I think I can confirm it for now, though I have known it for a very long time now
..I am an atheist.
There is some doubt as to the very name "atheist". Oxford dictionary says its someone who doesn't believe in the existence of God. But if I don't believe in something in the first place- which is to say, that there is absolutely no logic in my mind that can lead me to believe in a thing, then where is the question of disbelieving in the existence of it?
I guess we could also say...isn't Oxford dictionary assuming that a god exists anyway? It's very convenient for someone like God (if he did exist) to be watching us argue on his/her/its existence.
None of us starts from the fence on the question of god. we start by either calling ourselves believers or non-believers. why don't we start, say, along the lines of Bill Maher, who groups his beliefs under the word Doubt. This post is not named after his beliefs...although doubt is a way of starting off on the fence.
since we all like to appear scientific (many of us actually BEING so) in their approach to answer questions, lets conduct an experiment to find out which side of the fence we classify ourselves in.
lets base the experiment on the premise that both believing and not-believing provide some purpose or give something in return.
So....first exp.
Religion/God---> Prayers offered by people. In return, we get (if u believe in the whole divine plan/god's will etc. jazz) floods, earthquakes, not to mention exciting apostles of evil like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler, Stalin. where is the proof that God told Bush to invade iraq or hitler to kill all the Jews? how fast an internet connection does the white house have?
lets add some election defeats to this (i read in a newspaper report about how it was "god's will" that a certain party had lost the recent general elections)
I wonder how all our priests have never dragged their overly-obese bodies onto the streets and shouted up to the skies "What the fuck God?"...Noooo. the obese bodies stay comfortably inside the temple, and tell everyone else "it's God's will...That's all Folks!" (tell me u didn't just picture Porky pig in Hindu garb!)
Non-believers---> Realism, i.e. Nature and Nature alone has the kind of power over us, that we can and should put any kind of faith - if u will - on. We fight disease with medicines yes, but think about it...if humans didn't pollute everything in sight, a multitude of preventable diseases would actually be prevented. I hate it when i see ads for water filtration machines on TV.
people! Industries pollute the water. Then another industry comes along to sell you that crappy filter and soon, two fat industry tycoons are joking at a party about how one of them saved millions by dumping all factory waste into the local river...and how one of them made millions by selling the crappy filter.
Have you ever noticed that when politicians talk about nuclear wars or global warming..they do so as if the planet would blow up or something.
"boo hoo! think about the earth and what all our nuclear weapons are doing to it"
"global warming...climate change ..waaah! Lets hold a G1000 summit, so we can express our grief about how no one is doing anything...which the population also does anyways, just that we do it on a more expensive and glamorous level"
Bullshit!
all that our govts probably fear is that our human race will be annhilated in all the nuclear shit etc. people...the Earth has a lot more capacity than you think. The planet's like the intelligent mother who lets her kid get dirty in the shit he's been playing in...then tells him that its socially unacceptable to go around in public like that.
whatever we manage to do to ourselves by shooting bombs, Nature will take over. You think we're more powerful than the dinosaurs? they lived for millions of years buddy! we've been around - at least the dumb-as-shit part of humanity- for no more than 3000 years tops.
Here's my solution to save the PLANET . kill the whole human race...
before that..have a look at "Life after People" (google it)
I'm not sure I understand the point of this post. Is your beef with the idea of God or with the human species?
ReplyDeleteAnd the point that if humans hadn't "invented" pollution, disease would not have existed is wrong. Disease is a characteristic of every single species known to man (there is a whole school of though which says dinosaurs died from years of "diseased" lifestyles etc). So there is no way to actually predict or say what would have happened if humans had not evolved to what we are right now.
The fact is we exist, we have evolved to become this highly intelligent species that can actually work out what to do to protect (and prevent) itself from disease, poverty and any other evil, even though we created a number of these problems on our own.
In addition, let me make it very clear that saving the PLANET is not the point at all (one of the core philosophies of environmentalism is that human beings should be the first recipients of any environment-saving solutions). Everyone but the most blinkered Greenpeace activist knows that the planet itself (and maybe cockroaches) will survive (for now). So I think the objective of having a sustainable ecology is so OUR species can ultimately survive. Therefore all the moral outrage from politicians and other people is justified, although I agree that our species has to start doing something as well.
Actually, and this is just me, I don't think governments are taking climate change seriously enough. Things are much worse than the government is telling you. This world is headed for disaster and all because of too much human involvement, "development", and waste.
ReplyDeleteI'm an "atheist" in the sense of the word, but then again, the world is just too fucked up and arbitrary for it to not be a cruel joke being played by an ubiquitous power. We're just a really badly managed game of Age of Empires.
@ Shishir blogging not necessary always should have a point and same goes with reasons behind existence of a species. I agree to you when you say…. “So I think the objective (of human) of having a sustainable ecology (for human) is so OUR (Human) species can ultimately survive” but where is the point of saying so. Even after thousands of years of CIVILIZATION if survival is still the question. “Dinosaurs died from years of "diseased" lifestyles etc”… Possible but tell me how many species did Dinosaurs dragged along themselves to the limits of extinction through their so called life style?
ReplyDelete“The fact is we exist, we have evolved to become this highly intelligent (whatever that means) species that can actually work out what to do to protect (and prevent) itself from disease, poverty and any other evil, even though we created a number of these problems on our own”.
First of all we have not come out with any fucking solution for any evil… all we did is find justifications. Here I think where ‘religion’ and so called ‘economics’ plays a role.
@ S.O.T.O existence of God or non-existence does not make that big a difference. While the whole thing boils down to your faith (in existence) which actually did more good or harm to the society.
@ Shobhna; I don’t know what governments are upto? But I think we should stick to our plan and do whatever little we can do. Like stop using plastic bags…. Use public conveyance… you know little things like these….
@ my beef with the concept of "God" is that it is just like everything else thats fucking up our planet - global warming, nuclear blah etc....its man made...people in power have their hands on the big red button, just to prove that the whole doomsday prophecy thing is true..
ReplyDeletei agree with all three of ya'll.
@shishir- im not saying disease will not exist if thrs no pollution..after all, what are genes for?
@shobhna- "badly managed game of Age of Empires" ROFL!!!!!
@Samrat--"all we did is find justifications" yes i agree with this..its the same as saying "god's will, what can we do?"
@ Sadak Chaap: I agree. I know a lot of people are defeatists who are of the opinion that one individual using one cloth bag or reusing a plastic water bottle won't make a difference, but it does, it really does.
ReplyDelete@ Shishir: what you say is very interesting. It's true, Sustainable Development is aimed at sustained human existence, it's for the continuation of life as we know it. Which, let's face it, is hard to fathom because at the rate we're burning earth's natural fuels, it's going to be impossible in a few thousand years (if we last that long) for humanity to not have to revert to what we tend to think of as more "primitive" forms of life.
ReplyDeletein re: diseases, isn't it true that what we call diseases, and "germs", is just our lack of immunity against the presence of microorganisms in our systems? So yes, while we didn't invent "pollution" and "disease" per se, our notions of civilization and medicine did in fact take away the power of natural selection that diseases had to wipe out those with weaker immune systems. Our medicines impinge our growth as a society, if we're being technical, because they let even the weakest survive. (I'm not saying we should take away medicines and let only the strong and immune live, only that we are an anomaly and the exception on our planet when it has come to our evolution)
@it does yes...but i think the world needs more than individual effort (talking abt saving HUMANS here..planet lives on 4ever anyways)
ReplyDeleteeven if u consider an org like greenpeace...i see their volunteers at places like connaught place trying to get signatures etc. hardly anyone stops..i did once and now i get daily news updates on their work etc...even if i cant jump on a boat right now to prevent shark hunting in finland or something..at least i stay informed...
the media is a good outlet of course..but not while its corporate controlled.
@ "we are an anomaly"
ReplyDeleteagain...ROFL
m sure dinosaurs had diseases..but they were probably not caused by the huge nuclear plant just north of pterodactyl isle...or else poor little Ptero Jr would have grown up with 2 heads...
as if dinosaurs couldn't get scarier
It isn't ROFL-worthy, is it? :P
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah I think what Greenpeace does is admirable. So few people gave a shit anymore, and then it's passive (exhibit a: me). Very few of us are brave enough to be proactive in this generation of "uh.. who cares"
@ i laugh because i myself believe evrything the earth was fine and hunky dory before we came up with our modernisations...so i guess i laugh because now i know other ppl to consider our race to be an anomaly
ReplyDeleteok its worth an lol maybe :)
Haha, well okay, yeah. :)
ReplyDeleteWhy does everyone think Greenpeace sabotaging everything is "being proactive"? By that logic, Al Qaeda is doing everything right in its protest against American imperialism.
ReplyDelete@ nobody else seems to be doing much about...i know obama has good energy policies he wants to implement, but till now it was bush and his "drill-baby-drill" funda...not to mention that kyoto protocol incident, not signing up to reduce carbon emissions....so i guess it became a case of "fight fire with fire"
ReplyDeletenot sure what the US stance is now after Obama..
perhaps u can shed some light on that
secondly i dont agree with al-qaeda methods but (and this is NOT JUST a fanatical islamic viewpoint) American imperialism is kind of screwing up things for a lot of countries...
@Rant. Never ever underestimate individual efforts. For a time being let’s not blame Bush: he is too easy a target to shed our responsibilities off. Personally speaking and no offence green peace a very over rated organisation and ofcouse they have wonderful (handsomely paid) PR people working for them. Yes they do very brave stuff but all in all they just a photogenic organisation. All they do is invite photographers for free photo-opportunity where they do crazy dance infornt of so called building of destructions.
ReplyDeleteWell they(green peace)are not criminals neither billions of us who are asking cheaper fuels(drilling), cheaper food(genetically modified), cheaper and better cars and bigger houses(mining) smother roads, roads to places where it might help to reach medical facilities(cutting down the mountains), air-conditioners (which save us from melting from the heat coming out from other ACs).
Now I am asking you who is going to draw the line? Some thing which is bigger than an individual, a government, an organisation, an institution where an individual completely surrenders himself thinking he is doing it for a bigger good.
Then these institutions (hahahha I love to call them institutions) wage war thinking of a bigger good. Who is going to draw the line…..
@exactly...who will draw the line...
ReplyDeleteas of now it cant be the government. or lets say it shouldnt be
but then, we have to do something realistic abt the whole problem. so yeah individual efforts should be on, maybe in a generation or two, natural selection will cause all humans to start thinking ethically and For-The-Global-Good-ly
@shobhna: http://xkcd.com/610/
ReplyDelete@bibd etc who feel we are fucking this up: i think as an evolved species native to our planet (apologies to scientologists) the fact that we realize, monitor and attempt to regulate the environment is in itself commendable(you should see how much my dog cares). and frankly it isn't too bad for us humans(about 50% of us at least) nor is it going to be for a long fucking time.
btw i urge all non science people here to stop trying to understand and/or explain evolution. it's not pop sci... :-0. let me elaborate:
@bib: "natural selection will cause all humans to start thinking ethically", heavy bibd, heavy.
@ My post and the comments were not directed at the general population as such. was to ppl who assume the mantle of leadership and then mis-lead...
ReplyDeleteand it is good that we are looking for ways to "realize, monitor and attempt to regulate the environment" . but all of this is currently happening either on a very individualistic level or its just gas-talk on the governmental level. It's all good to go to a G8 summit, infront of the world press and say "we must strive to reduce carbon emissions." its another to actually punish industries that dont adhere to norms.
As an example we may take our TATAs. I obv dont know the scene now, but a few years earlier, they were i think the first company to adopt ISO 14000 norms. and i think a lot of it had to do with emissions etc.
and i disagree with u telling non-sciene ppl to stop trying to UNDERSTAND evolution...it is infact imperative that everyone in the world attempts to understand it. it is because certain ppl dont understand the concept or simply refuse to accept evolution as a theory that we are facing a crisis of religious proportions!