tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45800186579520719022024-03-13T14:08:19.897-07:00Rationalist HumansShyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-79699878448345920662016-10-18T05:38:00.002-07:002016-10-18T05:38:16.147-07:00Why Islam is False?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">By Ahmad Y.H.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Six years ago, it never
crossed my mind that I would be writing an article like this. I never thought
I’d be looking on the religion I believed in once the way I am today. I was
actually “good at it.” I used to debate atheists and Christians, I had people convert
to Islam, but I never could put the change I went through after that period in
words until I read somewhere that “Religion is like a lonely tree in an empty
field on a foggy day, you think it’s someone who can help you find your way,
but once you get close to it you realize that it’s just a tree, and you keep
walking, never looking back at it the same way.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The problem with Islam
for the outsider is that in the face of it and in the way it’s generally
presented, it kind of makes more sense than any other Abrahamic religion. It’s
kind of more practical, and it has way less nonsense in its teachings, yet still,
it has what is enough for it to share the same quality of being man-made.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ridiculous claims<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Islam makes the claim
that we are created by God, an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful being,
that we are to worship him, and that based on our deeds we will be sent to
either Paradise or Hell. Yet if you ask any Muslim this simple question, “If
you were God/Allah himself, would you create people to test them even though
you know that most of them would fail the test?” they would have no answer,
which goes to show how immoral this teaching is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Quran makes the
claim that it’s the word of God, and that it’s miraculous, and so do Muslims.
Just ask any average Muslim for a proof of that, they will straight away tell
you that the Quran is a linguistic miracle as it claims, that no other book is
like it, that the Arabs at the time of Muhammad—who regarded language, poetry
and eloquence in the highest regards—could never produce anything like it in
its beauty. Yet ask the same person for a single example and then watch them
stand there with no answer, simply because they just repeat what they were
told. It’s true that the Quran’s language is somewhat unique, yet only just
like the works of Shakespeare and the symphonies of Mozart. No one could
produce anything like them, because each carries the style of their author. No
miracle is needed, not to mention that the Arabic speaker can search online to
find that the Quran does in fact contain grammatical and linguistic errors,
which Muslim scholars tried to come up with the most bizarre excuses for as
many as they could of these errors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">As a non-Arabic speaker,
you could simply say, “I don’t speak Arabic, what miracle does the Quran
provide for me? That’s when Muslims start pouring their “Scientific miracles in
the Quran” on you, which is basically a verse in the Quran that is given
steroids and then bent in all shapes and directions to make it look as if it
holds a fact that only modern science could discover. I’ll give you the simple
example of the verses that talk about the creation of the heavens and earth in
(Surah 21: Verse 30). Muslims like to funnily enough claim that this verse is
talking about the big bang, and how life is impossible without water, yet no
scientist have ever said that the heavens and earth were ever connected. They
were not even there at the time of the big bang; at best it’s a bad description
of the big bang. On the contrary these verses rhyme with other ones in other
parts of the Quran that clearly show that the Quranic view of the heavens and
earth is the same as the dome model, and it doesn’t really take a genius to
observe that living creatures die without water now does it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Scientific Errors<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Quran is full of them,
simple as that. It says that asteroids, planets and stars are for shooting devils
that try to listen to the heavens. It says that a famous general (not named but
is believed to be Alexander the Great) has found the sun to be setting in a hot
muddy water spring. It says that an ant spoke and that King Solomon heard it.
It says that heaven (the sky) was raised and is being held so that it won’t
fall on earth. Do I need to go on or are you still laughing?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">You know what would be a
real scientific miracle? If Muslims could bring one verse that claims a fact
that could in no way be known 1400 years ago in a straightforward vocabulary
and then ask the scientific community to verify it, say for example, if the
Quran had a verse that says that a day on Venus is like 243 days of earth days.
That is not too much to ask for.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I have chosen to only
consider the Quran here as it’s what all Muslim, regardless of what sect they
belong to hold as true. Hopefully in a later blog I’ll be able to include the
Hadith (Muhammad's sayings and actions). Until then do not let any Muslim–ignorantly
in their good intention—fool you with a book that you can’t read in its
original language.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ahmad Y.H.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I am a commercial pilot,
guitarist, and a thinker for myself. I also love astronomy, arts, and gaming. I
grew up in a Muslim Arab country and was raised a Muslim, but no longer
identify as one. Sometimes I wish I had not told anyone here this because of the
amount of hate received as a result. People here are not ready for atheism, I
used to be deeply religious, I even had people convert to Islam (yes). The more
you know about Islam, the more you realise it's man-made, nothing special about
it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">(The article is
published in Atheist Republic http://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog/ahmad/why-islam-false)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-2681803482479563132016-06-16T09:49:00.004-07:002016-06-16T09:49:39.253-07:00Will Amway compensate the hospital expenses?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<dt class="comment-author " id="c4455538094666822318" style="background-color: white; background-position: 0px 1.5em; border-top-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16.8px; margin-left: -45px; padding-left: 45px; padding-top: 1.5em;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/profile/04151982592556532988" rel="nofollow" style="color: #7c93a1; text-decoration: none;">RAJAN</a> said...</dt>
<dd class="comment-body" id="Blog1_cmt-4455538094666822318" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16.8px; margin: 0.5em 25px 0.5em 0px;">I started using AMWAY's Protein Powder, Calcium, Vitamins & few other products in Feb. Mar. 2014. After using for 2 months or so, I used to feel unusually weak & extremely tired. So I discontinued with these. But weakness persisted even after that. Later in Apr. 2014 I had internal bleeding, which somehow I could not recognize at that time & hence I neglected it. I pulled on like this till Nov. 2014 when I happened to do Blood test along with few other Medical tests, I found My Platelets to be alarmingly low - 20,000 ( it went down to 6000 - 4000 level later on ). Earlier in Jan. 2014, My Platelets were around 1,02,000, as per my medical check up. I never had any disease of any nature earlier so as to bring down my Platelets to this level & that too at such a short period of time. Even Doctors opined that the Food Supplements as these can do harm, particularly blood related. Friends & relatives told me that there are several news items & articles appearing in the News Papers & in the Internet stating that the Food Supplements are capable of reducing one's platelet levels.<br />
It took almost a year & a half for me to recover from this dreadful disease. The sufferings & agony underwent by me is beyond one's imagination.<br />
Total medical & hospital expenses are around 4 lakh. Will AMWAY Compensate this to me. Is it possible for AMWAY to compensate the sufferings & agony underwent by me. I am not the only one to have such a Bad experience as this. Many are there, but they either do not realize this Or they do not report their complaints. As regards the other products other than Nutrilites, I feel they are too costly, which I demonstrated to my near & dear. Use of natural ingredients in its natural way as prescribed in Ayurveda is the best solution for all health & skin care issues.<br />
Be Indian Buy Indian.</dd></div>
Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-74222650346007133632016-02-12T07:09:00.000-08:002016-02-12T07:09:06.280-08:00Why I am an Atheist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="color: #a90017; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Written By </span></b><b style="line-height: 20.0667px; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Bhagat Singh:</span></b><span style="color: #a90017; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 12.5pt;"> October 5–6, 1930</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #a90017; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Source/Translated</span></b><span style="color: #a90017; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">: Converted from the original Gurmukhi
(Punjabi) to Urdu/Persian script by Maqsood Saqib;<br />
translated from Urdu to English by Hasan for</span><span style="color: #a90017; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><a href="http://marxists.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">marxists.org</span></a><span style="color: #a90017; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">,
2006;<br />
</span><b><span style="color: #a90017; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">HTML/Proofread</span></b><span style="color: #a90017; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">: Andy Blunden and Mike Bessler;<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is a matter of
debate whether my lack of belief in the existence of an Omnipresent, Omniscient
God is due to my arrogant pride and vanity. It never occurred to me that
sometime in the future I would be involved in polemics of this kind. As a
result of some discussions with my friends, (if my claim to friendship is not
uncalled for) I have realised that after having known me for a little time
only, some of them have reached a kind of hasty conclusion about me that my
atheism is my foolishness and that it is the outcome of my vanity. Even then it
is a serious problem. I do not boast of being above these human follies. I am,
after all, a human being and nothing more. And no one can claim to be more than
that. I have a weakness in my personality, for pride is one of the human traits
that I do possess. I am known as a dictator among my friends. Sometimes I am
called a boaster. Some have always been complaining that I am bossy and I force
others to accept my opinion. Yes, it is true to some extent. I do not deny this
charge. We can use the word ‘vainglory’ for it. As far as the contemptible,
obsolete, rotten values of our society are concerned, I am an extreme sceptic.
But this question does not concern my person alone. It is being proud of my
ideas, my thoughts. It cannot be called empty pride. Pride, or you may use the
word, vanity, both mean an exaggerated assessment of one’s personality. Is my
atheism because of unnecessary pride, or have I ceased believing in God after
thinking long and deep on the matter? I wish to put my ideas before you. First
of all, let us differentiate between pride and vanity as these are two
different things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I have never been able to understand how unfounded, baseless
pride or empty vanity can hinder a person from believing in God. I may refuse
to acknowledge the greatness of a really great person only when I have got fame
without doing any serious efforts or when I lack the superior mental powers
necessary to become great. It is easy to understand but how is it possible that
a believer can turn into a non-believer because of his vanity? Only two things
are possible: either a man deems himself to be in possession of Godly
qualities, or he goes a step further and declares himself to be a god. In both
these states of mind he cannot be an atheist in the true sense of the word. In
the first case, it is not an outright rejection of God’s existence; in the
other, he is affirming the existence of some kind of supernatural power
responsible for the working of universe. It does not harm our argument whether
he claims to be a god or considers God to be a reality in existence above his
own being. The real point, however, is that in both cases he is a theist, a
believer. He is not an atheist. I want to bring home this point to you. I am
not one of these two creeds. I totally reject the existence of an Omnipresent,
all powerful, all knowing God. Why so? I will discuss it later in the essay.
Here I wish to emphasise that I am not an atheist for the reason that I am
arrogant or proud or vain; nor am I a demi-god, nor a prophet; no, nor am I God
myself. At least one thing is true that I have not evolved this thought because
of vanity or pride. In order to answer this question I relate the truth. My
friends say that after Delhi bombing and Lahore Conspiracy Case, I rocketed to
fame and that this fact has turned my head. Let us discuss why this allegation
is incorrect. I did not give up my belief in God after these incidents. I was
an atheist even when I was an unknown figure. At least a college student cannot
cherish any sort of exaggerated notion of himself that may lead him to atheism.
It is true that I was a favourite with some college teachers, but others did
not like me. I was never a hardworking or studious boy. I never got an
opportunity to be proud. I was very careful in my behaviour and somewhat
pessimistic about my future career. I was not completely atheistic in my
beliefs. I was brought up under the care and protection of my father. He was a
staunch Arya Samaji. An Arya Samaji can be anything but never an atheist. After
my elementary education, I was sent to D. A. V College, Lahore. I lived in the
boarding house for one year. Besides prayers early in the morning and at dusk
time, I sat for hours and chanted religious Mantras. At that time, I was a
staunch believer. Then I lived with my father. He was a tolerant man in his
religious views. It is due to his teachings that I devoted my life for the
cause of liberating my country. But he was not an atheist. His God was an
all-pervading Entity. He advised me to offer my prayers every day. In this way
I was brought up. In the Non-cooperation days, I got admission to the National
College. During my stay in this college, I began thinking over all the
religious polemics such that I grew sceptical about the existence of God. In
spite of this fact I can say that my belief in God was firm and strong. I grew
a beard and ‘Kais’ (long head of hair as a Sikh religious custom). In spite of
this I could not convince myself of the efficacy of Sikh religion or </span><i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">any religion at all,
for that matter</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. But I had an
unswerving, unwavering belief in God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then I joined the Revolutionary Party. The first leader I met
had not the courage to openly declare himself an atheist. He was unable to
reach any conclusion on this point. Whenever I asked him about the existence of
God, he gave me this reply: “You may believe in him when you feel like it.” The
second leader with whom I came in contact was a firm believer. I should mention
his name. It was our respected Comrade Sachindara Nath Sanyal. He was sentenced
to life imprisonment in connection with Karachi conspiracy case. Right from the
first page of his only book, ‘Bandi Jivan’ (Incarnated Life) he sings praises
to the Glory of God. See the last page of the second part of this book and you
find praises showered upon God in the way of a mystic. It is a clear reflection
of his thoughts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">According to the prosecution, the ‘Revolutionary Leaflet’ which
was distributed throughout India was the outcome of Sachindara Nath Sanyal’s
intellectual labour. So often it happens that in revolutionary activities a
leader expresses his own ideas which may be very dear to him, but in spite of
having differences, the other workers have to acquiesce in them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In that leaflet, one full paragraph was devoted to the praises
of God and His doings which we, human beings, cannot understand. This is sheer
mysticism. What I want to point out is that the idea of denying the existence
of God did not even occur to the Revolutionary Party. The famous Kakory
martyrs, all four of them, passed their last day in prayers. Ram Parshad Bismal
was a staunch Arya Samaji. In spite of his vast studies in Socialism and
Communism, Rajan Lahiri could not suppress his desire to recite hymns from
Upanishads and Gita. There was but only one person among them who did not
indulge in such activities. He used to say, “Religion is the outcome of human
weakness or the limitation of human knowledge.” He is also in prison for life.
But he also never dared to deny the existence of God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Till that time I was only a romantic revolutionary, just a
follower of our leaders. Then came the time to shoulder the whole
responsibility. For some time, a strong opposition put the very existence of
the party into danger. Many leaders as well as many enthusiastic comrades began
to uphold the party to ridicule. They jeered at us. I had an apprehension that
some day I will also consider it a futile and hopeless task. It was a turning
point in my revolutionary career. An incessant desire to study filled my heart.
‘Study more and more’, said I to myself so that I might be able to face the
arguments of my opponents. ‘Study’ to support your point of view with
convincing arguments. And I began to study in a serious manner. My previous
beliefs and convictions underwent a radical change. The romance of militancy
dominated our predecessors; now serious ideas ousted this way of thinking. No
more mysticism! No more blind faith! Now realism was our mode of thinking. At
times of terrible necessity, we can resort to extreme methods, but violence
produces opposite results in mass movements. I have talked much about our
methods. The most important thing was a clear conception of our ideology for
which we were waging a long struggle. As there was no election activity going
on, I got ample opportunity to study various ideas propounded by various writers.
I studied Bakunin, the anarchist leader. I read a few books of Marx, the father
of Communism. I also read Lenin and Trotsky and many other writers who
successfully carried out revolutions in their countries. All of them were
atheists. The ideas contained in Bakunin’s ‘God and State’ seem inconclusive,
but it is an interesting book. After that I came across a book ‘Common Sense’
by Nirlamba Swami. His point of view was a sort of mystical atheism. I
developed more interest in this subject. By the end of 1926, I was convinced
that the belief in an Almighty, Supreme Being who created, guided and
controlled the universe had no sound foundations. I began discussions on this
subject with my friends. I had openly declared myself an atheist. What it meant
will be discussed in the following lines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In May 1927, I was arrested in Lahore. This arrest came as a big
surprise for me. I had not the least idea that I was wanted by the police. I
was passing through a garden and all of a sudden the police surrounded me. To
my own surprise, I was very calm at that time. I was in full control of myself.
I was taken into police custody. The next day I was taken to the Railway Police
lockup where I spent a whole month. After many days’ conversation with police
personnel, I guessed that they had some information about my connection with
the Kakori Party. I felt they had some intelligence of my other activities in
the revolutionary movement. They told me that I was in Lucknow during the
Kakori Party Trial so that I might devise a scheme to rescue the culprits. They
also said that after the plan had been approved, we procured some bombs and by
way of test, one of those bombs was thrown into a crowd on the occasion of
Dussehra in 1926. They offered to release me on condition that I gave a
statement on the activities of the Revolutionary Party. In this way I would be
set free and even rewarded and I would not be produced as an approver in the
court. I could not help laughing at their proposals. It was all humbug. People
who have ideas like ours do not throw bombs at their own innocent people. One
day, Mr. Newman, the then senior Superintendent of CID, came to me. After a
long talk which was full of sympathetic words, he imparted to me what he
considered to be sad news, that if I did not give any statement as demanded by
them, they would be forced to send me up for trial for conspiracy to wage war
in connection with Kakori Case and also for brutal killings in Dussehra
gathering. After that he said that he had sufficient evidence to get me
convicted and hanged.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was completely innocent, but I believed that the police had
sufficient power to do it if they desired it to be so. The same day some police
officers persuaded me to offer my prayers to God two times regularly. I was an
atheist. I thought that I would settle it to myself whether I could brag only
in days of peace and happiness that I was an atheist, or in those hard times I
could be steadfast in my convictions. After a long debate with myself, I
reached the conclusion that I could not even pretend to be a believer nor could
I offer my prayers to God. No, I never did it. It was time of trial and I would
come out of it successful. These were my thoughts. Never for a moment did I
desire to save my life. So I was a true atheist then and I am an atheist now.
It was not an easy task to face that ordeal. Beliefs make it easier to go
through hardships, even make them pleasant. Man can find a strong support in
God and an encouraging consolation in His Name. If you have no belief in Him,
then there is no alternative but to depend upon yourself. It is not child’s
play to stand firm on your feet amid storms and strong winds. In difficult
times, vanity, if it remains, evaporates and man cannot find the courage to
defy beliefs held in common esteem by the people. If he really revolts against
such beliefs, we must conclude that it is not sheer vanity; he has some kind of
extraordinary strength. This is exactly the situation now. First of all we all
know what the judgement will be. It is to be pronounced in a week or so. I am
going to sacrifice my life for a cause. What more consolation can there be! A
God-believing Hindu may expect to be reborn a king; a Muslim or a Christian
might dream of the luxuries he hopes to enjoy in paradise as a reward for his
sufferings and sacrifices. What hope should I entertain? I know that will be
the end when the rope is tightened round my neck and the rafters move from
under my feet. To use more precise religious terminology, that will be the
moment of utter annihilation. My soul will come to nothing. If I take the
courage to take the matter in the light of ‘Reward’, I see that a short life of
struggle with no such magnificent end shall itself be my ‘Reward.’ That is all.
Without any selfish motive of getting any reward here or in the hereafter,
quite disinterestedly have I devoted my life to the cause of freedom. I could
not act otherwise. The day shall usher in a new era of liberty when a large
number of men and women, taking courage from the idea of serving humanity and
liberating them from sufferings and distress, decide that there is no
alternative before them except devoting their lives for this cause. They will
wage a war against their oppressors, tyrants or exploiters, not to become
kings, or to gain any reward here or in the next birth or after death in
paradise; but to cast off the yoke of slavery, to establish liberty and peace
they will tread this perilous, but glorious path. Can the pride they take in
their noble cause be called vanity? Who is there rash enough to call it so? To
him I say either he is foolish or wicked. Leave such a fellow alone for he
cannot realise the depth, the emotions, the sentiment and the noble feelings
that surge in that heart. His heart is dead, a mere lump of flesh, devoid of
feelings. His convictions are infirm, his emotions feeble. His selfish
interests have made him incapable of seeing the truth. The epithet ‘vanity’ is
always hurled at the strength we get from our convictions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You go against popular feelings; you criticise a hero, a great
man who is generally believed to be above criticism. What happens? No one will
answer your arguments in a rational way; rather you will be considered
vainglorious. Its reason is mental insipidity. Merciless criticism and
independent thinking are the two necessary traits of revolutionary thinking. As
Mahatmaji is great, he is above criticism; as he has risen above, all that he
says in the field of politics, religion, Ethics is right. You agree or not, it
is binding upon you to take it as truth. This is not constructive thinking. We
do not take a leap forward; we go many steps back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our forefathers evolved faith in some kind of Supreme Being,
therefore, one who ventures to challenge the validity of that faith or denies
the existence of God, shall be called a Kafir (infidel), or a renegade. Even if
his arguments are so strong that it is impossible to refute them, if his spirit
is so strong that he cannot be bowed down by the threats of misfortune that may
befall him through the wrath of the Almighty, he shall be decried as
vainglorious. Then why should we waste our time in such discussions? This
question has come before the people for the first time, hence the necessity and
usefulness of such long discussions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As far as the first question is concerned, I think I have made
it clear that I did not turn atheist because of vanity. Only my readers, not I,
can decide whether my arguments carry weight. If I were a believer, I know in
the present circumstances my life would have been easier; the burden lighter. My
disbelief in God has turned all the circumstances too harsh and this situation
can deteriorate further. Being a little mystical can give the circumstances a
poetic turn. But I need no opiate to meet my end. I am a realistic man. I want
to overpower this tendency in me with the help of Reason. I am not always
successful in such attempts. But it is man’s duty to try and make efforts.
Success depends on chance and circumstances.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now we come to the second question: if it is not vanity, there
ought to be some sound reason for rejection of age-old belief in God. Yes, I
come to this question. I think that any man who has some reasoning power always
tries to understand the life and people around him with the help of this
faculty. Where concrete proofs are lacking, [mystical] philosophy creeps in. As
I have indicated, one of my revolutionary friends used to say that “philosophy
is the outcome of human weakness.” Our ancestors had the leisure to solve the
mysteries of the world, its past, its present and its future, its whys and its
wherefores, but having been terribly short of direct proofs, every one of them
tried to solve the problem in his own way. Hence we find wide differences in
the fundamentals of various religious creeds. Sometimes they take very
antagonistic and conflicting forms. We find differences in Oriental and
Occidental philosophies. There are differences even amongst various schools of
thoughts in each hemisphere. In Asian religions, the Muslim religion is
completely incompatible with the Hindu faith. In India itself, Buddhism and
Jainism are sometimes quite separate from Brahmanism. Then in Brahmanism
itself, we find two conflicting sects: Aarya Samaj and Snatan Dheram. Charwak
is yet another independent thinker of the past ages. He challenged the Authority
of God. All these faiths differ on many fundamental questions, but each of them
claims to be the only true religion. This is the root of the evil. Instead of
developing the ideas and experiments of ancient thinkers, thus providing
ourselves with the ideological weapon for the future struggle, – lethargic,
idle, fanatical as we are – we cling to orthodox religion and in this way
reduce human awakening to a stagnant pool.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is necessary for every person who stands for progress to
criticise every tenet of old beliefs. Item by item he has to challenge the
efficacy of old faith. He has to analyse and understand all the details. If
after rigorous reasoning, one is led to believe in any theory of philosophy,
his faith is appreciated. His reasoning may be mistaken and even fallacious.
But there is chance that he will be corrected because Reason is the guiding
principle of his life. But belief, I should say blind belief is disastrous. It
deprives a man of his understanding power and makes him reactionary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Any person who claims to be a realist has to challenge the truth
of old beliefs. If faith cannot withstand the onslaught of reason, it
collapses. After that his task should be to do the groundwork for new
philosophy. This is the negative side. After that comes in the positive work in
which some material of the olden times can be used to construct the pillars of
new philosophy. As far as I am concerned, I admit that I lack sufficient study
in this field. I had a great desire to study the Oriental Philosophy, but I
could get ample opportunity or sufficient time to do so. But so far as I reject
the old time beliefs, it is not a matter of countering belief with belief,
rather I can challenge the efficacy of old beliefs with sound arguments. We
believe in nature and that human progress depends on the domination of man over
nature. There is no conscious power behind it. This is our philosophy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Being atheist, I ask a few questions from theists:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1. If, as you believe
there is an Almighty, Omnipresent, Omniscient God, who created the earth or
universe, please let me know, first of all, as to why he created this world.
This world which is full of woe and grief, and countless miseries, where not
even one person lives in peace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2. Pray, don’t say it
is His law. If He is bound by any law, He is not Omnipotent. Don’t say it is
His pleasure. Nero burnt one Rome. He killed a very limited number of people.
He caused only a few tragedies, all for his morbid enjoyment. But what is his
place in history? By what names do we remember him? All the disparaging
epithets are hurled at him. Pages are blackened with invective diatribes
condemning Nero: the tyrant, the heartless, the wicked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One Genghis Khan killed a few thousand people to seek pleasure
in it and we hate the very name. Now, how will you justify your all powerful,
eternal Nero, who every day, every moment continues his pastime of killing
people? How can you support his doings which surpass those of Genghis Khan in
cruelty and in misery inflicted upon people? I ask why the Almighty created
this world which is nothing but a living hell, a place of constant and bitter
unrest. Why did he create man when he had the power not to do so? Have you any
answer to these questions? You will say that it is to reward the sufferer and
punish the evildoer in the hereafter. Well, well, how far will you justify a
man who first of all inflicts injuries on your body and then applies soft and
soothing ointment on them? How far the supporters and organizers of Gladiator
bouts were justified in throwing men before half starved lions, later to be
cared for and looked after well if they escaped this horrible death. That is
why I ask: Was the creation of man intended to derive this kind of pleasure?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Open your eyes and see millions of people dying of hunger in slums
and huts dirtier than the grim dungeons of prisons; just see the labourers
patiently or say apathetically while the rich vampires suck their blood; bring
to mind the wastage of human energy that will make a man with a little common
sense shiver in horror. Just observe rich nations throwing their surplus
produce into the sea instead of distributing it among the needy and deprived.
There are palaces of kings built upon the foundations laid with human bones.
Let them see all this and say “All is well in God’s Kingdom.” Why so? This is
my question. You are silent. All right. I proceed to my next point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You, the Hindus, would say: Whosoever undergoes sufferings in
this life, must have been a sinner in his previous birth. It is tantamount to
saying that those who are oppressors now were Godly people then, in their
previous births. For this reason alone they hold power in their hands. Let me
say it plainly that your ancestors were shrewd people. They were always in
search of petty hoaxes to play upon people and snatch from them the power of
Reason. Let us analyse how much this argument carries weight!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Those who are well versed in the philosophy of Jurisprudence
relate three of four justifications for the punishment that is to be inflicted
upon a wrong-doer. These are: revenge, reform, and deterrence. The Retribution
Theory is now condemned by all the thinkers. Deterrent theory is on the anvil
for its flaws. Reformative theory is now widely accepted and considered to be
necessary for human progress. It aims at reforming the culprit and converting
him into a peace-loving citizen. But what in essence is God’s Punishment even
if it is inflicted on a person who has really done some harm? For the sake of
argument we agree for a moment that a person committed some crime in his
previous birth and God punished him by changing his shape into a cow, cat,
tree, or any other animal. You may enumerate the number of these variations in
Godly Punishment to be at least eighty-four lack. Tell me, has this tomfoolery,
perpetrated in the name of punishment, any reformative effect on human man? How
many of them have you met who were donkeys in their previous births for having
committed any sin? Absolutely no one of this sort! The so called theory of
‘Puranas’ (transmigration) is nothing but a fairy-tale. I do not have any
intention to bring this unutterable trash under discussion. Do you really know
the most cursed sin in this world is to be poor? Yes, poverty is a sin; it is a
punishment! Cursed be the theoretician, jurist or legislator who proposes such
measures as push man into the quagmire of more heinous sins. Did it not occur
to your All Knowing God or he could learn the truth only after millions had
undergone untold sufferings and hardships? What, according to your theory, is
the fate of a person who, by no sin of his own, has been born into a family of
low caste people? He is poor so he cannot go to a school. It is his fate to be
shunned and hated by those who are born into a high caste. His ignorance, his
poverty, and the contempt he receives from others will harden his heart towards
society. Supposing that he commits a sin, who shall bear the consequences? God,
or he, or the learned people of that society? What is your view about those
punishments inflicted on the people who were deliberately kept ignorant by
selfish and proud Brahmans? If by chance these poor creatures heard a few words
of your sacred books, Vedas, these Brahmans poured melted lead into their ears.
If they committed any sin, who was to be held responsible? Who was to bear the
brunt? My dear friends, these theories have been coined by the privileged
classes. They try to justify the power they have usurped and the riches they
have robbed with the help of such theories. Perhaps it was the writer Upton
Sinclair who wrote </span><span style="color: #999999; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Bhagat Singh is
referring to Sinclair’s pamphlet ‘Profits of Religion’ – MIA transcriber) </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">somewhere “only make a man firm believer in
the immortality of soul, then rob him of all that he possesses. He will
willingly help you in the process.” The dirty alliance between religious
preachers and possessors of power brought the boon of prisons, gallows, knouts
and above all such theories for the mankind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I ask why your Omnipotent God does not hold a man back when he
is about to commit a sin or offence. It is child’s play for God. Why did He not
kill war lords? Why did He not obliterate the fury of war from their minds? In
this way He could have saved humanity of many a great calamity and horror. Why
does He not infuse humanistic sentiments into the minds of the Britishers so
that they may willingly leave India? I ask why He does not fill the hearts of
all capitalist classes with altruistic humanism that prompts them to give up
personal possession of the means of production and this will free the whole
labouring humanity from the shackles of money. You want to argue the
practicability of Socialist theory, I leave it to your Almighty God to enforce
it. Common people understand the merits of Socialist theory as far as general
welfare is concerned but they oppose it under the pretext that it cannot be
implemented. Let the Almighty step in and arrange things in a proper way. No
more logic chopping! I tell you that the British rule is not there because God
willed it but for the reason that we lack the will and courage to oppose it.
Not that they are keeping us under subjugation with the consent of God, but it
is with the force of guns and rifles, bombs and bullets, police and militia,
and above all because of our apathy that they are successfully committing the
most deplorable sin, that is, the exploitation of one nation by another. Where
is God? What is He doing? Is He getting a diseased pleasure out of it? A Nero!
A Genghis Khan! Down with Him!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now another piece of manufactured logic! You ask me how I will
explain the origin of this world and origin of man. Charles Darwin has tried to
throw some light on this subject. Study his book. Also, have a look at Sohan
Swami’s “Commonsense.” You will get a satisfactory answer. This topic is
concerned with Biology and Natural History. This is a phenomenon of nature. The
accidental mixture of different substances in the form of Nebulae gave birth to
this earth. When? Study history to know this. The same process caused the
evolution of animals and in the long run that of man. Read Darwin’s ‘Origin of
Species.’ All the later progress is due to man’s constant conflict with nature
and his efforts to utilise nature for his own benefit. This is the briefest
sketch of this phenomenon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Your next question will be why a child is born blind or lame
even if he was not a sinner in his previous birth. This problem has been
explained in a satisfactory manner by biologists as a mere biological
phenomenon. According to them the whole burden rests upon the shoulders of
parents whose conscious or unconscious deeds caused mutilation of the child
prior to his birth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You may thrust yet another question at me, though it is merely
childish. The question is: If God does not really exist, why do people come to
believe in Him? Brief and concise my answer will be. As they come to believe in
ghosts, and evil spirits, so they also evolve a kind of belief in God: the only
difference being that God is almost a universal phenomenon and well developed
theological philosophy. However, I do disagree with radical philosophy. It
attributes His origin to the ingenuity of exploiters who wanted to keep the
people under their subjugation by preaching the existence of a Supreme Being;
thus claimed an authority and sanction from Him for their privileged position.
I do not differ on the essential point that all religions, faiths, theological
philosophies, and religious creeds and all other such institutions in the long
run become supporters of the tyrannical and exploiting institutions, men and
classes. Rebellion against any king has always been a sin in every religion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As regard the origin of God, my thought is that man created God
in his imagination when he realized his weaknesses, limitations and
shortcomings. In this way he got the courage to face all the trying
circumstances and to meet all dangers that might occur in his life and also to
restrain his outbursts in prosperity and affluence. God, with his whimsical
laws and parental generosity was painted with variegated colours of
imagination. He was used as a deterrent factor when his fury and his laws were
repeatedly propagated so that man might not become a danger to society. He was
the cry of the distressed soul for he was believed to stand as father and
mother, sister and brother, brother and friend when in time of distress a man
was left alone and helpless. He was Almighty and could do anything. The idea of
God is helpful to a man in distress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Society must fight against this belief in God as it fought
against idol worship and other narrow conceptions of religion. In this way man
will try to stand on his feet. Being realistic, he will have to throw his faith
aside and face all adversaries with courage and valour. That is exactly my
state of mind. My friends, it is not my vanity; it is my mode of thinking that
has made me an atheist. I don’t think that by strengthening my belief in God
and by offering prayers to Him every day, (this I consider to be the most
degraded act on the part of man) I can bring improvement in my situation, nor
can I further deteriorate it. I have read of many atheists facing all troubles
boldly, so I am trying to stand like a man with the head high and erect to the
last; even on the gallows.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let us see how steadfast I am. One of my friends asked me to
pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, “When your last days come, you will
begin to believe.” I said, “No, dear sir, Never shall it happen. I consider it
to be an act of degradation and demoralisation. For such petty selfish motives,
I shall never pray.” Reader and friends, is it vanity? If it is, I stand for
it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-79511812575166904022015-09-30T09:00:00.000-07:002015-09-30T09:00:40.161-07:00On the Freedom to Offend an Imaginary God<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="border: 0px; color: #c6904d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1.25em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://richarddawkins.net/news_articles?author=Sam+Harris" rel="nofollow" style="border: 0px; color: #0088cc; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">by Sam Harris</a></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 1.25em; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit;"> </span></h2>
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The latest wave of Muslim hysteria and violence has now spread to over twenty countries. The walls of our embassies and consulates have been breached, their precincts abandoned to triumphant mobs, and many people have been murdered—all in response to an unwatchable Internet video titled “Innocence of Muslims.” Whether over a film, a cartoon, a novel, a beauty pageant, or an inauspiciously named teddy bear, the coming eruption of pious rage is now as predictable as the dawn. This is already an old and boring story about old, boring, and deadly ideas. And I fear it will be with us for the rest of our lives.</div>
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Our panic and moral confusion were at first sublimated in attacks upon the hapless Governor Romney. I am no fan of Romney’s, and I would find the prospect of his presidency risible if it were not so depressing, but he did accurately detect the first bleats of fear in the Obama administration’s reaction to this crisis. Romney got the timing of events wrong—confusing, as many did, a statement made by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo for an official government response to the murder of Americans in Libya. But the truth is that the White House struck the same note of apology, disavowing the offending speech while claiming to protect free speech in principle. It may seem a small detail, given the heat of the moment—but so is a quivering lip.</div>
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Our government followed the path of appeasement further by attempting to silence the irrepressible crackpot Pastor Terry Jones, who had left off burning copies of the Qur’an just long enough to promote the film. The administration also requested that Google remove “Innocence of Muslims” from its servers. These maneuvers attest to one of two psychological and diplomatic realities: Either our government is unwilling to address the problem at hand, or the problem is so vast and terrifying that we have decided to placate the barbarians at the gate.</div>
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The contagion of moral cowardice followed its usual course, wherein liberal journalists and pundits began to reconsider our most basic freedoms in light of the sadomasochistic fury known as “religious sensitivity” among Muslims. Contributors to <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 18.8889px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The New York Times</span> and NPR spoke of the need to find a balance between free speech and freedom of religion—as though the latter could possibly be infringed by a YouTube video. As predictable as Muslim bullying has become, the moral confusion of secular liberals appears to be part of the same clockwork.</div>
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Consider what is actually happening: Some percentage of the world’s Muslims—Five percent? Fifteen? Fifty? It’s not yet clear—is demanding that all <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 18.8889px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">non-Muslims</span> conform to the strictures of Islamic law. And where they do not immediately resort to violence in their protests, they threaten it. Carrying a sign that reads “Behead Those Who Insult the Prophet” may still count as an example of peaceful protest, but it is also an assurance that infidel blood would be shed if the imbecile holding the placard only had more power. This grotesque promise is, of course, fulfilled in nearly every Muslim society. To make a film like “Innocence of Muslims” anywhere in the Middle East would be as sure a method of suicide as the laws of physics allow.</div>
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What exactly was in the film? Who made it? What were their motives? Was Muhammad really depicted? Was that a Qur’an burning, or some other book? Questions of this kind are obscene. Here is where the line must be drawn and defended without apology: We are free to burn the Qur’an or any other book, and to criticize Muhammad or any other human being. <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 18.8889px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Let no one forget it</span>.</div>
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At moments like this, we inevitably hear—from people who don’t know what it’s like to believe in paradise—that religion is just a way of channeling popular unrest. The true source of the problem can be found in the history of western aggression in the region. It is our policies, rather than our freedoms, that they hate. I believe that the future of liberalism—and much else—depends on our overcoming this ruinous self-<span class="il">deception</span>. Religion only works as a pretext for political violence because many millions of people actually believe what they say they believe: that imaginary crimes like blasphemy and apostasy are killing offenses.</div>
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Most secular liberals think that all religions are the same, and they consider any suggestion to the contrary a sign of bigotry. Somehow, this article of faith survives daily dis-confirmation. Our language is largely to blame for this. As I have pointed out on many occasions, “religion” is a term like “sports”: Some sports are peaceful but spectacularly dangerous (“free solo” rock climbing, street luge); some are safer but synonymous with violence (boxing, mixed martial arts); and some entail little more exertion or risk of serious injury than standing in the shower (bowling, badminton). To speak of “sports” as a generic activity makes it impossible to discuss what athletes actually do, or the physical attributes required to do it. What do all sports have in common, apart from breathing? Not much. The term “religion” is scarcely more useful.</div>
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Consider Mormonism: Many of my fellow liberals would consider it morally indecent to count Romney’s faith against him. In their view, Mormonism must be just like every other religion. The truth, however, is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more than its fair share of quirks. For instance, its doctrine was explicitly racist until 1978, at which <span class="il">point</span> God apparently changed his mind about black people (a few years after Archie Bunker did) and recommended that they be granted the full range of sacraments and religious responsibilities. By this time, Romney had been an adult and an exceptionally energetic member of his church for more than a decade.</div>
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Unlike the founders of most religions, about whom very little is known, Mormonism is the product of the plagiarisms and confabulations of an obvious con man, Joseph Smith, whose adventures among the credulous were consummated (in every sense) in the full, unsentimental glare of history. Given how much we know about Smith, it is harder to be a Mormon than it is to be a Christian. A firmer embrace of the preposterous is required—and the fact that Romney can manage it says something about him, just as it would if he were a Scientologist proposing to park his E-meter in the Oval Office. The spectrum between rational belief and self-serving delusion has some obvious increments: It is one thing to believe that Jesus existed and was probably a remarkable human being. It is another to accept, as most Christians do, that he was physically resurrected and will return to earth to judge the living and the dead. It is yet another leap of faith too far to imagine, as all good Mormons must, that he will work his cosmic magic from the hallowed ground of Jackson County, Missouri.</div>
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That final, provincial detail matters. It makes Mormonism <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 18.8889px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">objectively</span> less plausible than run-of-the-mill Christianity—as does the related claim that Jesus visited the “Nephites” in America at some <span class="il">point</span> after his resurrection. The moment one adds seer stones, sacred underpants, the planet Kolob, and a secret handshake required to win admittance into the highest heaven, Mormonism stands revealed for what it is: the religious equivalent of rhythmic gymnastics.</div>
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The <span class="il">point</span>, however, is that I can say all these things about Mormonism, and disparage Joseph Smith to my heart’s content, without fearing that I will be murdered for it. Secular liberals ignore this distinction at every opportunity and to everyone’s peril. Take a moment to reflect upon the existence of the musical <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 18.8889px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Book of Mormon</span>. Now imagine the security precautions that would be required to stage a similar production about Islam. The project is unimaginable—not only in Beirut, Baghdad, or Jerusalem, but in New York City.</div>
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The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 18.8889px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">has already been lost</span>. And the only forces on earth that can recover it are strong, secular governments that will face down charges of blasphemy with scorn. No apologies necessary. Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance. And Governor Romney, though he is wrong about almost everything under the sun (including, very likely, the sun), is surely right to believe that it is time our government delivered this message without blinking.</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-375124205132147572015-07-31T05:13:00.000-07:002015-07-31T05:13:13.719-07:00REMEMBERING A HUMANIST 'GURU'-- MN ROY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="line-height: 16.0799999237061px;">-</span><span style="line-height: 16.0799999237061px;"> </span><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=100001583978925" href="https://www.facebook.com/babu.gogineni.9" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; line-height: 16.0799999237061px; text-decoration: none;">Babu Gogineni</a></div>
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<span style="line-height: 16.0799999237061px;">Apparently today is Guru purnima - messages of how important a Guru is on this full-moon day are flooding us. On TV they are prea</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; line-height: 16.0799999237061px;">ching why it is important to lay down our full trust at the feet of a Guru in order to reach salvation. We are being told how obedience to a Guru is an important tradition in India. TV screens are showing statues of Shirdi Sai Baba being showered with milk. They are pouring milk - food produced by an animal they consider holy, food which their holy animal produced for its babies - after taking it away from the animals and instead of feeding their own children with the food produced by another mother, are pouring it on the head of a statue of a man who himself never did this.</span></div>
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This is not how Humanists deal with their teachers. A Humanist 'guru' is valuable but not Holy! A Humanist 'guru' teaches how to ask the questions rather than supply the answers! A Humanist 'guru' is a friend, a philosopher and a guide but never the final authority! They are not 'gurus' at all in the traditional authoritarian mould - they think and they teach how to think independently. and they promote Human values and independent inquiry.</div>
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The Carvakas, Ajita Kesakambali, The Buddha, Socrates, down the line to Vemana, Voltaire, Emmanuel Kant, Diderot, Bertrand Russell, Jawaharlal Nehru, Einstein, Karl Popper, John Dewey, Ambedkar, Tarkunde, Indumati Parikh, H. Narasimhaiah ... and a thousand others like them fall in this tradition.</div>
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In any case, since every one is remembering a favourite teacher, apart from thinking of parents, and school and college teachers, I take the opportunity to recall the life of - M.N. Roy who was introduced to me in my father's library who gripped my imagination with his extraordinary life story in his autobiography and inspired me with his vision in his writings. Long years ago I wrote the shortish entry about him in the MS Encarta Encyclopaedia. There are so many references that Google throws up - and you will also see that his home in Mexico is today a trending Pub, called M.N. Roy!</div>
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Actually, M.N. Roy seems to be gaining new traction - I was asked to speak about him twice in recent days and am receiving several inquiries about him as well. I also had the chance to speak of him in a major TV interview to be aired Sunday night 2 August.</div>
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M.N. Roy was called the most consistent political prophet of the 20th century: he was one of the first internal critiques of Marxism, foresaw the fall of the British Empire, showed why the Nazis and the Fascists were even more dangerous than the British colonialists, proposed the first draft Constitution for a future Independent India and issued dire warnings re. cultural nationalism that would lead ultimately to cultural fascism.</div>
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Here is something I wrote about him many years ago.</div>
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M.N. ROY - PHILOSOPHER OF THE HUMANIST REVOLUTION</div>
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Humanist philosopher and activist with rare intellectual gifts and vast practical experience, M.N. Roy was a leading participant in revolutionary movements in four countries spread-out in three continents.</div>
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A school dropout, Roy joined the ranks of the Bengal militants as a teenager, and soon became a leader of the revolutionary movement which aimed to overthrow British colonialism by means of an armed insurrection. Roy's clandestine travels in search of German and Japanese arms to achieve this purpose began in 1915. In the course of the next 15 years, Roy realised that the Japanese and the Germans had their own designs on India, discovered Karl Marx in a New York library, established in Mexico in 1917 the first communist party outside the Soviet Union, disagreed at the Second Communist International in 1920 with Lenin on the National and Colonial Question, was soon elected to the highest decision making bodies of the Communist International, travelled to China as sole emissary of the Communist International with a brief to transform the Right Wing Kuomintang into a revolutionary instrument in the hands of the proletariat, befriended Gramsci and Einstein, inspired and influenced Nehru, earned universal respect for his courage of convictions, and was expelled in 1929 from the Communist International for his heretical and non-doctrinaire views.</div>
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Even though much is now known about this phase of Roy's life, one of his biographers despaired that the story of his early life may never be fully told: official documents and his notes relating to China and Russia were suppressed or destroyed because he fell out with Stalin, the manuscript of a magnum opus The Rise and Fall of the British Empire written in 1929 and predicting the fall of the Empire was destroyed by the Nazis, to complicate matters further, Roy wrote in several languages - Bengali, English, Spanish, French, German and Russian - and often in proscribed journals and used over 15 noms de plume Indeed, M.N. Roy is itself the most permanent of the several pseudonyms that Narendranath Bhattacharya (1887 - 1954) adopted in 1917 to escape from the American police when he jumped bail!</div>
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Roy's clandestine return to India in 1930 after spending 15 years in 17 countries finally led to his arrest, in camera trial and imprisonment by the British. Despite the difficult conditions of his imprisonment as an ordinary criminal and not as a political prisoner, Roy continued with his prolific writing, and produced 9000 pages of writings, some of which have later been published as Fascism; Historical Role of Islam; Heresies of the 20th Century; Nationalism: An Antiquated Cult; Science and Philosophy etc. As a tribute to his sole companion in prison, Roy also wrote an amusing best selling critique of Hinduism: Memoirs of a Cat!</div>
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On release from prison in 1936, Roy formally announced his break with Marxism by rejecting historical determinism and class war, and declared that without a cultural and philosophical revolution no social, political and economic revolution was possible. Terming this desired cultural transformation a 20th century renaissance, Roy later founded in 1946, along with his second wife Ellen Gottschalk and other colleagues, the Indian Renaissance Institute for 'spreading the spirit of Enlightenment, Humanism and the Search for Truth'.</div>
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Roy formulated his materialistic approach in 22 thesis where he attempted to restore to 19th century Radicalism its humanist essence, and hence called his philosophy Radical Humanism. Roy's approach integrates the scientific attitude and the democratic spirit - democracy is not merely a process, it is a system of values. For the Radical Humanist, the quest for freedom and search for truth constitute the basic urge of human progress. The quest for freedom is the continuation, on a higher level - of intelligence and emotion - of the biological struggle for existence.</div>
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The method and programme of a social revolution must therefore be based on a reassertion of the basic principle of social progress. Hence, the programme of the humanist revolution will be based on the principles of freedom, reason and social harmony. In this way, Radicalism gives to freedom a moral-intellectual as well as social content; and it also offers a comprehensive theory of social progress in which both the dialectics of economic determinism and dynamics of ideas find their due recognition; and it deduces from the same a method and programme of social revolution in our time. Radical Humanism provides an approach to the reconstruction of the world as a commonwealth and fraternity of free men, by the collective endeavour of spiritually emancipated moral men.</div>
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In 1944 Roy prepared a draft Constitution for India where he proposed an alternative system of political economy emphasising decentralisation and devolution of power, which would be in tune with his humanistic approach of restoring sovereignty to the individual in society. Roy soon rejected political parties themselves as legitimate instruments for the spread of democratic values, and in 1948 dissolved his own Radical Democratic Party which he had founded in 1940 to promote a humanist approach to politics and (most unpopularly) to support Britain's anti-fascist war efforts. Roy's alternative proposal for a humanist society was a party-less but organised democracy with a network of people's committees as its base. His ideas are elaborated in a collection of speeches: People, Power and Parties. After dissolution of the political party, Roy spent the rest of his life working for his cherished Renaissance, and the Radical Humanist Movement joined hands with similar groups in Europe and America to found in 1952 IHEU. Roy was closely involved in the establishment of the IHEU, but could not attend due to an accident to which he finally succumbed. He was elected a founder Vice-President in absentia.</div>
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A revolutionary at heart, and fired by the ideal of Human Freedom, Roy finally became a philosopher of the modern renaissance and that of the humanist revolution.</div>
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Roy's approach is summarised by Justice Tarkunde: "A humanist revolution, which is designed to achieve the ideal of comprehensive democracy, must necessarily partake of the character of the ideal. A humanist revolution is also a path to be traversed rather than a goal to be achieved. A Radical Humanist who traverses the way to a humanist revolution is, therefore, succeeding all the time".</div>
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And Roy's life is summarised in the eloquent tribute paid by the late Prof. G.D. Parikh: "Beginning as a nationalist worshipping geography, he could make any land his own. Appearing to swear by a dogma, he could struggle as a rationalist; seeming to believe in ideologies, he retained an indomitable interest in ideas. Founder of a political party, he never became partisan. A politician universally respected for honesty and integrity, a man of action hailed as a philosopher. He did not strive for greatness, he strove to lead a good life and to bring such living within the reach of all those who live".</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-68410462999543457882015-07-29T09:29:00.000-07:002015-07-29T09:29:32.437-07:00Good Boy Scouts don't need God<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="line-height: 21.3pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Tom Krattenmaker</span></b></div>
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<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Who said people can't be moral without
religion?</span></i></div>
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HIGHLIGHTS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #646464; font-family: Symbol;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">·</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><b><span style="color: #646464; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">When will the Boy
Scout accept the nonreligious? </span></b><span style="color: #646464; font-family: Symbol; line-height: 10pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><b style="line-height: 10pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="color: #646464; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Undergirding the Boy
Scouts' ban is the dubious premise that people cannot be moral without
religion. </span></b><span style="color: #646464; font-family: Symbol; line-height: 10pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><b style="line-height: 10pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="color: #646464; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It's the right thing to do.</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 13.75pt;">Depending on what happens at the Boy
Scouts' national meeting this month,gay Scouts might soon be accepted</span><b><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 13.75pt;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 13.75pt;"><b><span style="color: #444444;">i</span></b><span style="color: #333333;">nto the venerable organisation. Even
then, there will remain a large and growing group of Americans still barred by
the Boy Scouts.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">When will the Boy Scouts accept the
non-religious?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Boy Scouts of America</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">recognizes an
impressive range of religious affiliations that qualify one as
"reverent" and, thus, eligible to participate. Two dozen varieties </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">of Christianity get
the nod, plus Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Bahai'ism and more.
However, the non-religious are not welcome, and that poses a problem the Boy
Scouts should address in addition to the sexual orientation question drawing so
much attention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Undergirding the Boy Scouts' ban is the
dubious premise that people cannot be moral without religious belief. It's an
assumption that non-believers are wisely challenging as the public face of
atheism moves away from angry anti-religious diatribes, typified by the late</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Christopher Hitchens,
toward a positive expression of non-belief summed up by the pithy phrase "good without god."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Can atheists be good Scouts? Neil Polzin's </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">story suggests a
resounding "yes." Polzin, now 29, contributed to a successful
life-and-death rescue operation during a Boy Scouts backpacking trip when he
was 13. He later became an Eagle Scout and an aquatics program director as an
adult. In 2009, as he tells it, a rival who wanted his job made an issue of the
fact that Polzin is an atheist. Hoping to clear the air, Polzin notified his
regional council of his atheism — and was unceremoniously booted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">One would think that his long track
record would have proved his skill and moral worthiness by that point. But all
the years of good</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Scouting</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">and service were
erased by a single dreaded word: atheist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Margaret Downy, </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 13.75pt;">president of the Freethought Society (and the mother of the a young man </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 13.75pt;">who was barred from
the Scouts as a boy), is leveraging the new focus on Boy Scout inclusion
policies to prompt a fresh look at its ban on atheists. Downey welcomes the new
momentum for inclusion of gay Scouts. Even so, she asks, why no consideration
of non-believing boys, too? "There is no question that people can be good
without a god belief," Downey says. The Boy Scouts offer a great program,
she adds, "yet their bigoted membership policies are harmful."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Welcoming non-believers might seem a
difficult bridge to cross for the Boy Scouts and traditionalists who defend
current membership requirements. Wouldn't acceptance of atheists force
revisions to the Boy Scout Oath, which pledges duty to god and country</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">? Why should a private,
voluntary organization have to do that, particularly when most Scout troops are chartered by churches? </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">These and other obstacles can be
navigated through nuance, common sense and mutual respect. Let the churches
that charter Scout troops adopt the attitude that churches usually adopt when
it comes to non-believers: Welcome them in the hope of having a positive influence
on them. Require atheist Scouts to respect the religion of their fellow Scouts,
leaders and sponsors, with the assurance that their non-belief will be
respected in kind. And, as Downey suggests, an additional "o" can go
a long way; let the atheist Scout pledge his devotion to "good"
rather than "God."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Ultimately, it would be self-defeating
for the Boy Scouts to forfeit the chance to spread Scouting skills and values
among the population of people who identify as atheist, agnostic, or otherwise
not religious. More and more youths are growing up in non-religious homes; why
would the organization squander the opportunity to serve and influence these
boys?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Yes, as a private association, the Boy
Scouts have a right to decide for themselves who's in and who's out. But just
because they can exclude atheists doesn't mean they should.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">"There are millions of young,
secular Americans committed to civic duty, community service and personal
improvement," says August Brunsman, executive director of the Secular
Student Alliance. "They're looking to serve their country alongside their
religious friends, and it's long past time for the Boy Scouts to wake up and
let these admirable young men serve."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It's the right thing to do. And here's
the bonus: Once the Boy Scouts open up to non-believers, they're going to
discover they have a lot to contribute — just as they've been contributing all
along.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Tom Krattenmaker is a member of USA TODAY's Board of
Contributors and author of the new book</span></i></b><b><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span></i></b><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The
Evangelicals You Don't Know</span></b><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">.</span></i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-72126260313824974422015-06-21T05:07:00.003-07:002015-06-21T05:07:30.169-07:00NO, THE FISHES DID NOT FALL FROM THE SKY!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="fwb fcg" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" style="font-weight: bold;"><a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=100001583978925&extragetparams=%7B%22fref%22%3A%22nf%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/babu.gogineni.9?fref=nf" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Babu Gogineni</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.38;">Sometimes Fishes, sometimes frogs, sometimes tadpoles have been reported as falling from the sky - like rain. Starting from Pliny the Elder in the 1st century in Rome many have reported this phenomenon. The French 'scientist' Ampere who did great research on electricity also investigated the phenomenon. In 1861 there was reportedly a huge rain of fish in Singapore!</span></div>
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The modern understanding has been - for the last 80 years or so - that when a fast moving hurricane passes over a water body it forms a water spout which extends as far high as the clouds, and that this water spout sucks up the water and along with that some of the small aquatic animals. And when the twister loses its force the fish are deposited where ever that spot is where it weakened.</div>
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Actually no one has so far seen fish fall down - and this fact is crucial. All people who have reported this have seen the fish on the ground or on the surface. This was also the case of Nandigama of Krishna District, by the river Krishna.<br />Last night huge quantities of fish were found in paddy fields with knee deep water and in some cases on the roads in Nandigama. As they were not there in the evening and they appeared in the morning in their fields, and since fish cannot come out of their water bodies themselves, many thought that it rained fish. While some believe in the tornado/hurricane theory, others believe that strong winds and hurricanes carry the frogs and fish up into the clouds and at some point they drop from there.</div>
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Actually, all these explanations and assumptions are most likely to be wrong. It is not difficult to find out why this explanation is wrong.</div>
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The easiest is that no cloud is able to carry the weight of 200 gm frog or a 3 kilo fish - clouds are simply water vapour. Secondly hurricanes are not gentle things - they are violent and destroy - it would be rare for a hurricane to gently pick up aquatic creatures and gently deposit them elsewhere - do note that these fish and frogs are alive when found. This is also why the cloud theory can be dismissed right away. The lowest clouds are somewhere around 2 kilometres above our heads. No frog or fish dropped from there is likely to be left in one piece - or without their insides splattered everywhere. Remember that the fish spotted are alive. Finally the columns seen when a 'water spout' is formed is really a rotating column of air with water vapour and mist.</div>
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So what could be the most plausible explanation?</div>
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Much depends on the species of fish. We know that some fish can jump / fly as much as 50 meters in one go. We also know that some fish do 'travel;' on land. They can for brief periods breathe air, and using their tail and fins can push themselves forward. Some of the fish, like the cat fish, do travel like that. For the non specialist it looks like the fish is struggling because it is out of water, where as in reality it is inelegantly trying to move forward without legs.</div>
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Why would fish want to travel? That is not a strange phenomenon to the animal kingdom. As explained in THE BIG QUESTION WITH BABU GOGINENI (DO ANIMALS HAVE CALENDARS? <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=W_EHF3qfe4w" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">youtube.com/watch?v=W_EHF3qfe4w</a>) (pls add www before youtube) we see crores of red crabs migrating annually on the Christmas Islands near Australia - to lay eggs. In Kenya we have the extraordinary spectacle of the crores of wildebeest rushing on for their migration. Fish travel thousands of kilometers in the sea to mate or to lay eggs. Salmon swim against the water current to go and lay eggs. Turtles and their arrival on India's East Coast is well known and much studied,</div>
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This is what must have happened with the fish found in Nandigama and none of these explanations involve the sky as the source of the fish!</div>
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-The first rains made fish look for ways to move out of their habitat. They probably were in nearby ponds or in the river. They may have been washed out with the flood waters from these natural water bodies.</div>
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- The fish tried to migrate on land and are the ones akin to cat fish.</div>
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- Some poor fish farmer's tank may have breached releasing the well fed almost uniformly 3 kilo weighted fish into the paddy fields.</div>
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The reason there are also many frogs on the ground after the rains is that frogs are amphibeans, they too swarm, and need water to keep their skins moist. Further, frogs and earth worms and other creatures which have been living in the dry land are forced out of their habitation because they are flooded.</div>
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So nothing came from the sky, except the rain water!</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-83632432730609488352015-04-27T04:27:00.002-07:002015-04-27T04:27:39.474-07:00HOUNDED BY MULLAHS: A MUSLIM WOMAN WRITER IS FORCED TO FLEE HOME<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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HOUNDED BY MULLAHS: A MUSLIM WOMAN WRITER IS FORCED TO FLEE HOME</h1>
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<span class="info float_left blue_anchor" id="reporters_details" style="float: left; margin: 10px 0px !important; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">by <span class="blue" style="color: rgb(0, 114, 188) !important; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">firstpost</span> last updated on April 26, 2015 at 12:30 pm</span><div class="clear" style="clear: both; font-size: 1px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">
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As a poet, Sharmila Seyyid is used to dealing in imagination but even she couldnt have imagined that an innocuous remark in an innocuous BBC interview would trigger a chain of events that would turn her world upside down--ultimately forcing her to go into hiding in a place far away from her home.A Muslim woman journalist, writer and activist, Seyyid is being hounded by fundamentalist groups not in one but two countries--because of her outspoken criticism of certain Islamic practices such as the purdah system, and her warnings against creeping Talibanisation of the Muslim community.A Tamil-speaking Sri Lankan and a single mother with a small child, she finds herself stuck in a safe house in Chennai after being forced to flee her home in Batticaloa, eastern Sri Lanka. This followed a systematic and vicious campaign of intimidation, including death threats and threats to kidnap her young sister with whom she ran an English language school. The school was attacked, and an attempt made to burn it down.But if Seyyid thought that moving to India would buy her peace, she had not reckoned with the long reach of her tormentors. For, far from dying down, the hate campaign against her has grown in recent weeks with Indian Muslim fanatics taking over where their Sri Lankan comrades left off.Yet, surprisingly, Seyyids nightmare has attracted little media attention outside Tamil-speaking circles. Among the national English language newspapers, only The Hindu took note of it courtesy an op-ed (Chronicle of a Death Online, 7 April) by Kannan Sundaram, editor of Kalachuvadu, a Tamil monthly.Meanwhile, vigilantism has gone online with her critics taking their dirty tricks to social media.A few weeks ago, they warned her to remove all of her photographs without purdah from Facebook within 24 hours. When she refused, an audio of a lewd conversation between a high-ranking Tamil Nadu police officer and a female subordinate was posted with a photo of Seyyid tagged to it suggesting that the woman the officer was talking to was her. It was widely shared on the net, and though she was finally able to get it off the web the damage had been done.Emboldened by their success, the bullies attempted another even more obscenestunt. This time, they posted what sounded like a real news item of a woman being raped and murdered attached to a photoshopped picture of Seyyids body.It went viral, and such was its impact that her family and friends thought it was true and landed up at her home. Her father Seyyid Ahmed has made a formal complaint to the police alleging a concerted attempt to incite hatred against his daughter. He says his family is living a nightmare; and fears for their safety.Now back to the BBC interview which triggered Seyyids nightmare.It happened in 2012 when speaking to the BBCs Tamil Service she backed legalising sex work arguing that it would help protect sex-workers. It was not part of any agenda. She was simply answering a specific question about her debut collection of poems Siragu Mulaitha Penn (The women who grew wings) in which one poem was about sex workers.Fundamentalist groups, who already had her in their sights because of her progressive (allegedly anti-Islamic) views, seized on her remarks to launch an all-out attack accusing her of endorsing prostitution, considered haram in Islam.The threatening calls began soon after. By the next morning, Ms. Seyyid had received hundreds of missed calls on her mobile phone. There were news reports that condemned her for supporting sex work and the social media joined in, according to The Hindu article.Threats and intimidation continued even after she apologised for unwittingly hurting anyones sentiments. But she refused to retract her statement under duress. This provoked the mullahs to step up their attacksfinally forcing her to seek refuge in India, only to discover that you can run away from your country but you cant run away from the growing menace of religious fundamentalism.Sayyid has been praised for standing up to the bullies.Horrid as this entire episode is, I think, Sharmilas courage, strength and tenacity will inspire women everywhere to fight oppression, human rights activist Mari Marcel Thekaekara wrote on her blog.Seyyids case comes on the heels of that of Mumbai-based Shirin Dalvi, then editor of an Urdu daily, Avadhnama. She was targeted in a similar fashion for hurting Muslim sentiments. Her crime was that while writing about the murder of Charlie Hebdo journalists , she reproduced the magazines cover carrying a cartoon of Prophet Mohammad. And though she was quick to publish an unconditional front page apology, it did not satisfy Islams self-appointed custodians who continued their relentless smear campaign.On their complaint, she was arrested, and multiple cases were registered against her for outraging religious feelings with malicious intent. Things reached a point where she felt so insecure that she took to wearing burqa to escape attention and to move out her family home.Unfortunately, few liberal Muslims stood up for her. In fact, a senior Urdu newspaper editor admitted that elements of the Urdu Patrakar Sangh, which represents Urdu journalists and of which she was a member, were party to the cases filed against Dalvi.Understandably, Muslims resent being called upon to condemn every act of Muslim extremism by arguing why the entire community should be held accountable for a few rotten apples. But here was a Muslim woman being harassed by their own lunatic fringe.In Seyyids case, though, some liberal Tamil Muslims have joined an online protest but thats not enough. Contrast this with the strong liberal Hindu response in the Perumal Murugan case. They rushed to support the Tamil writer when he was attacked by Hindutva groups objecting to certain portions in one of his best-known books.What if Dalvi and Sayyid had been victims of Hindu fanatics? Im sure Muslims would have reacted with outrage. And rightly so. But such selective outrage not only weakens the broader fight against religious fanaticism but gives a handle to the Hindu Right to exploit such cases for their own political ends.It is not about defending individuals but about standing up for civilised behaviour when it is under threat irrespective of the source of the threat. For, if allowed to go unchallenged, this lunatic fringe can also turn against us one day.</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-28600198448887268362015-03-25T08:21:00.002-07:002015-03-25T08:21:45.791-07:00‘Don’t call me Muslim, I am an Atheist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #7f7f7f; font-size: 18px; line-height: 18px; text-transform: uppercase;">SUVOJIT BAGCHI</span></h1>
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<img alt="Taslima Nasreen. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury" class="main-image" height="413" src="http://www.thehindu.com/multimedia/dynamic/02348/21TH_TASLIMA_2348121e.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(235, 235, 235); margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 2px; vertical-align: bottom;" title="Taslima Nasreen. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury" width="318" /><div class="photo-caption" style="border: 0px; clear: both; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 12px; margin: 0px 0px 36px; outline: 0px; padding: 5px 0px 3px; position: relative;">
<br />Taslima Nasreen. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury</div>
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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: normal;">Writer-in-exile Taslima Nasreen calls for reining in religious fundamentalism, saying that criticism of religion is not the domain of non-Muslim intellectuals alone</span></div>
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<i style="outline: 0px;">Writer Taslima Nasreen fled Bangladesh in 1994 when extremists threatened to kill her for criticising Islam, and has been living in exile since. Her country has, in recent times, seen many intellectuals expelled or killed. Ahmed Rajib Haider, an atheist blogger who wrote under the name Thaba Baba, was hacked to death after the Shahbag protests in 2013. In February this year, atheist blogger Avijit Roy was killed in Dhaka by extremist groups for his writings on the Bangla blog Mukto-Mona (Free Thinker) that he founded. Feminist and secular humanist Ms Nasreen now lives in New Delhi. In an interview with <b style="outline: 0px;">Suvojit Bagchi</b>, she spoke about the shrinking space for free thinkers in Bangladesh and says that Islam cannot be exempt from the critical scrutiny that other religions go through.</i></div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;">Tell us a little bit about Avijit Roy.</b></div>
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I knew Avijit for a long time. He started Mukto-Mona to accommodate writings of atheists and humanists, as newspapers do not publish their work. Avijit was a science blogger and a free thinker, an atheist and a rationalist, who wanted to secure a space to dissect and debate issues. Later, he turned his blogs into books. Mukto-Mona became a window through which people could look at each other and raise questions about all religions, including Islam. In Bangladesh, over a period, the space for free thinkers has been disappearing. Avijit brought it back using a new platform… precisely why his contribution is outstanding.</div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;">When and how exactly did this space for free thinkers start shrinking?</b></div>
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The change was noticed at the time of General Hussain Ershad in the mid-1980s. A secular Constitution was given away to make Islam the state religion. I have witnessed the mass movement of 1969, the newly independent country of the 70s… the situations then were different. People could voice their opinion and women hardly wore the hijab or the burqa. But society slowly changed. For instance, whatever I wrote in the 1980s, early 90s — criticising Islam and women’s condition in Islamic societies — was published in newspapers with a wide circulation. But that cannot be imagined now. Freedom of expression is an alien term now.</div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;">Why has this change taken place?</b></div>
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The progressive community is partly responsible. When I was expelled in 1994, the whole of society went silent. If this community had objected then, Bangladesh would not have had a society in which an Avijit is hacked to death, a Humayun Azad targeted or an Ahmed Rajib Haider killed for criticising Islam. Perhaps the conflict in Bangladesh is whether to have a country on the basis of language or on the basis of religion.</div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;">How can this be resolved?</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 30px; outline: 0px;">“</span>We must stop stoning women to death in the name of religion. Laws should be based on equality, not on religion<span style="font-size: 30px; outline: 0px;">”</span></div>
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Bangladesh was born on the idea of a secular Bengali nation. Since 1952, Bengali Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians have wanted their state language to be Bengali, not Urdu. The people who opposed our independence, along with the Pakistani army, killed three million Bengalis in 1971 and are now involved in the Islamisation of Bangladesh. They are killing free thinkers and intellectuals. Pakistan is a country which is based on religion. But the Bangladesh constitution must remain secular, and separate state from religion. We must have secular education rather than education through madrassas. The government must not let the country become a safe haven for religious extremists.<div style="outline: 0px;">
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<b style="outline: 0px;">People say your criticism of religion is rather excessive and provocative.</b></div>
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I said religion oppresses women. Laws should be based on equality, not on religion; women should have equal rights in marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance. I said we must stop stoning women to death in the name of religion. Is that provocation? Every civilised state has questioned the relationship of the state with religion, eventually disentangling and distancing the two. Islam should not be exempt from the critical scrutiny that other religions have gone through. My opinion is based on my belief in secular humanism. If that is provocative, then it is absolutely necessary to provoke.</div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;">But it's often said that your writings strengthen fundamentalism.</b></div>
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Governments are strengthening fundamentalism, not me. When religious fanatics set a price on my head, instead of taking action against them, the government targeted me. The Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party joined hands with these forces and so did the caretaker government. Even in West Bengal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led government expelled me; the Imam Barkati of the Tipu Sultan Mosque, who set a price on my head, was adored by the Marxists. Interestingly, Mamata Banerjee befriended the Imam as soon as she came to power.</div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;">Another allegation is that by making statements against Islam, you strengthen the right wing in India.</b></div>
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Absolute nonsense. I criticise all religions, including Hinduism. I opposed Hindu godmen, rituals such as karva chauth and shivaratri, and condemned the oppression of Muslims in Gujarat. I donated Rs.10,000 to poet Shankha Ghosh, who was collecting funds for rehabilitating Gujarat riot victims.I objected to the oppression of Hindus in Bangladesh, Jews in Nazi Germany, Muslims in Bosnia, Palestine and Christians in Pakistan. I also wrote in favour of films such as PK, Water and The Last Temptation of Christ. Please don’t call me a Muslim, I am an atheist.</div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;">When Indian rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and CPI leader Govind Pansare were killed, you were silent.</b></div>
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Who told you? You need to check my Twitter account to find out about my reactions and how the Hindu right-wing elements abused me for that. However, it is true that I consider Islamic fundamentalism a bigger threat.</div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;">As do many western countries…</b></div>
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Only the western world thinks that Islamic fundamentalism is dangerous? Rather, it’s the opposite — the West is keen to side with Islamists.</div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;">As a Muslim writer, your work often reflects the West’s paranoia about Islam. Is the West forcing you to say what it wants?</b></div>
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Are you saying Muslims cannot have a mind of their own to criticise their religion? Is criticism of religion the domain of non-Muslim intellectuals? That is an anti-Muslim remark, seriously.</div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;">What could be Bangladesh’s future?</b></div>
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The country will be heading for a complete disaster if Islamic terrorists are not brought to justice. However, given the past record, nothing will happen and such incidents will increase in the coming months, as they are intrinsically connected with politics<br />.</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-64393361282349610212015-03-02T06:21:00.002-08:002015-05-07T10:25:54.157-07:00Bangladeshis protest after atheist writer Avijit Roy hacked to death<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #767676; font-size: 1.125rem; line-height: 1.375rem;">Hundreds rally against fundamentalism in Dhaka as Islamists claim responsibility for murder of prominent US-Bangladeshi blogger</span></h1>
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<figure class="media-primary media-content media-primary--showcase" data-component="image" itemprop="associatedMedia image" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" style="margin: 0px; position: relative;"><a class="article__img-container js-gallerythumbs" data-is-ajax="" data-link-name="Launch Article Lightbox" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/27/bangladeshi-protests-over-of-atheist-writer-avijit-roy#img-1" style="background: transparent; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><div class="js-image-upgrade " data-src="//i.guim.co.uk/media/w-{width}/h--/q-95/eb00bbf353458e9d3543eea469b44b9064d83570/0_169_3147_1888/1000.jpg">
<img alt="Bangladeshi secular activists take part in a torch-lit protest against the murder of Avijit Roy, founder of the <em>Mukto-Mona</em> (Free-mind) blog site. He had received death threats from Islamists before arriving in the country. " class="maxed responsive-img" src="http://i.guim.co.uk/media/w-620/h--/q-95/eb00bbf353458e9d3543eea469b44b9064d83570/0_169_3147_1888/1000.jpg" itemprop="contentURL representativeOfPage" style="border: 0px; display: block; text-align: justify; width: 620px;" /><span class="rounded-icon article__fullscreen" style="background-color: rgba(51, 51, 51, 0.6); border-radius: 62.5rem; display: inline-block; height: 2.75rem; margin: 0.625rem; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 2.75rem;"><i class="i i-expand-white" style="-webkit-background-size: contain; background-image: url(data:image/svg+xml; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: contain; bottom: 0px; display: inline-block; height: 1.375rem; left: 0px; margin: auto; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; width: 1.375rem;"></i></span></div>
</a><figcaption class="caption caption--main caption--img" itemprop="description" style="color: #767676; font-family: 'Guardian Text Sans Web', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; line-height: 1rem; max-width: none; min-height: 1.75rem; padding: 0.5rem 0px 1.5rem; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 0.75rem;"> </span><b>Bangladeshi secular activists take part in a torch-lit protest against the murder of Avijit Roy, founder of the<em>Mukto-Mona</em> (Free-mind) blog site. He had received death threats from Islamists before arriving in the country. Photograph: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty</b></figcaption></figure><br />
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<span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a class="tone-colour" data-link-name="auto tag link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/saad-hammadi" itemprop="url name" rel="author" style="background: transparent; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Saad Hammadi</a></span> in Dakha and <span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a class="tone-colour" data-link-name="auto tag link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/marktran" itemprop="url name" rel="author" style="background: transparent; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">Mark Tran</a></span></div>
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<time class="content__dateline-wpd js-wpd content__dateline-wpd--modified tone-colour" data-timestamp="1425065747000" datetime="2015-02-27T19:35:47+0000" itemprop="datePublished" style="color: #005689; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block;">Friday 27 February 2015 </time></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333;">Hundreds of people have taken to the streets of Dhaka
in protest at the murder of a prominent secular American blogger of Bangladeshi
origin who was hacked to death with machetes after he allegedly received
threats from Islamists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Avijit Roy and his wife, Rafida Ahmed, were attacked
on a crowded pavement as they were returning from a book fair at Dhaka
University. Ahmed, who is also a blogger, lost a finger and remains under
treatment at the Square hospital in Dhaka.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The attack took place at about 8.45pm on Thursday
evening when a group of men ambushed the couple as they walked toward a
roadside tea stall, with at least two of the attackers hitting them with meat
cleavers. The attackers then ran off into the crowds. Two blood-stained
cleavers were found after the attack, said police.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=ansar+bangla+7"><span style="color: #005689;">A tweet from Ansar Bangla 7</span></a>, a previously
unknown fundamentalist group, said: “Anti-Islamic blogger US-Bengali citizen
Avijit Roy is assassinated in capital #Dhaka due to his crime against #Islam.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Roy, founder of the <i>Mukto-Mona</i> (Free-mind)
blog, which featured articles on scientific reasoning and religion, had been
receiving threats for some time. A Facebook posting this month said that he
would be killed once he arrived in the capital. The couple arrived in Dhaka on
15 February.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“There have been <a href="http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2015/02/27/avijit-murdered-by-extremists-family"><span style="color: #005689;">Facebook posts stating Avijit Roy cannot be killed
because he lives in America. He would be killed when he arrives in Dhaka</span></a>.
They must have followed his movement,” Ajoy Roy, Avijit’s father, told the
Guardian. He criticised the police for failing to act despite being allegedly
just metres away from the scene of the attack.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Police said the murder was being given high priority
and had been referred to the detective branch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">“This is being treated as a highly important and
sensitive case, which is why the case has been handed to the detective branch,”
said Shibly Noman, assistant police commissioner of the Dhaka metropolitan
police. Several hundred people – including teachers, publishers and fellow
writers – joined a rally on Friday near the site of the attack carrying banners
saying: “We want justice” and “Down with fundamentalism”.</span><span style="color: #6e6e6e; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imran Sarker, head of the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/bangladesh"><span style="color: #005689;">Bangladesh</span></a> bloggers’
association, said the protests would not let up unless those responsible for
Roy’s killing were caught. “Avijit’s killing once again proved that there is a
culture of impunity in the country,” Sarker told Agence France-Presse. “The
government must arrest the killers in 24 hours or face non-stop protests.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Roy, who was 42, had been a target of extremist groups
for at least five years because of his writings on secular and lesbian and gay
issues in his columns and blogs, his father said. “There isn’t one specific
writing I can think of which caused this attack on him,” he added.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Roy, a mechanical engineer, was a regular columnist of
the Bangladeshi news agency <a href="http://bdnews24.com/"><span style="color: #005689;">bdnews24.com</span></a>. He wrote about 10 books,
including the best-selling<i>Biswasher Virus</i> (Virus of Faith), as well
as his blog, which championed liberal secular writing in the Muslim-majority
nation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“His murder only highlights the point, being made
consistently by many, that much more needed to be done to protect these people
and the state has been failing to do its job,” said Toufique Imrose Khalidi,
editor of <a href="http://bdnews24.com/"><span style="color: #005689;">bdnews24.com</span></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Roy is the second blogger suspected to have been
killed by fundamentalist groups in the past two years. Ahmed Rajib Haider was
killed in February 2013 for posts antagonising extremist groups. After Haider’s
death, Bangladesh’s hardline Islamist groups started to protest against other
campaigning bloggers, accusing them of blasphemy and calling a series of
nationwide strikes to demand their execution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The government reacted by arresting some atheist
bloggers. It also blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the furore
over blasphemy, as well as stepping up security for the bloggers. In 2004,
Humayun Azad, a prominent writer and teacher at Dhaka University, was seriously
injured in an attack when he was returning from the same book fair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The attacks starkly underline an increasing gulf
between secular bloggers and conservative Islamic groups, often covertly
connected with Islamist parties. Secularists have urged authorities to ban
religion-based politics, while Islamists have pressed for blasphemy laws to
prevent criticism of their faith.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/islam"><span style="color: #005689;">Islam</span></a> is Bangladesh’s state religion but the
country is governed by secular laws based on British common law, and Sheikh
Hasina, the prime minister, has repeatedly said she will not give in to
religious extremism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The latest murder comes against a backdrop of
political violence since the beginning of January. More than 100 people have
been killed in molotov cocktail attacks amid a political deadlock. The
opposition <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/bangladesh"><span style="color: #005689;">Bangladesh</span></a> Nationalist party is demanding
a fresh election administered by an independent interim government, which the
ruling Awami League flatly rejects.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 12.9pt; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Robert Gibson, the British high commissioner, <a href="https://twitter.com/HCRobertGibson/status/571120260549451776"><span style="color: #005689;">expressed his shock</span></a> at Roy’s murder and
the recent violence in the country. Baki Billah, a friend of Roy and a blogger,
told Independent TV that Roy had been threatened earlier by people upset at his
writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“He was a free thinker. He was a Hindu but he was not
only a strong voice against Islamic fanatics but also equally against other
religious fanatics,” Billah said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-81302817985332106582015-03-02T06:18:00.001-08:002015-03-02T06:18:21.798-08:00Avijit Roy was hacked to death for his secular views. Let’s share his story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Those who challenge religion challenge power. Exercising free speech puts some people in grave danger, and the least we can do is back them up</div>
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</a><figcaption class="caption caption--main caption--img" itemprop="description" style="color: #767676; font-family: 'Guardian Text Sans Web', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 0.75rem; line-height: 1rem; max-width: none; min-height: 1.75rem; padding: 0.5rem 0px 1.5rem;"> Activists light lamps in protest against the killing of Avijit Roy in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photograph: Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/Barcroft</figcaption></figure><div class="content__meta-container js-football-meta u-cf
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“No trips to the old country, yeah?” This was the brief message I got from a dear friend who sent me an email with a link to the news that Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi blogger well-known for his secular views, had been <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/27/bangladeshi-protests-over-of-atheist-writer-avijit-roy" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">hacked to death</a> in the streets of Dhaka.</div>
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“The old country”. How romantic that sounds. I was born in Bangladesh and have wonderful memories of being a child there, roaming the countryside, experiencing a sense of freedom and peace I’ve never felt since. It is a land of lush green fields nourished by a brightly burning sun. This is what is depicted on the nation’s flag, a design that rejects the religious symbolism found in those of India and Pakistan – the latter of which Bangladesh fought a bitter <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2008/apr/10/bangladesh1971" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">war of independence</a>, partly so it could become a secular state. But that early commitment to secularism has been betrayed and instead Bangladesh has become a nation where those promoting secular values can expect to live their lives in fear, be threatened with death, and even brutally killed.</div>
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<a class="flyer__link" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="background: transparent; color: inherit; cursor: pointer;">Bangladeshis protest after atheist writer Avijit Roy hacked to death</a></h1>
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Avijit Roy was an American citizen of Bangladeshi origin who was an engineer by profession and the author of several books on topics including science, atheism and free expression. He founded the <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.mukto-mona.com/" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">Mukto-Mona</a> (“free mind”) blog which supported and nurtured a community of free-thinkers, secularists, atheists and humanists in Bangladesh. Avijit wanted “to build a society which will not be bound by the dictates of arbitrary authority, comfortable superstition, stifling tradition, or suffocating orthodoxy but would rather be based on reason, compassion, humanity, equality and science.”</div>
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He was a hero to many Bangladeshis, but few if any in the west will be declaring that they are Avijit in the way so many of us announced <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2015/jan/12/je-suis-charlie-around-the-world-in-pictures" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">we were Charlie</a> after the<a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/07/satirical-french-magazine-charlie-hebdo-attacked-by-gunmen" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">Charlie Hebdo attacks</a>. But there are lots of Avijits outside the west, genuinely brave individuals who put their lives on the line to uphold values and freedoms that we take for granted: <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Rajib_Haider" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">Ahmed Rajib Haider</a>, another Bangladeshi atheist who was killed because of what he wrote; <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="https://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions/saudi-arabia-free-raif-badawi-flogged-blogger" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">Raif Badawi</a>, a Saudi Arabian blogger who has been flogged in public and is in prison for “insulting Islam”; <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jan/13/egyptian-student-jailed-for-proclaiming-that-he-is-an-atheist" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">Karim Ashraf Mohamed al-Banna</a>, jailed for three years in Egypt, again for “insulting Islam” by simply declaring he is an atheist; <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kacem_El_Ghazzali" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">Kacem El Ghazzali</a>, who lives in exile after death threats in his home country of Morocco – the list is long and depressing.</div>
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The attacks in Paris <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/15/copenhagen-police-investigate-whether-gunman-acted-alone" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">and Copenhagen</a> shocked the west, but killing people for expressing their views is almost routine elsewhere. According to <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://iheu.org/fot14/" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">a report</a> by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, “Non-religious people are being targeted by ‘hate campaigns’ in countries around the world.”</div>
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After the Charlie Hebdo killings there was much debate about whether the cartoonists had provoked the killers, about the cartoonists “punching down”, about whether there should be limits to giving offence and so on. The brutal, cowardly murder of Avijit Roy shows how dangerous such arguments can be. Challenging religion is challenging those in power, and many pay a heavy price – we betray people like Avijit when we are half-hearted in our commitment to free speech.</div>
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<a class="flyer__link" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" style="background: transparent; color: inherit; cursor: pointer;">Avijit Roy, the blogger who wouldn't back down in the face of threats</a></h1>
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Let’s not be mistaken about why Avijit was killed: he said and wrote things some people didn’t like. There will be more such killings. More people will die because they say, write or draw things that other people don’t like. More people will die until we are all united in stating unequivocally that anyone who commits such atrocities is entirely in the wrong, that it is unjustifiable to kill people who “offend” you, that <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://end-blasphemy-laws.org/" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">blasphemy is a ridiculous notion</a> and that no one should ever, ever be killed for “insulting” a religion or drawing a cartoon.</div>
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I didn’t know Avijit Roy, but I know people who did, and their grief and rage at his murder is far more keenly felt than mine. For that reason I had reservations about writing this piece, but Avijit’s daughter <a class=" u-underline" data-component="in-body-link" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://iheu.org/avijit-roy-by-his-daughter-everyone-share-his-story-%E2%80%8Ewordscannotbekilled/" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">said that:</a> “To say that I’m furious or heartbroken would be an understatement. But as fucked up as the world is, there’s never a reason to stop fighting to make it better … What would help me the most right now is if everyone (even people I’ve never met) could share his story.” So that’s what I’m doing here.</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-86222979744338134372014-12-25T05:14:00.003-08:002014-12-25T05:14:55.739-08:00AP CID attaches properties of NMart<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Andhra Pradesh Crime
Investigation Department has attached the movable and immovable properties of
Surat-based New Look Traders also known as NMart. The fixed deposits Rs. 2.61
crore parked in various banks throughout the country and immovable properties
situated in Surat, Gujarat worth about Rs. 9.27 crore have been attached by the
CID.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It may be recalled that following a
complaint lodged by Vijayawada-based Corporate Frauds Watch, the then
superintendent of police of Prakasam District Dr Kolli Raghuram Reddy
registered a criminal case against the NMart for indulging in illegal money
circulation scheme offering huge returns in a short span of time. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The police have also frozen the accounts of
NMart at that time. The chairman of NMart, Gopal Singh Shekhawat, was arrested
and thrown behind bars. The Prakasam police have also identified the immovable
properties belonging to Gopal Shekhawat in Surat and other places after
freezing the bank accounts in various banks throughout the country.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The NMart has mobilised deposits from
people of various districts in the then undivided State of Andhra Pradesh and
all over the country too. After enrolling members into the scheme by collecting
Rs. 5,500 per member, the NMart also induced them to enrol more members into
the scheme with an incentive of Rs. 200 per member.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Subsequently, the case was transferred to
the CID for further investigation. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The CID officials attached the properties
which would be subsequently auctioned and deposited with the government. <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-6466857709000538962014-07-14T04:17:00.000-07:002014-07-14T04:17:05.464-07:00Glaze Trading India aka GALWAY takes unemployed youth for a ride<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">In what could be described as the copycat of Amway, Glaze
Trading India aka GALWAY, started its cheating operations throughout the
country. At least 10,000 youths from all over the two States of Telangana and Andhra
Pradesh have already been cheated by this fraudulent company according to
series of visuals telecast by TV6 Telugu news channel. </span><span style="font-size: large;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSh5dv3tbZI</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The news channel exposed the dubious ways of this company
which has been inducing youths with job opportunity with a monthly salary of
Rs. 50,000. However, they were asked to pay Rs. 8,000. After reaching their
office in the state of Jharkhand, they were asked to enroll at least four
members each to earn unlimited income. Then they realised that they were deceived.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The youths were asked to stay in a dungeon and they were
hardly given any work though they were promised to undertake bar-coding,
creating e-mail IDs and other works. Dejected, these youths returned to their places. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A glance at its website, http://www.globalglaze.in/company/our-management/ shows that it also sells products of Homecare, personal care etc. Not only that they also sell products for farming like G-PSEUDO+ G-DERMA+ G-SEAPOWER, soil conditioner. Anyway one should appreciate the sense of humour of these fellows. They openly claim it is 'pseudo' and selling. Don't ask what 'derma' has to do with biofertiliser. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Behind all the product sales under direct selling mode, the real cheating is illegal money circulation scheme. This is how Amway has been inspiring many a crook to indulge in illegal money circulation schemes in the name of direct selling.</span></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-77062093009340697612014-07-02T23:09:00.000-07:002014-07-02T23:09:00.434-07:00Cops tracking ‘Diamonds’ of Amway<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<strong style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Hyderabad: </strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">The top police officials of the two States of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have launched a massive hunt to track down the ‘Diamonds’ and other members of Amway India Enterprises to make sure their role in the multilevel marketing scam of the US-based company.</span><br />
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<img align="middle" alt="Amway India Enterprises" height="360" src="http://thehansindia.com/assets/amway(1).jpg" style="color: #555555; margin: 5px 10px 5px -10px; padding: 0px; width: 620px;" width="640" /></div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">According to informed sources, the police of both the states are even sharing information regarding the list of upline members in the hierarchy of Amway India Enterprises, who share commissions on purchase of products by the downline members. The sources said that in the business model of Amway, the upline members who enroll new members into the scheme of purchasing products received sizable income which was nothing but easy and quick money. “Once the list of the ‘Diamonds’ is prepared and their income on commissions is confirmed, we go ahead with arresting them also,” the source said.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">Meanwhile, the police on Monday arrested the MD and CEO of Amway, William S Pinckney, who is presently in Charlapalli Jail and presented him in the judicial court which sent him to remand for 14 days. The MD was sent back to Charlapalli Jail. It is learnt that the police would file a petition in the court seeking custody of Pinckney for interrogation to take the criminal case against him to a logical conclusion.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">A police official said that the law would take its own course and charge sheets would be filed soon in the criminal cases against Amway India. In another twist to the criminal case against the MD of Amway, the High Court did not issue any orders on the petition filed by Amway India to exempt its managing director Pinckney from surrendering the passport to the police department. However, the passport surrender order issue has become an impediment for the release of Pinckney on bail. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Verdana; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2014-07-02/Cops-tracking-%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%98Diamonds%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%99-of-Amway-100323</span></span></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-74386064621280049402013-11-29T08:23:00.002-08:002013-11-29T08:25:21.923-08:00Why I am an Atheist: Bhagat Singh 1931<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #a90017; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">Written</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #a90017; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">: October 5–6, 1930</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">Source/Translated</span>: Converted from the original Gurmukhi (Punjabi) to Urdu/Persian script by Maqsood Saqib;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">translated from Urdu to English by Hasan for <a href="http://marxists.org/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">marxists.org</a>, 2006;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">HTML/Proofread</span>: Andy Blunden and Mike Bessler;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">CopyLeft</span>: Creative Common (Attribute & ShareAlike) <a href="http://marxists.org/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">marxists.org</a> 2006.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It is a matter of debate whether my lack of belief in the existence of an Omnipresent, Omniscient God is due to my arrogant pride and vanity. It never occurred to me that sometime in the future I would be involved in polemics of this kind. As a result of some discussions with my friends, (if my claim to friendship is not uncalled for) I have realised that after having known me for a little time only, some of them have reached a kind of hasty conclusion about me that my atheism is my foolishness and that it is the outcome of my vanity. Even then it is a serious problem. I do not boast of being above these human follies. I am, after all, a human being and nothing more. And no one can claim to be more than that. I have a weakness in my personality, for pride is one of the human traits that I do possess. I am known as a dictator among my friends. Sometimes I am called a boaster. Some have always been complaining that I am bossy and I force others to accept my opinion. Yes, it is true to some extent. I do not deny this charge. We can use the word ‘vainglory’ for it. As far as the contemptible, obsolete, rotten values of our society are concerned, I am an extreme sceptic. But this question does not concern my person alone. It is being proud of my ideas, my thoughts. It cannot be called empty pride. Pride, or you may use the word, vanity, both mean an exaggerated assessment of one’s personality. Is my atheism because of unnecessary pride, or have I ceased believing in God after thinking long and deep on the matter? I wish to put my ideas before you. First of all, let us differentiate between pride and vanity as these are two different things.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have never been able to understand how unfounded, baseless pride or empty vanity can hinder a person from believing in God. I may refuse to acknowledge the greatness of a really great person only when I have got fame without doing any serious efforts or when I lack the superior mental powers necessary to become great. It is easy to understand but how is it possible that a believer can turn into a non-believer because of his vanity? Only two things are possible: either a man deems himself to be in possession of Godly qualities, or he goes a step further and declares himself to be a god. In both these states of mind he cannot be an atheist in the true sense of the word. In the first case, it is not an outright rejection of God’s existence; in the other, he is affirming the existence of some kind of supernatural power responsible for the working of universe. It does not harm our argument whether he claims to be a god or considers God to be a reality in existence above his own being. The real point, however, is that in both cases he is a theist, a believer. He is not an atheist. I want to bring home this point to you. I am not one of these two creeds. I totally reject the existence of an Omnipresent, all powerful, all knowing God. Why so? I will discuss it later in the essay. Here I wish to emphasise that I am not an atheist for the reason that I am arrogant or proud or vain; nor am I a demi-god, nor a prophet; no, nor am I God myself. At least one thing is true that I have not evolved this thought because of vanity or pride. In order to answer this question I relate the truth. My friends say that after Delhi bombing and Lahore Conspiracy Case, I rocketed to fame and that this fact has turned my head. Let us discuss why this allegation is incorrect. I did not give up my belief in God after these incidents. I was an atheist even when I was an unknown figure. At least a college student cannot cherish any sort of exaggerated notion of himself that may lead him to atheism. It is true that I was a favourite with some college teachers, but others did not like me. I was never a hardworking or studious boy. I never got an opportunity to be proud. I was very careful in my behaviour and somewhat pessimistic about my future career. I was not completely atheistic in my beliefs. I was brought up under the care and protection of my father. He was a staunch Arya Samaji. An Arya Samaji can be anything but never an atheist. After my elementary education, I was sent to D. A. V College, Lahore. I lived in the boarding house for one year. Besides prayers early in the morning and at dusk time, I sat for hours and chanted religious Mantras. At that time, I was a staunch believer. Then I lived with my father. He was a tolerant man in his religious views. It is due to his teachings that I devoted my life for the cause of liberating my country. But he was not an atheist. His God was an all-pervading Entity. He advised me to offer my prayers every day. In this way I was brought up. In the Non-cooperation days, I got admission to the National College. During my stay in this college, I began thinking over all the religious polemics such that I grew sceptical about the existence of God. In spite of this fact I can say that my belief in God was firm and strong. I grew a beard and ‘Kais’ (long head of hair as a Sikh religious custom). In spite of this I could not convince myself of the efficacy of Sikh religion or <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">any religion at all, for that matter</em>. But I had an unswerving, unwavering belief in God.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then I joined the Revolutionary Party. The first leader I met had not the courage to openly declare himself an atheist. He was unable to reach any conclusion on this point. Whenever I asked him about the existence of God, he gave me this reply: “You may believe in him when you feel like it.” The second leader with whom I came in contact was a firm believer. I should mention his name. It was our respected Comrade Sachindara Nath Sanyal. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with Karachi conspiracy case. Right from the first page of his only book, ‘Bandi Jivan’ (Incarnated Life) he sings praises to the Glory of God. See the last page of the second part of this book and you find praises showered upon God in the way of a mystic. It is a clear reflection of his thoughts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">According to the prosecution, the ‘Revolutionary Leaflet’ which was distributed throughout India was the outcome of Sachindara Nath Sanyal’s intellectual labour. So often it happens that in revolutionary activities a leader expresses his own ideas which may be very dear to him, but in spite of having differences, the other workers have to acquiesce in them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In that leaflet, one full paragraph was devoted to the praises of God and His doings which we, human beings, cannot understand. This is sheer mysticism. What I want to point out is that the idea of denying the existence of God did not even occur to the Revolutionary Party. The famous Kakory martyrs, all four of them, passed their last day in prayers. Ram Parshad Bismal was a staunch Arya Samaji. In spite of his vast studies in Socialism and Communism, Rajan Lahiri could not suppress his desire to recite hymns from Upanishads and Gita. There was but only one person among them who did not indulge in such activities. He used to say, “Religion is the outcome of human weakness or the limitation of human knowledge.” He is also in prison for life. But he also never dared to deny the existence of God.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Till that time I was only a romantic revolutionary, just a follower of our leaders. Then came the time to shoulder the whole responsibility. For some time, a strong opposition put the very existence of the party into danger. Many leaders as well as many enthusiastic comrades began to uphold the party to ridicule. They jeered at us. I had an apprehension that some day I will also consider it a futile and hopeless task. It was a turning point in my revolutionary career. An incessant desire to study filled my heart. ‘Study more and more’, said I to myself so that I might be able to face the arguments of my opponents. ‘Study’ to support your point of view with convincing arguments. And I began to study in a serious manner. My previous beliefs and convictions underwent a radical change. The romance of militancy dominated our predecessors; now serious ideas ousted this way of thinking. No more mysticism! No more blind faith! Now realism was our mode of thinking. At times of terrible necessity, we can resort to extreme methods, but violence produces opposite results in mass movements. I have talked much about our methods. The most important thing was a clear conception of our ideology for which we were waging a long struggle. As there was no election activity going on, I got ample opportunity to study various ideas propounded by various writers. I studied Bakunin, the anarchist leader. I read a few books of Marx, the father of Communism. I also read Lenin and Trotsky and many other writers who successfully carried out revolutions in their countries. All of them were atheists. The ideas contained in Bakunin’s ‘God and State’ seem inconclusive, but it is an interesting book. After that I came across a book ‘Common Sense’ by Nirlamba Swami. His point of view was a sort of mystical atheism. I developed more interest in this subject. By the end of 1926, I was convinced that the belief in an Almighty, Supreme Being who created, guided and controlled the universe had no sound foundations. I began discussions on this subject with my friends. I had openly declared myself an atheist. What it meant will be discussed in the following lines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In May 1927, I was arrested in Lahore. This arrest came as a big surprise for me. I had not the least idea that I was wanted by the police. I was passing through a garden and all of a sudden the police surrounded me. To my own surprise, I was very calm at that time. I was in full control of myself. I was taken into police custody. The next day I was taken to the Railway Police lockup where I spent a whole month. After many days’ conversation with police personnel, I guessed that they had some information about my connection with the Kakori Party. I felt they had some intelligence of my other activities in the revolutionary movement. They told me that I was in Lucknow during the Kakori Party Trial so that I might devise a scheme to rescue the culprits. They also said that after the plan had been approved, we procured some bombs and by way of test, one of those bombs was thrown into a crowd on the occasion of Dussehra in 1926. They offered to release me on condition that I gave a statement on the activities of the Revolutionary Party. In this way I would be set free and even rewarded and I would not be produced as an approver in the court. I could not help laughing at their proposals. It was all humbug. People who have ideas like ours do not throw bombs at their own innocent people. One day, Mr. Newman, the then senior Superintendent of CID, came to me. After a long talk which was full of sympathetic words, he imparted to me what he considered to be sad news, that if I did not give any statement as demanded by them, they would be forced to send me up for trial for conspiracy to wage war in connection with Kakori Case and also for brutal killings in Dussehra gathering. After that he said that he had sufficient evidence to get me convicted and hanged.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was completely innocent, but I believed that the police had sufficient power to do it if they desired it to be so. The same day some police officers persuaded me to offer my prayers to God two times regularly. I was an atheist. I thought that I would settle it to myself whether I could brag only in days of peace and happiness that I was an atheist, or in those hard times I could be steadfast in my convictions. After a long debate with myself, I reached the conclusion that I could not even pretend to be a believer nor could I offer my prayers to God. No, I never did it. It was time of trial and I would come out of it successful. These were my thoughts. Never for a moment did I desire to save my life. So I was a true atheist then and I am an atheist now. It was not an easy task to face that ordeal. Beliefs make it easier to go through hardships, even make them pleasant. Man can find a strong support in God and an encouraging consolation in His Name. If you have no belief in Him, then there is no alternative but to depend upon yourself. It is not child’s play to stand firm on your feet amid storms and strong winds. In difficult times, vanity, if it remains, evaporates and man cannot find the courage to defy beliefs held in common esteem by the people. If he really revolts against such beliefs, we must conclude that it is not sheer vanity; he has some kind of extraordinary strength. This is exactly the situation now. First of all we all know what the judgement will be. It is to be pronounced in a week or so. I am going to sacrifice my life for a cause. What more consolation can there be! A God-believing Hindu may expect to be reborn a king; a Muslim or a Christian might dream of the luxuries he hopes to enjoy in paradise as a reward for his sufferings and sacrifices. What hope should I entertain? I know that will be the end when the rope is tightened round my neck and the rafters move from under my feet. To use more precise religious terminology, that will be the moment of utter annihilation. My soul will come to nothing. If I take the courage to take the matter in the light of ‘Reward’, I see that a short life of struggle with no such magnificent end shall itself be my ‘Reward.’ That is all. Without any selfish motive of getting any reward here or in the hereafter, quite disinterestedly have I devoted my life to the cause of freedom. I could not act otherwise. The day shall usher in a new era of liberty when a large number of men and women, taking courage from the idea of serving humanity and liberating them from sufferings and distress, decide that there is no alternative before them except devoting their lives for this cause. They will wage a war against their oppressors, tyrants or exploiters, not to become kings, or to gain any reward here or in the next birth or after death in paradise; but to cast off the yoke of slavery, to establish liberty and peace they will tread this perilous, but glorious path. Can the pride they take in their noble cause be called vanity? Who is there rash enough to call it so? To him I say either he is foolish or wicked. Leave such a fellow alone for he cannot realise the depth, the emotions, the sentiment and the noble feelings that surge in that heart. His heart is dead, a mere lump of flesh, devoid of feelings. His convictions are infirm, his emotions feeble. His selfish interests have made him incapable of seeing the truth. The epithet ‘vanity’ is always hurled at the strength we get from our convictions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">You go against popular feelings; you criticise a hero, a great man who is generally believed to be above criticism. What happens? No one will answer your arguments in a rational way; rather you will be considered vainglorious. Its reason is mental insipidity. Merciless criticism and independent thinking are the two necessary traits of revolutionary thinking. As Mahatmaji is great, he is above criticism; as he has risen above, all that he says in the field of politics, religion, Ethics is right. You agree or not, it is binding upon you to take it as truth. This is not constructive thinking. We do not take a leap forward; we go many steps back.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Our forefathers evolved faith in some kind of Supreme Being, therefore, one who ventures to challenge the validity of that faith or denies the existence of God, shall be called a Kafir (infidel), or a renegade. Even if his arguments are so strong that it is impossible to refute them, if his spirit is so strong that he cannot be bowed down by the threats of misfortune that may befall him through the wrath of the Almighty, he shall be decried as vainglorious. Then why should we waste our time in such discussions? This question has come before the people for the first time, hence the necessity and usefulness of such long discussions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As far as the first question is concerned, I think I have made it clear that I did not turn atheist because of vanity. Only my readers, not I, can decide whether my arguments carry weight. If I were a believer, I know in the present circumstances my life would have been easier; the burden lighter. My disbelief in God has turned all the circumstances too harsh and this situation can deteriorate further. Being a little mystical can give the circumstances a poetic turn. But I need no opiate to meet my end. I am a realistic man. I want to overpower this tendency in me with the help of Reason. I am not always successful in such attempts. But it is man’s duty to try and make efforts. Success depends on chance and circumstances.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Now we come to the second question: if it is not vanity, there ought to be some sound reason for rejection of age-old belief in God. Yes, I come to this question. I think that any man who has some reasoning power always tries to understand the life and people around him with the help of this faculty. Where concrete proofs are lacking, [mystical] philosophy creeps in. As I have indicated, one of my revolutionary friends used to say that “philosophy is the outcome of human weakness.” Our ancestors had the leisure to solve the mysteries of the world, its past, its present and its future, its whys and its wherefores, but having been terribly short of direct proofs, every one of them tried to solve the problem in his own way. Hence we find wide differences in the fundamentals of various religious creeds. Sometimes they take very antagonistic and conflicting forms. We find differences in Oriental and Occidental philosophies. There are differences even amongst various schools of thoughts in each hemisphere. In Asian religions, the Muslim religion is completely incompatible with the Hindu faith. In India itself, Buddhism and Jainism are sometimes quite separate from Brahmanism. Then in Brahmanism itself, we find two conflicting sects: Aarya Samaj and Snatan Dheram. Charwak is yet another independent thinker of the past ages. He challenged the Authority of God. All these faiths differ on many fundamental questions, but each of them claims to be the only true religion. This is the root of the evil. Instead of developing the ideas and experiments of ancient thinkers, thus providing ourselves with the ideological weapon for the future struggle, – lethargic, idle, fanatical as we are – we cling to orthodox religion and in this way reduce human awakening to a stagnant pool.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It is necessary for every person who stands for progress to criticise every tenet of old beliefs. Item by item he has to challenge the efficacy of old faith. He has to analyse and understand all the details. If after rigorous reasoning, one is led to believe in any theory of philosophy, his faith is appreciated. His reasoning may be mistaken and even fallacious. But there is chance that he will be corrected because Reason is the guiding principle of his life. But belief, I should say blind belief is disastrous. It deprives a man of his understanding power and makes him reactionary.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Any person who claims to be a realist has to challenge the truth of old beliefs. If faith cannot withstand the onslaught of reason, it collapses. After that his task should be to do the groundwork for new philosophy. This is the negative side. After that comes in the positive work in which some material of the olden times can be used to construct the pillars of new philosophy. As far as I am concerned, I admit that I lack sufficient study in this field. I had a great desire to study the Oriental Philosophy, but I could get ample opportunity or sufficient time to do so. But so far as I reject the old time beliefs, it is not a matter of countering belief with belief, rather I can challenge the efficacy of old beliefs with sound arguments. We believe in nature and that human progress depends on the domination of man over nature. There is no conscious power behind it. This is our philosophy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Being atheist, I ask a few questions from theists:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">1. If, as you believe there is an Almighty, Omnipresent, Omniscient God, who created the earth or universe, please let me know, first of all, as to why he created this world. This world which is full of woe and grief, and countless miseries, where not even one person lives in peace.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">2. Pray, don’t say it is His law. If He is bound by any law, He is not Omnipotent. Don’t say it is His pleasure. Nero burnt one Rome. He killed a very limited number of people. He caused only a few tragedies, all for his morbid enjoyment. But what is his place in history? By what names do we remember him? All the disparaging epithets are hurled at him. Pages are blackened with invective diatribes condemning Nero: the tyrant, the heartless, the wicked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">One Genghis Khan killed a few thousand people to seek pleasure in it and we hate the very name. Now, how will you justify your all powerful, eternal Nero, who every day, every moment continues his pastime of killing people? How can you support his doings which surpass those of Genghis Khan in cruelty and in misery inflicted upon people? I ask why the Almighty created this world which is nothing but a living hell, a place of constant and bitter unrest. Why did he create man when he had the power not to do so? Have you any answer to these questions? You will say that it is to reward the sufferer and punish the evildoer in the hereafter. Well, well, how far will you justify a man who first of all inflicts injuries on your body and then applies soft and soothing ointment on them? How far the supporters and organizers of Gladiator bouts were justified in throwing men before half starved lions, later to be cared for and looked after well if they escaped this horrible death. That is why I ask: Was the creation of man intended to derive this kind of pleasure?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Open your eyes and see millions of people dying of hunger in slums and huts dirtier than the grim dungeons of prisons; just see the labourers patiently or say apathetically while the rich vampires suck their blood; bring to mind the wastage of human energy that will make a man with a little common sense shiver in horror. Just observe rich nations throwing their surplus produce into the sea instead of distributing it among the needy and deprived. There are palaces of kings built upon the foundations laid with human bones. Let them see all this and say “All is well in God’s Kingdom.” Why so? This is my question. You are silent. All right. I proceed to my next point.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">You, the Hindus, would say: Whosoever undergoes sufferings in this life, must have been a sinner in his previous birth. It is tantamount to saying that those who are oppressors now were Godly people then, in their previous births. For this reason alone they hold power in their hands. Let me say it plainly that your ancestors were shrewd people. They were always in search of petty hoaxes to play upon people and snatch from them the power of Reason. Let us analyse how much this argument carries weight!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Those who are well versed in the philosophy of Jurisprudence relate three of four justifications for the punishment that is to be inflicted upon a wrong-doer. These are: revenge, reform, and deterrence. The Retribution Theory is now condemned by all the thinkers. Deterrent theory is on the anvil for its flaws. Reformative theory is now widely accepted and considered to be necessary for human progress. It aims at reforming the culprit and converting him into a peace-loving citizen. But what in essence is God’s Punishment even if it is inflicted on a person who has really done some harm? For the sake of argument we agree for a moment that a person committed some crime in his previous birth and God punished him by changing his shape into a cow, cat, tree, or any other animal. You may enumerate the number of these variations in Godly Punishment to be at least eighty-four lack. Tell me, has this tomfoolery, perpetrated in the name of punishment, any reformative effect on human man? How many of them have you met who were donkeys in their previous births for having committed any sin? Absolutely no one of this sort! The so called theory of ‘Puranas’ (transmigration) is nothing but a fairy-tale. I do not have any intention to bring this unutterable trash under discussion. Do you really know the most cursed sin in this world is to be poor? Yes, poverty is a sin; it is a punishment! Cursed be the theoretician, jurist or legislator who proposes such measures as push man into the quagmire of more heinous sins. Did it not occur to your All Knowing God or he could learn the truth only after millions had undergone untold sufferings and hardships? What, according to your theory, is the fate of a person who, by no sin of his own, has been born into a family of low caste people? He is poor so he cannot go to a school. It is his fate to be shunned and hated by those who are born into a high caste. His ignorance, his poverty, and the contempt he receives from others will harden his heart towards society. Supposing that he commits a sin, who shall bear the consequences? God, or he, or the learned people of that society? What is your view about those punishments inflicted on the people who were deliberately kept ignorant by selfish and proud Brahmans? If by chance these poor creatures heard a few words of your sacred books, Vedas, these Brahmans poured melted lead into their ears. If they committed any sin, who was to be held responsible? Who was to bear the brunt? My dear friends, these theories have been coined by the privileged classes. They try to justify the power they have usurped and the riches they have robbed with the help of such theories. Perhaps it was the writer Upton Sinclair who wrote <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #999999;">(Bhagat Singh is referring to Sinclair’s pamphlet ‘Profits of Religion’ – MIA transcriber) </span>somewhere “only make a man firm believer in the immortality of soul, then rob him of all that he possesses. He will willingly help you in the process.” The dirty alliance between religious preachers and possessors of power brought the boon of prisons, gallows, knouts and above all such theories for the mankind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I ask why your Omnipotent God does not hold a man back when he is about to commit a sin or offence. It is child’s play for God. Why did He not kill war lords? Why did He not obliterate the fury of war from their minds? In this way He could have saved humanity of many a great calamity and horror. Why does He not infuse humanistic sentiments into the minds of the Britishers so that they may willingly leave India? I ask why He does not fill the hearts of all capitalist classes with altruistic humanism that prompts them to give up personal possession of the means of production and this will free the whole labouring humanity from the shackles of money. You want to argue the practicability of Socialist theory, I leave it to your Almighty God to enforce it. Common people understand the merits of Socialist theory as far as general welfare is concerned but they oppose it under the pretext that it cannot be implemented. Let the Almighty step in and arrange things in a proper way. No more logic chopping! I tell you that the British rule is not there because God willed it but for the reason that we lack the will and courage to oppose it. Not that they are keeping us under subjugation with the consent of God, but it is with the force of guns and rifles, bombs and bullets, police and militia, and above all because of our apathy that they are successfully committing the most deplorable sin, that is, the exploitation of one nation by another. Where is God? What is He doing? Is He getting a diseased pleasure out of it? A Nero! A Genghis Khan! Down with Him!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Now another piece of manufactured logic! You ask me how I will explain the origin of this world and origin of man. Charles Darwin has tried to throw some light on this subject. Study his book. Also, have a look at Sohan Swami’s “Commonsense.” You will get a satisfactory answer. This topic is concerned with Biology and Natural History. This is a phenomenon of nature. The accidental mixture of different substances in the form of Nebulae gave birth to this earth. When? Study history to know this. The same process caused the evolution of animals and in the long run that of man. Read Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species.’ All the later progress is due to man’s constant conflict with nature and his efforts to utilise nature for his own benefit. This is the briefest sketch of this phenomenon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Your next question will be why a child is born blind or lame even if he was not a sinner in his previous birth. This problem has been explained in a satisfactory manner by biologists as a mere biological phenomenon. According to them the whole burden rests upon the shoulders of parents whose conscious or unconscious deeds caused mutilation of the child prior to his birth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">You may thrust yet another question at me, though it is merely childish. The question is: If God does not really exist, why do people come to believe in Him? Brief and concise my answer will be. As they come to believe in ghosts, and evil spirits, so they also evolve a kind of belief in God: the only difference being that God is almost a universal phenomenon and well developed theological philosophy. However, I do disagree with radical philosophy. It attributes His origin to the ingenuity of exploiters who wanted to keep the people under their subjugation by preaching the existence of a Supreme Being; thus claimed an authority and sanction from Him for their privileged position. I do not differ on the essential point that all religions, faiths, theological philosophies, and religious creeds and all other such institutions in the long run become supporters of the tyrannical and exploiting institutions, men and classes. Rebellion against any king has always been a sin in every religion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As regard the origin of God, my thought is that man created God in his imagination when he realized his weaknesses, limitations and shortcomings. In this way he got the courage to face all the trying circumstances and to meet all dangers that might occur in his life and also to restrain his outbursts in prosperity and affluence. God, with his whimsical laws and parental generosity was painted with variegated colours of imagination. He was used as a deterrent factor when his fury and his laws were repeatedly propagated so that man might not become a danger to society. He was the cry of the distressed soul for he was believed to stand as father and mother, sister and brother, brother and friend when in time of distress a man was left alone and helpless. He was Almighty and could do anything. The idea of God is helpful to a man in distress.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Society must fight against this belief in God as it fought against idol worship and other narrow conceptions of religion. In this way man will try to stand on his feet. Being realistic, he will have to throw his faith aside and face all adversaries with courage and valour. That is exactly my state of mind. My friends, it is not my vanity; it is my mode of thinking that has made me an atheist. I don’t think that by strengthening my belief in God and by offering prayers to Him every day, (this I consider to be the most degraded act on the part of man) I can bring improvement in my situation, nor can I further deteriorate it. I have read of many atheists facing all troubles boldly, so I am trying to stand like a man with the head high and erect to the last; even on the gallows.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Let us see how steadfast I am. One of my friends asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, “When your last days come, you will begin to believe.” I said, “No, dear sir, Never shall it happen. I consider it to be an act of degradation and demoralisation. For such petty selfish motives, I shall never pray.” Reader and friends, is it vanity? If it is, I stand for it.</span></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-11331648899656442062013-02-27T06:16:00.001-08:002013-02-27T06:16:06.957-08:00Atheists face extensive discrimination, UN rights council told<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.333em; line-height: 1.25;">Humanist group raises concerns amid new efforts by Muslim countries in UN to ban denigration of religion</span></h1>
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Reuters in Geneva</div>
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Muslim countries are seeking to obtain a worldwide ban on denigration of religion, specifically what they call Islamophobia. Photograph: Rehan Khan/EPA</div>
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Atheists, humanists and freethinkers face widespread discrimination around the world, with expression of their views criminalised and even subject to capital punishment, the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/unitednations" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on United Nations">United Nations</a> has been told.</div>
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The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) said <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/atheism" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Atheism">atheism</a> was banned by law in a number of states where people were forced to officially adopt a faith.</div>
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"Extensive discrimination by governments against atheists, humanists and the non-religious occurs worldwide," said the union, which has 120 member bodies in 45 countries.</div>
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In Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan "atheists can face the death penalty on the grounds of their belief", in violation of UN <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/human-rights" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Human rights">human rights</a> accords, the IHEU said in a document submitted to the UN human rights council.</div>
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In several other countries legal measures "effectively criminalise atheism [and] the expression and manifestation of atheist beliefs" or lead to systematic discrimination against freethinkers, it said.</div>
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Three of the states on the rights council – Pakistan, Mauritania and Maldives – have legislation providing for death for blasphemy against Islam, a charge that can be applied to atheists who publicly reveal their ideas.</div>
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The paper was submitted as the council opened its annual spring session against a background of new efforts in the UN by Muslim countries to obtain a worldwide ban on denigration of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/religion" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Religion">religion</a>, specifically what they call Islamophobia.</div>
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Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, told the council there was a "rising trend" of Islamophobia. "We condemn all sorts of incitement to hatred and religious discrimination against Muslims and people of other faiths," he said.</div>
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This month a senior official of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC) said the body would focus on getting agreement on criminalising denigration of religion in coming talks with western countries.</div>
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Last November the head of the 21-country Arab League told the UN security council in New York that his organisation wanted a binding international framework to ensure "that religious faith and its symbols are respected".</div>
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The IHEU and other non-governmental rights groupings argue that many Muslim governments use this terminology and the concept of "religious blasphemy" within their own countries to cow both atheists and followers of other religions.</div>
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A number of these governments "prosecute people who express their religious doubt or dissent, regardless of whether those dissenters identify as atheist", the IHEU document said.</div>
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Islamic countries including Bangladesh, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey had also stepped up prosecution of "blasphemous" expression of criticism of religion in social media such as Facebook and Twitter, it said.</div>
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OIC countries have 15 seats on the council, all from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, making up almost a third of the rights body.</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-48770489887579901152013-02-01T03:17:00.000-08:002013-02-01T03:17:40.582-08:00Happy Darwin Day and Evolution Weekend<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.25rem; line-height: 18px;">Charles Darwin's birthday has become not just an international holiday, but an entire evolution-themed weekend. Here are ideas for how to celebrate.</span></div>
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Fri, Feb 10 2012 at 12:48 PM</div>
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British naturalist Charles Darwin strikes a pensive pose in this copy of an 1881 oil painting by John Collier. (Image: <a href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait.php?search=ap&npgno=1024&eDate=&lDate=" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">National Portrait Gallery</a>)</div>
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Charles Darwin was born 203 years ago Sunday, 50 years before he would forever change the field of biology with "<a href="http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_OntheOriginofSpecies.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">On the Origin of Species</a>." Another book, published 143 years later, dubbed his opus on evolution "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Day-Collection-One-Single/dp/0972384405" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">the single best idea, ever</a>."</div>
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The editors of that book helped found <a href="http://darwinday.org/about/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">Darwin Day</a> in the 1990s, honoring not just Darwin, but also "the achievements of humanity as represented in the acquisition of verifiable scientific knowledge." People had already been celebrating Darwin's birthday every Feb. 12 for decades, but Darwin Day became a broad, global holiday for science, with Darwin as its patriarch — sort of like a less jolly, more scholarly Santa Claus.</div>
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But while Darwin's discovery of natural selection has revolutionized science, it has also inspired generations of critics. Some distrust it for religious reasons, seeing it as a threat to Creationism or Intelligent Design, and some just don't like to think of people as animals. Darwin wasn't anti-religion, though — he was on track to be a clergyman before his fateful Galapagos trip, and his body is <a href="http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/charles-darwin" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">buried</a> at Westminster Abbey.</div>
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If you'd like to commemorate this Darwin-packed weekend, but aren't sure how, here are a few suggestions:</div>
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• <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Host a Phylum Feast:</strong> Darwin enthusiasts have been holding yearly Phylum Feasts on Feb. 12 since at least the 1970s. A <a href="http://pinicola.ca/darwind2.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">Phylum Feast</a> is a potluck dinner in which all the dishes are as biodiverse as possible — ideally, each should come from a different phylum. Darwin reportedly enjoyed eating "birds and beasts ... unknown to human palate," and many people still see this as a way to embrace our evolutionary past. "Most of our day-to-day food comes from a small number of domesticated vertebrates and grasses," writes naturalist and Phylum Feast authority Frederick Schueler, "but by seeking out and identifying the diverse biotic sources of our diet in this meal, we remember our origin as omnivores, and our relatedness to other lineages."</div>
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• <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Make "primordial soup":</strong> Of course, the idea of a Phylum Feast can make conservationists cringe, especially when the <a href="http://pinicola.ca/darwind2.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">menu</a> includes exotic items like minke whale meat. Phyla diversity is also limited at some grocery stores, often making such feasts impractical. But you could always just make another Darwin Day favorite instead: "primordial soup." Named after the cocktail of amino acids believed to spark the first life on Earth, this dish is wide open to interpretation — from simple stews to Phylum Feasts in a pot. There's also <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pt0rIZ3ZNE" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">Julia Child's version</a>, if you're feeling more literal.</div>
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• <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Attend a Darwin Day event:</strong> There were more than 800 Darwin Day events worldwide in 2011, and <a href="http://darwinday.org/events/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">darwinday.org</a> offers a partial list of those being held in 2012. Some are one-day affairs, like Friday's Darwin Day exhibit at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.; Saturday's Darwin Day Beach Cleanup in Myrtle Beach, S.C.; or Sunday's annual Darwin Day Lunch in Oxford, England. Others are more stretched out, like a monthlong Darwin exhibit in Bologna, Italy; "Darwin Week" festivities in San Antonio, Texas; and a variety of three-day weekend celebrations. Darwin Day originally focused on lectures by prominent scientists, but today it has expanded to include debates, museum exhibits, film festivals, art shows, essay contests and more. Some even use the holiday to jointly honor U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, who was also born on Feb. 12, 1809.</div>
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• <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Read "On the Origin of Species":</strong> Not only is the <a href="http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F373&viewtype=text&pageseq=1" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">full text</a> of Darwin's seminal work available online, but so are <a href="http://darwin-online.org.uk/contents.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">all of his publications</a>. It's a lot to absorb in one day, or even three days, but a chilly weekend like this one might nonetheless be a good time to dig in — with a steaming bowl of primordial soup, of course.</div>
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For more information about evolution by natural selection, check out this classic (and animated) explanation by the late astronomer and science educator Carl Sagan:</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Have other ideas for celebrating Darwin Day and Evolution Weekend? Let us know in the comments below.</em></div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Also on MNN:</strong></div>
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<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/anti-evolution-bills-to-be-revived-in-2012" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">Anti-evolution bills to be revived in 2012</a></li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/intuition-outweighs-facts-when-it-comes-evolution-beliefs" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">Intuition outweighs facts when it comes evolution</a></li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/massive-seagrass-clones-are-oldest-living-things" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">Massive seagrass clones are oldest living things</a></li>
<li class="last" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/videos/butterfly-research-evolution-in-action" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #025689; text-decoration: initial;">Butterfly research: Evolution in action</a></li>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-70012883359895129882013-01-24T03:18:00.000-08:002013-01-24T03:18:42.261-08:00Don’t Replace Religion; End It<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://pennsundayschool.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #406584; font-size: 14px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Penn Jillette</a> is the author of "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Every-Day-Atheist-Holiday-Magical/dp/0399161562" style="border: 0px; color: #406584; font-size: 14px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!</a>" and "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-No-Already-Atheist-Magical/dp/1451610378/" style="border: 0px; color: #406584; font-size: 14px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">God, No!</a>"</div>
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JANUARY 22, 2013</div>
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Religion cannot and should not be replaced by atheism. Religion needs to go away and not be replaced by anything. Atheism is not a religion. It’s the absence of religion, and that’s a wonderful thing.</div>
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Religion is not morality. Theists ask me, “If there’s no god, what would stop me from raping and killing everyone I want to.” My answer is always: “I, myself, have raped and killed everyone I want to ... and the number for both is zero.” Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don’t need religion.</div>
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Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.</blockquote>
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Religion is faith. Faith is belief without evidence. Belief without evidence cannot be shared. Faith is a feeling. Love is also a feeling, but love makes no universal claims. Love is pure. The lover reports on his or her feelings and needs nothing more. Faith claims knowledge of a world we share but without evidence we can share. Feeling love is beautiful. Feeling the earth is 6,000 years old is stupid.</div>
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Religion is often just tribalism: pride in a group one was born into, a group that is often believed to have “God” on its side. We don’t need to replace tribalism with anything other than love for all humanity. Let’s do that, okay?</div>
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Religion also includes fellowship, joy, compassion, service and great music, and those can be replaced by ... fellowship, joy, compassion, service and great music.</div>
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Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-55127401871898449382013-01-14T07:54:00.000-08:002013-01-14T07:54:19.646-08:00Pastafarians push to register Church of Flying Spaghetti Monster in Poland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">Polish adherents of the satirical Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are trying to have their creed registered as an official faith.</span></h1>
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Touched by his Noodly Appendage: Niklas Jansson - wikipedia</div>
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An application has been submitted to the Ministry of Administration and Digitization, and the resulting decision is due by the end of January.</div>
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“Just as the <a href="http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/25435,%E2%80%98Gnome-may-run-for-Senate" style="border: 0px; color: #003878; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Orange Alternative</a> fought with communism, so pastafarians are fighting with the vast influence of the [Roman Catholic] clergy,” said Armand Ryfinski, MP for liberal party Palikot's Movement, as quoted by the<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> Gazeta Polska Codziennie</em> daily.</div>
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Ryfinski is one of the administrators of the Polish Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's web site.</div>
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The anti-clerical Palikot's Movement is currently the third largest party in Poland's parliament.</div>
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Pastafarians state that the world was created by Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). Prayers end with the word<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> r'amen</em>, in an allusion to the Japanese noodle dish <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">ramen</em>, and the <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">amen</em> of Christian worship.</div>
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Pastafarianism emerged in America in 2005, after physics student Bobby Henderson protested against the Kansas State Board of Education's decision to permit the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to creationism in science classes.</div>
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In Poland, conservative politicians are branding the bid to register the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as an anti-Catholic provocation.</div>
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“We are going to monitor these events, as there are already far too many of them,” said Andrzej Jaworski, MP for conservative opposition party Law and Justice. <strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">(nh)</strong></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-591481765043449562013-01-08T22:00:00.000-08:002013-01-08T22:00:24.936-08:00Prayer in public meetings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12px;">Should governments hold prayers before or during public meetings? </span><span style="font-size: 12px;">Nothing fails like prayer in government</span></h3>
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<em><a href="http://blogs.roanoke.com/roundtable/files/2013/01/ALGhighres_0106.jpg" style="color: #003399; text-decoration: initial;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-36163" height="300" src="http://blogs.roanoke.com/roundtable/files/2013/01/ALGhighres_0106-225x300.jpg" style="border: none; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; padding: 5px;" width="225" /></a>By Annie Laurie Gaylor</em><br />
<em>Gaylor is co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.</em><br />
Prayer at government meetings is unnecessary, inappropriate and divisive. Calling upon other elected officials and citizens to rise and pray is coercive, embarrassing and beyond the scope of county government. Supervisors, after all, are free to pray privately or to worship on their own time in their own way. They don’t need to worship on taxpayers’ time. That line between the Jeffersonian “wall of separation between church and state” is being crossed when elected officials misuse their authority to promote their personal religious views at government functions.<br />
A government board ought not to lend its power and prestige to religion. Such governmental endorsement of religion excludes the 15 percent of the American population that is nonreligious (American Religious Identification Survey 2008), including more than 1 million Virginians.<br />
The numbers of nonreligious are growing rapidly in this country, as shown by the Pew Forum’s survey last year finding one in five adults has no religious affiliation. We nonreligious citizens are offended, excluded and made to feel like political outsiders when our government oversteps its power to conduct or impose prayer. Since government prayer often invokes Jesus and Christianity, it also turns those of other faiths into second-class citizens.<br />
America was founded in part by refugees seeking freedom from religion in government. They sought to escape tyrants who told them which church to support, what religious rituals to engage in, or what to believe or disbelieve. Whether to pray, whether to believe in a god who answers prayer, is an intensely personal decision protected under our First Amendment as a paramount matter of conscience.<br />
The U.S. founders who adopted our entirely godless Constitution knew there can be no religious liberty without the freedom to dissent. If the framers of our Constitution found no need to pray when they adopted our secular Constitution, why does the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors need to pray over sewers, building permits and variances? Isn’t it a bit vain to imagine that a deity, if there is one, would be interested in the prayerful demands of supervisors anyway?<br />
If constitutional injunctions do not impress, perhaps scriptural ones will. Christians who know their Bible are familiar with the biblical injunction of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, condemning public prayer as hypocrisy, and advising:<br />
“Enter into thy closet and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.”</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-74774357502464451212013-01-07T02:16:00.002-08:002013-01-07T02:16:56.240-08:00It is here and it is now<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="color: grey; line-height: 12px;">By </span><span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" style="color: grey; line-height: 12px;"><span itemprop="name">SUSAN JACOBY</span></span></b></span></div>
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IN a recent conversation with a fellow journalist, I voiced my exasperation at the endless talk about faith in God as the only consolation for those devastated by the unfathomable murders in Newtown, Conn. Some of those grieving parents surely believe, as I do, that this is our one and only life. Atheists cannot find solace in the idea that dead children are now angels in heaven. “That only shows the limits of atheism,” my colleague replied. “It’s all about nonbelief and has nothing to offer when people are suffering.”</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.467em;">This widespread misapprehension that atheists believe in nothing positive is one of the main reasons secularly inclined Americans —roughly</span><span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.467em;"> </span><a href="http://www.pewforum.org/unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx" style="color: #666699; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.467em;">20 percent of the population</a><span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.467em;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.467em;">— do not wield public influence commensurate with their numbers. One major problem is the dearth of secular community institutions.</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; line-height: 1.467em;"><span style="font-size: small;">The secular community is fearful of seeming to proselytize. When giving talks on college campuses, I used to avoid personal discussions of my atheism. But over the years, I have changed my mind because such diffidence contributes to the false image of the atheist as someone whose convictions are removed from ordinary experience. It is vital to show that there are indeed atheists in foxholes, and wherever else human beings suffer and die.</span></span></h3>
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Now when students ask how I came to believe what I believe, I tell them that I trace my atheism to my first encounter, at age 7, with the scourge of polio. In 1952, a 9-year-old friend was stricken by the disease and clinging to life in an iron lung. After visiting him in the hospital, I asked my mother, “Why would God do that to a little boy?” She sighed in a way that telegraphed her lack of conviction and said: “I don’t know. The priest would say God must have his reasons, but I don’t know what they could be.”</div>
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Just two years later, in 1954, Jonas Salk’s vaccine began the process of eradicating polio, and my mother took the opportunity to suggest that God may have guided his research. I remember replying, “Well, God should have guided the doctors a long time ago so that Al wouldn’t be in an iron lung.” (He was to die only eight years later, by which time I was a committed atheist.)</div>
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The first time I told this story to a class, I was deeply gratified when one student confided that his religious doubts arose from the struggles of a severely disabled sibling, and that he had never been able to discuss the subject candidly with his fundamentalist parents. One of the most positive things any atheist can do is provide a willing ear for a doubter — even if the doubter remains a religious believer.</div>
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IT is primarily in the face of suffering, whether the tragedy is individual or collective, that I am forcefully reminded of what atheism has to offer. When I try to help a loved one losing his mind to Alzheimer’s, when I see homeless people shivering in the wake of a deadly storm, when the news media bring me almost obscenely close to the raw grief of bereft parents, I do not have to ask, as all people of faith must, why an all-powerful, all-good God allows such things to happen.</div>
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It is a positive blessing, not a negation of belief, to be free of what is known as the theodicy problem. Human “free will” is Western monotheism’s answer to the question of why God does not use his power to prevent the slaughter of innocents, and many people throughout history (some murdered as heretics) have not been able to let God off the hook in that fashion.</div>
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The atheist is free to concentrate on the fate of this world — whether that means visiting a friend in a hospital or advocating for tougher gun control laws — without trying to square things with an unseen overlord in the next. Atheists do not want to deny religious believers the comfort of their faith. We do want our fellow citizens to respect our deeply held conviction that the absence of an afterlife lends a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth.</div>
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Today’s atheists would do well to emulate some of the great 19th-century American freethinkers, who insisted that reason and emotion were not opposed but complementary.</div>
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Robert Green Ingersoll, who died in 1899 and was one of the most famous orators of his generation, personified this combination of passion and rationality. Called “The Great Agnostic,” Ingersoll insisted that there was no difference between atheism and agnosticism because it was impossible for anyone to “know” whether God existed or not. He used his secular pulpit to advocate for social causes like justice for African-Americans, women’s rights, prison reform and the elimination of cruelty to animals</div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.467em;">He also frequently delivered secular eulogies at funerals and offered consolation that he clearly considered an important part of his mission. In 1882, at the graveside of a friend’s child, he declared: “They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave, need have no fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest ... The dead do not suffer.”</span></div>
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Today’s secularists must do more than mount defensive campaigns proclaiming that we can be “good without God.” Atheists must stand up instead of calling themselves freethinkers, agnostics, secular humanists or “spiritual, but not religious.” The last phrase, translated from the psychobabble, can mean just about anything — that the speaker is an atheist who fears social disapproval or a fence-sitter who wants the theoretical benefits of faith, including hope of eternal life, without the obligations of actually practicing a religion. Atheists may also be secular humanists and freethinkers — I answer to all three — but avoidance of identification with atheism confines us to a closet that encourages us to fade or be pushed into the background when tragedy strikes.</div>
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We must speak up as atheists in order to take responsibility for whatever it is humans are responsible for — including violence in our streets and schools. We need to demonstrate that atheism is rooted in empathy as well as intellect. And although atheism is not a religion, we need community-based outreach programs so that our activists will be as recognizable to their neighbors as the clergy.</div>
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Finally, we need to show up at gravesides, as Ingersoll did, to offer whatever consolation we can.</div>
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In his speech at an interfaith prayer vigil in Newtown on Dec. 16, President Obama observed that “the world’s religions — so many of them represented here today — start with a simple question: Why are we here? What gives our life meaning?” He could easily have amended that to “the world’s religions and secular philosophies.” He could have said something like, “Whether you are religious or nonreligious, may you find solace in the knowledge that the suffering is ours, but that those we love suffer no more.” </div>
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Somewhere in that audience, and in the larger national audience, there were mourners who would have been comforted by the acknowledgment that their lives have meaning even if they do not regard death as the door to another life, but “only perfect rest.<br />”</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-43654769142090179022012-12-13T02:34:00.003-08:002012-12-13T02:34:57.682-08:00Richards Dawkins congratulates Wales on atheism growth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="date" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;">12 December 2012</span><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"> </span></h1>
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Evolutionary biologist Prof Richard Dawkins, the author of a number of best-selling books on biology and religion including the God Delusion, has welcomed census results showing a fall in the number of people in Wales saying they do not have any religion.</div>
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He tells Felicity Evans on BBC Radio Wales that the figures are actually worse for Christianity than they appear.</div>
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He said a separate poll carried out in the same week commissioned by his organisation showed many people who said they checked the census box for Christianity did so to express the fact they felt they were good people and not necessarily religious.</div>
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The Church in Wales responded to the results by saying that Christianity was "no longer the default setting" for many people but the picture is complex.</div>
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Those stating that they were Muslim in Wales is 1.5%, up from 0.7% - in 2001, and there were also slight increases in the percentage of people who said they were Hindu or Buddhist, both up from 0.2% to 0.3%.</div>
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There was also a rise in people saying they had other faiths - from 0.2% to 0.4%</div>
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<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-20678136" style="color: #4a7194; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px; text-decoration: initial;">One third in Wales not religious</a></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-80374843378598847052012-10-23T17:34:00.002-07:002012-10-23T17:34:58.090-07:00American skeptic Paul Kurtz is no more<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: 24pt;">PAUL KURTZ</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14pt;">December 21, 1925 – October 20, 2012</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat repeat; font-size: 12pt;">Paul Kurtz, American skeptic, founder of modern secular-humanist movement and philosopher, passed away on 20 October 2012. He was 86 years old. He was Honorary Associate of <i>Rationalist International</i>and also Honorary Associate of<i> Rationalist Association </i>(formerly<i> RPA</i>) of UK . </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In 1999 Kurtz received International Humanist Award by the <i>IHEU</i>, and in 2000 he received International Rationalist Award by the <i>Rationalist International</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat repeat; font-size: 12pt;">He authored 50 books and nearly 800 articles. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Many of his books have been translated into over 60 languages. They include <i>The Transcendental Temptation</i>, <i>Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Secularism</i>, <i>The Courage to Become</i>, and <i>Multi-Secularism: A New Agenda</i>. His published bibliography of writings from 1952 to 2003 runs over 79 pages.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Paul Kurtz was largely responsible for the secularization of humanism. Before Kurtz embraced the term “secular humanism," which had received wide publicity through fundamentalist Christians in the 1980s, humanism was more widely perceived as a religion (or a pseudo-religion that did not include the supernatural. This can be seen in the first article of the original <i>Humanist Manifesto</i> which refers to "Religious Humanists" and by Charles and Clara Potter's influential 1930 book <i>Humanism: A New Religion.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In 1969, Kurtz founded the publishing house <i>Prometheus Books</i>. He was also the founder and past chairman of the <i>Committee for Skeptical Inquiry</i> (formerly the <i>Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal</i> (CSICOP)), the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Center for Inquiry. On May 18, 2010, he resigned from all these positions. </span><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat repeat; font-size: 12pt;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">He was editor in chief of <i>Free Inquiry</i> magazine, a publication of the<i>Council for Secular Humanism</i>. He was co-president of the <i>International Humanist and Ethical Union</i> (IHEU). He was a Fellow of the <i>American Association for the Advancement of Science</i>, Humanist Laureate, Honorary Associate of </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Rationalist International</span></i><i>,</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">president of the International <i>Academy of Humanism</i> and Honorary Associate of <i>Rationalist Association </i>(formerly <i>Rationalist Press Association</i>) of UK.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As a member of the <i>American Humanist Association</i>, he contributed to the writing of <i>Humanist Manifesto</i>. He was a former editor of <i>The Humanist</i>, 1967-1978. The asteroid <i>(6629) Kurtz</i> was named in his honor.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Kurtz used the publicity generated by fundamentalist preachers to grow the membership of the <i>Council for Secular Humanism</i>, as well as strip the religious aspects found in the earlier humanist movement.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">He founded the <i>Center for Inquiry</i> in 1991. There are now some 40 Centers and Communities worldwide, including in Los Angeles, Washington, New York City, London, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Moscow, Beijing, Hyderabad, Toronto, Dakar, Buenos Aires and Kathmandu. Following </span><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat repeat; font-size: 12pt;">his resignation from the Center for Inquiry, Paul Kurtz launched the <i>Institute for Science and Human Values</i> as a separate entity</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Kurtz was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, having previously also taught at Vassar, Trinity, and Union colleges, and the New School for Social Research</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Kurtz was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Sara Lasser and Martin Kurtz. Kurtz received his bachelor's degree from New York University, and the Master's degree and Doctor of Philosophy degree from Columbia University. Kurtz was left-wing in his youth, but has said that serving in the United States Army in World War II taught him the dangers of ideology. He saw the Buchenwald and Dachau <wbr></wbr>concentration camps after they were liberated, and became disillusioned with Communism when he encountered Russian slave laborers who had been taken to Nazi Germany by force but refused to return to the Soviet Union at the end of the war.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Sanal Edamaruku</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"> (President of <i>Rationalist International</i> and President of the <i>Indian Rationalist Association</i>) and <b>Pekka Elo</b>(President of the <i>Finnish Humanist Union</i> and Honorary Associate of <i>Rationalist International</i>) in a joint statement issued at Helsinki, Finland, have condoled the demise of Paul Kurtz.</span></span></div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-70336194574251064112012-10-10T07:30:00.001-07:002012-10-10T07:30:19.093-07:00Survey: One in five Americans has no religion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">By</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;"> </span><strong style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Dan Merica</strong><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">, CNN </span><br />
<strong style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Washington (CNN) –</strong><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">The fastest growing "religious" group in America is made up of people with no religion at all, according to a Pew survey showing that one in five Americans is not affiliated with any religion.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">The number of these Americans has grown by 25% just in the past five years, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">The survey found that the ranks of the unaffiliated are growing even faster among younger Americans.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">Thirty-three million Americans now have no religious affiliation, with 13 million in that group identifying as either atheist or agnostic, according to the new survey. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">Pew found that those who are religiously unaffiliated are strikingly less religious than the public at large. They attend church infrequently, if at all, are largely not seeking out religion and say that the lack of it in their lives is of little importance.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">And yet Pew found that 68% of the religiously unaffiliated say they believe in God, while 37% describe themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious.” One in five said that they even pray every day.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">John Green, a senior research adviser at Pew, breaks the religiously unaffiliated into three groups. First, he says, are those who were raised totally outside organized religion.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">Second are groups of people who were unhappy with their religions and left.</span><br />
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The third group, Green says, comprises Americans who were never really engaged with religion in the first place, even though they were raised in religious households.</div>
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“In the past, we would describe those people as nominally affiliated. They might say, 'I am Catholic; I am a Baptist,' but they never went" to services, Green says of this last group. “Now, they feel a lot more comfortable just saying, ‘You know, I am really nothing.’ ”</div>
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According to the poll, 88% of religiously unaffiliated people are not looking for religion.</div>
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“There is much less of a stigma attached" to not being religious, Green said. “Part of what is fueling this growth is that a lot of people who were never very religious now feel comfortable saying that they don't have an affiliation.”</div>
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Demographically, the growth among the religiously unaffiliated has been most notable among people who are 18 to 29 years old.</div>
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According to the poll, 34% of “younger millennials” - those born between 1990 and 1994 - are religiously unaffiliated. Among “older millennials,” born between 1981 and 1989, 30% are religiously unaffiliated: 4 percentage points higher than in 2007.</div>
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Poll respondents 18-29 were also more likely to identify as atheist or agnostic. Nearly 42% religious unaffiliated people from that age group identified as atheist or agnostic, a number far greater than the number who identified as Christian (18%) of Catholic (18%).</div>
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Green says that these numbers are “part of a broader change in American society.”</div>
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“The unaffiliated have become a more distinct group,” he said.</div>
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<a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories</a></div>
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Pew's numbers were met with elation among atheist and secular leaders. Jesse Galef, communications director for the Secular Student Alliance, said that the growth of the unaffiliated should translate into greater political representation for secular interests.</div>
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“We would love to see the political leaders lead on this issue, but we are perfectly content with them following these demographic trends, following the voters,” Galef said.</div>
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“As more of the voters are unaffiliated and identifying as atheist and agnostics, I think the politicians will follow that for votes.</div>
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“We won’t be dismissed or ignored anymore,” Galef said.</div>
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The Pew survey suggested that the Democratic Party would do well to recognize the growth of the unaffiliated, since 63% of them identify with or lean toward that political group. Only 26% of the unaffiliated do the same with the Republican Party.</div>
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"In the near future, if not this year, the unaffiliated voters will be as important as the traditionally religious are to the Republican Party collation,” Green predicted.</div>
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Green points to the 2008 exit polls as evidence for that prediction. That year, Republican presidential nominee John McCain beat President Barack Obama by 47 points among white evangelical voters, while Obama had a 52-point margin of victory over McCain among the religiously unaffiliated. </div>
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<span style="font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">According to exit polls, the proportion of religiously unaffiliated Americans who supported the Democratic presidential candidate grew 14 points from 2000 to 2008.</span></div>
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In announcing the survey’s findings at the Religion Newswriters Association conference in Bethesda, Maryland, Green said the growing political power of the unaffiliated within the Democratic Party could become similar to the power the Religious Right acquired in the GOP in the 1980s.</div>
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“Given the growing numbers of the unaffiliated, there is the potential that that could be harnessed,” he said.</div>
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Shyam Sundarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07073756550506412291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4580018657952071902.post-31379958604610859572012-10-08T17:27:00.000-07:002012-10-08T17:27:10.083-07:00Einstein letter, set for auction, shows scientist challenging idea of God, being 'chosen' <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">Decades before atheist scientist and author Richard Dawkins called God a "delusion," one world-renowned physicist - Albert Einstein - was weighing in on faith matters with his own strong words.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;"><b>“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends,” Einstein wrote in German in a 1954 letter that will be auctioned on eBay later this month. "No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”</b></span><br />
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Dubbed Einstein’s “God Letter” by the Los Angeles-based auction agency that's posting it online, <a href="http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=gazinauctions" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the original document</a> will be up for grabs starting Monday. The opening bid: $3 million.</div>
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<span id="more-34522" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>The letter provides a window into the famed genius's religious beliefs. Einstein wrote it to Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind, one year before Einstein died, in reaction to Gutkind’s book, “Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt.”</div>
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“I’ve been managing high profile auctions since 2005, and this is the most historically significant item to come up ... since I’ve been doing auctions,” said Eric Gazin, president of <a href="http://www.auctioncause.com/" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Auction Cause</a>, the group that's organizing the eBay auction.</div>
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Einstein was “one of the most brilliant minds to ever live, but so much of what we know is scientific. … As related to God and Judaism, this is so significant. It really lends itself to further study,” Gazin told CNN. “No one even knew this letter existed till recently.”</div>
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But Diana Kormos Buchwald, a history professor at the California Institute of Technology and the director of the <a href="http://www.einstein.caltech.edu/index.html" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Einstein Papers Project</a>, says that's not true.</div>
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She said copies of this letter, not to mention numerous additional writings reflecting similar sentiments, have been known to researchers and available for decades, both in the Pasadena-based Einstein Papers Project and <a href="http://www.albert-einstein.org/.index.html" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Albert Einstein Archives at Hebrew University in Jerusalem</a>.</div>
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The Einstein Papers Project recently published its <a href="http://www.caltech.edu/content/caltech-and-princeton-university-press-release-thirteenth-volume-einstein-papers" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">13th volume of Einstein’s collected papers</a>.</div>
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Einstein, who was raised a secular Jew, was open about his religious views starting in the 1920s, when he became a public figure after winning the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, Buchwald said. And biographers, including Walter Isaacson, have documented <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1607298,00.html" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Einstein’s faith journey</a>.</div>
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“There are no revelations here,” Buchwald said of the so-called God letter. “But it is frank in the sense that there are other writings where he says he understands a need for religion and is not derogatory. … Here he makes his own position very clear.”</div>
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In the letter about to be offered on eBay, Einstein drove home his strong opposition to the idea that Jews, or any people, may be “chosen.”</div>
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Here’s part of what he wrote, according to the Auction Cause translation:</div>
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For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups … I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.</div>
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Buchwald, who has dedicated her life to making Einstein’s works available, believes any discussion of historic documents has value, but she is critical of how this letter is being presented.</div>
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There are word choices in the translation that she, as a German speaker, would tweak. She also doesn’t get why it’s said to be written on Princeton University letterhead, when a <a href="http://www.auctioncause.com/cf/einstein/images/large.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">blown-up image </a>shows it wasn't. Einstein wasn’t even employed there, she pointed out; he was with the <a href="http://www.ias.edu/about/mission-and-history" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Institute for Advanced Study</a><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> in</em> Princeton, not <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">at </em>Princeton.</div>
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Though she views such incongruities as "a bit muddy," she said she wishes the auction agency and seller luck. "It's just hype. ... I don't have a horse in this race."</div>
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The letter first became fodder for public discussion and mass fascination when the original sold at a London auction in May 2008 and “poured gasoline on the culture wars between science and religion,” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/science/17einsteinw.html" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The New York Times reported</a>. Back then, it fetched a <em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mere </em>$404,000. Among the bidders who reportedly lost out that time around: big-name atheist and author Richard Dawkins.</div>
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Gazin of Auction Cause, which pairs marketing with charities, said the 2008 anonymous buyer sought his group out for the Einstein letter's sale after noting the agency's other successes. Topping the list: the $2.1 million raked in for an <a href="http://download.premiereradio.net/guest/rushlimb/pdf/RushLimbaughSmearLetter.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #5c7996; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">October 2007 letter </a>from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and signed by 41 other Democrat leaders, demanding an apology from Rush Limbaugh.</div>
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"More than a few” potential buyers have gotten prequalified to enter this upcoming Einstein letter bidding war, Gazin said. He described those expressing interest so far as people in the technology and atheist communities, as well as university and public museums.</div>
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At the current owner’s request, Gazin said, an unspecified portion of the letter's proceeds will go to cancer research.</div>
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<span style="font-style: inherit; line-height: 1.7em;">For those not interested in such heady materials, Auction Cause is offering some less profound items on eBay this month: the dress Maria Menounos wore to the Emmys; shoes from Kourtney Kardashian's closet and time with Howard Stern in the shock-jock's studio.</span></div>
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