Additionally, I think it is a marvellous coincidence that a few thousand years ago some people could end up writing the Rig Veda or Upanishads and that bits of them are ‘more or less’ similar to what scientific theory has discovered!

How coincidental is it, when even someone can figure the age of the universe to be in billions of years? They could have easily chosen any number of zeroes couldn’t they? (dont think the zero was invented yet actually!)

India is a history hole, we know there was something happening, but we really dont even know the dimensions of it yet. A pity. There is much to discover and elucidate us with.

Good post Atanu, thanks for the information.

http://ravingatheist.com/

and mine

iam convinced with that. there is God and he is mysterious because that’s the only way we will keep searching for him.

“I said that only feeble-minded people need the crutch that faith provides against the terrors of non-existence that follows death.”

My opinion on the crutch called faith.

U say this without any scientific evidence at all or at least I don’t see any or maybe it is just your point of view, which is fair enough.

“the crutch that faith provides against the terrors of non-existence that follows death”

Faith may provide a crutch for people to go about their day to day hassles, in this unforgiving and fiercely competitive world, with hope that there is some power that will take care, not sure how many of them keep the faith thinking of the day they will die. A proof of it is that the greatest and die-hard followers of any faith are found in the less prosperous sections of society. Many of them may not be living lives worth all the suffering. Maybe I should not be judgemental about their lives.

Anyway, having faith does not guarantee immortality, it may be better to stay on earth rather than end up in the fires of hell? Faith doesn’t guarantee heaven, no faith does! Faiths that talk of reincarnation, at least some of them talk of Karma. In very naive terms and I am no great exponent of philosophy, all they say is that you will pay for your own deeds (good or bad, what is good and what is bad may be matter of trial). Shouldn’t sound very good to most of these handicapped billions. Only ignorance of their faith can act as a crutch.

Vivekananda in fact said that man should contemplate death and not shy away from it. He was a man of faith no man in need of crutches. So was Mahatma Gandhi (where I am not using Mahatma to imply that he was godly) who may have acted as a crutch for many but was very confident about the faith he followed. Man does go through various phases in a life time that is comprehendible to this world. There may also be a phase beyond what we humans can comprehend, the existence of which has not been disproved yet. It is OK not to accept something that has been disproved by science but scientists cannot ask people or ridicule people who believe in stuff that science has not been able to disprove, in fact have no proof against.

Even Einstein, from what u have quoted (as said by Carl Sagan), despises people who think of immortality of their physical body or self not of reincarnation or after-life. Reincarnation doesn’t essentially mean that Einstein should be born as a great scientist in his next life. All it says is that one is caught in the infinite cycles of life and death till one rises above his own ego only to realise the oneness of this creation. In fact it talks of loosing one’s self (the soul included) to recognise the oneness(Well this is my understanding and may not be the absolute truth, if there is any).

As an aside, I have recently read some beautifully written articles on the blogosphere that give reasons on why creationism is unscientific and why there is no great intelligent blueprint behind all what is evolving [link - got it via India Uncut's link ]. But none of the people who supported the darwin theory of evolution just presented the ridicule of creationism. They had scientific discoveries made after extensive studies to prove their theory and disprove the theory of creationists who were without a proof.

Acceptable that we are not clear about what the truth is but then that is a handicap that science will overcome with time. Till then it is not fair to call people who believe in faith as ones who require crutches.

the following is a short piece from hans wolfgang schumann’s “buddhism – an outline of its teaching and its schools” (probably the most clear description of buddhist metaphysics i have read so far) :

“According to the Buddha’s teaching rebirth indeed operates without a transmigrating soul. The continuity of the chain of rebirths does not lie in an imperishable substratum, but in the conditionisms of the forms of existence : each rebirth conditions another. Even though the simile is halting, one can illustrate the process with billiard-balls. Tapping a ball makes it roll for some distance and set the next ball in motion. Nothing material passes over from the first ball to the second and third, but each ball by its impact gives the next one motion and a certain, by no means accidental, direction. In Buddhism thinking in terms of substances is replaced by thought in terms of conditionalities. In the Nexus of Conditional Origination (paticasamuppada) the texts furnish the theoretical foundation for this kind of thinking.”

there is lots more (that clarifies what conditioned origination means), but to transribe it all would take up more time than i have. i recommend the book to your readers who might be interested in learning about the subtler nuances of buddhist thought (especially how it differs from hindu metaphysics and also how the different schools of buddhism also differ in the extent to which they acknowledge this idea of conditioned origination).

I, for myself, and on behalf of the billions of the theists (in your words, ‘people with faith’) strongly condemn your deprecating comments on theists as feeble-minded and terrified. I don’t understand what made you think that theists are feeble-minded and so on. It is not proven that there is no God. Though it is also not proven ’scientifically’ that there is God, it may be that science has not evolved enough to prove the existence of God, or that some things are beyond science just as some things are beyond mind. Even if there is no God in the real sense, you can’t deprecate people who believe otherwise without showing definite proof of the absence of God.

I was glad, as many reasonable people were, when you condemned Mother Theresa and other fundamentalists who believe that their God is the only God and whose main goal of service was to convert as many people as possible to Christianity and not because of humanitarian reasons. I was also glad when you condemned fundamentalists of other religions. But, pardon me, I fail to understand why you are not a fundamentalist too. My understanding of a fundamentalist is one who thinks what he believes is true and the contrary false. Theists are not necessarily fundamentalists, as atheists are not necessarily liberal (as exemplified in your post).

Hinduism, or more accurately ‘the religion of Vedanta’ in Swami Vivekananda’s words, never condemned other faiths or even atheists. In his words, ‘not just tolerating, but we accept all religions as true and equal’. To a person who uses his reason, the works of Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna on God are enlightening. (www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info). Sri Ramakrishna has said that man’s chief aim should be to realize God. Swami Vivekananda has said that every human being is potentially divine and his life’s goal is make people realize their potential. Swami Vivekananda’s arguments convince the vast majority of people in the existence of God. Initially, he was an atheist, but Sri Ramakrishna showed him God. His experience should be enough. You never looked at the proof of E=mc2 (square), yet you believe in it, don’t you? Why should this be different?
It is strange that, despite being a Bengali, you missed to read/understand the works of two of the world’s greatest people. Yet, you believe in people that made little difference to the world, like Carl Sagan whom I have never heard of before – despite my being a reasonably well informed person.

You also say, ‘I don’t have faith in soul. I am not one who believes that the universe is made up of ‘matter’ and ’spirit’ . It is all of one thing – matter or spirit – take your pick. But you can’t have both.’

This might be another of your ‘beliefs’. I wonder why we can’t have both matter and spirit. The uniqueness and eternality of spirit/soul is the core principle of Hinduism/Vedanta. I know the law of conservation of matter/energy, or mass-energy equivalence – whatever you call, yet soul doesn’t convert from one form to another or release/absorb energy. At the most it merges with the supersoul/God which process is called moksha/salvation/’liberation from the chain of life and death’.

You are inclined towards the atheistic religion Buddhism and its founder Buddha, I’m led to believe from your posts. If you have read his own words, you should know that he took 50,000 births to realize himself. If there is nothing called soul, what is it that continued between those births? I learn that people who appear to use their reason fail to use it in the core sense.

What I was pointing out was that Hindu cosmology has very long time-scales, just as modern cosmology has very long time-scales. There is convergence between the time scales but that does not imply that every bit of modern cosmology is mystically connected with Hindu wisdom.

Desh makes the tenuous (in my opinion) connection between Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect and Ramakrishna Paramahansa. It is a stretch–from his Chem prof to Satyen Bose to Victor Hugo to Vivekananda to Ramakrishna.

When a vibration arises in that Cosmic Being, Lord Vishnu is born, even as a wave arises when the surface of the ocean is agitated. From that Vishnu, Brahma – the creator – was bornand Brahma began to create the countless varieties of animate and inanimate, sentient and insentient beings in the Universe. And Universe was as it was before the Cosmic Dissolution.
——————-

so even the Consciousness is of two natures… wave form and physical! Something that Einstein came to believe to get the Nobel prize for photoelectric effect.

Btw, one of my Chemistry profs who had witnessed a conference in which Satyen Bose was addressing.. he explained how Einstein got his idea.. He read a book by Victor Hugo on how Ramakrishna Paramhans helped Swami Vivekananda witness the “light” and then commented that all the “light” I had has gone to you in completeness.. “it does not go in percentages” – some thing that made Einstein come up with the concept of “Photons” – without which its impossible to explain the photoelectric effect and the variations experienced in it!

Atanu Dey talks about how there is a convergence between modern cosmology and ancient Hindu wisdom:The ancients in India dreamt all that stuff up, of course. And the physicists of today are dreaming more such stuff. And from time to