The point to consider is that no one can really compete with God. The Supreme Lord is unparalleled, second to none. As it is said in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, ekale īśvara kṛṣṇa, āra saba bhṛtya: (CC Adi 5.142) "Lord Kṛṣṇa alone is the Supreme Godhead, and all others are His servants." Only those who go through life being kicked about by fate, slaving hard to fill their bellies and maintain a roof overhead, can harbor so preposterous a wish as to compete with the omnipotent Supreme Controller. It is ludicrous. They dare harbor such desires because they are totally ignorant of the supreme, transcendental position of the Lord. Yet the Supreme Lord is so compassionate that by various tricks He tries to teach even these fools the facts of His transcendental and supreme position. And the Lord's confidential servitors, accepting many hazards and pains, also try every possible means to exorcise Satan from these people, who are possessed by the demon of atheism.
Then there are those so-called scholars who claim that they they alone know the scriptures and that all others are illiterate fools. Such "scholars" say that research of the holy texts clearly reveals that Kāraṇodakaśāyī Viṣṇu is the cause of this material creation and that Lord Kṛṣṇa, the son of Vasudeva and Devakī, is at best Viṣṇu's partial expansion. Thus we see that even intelligent men are sometimes bewildered by the illusory potency, māyā, and subscribe to demoniac ideas. How is it possible for such bewildered souls to accept that Lord Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the cause of all causes?
If we consult the śruti and smṛti scriptures on this topic, we will find many references proving that Lord Govinda, Kṛṣṇa, is the origin of Kāraṇodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, and not vice-versa. For example, the Brahma-saṁhitā (5.47) states,
- yaḥ kāraṇārnava-jale bhajati sma yoga-
- nidrām ananta-jagad-aṇḍa-sa-roma-kūpaḥ
- ādhāra-śaktim avalambya parāṁ sva-mūrtiṁ
- govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi
I adore the primeval Lord Govinda who assuming His own great subjective form, who bears the name Śeṣa, replete with the all-accommodating potency, and reposing in the Causal Ocean with the infinity of the worlds in the pores of His hair, enjoys creative sleep (yoganidrā).
The Bible says, "God created man after His own image." According to this statement, man possesses two hands because he has a form similar to God's. But this doesn't mean that God is a human being because He has two hands. It is a heinous offence to try to diminish the position of Lord Kṛṣṇa because He appeared in a human form. The truth about His divine potency and supreme position should be learned from the self-realized spiritual master, the saintly souls, and the revealed scriptures.
Demonic persons fail to understand the real purpose of human life. Instead, they are always quick to try to diminish the supreme position of Lord Kṛṣṇa. Such atheists may have very high ambitions and may perform great, noble deeds, but because their ambitions and deeds are cut off from a loving relationship to Lord Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Godhead, they are all useless. The demon Rāvaṇa wanted to reach heaven by constructing a stairway, but he failed. And all atheists' ambitions are like that. A zero placed next to the number one gives ten, a second zero makes one hundred, and so on. As long as the number one is there, the value keeps rising as the zeroes increase. But without the number one, any number of zeroes are valueless. Similarly, if a person spends his whole life simply increasing the "zeroes" of material wealth, fame, and learning, without any relationship to the "one"—Lord Kṛṣṇa—then his whole life is valueless. As Lord Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā,
- moghāśā mogha-karmāṇo
- mogha-jñānā vicetasaḥ
- rākṣasīm āsurīṁ caiva
- prakṛtiṁ mohinīṁ śritāḥ
- (BG 9.12)
Those who are thus bewildered are attracted by demoniac and atheistic views. In that deluded condition, their hopes for liberation, their fruitive activities, and their culture of knowledge are all defeated.
Although a person may call himself a devotee of Lord Kṛṣṇa, if he considers Kṛṣṇa a human being or thinks that He started off as a human being and then evolved into God (as is now in vogue, with so many "incarnations" mushrooming), then such a person is not a devotee but an imposter. One often comes across monists and pseudo-devotees posing as Lord Kṛṣṇa's devotees, but eventually they try to usurp Kṛṣṇa's position. They want to be Lord Kṛṣṇa themselves. Persons with such insidious desires are totally bewildered. If a fruitive worker thinks that Lord Kṛṣṇa is an ordinary mortal, he does not attain the goal of his fruitive work—elevation to the heavenly planets. And if an anthropomorphist happens to be a jñānī, an empirical philosopher, then he also fails to achieve the goal of his pursuit of knowledge—liberation from the material modes.