A Pitch For Banning All Religion

From the video description:

'The Pitch' is a segment on ABC TV's 'The Gruen Transfer' where two ad companies compete to 'sell the unsellable'. Past example of selling the unsellable include invading New Zealand, compulsory euthanasia for the elderly, cosmetic surgery for children and introducing a parent licence.

Here, two ad agencies make pitches for banning all religion. Fascinating stuff.

Watch:

Richard Dawkins interviews Wendy Wright

Richard Dawkins, that man believers hate, interviews Wendy Wright.

Apparently, Dawkins confronted her after recieving her hate mail, and she agreed to an interview.

I saw all seven parts of this interview on Youtube this evening. As a comment on one of the video says:

“…props to Dawkins, though. I would have punched her in the throat five minutes in.”

Wright argues her case poorly. Worse, she’s smug, poorly articulated, and shows her tribe in poor light.

Her views, which she repeats countless times through the talk, can be summed up as thus:

There is a creator.
Each individual is unique.
Where is the evidence for evolution?
All humans should be treated with respect.
Roll that back.
Teach the controversy at schools.
You have an agenda.
The Darwin way is disrespectful to humans.
At the start, Dawkins introduces himself and asks her where they can begin the interview. She smugly smiles and refuses to even seat him. They do the whole talk standing.

Dawkins, by the way, is 68. So much for her respect for humans.

After this interview, my respect for Dawkins grows. He remains polite through the talk, speaks in a low tone, and keeps a straight face through Wright’s ridiculous replies.

If you are the sort interested in the debate about god, Charles Darwin, evolution and creationism — and you probably are, if you’ve read this post till this point — don’t miss this video.

[Video link thanks: Anirudh]

Vacationing In Tirupati, And What I Like & Dislike About Organised Religion

I’m wary of crowded places, hot weather and long queues.

Add ill-mannered security guards. And priests who’d make Atilla blush. Blend them, and you get Tirupati.

Yet I had to go. Family tradition. It’s something we do after marriage.

I kept pushing it away for two years. And then, the trip materialised and our family headed for the seven hills.

It was my sixth trip to the place. I don’t remember going to another holiday spot – religious or otherwise – as many times.

At first, there’s much to like about the place: the climate’s pleasant, the locales are clean and green, there’s spicy, piping hot, slurpacious Andhra food. And the datacard works too.

Then, the darshans happened.

There are several types of darshans you can make at Tirupati.

The cheapest option will leave you standing in queues several kilometres long. The slow, painful barefooted drag to the lord’s chamber takes many hours, sometimes more than a day.

Then, there’s the VIP queue, where you have to pay a higher-than-usual ticket price. But you are spared the queue and taken straight to the sanctum sanctorum.

Right before they reach the business end of the darshan, all these queues merge. Then, another wave from this sea of skinheads prepares to hit the lord’s chamber.

There, just as the devotees reach the chamber and get a second’s worth of his glimpse, they’re pushed away by the security – swiftly, rudely – to keep the queue moving.

All those hours in the sun.

For one second’s worth of darshan.

Two seconds, if you’re lucky.

Three, if you hold your ground and don’t let them push you.

It doesn’t stop there.

After this, people queue up again to make donations to the ginormous Tirupati hundi.

This queue is much shorter. But one thing doesn’t change: right after you’re done dropping your money in the hundi, the guard – probably fully aware that your donation helps pay his salary – pushes you away. All over again.

After this, you pass a gallery where overweight priests sit behind a glass wall with currency notes strewn around, waiting to be counted, or be pinched.

I’m an atheist. But what I truly like about organised religion is that it’s a fantastic, recession-proof, all-weather business model.

Its consumers fear abandoning it. Its proponents milk it for its dogmatic worth. And the product itself – The God – has irreproachable manners of pleasing or displeasing its followers.

My heated back-and-forth with some priests and guards would mean I’m not going back to any place of religion in a hurry.

However, if I can, I’m definitely going to set up a temple in every corner of the country.

And A Word To Pankaj Kumar

Nitpicking today’s Inner Voice in the Hindustan Times.

When we begin to love God and follow the essential teachings of our religion, we fulfill the purpose for which we came to this planet.

What purpose? Why is it my purpose?

If we follow the core teachings and fulfill our duties, we need not have many worries, for God will take care of the rest.

Aren’t thousands of people doing God’s Work everyday when they get blown to bits by bombs, or get crushed during earthquakes, or get swept away by tsunamis or killed by grave diseases?

Faith and love of God or bhakti go together. Faith is not blind faith.

Faith, among other things, is believing in something you can’t see. That, to me, is very blind. Also, we put too much premium on ‘Enlightened Persons’ for humanity’s own good.

The human faculty of reasoning cannot provide answers to all the questions that life presents us. We have to rely on faith and intuition in such cases.

Exactly. For once, I agree. The question of Life, The Universe and Everything Else is too complicated for the human mind to fathom. But if you use God as the explanation, just how do you explain God?

For cultivating bhakti, we should try to keep our minds free from lust, anger, greed, attachment and pride.

Lust, anger, greed, attachment and pride go hand-in-hand with humanity. Show me a man free of these, and I will show you the elves in my sock drawer.

Reading spiritual books, prayer and japa help us to cultivate bhakti. We may not know the languages in which our scriptures were written or we may find that the modern translations are inaccurate.

This is why I choose not to read them.

Prayer is our effort to commune with the divine.

But if I pray to the elves living in my sock drawer, I’d be called a loon. Why? Because elves don’t exist?

We can tell our hopes and fears to God like a child and ask for guidance and support.

I’d rather consult the elves in my sock drawer. Oh wait. It’s the same thing. There’s an old joke which goes thus: when you talk to God, it is prayer; when God talks back, it is schizophrenia.

However, Buddhism suggests that we rely more on our own efforts and less on prayer. Christianity says that the 10 commandments can be summed up in one sentence: Love God and love your neighbour. Just so, the Hindu concept of bhakti or love of God encompasses the love of his creation.

Sometimes, I have nothing but contempt for creation - or whatever you might want to call it. To quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide, “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

All religions exhort us to have a friendly attitude towards our fellow humans. Hence, violence and murder are considered grievous sins.

So they are. Still, too many people kill in the name of religion. Why?

What about the possibility of a stage in our lives when we turn atheist? For atheists, the Dalai Lama said: “It does not matter whether you have religious faith or not. All that is required is that you should be a warm-hearted person.

It does not matter if you have faith. It doesn’t matter if you don’t. In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter. Nothing does.

Haven't We Always Been This Way?

Let's look at the bigger picture: humans have always been like the gun-toting boy here. If anything, I take comfort from the fact that man is, perhaps, a more tolerant creature than he was a hundred years ago.

You and I, we can get by in life. We want to trade, earn our bread, live in peace, and hope not to step on someone's toes. But there's always somebody out there who wants more. Pushed down hard enough, he will fight back: for elbow-space, money, land, oil, ideology, faith, love, or anything that's worth fighting — and killing — for.

This is what we've been. That's the truth. We've always fought and killed. History is constituted almost entirely of man's territorial ambitions. There's no end to this. The more we kill, the more we annex, the greater we are. Ashoka The Great, Alexander The Great, and so on.

As long as he exists, man will fight man. Bloodshed and war know no end. Let the loss of human life not surprise you anymore. There will be lazy politicians, there will be police lapses, Intelligence will continue to sit on its butt, and maybe someday you will be sitting on a park bench or at a film theatre when you suddenly become toast. This is small matter.

There's no end to this, and the only way to escape it all is death. I'm saddened by the incidents in Mumbai and I am in one of my skeptical moods. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

~~~

Devarshi pointed me to a Facebook search result for Mujahideen. My first thought was to have the groups reported. My second thought was, "Wait, everyone deserves a chance to speak." Then, I noticed some hateful comments in one group and decided to have them reported. My submission is just a drop in the ocean. Perhaps you can help, too.

Of belief and promises

Suppose you're the kind who never break their promises.

Let's say you made a promise about something to someone.

Let's say, you once heard a story about the benevolent nature of 'X', and it inspired you promise yourself to emulate 'X'.

But sometime later, you realise that the story about the benevolence of 'X' was false.

In fact, you have arrived to the conclusion that 'X' never existed, and the stories you had heard about him were baseless.

But you had made a promise to yourself. What happens to it?

And what if you can no longer get yourself to keep the promise?

है वजूद खुदा का?

The following is a poem by Taeer, a shayar and Closet Atheist.

है वजूद खुदा का, कैसे मान लिया आप ने?
अनजाने डर को खूब नाम दिया आप ने ...

हम को तो ऐतबार का सबब नही मिलता ,
कहीं बेवजह तो नही भरोसा किया आप ने?

अपने ही बंदो से जो बेपर्दा न हो सका,
फलक पे मकाम उसका, मान लिया आप ने ...

गर है वह हर जगह तो कैद क्यों करना पड़ा?
या कहो उसे भी कोने में बिठा दिया आप ने ...

देह्लीज़ पे जा के चंद सिक्के चढा आते हो,
खुदा से भी कारोबार , खूब किया आप ने ...

औरो को खुशी दे , ताईर दुआ कर लेता ,
उस पर भी बना दी कितनी कहानियाँ आप ने...

Just wondering...

Whom does an atheist thank when it's Friday?

The godman and the game

My colleague Deepika has done a story I wish I had done. It goes:

Tennis was not quite blessed in the land of the Sathya Sai Baba. The India-Philippines tennis test series at Puttaparthi — the home of the Sri Sathya Sai Baba — could not take place a couple of weeks ago because of bizarre circumstances.

According to sources, the first of the two ties — India won the second 3-0 at the DLTA facility here — did not happen because the Sai Baba could not turn up to inaugurate the tie and bless the players.

Apparently, Doordarshan had begun the live telecast of the game only to be told that since the godman hasn't shown up to "bless" the event, the fixture would be cancelled. However, the tennis association says this was done because of a power failure at the venue.

This story amuses me for many reasons, one of them being that I'm an unbeliever in a family of Sai devotees. Not your normal devotees, but the Saturday Bhajan Mandli variety.

Jesus — I Will Survive

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.
— Robert Frost

Time Wasting 101

His G-Talk status message: God...where do I get the respite?

Me: For starters, you could stop asking God for respite, because there is none. :D

Him: Ha ha ha! Very good. So you are trying to take a dig at me? That’s really wonderful.

Me: No. I'm simply saying there is no god.

Him: How can you deny the existence of the almighty? What makes you think like that?

Me: The same reason which makes you think there is an almighty.

Him: I can't beat you in words it seems but I can't deny your proposition

Me: I do feel there are super beings out there somewhere else in the universe... but I strongly doubt if they are watching over us, which why I think that if there's no one watching over us, then there's no god.

Him: But that does show signs of belief in you, and that proves that your disbelief in almighty is a thrusted one.

Me: Like I said... "almighty" to me means someone who is super powerful and is controlling our lives, which gives it power. What I'm saying is, I dont think there’s anybody watching over us or controlling us. So, to me, whatever this entity is, it is certainly not almighty.

Him: Ok.

Him: Sounds difficult to believe but somehow I genuinely believe that those who do not believe in the almighty are the one who believe the most. :)

Me: Sir, you are entitled to feel that way, but from a non-believer's point of few, I can vouch for myself: I don’t believe in the concept of god.

Him: Look, what I feel is even when you say that you “don’t believe”, you still use the word ‘believe’ which gives us my inclination.

Me: The ‘believe’ goes with the ‘don’t’ and adds up to suggest a complete absence of belief.

Me: I could turn around the argument and say that when you say “I believe in god”, it’s the same as saying you’re really not sure if you do, because it’s just a belief, and is not based on empirical evidence.

Him: Well, a smart reply no doubt but when you say a flowing river, a blue sea that does not indicate that they are not there.

Me: But to the normal eyesight, the sea IS ACTUALLY blue, and the river IS REALLY flowing. There's evidence there.

(Some time passes by)

Me: Sir, kaha gaye aap?

Him: I am very much here and was mulling over your response.

Him: The word evidence has caught me off guard.

-------------------

PS: The person in question here is a batch-mate from journalism school, and was a fierce participant during elocution and debate competitions there.

Happy New Year

You scored as atheism. You are... an atheist, though you probably already knew this. Also, you probably have several people praying daily for your soul.

Instead of simply being "nonreligious," atheists strongly believe in the lack of existence of a higher being, or God.

atheism		92%
Buddhism		83%
agnosticism		79%
Satanism		67%
Paganism		38%
Judaism		17%
Islam		8%
Christianity		8%
Hinduism		4%

Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)
created with QuizFarm.com

While we're talking New Years and atheism, I must point you to Amit Varma's last post for 2006. Must read.

'Pop is Dog'

Rock is dead, and pop has gone to the dogs -- I'm particularly not fond of the Backstreet Boys myself.

On a serious note, I quite agree with what Vir Sanghvi had to say in his Sunday column in the Hindustan Times. He was writing on the Pope Benedict XVI quoting the Byzantine emperor Manuel II in a recent speech, which had uncharitable remarks about Islam and the Prophet.

Vir writes:

...if you were to scour the world’s religious texts to find examples to suit your argument, you could probably come up with quotes to fit any cause. (Hence that old caution about the devil quoting scripture.) Certainly, there is much in the New Testament and much more in the Old Testament that can be used to make the same case against Christianity. Similarly, you could damn Hinduism simply by quoting original texts on the subject of women or caste.

Plus, there’s the historical background. If Christianity is such a non-violent religion, then why did so many Catholics sign up in the Middle Ages for the Crusades, a Christian version of jihad, a holy battle sanctioned by the Pope to fight the Muslims who had overrun the ‘holy land’? How does Ratzinger explain the Inquisition and Torquemada? What about the brutality of early Christian conquerors? The genocide of American Indians? The European tradition — with the tacit approval of the Church — of anti-Semitism?

[...]

So why did he include it?

I do not believe that it was a mistake or that he was unmindful of the impact it would have on the Islamic world. He may be a reactionary but he is not stupid.

Sometimes, I just wish I had a giant catapult. I'd load the religious leaders of the world on it, aim at Pluto, and SPROINNNG!

[Photo: Hindustan Times]