I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in.

Taken at face value, the remark expresses a secular or non-theistic stance: the speaker finds naturalistic explanations—history, politics, psychology, science, chance, and human agency—sufficient to account for lived reality without invoking a divine hypothesis. In Rushdie’s case, such a statement also resonates with his long engagement with religious authority and the social power of belief, especially where claims of sacred certainty collide with pluralism, satire, and free expression. The line is less a metaphysical proof than a declaration of intellectual independence: meaning and moral responsibility are located in human experience rather than guaranteed by theology.