Facebook CEO “is” not the only celebrity who was an atheist and later turned believer. Nor he “was” the only celebrity who was an atheist in the first place
Yes, this is precisely the question. Is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg no longer an atheist? And if yes, then why?
Mark Zuckerberg used to claim, not too long ago, that despite being raised as a Jew, he is an atheist. However, after the birth of his daughter Max (December 2015), his approach towards religions appeared to be changing. In 2016 he was seen kneeling in front of a Buddha idol and then later he met Pope and showered praise on him. On Christmas, he wrote a Facebook post wishing all his friends “Merry Christmas”. When asked by a user, as to wasn’t he an atheist, he replied to thousands of likes, “I was raised Jewish and then I went through a period where I questioned things, but now I believe religion is very important.” Zuckerberg post raised a heated debate right there on his page with more than 28,000 user comments on the post, some of them asserting that why it is necessary to be a believer at all in order to celebrate Christmas.
But Mark Zuckerberg “is” not the only celebrity who was an atheist and later turned believer. Nor he “was” the only celebrity who was an atheist in the first place. The list just goes on and on and on.
Steve Jobs was an atheist despite his inclination towards Buddhism, but then Buddhism itself is an atheist religion. Bill gates appear to be an agnostic atheist (An agnostic is a person who does not believe in any Gods, but at the same time does not claim to know either that they don't exist). Nobel Laureate Czes?aw Mi?osz had converted to Catholicism from being an atheist. So did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, his fellow Nobel Laureate. However, actor Daniel Radcliffe remains an atheist, though he would not force others to join him. Same goes with Katharine Hepburn.
When Julianne Moore was asked that what she'd want to hear God say to her at the pearly gates, she responded, "Well, I guess you were wrong. I do exist." Though Emma Thompson wasn’t too keen to be funny about it. She said in precise words that "I'm an atheist and I regard religion with fear and suspicion.” James Cameron was more humorous about it. He said, "I've sworn off agnosticism, which I now call cowardly atheism." But the most eloquent remark comes from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or rather from a character of Marquez. When asked does he believe in God, he famously replied, “No, I don’t, but I am afraid of him all the same!”
Religious faith is after all a personal matter. The majority population of the world has one religious faith or other. Atheists are minority, however, they have their say in every walk of life. I guess mostly the word atheism is misunderstood. For instance, an atheist doesn’t precisely say that a great cosmic power does not exist, all he says is that it certainly does not exist in the dogmatic way of organized religions and all forms of idolatries, unleashing a socio-economic hegemony of religion. However, one is not sure as to why Mark Zuckerberg seem to have changed his mind regarding the place of religion in man’s life. Only he can tell. And if he really felt what he said, then this must be respected as his personal orientation.
Friedrich Nietzsche had famously said that “God is dead and now it is time that man must live.” On the same line, we can also say that “God goes on living since man can’t do without Him anymore.” At least the majority population’s faith suggest this only.