Persons who remain firm in the mould they were made in...

Persons who remain firm in the mould they were made in, true to themselves, unhindered by local customs or bourgeois conventions, retain their innate knowledge uncoloured by popular catchwords or trendy fashions, can hear the inner voice more clearly and so can tell right from wrong in actions, truth from falsehood in beliefs. Therefore atheism, which derails true human nature, is less seen in such integrated personalities.

If you say to such a person: "The universe is a mere chance agglomeration, an accidental conjuncture"; even back the assertion with eloquence, with seemingly logical arguments, with philosophy; none of this will move that person. The inner voice with its instinctive, innate, limbic certainties bids them to reject all such opinions. The "demon" which led Socrates was the name by which he called what Islam calls fitrah, that innate sense man is born with.

But so-called "science" weaves a spider's web of such human concepts which traps its captives into doubt and scepticism. The arrogant delusions of limited knowledge place glass slides of many colours before the lens of the eye of reason and inner certainty. Those who boast of this type of human learning, paint the universe in the colours of their own spectacles of "science", "knowledge", "craft", and "skill". They then consider their portrait to be reality itself.

They are unable to distinguish the lens of reason from the coloured glasses of wishful fantasy. By this it is not intended to say that a person, by perfecting his intelligence, can stand so firm that he is immune to all deviatory influences. It is intended to say that a man should not be enslaved by limited human knowledge and delusions of technological prowess. He should rather regard every new piece of learning and science as a rung on the upward ladder of human endeavour.

Setting his foot firmly on each new rung, he raises himself upward towards higher things, and sets himself free from the stagnant immobility of imprisonment within four walls of current phraseology and opinion. In Persian, we use the Arabic word fitrah, for this inner compass or guide which is inborn in every individual. Bertrand Russell's contention that fear is the seedbed of religion, denies the fact that fitrah hurries to man's aid at moments of peril.

But, of course, Bertrand Russell put the cart before the horse. It is not fear that generates religion; it is religion that runs to the aid of fear.