"In a progressively more secularized world, the only religious people in the world seem to be fanatics"
Is God Real? I'm sure many of us might have debated the question at some point in our lives. I'm not here to drill in my opinion or bore you to boredom heaven with facts. Oh wait! This is a blog and I am supposed to give opinions and facts!
Sam Harris, the bestselling author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason has some pretty interesting and solid points to make about well, religion terrorism and reason.
Now, all of us are familiar with the Religion vs Science and the whole 'If the human body were to be one of God's intelligent design products, where does the appendix figure?' argument. What Harris talks about is the reason behind a person's belief. Hope turns into belief as long as you have a convincing argument supporting it he says. This is plausible as far as science is concerned and indeed he makes an excellent point saying there is no Christian Physics and Muslim Mathematics. But what happens when we start treading on the slippery religious and moral grounds? What distinguishes belief from hope?
The Tibetans have been oppressed and flogged for centuries. Do we see Tibetan suicide bombers running amok in Tiananmen Square? Yet, politicians and thinkers alike wouldn't dare discuss issues like this let alone topics like atheism. Coming to atheism, stats say that half of Great Britain and almost 80% of Sweden and most parts of Western Europe consists of atheists. I'm not saying we should have more atheists in India, but we don't even seem to be anywhere near an intelligent debate on the subject. I'd love to see Sam Harris face off with the likes of Praveen Togadia and Ashok Singhal!
One this is certain - religious debates are never boring! Or is it just me?
Newsweek has an interesting debate between the evangelist Rick Warren and Sam Harris here
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Life's Biggest Question?
Friday, May 18, 2007
The birds & the bees
I have always been fascinated by the captivating power of the lucre. Everybody, everywhere, everytime(mostly atleast) has a thought pertaining in some way or another to this mother of all magnets. If Ali, could "fly like a butterfly, and sting like a bee", this is like a point blank shot to the temple with a very high-bore gun. The conduit for the flow of all this moolah, the stock market, prompted me into coming up with this very bizzare analogy while being perched on my thinking pedestal. Here goes... (this refers to the recent rise and fall in the Indian economy)
The rise of the sensex (indicator of the nation’s growth) can be credited to a variety of reasons from expendable incomes to favorable global phenomenon, from foreign investments to the coming of age of our own industries and so on. The meteoric rise can be compared to the feelings of a guy in the company of a beautiful woman, being enticed and excited. The guy gets aroused at a steady pace reaching higher and higher plateaus on his way to his threshold. As the seduction reaches its peak the guy makes one final charge and like Newton’s law, “everything that goes up must come down’. The guy is no exception. Once the threshold is breached, the guy can no longer defy gravity. What happens? He begins to deflate. Only in the case of the sensex, this fall was exponential.
Investment, yeah I know the word sound dreary and boring and more often than not, best left to the patriarch’s of the family. But with financial stability becoming the need of the hour for guys and the fairer sex (independently & together) investing is one heck of an idea. Oh and before I forget, this is most probably the best time in the country’s history in terms of economic growth and can be can be compared to a guy’s growth on ‘Viagra’. Thus the time is ripe to get on the bandwagon and reap the spoils for the rest of your adult, active lives.
Alright, for those who think short term; no pain, maximum gain, try this on for size. Your better half’s birthday is on the anvil or an important day of your relationship is fast approaching and you, my friend, as usual are short on cash! The thing for you would be to invest small, for a few weeks and withdraw at the end of that making a neat, albeit smallish profit. This technique also works when you total your car and can’t afford, literally to tell your folks about it and could use some moolah!
Before going any further, let me just spell it out for you, “the previous paragraph is a complete no no!” I was just kidding around. This is best left to the experts. Dabbling in such doings is as hazardous as playing with fire, and will leave you scarred for life (at least majority of the times) and will leave you ‘up the creek without a paddle’. The idea is as ludicrous as a study done on the U.S Presidential elections, which revealed that the taller candidate always won.
Coming back to the analogy we started off with (if you don’t remember, go back to START), what the whole investment game needs is foreplay, vis-à-vis, research, and loads of it. Copious quantities of this will hold you in good stead throughout your adult, physically active life (pardon the pun).You can never get enough of it and large doses of this never resulted in a grunt of discomfort from anybody.
Once this is adequately dealt with (whenever that may be), one can get down on their hands and knees and delve deep into the world of… you guessed it, money (for all those who guessed different, get a life!). All this talk of analogies is actually quite tedious and has prompted the writer to take a thoroughly deserved break, to succumb to the call of the thinking pedestal!!
Perverted, maybe... Insidious, could be... but these are the thoughts that make life fun and worth waking upto!! Think about it?
Monday, May 7, 2007
SHAM - a way of life!!
The fourth estate! Powerful and omnipresent. Media plays a vital role in our daily lives and none more so than the www. The Web has lead to “the death of distance”, and has brought us into touching distance with the far reaches of the Earth. All this serious and seemingly informed talk is actually just a load of sham! We are ‘three young blokes’ who have started on an odyssey that would forever change our lives.
SHAM is going to be an online magazine that provides all us desi’s with an awesome place to hang out at. There will be truckloads of entertainment, a gamut of emotions and expressions and we will also talk shop, vis-à-vis, studies, employment and beyond. This is going to be a serious magazine which talks about serious issues (SHAMming again!!). SHAM is going to be fun, fun and a whole can of ‘whoop-ass’ (pardon the language).
We are looking for your support in getting this ride on the road and would appreciate any and all kinds of help. There is a need for writers, designers, photographers and creative people who have the desire to have a place that we can call, “OUR OWN!”
For starters, you can contribute by filling out the survey HERE. If you don't give a s*** about the magazine, at least you'll have the satisfaction of helping out your fellow students!!
