Of Faith and science

Chachi, I just understood your first quote.Let me recall it again

"how can there be a perversion of faith, if faith, lackingobjective justification, doesn't have any demonstrable standard topervert"

You are questioning Faith on the basis that its not being falsifiable, arent you? Like a Scientific Theory. Ahem.

I see no way this debate can rage on if you dont see what separates a Scientific Theory from a Theoretical contruct based on faith alone

And another thing, You may draw a parallel even here, as I may have pointed outs some 10000 times. A Scientific theory is strictly representational. Its a toy, with certain "internal" parts, and certain "external" parts of it mimic our world in a purely representaational way.

I'll tell you the precise definition of a "Scientific theory". A theory is said to be "Scientific" if it takes a finite subset of these "World Data", (which, you may recall, is what the "External" parts are supposed to mimic, fixes ALL "internal parts" with this set, and now this toy mimics all the world we can see.

Now what if we choose to have a totally different toy model? We can fix ITS parts using a finite subset of "world data" too, isnt it?So what makes us so vehemently defend what is , in fact one of an infinite set of scientific Theories that describes whatever portion of the world we see?

Some may choose to call it "Faith".

A Specific case, the discussion of which might lead to resolution of some conflicts

Ok, for a moment I'll try to be unprejudiced and completely rational, for I agree that just like sunily and chachi look prejudiced to me and satti, the reverse is also probably true. I'll also leave dawkins out of the equation, as I havent read him

Now , I recall seeing a poster of Albert Einstein in Sunily's room which said

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice."

Let us , for a moment forget the present debate, that is preventing satti from going to office, and will very soon will result in chachi being thrown out of USC, and try to analyse this statement. Let us also assume (ASSUME, so please dont flame, chachi and sunily) that Einstein was "God", and what he said is to be mandatorily respected by all of us, the only degree of freedom being in the way we interpret his statement . The reader may recognize a very familiar pattern emerging. This is exactly how religions operate.

Now, given all this, let us analyse the statement. Sunily and Chachi, if I am not mistaken, would interpret this statement in the following manner:

a) Killing other people is stupid
b)A large part of being a soldier involves Killing other people.
c)Even if you are averse to killing other people, you will be forced to , the justification provided to you being that it benefits your nation.
d)Justifying anything by saying it benefits the nation is stupid.

Now let us note that there are considerable plusses in this interpretation. What is a country, after all? Its a contrived set of people, which has no physical basis. People on the other hand, are not contrived, and Killing them has a very tangible aspect to it. So, what would you rather do? Would you destroy a physical entity grounded in reality for the benefits(genuine or contrived) of a concept of dubious origin and basis?

Me and satti, in our efforts to interpret the statement with which we started, would probably not question points a) to c) stated above.
Not even point c), because we would agree that even if I do not want to kill a man just because he lives across an artificial border, there would be fanatics who would probably force me to.

What we would not agree to subscribe to however , I think , is statement d) with its tremendously scary scope. It is noteworthy that points a) through c) are things we can directly experience, as in we can give proper physical evidence justifying these. However point d) is at a level of detachment from any tangible consequence that it allows us the freedom of accepting it or rejecting it. Either way, it has no "visible" effects.

We would say, that okay, somebody forcing you to kill for the love of you nation is wrong , because KILLING IN THE NAME OF ANYTHING IS WRONG. The only part of the expression "Killing in the name of your country" we would find anything wrong with is "Killing". We would not see anything wrong with "in the name of your country". Is loving my nation a sign of my mental weakness ? Just because some fanatic misuses it? That way as Satti has pointed out, our overwhelming desire to know more about the world will probably be our undoing, so does that lead us to question the viability of Science as a practice?

Just because I cannot show you what exactly I mean by "my nation", is it a sign of my irrationality to show love for my nation? The rigid man made rules of logic can never allow us to comprehend love, how can we expect to rationalize love, be it for for nation or for kin ?

Heck, I can even love the air I breathe, draw strength from believing that I am loved back with the same intensity with which I have loved. Is THAT a sign of my mental weakness? Who decides if its right or wrong, or if there is a better alternate? There are no better alternatives in matters of the heart

I think by now you can see what I am trying to indicate about your views on religion and its supposed lack of viability and the various disadvantages we face by allowing religions to flourish. I would be very pleased if that two of you at least try not to make fools of yourselves by posting irrelevent comments, if indeed you are intent on having a serious discussion. If not, tell the rset of us, and we'll all participate in some playful bantering and frolic.

@ Chachi

a) Sunily, you really should finish Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

b)Chachi. My point is that you ought to scream your lungs out at me when I criticize whatever Edifice you have constructed in your mind. When I criticize Cobain, for you, I am criticizing your cobain. You have every right to use the customary expletives, instead of reading some wanker's book and concluding that Your defence is based on irrational premises (like poor uneducated people who defend their religions with their lives), and in order to transcend to a higher state of spiritual existence, you ought to abandon your god.

There is no higher state of existence. This, is as good or bad as it gets. Take it or leave it. So stop trying to get to it. Scream with impunity

The aim of my life

@sandman

see, I completely understand what you are trying to say, and I had half-written a post on that once.

It's called, "What is the aim of my life?"

There are three levels to it. What is the aim of existence. Of anything. Of this world. Of you. And my answer is, there's no aim. Which is the same as yours. The world just is. There's no good or bad, nothing matters.

The second level is, what is the aim of a life-form? That, it seems, is survival, and multiplication. By hook or crook, the gene tries to survive (I've heard The Selfish Gene is revolutionary too).

The third, is what is the aim of your life, as a conscious being? And my answer is, whatever gives you kicks. Do whatever your heart tells you to do. That's something we all search for in life. You've got a life. Enjoy it in the way you can best.

Now, you have only used the first level of "the aim of life" to drive your point home, and have completely ignored the 2nd and the 3rd level. In the end, nothing matters, so why care? May humanity rot in hell, who gives a crap?

And you're right. It is so. But the point is, we are stuck inside mortal bodies. We have life. And consciousness. Now, using an ethereal viewpoint makes everything immaterial. But why are we using that viewpoint? aren't we mortal? Don't we have to save our asses? And of our children? Doesn't humanity have to progress, so that our genes can live long? If either option doesn't make a difference from the ethereal viewpoint, why not choose the one which is "good" for "us" in the earthly viewpoint, i.e. in the second level.

If we were cows, then we'd have done it in the usual way, eating and mating. But since we are humans, our consciousness has allowed us to figure a lot of things out. Dawkins is one of the persons who's doing things which are good at the second level.

At the third level, you are free to do whatever you want. This contradicts with the second level, since you have to do things which are good for your/the species' survival. For Dawkins, he has figured out that the second and the third level are the same for him. His heart says, do what is good for the people, and that's what he's doing. This may not be true for you. You may be inclined to kill your entire family to see how it feels like. Or become a mad scientist (bwhahaahahaha) and destroy the earth with an uncontrollable fusion bomb.

I have this technique for preserving the sanity (i.e. conforming with the second level) of my actions. I assume that the 1st level is the only truth, hence none of my actions have any real consequences. So now, I'm free from the 2nd level, and can do whatever I want, conforming to the third level. Seems insane? No. I trust my instincts, and believe in my basic goodness (again, 2nd level). So whatever I do, would be in the interest of my species. Now, this allows me freedom from any pressure/responsibilities from the 2nd level, and so I can keep up the good work. I assume that this technique would work for a lot of people (at least for people contributing to/learning from science). Heck, I'd make this into another post :P.

The Great Enemy

To begin with, one does not have to give a crap about Dawkins, nor any of his minions who invoke Occam's Razor at every available opportunity. However, claiming the non-existence of objective reason and morality is nothing but an excuse. Nihilism is not an end, but a question to be answered, to perish trying to solve.

The primary antagonist in J.R.R Tolikien's 'Silmarillion' is Melkor, the fallen Vala who is later named Morgoth, 'the great enemy of the world'. Melkor is evil embodied, when he curses, he does not channel the power of some superior being, it is his will that bends the fate of his enemies. Morgoth's evil arises from his desire to impose his will on all life.

Does labelling everything that constitutes such hegemonic intention lead to even a blurry distinction between good and bad ? Free will, if it exists, is all that you have, and once it is denied, you're as good as if not worse than, dead. Obviously, universal free will is impossible to achieve in this starved planet of six billion, but what have we got to loose ? If you want to believe in god, feel free, but find your own god, not someone else's.

"Sometimes in the mornings I walk all the way up here to welcome the sun who greets me. Nature is bestilled; bees and snakes are not yet stirring about. The earth and I ask each other why we are here at this very hour, for what purpose, for what grand purpose. Very few mortals think these things through in concert with nature. If human beings think at all, there are only a few pitiful ideas in their heads which they have acquired from others but think are original with them; they never discover something by contemplating nature themselves. They are feeble, wishy-washy, fragile." - The New Life, Orhan Pamuk

"For it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

What is to be opposed about religion is not the all-pervading supreme being, ethereal and intangible, who is more of an instrument to implement spiritual thought, but the tyrannical hypocrite who seeks to force his twisted views on and to subvert the will of his 'believers' to satisfy his lust for power.

This is a post from an old, now deleted blog of mine.
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The last drop hung precipitously, reluctant to leave home, a moment's hesitation later, it plunged to the dusty earth - but gravity, unfortunately had rather poor reflexes. His palm moved faster then the keenest eye could discern - every drop was an ocean of warmth, a tranquilizer, a hallucinogen, it was ecstasy, it was amphetamine. Nonchalantly, he threw aside the last of the water skins. He'd long known it was hopeless.

The wasteland was an endless sea of dust and crags rising in defiance as though the very earth conspired against him, the wind lay deathly still, undisturbed but for little eddies that whispered in stark mockery at his solitude, of a fellow journeyman from ages since. His hands knew naught but the harsh razor edges of dust laden rugged rock, of fleeting ghosts of sand. Since the beginning of time they sought the lush grass he had once been promised, and his eyes the paradise that lay beyond. Now they reeled under the sun's assault that pierced deeper than the eyes, threatening to burn his very spirit to oblivion.

Withered trees stood among the desolate rocky outcrop, their roots twisted, clutching in desperation to arid waste that hadn't seen a drop of water in aeons. The desert knew neither day and night nor season. Every moment an eternity that seemed to encompass all in its omnipotence, as the next. Yet the aura of death, of inaction was but a veil, for the wasteland was alive. It was a consciousness in itself, every speck of dust a part it, even the dreary passage of time was under its domain. For it yearned to subdue all to its will.

Yet he walked. Each step revealed a new vista as horrifying as the last. Heavy were his footfalls, raising clouds of dust, echoing among the immutable wilderness.

(Another lame attempt. This time, I started reading Eliot's 'The Waste Land'. Although my feeble intellect couldn't take me too far into the poem I got all excited when I read these :

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow.
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

As is apparent from the shite I've written , not in a couple of dozen millennia could I produce something of such dreadful majesty. )

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Information overload, more stuff on the subject in question, read ze comic. And if you like it, check out more here.

The Dawkins Delusion

With all due respect to Mr .Dawkins, let me remind his esteemed highness, or those present who are liable to take offence at what follows, that criticizing religion by saying that it makes us satisfy ourselves at knowing that we'll never understand everything, is just plain stupid. The problem with Mr Dawkins and others like him is that they presuppose that the World is slowly evolving to a perfect (Read good) state, and this is merely an intermediate (Read bad) state, and since this is true, the world is currently filled with all kinds of irrationalist, who not having benefitted from the gentile existence and purity of spirit and all that crap that Mr.Dawkins was clearly imbued in from his childhood, are susceptible to believe in the existence of things like God, and furthermore they demand that their religious prejudices be respected.

Well Mr.Dawkins (and all his followers)I have news for you. It is not "unfair" to give so much weight to religious prejudices. And you want to know why? Because unfair and fair, good and bad, are just wine bottles we see the world through, pleasantly distorted out of shape to suit our grotesque fanatsies. What is Respect, that thing that Mr.Dawkins so grudges to give to people with religious beliefs?

What is Respect? We are organisms . We have our interests, not all of which might be in the interest of our nearest neighbours. Those interests might be protecting our own irrational facet, which all of us do have, no matter how vehement he/she might be in insisnting that he/she is a completely rational being. But let us not be so specific. Generally, We show "Respect" to others' interests so that they accomodate ours. That is what is Respect. Clearly, Mr Dawkins, you see that Respect is a human invention which is incompatible with another human invention ,"unfair".

The point that eludes all ardent rationalists is that they fail to understand that any system of logic is based and operated by axioms, which are stated by humans like them, albeit after careful consideration, but by humans nevertheless . There are things that escape the radar of logic, that cant be "explained". They fall short because they try to "explain" god, and since god does not occur to them within the confines of the framework that they made, they deem its existence to be dubious. What they fail to understand is that God is a concept. It is a concept, like logic is a concept, like Respect is a concept, like unfair is a concept, They exist in the mind of humans. So if anything, its "illogical" to question their existence, or to question why one concept commands so much respect. Its stupid. its like trying to stab air. Can you stab air Mr. Dawkins?

As concepts, all of them exist, and thats the way the world is. Saying that something is not good, the world has this wrong with it and that right with it, is plain naive. . People believing in god isnt good or bad. People committing mass suicide because they think that there's a UFO hiding behind Halley's comet and its their last chance to escape earth, isnt good or bad. Psychotic killers who kill in the name of God, rape women and mutilate children in the name of God, this isnt good or bad. The World , isnt good or bad. The world just Is.

So my advice to Mr. Dawkins is , shut the **** up.

The God Delusion

I was reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins a few days ago (as well as watching his documentary, "The Root of All Evil?"). I haven't finished the book yet (probably would not for a while, cuz I go bored), but one of the points that he was emphasizing was the unfair respect that religion gets, i.e., when we (rationalists) treat all other ideas with critical justice. why don't we treat religion in the same way? Why the need to respect false beliefs? When someone says "I am Napolean Bonaparte", we treat him with ridicule, but when someone says, "I believe there is a God", we prefer to keep quiet and let him have his beliefs. Why this unfair fear of hurting sentiments? In all probability, he's right - we have been clinging to religion for too long now, and have been giving it a special status, which is entirely undeserved. Though I can understand the "why". The other day when Porny said "Nirvana is the most overrated mediocre band in history", I was infuriated. How dare he talk like that about my band? How dare he talk like that about my religion? I would have his body dismembered and fed to dogs! That Satan-pig!

Kudos to Dawkins for coming out so straightforward and, as he himself says, showing us the elephant in the room. May this world be cleansed of all things irrational. Amen ;)

p.s. - read the description here, and a few reviews too. The major context of the book is Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but a few things may apply to Hinduism as well. Haven't read it completely, but seems to tackle everything :- why this should be of a matter of concern to you, why one should not believe in god and other superstitions, how it is possible to be moral without being religious et cetera. A must-read for the half-religious and the half-atheist.

In the meantime, listen to "Nutshell" by Alice in Chains, which tackles the other big problem : society which destroys the self. More on this later, when I talk about Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead".

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Here comes the first post on Nonlinear Wisdom in almost two years :) . Someone said we should revive it, so I'm trying. Do comment.