16.09: When ignorance seeks to fly with intellectual wings…

The Bhagavad-gita (16.9) indicates that the atheistic, being possessed by their meager intelligence, flourish in self-destructive and world-destructive activities. In these people, ignorance not only resides, but flies with the wings of the misdirected intellect

To be in ignorance is bad; these are the wingless atheists.

To be in ignorance and to imagine oneself to be in knowledge is worse; these are the budding wing atheists.

To be in ignorance, to imagine oneself to be in knowledge and to imagine one in knowledge to be in ignorance is worst; these are the flying atheists, who pass the pee of their disbelief wherever they fly.

This third category is where fanatical atheists belong, where they baptize themselves as the saints of reason with a holier-than-thou attitude of condescension towards anyone who doesn’t agree to join their atheistic coterie.  

Gita wisdom informs us that such people are born with ungodly qualities and they aggravate those negative traits by their lifestyle choices and especially their intellectual rationalizations. 

When spiritual seekers face such confirmed and convinced atheists, the best way – and often the only way – to serve them is to pray for them from a distance. The sixteenth chapter of the Gita describes the inauspicious destinations to which they are headed due to their foolhardy intellectual self-righteousness – and spiritual seekers pray that they may be saved from that unfortunate destiny by using the wings of their intelligence not to fly away from God, but to fly toward God.