Atheism and Agnosticism

2011-11-20T08:37:00.001+05:30

Truths behind Lies
http://knol.google.com/k/ram-bansal/truths-behind-lies/75y327els9kv/5#

Process of Psychological Healing | Healthmad

2011-09-24T05:28:00.000+05:30

Process of Psychological Healing | Healthmad

Spirituality, The Nasty Game Against Human Intellect | Socyberty

2011-09-19T06:00:00.000+05:30

Spirituality, The Nasty Game Against Human Intellect | Socyberty

Business of Religions

2011-08-19T15:01:00.000+05:30

Sophie, a writer from the British credit cards comparison service money.co.uk, forwarded on this overview of religions as businesses. While trying to be as impartial as possible, something like this will always cause a bit of contention but the figures certainly speak volumes on their own.

The Business of Religion

The link between money and religion is a grey area, fraught with conspiracy and scandal. Some of
the wealthiest organisations on the planet are religions or religious movements – some ancient,
some modern – yet the followers of religion and the countries in which they are practised are
often the poorest. The money.co.uk team has examined some of the richest religions and their
relationships with wealth.

1. Scientology

Established in 1952 as a successor to dianetics, the Church of Scientology has always been a
controversial entity. It’s been criticised for taking money from gullible people, some of whom have
committed suicide or found themselves homeless as a result of the extortionate fees incurred as a
Thetan. Reports of harassment, covert surveillance and blacked-out SUVs are not uncommon among
members of The Church of Scientology.

Number of followers: The Church of Scientology claims to have over 8 million followers worldwide
and 3.5 million in the United States alone, but a 2008 survey showed that just 20,000 American
individuals identified themselves as Scientologists.

Notorious for: Selling beliefs to vulnerable people, being expensive, being quite uniquely absurd.

Fortune comes from: The subscription based religion charges to allow members to progress up the
religious hierarchy. It costs $277,010 to reach Operating Thetan VIII, the highest rank in the Church
of Scientology. Newcomers to Scientology are thoroughly scrutinised financially, then encouraged to
take out loans to cover their payments.

Total worth: Not known, but definitely in the hundreds of millions and probably in the billions of
dollars.

Spends on: They have a cruise ship to practise their Scientology training on, although most
members’ cash appears to disappear before their very eyes.

2. Catholicism

The Catholic Church isn’t without its critics. The traditional bells-and-smells Catholic services extol
the virtues of a life without possessions, and an existence free of money. However, the Catholic
Church harbours some of the world’s greatest and most exquisite works of art, and huge chunks of
gold deposits stored around the world.

Number of followers: 1.181 billion worldwide and rising.

Notorious for: Telling AIDS-ridden African nations that you go to hell if you use contraception, along
with some known cases of child abuse.

Fortune comes from: Mostly priceless works of art, but the Catholic Church were implicated in the
disappearance of plundered Nazi gold, discovered in the mid 1980s. Tourism to the Vatican accounts
for some of their income.

Total worth: Hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide.

Spends on: Upkeep of an extensive international network of churches, compensation payouts for
abuse victims (totalling over half a billion dollars in the USA).

3. Freemasonry

Shrouded in secrecy and an air of mystery, Freemasonry is not a religion in its own right. It requires
its members to believe in a “supreme being” of some sort, but is not specific as to which one. In
some countries, like Sweden, the members accepted are only Christians. Hundreds of conspiracies
exist, accusing Freemasons of being part of a New World Order which strives to dominate the planet
through control of finances. A Masonic symbol, the Eye of Providence, can be found on the $1 bill,
the Great Seal of the United States, and the logo of DARPA’s Information Awareness Office.

Number of followers: Six million worldwide.

Notorious for: Secret handshakes, allegations of corruption and an impenetrable old-boys network.

Fortune from: Wealthy individuals form the bulk of the Masonic ranks.

Total worth: Depends who you believe – if the Freemasons control as much money as conspiracy
theorists believe, the Freemasons are the richest organisation in the world.

Spends on: Charity. Masonic lodges all have philanthropic tendencies, and most run health or
education projects.

4. Televangelism

This particular element of Christianity is a largely American phenomenon, whereby huge numbers
of people can be addressed by one minister via television broadcasts. Ostensibly it’s the same
Christianity as everywhere else, but in reality it shares more with the personal morality preachers of
Texan megachurches. The beauty of televangelism lies with something called the prosperity gospel,
defined by the belief that “Jesus blesses believers with riches”. This assurance that “God will provide
you with material wealth if you watch my television programmes and also the adverts in between”
clearly works.

Number of followers: Although there are no official figures, televised Church services continue to
draw in large audiences in America and across the world.

Notorious for: Peddling a distorted version of Christianity, speaking in tongues and being completely
unaccountable to any reputable organisation within the Christian Church.

Fortune from: Donations, adverts, selling merchandise to followers, and many other commercial
activities under a tax-free umbrella.

Total worth: The industry could be worth billions.

Spends on: TV evangelists have a life of luxury. Multi-million dollar homes, travel by private jet and
international ‘crusades’ at $3,000 a night are not uncommon.

5. The Church of England

A lot of the Church of England’s distinctive flavour stems from Henry VIII’s determination to divorce
Catherine of Aragon. There had been attempts to separate the English church before, most notably
by the hilariously named Lollardy movement, but it was Henry’s efforts which ultimately resulted in
the creation of Anglicanism and his excommunication.

Number of followers: 25 million baptised members

Notorious for: split within the Church over allowing homosexuals and women to become priests and
bishops.

Fortune from: £200 million ($320m) in cash donations from congregations, £250m ($400m) in
legacies, events and services, and £200m ($320m) in Gift-Aid donations. The Church used to be
the biggest landowner in Britain, but most of that land was sold off to fund the £4.4bn investment
portfolio which earns £160m+ ($255m+) every year.

Total worth: Billions.

Spends on: Pensions, salaries, and maintaining 16,000 ancient buildings (most of which are Grade 1
listed). There are 43 cathedrals which require constant upkeep and repair.

6. The Richest Billionaires with Faith

Carlos Slim - $74bn

Maronite Catholic

Larry Ellison - $39.5bn

Jewish

Lakshmi Mittal - $31.1bn

Hindu

Amancio Ortega - $31bn

Christian

Eike Batista - $30bn

Very superstitious

Mukesh Ambani - $27bn

Hindu

Christy Walton - $26.5bn

Born into Presbyterianism

---------

Theology Degrees » So There is a Higher Being? Top 20 Agnostic Blogs

2011-03-09T23:51:00.000+05:30

Theology Degrees » So There is a Higher Being? Top 20 Agnostic Blogs

Question of Life and Death

2011-02-06T01:19:00.000+05:30

A few days back, a friend raised issue of fear from death. Once earlier also, she had felt the fear. Today, in a chat, another medico friend raised the issue of death, saying something like that she helps people in dying as her professional duty, so in-spite of life after death and incarnation etc.being controverted and her agreeing to that, still she would like to believe these concepts for these provide some solace to her. This piece is to deal with these issues. To begin with, these issue being of universal value, personal notions regarding these need be avoided.

Fear from death is an eastern concept widely publicized by vested interests to terrify the humanity of death and its consequences with the objective of establishing a psychological rule over the terrified humanity. In reality, every form of life remains concerned with the process of life and never that of death. With this concern, a huge amount of work has been done and is being done in the fields of medicine, health, foods, well-being, pleasures, happiness, psychology, relationships, etc. and against this huge list, let anybody tell me what has been or is being done by the humanity for death. Since, in reality and by nature itself, we remain concerned about living and not dying, there need be no fear from death.

Now, I come to the second issue of life after death. Believing in this concept just because it suits one in her particular circumstances is no good reason for believing. Somehow, my above-said friend has misconceived the notion that she helps people to die. On the contrary, whole of medical science and all the medicos on earth do work for helping people to live on and she is also doing that as her professional duty. In the process, if some persons die, it is nobody's fault.

Therefore, there is no need for anybody to fear death, or to think about what is going to happen after death. Indeed, nothing is going to happen, that being the final end.

Before the God was Created

2011-01-23T01:04:00.000+05:30

The concept and the word 'God' were not born when the first human child was born, nor these were found written on a rock by someone unknown. These were created by some human-being (Plato, to be very particular) for some purpose best known to him. But some of us shall like say that he did a great job while others like me feel that he misguided the whole humanity through this misconception. Anyway this is not the issue, I am here for, but for trying to understand what was in the human mind about the creation before the God was created.

The vast creation full of variety of animated and unanimated forms of matter was sufficient to generate a feeling of wonder in the minds of the people, and they must also be curious to know who created all this. Even theory of evolution was not available to them to quench their quest. They must have been a puzzled lot, but for their engagements in solving problems of their own survival. Since, they were wandering tribes in their limited regions, they might have considered the Earth to have boundaries somewhere far away from them. This was why the Earth was considered to be a flat disk before Galileo's concept of the spherical Earth was accepted.

In-spite of all the puzzlings, nobody ever thought that there has ever been a creator of the whole creation, else they would have hunted for him through their wanderings. Neither, they imagined that the creator is sitting somewhere in the skies. That was unthinkable for them. If there were any thinkers, they might have been sure that no creator can ever reside in his own creation otherwise where he was residing before the creation. Thie logic that the creator, if any, needed a place to stay, and that there was no place available before the creation, must have proved to them that they is no creator even though they failed to understand the whole process - the evolution.

Plato provided a lame cue to all those curious minds of that time by his concept of God, to serve his own vested interest of establishing a psychological rule over the world through misguiding and terrorizing humanity in the name of God, and he proves to be very successful.

Atheism, Rationality and Religions

2011-01-16T12:41:00.000+05:30

All religions fail on rational scrutiny so they disallow it and blame the scientific community, and particularly the atheists, to interfere in their matters of faith. But they never provide justification why even the faith should not be scrutinized. What is rational may be, many times, circumstantial and subjective, but this too does not mean that we allow anything irrational or be like this in our behavior and actions. From atheism point of view, however, there may always be a need to improve upon considerations of rationality.

What all religions flourish on is the terror of not remembering God and other Divinities, thus is a promotion of theism through negative feelings in the minds of people. Religious preachers often remind the people of the day of judgment after their respective deaths to terrify people and make them surrender to the imagination called God through the religions and religious agents. This has become a flourishing business all over the world with concentration in the developing and the under-developed world.

Absolute truth is always the only one and if God is the absolute truth, there can not be different ways to promote Him. This means existence of a single religion on the earth and that is 'humanism' mutilated, damaged and destroyed by multiple religions with vested interests.

The only logic for faith put forward by the theist is that 'seeing something is not necessary for believing in existence of that, it could be through information from those who had seen the thing'. But such a belief must be verifiable through actually seeing or through derivation by the subject if need be. Has anybody claiming to see the God shown it to anybody else? Such so-called divine souls simply play psychological games to make fool of the innocent people and thus misguide them to serve their vested interests.

Another school of thought which has come up to bypass rational scrutiny is 'fideism' which completely forbids rational scrutiny of faith. Indeed it is no thought in any way but just the empiricism.

Whole Nature is transient by its nature itself and this fact has been misused by the theist to preach the search of something stable and they call it God - just an imagination. How and why the stable God will create everything transient?

Another argument put forward by theists is the infinite universe which, they say, must have a creator. They forget and make others to forget that the Nature evolves through its transitory nature, and the whole creation is the result of this evolution. Nothing has been created in a moment but everything has evolved through cause-and-effect principle of Nature.

Spirituality in Practice

2010-12-27T02:01:00.000+05:30

A real story -

"A highly educated girl from USA visits India in search of spiritual awakening. She reaches Rishikesh and meets a so-called sage. She is initialized in a week and goes back to USA with the hope of enlightenment in due course.

The so-called sage chases her to USA and settles there with a regular flow of money from her and others in contact there. She meditates, practices yoga as guided, and develops bipolar syndrome - a psychological disorder. As a result she becomes unpredictable and irritable and when calmed down becomes passive ready for an exploitation. Other exploitations of the girl, including sexual, begin and become frequent. He keeps on asking for money on different pretexts and she provides under his influence treating him divine. 14 years pass by.

She is now matured and works as a professor. She can understand the reality through her experiences. With assistance from her friends, she realizes her folly of harboring a cheat in the robe of a sage, who tries to keep her isolated from such friends. Finally, she got isolated with a great disappointment and almost incurable psychological disorder."

This is what is happening in some cases while in most others, beautiful American women take up the business of spirituality and thus become channels of exploitation of many others by the spiritualists of different shades - mostly from India.

Spiritual practices work like hypnotism and in many cases even psychodelic drugs are used to have unusual experiences to be lost in at regular intervals. These things put the practitioner on an infinite path of hope which he/she never desires to leave, but with no ultimate results.

In reality, there is no enlightenment but just mirages through auto-suggestions. No body is divine or having divine powers, or capable in inducing divinity. All such feelings are results of misplaced faiths generated by propaganda of spirituality all over the world, particularly in India for lack of education and scientific temper and in USA for the people's utilitarian and artificial lifestyles and their disenchantments from these.

India is the center of this business of spirituality because all the cunning persons here go in for such trickeries for quick gains of wealth and fame. Hard honest work is hardly appreciated here. In India, people get easily attracted to these trickeries but being poor can't provide much to this business. So, every spiritualist tries to make it to the prosperous USA.

Positive side of Atheism - Humanism

2010-12-18T00:36:00.000+05:30

When atheists say that God does not exist, religions are unwanted, spirituality is a fraud, etc. they are marked as reactionaries have nothing original to say without referring to the trendy religions and theism. This is right, up to some extent but not in its wholeness. In fact, they negate theism only because these are keeping a strong hold on the humanity and the humanity need be pulled out of this grip to have subscribers from the humanity. After all, they will not create anybody outside of humanity to be their supporter. So, the 'reactionary' label on the atheists is correct but there is nothing wrong in being a reactionary.

I have always been insisting that atheism is humanism while all religions divide the human society into fragments which go against the spirit of humanism. Theism has introduced competitiveness to human society while the humanism brought social order to itself through rejuvenating cooperation which was in peril in the days of wandering humanity.

The cooperation evolved by humanism is being thwarted by theism through religions for serving vested interests. Thus, even theism is also a reactionary development against humanism. Indeed, there was no need for coining the word 'atheism' to counter theism. What people against theism were needed to do was and still is to insist on humanism to suppress theism.

Humanism is basic and original to humanity and theism was created to oppose its spirit of cooperation in the humanity. It is same as science being original for humanity and faith created to oppose the spirit of science. Science is basically the process of knowing through senses, while faith is not knowing but believing what others say. Thus, tussle between humanism and theism is same as tussle of science versus faith, and now the tussle between atheism and theism.

Another difference between science and faith is that the science evolves out of curiosity of humanity and so is dynamic while the faith is constructed and the construction remains static. For this reason, all faiths have remained the same after their origins while the science has been continuously evolving adding more and more to knowledge base of humanity. This however gives advantage to faiths for the human inertia to adapt to changes. For this reason, today the faiths have more subscriber while the sciences have a few. In the democratic world where numbers matter rather than quality, faiths have gained supremacy over sciences.

In-spite of the apparent supremacy of faiths over sciences, no human-being is living without getting advantage of the scientific developments while the faiths are ditching the humanity by raising partitions within each society and group of people.

Paradox of Immortal Soul

2010-11-21T11:05:00.000+05:30

All shades of theists, spiritualists and religious people believe in existence of a soul in every living-being which never dies but transcends from one dying body to another body taking birth. Some pseudo-scientists claim that they have experimentally proved going away of soul from a dying body by encasing the dying person in a glass chamber. Thus, the soul nether takes birth nor dies. This means that number of souls in this universe must fixed from eternity to the present.

I won't talk here of millions of years but experiences of my life span of about 60 years. In my childhood, human population was much less than today, and so were the cattle and pets like dogs and cats. Today all these species of life are innumerable scattered all over the earth like a swarm. One thing, which I used to find in my agricultural fields be more in number than today is swarms of locusts, but all other insects overcompensate for this deficiency. I grow crops and they get instantly destroyed by worms and insects in a few days if not spray-killed.

Assuming for the time being that every plant too has a soul of its own, the paradox further deepens. With less of forests of huge trees on the earth and more of agricultural crops on the surface, the number of souls further increases. But I hope my friends would not dare to confirm this assumption because the plants do not have brains, although each one has its own mind to regulate its growth and provide other directives. Here, I need to refer my theory of two different entities - the mind and the brain - in each living body.

There are two possibilities - either many more souls have taken birth in these 60 years, or many forms of life are soulless. The spiritualists and religious fellows deny both of these. The reality of things discard their hypothesis of existence of an immortal soul in each individual of every form of life on the earth. Obviously, all these hypes are to make fool of the people and run a grand business of religions, gods and godliness.

The Virus of God and Religions

2010-11-15T02:16:00.001+05:30

God is a virus and religions are its carriers which spread it through hypnotizing the people. This is the conclusion of experiences of Dr. Derrel Ray who had been involved in church work for a long time and is a psychotherapist using hypnosis to treat psychological disorders. His findings are important for the whole humanity for the reason of his involvement in the church work. Now, he is of the opinion that the God virus enters the mind through ears in the early childhood, germinates there and comes out of the mouth to spread the virus to nascent minds. As a psychotherapist, his opines that the church services are carefully structured to achieve the same sort of hypnotic effect he was inducing in his patients. I fully agree with opinions of Dr. Ray.

Faith in God work just like the way infections do for spreading from person to person, and its carriers - the religions, hypnotize people to instill guilt in their minds and make them surrender before God for security.

The greatest asset of human race is the highly developed intellect through which it understands, works and progresses using logical derivations. This may be termed as 'humanism'. Since religions are devoid of logical derivations, these have found the way of hypnotizing people to have faith and forget about logic. The faith and logic work in ways just opposite to each other, religions are pitched against humanism to make it devoid of its greatest asset- the intellect. Thus, religions are working to kill intellectualism.

If the religions are allowed to have their way, future humans shall be without brains and their working shall be based on just the faith in what others tell them. All sciences shall die out, and the progress of human civilization and culture made through sciences shall be undone. This shall make the humanity a wild wandering race again where might shall be right and plundering shall be the lifestyle. It is now, we need to act fast to save the humanity from onslaughts of religions.

Religions are designed the way they are and shall be working to achieve their goal through hypnotizing the people. Their stings carry the virus of God which need be eliminated to save the humanity. It is like fighting malaria by making mosquitoes devoid of the malaria infection.

Religions have negative consequences on intelligence and personality through suppressing curiosity of the human brain. A brain without curiosity is a brain without a sting and hence is ineffective. Religions instill supernatural things in the minds in place of natural things and their scientific explanations - the backbones of human civilization.

All theists hate scientific and logical arguments in understanding nature while keep on enjoying the fruits of scientific thinking in their daily living. Thus, theists are the most ungrateful creatures on this earth.

Knowledge versus Faith in Religions

2010-11-02T07:03:00.000+05:30

I have a copy each of a compilation of all the Vedas, Vishnu Puran, Geeta, Quran and Bible on my bookshelf and people visiting me get surprised to see these and ask me point blank, "You claim to be an atheist, yet why do you have all these religious books?" and I quickly reply, "To know the religions." And I believe that is the general trend about all the atheists on the globe. Conversely, I visit my religious friends and foes and find them boasting about their own religion and criticizing all others, without ever reading a book on the subjects. Their knowledge about religions remains limited to what they learn from their narrow communities.

Such an instance is confirmed by a recent survey wherein atheists and agnostics are found to surpass all other groups in their knowledge of religions. Now, we are here to survey what and why we must know about religions.

Whether one believes in some concept or refuses to believe, he/she is supposed to know it. Since, present human society has a majority of believers in religions and God, it s all the more important for the non-believers to know religions and God to counter the false beliefs of the majority. The survey also proves that mostly the ignorant people are believers in religions and God.
Knowledge is power of humanity over all other species of life, and through it only we come to differentiate between the right and the wrong. And surely, knowledge does not mean believing. It is all the more needed for not believing.
Believing in something distracts the person from knowing about the alternatives, and deeper the faith more is the distraction. Multiplicity of religions proves fallacy of universality of religions and God which every religion claims. I mean to say if religions are there to preach the universal facts of life, as they claim, why there should be so many versions. This proves that some religions are misleading the people and so the believers must try to know more of other religions.
Most of the religious persons know more of the history rather than the preachings and their basis of their own religions, while the latter must play more important role in developing faith in the religion. Through history, these religions create an alliance of followers with the pioneer of the religion and then prove the pioneer to be a great soul and make him their deity. While an atheist probes the teachings and judges the religion on their basis. For the religious persons, they develop a faith in the person rather than his teachings while their followers are supposed to follow the teachings. As a result, religious followers worship the pioneering persons ignoring their teachings in their lifestyles.
Converse to the above point, science is being adopted in everyday life of all of the humanity without knowledge of its fundamental principles and theories. This proves that science has more followers than the religions. And the atheism evolves from scientific analysis of religions and theism.

Thus, religions are being followed through ignorance of the teachings and their overall impacts on humanity while the atheism is being followed through application of scientific logic to lifestyles.

Atheism and Secularism

2010-10-11T09:16:00.000+05:30

Secularism is not discriminating between various religions and faiths by the society, and when this principle is applied to the State, it means freedom of all policies and matters of the State from all religions and faiths. This perceptional difference between the society and State creates a great contradiction as far as whole humanity is concerned. This is because of the religions and faiths being imposed on the humanity artificially to serve vested interests of a few. Conversely, the concept of atheism being quite natural to humanity supports secularism in both the sectors - society as well as State.

If the concept of religion were natural to the humanity, there could be no multiplicity of religions on the earth. In that case, that only religion would have been religion of humanism needing no atheism and no secularism. Multiplicity of religions also proves their falsehood. And this falsehood itself has given rise to the concepts of secularism and atheism.

Ensuring existence of a secular State has the greatest difficulty from religious/theists persons in political authority. They can't be free and fair to followers to all religions for their individual biases because a person is first an individual, then a family-person, then a social creature, and lastly a political authority. Since, the first three of these statuses of the person have religious biases, his/her fourth status can't be free from this bias. So very existence of theism and religions mars possibility of a secular State unless those in political authority are atheists.

A religious person may subscribe to secularism by recognizing everyone else's rights to follow faiths of their individual choices. But, the religious persons are regularly persuaded to be fanatic about their respective religions, and this influence, they forget rights of others and follow path of secularism. Conversely, an atheist is by own nature itself is certainly a subscriber of secularism by heart and mind. Other humanistic aspects that the atheists have above all creeds of religious people are discussed below.

Fairness without Fear
Some of the theists follow path of truthfulness for their belief that God is observing all their deeds and if they speak a lie, they shall be punished by Him sooner or later. Although such a fear is baseless, this has a sobering influence of these theists. This is good for the society in some way, but is not right from morality point of view. Doing something under fear is against human moral standards. Apart from these few God-fearing theists, all others know it in their heart and mind that the very concept of God is a falsehood and aimed at cheating others. Higher the level of theistic displays in the person, more is his/her knowledge about falsehood of the concept of God. This makes them more immoral than anybody else. Conversely, all atheists have no fears and are thoughtful and courageous persons. For these attributes, they stick to moral values and stay fair under all circumstances without any fear.

Unbiased Opinions
Atheists are free from religious biases and their multiplicities, so they have a higher possibility of having a free and fair opinion on any matter related to humanity. Because of an all-pervading influence of religions, a religious bias touches all aspects of life of a theist and prevents his/her mind to think freely and fairly as a matter of habit. Religious institutions add fuel to this fire against humanity. This also mars their thinking capabilities.

Truly Democratic
All religions of the world have evolved to be autocratic in nature and functionality in line with the imagined autocracy of God. Thus, in the realm of God and religions, there exists no possibility of a true democracy which is so far considered to be best system of governance of a humanity. Thus religions and theism bias the people in favor of anti-democratic autocracy which is against the evolved conscience of humanity to be democratic. It is only the atheists, who can afford to be truly democratic.

Free Thinkers
All religions are dictum of their prophets and divinities and no body is ever allowed to speak against them. Some religions even prescribe inhuman punishments to those expressing their free thoughts on God and religions. Thus, religious followers can never be free thinkers as a matter of their evolved natures of being religious. Conversely, all atheists are free to think and they practice it as a matter of their individual habits. For them logic plays the superior-most role in their lives which is part and parcel of thinking process.

Creative Beings
All arts and sciences are the most refined forms of creative expressions. Out of these, arts have limited roles of entertainment in human life while sciences influence every aspect of it leading the humanity to be more civilized and more creative. Religions are generally against scientific way of life and thinking and hence prevent scientific creativity in their followers. On the other hand, atheists are of scientific temper and they are atheists for their being of scientific temper and continuously nourishing this trait of theirs.

Neutrality and Arbitrariness
Humans, for having the most developed intellect of all forms of life, must be guided by their own free conscience but the religions put social and parental pressures on each individual since birth and make him unable to make his/her free choice of faith. So, religious persons are reduced to less than the true humans with intellect. Conversely, the atheists are free from such psychological bondages and so are neutral in their decisions.

This drives the point that true secularism could be achieved through wiping out all religions from the earth. Further in that case, no secularism will ever be needed.

Psychology of Atheism

2010-09-28T09:35:00.000+05:30

Human psyche is convenience-oriented without bothering for logical rightness. This has been exploited by each propounder of religions and theism. This evolved many faiths in human society which are, undoubtedly, very popular among common people all over the globe. This was an initial development in social sciences which more or less supported theism as a consequence natural human psyche.

Exploitations of weak by the strong was also considered beastly attribute. Since humans too originated from their beastly past through civilized overtures over the time, beastliness is considered as a natural attribute ignoring claim of civilization to be a more human behavior. Indeed, human civilization and nature stand face to face against each other in this respect. Modern humans can not afford to be natural in any way, in-stead they have to be civilized.

Evolution of civilizations also included prevention of exploitations of the weak by the strong to gradually tame the beastliness of early humans. Civilization is not convenience-oriented but prefers to be discipline-oriented, whether convenient or not. Thus civilization works against convenience-oriented human psyche also. In such a confrontation of convenience and discipline, humans tend to slide towards conveniences ignoring their civilized developments. This tendency is also being exploited by theists for popularizing their viewpoints.

Although, theism is based on psychological exploitation, no theist is willing to accept this fact in public, even though most of them accept it in private. In public, they also preach prevention of exploitations of the weak by the strong, but still keep on working to exploit the psychological weakness of human mind due to its genetic beastliness wherein exploitation was rampant in its historical past.

Atheism is also natural as no infant takes birth with a religious leaning or as a subscriber to theism. It is the society which colors his/her conscience with religious fervor and inscribes in his/her brain seeds of theism. This is also a sort of exploitation of an innocent mind.

Exploitation is a beastly culture rampant in the natural world, while humans through civilized developments of their minds and cultures have been opposing exploitation of all sorts. Free developments of minds have always been targeted by right thinking people all over the globe since times immemorial. Such a free thinking frees individuals and societies from bondages of God and religions and make them atheists, the true human-beings.

Developments of physical sciences also impresses on human minds to think, get convinced through logic, and then follow their consciences. These sciences also disapprove existence of any God or other deities and need of having any faith in these misconceptions gripping the non-thinking irrational humanity.

Philosophically also, all those who thought deeply on the issue reached the conclusion that there is no need of any imagination or concept of god for humanity to move on its path of higher and higher civilization. Examples of such thinkers and their philosophies are numerous - secular humanists, Humeans, Nietzschean nihilists, Marxists, Madalyn Murray O'Hairists, Russellites, Chomskyites, French existentialists like Camus or Sartre, logical positivists, utilitarians like Mill or Singer, New Atheists, etc.

To say that atheism has evolved through constructions of few individuals in the world is false. On the contrary, theism is a construction of nasty human minds to exploit the innocent minds of future generations in their infancies. Atheism is pure and natural.

Faith and Logic

2010-09-21T01:41:00.000+05:30

Humans have an instinct called curiosity - to know more of things around - and for satisfying this urge, they acquire knowledge. There are two possible sources for gaining knowledge - by learning from others and believing them, and by studying unknown things logically or by grasping such studies of others and accepting the facts by satisfying themselves through reasoning. These two methodologies are, respectively, known as 'faith' and 'reasoning', and the latter is generally called as 'science'.

For faith, the person need not be knowledgeable in advance, nor he/she needs to have reasoning capability. In faith, the person gets an information from another just accepts that. So, it needs neither wisdom nor any mental exertion. Therefore, it is very easy and often an asylum for the idle minds - their curiosity gets satisfied without any efforts. Such a person may call him/herself as 'knowledgeable' but all his/her knowledge is shallow and changeable with time and circumstances. Imagine a person going to a group of theists and by just listening their views becomes a theist him/herself. The same person when goes to a group of atheists becomes an atheist just after listening their views. Thus, his/her faith and knowledge are changeable. For stabilizing his/her faith, he/she goes by majority view, or whatever is said by more people in his/her contact, is believed to be true..

Conversely, gaining knowledge logically is difficult, needing efforts and use of intellect of the person. In this process, the person examines each fact critically and accepts it only after getting satisfied. For this, the person must have reasoning capability and previous knowledge of examining the things critically. Therefore, only really knowledgeable persons could be logical. Because this scientific process is difficult, only few persons go for it and they acquire a little with much efforts. But their little knowledge is deep and unchangeable. For his/her little knowledge, such a person always remains curious and never considers him/herself 'knowledgeable'. With this feeling, he/she keeps on making efforts for gaining more and more knowledge. In reality, this is humanism which keeps the instinct of curiosity alive for ever.

Faith is not a natural attribute of human-beings. This was chosen by early humans on ad hoc basis to satisfy their curiosity when their sources and means of gaining knowledge were too few to satisfy their curiosity instinct. Even their intellect was also limited at that time. So, faith is not a permanent solution for satisfying curiosity but the 'science' certainly is.

Even humans have inertia like that of the dead bodies which provides them convenience of getting satisfied without working. For this reason, convenience-seeker humans are assertive on holding 'faith' steadfastly to save themselves from hardships of gaining knowledge through science.

Science and Religion

2010-09-14T13:39:00.000+05:30

Science is study of nature of things in the universe that is continuously evolving along with human civilization and two are providing support to each other in the processes of evolution. The evolution of science as well as that of civilization will never to an end of evolution, hence shall always be incomplete but their developmental voids are reducing day by day.

When the humanity started its journey of scientific developments, there was complete darkness about nature of things but people had a will to know about everything logically. Science had no instant answer to their curiosity. This was taken advantage of by some cunning people and they introduced concept of faith rather than the logic. Through faith they introduced the concept of God and its derivative - religion.

Every truth is unique while its corresponding falsehoods may be infinite in number and variations. Therefore, unanimity is the ultimate test for a truth. Whole humanity ultimately comes to unanimity on every truth but the falsehoods divide the people in accordance with their varied perceptions. Since, concept of religion was a false perception, no unanimity was ever achieved on this issue giving rise to multiple religions. Each of the religions guiding people to have faith in different perceptions of God and religions and misusing this faith to misguide them.

Logically speaking, science at any stage may not be the complete truth but surely it promotes truth. Therefore, promotion of science amounts to promotion of humanism. Conversely, religions preserve falsehoods and thus are anti-humanity.

The only support to religions is derived from the fact that majority of the people are not of scientific orientation as it needs a particular type of education and training. So, they are inclined towards religions which does not need any particular type of education or training to them. This argument gets countered by the fact that religions have divided the society leading to violent confrontations. Even the world's longest war was fought for religious reasons between followers of Christianity and those of Islam Thus, popularity of religions brings disgrace to humanity.

In support of science, we have many arguments -

Advances in human civilization are resulted by scientific developments while many religious developments bring humanity to shame through fanaticism.
For living comforts, conveniences, and pleasures, even the greatest of theists depend on scientific development, to the extent that even promotion of religions is done using scientific gadgets. Thus, understanding of science may be by a minority, its application touches on and all.

God and Universe

2010-09-07T03:39:00.000+05:30

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking speaks at the Perimeter Institute For Theoretical Physics in Ontario, June 20, 2010. REUTERS/Sheryl Nadler

The greatest of the living scientists Stephan Hawking, in his latest book 'The Grand Design' has expressed that concept of God as creator of this Universe is redundant and fails under the recently studied theories of the Universe and its creation.

This is a good news for the thinking people of the world who are under constant attacks by the theists and religious fanatics who have been dividing the humanity on religious lines to serve their own vested interests of business of divinities spread all over the world.

Hawking writes, "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Hawking, now at 68, has worked on Black Holes, Cosmology and Quantum Gravity. His concept of a Grand Unified Theory tries to relate constitutions of the Universe and subatomic particles through a common formulation. In the scientific world, he is considered as another Einstein.

Earlier, in his book 'A Brief History of Time' Prof. Hawking had written, "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God." which implies that he believed in the existence of God. But now he has broken away from this orthodox view. Indeed, the business of God spread all over the world works to corrupt human mind even before a child takes birth. This results in to a general view that God exists. Hawking was no exception. But now, like other thinking people, he has revised his views on God as the creator of Universe.

He further writes that the concept of God created the world to please the humanity. Conversely, the conditions of Earth, particularly the Sun-Earth distance, made this planet congenial to life. So, existence of humanity is per chance and not a grand design.

Often, persons with miserable conditions seek asylum of religious fanatics to eliminate their miseries with God's grace. Since, most of the humanity lives in miserable conditions for its failure to solve its problems through religious interventions, more and more people get inclined to solve the problems by themselves through reasoning. Hawking is no exception in this regard although his physical condition is also miserable for almost complete paralysis of his body. But he is no seeker of God's grace to eliminate his miseries. He has full faith on solving the problems through reasoning. .

Disapproval of Nature to Theism

2010-08-23T01:36:00.000+05:30

The Nature provides basic instincts of will to survive, procreation, etc. to human life, and these are found equally developed in all species of life on earth. If the concepts of God and theism were natural, all species of life would have it like the basic instincts. But we find no traces of these concepts in any species of life other than the humans, so these prove to be the products of human brain and hence are not natural but artificially created.

If the God were supreme and the humans did not create it, then how the humanity came to know about it. Was it found inscribed naturally some where, or listened by somebody from a natural source. Obviously, none of these is true hence the God is a creation of humanity itself. With this logic, God being creation of human civilization or a distortion thereof, can not be superior to humans because no creation can be superior to the creator.

The next question to be considered is whether the God is the creation of human civilization or its distortion. No theist of the world is going to accept the reality of the God being inferior to humanity. In their view, the God is the creator of humanity hence is supreme. This is nothing but covering one falsehood by another. Since the whole concept of God and its related outcomes such as religions, theism, etc. are comprised of a chain of falsehoods, one after another, all such things are distortions of human civilization.

God is said to be a matter of faith and nothing else. Firstly, no faith has a universal value and is always a product individual human brain or of circumstances of individual's upbringing. Secondly, there are a number of faiths originated from various religions and sects and each one depicts God differently. If the God were a universal object, there could be no controversy about it. A unique thesis could have been scientifically established about it.

The Nature says nothing of God while it is quite explicit about different species of life, climates, and planetary systems etc. If God were a natural object, it would have been existing somewhere in nature and could be scientifically studied and understood.

Faiths Blocking Scientific Developments

2010-08-09T04:24:00.000+05:30

With the development of sciences, the humanity has become more knowledgeable and the process is going on. But religious myths, developed at a time when sciences had not developed in many fields, are in direct confrontation with the scientific knowledge. Today, only 45 percent of Americans believe in truth of evolution. However, Japanese and Europeans have shown a better inclination to scientific evolutionary knowledge with their percentages standing at 78 and 70, respectively.

So much so that the National Science Board, which oversees National Science Foundation in US, has opined that if religious beliefs of people require to discard scientific facts, the board doesn’t think it appropriate to expose the truth.

This is alarming to the scientific community and their work the world over and with some more advancements in the same direction, one day may kill all scientific developments. This is alarming to the people also who, in-spite of their contra-science religious beliefs, are dependent on scientific knowledge for their survival in their present lifestyles, whether it is electricity, medicines, computers, internet, etc or anything else. Thus the faith holders have a dual face on depending on sciences and showing their faith in anti-science religions. This is a clear indicator of where the religions are going to lead us to – a dark age.

Every religion claims to being based on universal knowledge. Yet the religious faith followers have been showing their intolerance to other religions by murderous actions, religious hatred, beheading and bombing people. Comparatively, the Atheists and non-believers rarely condemn individuals rather actions and ideas that deserve to be challenged and they are unanimously condemned by all religious followers. It shows that only the religions are at fault and these are misleading people and are divisive to human society.

Keeping religions immune from criticism, in the name of tolerance to religious faith and hurting feelings of the believers, is both unwarranted and dangerous. Unless we are willing to expose religious irrationalities whenever and wherever these arise, we shall be encouraging irrational orientation of public mind, policy and promote ignorance over education for our next generations.

False Beliefs and Ideas

2010-08-02T15:43:00.000+05:30

A noted thinker, Thomas Jefferson noted, “It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.” The advice sounds good and accepted by one and all to be truthful. But the theist's world does just the reverse of above in-spite of its accepted truthfulness. The fundamental question that arises and need to be answered is what is the test for a falsehood of an idea or some belief being wrong.

human civilization has come a very long way to be a regime in its own right parallel to that of Nature. In many spheres of life, the nature's harshness is isolated from human life to eliminate its dangers to survival. As a result, mortality is reduced and longevity is enhanced. Hence, the Nature is no more supreme, or in other words, human intellectual resources, which have taken the human civilization so forward, have proved to be super to be treated at par with Nature. Further, potential of human intellect seems to be boundless and it can do much much more in future. The essence of this statement is that humanity can and must rely on its intellectual resources for all purposes of life including ideas and beliefs.

The idea of God and belief in it have never been verified by human intellect and to circumscribe the problem of verification, theists declare this idea beyond knowing by human intellect. As such the concept of 'agnosticism' is forwarded in support of this unknowability. Assuming, for a moment, that 'agnosticism' is correct, then what is that which created the concept of God, where did it come from, and how the humanity came to realize existence of God, if it is not from the human intellect. Let there be something agnostic in the universe, then why should humans bother about it if it is beyond knowing through human intellect, the best resource the humanity has at its disposal.

The fact of the matter is that idea of God and beliefs in it are mischievous creations of some humans through misuse of their intellect to mislead the humanity into an arena of false beliefs. This misleading became a thriving business for a large population all over the globe which has been finding newer ways to reinforce this false belief amongst innocent people.

Supremacy of Human Mind over God

2010-07-19T05:34:00.000+05:30

The very concept of God came to human mind making God a creation of human mind. There is nothing to prove that the concept is a divine creation or existed before evolution of human civilization.

All spiritualists and Godly persons declare that a creator is always superior to the created and through this they claim that the God created the whole Universe and so is the superiormost of everything in this Universe. But we all know that even this thesis is a creation of human mind. Thus, human mind is proved to be superior to even God and all its related concepts and hypotheses.

All Godly personalities like Ram of Theo culture, Jesus of Christianity, etc. have been experiencing pains and pleasures of life like all other ordinary persons on this earth. This proves that they were also humans. Of course, such persons were great in their deeds, or we may say that these persons had great thoughts in their minds for which humanity appreciates them. Importantly, none of such real great persons claimed to be Divine or embodiments of God in their lifetimes. People who appreciated their greatness respected them. And when the concept of God and Divinities came into being, they were regarded as Divine personalities and embodiments of God.

Thus, Godliness is greatness of mind and deeds which anybody may achieve through self-restrain, discipline and taking care of humanity through taking it forward on its march to a better human civilization. In this respect, one thing is sure and certain - Godliness is not be claimed by the person him/herself but has to be rewarded by others of future generations after realizing and ascertaining greatness of deeds of the person. Whosoever claims to be Divine by him/herself is a fraud against humanity and Godliness. One can only be devoted to Godliness but can't claim to have achieved it.

Convergence of Thoughts and Religions

2010-06-25T10:57:00.000+05:30

Take a problem and let 100s of person, well versed with the problem field, objectively think an optimum solution for it. With perfect objectivity, 100 percent chances are that all shall find the same solution. But in practice, perfect objective thinking is not feasible, it always have a subjective touch which may make some minor differences in the thought-out solution. This is my 'Convergence Principle of Thinking', which has been tested and verified in varied situations.

This principle, though not spelled out before, is accepted by intellectuals of the world since historical times and is unknowingly applied in all human endeavors in practice. For this very reason, management decisions do not need be taken democratically but assumed to be right when some individual thinks and suggests for implementation.

Some cunning individuals thought that if every body starts thinking, they shall have same views and thus get unified into a strong humanity. This would have made ruling the majority by a few impossible. Since, desire for dominance has always been there in the air of human history, these cunning persons desirous of dominating the rest, found ways to block thinking by common people through doctoring them ways and means of thoughtless living. since thinking is a process straining the individual's brain extra-ordinarily, common people also felt happy in leading thoughtless lifestyles.

Ways and means doctored for thoughtless living were named religions with a common imaginary deity named God and individual incarnations of this imagination. The purpose of all religions is to block thinking process of followers and providing ever-failing easy solutions for problems of life in these religions. Thus, the God and various religions came into being on this earth. Every religion claims to preach universal truths of life and every religion has its own universal truths to be preached which is different from all other religions. This proves fallacy of religions and their universal truths.

If every individual starts thinking on his/her own, there shall exist no religion and hence no God, and all individuals shall come to know the universal truths of life. The world humanity shall be unified, undivided by various religions, and every individual shall be an atheist.

Thoughts on Agnosticism

2010-06-18T17:05:00.000+05:30

Agastya a seer from India of Mahaabhaarat period, from 400 bc to about 150 bc, founded the concept of agnosticism to save human thought energy from wasting in things which matter little to overall human welfare on earth. In his opinion, there are few things which are and shall always be unknowable to humanity - like the creator of this universe and the purpose of its creation. The idea is to look forward for progress and be on the march of a better human civilization where all humans shall be healthy and happy and put all our energies to attain this goal. In achieving this goal, questions such as when the universe was created and who created it matter little and we should not waste our precious energies on such trivial issues.

History is not all that useless to our progress. It teaches us where did the past humanity erred to avoid such instances in future, and where it fared well to keep them going on. But these historical information must be relevant to our present and near-future contexts. If the information from the past is irrelevant now and for near-future, it need not be looked into to conserve our energies. The questions about the creation are such matters irrelevant to our present and near-future, these being from extremely far off in the past. So, Agastya marked such issues as unknowable and this philosophy came to be known as agnosticism in honor of its proposer.

Issues of creation are from our real world. But with passage of time, some cunning fellows conceptualized an imaginary God as the creator of our universe, against the philosophy of agnosticism which prohibits thinking over the creation or its creator. Thus, existence of God or its non-existence also came within the purview of agnosticism, or in other words - whether God exists or not, is unknowable.

Thus, the concept of God is philosophically irrelevant to humanity and its onward march for a better world tomorrow. scientifically also, it has no foundation. Science has been trying to deal with the issue of creation, form, etc. of the Universe. Since science does not deal with any issue in philosophical terms, and agnosticism is a philosophical issue, these two ways of gaining knowledge are unrelated to each other, so do not interfere mutually.

Theism is Cultural Degradation of Humanity

2010-06-10T06:26:00.000+05:30

Firstly, let me explain what is my view of a culture. It is what a children learn from their parents and elders in the society, or in other words, culture is composed of customs and traditions of the society which get naturally cultivated in the mind and lifestyle of children. Wit this definition, it may be or moving in right or wrong direction depending on whether customs and traditions of a society are right (scientific) or wrong (orthodox). So, culture is not a pious word, as is normally understood.

Greater problem with culture of a society is that the people usually pay great regard to their culture irrespective of whether it is right or wrong, and so resist any change in its norms even if it is non-scientific. This degrades the society. Europe critically analyzed its culture about 300 years back and entered into the age of renaissance which changed everything there - customs and traditions - thus, re-cultivating the people's minds and thinking. All people are not that great of being critical to what they are accustomed to. Conversely, India is still suffering with the burden of 2000 year old orthodox and superstitious culture.

The worst contributor of human culture in the history of humanity has been Plato who, in his Academy, researched on social dynamics and found that people can easily be slaved of misconceptions like God, religion, spirituality and other allied superstitions and he managed to float a theist culture all over the then world, particularly in Eurasia. That culture still prevails in most part of the world, blocking fresh thinking by the people for being terrified in the names of God and other Divinities, with various religions working as carriers of this terror. Thus, theism is the culture, exit from which people resist with all their might.

The original religion of humanity had been humanism. After the people were cultivated into theism, the converse of it - atheism, was coined as another name of humanism. Thus, theism and humanism face each other as opposite of each other. Unfortunately, for the huge and continuous investments in theistic religions by vested interests all over the world, most of the people today are theists forgetting everything about the real humanism. Even Jesus Christ, in whose name Christianity was floated about 200 years after his death, was opposed to misconceptions of religions and Gods for the whole of his life which he spent on Indian land along with his Theo (Dev) friends.