? Why doesn't He deliver the Promised Kingdom to the beleaguered mankind? Is He actually dead as I conjectured?

But, what if God doesn't exist at all, and turns out to be just God of all hoaxes! Atheists would accept this theory without asking any question, but many devout, if not rabid, faithful will be ready to die a martyr to prove otherwise. Look at how gleefully ultra religious suicide bombers ply their trade in Palestine, Sri Lanka, Iraq and in the 9/11 tragedy that claimed more than thousands of lives as the trophy of their religious mission. If such a God exists who promises heaven in return for killing, maiming people and destroying the harmony of the human society, He is at best unworthy of worship.

Many spiritual minded pundits heap scorn on people who are either agnostics, or outright atheists. They charge the godless people with committing most of the sins in the world, and condemn them for putting the rest of the pious humanity at risk of God's retribution. Contrary to popular belief, some of the most heinous and cruel crimes against humanity were and are orchestrated by deeply religious people. Adolph Hitler, who is arguably considered the most deplorable person, in the modern times, for his inhumane methods of torturing his victims in gas chambers and killing them, was a Catholic. In all these, he believed he was cleansing the world of vermin. "I believe," he wrote in Mein Kampf, "that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord".

Fast forward to the present time. President George Bush, a fiercely devout Christian, was until recently busy lab-testing the precision computer guided missiles on the civilian population of Iraq, leaving many--including children and women--dead and maimed forever. The war is over, or you thought so. We had believed that peace would be restored in Iraq, and a democratic government installed, or rather its poor caricature. But that faint hope is now gone. With the Iraqi nationalists mounting their guerilla attacks on coalition force led by US with greater gusto, soldiers are dying each day at an alarming rate. All in all a bloody war, which will only increase in its scale and human toll. Will God that Mr. Bush pray to ever approve of this bloodbath in Iraq, which is unfolding with greater and greater intensity? Is the calamity in Iraq one of God's wishes that He revealed in Bush's dream?

Meanwhile, the Islamic fanatics are whetting their lethal weapons of revenge--by recruiting more suicide bombers--pilots included. Jihaad is the most popular word of this pack with Mr. Osama bin Laden at the helm. They pray five times a day; occasionally change their wives; keep their women under the burqua; die for their faith, and also kill the infidels as a small religious duty. All their divine inspiration comes from Allah, and there is no looking back once Jihaad has begun. It has already begun. Does Allah actually wish to see the Twin Towers collapse, with several thousand souls in them, is altogether another point?

Though very often seen as a religion embodying passivism, Hinduism also has its violent black spots. At the vanguard of its metamorphosis into an assertive and vindictive religion is the RSS and its sister organizations like VHP and Bajrang Dal. These are the same organizations that destroyed mosques and engineered numerous communal riots. Christian bashing is its new found staple of diatribe, when they are not busy hatching anti-Muslims conspiracies.

Religion has given us more pain than solace in our world. Believing in God is becoming a curse, rather than a boon. Instead of complementing each other, religions contradict each other, arraigning the followers of different religions against one another. Follower of one religion will denigrate other religions, and also aggressively try to convert believers of other faiths to his own--often using coercion and unethical allurements. Rational people, who are not swayed by the carrot-and-stick proposition of "Heaven" and "Hell" in most of the religions, find it almost impossible to single out the TRUE religion. Even if they overlook the sins of religious people, their Holy Books/Scriptures are a dead give-away. For instance, the Bible is replete with improbable parables that defy very single laws of nature. Its authenticity is suspect; the Bible was written by many authors relying heavily on oral tradition in over thousands of years. In the process, many inaccuracies might have crept in and passed off as the Words of God. Many passages in Bible, and for that matter in almost all other Holy Books, are also subject to opportunistic interpretation by clerics, who may or may not understand their exact meanings. The whole exercise can be compared to shooting in the dark.

Whether or not the scriptural basis of their religion is true, evangelists of all colour and hue proclaim the perfection of their spiritual belief, while disdaining all other religions and their adherents as a sham and uncivilized heathens. For instance, In 1989 Argentine-born evangelist Luis Bush pointed out that 97% of the unevangelized lived in a "window" between the 10th and 40th latitudes. This immense global slice, he explained, was disproportionately poor; the majority of its inhabitants "enslaved" by Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism and, ultimately, by Satan. Fanatics of other religions hold the same condescending mentality towards people outside their faith.

These entire hullabaloo and violence over religious convictions have repulsed some of us from God, and led us to cast doubt on the very existence of God itself. That God created universe is being challenged by one well known scientist Stephen Hawking. In his masterpiece work, "A Brief History of Time", he explains his theory that the universe is closed and finite in extent, with no beginning or end. Rationalists also often wonder that if a creator created universe, then who created the creator? People say--God just "is/was" and not created by any one. Can the same principle apply to the existence of universe as well, as the theory of Mr. Hawking implied?

For all those who are not sure about the existence of God, there is an interesting hook called "Pascal Wager" which says, "If you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing -- but if you don't believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you will go to hell. Therefore it is foolish to be an atheist." There are lot problems in following this theory, and it throws up lot of mutually contradictory dilemmas. First, it doesn't tell which religion to follow. If we follow one religion, we may end up in another religion's version of hell. And there are many Gods more than there are religions; if we happen to believe in the wrong God, the true God will punish us for our foolishness. Consider also the deaths that have resulted from people rejecting medicine in favour of prayer. And since God is omniscient, He will certainly know who really believes Him and who do so out of a wager, for personal gains. God will punish the latter for the selfish pretensions; God demands genuine trust and faith in Him.

Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists the world has ever produced, had this to say: "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

Either the God doesn't exist in the first place, or He is dead already. To use the favourite word of the believers of Christianity, "Satan" has taken over us and plunged the world into an abyss of injustice, carnage, pandemonium, war, disease and chaos.

Last week, columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote in the New York Times: "Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God. God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people are connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too."

I can't but agree with him more.