Ridiculing Religion or Religion of Ridicule

Okhla writes "Masadi was terminated from some US university last year. The following facts have been presented on many occasions:"

I was not terminated from anywhere and certainly not "last year". I returned to Pakistan Jan 2007 .

Then he writes "Fact : Masadi was kicked out of US."
BS I left of my own accord and have been back twice since then. Nobody "kicked out" has such liberty.

"Fact: Masadi begged for an extension but was denied on merit."

More BS. This person is so pathetic that when stumped by my arguments he invents tales as ad hominem. I taught part time in the US not based on any contract on a "need" basis. No extension is involved in such deals

"Fact: Masadi was rejected by all mainline publishers."
I just tried a couple, not ALL. Another lie, and corporate publishers usually "reject" people of impeccable credentials whose work then can either not make money off of or whose work goes against the structure of capitalism.


"Fact: Lulu.com agreed to publish Masadi papers, for a fee."

Lulu doesn't "agree" to publish anyone and they don't charge a fee.

"Fact: All Pakistan colleges/schools refused to hire Masadi."

I worked at at least 3 well know universities in pakistan.

"Fact: Chowk rejected six(or eight?) of Masadi articles."

Chowk rejected around a dozen articles of mine because of my viewpoints that don't sit well with Gill the plumber. Only Okhla takes chowk editors as the be all and end all literary standards

"Fact: Masadi believes the rest of the world consists of "dimwits" who are peons of the West."

People like okhla certainly do qualify for the above, the "rest" of the world is a victim of the elite, the few who serve them are the dimwits and peons, Okhla has a prominent position among them.

"Fact: Mad mullahs like Masadi shall soon be eliminated."

Okhla is not immune from death either...

"Mian Masadi, the more you "change" the more you remain the same. But you don't fool any Chowkies..."

If by change you mean I should change my pov, go climb a pole till you reach a point of perfect fit, if you know what I mean......

Re: # 165

Alphanull:

"...That *one experimental result* sufficed to *disprove* the theory of Newtonian mechanics as it stood..."

The experimental result that you quote showed limits of Newtonian Physics and did not "disprove" Newton's laws.
I am not putting down experimental (empirical) work, in fact it is a necessary condition to "verify" theoretical physicists work. In fact scientific community remain skeptic about theoretical postulates until verified experimentally.

Another example is, that only recently, when a spacecraft left solar system that limits of Euclidian geometry showed up, because the calculated velocity and observed speeds of the spacecraft had discrepancy large enough to be ignored.

Likewise Newtonian Physics, Einstein's Theory and QM came into play, and now Euclidian Geometry's limits showed up too. Now theoretical physicists are saying QM is inadequate to study String Theory.

None of this means "disproved". Instead it means their limits are reached and "new" approaches are needed.

"Disproving" is a deduction, implication etc. Religionist wrongly approach is that "if God's existence is not disproved", then God exists. The fact is Scientific methods do not "disprove". This is Masadi's, however convenient but wrong, argument is when he is asking to be "disproved". He has demonstrated intellect, and not ignorance to understand it. Therefore, uses such arguments to confuse, and insists that scientific methods disprove to justify his arguments.

Religious beliefs are not as tolerant as Scientific methods. He knows it, and that is why he wants to claim that his arguments based on his religious beliefs are scientific. He is not alone, after all there are many who chased the similar dreams and came up with Christian Science too. He is trying to probably "invent" Islamic science.

You are correct, if you meant that Einstein's quote did not make him a hindrance in the progress of QM. After all Einstein's constant that he rejected from his own equations, is now being brought back and explained using QM. Einstein's rejected constant may now win someone a Nobel Prize.

#173 Posted by quin on
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This is a challenge for all those who want to bring the true value of religious thought to fore and make it accessible for the modern mind. No doubt, without proper ‘contextualizing’ no meaningful work about religion is possible.
]]

This is the one bad thing that religion gave to us. The responsibility to keep giving contexts to stupid things??? So God said things without "thinking" properly and now you will have to add "context" to make "tribal" look "modern". And how much of context will it be????


So the "true value of religion" is already known to you without knowing the context of that true value. It is like you don't know what the thing is but you know its true value??

Let me be a bit rude and idiotic to suggest you this... A truth is truth when it is said with all of its context otherwise it doesn't even make sense,forget about being true or not.

Re #72 Posted by quin on


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#2. pinku: please substantiate your claim;

“seems like an apology on behalf of all religion�
]]

In general your article describes movie as "for athiest and against religion", the movie was "for those who do not believe in religion and against religion". I was referring to the following para in your article. What you say, seems to suggest that movie hardly had any comedy or sarcasm and instead of doubt it was rallying the cause of athiests in a distasteful way. First what is the cause of athiests? I do not know that athiests use the same kind of large organized structures, lies as religions use? If you think that cause of athiests is to make religions look bad when they are not, then you should give examples where that was done (a lie about religion). "snake" and all those things are part of those religions? Otherwise why it is distasteful if the taste of movie is to show bad taste of religions?

I have still not seen that movie, but in his intevrview with Larry King he says that he is not Athiest, he simply do not know who God is what he is. So why people of religion force words into mouths of those who say religions are bad, why do you call him athiest? He doesn't say that God doesn't exist, he doesn't say he is an athiest, he says he doesn't know and of course if God exists he is not God of those religions?

There is nothing in culture that religion gives and is not replacebale with something better. It is very difficult to say what is "good" in religion that you can not have without religions, but it is easy to say what is bad in them, that we can avoid.

Paragraph from your article-
[[
Yet, watching the movie, one neither gets the comedy nor the satire, nor a simple message of doubt. One leaves the theatre with a strong sense that Maher is rallying the atheists in a battle cry. It may be good to challenge what is ridiculous in religion. Only by a thorough and unrelenting threshing can all chaff be separated from traditional religious thinking. On the other hand, the trickery he and his team use for this venture renders Religulous ineffective and a distasteful production. By pronouncing war against religion, Maher may do a greater disservice to the cause of atheism. Atheism becomes its own antithesis, the worst form of which is no less than religious fundamentalism. In a chart near the beginning of the movie Maher shows that sixteen percent of the US population are atheist—more than other groups such as gay and lesbians, Muslims, Jews, and Blacks. Clearly the atheist voice must be heard.
]]

Re: # 78 sattar2
You have expressed some intricate ideas very brilliantly. I really enjoyed this post.
“The way religion is shoved in their faces perhaps has something to do with it.� is a point worth pondering.
This is a challenge for all those who want to bring the true value of religious thought to fore and make it accessible for the modern mind. No doubt, without proper ‘contextualizing’ no meaningful work about religion is possible.

“I see his views on religion mainly as humorous that implicitly, correctly, warn us of the dangers of taking it all too seriously and literally.�
No question about it – my slight discomfort – as also expressed earlier in my interact about Salim_Chuhan’s post, is the danger that it may become misleading and camouflage the real political, economic and social issues. I lean towards the position that after Communism’s demise, Islam has becoming scapegoat for hiding vested interests of big corporations. Ironically (and intentionally) fundamentalism was fed by money from those vested interests in the first place. Though a different topic, but I cannot help to suspect that as these documentaries are becoming a new tool in propaganda war for the ‘heart and mind’ of people, and obviously by corollary, there may be an agenda involved in that.
I have no proof for that – and neither one can ‘disprove’ this … LOL

Re: # 95 Hyde
Well said

Re: # 96 Goldfinger,
Wow, a refreshing analogy that gives a pause for thought, “There is a possibility that the body and consciousness could be separate, like a computer and internet …)

Re: # 125 hamidm2
Good expression of athiestulous gobbledegook. And a good example of what Hyde in post # 95 refers when it says about how athiests think, “…those who believe are irrational (and probably need to be bombed back to rationality,…)

Re: # 139 teshah
In the movie, three religions are chosen for the ridicule. Other big religions of Indian sub-continent, North America, and Far East are not part of it. So the ridicule is specific – not general.
You made a good point – how it can be commented upon if one has not seen the movie. But it is not uncommon at Chowk to see people making over-sweeping comments about the articles they have not read. So here ya go.
Anyway, I think the movie should be available soon on the internet and video shops as it is already no more playing in as many theatres as it was at its debut.

Re: # 156 Ravi_Kopra,
Yes, when I joined Chowk I did not know that the log-in name I will choose will forever become my interact / iLog identity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have chosen a log-in as Mutaal_Mooquin.
Thank you for your interest.

Re: # 162 Salim_Chauhan
Thanks for your interest. I do agree with what you are saying about necessity of humour, especially about things which are being taken too seriously. Such humour allows us to see things in a lighter vein and thus allows us to be more enlightened about it. In my article, I have in fact commended that aspect. I have for example said,

“He [Bill Maher] must be commended for his brutally honest and plain questioning along with the funny commentaries that expose the ridiculousness of some views.�

Point of my article was to express my discomfort about some aspects of producers’ artisitc integrity or lack of it as substantiated also by journalistic reports cited in the article (The Los Angles Time, the Business Week).

The other point I wanted to bring was movie’s approach towards extremism. Your comment “… there is merit in laughing at the extreme view of ALL extremists.� is valid, however, that is not the case in the movie. The extremism (as generally understood by this terms) of Christians and Jewish extremists is hardly touched upon. Their perversion is shown to be benign, for example, contraptions to avoid Sabbath commandments or Christian pastor claiming to be reincarnated God Jesus etc. Only one small clip about Bush’s foreign policy comment made his way into the movie to bring extremist aspect of anyone other than Islam. When I say this I get accused of typical Islam apologists or similar. That is not true. The truth can be seen by anyone who watches the movie and analyze its content. I believe Richard Dawkins did much better job of exposing all extremists equally and I had no problems with that. Rather, I brought his “The God Delusion� to the attention of Chowk readers precisely for the reason that it exposes fairly the religious extremism of dominant faiths, though I do not agree with all his views.

Your comment about the perverted thinking and practices that must be exposed for what they are is well stated, “If we allow such barbarity and stupidity to be practiced in the name of OUR religion, we should be prepared to be laughed at.� I just capitalized ‘our’ in this quote as I hear the angst in it.

Anil #163

{{Einstein is famously quoted for saying "God does not play dice". He said so because he could not prove that Quantum Mechanics was wrong. A "disproof" that he knew he could never come up, hence this famous quote from him.}}

Anil ji, you are making confusion worse confounded by bringing that remark of Einstein's into the picture. Whether or not Einstein though he personally could prove QM wrong, it can in principle be proved wrong by a single unexplainable discrepant experimental observation. One can argue about interpretations of QM - and Einstein was deeply disturbed by a probabilistic interpretation of physical law - but that is a separate issue from the question whether the theoretical predictions of the QM agree with experiment.

And as far as Einstein was concerned, he knew very well that his own theories could be proved wrong by a single discrepancy. There is an anecodote about a pamphlet attacking his science and him personally, entitled "One Hundred Authors Against Einstein". His reported retort was "If I were wrong, one would have been enough". The situation may not be an exact parallel for experimental falsification but it does I think indicate what Einstein's attitude to falsification would have been.

Anil #91

{{Scientific methods only prove and not disprove.}}

and #131, #134, #151, #155

Anil ji, I regret to have to inform you that you are completely befuddled.

A theory about *empirically observable phenomena* is considered 'scientific' to the extent that it is falsifiable, i.e. to the extent that it makes precise predictions that can be tested experimentally and potentially contradicted.

Every experiment whose results agree with the predictions of a specific theory adds empirical validation to that theory. However *a single experiment* whose results show an unexplainable irresolvable discrepancy with the predictions of a theory *disproves* that *particular version* or variant of the theory for all time to come.

Thus a specific theory about empirical phenomena (such as most of physics, for example) can *always be disproved*. It can *never be proved*, i.e. placed beyond the reach of experimental falsification - though it can be provisionally supported by a large number of corroborating experimental observations. This is the opposite of what
you have been claiming.

For a concrete example, Newtonian mechanics was apparently corroborated by two centuries worth of astronomical observations of the planets - except, alas, for the discrepancy in the rate of precession of the perihelion of the orbit of Mercury around the sun, which was too large and too thoroughly verified to be explainable as
due to experimental error. That *one experimental result* sufficed to *disprove* the theory of Newtonian mechanics as it stood (and General Relativity subsequently predicted a rate that turned out to be in better accord with observations).

BTW, none of this is particularly esoteric - it is common knowledge among working scientists and all those with an interest in epistemology or philosophy of science. This viewpoint was developed in detail by Karl R. Popper in 'The Logic of Scientific Discovery'.

Re: # 163

Rabia:

Oops. I was trying to be extra careful and did spell checker, but left out the following closing paragraph.

"Often religious and other emotional believers intentionally or unintentionally use "disprove" argument to persuade that, for example, if God's existence cannot be "disproven" therefore it exists, as Masadi Sahib does. He goes even wilder with his claims to interpret many scientific findings to claim they support his argument."

Re: # 160

Rabia:

Einstein is famously quoted for saying "God does not play dice". He said so because he could not prove that Quantum Mechanics was wrong. A "disproof" that he knew he could never come up, hence this famous quote from him. The corollary to it survived and became a foundation of further research.

The portion you quote is what points to corollaries and continued probity in Scientific methods. Even if a proof is one, there can be many corollaries. However, corollaries are through implication, deduction etc. and hence proof negative is only accepted within certain constraints (my example of negative result of testing for virus). People who claim results based on corollaries never say for certainty that something is absent or something is disproven.

Doctors and most statisticians always qualify such claims of disproof. They never qualify if they have found a proof positive.

It is in this context the part you quoted is applicable. The investigators who found the proof positive must report "verifiable" method, and consider "challenges". Therefore, they consider the challenges (falsification) also. Masadi sahib on the other hand uses foul language, quite aking to Einstein's "God does not play dice".

The fact remains that scientific methods never "disprove". "Disproven" is corollary (opposite) implication or deduction) of the "proof". This article also said how individual's bias can influence (Einstein's bias as shown in his statement).

{"The climax is Bin Laden’s statement that ‘it is a must for Al Quaida to obtain the nuclear bomb.’ This contrasts dismally with the mere second lasting clip of Bush that lacks emphasis on how the Christian fundamentalism of the Bush presidency has fed the religious fundamentalism of Bin Laden"}

Dear Mutaal,
Making fun of the more serious aspects of life is the essence of good humor. There is no reason to spare religion as long as we are being sincere, fair, unbigoted, and logical. There is no point in insulting the holy symbols of various faiths, but there is merit in laughing at the exteme views of ALL extremists.

Bill Maher, whether he is joking about Catholics, Evangelists, Jews, or Muslims is genuinely funny. His mockery of Muslims, especially the part about burkas, beards, violence, and stoning are all fair game. If we allow such barbarity and stupidity to be practiced in the name of our religion, we should be prepared to be laughed at.