Religion is not Bad. People are! Oh common!!!

Me - Look what people do in the name of religion. Mass murder, holocaust, organised crime, demolition of Masjid and Mandir. And in the name of God, they are either not convicted or softly convicted. 

Theist - Well that is not what religion teaches. These people are bad. Not the religion.

Me - Hmmm.....

Theist - Look at all the good thing religious people do. Charity, missionary act, food for free, asharams, etc.

Me - Well that is not what religion teaches. These people are good. Not the religion. Check mate!

This happens when you argue with religious people. It apparently appears that they are enemies of logical thinking and have declared a war on it. Take a extract of debate with these people and you will encounter almost all logical fallacies, up and down!

I asked this question of a QA forum lately. "Religion is not bad, people are.." What are the best responses to this argument? I got some very amazing replies. You can follow the link to read the answers (You need a account, best things in life are not free). Anyways, here are the highlights of some of the best replies.

People are ultimately responsible for everything they do, there's no way around it. But something make doing the bad things a lot easier, and that makes these things dangerous. 

When people aren't responsible for their actions, many are willing to do horrible things. The Milgram experiment proves that. Religion by itself is not bad, but it sure makes easier for people to do bad things.

Guns don't kill people, people do. But the guns sure help. Same logic.

Rape is not bad, rapists are bad. 2+2=5 is not wrong, the people that claims it, is wrong. Faith over a falsehood leads to ignorance, misery and, in most cases, war. All the religions claim falsehoods not only as truth, but as the "Word of God", which if you don't believe unreasonably, you will burn in hell.

Here is my take on this issue.

Anybody can be a criminal. The driving force for crime is not an ideology, but circumstances. What ideology does it make you carry forward your crime.

That said, I am convinced that an theist would be more comfortable getting away from his/her (henceforth, just his) crime in the name of religion or God. An atheist on the other hand, can be a criminal but has no ideology to back his crime and hence the chances he commits one is less

This is how it works. When people do bad thing, most of them feel sad about it. They feel guilty and sometime uncomfortable. They cry, yell, consult people. At this moment, religion tags alone. It tells you, "What you did was good. It was a noble deed. Suffering is inevitable. You are doing work of God. Maybe you are convicted this life, but next life, you be a happy man. You will have 72 virgins waiting for you. Your future generation would be happy for this deed you did. Etc/Etc"

Now this is what religion does. It makes you commit a crime without feeling the guilt about it. You are deluded and convinced that whatever you do, whatever happens, is happening for a great cause called God. You are working for God and hence anything you do is for a great cause. This is a self fulfilling prophecies. A logical error in thinking.

Nothing can make you fly airplane into the tower killing 2000+, hijack 5 star hotel in Mumbai killing 200+ people, holocaust 6 million Jews, rape minors and yet feel like Lord Krishna and yet convince you deep within, you are NOT DOING ANYTHING BAD.

Religion is very dangerous force. Any amount of good it does cannot cover the mind block it creates in masses.

I think Steven Weinberg put its succinctly

With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

INCEPTION- Got You!

The stuff about PRIDE

Lets start by defining the term pride

"a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of one's close associates, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired."

Over here, we are not really going to be broad about the definition of proudness, rather, we are taking only the part of it. "a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from achievement of one's close associates".

People are proud of almost anything and everything these days. Nation, religion, caste, land, national flag, color of pajaymas, culture, Asharam Bapu, floor color, desktop wallpaper and what not.

Some pride are OK. Some are (very) dangerous. Very Dangerous. Make a person proud of his city or state and he will be totally convinced to throw a man out of running train. Make a man proud of his religion, and he will do whatever it takes to get a masjid or mandir from dome to trash, using just a hammer. Make him proud of his maleness, and he will beat the shit out of his wife for asking him to come early at home. Pride breed intolerance.

How do we check whether our pride is OK Dokey and acceptable?  Here is what I do. Don't be proud of anything you haven't achieved or worked for. I just gave you a golden formula for resisting yourself to be a anti-social element!

Lets talk about the pride of nationality or religion. Is  being a Maharashtrian or a North Indian Bhramin or a Muslim something to be proud of?

Toss a coin. What comes up? Heads? Ask yourself, "Is getting a heads something to be proud of?". Sounds stupid?

You should not be proud of something you were born with (like you kidney, 10(or 11 or 12) fingers, your nurse hairstyle, your height, etc.). You never had a chance to *select or earn* any-of the thing. You were just born!!. Randomness? Evolution at work?

You have to be proud of something you earned yourself.

The tag of Marathi, Bhramin or for that case any other thing, is not what you earned, but something your parents gave you which was given to them by their parents and so on.

And as far as Marathi, White, American, Sunni, Brahmin etc. are considered, these are nothing but (now) useless social constructs.

To end this up, here is something George Carlin said on the stuff of Pride

"Pride should be reserved for something you achieve or obtain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth. Being Irish isn't a skill... it's a fucking genetic accident. You wouldn't say I'm proud to be 5'11"; I'm proud to have a pre-disposition for colon cancer."

Occam Razor. The simple, The Better.

"Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler" 

--- Albert Einstein.

Ever heard this quote anywhere? What does it means? It's been long I have written a stuff. This is a second start!

Let’s take an example. A situation is given. People are asked to analyse it, and publish their results. There are three people doing it, Aman, Babli, Chiku. The illustration is below.

Read more.

If stripes are advantageous, then why don't horses and other animals have stripes like zebras do?

Good question. There is a simple answer to this. Richard Dawkins proposed what is called the 'Climbing the Mount Improbable"

We can convert the question to rather generalized one

If X,Y,Z traits are advantageous, why don't all the animals have it?

Here is the idea in nutshell:

When a particular characteristic is been developed in any species, it is like climbing mountains (mountain is abstract to evolutionary journey). We all start at the same starting point. There is no question of single best mountain as such. Every mountain is of different height (complexity and nature of characteristic). Some species climb up a particular mountain and stay at the peak. Some other species climbs another taller mountain and stay at their peak. Some other climb a smaller peak and stay there. The characteristic you develop is determined by the mountain peak you are at.

Note: One peak is not bad/less worthy than other peak. They are just different and not comparable.

In your case, the horses have climbed a smaller mount improbable with respect to Camouflage and stayed there. By luck and and probability and chance, Zebras got a higher mountain to climb and hence they have somewhat complicated black-white strips.

We can see this example using eyes. There are 20+ types of eyes in who of animal kingdom. If you see the below diagram, every type of eyes have reached a particular peak and settled down there itself. There is no race to be the best. All you do is by probability climb your mountain and when you reach the peak, settle there. But that time, some of your friendly species may get a chance to climb a higher mountain peaks and stay and some other climb a smaller peak. All is improbable.

What's the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists?

One man's terrorist is other man's freedom fighter.
- Gerald Seymour

Here is what Noam Chomsky said in one of his lecture.  I am paraphrasing it.

Every word in linguistic has two meanings. One is the theoretical meaning and other the technical meaning.

The theoretical meaning is the one which is always kept on papers and are used in non-practical work. The technical meaning is the meaning the word has in practical real world application.

Example:

Democracy - 

Theoretical meaning : Democracy is government by the people, of the people and with the people

Practical meaning :Democracy is a government in which is run by vote bank politics. India is a best example

Peace Process -

Theoretical meaning : The attempt to create peace using non violence mode.

Practical meaning : The US on-going in Middle East is called peace process.

Considering USA as a example, it  has already decided that whatever it does in middle east is a peace process and whatever the middle-east people do is terrorism. This is a non falsifiable hypothesis. It cannot be refuted because it will produce contradictions.

So, by definition the act of USA is a peace process. No amount of argument can make it terrorist act. On the same logic, whatever Iraq does is by definition terrorism, no matter how hard they try to convey there message, it will still be called terrorism.

What if evolution had the capacity to pass on *experience* of an individual to its offspring?

It is 9 am in the morning. My nephew is sleeping by my side. With his suckling bottle handy, he is crawling from one end of the bed, to another.

Suddenly, he reaches at the edge. I rush! Ghosh! I pull him the other side. My heartbeats swings up. He starts crying. I am reassured. He is annoyed (I just harshly pulled the baby hands).

Then I thought. Why don't I fall of the edge? There is a simple answer. I have an experience/knowledge that falling from the edge is a bad idea. I may get hurt, I may bleed or break a bone.

Why my nephew is not so vigilant and smart? Simply because he is not having enough knowledge and experience.

The question arises. What if evolution had the tendency to pass experience down the line? What if my nephew knew all that I knew. WoW! Wonderful, isn't it. But would it be a evolutionary advantage?

A lot.

In fact if you look on a wider scale, human beings have the capacity to pass on experience to their offspring. Although that in not much through genes, but through culture and our capability to preserve memories and solidify it using our amazing capability of language.

The below image is taken from the TED lecture of David Christian. He shows that every generation of rat is fresh and new. No teaching and experience is passed on. Whereas humans have greater tendency to avoid mistakes their past generations has done and learn from the experience. We grow exponentially, they grow linearly.

It is the result of our highly complex brain.

If you wanna youtube the video, here is the link. The part we are interested starts at 12.40 min.

David Christian: The history of our world in 18 minutes

Why I Gave Away God.

This article was originally published in KITABZAADE,  e-magazine for Book Exchange Club Of Mumbai.

I have a friend. She is perfect. Pretty, exquisite and stunningly witty. Every year, on the eve of 24th December, she is busy doing some shopping at local toy stores. Although she is very animated about shopping’s, this one is very close to her heart. At the end, when she is back home, her sack holds a small Christmas tree, few colorful baby socks, chocolates and some stationary. At night, she sits and writes a very imaginative appearing childish letter. Huge letter. One A4 size paper, perhaps. This note is for Santa Claus. She slides it in one of the brightly colored sock. A bit of beautification is done and then this entire setup is placed in her balcony. This is what she tells me, “Vicky, Santa Claus is going to come on 25th night and after reading the letter would make everything I wished for come true.” 

Continue Reading