tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12647652.post112523633910430600..comments2023-11-03T05:19:38.869-07:00Comments on Search Your Soul: Religion, Spirituality and FateThe Soul Doctorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06282012741855216292noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12647652.post-1132253724644094372005-11-17T10:55:00.000-08:002005-11-17T10:55:00.000-08:00My Dear LNI must appreciate the clarity of thought...<B>My Dear LN</B><BR/><BR/>I must appreciate the clarity of thought and the candidness with which you have placed your seemingly logical arguments. Nice.<BR/><BR/>Before embarking to write a reply to your comments, I must clarify that I am not an atheist. I don’t deny the existence of a supreme being. I am just introspecting and being a little inquisitive. I don’t accept god in the form that has been presented to us.<BR/><BR/>Rational thinking! Don’t you realize that what ever you have written in favour of god is also a product of rational thinking?! The rational thinking that has made someone deny the existence of god. How can you question rational thinking by rationally thinking??<BR/><BR/>If indeed you need to think about god in his absolute form, you need to get out of this subset of human rational thinking. Else, no amount of explanations would actually be correct if you try to explain the superset sitting inside the subset. A form of heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.<BR/><BR/>Your challenge to make the steel balls enter the core box randomly is childish. How many million yrs and how many zillion combinations must have taken place for the first RNA to have formulated? And then how many zillion errors have taken place while mutations resulting in so many billion species of varied colour, type, structure and families? If indeed there is a supreme being, then it is absolutely unbearable to even think that he will make his own creation a prey for his other creations to survive!!<BR/><BR/>Absence of proof is not a proof of absence. Today a person A claims that B is the biggest thief around. But he doesn’t have proof. How logical is for him to appeal to the world to believe it? Even in that case, close friends like me would choose not to believe it and then there would be some who will believe it , there will be a third group who will choose to be careful with you and there will be finally those who will be indifferent. Now, does this grouping prove or disprove the statement? No. God is a concept much more grander than B being a thief. And hence this division. <BR/>For a common man, a scientist coming and saying that there are more than 3 dimensions and there are 1000000 universes are of no value. He does not choose to argue or introspect. But GOD is an operating system for him. Theism and Atheism are the way his mind has been formatted. Its like FAT 32 or NTFS system. The way it has been formatted decides how his mind operates and he has every right to know, argue and if need be change the way he thinks. Its after all his life. Remember, the greats like Newton, einstien and scores of unsung achievers were all some Tom, Dick and Harry before they rose to stardom with their inventions and discoveries and philosophies. So never underestimate a Tom or Dick or Harry or for that matter yourself.<BR/><BR/>As far as predeterminism and fate are concerned I have written in detain in my part 4 of the series. Is there anything called the free will in real sense? That itself is highly debatable.<BR/><BR/>As far as superior intelligence is concerned, just glance through my blog titled who is the successor of man in the cycle of evolution.The Soul Doctorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06282012741855216292noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12647652.post-1131662045302632292005-11-10T14:34:00.000-08:002005-11-10T14:34:00.000-08:00SK! just glanced through several topics youhave ke...SK! just glanced through several topics youhave keyed. They seem interesting... atleast, matches with my interests.<BR/><BR/>One of my college teachers, a christian by birth and upbringing is spending his retired days blogging. (dharumi.weblogs.us). He wrote a 6 part series on why he 'converted' to atheism in the past 15 years. I have pasted below my response to his series.<BR/>I guess, it is not essential to read his article before reading my response. Go through this and go get back as and when you can.<BR/>take care.<BR/>anbudan Lakshminarasimhan<BR/>------------------------------<BR/><BR/> <BR/>His series ‘Why/How I underwent conversion’, is an excellent thesis that analyses the intricacies of different religions. In the first essay, he underscores the need for ‘objectivity’ and ‘rationality’ in analyzing religion and God. In the second, he brings up the apparent irony to the belief in existence of God: Is God really omniscient and omnipotent? Does the world run by God’s plan (pre-determinism) or by man’s free-will? The third part of his series was answers to questions posted by several readers, and the last three are a detailed analysis of the history and teachings of different religions. He is convincing in his argument that religions are man made and it is not wise for us to divide ourselves based on religion. The controversies and contradictions in the history and teachings of the different religions highlight the fact that, even this record of history and translations of the teachings over centuries, is highly inaccurate and so, bewildering to a present day reader. All through, he highlights the importance of rational thinking in following the teachings of any religion. Still better is being humane and not blindly ‘religious’ as per ones own interpretation.<BR/><BR/>Rational thinking! This is one of the key elements that has helped man kind be where we are today. Rational thinking enables one to think logically and not blindly accept or deny any idea or concept received through indoctrination or by personal bias. It is rational thinking that has made man the most intellectual organism on earth, and helped us advance in science and technology. Science and Technology, a by product of our rational thinking, has helped us do several things that were unimaginable in the past.<BR/>For instance:<BR/>We can put satellites to go around the earth, or even explore the neighboring planets. Though these space instruments don’t last for long, we can replace them.<BR/>We can design distillation units that can separate salt from sea water and make it potable, though this process is very expensive to do at large scale.<BR/>We can make robots execute functions we want precisely. There is still room for refining the control of movement in robots, nevertheless it is a great achievement.<BR/>We have the intelligence to harness power from radioactive fission. Though we know in theory that nuclear-fusion is a far efficient and cleaner process, we are far from achieving it in practice.<BR/>Atleast a handful of our species can understand complicated science such as ‘theory of relativity’; though we ourselves don’t understand or even know what it is all about, we can atleast accept and be happy that someone of my species knows what it is.<BR/><BR/>The list can go on endlessly! All these stand testimony to the great human intelligence – a product of our ‘rational thinking’.<BR/><BR/>Now let us take us away from our books and classrooms and any other source of passive indoctrination, and just look around us.<BR/><BR/>The stars (sun included) are perpetual source of energy where nuclear fusion keeps happening practically endlessly. The planets and satellites that float around in the space do so without need for repair or replacement. The giant scale distillation system that takes water vapour from sea and provides it in potable form as rain has been ‘cost effective’ and going on for ever. The huge diversity of organisms on earth, the various functions they do, their movement so precisely coordinated are way ahead of any man made robots we can imagine. Just look at the gaint redwood tree… it can suck water from soil and take it up hundreds of meters against gravity, for hundreds of years! I wonder how long human intelligence will take to design such a magnificent system.<BR/><BR/>This list can go on longer than the endless list of human achievements. Inspite of this humbling contrast, the human mind tends to think that such more efficient and elegant things can be put in place and kept functioning just by ‘random chance and evolution’. Now, if any so-called rational mind places a bet on ‘random chance’ to bring about such precision and elegance, I challenge them to this game: remember the toy we get in our ‘fancy stores’, one where you need to push 5-6 steel balls to the centre of concentric circles; just keep shaking this toy and show me you can get all the steel balls at the centre ‘just by chance’. Your time starts now…tick tick tick…<BR/><BR/>May be real rationalism will set in by now! If just five small balls can not assemble at one spot for a moment just by ‘chance’ without the interference of an intelligence to direct it, how could the first molecules (RNA?) orchestrate themselves into self-replicating systems, eventually leading to the highly complex living systems we see today?<BR/><BR/>There definitely is a higher intelligence than the human mind. It is this intelligence we call God. Our understanding of God varies from person to person. Some are ‘realised’ souls, and others are like us who can hope to understand God someday. As of now we may not be able to perceive the ‘proof’ for existence of God, but as my scientific mentor says, “absence of proof, is not proof of absence”. We may hope to understand God someday.<BR/><BR/>When a contemporary scientist says there are ‘10-raised-to-the-power-500’ universes and there are 9 dimensions, and our awareness is limited to only 3 dimensions, we are ready to accept, even if we don’t understand what it actually means. That is because we recognize the scientist’s expertise and acknowledge our own ignorance in that field. Leave alone such complex theories about nature of universe or theory of relativity; even something as simple as repairing a cycle tube puncture or a torn footwear, we take it to an ‘expert’. But when it comes to God, we think we all are experts and every Tom, Dick and Harry comes up with his own ‘expert opinion’! So much for ‘rationality’ and ‘objectivity’! Sometimes I wonder if ‘rationality’ is called ‘rationality’ because it is so much rationed amongst us!<BR/><BR/>Another question that comes to ones mind is, “If God is so intelligent, then why did he take so long to design/evolve human beings”. In asking this question, we assume ‘humans are the ultimate creation of God, and creation of humans was his sole purpose’, which is a fallacy! Secondly, if there are more than 3 dimensions, and time is one of the dimensions we can not perceive, then ‘different time points’ are just two spots on the canvas separated from each other! So, the question of ‘why this long’ does not arise!<BR/><BR/>Interestingly, in a 6-part series, Sam-ji actually has only 2-points against existence of God. All the rest is about religions! Sam-ji wonders if whatever happens is predetermined by God, or it is freewill of man. In considering these two possibilities, he fails to see that the reality could be a mix of these two. To draw an analogy, in any video game, the overall game plan is ‘predetermined’. The player takes himself from one situation to another, one stage to next. At each juncture he has to choose (freewill) from a few options, and his decision at that point determines his next step. The freewill choice predetermines the next step; the predetermination defines the choices freewill has at the next step. These two processes go hand-in-hand.<BR/>‘Pre-determinism’ or ‘Fate’ is a dynamic process; it puts you in situations and leaves it to your free-will to decide what you want to make out of the situation you are put in. To give an example, ‘fate’ could leave a person rich, but it is left to the freewill of the person to use the money to generate jobs and help others, or to use it up in his sense gratifications! The way we use our freewill today determines what situations we will be put in future.<BR/><BR/>I guess these concepts serve to counteract Sam-ji’s questions about God. <BR/><BR/>Though I would love to elaborate on how some of the ‘wrong lessons’ passed down generations in the form of religion could actually be a result of errors in communication and misinterpretations accumulated over the centuries, I don’t want to make this write up longer than what it is now. I do agree with Sam-ji that the religions as they are presented to us today are not completely unquestionable.<BR/><BR/>All through his essay, Sam-ji takes credit for ’15 years of deep contemplation’ before he arrived at the ‘truth’! You may remember, initially he prayed so earnestly to get back his absolute faith in God; may be God’s way of re-instating faith in a troubled mind is to first remove all the ‘blind faith’ he held in rituals and religious practices. That has taken him 15 years of research and contemplation. Now that his mind is cleared of the ‘blindness’, may be, he is set to think rationally and accept the existence of the superior intelligence!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12647652.post-1126386902732667792005-09-10T14:15:00.000-07:002005-09-10T14:15:00.000-07:00@ barathvery well said. Infact, i believe god to b...@ barath<BR/><BR/>very well said. Infact, i believe god to be my friend;)<BR/><BR/>@ soumya<BR/><BR/>its the case of chicken from egg or egg from chicken.....the question is not who came first.the fact is subsequent chicken are coming from eggs and eggs are being produced by chickens. both egg and chicken are true. one cannot prove eggs or chicken's existence without the other!!The Soul Doctorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06282012741855216292noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12647652.post-1125998707565271852005-09-06T02:25:00.000-07:002005-09-06T02:25:00.000-07:00"Its religion that has got it internalised over th..."Its religion that has got it internalised over thousands of generation of mankind"<BR/><BR/>no dear, it has happened in reverse ... whtevr got internalised we named it as religion ... <BR/>children r shaped by love, greed, fear and ... and not by religion ...Soumyahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00922568026832087187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12647652.post-1125942188928551472005-09-05T10:43:00.000-07:002005-09-05T10:43:00.000-07:00Nice post!reminded me of an anonymous quote ..."Go...Nice post!<BR/><BR/>reminded me of an anonymous quote ...<BR/><BR/>"God is an adult's imaginary friend!"<BR/><BR/>Its ones option to belive in it or not...!<BR/><BR/>Nyways you have been tagged! check my blog...!BBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13281483737727404197noreply@blogger.com