The Indian Miracle-Buster Stuck in Finland
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Consider Dr. Radhakrishnan, the head of ISRO (Indian space research org.) - Before every rocket that ISRO launches, he visits Tirupati, a holy site in India to pray for its success. Now, I realize this is far cry from people drinking sewage water, but if the head of the Indian space program is this superstitious, what can you say about the rest of the country?
"Being outside the realm of human control and understanding" is not what superstition means.
For some, Religion encompasses superstition, but it goes beyond that.
For others, Religion is "Dharma" [1]. It's a way of life / discipline.
If you doubt this, ask a series of "why?" questions about Dharma and drill down into it until you stop hitting rational thought and start hitting belief about the nature of the universe and belief about the importance of righteous action.
Trying to parse it from other superstitions doesn't change the meaning or existence of the word, nor the fact that it's still classified under that category.
Point being, the meaning of these terms are too broad to tag & generalize them with a few words.
I'm all for a "live and let live" approach for any religious belief or superstition that doesn't hurt people. I don't think this behavior by Dr. Radhakrishnan is worth any criticism (and plenty of other countries have ingrained rituals). But I don't like these distinctions we try to draw to legitimize religion over stuff that religion doesn't like but which outwardly appears to be the same.
> Superstition is the belief in supernatural causality
But then the influenced people become the causality of their actions. These root "superstitious" influences would then exist in concept and have a real effect. Note that conceptual existence is enough to influence intelligent beings who can recognize these concepts.
There's also effects that aren't explained by science, yet. That is a playground for all sorts of possibilities.
The rational one is discerning between the things that are in our power and those that aren't, and concern ourselves only with the former. This idea can be found in Stoicism [1] and other ancient philosophies, 2000 years earlier than the serenity prayer. Not just the ideas, mind you, but practical techniques of how to achieve this as a mere mortal.
The religious one is resignation: Instead of being confident that it is possible to do the things mentioned in the prayer using your ability to learn and think, the praying person begs a divine being for those things.
So you are seriously saying that going to pray for a successful rocket launch is an empowering strategy?
The issue is about loonies going after people for "insulting" their beliefs. Now I do completely agree with you that India has a great deal many loonies (like every other country); the trouble with India though is that the Police and the Judiciary (to a lesser extent, perhaps) are completely ineffective and are more or less beholden to fetid politcs.
However it presupposes that the Christian ideal of a god holds true, one that will reward you for belief and not reward you (or punish you for disbelief). There is a multidimensional spectrum of other options available. What if there is a god but (s)he created a mechanistic universe deliberately left behind no evidence, and so rewards those that use their critical thinking and form no belief? What if there's a benevolent god that rewards everyone regardless? What if you picked the wrong god and the real one hates wrong-believers more than atheists?
So it really only works in a situation where you have a binary choice, and that doesn't model the reality. In other words it's an exercise in apologetics written by someone who had already decided to believe, based on other criteria (or no criteria), trying to persuade others through a pseudo-rational argument.
I don't mean any of this as an attack on you, or as justification to look down on others' beliefs, but Pascal's Wager kinda grinds my gears :)
The cost of having a horseshoe over your door is zero, and if there is any negligible impact of it's positive luck, it's a worthy wager.
My interpretation, and Niels Bohr's, is that it doesn't matter if you believe or not, all that matters is that it brings you happiness, and does not cause harm to others. You don't actually have to believe in it.
Be that as it may, if you do interpolate it to less constricting religions, Pascal's wager does breaks down; but as you do say, it is an argument for an apologetic. I'm happier being an apologetic than to assume I'm rational.
I'm infact an agnostic, if you're inclined to believe me; but all this bashing of scientists for being religious is annoying. There are, things like, the world being created 6k years back, or that there lived a Super-monkey (Ramayana ?), which is plain silly. Superstitions like the one Sanal Edamaruku, also fall into this latter category. Anything that can be disproved by Science and reason, is not to be believed in.
Yes, the Middle ground is vague and ill-defined, but it's the only sane place to be.
Of course you may just correctly reason that in absence of data you can't assume anything about gods and save yourself all the thinking about gods as devoid of any predictive utility.
I just find this cheap dismissal of Pascal's wager to be mathematically nonsensical. It's almost surely not correct that the probabilities of all gods (real and honeypot) exactly cancel and therefore atheism is the correct choice.
Even if at some time those positive and negative utilities did cancel, even a small amount of evidence would shift the balance of probabilities pushing you back into Pascal's wager territory.
Even if there is/are god(s), she/he/they obviously don't want to be known/found as she/he/they have left no obvious clues from which we might deduce such a being or beings. So, we should all be atheists/agnostics because once we die, if it turns out that there is/are god(s), atheists/agnostics are the ones who will end up in heaven. Why? Because, they alone are following the will of a possible creator.
"Did I not give you a brain," such a deity would say to believers of various religions. "Did I not hide all indications of my existence, so that you try to make sense of the universe with the data available to you? Why, then, did you go and make up random fantastic beings to worship without a shred of evidence? You have ignored my will. How dare you presume that you are capable of knowing an almighty being that obviously doesn't want to be known? Look at these atheists, this small band of the faithful, who have stayed true to the faculties of reasoning I endowed them with and reached the logical conclusion that they could to the best of their ability. These alone have stayed true to their creator's purpose, and these alone shall party with us in Valhalla."
So there. :-)
The stronger version of the argument also is true provided you only care about maximizing expected utility. That is any finitely small probability that god exists times the infinite negative or positive utility of believing/not believing, and you the expected utility of believing is infinite.
The counter is "maybe there is a god but he punishes believers and rewards atheists." As long as the probabilities are exactly equal, they perfectly cancel each other out. However if they aren't exactly equal, if the probability of the Christian god is even slightly higher, then it will vastly overwhelm the expected utility calculation.
The consequence of this is you can go up to someone who believes in maximizing expected utility and say "I am a god. If you don't do what I say I will torture you for an infinite amount of time. If you think there as an even tiny probability that what I'm saying is correct, you must obey me." It doesn't just apply to the Christian god or even religion.
Thus expected utility maximization may not actually be the best way to make decisions.
It depends on the superstition. In some cases, the non-harmful variant provides cover for harmful variants. Many peaceful sects of Christianity and Islam, for example, fail to criticize the actions of their violent co-religionists. It's hard to do when the extremists can just turn around and say "You believe the same things we do, you just aren't committed enough to our faith."
Taking a step back and saying "There's no evidence for any of what you're saying, so you certainly have no justification for shooting doctors / stoning adulterers / etc." makes the point more clear.
True, but bear in mind that an awful lot of religious leaders do loudly and actively criticize their most unpleasant co-religionists, but are ignored by the media because "Local Pastor Calmly Advises Tolerance" doesn't sell papers. I'm not saying everyone does, but there's a lot more of it than people realize.
You're presupposing a lack of harm there. Once you've left a hole in your rationality that gives a free pass to a class of things that don't stand up to critical thinking, you leave yourself open for more such holes. That's quite actively harmful. In particular, it makes teaching about rationality, critical thinking, and cognitive biases much more difficult, because it stops people from believing those principles are universally applicable.
While it's certainly possible for people to compartmentalize enough to limit that harm, it's much easier for most people to say "Oh, logic and critical thinking don't apply to everything, just scientific things". Which is only a stone's throw away from "Oh, logic and critical thinking don't apply to this magic miracle elixir."; insert your favorite snake oil or pseudoscience here that people regularly get suckered by. It's not that there's a sucker born every minute; there's a sucker trained every minute.
The difference between that and enshrining such problems into law is only one of degree.
And your further comment "as silly as they may be" suggests that you are in fact looking down upon such behavior.
Do you know how he commented on it when asked whether he believes that this horseshoe above his door brought him luck?
"Of course not ... but I am told it works even if you don't believe in it."
It wasn't superstition it was just playfulness typical of imaginative mind.
There are physiological, psychological, & emotional benefits to meditation & prayer. There are also benefits to setting intention.
(Also in politics, where more education is correlated with more partisan viewpoints.)
Science is like a light which shows/highlights/brings out the already existing stuff. This does not mean that science created them, though latter discoveries depend on previous ones. They are there in nature before fundamentally and science pointed out to humanity.
Technology/engineering works on science's output to create products/services for humanity. Going by this logic, science and technology and human effort/intelligence are just harnessing/working on fundamental entities existed before.
So there exists an entity/constellation of entities which we call God which constantly churns out the activity which we all consume under various names,modify with intelligence/effort to suit our needs.
So there is nothing wrong in visiting temple/God who is basis for everything.
Why rational people should not believe in God and should not have beliefs? May be he has enough proof for the capabilities. Just because you do not have proof and just because that proof is not hyped/advertised, it does not mean that it does not exist.In Hindu Dharma, God is personal in the sense that each one connects to him in their own way unlike/in addition to monolithic set patterns visible to all.
Even Bhagavad Gita is based on rational discussion (Q&A), though it is spiritual too.
One personal comment: Based on the above comment, you appear young. I suggest you periodically to look inwards and read books in your language.
EDIT/APPEND: Unfortunately, there are various people/groups who mislead people on the subject of God. Some of them are/can be delusions. So you need to be careful but honest efforts on your own to connect to him/her (Hinduism is plural) can/may be possible.
This sounds very condescending...
I guess when faced with very high risk situations, people will do whatever helps deal with the pressure, no matter how illogical.
A lot of negative propaganda against Hindu traditions is driven by left liberals who view Hinduism and Paganic beliefs as evil.
Categorizing all religion as superstition seems to be some sort of atheist superiority complex. (I'm an atheist too, btw.)
What it probably means: He gave his 100%. So, the prayer is hope that whatever isn't in his control favours ISRO.
What it mostly represents: Pray to God that things work out despite what ever vague amount of effort that might have been put in to the task.
I think that we should be petitioning Pope so he would tell this CFS to cease, desist and disassemble. He may issue Papal bull, for example.
I don't remember catholics being eager on self-proclaimed wonders.
EDIT: yes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonization
> To be canonized a saint, at least two miracles must have been performed through the saint's intercession after his or her death
Isn't seeing images of Jesus in toast and other silly stuff like that somewhat common? I feel like I see that kind of thing in the news in _America_ from time to time typically associated with Catholicism.
All of this gives the overworked & corrupt Indian police almost limitless discretion on what to enforce & against whom. It also provides a sufficiently motivated grudge bearer an easy way to Shut up someone (or worse) that is making an unpopular argument.
There are several laws in this ugly bucket - "Hurting the religious sentiments of a group"
"Defamation..."
"Obscene content"
"Promoting Enemity between religions"
"Inciting Violence..."
The extremely vague "IT Act" also adds a digital dimension to this nonsense - where you have people Jailed for "liking" Facebook posts http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2013/10/03/freedom_on_...
Just a terrible mess over there legally....
As if this was not enough rationalists are always in danger in a place like India (having personally been affected by this I can attest that this is infact very real - two reasonable people can argue but it is hard to talk to some one threatening you). One more link to put the very real threat this gentlemen faces in context:http://www.in.com/news/current-affairs/cbi-files-fir-in-nare...
Dr Dabholkar was gunned down in broad daylight, while out for a walk on a busy road.
In the case of Sanal, (b) is certainly not the case since he's talking about facts he found in his investigation, and we need only examine (a) and (c).
Sanal is certainly not inciting violence between religious groups even by accident. So that's out. Sanal is a "myth buster" in the public eye - i.e. has permanently adopted a skeptical stance in matters of "miracles". Given the amount of evidence he's personally seen in this matter, we might at least give him the human allowance of a snarkiness that might have developed and which he might have expressed. Maybe mild cause for (a) perhaps, but insignificant in my opinion given his reputation.
Rgd (c), I think this whole category of "hurt" ought to be legally excludable and as far as I've read there doesn't seem to be any constitutional provision to do so. Truth hurts people when it shatters a belief that they have attached their self worth to. If someone feels "hurt" when presented with facts (at least facts at hand, leaving aside "historical facts" for the moment), this kind of hurt should not be cause for legal action.
I wish the "duty of a citizen of India to develop a scientific temper" were interpreted in this manner when it comes to actionable forms of hurt.
edit: tpyo (b) -> (a)
Kudos to the gentleman for his relentless struggle against superstition.
The lesson? It's remarkable how angry and violent people get when their beliefs are challenged - and this anger and violence seems proportional to the ignorance of those beliefs. It makes one yearn for the day when superstition is ended once and for all, and people can live in the real world according to the best evidence of their senses.
A problem with that statement is peoples' senses differ. Whether you believe in extra senses or not, you would need to have everybody agree with you. There's also intuition & emotional motivation.
It's easy to imagine a dystopia where only mainstream "senses" and "intelligence" are recognized as truth and people who have abilities that are not mainstream are shunned and persecuted.
There's another, possibly even more profound benefit. Superstition's harm is less about what you perceive phenomena, but rather more insidiously removes the motivation to look more deeply into phenomena. E.g. it's a second-order issue. The Indian Catholics didn't want Sanal to find the toilet leak cause of the miracle. They willfully closed their eyes to other possibilities because of their faith.
What is more harmful than an idea that inspires it's adherents to close their own eyes to reality?
There is a difference between Existence & Reality. Reality is based on perspective of Existence. Thus Reality is relative and seen by some as "mutable" (though I prefer the functional "immutable" view of a Reality).
So the adherents you are talking about are viewing Reality perfectly well. It's just their Reality is different from yours. Now if their Reality is based on an illusion, like the bad plumbing in the OP, there's the matter of changing their perception & Reality by exposing the illusion.
> But it would be free of disagreement born of irrational prejudice.
What is irrational is in the eye of the beholder & heavily influenced by culture. To your point, some cultures are closer to absolute truth (less based on illusion) than others.
However, even Rationality is based on a culturally defined Reality. What was Rational 100 years ago in America may not be Rational today.
As humanity progresses, we expose the truth and create more illusion in different areas of Existence.
Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai tried to broker a
solution by calling upon Edamaruku to apologise and on
Catholic groups to drop their case in return.
"Two plus two equals eight."
"No, it equals four."
"OK, hardass, how about seven."
"No, its four."
"C'mon, be reasonable, let's compromise on six."
That's what a reasonable compromise means in this case.
Case in point: http://www.odditycentral.com/news/golden-baba-indian-holy-ma...
Its these guys who have the resources to get whistle-blowers killed off relatively quietly.
There's certainly other ways of getting on the wrong side of the rumor mill, but, then, I think a lot of times the answer there is that one must often seek out a community that accepts them. Many of the small townies that go to the big city and find some community that accepts them would find those communities just as hostile to the people they left; it's not that they're "more accepting", it's that they accept you. The big city is "more accepting" because there's more subcommunities to be a part of, not because it's full of magically superhumanly tolerant people. And small towns simply lack the size to have a wide diversity of niche communities.
It's the religious nuts you have to fear.
I am aware that folks getting lynched where I live is generally more reserved for racial rather than religious or intellectual minorities, so I am well aware that it can be worse, so much worse even where I live for different kinds of minority populations.
But it is quite possible that the real outcome of being publicly atheistic or gay in a rural community is that you can't practically run a business or hold a local public office, and that is not hyperbole.
A different classmate thought it was funny to talk about going to the big city to race-bait 'niggers' at the mall.
Another friend of mine used to live in a town where you couldn't really do business if you weren't a member of the local church.
So I guess it's not quite the same as being forced to leave the country, but at the same time it can be pretty unpleasant.
Mind you this was circa 2003. And the fact that if these people actually did anything serious they could have been prosecuted is definitely a step better than in the story. Though I don't know if there's really any recourse to the business issue. But I do think the treatment of Atheists/Nontheists is pretty analogous.
I had some dope tell me that I was burning in hell because I was a catholic idolator after some sort of evangelical revival. I told him that I'd see him there and wished him a good day.
In seriousness, people get fed fire and brimstone, and see it as an escape from the dreariness of their existence. More people in India are in more desperate conditions, so I would expect more nonsense about magic and such.
Small town America will not arrest you for being atheist, but you may be passed over for promotion, your children may be bullied while outside of your protection, you will have a difficult time participating in local culture, and you will not enjoy the same sort of "slack" extended to the "in" crowd. It would also be unwise to buy a house with HOA covenant restrictions, as you may find that the lawn and landscaping of atheists are held to higher standards than those of households attending the same church as the HOA president.
Small and petty-minded people are everywhere on this planet. They will go as far as everyone else allows them to go. And wherever they are the majority, all others beware.
So some places, they just kill you. Other places, they make you want to kill yourself. Either way, you are surrounded by people that have no respect for individuality. In that sense, it is as bad, but obviously, being murdered arbitrarily is worse than not ever being invited to the neighborhood barbecue.
Either way, you have to either hide your true nature or move somewhere less hostile.
Why single out "Small town America"? It wasn't that long ago that here on HN, many were calling for the resignation of the Mozilla CEO because of his political position on gay marriage.
Being an atheist in some small towns is no worse for your career than being a Fundamentalist Christian in Hollywood.
I say this as an atheist: Obnoxious toe-the-line political correctness is in all corners of our society.
Big City America might not punish you as much for being atheist, but as you mention, it has its own prejudices. Imagine what might happen if you told your sugar-baby something racist and then she leaked it to the media!
Tolerance for the alien is definitely a learned behavior. If you have kids, please try to teach it to them.
As for LGBT issues, if I just restrict it to "gay bashing", the lists here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_acts_of_violence_a... and here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_acts_of_violence_a... show that big cities are not even vaguely immune to the problem.
(Although I'd caveat those lists of incidents based on the ones I actually know something about: Harvey Milk and George Moscone weren't killed because the former was gay, but because of SF city politics and their murderer's personal problems (that the conviction was for manslaughter with a short sentence, well, the Twinkie defense is another reason SF is infamous). The 1999 Fort Campbell incident was not as generally portrayed, although my information is not citable, comes from the son of a good friend who was there, collected evidence, etc. And lately the beautification of Matthew Shepard has come under serious reexamination.)
Perhaps because so many of these cities were and still are very anti-effective self-defense, there's this partial answer to the problem which is much more applicable in "small town America": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Pistols
Especially the further you get away from the Puritan Northeast, America has something of a live and let live tradition, reinforced by a very well armed population.
> "Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of [citizens of India]...
Law and order goes to shit when political parties are involved. What was police reaction? They say they will start putting curb on those who like offensive posts. So there you go making their priorities clear.
We grow up thinking we can do something for the country and when you hear all this bullshit, all you can think is immigration.
Under Indian law, the freedom of speech and of the press do not confer an absolute right to express one's thoughts freely.Clause (2) of Article 19 of the Indian constitution enables the legislature to impose certain restrictions on free speech under following heads:
I. security of the State, II. friendly relations with foreign States, III. public order, IV. decency and morality, V. contempt of court, VI. defamation, VII. incitement to an offence, and VIII. sovereignty and integrity of India.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_expression_in_India
This is in a way similar to European notions of freedom of speech. In Europe, you can't deny the holocaust for example.
We should be grateful that the US founders left no room for ambiguity in our Bill of Rights.
"[...] But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren’t a priest.”
“What?” asked the thief, almost gaping.
“You attacked reason,” said Father Brown. “It’s bad theology.”
Ironically, this method was employed by Christian missionaries like Mother Teresa to gather wealth from west.
Also, a high profile skeptic there was recently murdered:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/world/asia/battling-supers...
When the "bad people" are your neighbors, the majority, and the government, the law, the constitution, etc who exactly is going to take your side and free you from prison?
EDIT @icambron minor point, my position is the converse of what you interpreted: i.e. If you are going to tell me what to do then lead by example.
What will give him the best long-term outcome? Persisting on this issue while still in India, and getting himself arrested or killed, or preserving his life and freedom so that he may have several more decades to continue this fight?
Martyrdom is massively overrated.
Many people & groups don't like their reality challenged by another.
1) How weak people's faith is
2) How religionists behave when in power
If you seriously believe in something, let's say, the moon orbiting the earth, and some nut-job would claim it's just a piece of cheese floating in the sky, would it bother you? No, you would just laugh and move on.