Today my wife told me apologetically that she asked our three month old boy to pray for me. How should I react?
Anger, because we have this solemn agreement between us that our son will grow up without any religious affiliation and will be free to choose his path when he turns 18? And prayer is a part of religion, all of them (and especially hers) and by teaching him to pray she is teaching him a fundamental religious concept. One which has been proven to be completely ineffective and thus untrue.
Gratitude, to learn that she cares about me so much and wishes for my well-being so strongly to direct her best weapon to my side in my times of trouble and/or difficulties and make it doubly effective by involving our infant son in the exercise?
Or fear that our son may have his vision always clouded by these delusions and never see the truth due to being constantly bombarded by religion from all well-meaning quarters except this one?
Son, if I did believe in prayer and could pray, I would pray that your eyes always be open, your mind always be free and that your heart always be big. The rest is a given.
An Indonesian civil servant who posted “God does not exist” on his Facebook page has been taken into police custody for his own protection after he was badly beaten.
The man, identified as Alexander, 31, now faces the prospect of losing his job, or even being jailed, if he fails to repent and accept one of six official state religions.
The Indonesian state’s founding principles of Pancasila or the five principles are all very noble and beautiful, except the first one which makes belief in god mandatory, a regressive and backward and more importantly, discriminatory ideal. But the irony is this, a notorious, religious extremist group belonging to the majority, flout the other four brazenly whilst propagating violence and destruction without even a rap on the knuckles and this brave, unfortunate man is going to be demonized and hounded and ruined for violating one as a matter of personal belief. It may be argued that he brought his personal belief into the public sphere via his social media group and his comment/s on it. But the fact of the matter is that he was still just expressing a personal belief without prejudice to anyone who did not subscribe to his opinion. He was not preaching or inciting or spreading violence.
Indonesian Christians believe allah of the Muslims is a false god and only Jesus and their lord are true while Indonesian Muslims say the Christian god and lord are haram and only allah is the true god. So how is Alex wrong when all that he says is that both allah and god are false? Prosecute all Indonesian Christians and Muslims then for violating Pancasila’s first principle.
Are the believers of this world so insecure in their false beliefs to be offended by the mere presence of someone who do not subscribe to their delusions?
If you are one of the many people who have determined that religion no longer has a place in their life, but are still dealing with the after-effects in some way or another, Recovering From Religion may be just the right spot for you. Many people come to a point that they no longer accept the supernatural explanations for the world around them, or they realize just how much conflict religious belief creates. It can be difficult to leave religion because family and culture put so much pressure on us to stay and pretend to believe the unbelievable. If this is you, we want to help you find your way out. Dont let people convince you that you just didnt have enough faith, or that you just havent found the “right” religion. As Mark Twain famously said, “Faith is believing what you know aint so.”
Google Trends is a service Google provides where you can see some interesting statistics on topics that have been searched on Google over time.
Spurred by a post I saw elsewhere on the web I tried out some ‘trend-spotting’ of my own. Interestingly, the country which searches for topics related to ‘sex‘ the most is Pakistan. India comes in at number three and Indonesia at number six. Out of the top ten, six are Muslim majority nations. And the number one city in the list is Bangalore. When it comes to searching about ‘god‘ Philippines comes out on top although the rest of the list is dominated by cities and countries of the developed Western world. The small city state of Singapore is at number five beating the populous nations of India (sixth) and Indonesia (seventh). But funnily enough Philippines also takes the top spot when it comes to searching for ‘atheism‘. The rest of the list is entirely dominated by Western nations with India being the only exception at number nine.
The fact that India features on almost all the trend lists I tried out may have something to do with its large and young population who make up for the world’s third largest in number of Internet users. (China, the largest, of course doesn’t feature in these lists for various reasons!)
If you notice I have refrained from drawing any inferences from these statistics and am merely presenting what I saw. You can draw your own conclusions and try out more keywords at the Google Trends site. And for a perspective on these trends please do also see this chart of the world’s top 20 countries in terms of number of Internet users.
Came across this today. Stanley Kubrick in an interview with Playboy in 1969. Felt like my own muddled thoughts put into words. Thank you Stanley Kubrick!
Playboy: If life is so purposeless, do you feel its worth living?
Kubrick: Yes, for those who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces a man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre (a keen enjoyment of living), their idealism – and their assumption of immortality.
As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong – and lucky – he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan (enthusiastic and assured vigour and liveliness).
Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining.
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make them – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfilment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
This post started with this video. A very, very brave bunch of guys making a satirical point on the current state of Pakistan. Needless to say, I loved the song.
There was a reference to a certain Abdus Salam in the video and how no one remembers him any more, which led me to Google and after 30 minutes or so of reading online I discovered a great man called Abdus Salam!
Abdus Salam was a physicist and Pakistan’s one and only Nobel Laureate. He was also the first Muslim Nobel Laureate in the sciences, although Pakistan doesn’t recognise him as a Muslim! Because he belongs to the Ahmadiyya sect of Muslims who do not believe that Muhammad was the last prophet, for which they are persecuted all over the world and especially in Pakistan.
His extra-ordinary journey from very humble beginnings in a small town in Pakistan to the Nobel Prize is awe-inspiring. So is his apparent ease in striding the two dissimilar worlds of science and religion. A devout Muslim, anecdotes abound about his encounters with Bertrand Russell and Einstein and the resulting discussions on reason and faith. Though he saw both religion and science as essential to explaining the world around and inside of us, he did make it clear that “the validity of a scientific truth can be adjudicated only according to criteria internal to science and not by appeal to religious, metaphysical, or aesthetic considerations”. But his greatest qualities were his humility, his incessant efforts at creating opportunities for research for scientists from developing nations and his undying devotion to his roots.
His efforts led to the founding of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy (now called the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in his honour), under the aegis of the IAEA and now UNESCO. In his own words,
The Centre provides the possibility for scientists to remain in their own country for the bulk of the time, but come to the Centre to carry out research for three months or so. They meet people working in the same subject, learn new ideas and can return to their own country charged with a mission to change the image of science and technology in their own country.
Despite the attention and adulation from many parts of the world, he remained deeply committed to his own country, Pakistan, even after experiencing multiple betrayals and rejections from his countrymen. He belonged to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam which was declared a heretical sect and its followers non-Muslims, in 1974 by the Pakistani parliament. (Non-Muslims are second-class citizens in Pakistan, by law.) He resigned as the Chief Scientific Adviser to the President in protest and left Pakistan for good. But he never abandoned Pakistan in his heart and arrived in traditional ethnic garb to the Nobel ceremony in 1979 when he shared the Physics prize with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow. Much later, when Professor Salam wanted to run for the position of Director General of UNESCO, the Pakistan government refused to endorse his candidacy, which is a pre-requisite, despite support from several developing countries. Other countries, including Italy offered him a citizenship to run for the post but he refused – he never gave up his Pakistani citizenship. He also continued to support with money and resources scientific development and education in Pakistan, including donating his entire share of the Nobel prize money. But he has constantly been vilified and disparaged in Pakistan to the point of being accused of being an Indian spy and his contribution belittled and forgotten.
But his greatest legacy by far was his steadfast belief in the universal nature of Science. In a foreword to Professor Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy’s book Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and Battle for Rationality, he wrote:
“There is only one universal science, its problems and modalities are international and there is no such thing as Islamic science just as there is no Hindu science, no Jewish science, no Confucian science, nor Christian science.”
The ever-infuriating Westboro Baptist Church, which made its reputation picketing the funerals of soldiers while holding signs saying “god hates fags” and “thank god for dead soldiers,” says it is heading to Norway to lend its presence to the funerals of those killed in the July 22 massacre.
“Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death,” Mr. Hendrikse says. “No, for me our life, our task, is before death.” Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing. “When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, thats where it can happen. God is not a being at all… its a word for experience, or human experience.” Mr Hendrikse describes the Bible’s account of Jesus’s life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.
Mr. Klaas Hendrikse is neither a skeptical atheist nor a pagan non-believer – he is a reverend at the Exodus Church in Gorinchem, central Holland, which is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN).
Just 10 days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Rais Bhuiyan was working at a gas station in Dallas when he was shot in the face by a man named Mark Stroman. Stroman was on a shooting spree, targeting people who appeared to be Muslim or of Middle Eastern descent. Stroman is due to be executed July 20; Bhuiyan, the only survivor of the attacks, is fighting to save his life.
Abdus Salam was a physicist and Pakistan’s one and only Nobel Laureate. He was also the first Muslim Nobel Laureate in the sciences, although Pakistan doesn’t recognise him as a Muslim! Because he belongs to the Ahmadiyya sect of Muslims who do not believe that Muhammad was the last prophet, for which 
