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She was just 5 years old when he slid his hands between her legs for the first time. He? He was her own cousin. It was just another lazy night for me when my friend told me about her childhood. It took me some time to realize the fact that she was sexually assaulted when she was just a child, just five years old. I always felt that “rape”, “molestation” and other crimes against women were simply disgusting, but I only realized the intensity of such a crime when someone so close to me had to go through it. One man’s pleasure left a permanent scar on her entire life, His lust took away her childhood, His desperation gifted her with sleepless nights and endless days, some of which even I shared after she told me about it.

She is eighteen now. Strong, independent, cheerful and gregarious. It was only recently that I figured out that it was all just a fake cloak that she would use to cover up her deep scars. How do I comfort her? How do I tell her that everything happened for a reason? How do I convince myself that the same won’t happen to all the other women I care about? I have no hopes of ever finding an answer to all my questions.

I had the best childhood anyone could ask for, perks of being the first-born in the family you may say. I was always surrounded by people, people who cared about me. I always got what I wanted. It is only fair to say that I did take all that for granted. For me, my childhood memories are the most beautiful moments that I can dig out of the very limited vaults of my mind. I am not sure if it is the same for her. I often find myself staring at the ceiling during those sleepless nights, trying to imagine how her childhood is so different from mine. How she might want to run away from it and how I wish to go back to it. The paradox of life would be a nearly precise way to explain this.

It is a common misconception that it is the uneducated men who commit such crimes, but the reality is that education can never replace basic humanity. She comes from a family of doctors and lawyers, yet no one could help her. Her mother was a doctor and would often see bruises near her privates, but she did not have the curiosity to ask her about it. Her torture stopped when her cousin went abroad for work. Her ordeal lasted for an entire year, she told me. When she was old enough to realize what had happened to her, it was too late. She was already a confused child and would often fall into a state of depression. She would hurt other boys in her class. She was became extremely anti-social.

After constant complaints from her school, her parents decided to take her to a psychiatrist . This eventually gave her the confidence to speak out about what she went through. Her restless soul finally found a solid ground to stand on, that solid ground was her will power. Thanks to the shrink, her “educated” family got to know about the details they clearly missed out, rather they ignored. Her cousin had to face some heat, but then, no police complaint was filed against him. Not just because he was a part of the family, but also because they did not want the society to judge her. Obviously, she was not allowed to take a call for herself. She was asked to keep mum about her suffering, like all the other women out there. Her childhood ended when she was just five years old, the exact time when I was being pampered by everyone in my family. Yes, it is a little hard to believe that men like her cousin actually exist in the real world, but the fact is, there are way too many men like him. Men who are cowardly, men who measure their manliness by the thickness of their facial hair and the size of their privates.

My father once told me, “Treat every woman in the same way you would want your own daughter to be treated”, maybe that’s why her story disturbs me so much.

I know that I can’t give her back the childhood she lost, but I do know that she deserved a better one. Sometimes I wonder if it was possible to share a little bit of my picture perfect childhood with her. Maybe someday she will get over it, but her story has changed the way I look at the society. It has made me a better person, a better man. Somewhere down the line, I feel a little responsible for her torture, I feel ashamed because, I am, after all, a man…

(Img : http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-missing-child-concept-empty-playground-swing-shadow-little-girl-park-floor-as-symbol-children-image32095774)

Yesterday, when I went online, half of my newsfeed was populated with reports and articles about Maria Sharapova not knowing Sachin Tendulkar. My first thoughts were, how is it that there is not even half this response to the rape cases happening all over the country? I was just telling my neighbour that the number of people reacting to this issue is literally more than half the number of people who reacted to the UP rape case , which happened on 30^th may this year.

That’s when he carelessly commented that there are so many rape cases, how can we keep tabs on them? As in seriously, if it was your daughter or sister being raped would you still be able to give the same response? That’s when he started arguing that he has brought up his sister in ‘sanskarik’ way so she won’t be raped. ‘Seriously dude, where did you get your logic from’ was all I wanted to ask him. He still argues that even if there ‘might’ (stress’s on the might part) be fault on the guys’ part it is the responsibility of the girl to have prevented it.

Does this mean he would have told his sister or daughter the same thing if it had happened to them? Of course not! This is the problem with the way of thinking of our society, you hear about a rape, you say, “oh that was bad” and all but silently, you are glad that it wasn’t your daughter or sister. Does this mean our society will not speak up against it, until it happens to each and every girl and woman of our society? Something I read in the article about Sharapova not knowing Sachin was “Many argued that since Sharapova was a sportsperson she should know about other sportsmen”. I ask you, aren’t we all humans? Aren’t the girls and women who were raped, humans? Then why aren’t we arguing with the way and the amount of time our government takes to put the culprits behind bars and why aren’t all of us arguing about the safety of our women and children? I ask all those jingoistic fans of Sachin out there, is cricket more important than the safety of the women and girls of our society? All of you spoke up against someone not knowing Sachin, but how is it that there was hardly such an uproar from the entire country about the 2 teenage girls raped and strangled to death in UP, a month and a half ago? Sure there was quite an uproar in the state but what about the country as whole?

Did you know that the policemen who where at the station that day, when the relatives of those girls had gone to lodge a complaint, blamed the teenage girls and their parents for the crime, siding with the culprits? Did you know that if they had taken some action that day then the girls wouldn’t have been raped again and murdered the next day; then they would still be alive today ?

When you can talk so much about something so trivial as someone not knowing Sachin, I ask you, why can’t you stand up against a crime of this magnitude?

Just because it wasn’t your daughters or sisters who were raped, does not mean they weren’t daughters and sisters of someone else! That doesn’t mean we should not fight for their justice!  Every woman, Every girl out there has the complete right to safety as our sisters and daughters do!

I blame the way our society thinks!

Yesterday, all the girls of my school were called by the principal and she blamed only the girls for whatever may happen. May I ask why?

Is it because , as one of politicians Mr.Yadav said “Boys make mistakes , how can we hang them for rape?”

It is because of that illogical way of thinking that our society chooses to follow that we are not safe today!

It is because girls are told to dress properly and told not go out at night instead of telling the boys to respect and Not To Rape, that we are not safe today!

It is because our government still hasn’t implemented all the laws perfectly, that we are not safe today!

It is because sex education is considered unnecessary and bad in our teaching curriculum, that we are not safe today!

It is because talks about rape and safe sex are considered unnecessary at homes, that we are not safe today!

But more than all these, it is because we are not fighting against this, because we are not taking action against this, because we are not speaking up against this, that we are not safe today!

Let’s not forget “From Ignorance Breeds Fear And From Fear, Bigotry”

So let’s all be Against Ignorance!

]]> http://againstignorance.com/rape-victim-blaming/feed/ 0 http://againstignorance.com/battling-ignorance-on-the-frontlines/ http://againstignorance.com/battling-ignorance-on-the-frontlines/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2014 12:28:19 +0000 http://againstignorance.com/?p=323

The constitution of this nation states that it is every citizen’s duty to develop scientific temper. Which means that it is every citizen’s duty to pursue the truth using the scientific method, empirically and to make it known to everyone if there is any kind of foul play involved.

When a purported ‘miracle’ was investigated by Sanal Edamaruku and shown to be a health hazard to all the people consuming ‘holy water’ that was dripping from a statue in Navi Mumbai because the source of the water was a drainage pipe with stagnant water that had alarmingly high amounts of E.coli in it, he was instantly taken on by the community that had been marketing this incident as a miracle.

They hired goons and thugs to threaten him, they filed multiple legal cases against him under the blasphemy law of the country: IPC 295A, an archaic colonial era law that was used to prevent anyone from expressing an opinion contrary to the ruling elite is used nowadays to strong-arm people who have opinions contrary to a majority group, whether it be political, religious or ideological.

Sanal was forced to leave the country, for two major reasons, Firstly, because he faced immediate arrest for doing his duty as a citizen of this nation, by exercising and developing ‘scientific temper’ and his skepticism and may even have saved lives, considering that people were going to the extent of drinking this ‘holy water’.
Secondly, because his life as well as the lives of his family were being threatened by goons hired by this fanatic organization.

I implore you to consider this scenario, consider the fact that in a country of 1.23 billion people, regardless of what one’s opinion is, it will invariably offend at least someone, then does is really make sense to even consider legislatively protecting someone whose views are so feeble that they get offended by the truth? Is it right to force a person who did nothing but ask the organization involved to apologize for perpetrating this hoax (endangering lives in the process) into a self imposed exile? Is it even sane for us to continue with a vestigial law that is a direct reminder of the colonial era when we were subjected to horrendous discrimination based on caste, creed and even skin colour?

Now, I dont know if Ive made a convincing argument for the scenario and thus convinced you to see things as I do, but if you have, then I hope that adding a couple of key facts about this story will not change anything.
The organisations involved in this particular incident were fanatical Catholic organisations namely the Catholic Secular Forum, the Association of Concerned Catholics and the Maharashtra Christian Youth Forum .

I had the honour of meeting Sanal and spending some time with him a while back, a man who had made it his life’s mission to combat superstition and dangerous dogma. He has debunked a number of fraudulent claims and exposed a number of mystics who constantly used to take advantage of the faithful. His life was once threatened by one such charlatan on live television, stating that the man could kill Sanal using his chants alone. The standoff went on with the mystic chanting and Sanal smirking as the country watched that show live. Evidently the supernatural didnt get the memo about helping this mystic out as he made a complete fool of himself. He is the President of the Indian Rationalist Association and currently operates from Helsinki via teleconferencing sessions because of his exile.

The point now however is, should we really put up with this nonsense in the name of being politically correct at times and non confrontational at other times when the risks are so high. Is’nt it always better to question one’s motives and be skeptical about everything around us? Question everything, find answers that are sufficiently reasonable and battle ignorance at every corner, we owe it to ourselves and to everyone in society.

P.S. If you have any ideas about spreading the word and somehow making Sanal’s situation a tad bit better, please do feel free to share.

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We are the social animals, but incidentally, every weak species in the planet are social. The weak find strength in numbers. The numbers ensure one thing, at times of distress, the chances of survival from within a group is more than the chances of survival when alone.
A pack of deer, say a hundred strong, when hunted by Lions, might lose one or two, which is acceptable. Ninety eight survived, which is 98% survival rate. If it was a five strong pack, death of one reduces the survival rate to 80%. So the group has more survival rate, the weak lives together, the strong hunts alone.
So , is being social a sign of strength? Or is it a show of weakness?
Debatable.
Being social has it’s uses. It gives a bigger target to the hunters, it gives a better survival chance to the weak.
So us being social, is just a compensation for our weakness, because when our great grand fathers were faced with some really strong challenge like a mammoth or sabretooth tiger, they had to stand together, some one with a spear might get lucky. People folked around heroes. The weaker accumulated around the comparatively stronger. Societies arose, civilisations came together, space science came to being, earth became a global city.
But while, we pride about being social, and social being something greater than being an animal, is there truly any difference?
Calling ourselves greater than animals, calling ourselves civilised, calling ourselves the masters of all things on earth. Isn’t all this a little premature for a species that came to existence just about 300,000 years ago? A species which is physically unable to survive the nature, if left alone. As compared to the animals that are ready to hunt for food from the point of their birth?
Our species was compromised in physical abilities which augmented the mental capabilities, the process of coming to being of all spcies on earth is a compromise between different abilities.
If humans had greater immunity, that we won’t be falling sick under any circumstance, it might mean lesser response to digestive absorption process.
We are developers of technology, so far reaching that we can go to planets and come back. Animals can’t do that, but a cheetah can run faster, a lion can hunt better, a dog can smell better, birds can fly, and a bat can hear subsonic. We created technology to overcome all these. Does it make us better? Or are we trying to catch up with natural abilities if other species?
But whatever the technology be, whatever our achievements be. Our society is just as animal as it is in the wild.
The strong preys on the weak. The tiger hunts the deer. The powerful humans ‘hunt’ the weaker. The corporates and political barons take away the freedom of the weak. Deers can run from a tiger, but the weaker humans are left with no other option than lie back and die against the massive strength of the powerful.
A tiger protects it’s turf from another, they fight is with the natural weapons they got. Sharp teeth and nails. Strength of their legs and strength of their muscles. Unless severely deprived of food, the animal kingdom extols the fight between equals. While among as humans, the stronger just exterminated the weak. Totally.
This is what civilization has given us. A sense of non existent freedom, where the powerful rules and the weak listens, sometimes the weak grows to power, or the powerful falls, but the equations of power remains the same. It is still death for the weak. Is this the true meaning of being civilized? Where everything that is being done is mirroring the animal world. Can’t we care? Can’t a human being show concern to his fellow being? Or is selfishness the key to survival? What happened to co existence and helping others? What happened to giving a shoulder if support to the ones in need? What happened to the world where people called themselves civilized? While they had babies for breakfast and skulduggery as dessert. Are we not just animals? What is the progress we had?

If we are honest with our selves, with  the deepest parts of our soul, we instinctually know that sexuality is not a neat concept with a stamp and seal of FOREVER on it.  It isn’t simply being attracted to one person, one gender, one expression of love or passion or about sex.  It is many things to each person as well as changeable in both definition and expression.  Humans  try and make sense of love and matters of the heart by making everyone follow the same rules whether imposed by society, a culture, or worse – a religion.   Supposedly life won’t be nearly as messy/chaotic/real/shocking when we all follow the same rules of attraction.

In reality, though, it is messier.   Yes less messy on the outside – the mask we wear to make others happy or to follow the rules and all act the same – but how very messy it is on the inside of each person forced into a role they can’t authentically  play.   Our hearts ache for the true path of love and  we are bruised so deeply when teased, ignored and humiliated by others for our true selves.    We deeply hurt when people malign that which they don’t understand.  We grow up afraid to  show who we really want and how chaotic our own thoughts about acceptance become when we can’t openly and freely follow love where it takes us and who it takes us to.  Living in Fear is a messy, joy-killing and heart damaging life that leaves NO survivors!!!

Of my 9 children more than one of my sweet babies identifies with LGBT. And yet, they don’t. They don’t because they refuse to label themselves ONE thing when they have the capacity to be more than that label. Yes, for the sake of societal change and a much needed movement LGBT is used to bring us together to create action but in reality my children have lived their life as simply themselves supported and loved by those around them.
Growing up they ALL got the same lectures on relationships – straight or gay – like  saying no, accepting no, respecting others, date etiquette, being honest and not playing games with others hearts and safe sex with consenting partners. Never was the issue WHO they love but simply that they love honestly and truthfully. We always welcomed their friends and their loves and never gave thought  of delving into why they are attracted to the same sex or opposite.  How they treated the person was what we gave thought to.

Being attracted to another person – same or opposite sex – doesn’t always mean sexual attraction. It can mean a role model, a example of something we like, a beautiful person, a brave person, a person who loves and accepts others, a person who gives great hugs and a person who listens to our heaviest worries…it can be intimacy on so many other levels that  sex actually pales when we see how intimacy is needed from others we trust and love.  Instead of being concerned or worried or judgmental of another’s sexual preferences let’s be supportive of honest and authentic relationships to each other that express love, compassion, honesty and support. Let’s start the movement of being authentic and real to each other…..the rest will take care of itself.

We have had our hard moments as adjustments and realizations were dealt with and we also have had our fun times. Once my daughter who was dating another woman at the time came in on April Fools days announcing she was pregnant. As a midwife and her mom it took me a moment to understand what she was saying. I first said “but you are dating a girl!! and she said well not at that time!!”  I was punkd good!!!!  I have had friends who made negative remarks about gay people and I had to remove the from my life immediately because I would not accept mean people in my life.  I have learned to stand up to ignorant remarks and not laugh or ignore it- i wanted my kids to always see me standing up for right.

I am so proud of my children that in this crazy world they maintain support and encouragement not only to each other but to those around them. They have followed me to every pride parade, LGBT meeting, demonstrated with signs outside Chik-Fil-A, raised Rainbow flags in our front yard, and sported rainbow clothes and bandanas as well as even arguing with ignorant people they come in contact with.  Even though I would like to take some credit for how my kids turned out–AWESOME!!– i also know that who i am today is because of who my kids are.  I taught them about love and compassion and they taught me about real acceptance and equality and what that means in every day life.  My kids are my biggest fans and I am their biggest supporter!!

I am from a country which cleanly has a convoluted and mistaken idea about what is “Science”. It has all to do with what is being called as “Shastra”, a word that denotes “Science” among other things. But then when we consider all the “other things” that “Science” is involved  in India, I guess the actual Science takes a step back. Here, Palmistry is a Shastra. So is Panch-Pakshi Shastra ( it has something to do with some , “Astro Stellar force of an individual” , which I cant associate to any known form of force that human beings can physically conceive. )

Then there are Parrot toting astrologers, (another link ) they can predict future from the tarot cards picked up by parrots. In a country where cows are holy, I guess this is pretty common. Astrology is considered as a science. Even when educated people consider Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Pluto ( is there Pluto ? ) to affect a man’s life. And also his wife.

I just saw a book called “Biorhythms of the Natal Moon”, Biorhythm? Natal Moon? pseudo-science, meaningless words to impress the poor guy who sees such big words and falls for it. Here is the link to the book, and here is the description.

The system is unfailing as sit is based on natural laws of five elements (Pancha Mahabhutas) combined with astro-stellar force of each individual.This can be successfully applied in all matters of life in the fields of Horary, Electional, Medical Astrology and especially on Natal  Astrology.

What a load of nothing, reading all this is like listening to a Homeopathy doctor who keep on saying.. nothing. Pseudo-Science, Alternative Medicines.

In this country, everything is a science, Vasthu Shastra ( It is the metaphysical plan of a building that incorporates the course of the heavenly bodies and supernatural forces. Meta physical plan of a building? Incorporate heavenly bodies and Supernatural forces? ), A  non-Indian “Shastra”, they call it “Pranic Healing® is a highly developed and tested system of energy energy medicine “. ( What is it? Pranic Healing® is applied on the bio-electromagnetic field known as the aura, or energy body, which is a mold or blueprint that surrounds and interpenetrates the physical body. This energy body absorbs life energy and distributes it throughout the physical body, to the muscles, organs, glands, etc. Bio-electromagnetic field? and the rest of it? A load of mind boggling trash.).

When all these are called Shastra, along with Physics, Chemistry and Biology, what we have done is create a pseudo sense of authenticity for the “Indian/Non-Indian Shastras”. This pseudo-authenticity is utilized by the “doctors/practitioners” to make money, and get themselves some respectability.  Common misconceptions about “Shastra” give rise to a new generation of people who believe all Shastras are authentic.

If anyone has to know what Indian Shastra’s are, check up on Koka Shastra.

The real scientists, try to explain Science in simple words, for the common man to understand. Stephen Hawking did not write “A Brief History of Time” to be read by scientists. Richard Dawkins explained evolutionary biology to the common man in The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene, The Greatest Show on Earth and the rest. How to understand real Science? The one that is said by Dawkins, Hawking, Weinberg makes science simple, they tell things in very simple language,  while all this other “Shastra” scientists make complicated big words to explain what they want to say. Making “Astro Stellar, Bio-electromagnetic, Biorhythm, Memory of Water ( Homeopathy ) etc, sound like things you should know about. But actually , they are collection of words are meaningless. Next time someone tells something like this, Ask them, what is that thing and can I see it and is there proof. I guess, you just got to look at the face of the “Scientist”.

On a side note, I have not seen any reason why all the astrologers are not millionaires.

To my dearest daughter,

Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky, are really huge balls of fire like the Sun and very far away? And how do we know that the Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the Sun?
The answer to these questions is ‘evidence’.

Sometimes evidence means actually seeing (or hearing, feeling, smelling….) that something is true. Astronauts have traveled far enough from the Earth to see with their own eyes that it is round. Sometimes our eyes need help. The ‘evening star’ looks like a bright twinkle in the sky but with a telescope you can see that it is a beautiful ball – the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing (or hearing or feeling…) is called an observation.

Often evidence isn’t just observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there’s been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the dead person!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots of other observations which may all point towards a particular suspect. If a person’s fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn’t prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it’s joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realize that they all fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder.

Scientists – the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the universe – often work like detectives. They make a guess (called a hypothesis) about what might be true. They then say to themselves: if that were really true, we ought to see so-and-so. This is called a prediction. For example, if the world is really round, we can predict that a traveler, going on and on in the same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started. When a doctor says that you have measles he doesn’t take one look at you and see measles. His first look gives him a hypothesis that you may have measles. Then he says to himself: if she really has measles, I ought to see… Then he runs through his list of predictions and tests them with his eyes (have you got spots?), his hands (is your forehead hot?), and his ears (does your chest wheeze in a measly way?). Only then does he make his decision and say, ‘I diagnose that the child has measles.’ Sometimes doctors need to do other tests like blood tests or X-rays, which help their eyes, hands and ears to make observations.

The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something, and warn you against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called ‘tradition’, ‘authority’, and ‘revelation’.

First, tradition. A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion with about 50 children. These children were invited because they’d been brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs. The man with the microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they said shows up exactly what I mean by ‘tradition’. Their beliefs turned out to have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their parents and grandparents, which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either. They said things like, ‘We Hindus believe so and so.’ ‘We Muslims believe such and such.’ ‘We Christians believe something else.’ Of course, since they all believed different things, they couldn’t all be right. The man with the microphone seemed to think this quite proper, and he didn’t even try to get them to argue out their differences with each other. But that isn’t the point I want to make. I simply want to ask where their beliefs came from. They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing; perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and Zeus. But after they’ve been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because people have believed the same thing over centuries. That’s tradition.

The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up, it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was. If you make up a story that isn’t true, handing it down over any number of centuries doesn’t make it any truer!

Most people in England have been baptized into the Church of England, but this is only one of many branches of the Christian religion. There are other branches such as the Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic and the Methodist churches. They all believe different things. The Jewish religion and the Muslim religion are a bit more different still; and there are different kinds of Jews and of Muslims. People who believe even slightly different things from each other often go to war over their disagreements. So you might think that they must have some pretty good reasons – evidence – for believing what they believe. But actually their different beliefs are entirely due to different traditions.

Let’s talk about one particular tradition. Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was so special that she didn’t die but was lifted bodily into Heaven. Other Christian traditions disagree, saying that Mary did die like anybody else. These other religions don’t talk about her much and, unlike Roman Catholics, they don’t call her the ‘Queen of Heaven’. The tradition that Mary’s body was lifted into Heaven is not a very old one. The Bible says nothing about how or when she died; in fact the poor woman is scarcely mentioned in the Bible at all. The belief that her body was lifted into Heaven wasn’t invented until about six centuries after Jesus’s time. At first it was just made up, in the same way as any story like Snow White was made up. But, over the centuries, it grew into a tradition and people started to take it seriously simply because the story had been handed down over so many generations. The older the tradition became, the more people took it seriously. It finally was written down as an official Roman Catholic belief only very recently, in 1950. But the story was no more true in 1950 than it was when it was first invented 600 years after Mary’s death.

I’ll come back to tradition at the end of my letter, and look at it in another way. But first I must deal with the two other bad reasons for believing in anything: authority and revelation.

Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the Pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are old men with beards called Ayatollahs. Lots of young Muslims are prepared to commit murder, purely because the Ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.

When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that they had to believe that Mary’s body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in 1950 the Pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The Pope said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that Pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good reason why, just because he was the Pope, you should believe everything he said, any more than you believe everything that lots of other people say. The present Pope has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If people follow his authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be terrible famines, diseases and wars, caused by overcrowding.

Of course, even in science, sometimes we haven’t seen the evidence ourselves and we have to take somebody else’s word for it. I haven’t with my own eyes, seen the evidence that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Instead, I believe books that tell me the speed of light. This looks like ‘authority’. But actually it is much better than authority because the people who wrote the books have seen the evidence and anyone is free to look carefully at the evidence whenever they want. That is very comforting. But not even the priests claim that there is any evidence for their story about Mary’s body zooming off to Heaven.

The third kind of bad reason for believing anything is called ‘revelation’. If you had asked the Pope in 1950 how he knew that Mary’s body disappeared into Heaven, he would probably have said that it had been ‘revealed’ to him. He shut himself in his room and prayed for guidance. He thought and thought, all by himself, and he became more and more sure inside himself. When religious people just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, even though there is no evidence that it is true, they call their feeling ‘revelation’. It isn’t only popes who claim to have revelations. Lots of religious people do. It is one of their main reasons for believing the things that they do believe. But is it a good reason?

Suppose I told you that your dog was dead. You’d be very upset, and you’d probably say, ‘Are you sure? How do you know? How did it happen?’ Now suppose I answered: ‘I don’t actually know that Pepe is dead. I have no evidence. I just have this funny feeling deep inside me that he is dead.’ You’d be pretty cross with me for scaring you, because you’d know that an inside ‘feeling’ on its own is not a good reason for believing that a whippet is dead. You need evidence. We all have inside feelings from time to time, and sometimes they turn out to be right and sometimes they don’t. Anyway, different people have opposite feelings, so how are we to decide whose feeling is right? The only way to be sure that a dog is dead is to see him dead, or hear that his heart has stopped; or be told by somebody who has seen or heard some real evidence that he is dead.

People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you’d never be confident of things like ‘My wife loves me’.
But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn’t purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.

Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong. There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn’t even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can’t trust them.

Inside feelings are valuable in science too, but only for giving you ideas that you later test by looking for evidence. A scientist can have a ‘hunch’ about an idea that just ‘feels’ right. In itself, this is not a good reason for believing something. But it can be a good reason for spending some time doing a particular experiment, or looking in a particular way for evidence. Scientists use inside feelings all the time to get ideas. But they are not worth anything until they are supported by evidence.

I promised that I’d come back to tradition, and look at it in another way. I want to try to explain why tradition is so important to us. All animals are built (by the process called evolution) to survive in the normal place in which their kind live. Lions are built to be good at surviving on the plains of Africa. Crayfish are built to be good at surviving in fresh water, while lobsters are built to be good at surviving in the salt sea. People are animals too, and we are built to be good at surviving in a world full of … other people. Most of us don’t hunt for our own food like lions or lobsters, we buy it from other people who have bought it from yet other people. We ‘swim’ through a ‘sea of people’. Just as a fish needs gills to survive in water, people need brains that make them able to deal with other people. Just as the sea is full of salt water, the sea of people is full of difficult things to learn. Like language.

You speak English but your friend speaks German. You each speak the language that fits you to ‘swim about’ in your own separate ‘people sea’. Language is passed down by tradition. There is no other way. In England, Pepe is a dog. In Germany he is ein Hund. Neither of these words is more correct, or more truer than the other. Both are simply handed down. In order to be good at ‘swimming about in their people sea’, children have to learn the language of their own country, and lots of other things about their own people; and this means that they have to absorb, like blotting paper, an enormous amount of traditional information. (Remember that traditional information just means things that are handed down from grandparents to parents to children.) The child’s brain has to be a sucker for traditional information. And the child can’t be expected to sort out good and useful traditional information, like the words of a language, from bad or silly traditional information, like believing in witches and devils and ever-living virgins.

It’s a pity, but it can’t help being the case, that because children have to be suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. Lots of what grown-ups tell them is true and based on evidence or at least sensible. But if some of it is false, silly or even wicked, there is nothing to stop the children believing that too. Now, when the children grow up, what do they do? Well, of course, they tell it to the next generation of children. So, once something gets itself strongly believed – even if its completely untrue and there never was any reason to believe it in the first place – it can go on forever.
Could this be what happened with religions? Belief that there is a god or gods, belief in Heaven, belief that Mary never died, belief that Jesus never had a human father, belief that prayers are answered, belief that wine turns into blood – not one of these beliefs is backed up by any good evidence. Yet millions of people believe them. Perhaps this is because they were told to believe them when they were young enough to believe anything.

Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong. Even within Christians, Roman Catholics believe different things from Church of England people or Episcopalians, Shakers or Quakers, Mormons or Holy Rollers, and all are utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong. They believe different things for exactly the same kind of reason as you speak English and someone speaks German.

Both languages are, in their own country, the right language to speak. But it can’t be true that different religions are right in their own countries, because different religions claim that opposite things are true. Mary can’t be alive in the Catholic Republic but dead in Protestant Northern Ireland.

What can we do about all this? It is not easy for you to do anything, because you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: ‘Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?’ And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: ‘What kind of evidence is there for that?’ And if they can’t give you a good answer, I hope you’ll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

Your loving,

Daddy

Note : Letter to his 10 year old daughter Juliet by  Prof. Richard Dawkins.

It is a weird world we live in, it is a weird set of people whom we share this world and it is a weird set of philosophies that we live with. Sometimes you see a something that gives you renewed hope in humanity, but many a times it is exasperation and futility that digitally scroll in front of our eyes.

We live on the third, blue planet from the Sun, which is a spec on the second arm of the small Milkyway Galaxy: A tiny spec in the vast cosmic ocean. But as Carl Sagan said:

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”.

We are part of such a wondrous event, our cells are made of atoms that were made in super novas, our life a unique celebration of the coming together of what may have been multiple galaxies and multiple stars. We breathe the same air that passed through the lungs of every animal that lived before us, we share the same tree of life. ( Yes, I saw Cosmos: A Space Time Odessey ) 
When I learn about the cosmos, its power and what it is, I was filled with wonder. A wonder that I could not contain, a wonder that makes me feel like a child learning to walk, a wonder that makes me a voracious consumer of information, a wonder that truly makes me happy  for living here at this age. Where science is reaching a stage if infinite wonders. Science makes me feel wonderful. It tells me that I am awesome and I am a unique universe in myself.

We read about anti-vaxxers, salt-in-sea-whale-spermers, moon-landing-hoaxers and suddenly our world appears less bright, our achievements seem less poignant, our lives become less meaningful, the wonders seems to shine less.

You cannot know everything about everything in this world. It is a fact, we do not have the time in this world for that, yet. One life time is not enough to consume the knowledge that we have uncovered over the last few hundred years. This was the time of enlightenment. When the human race got out of the shackles of mythology and supernaturalism, to step into a world of knowledge, light, proofs and logic. Becoming rational being, applying ones own thought on topics, proving them wrong or supporting them with new evidence. The gaps where gods could hide became smaller, and smaller, to a point that any mathematician would say, this gaps wont exists for more time.

Gods of weather are a thing of the past, gods for crops and harvests turned into fertilizers and farming. Gods that guarded the sea became GPS and Satellites. These were all attributed to god or gods. Their gods exist in mysteries and when there are no mysteries, they decide to call certain things mysteries and be happy in their claps and hymns.

People do not believe in climate change, people do not believe in Big Bang, people do not believe in evolution. Things like these, don’t need belief. They are true and has evidence to prove it to be true. That is why we go Against Ignorance.

“Nothing is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity”

Martin Luther King Jr.