A Letter to God

tahmed writes "ertility levels did not increase due to modern medicine. it was mortality levels that decreased (meaning: modern medicine saved people's lives, not kill them as you imply). and that is what caused the population explosion."

Don't try to teach demography to a demographer. Mortality rates being high cause fertility to remain high, when mortality falls and that was not due to modern medicine by the way, fertility lags in falling causing the population explosion. In third world countries the high fertility is due to high mortality apart from other reasons

Re: # 28

I think you are still under the impression that Saima Shah is till the editor of Chowk - which she is not. In fact she has not been the editor for a few years now - so blocking Tahir and Masadi is probably because they are still writing to her as if she is the editor....just a clarification!

.... i don't know much about these things, but i read somewhere that plato was real bad man - a racist who advocated totalitarianism and a vain scoundrel who wanted to intall himself as the philosopher king .... he was hitler's patron saint ....

#58 Posted by hamidm2

Oh! I forgot two even greater ones. Every two bit state in the world is eager to call itself a Republic, be it Peoples Republic of China, to Islamic Republic of Pakistan to the US of A all want to be his conception of what a state should be. Second one is for you purrhakoo types – all the education that you received; degrees that you are so proud of are based on the system of education he developed in the Academy. Yes it is called the Socratic method because he decided to not take the credit for anything himself instead ascribed everything to his teacher Socrates.

Re: # 55

ok ... so you believe in the guy who inspired nazism, fascism, racism, islam and communism - ideologies that have killed millions and will kill millions in the future .......... i choose to believe in the spaghetti monster!

#54 Posted by Afat

“...This I presume is about time Abraham was here...!!..its after Abraham .... religions , organized religions took over”

Abraham is mythic just like Rama or Odysseus. His importance is because he has a covenant (contract) with God to “make the Hebrews a great nation.” The myth itself was developed during the Axial age perhaps betweem 500 and 600 BC. But the religion only took over after 280 AD when Christianity started taking hold in the Roman Empire.

#53 Posted by Regards

Well I must say this is the only period that really grips me so I study the stuff. There were so many other major figures that just get lost in the flush during that time. This is why the beginning of that age at least in the West is referred to as the Ionian enlightenment. But this enlightenment was taking place the world over. The amazing part is that similar ideas were germinating and same conclusions drawn in different places in isolation.

“Greeks knew enough about India and Indian advances otherwise Alexandre would have never taken such great risks to go to India.”

Alexander was not interested in going to India as such he was interested in conquering the world and at that time that meant defeating the Persians. He also was completely enamored by his teacher Aristotle and was convinced that if Hellenism could be adopted by the rest of the ‘barbarians’ (a term used by the Greeks denote non Greek speakers) it would bring about an age peace and tranquility and the best for the world. This is why whereever he went he set up Greek towns (there were so many Alexandrias) and restored the vanquished to their thrones and property so long as Pan Hellenism could be established. By the time he got to India his tired generals refused to go beyond the Indus (I think) and so he went back.

#52 Posted by hamidm2

".... i hope you realize that your beloved plato, who defended infnaticide and was the proponent of a master race, was also loved by the nazis and other fascists ......"

Not only the Nazis but also the Socialists, Karl Marx and the whole communism enterprise is nothing but a reiteration of the three waves that Plato describes in the Republic. But it was his pupil and most gifted student Aristotle who also became his severest critic. Now his critique of Plato’s three waves is what western democracies are all about. Let me just iterate other major influences we have that can be directly attributed to him. His tri-partite theory of soul was so important that Christianity had no choice but after being around for nearly three hundreds incorporate the concept of Trinity into its conception of God. Your buddy Freud’s theory of Id, Ego, and Superego is also the same regurgitation. Montesquieu division of government into executive, legislative, judicial is the same tripartite theory of soul. His conceptions on love, justice, courage, beauty and of course the soul continue to formulate the debate, the parameters of all rational discourse in western civilization.

" instilled such a fear of hell and heaven in hereafter set in us "

...This I presume is about time Abraham was here...!!..its after Abraham .... religions , organized religions took over ....
humanity took the wrong turn... along the road to evolution back to the Orignal....the ever lasting ....and the one and only ...... call it light, call it Noor, call is whatever .


.... as Above....so below.


Or am I mistaken along the time line....?

#50 TehsinA
#The Axial Age from 800 to 200 BC is the time that nearly all the work in this field was done. Individuals such as Zoroaster in Persia, Isaiah among Hebrews, Plato and Aristotle in Greece, Buddha in India and Confucious in China made simultaneous but independent and indellible contributions to our consciousness."

Your remark is very pertinent about the first window of 900BC - 200 BC. Iron age has just set in and tools gave humans time to think beyond food and shelter (and probably sex). Is'nt it remarkable that among others in India non- or marginally vedic philosophies such Yoga, Sankhya and buddhism there were Charvaks (atheists) too? I do not think over such long periods of time, philosophies develop in isolation. Curiosity and thought are most contagious. By the time Socrates, Aristotale, Plato came by, Greeks knew enough about India and Indian advances otherwise Alexandre would have never taken such great risks to go to India.

"So please don’t throw away the work of these great sages in your anxiety to throw out religion"

On the contrary, they did a wonderful job and we should try to deserve them by taking it forward. Evolution theory was not still found and still Buddha had firmly entrenched his cause & effect theory. He does not mention God anywhere because God had already become irrelevant. All this by just meditating and forward thinking. No computers.

Except again in another window with the ascendance of buddhism in 3rd to 7th AD with advances in astronomy, maths and surgery, WHAT WE DID AFTER? NOTHING or even REGRESSED. Just beacuse semitic tribes from west were less philosophical and more disciplined like army, they imposed their civil and criminal codes on us.

They instilled such a fear of hell and heaven in hereafter set in us. And specially in this life only if we refuse to belive in what we're told to believe since birth. We're frozen in a mental ghetto. Most courageous and rationals of us do not wish to raise our voice over a mumble, lest our own fellow friends will ostracize and worse stalk us.

We should not throw the baby out with water but also not keep the baby in the same water after 2000 years. Please let the thought and especially courage of thought - the baby - grow.

Re: # 50

tehsin mian,

.... i hope you realize that your beloved plato, who defended infnaticide and was the proponent of a master race, was also loved by the nazis and other fascists ......

#45"And since it is impossible for a human to think outside the box, it is best to leave it at that - realize there is more to things than what we can perceive"

Thinking out of the box, impossible. Not really. Just not allowing temple merchants ride roughshod over simple lives and .... logic.

I'll readily agree to leave at that but unfortunately gaïa factor- earth as one single individul, is more and more evident. What everyone else is doing ends up deciding my future or my geneticall descendents' futur. So with no consideration for my 'natural' altruistic incline, I'm still forced to make sure that when the time comes of a disaster - environmental or technical (I perfectly agree on Tehsin on that), most around me will agree to concur and find a strategy to stave it off. Given what our Indian & Pakistani bhais are, they will run for aarti/ namaz or ..for their lives in panic.

How can we bring around Ram Bahrose and mamooli Abdullah if even rational folks like masadi, tahir, ustruly will start insulting and giving an education when it comes to so called sacred? I'm grateful to Tehsin that he offers to analyse and then argue. very rare.

#43 Posted by Regards

“But all religions rely on soul or on the promise of hereafter”

I agree with you that religions use soul, God, purpose of life etc. to exercise power over people and this should be rejected entirely. During the past 2000 years religions have caused havoc by exercising power over people in the name of ‘saving their souls’. I am totally with you that religion as force for organization and action is the worst form of imperialism and should be banished to the dust bins of history. But please do not throw the baby with the bath water.

The Axial Age from 800 to 200 BC is the time that nearly all the work in this field was done. Individuals such as Zoroaster in Persia, Isaiah among Hebrews, Plato and Aristotle in Greece, Buddha in India and Confucious in China made simultaneous but independent and indellible contributions to our consciousness. It is amazing that these parallel developments took place around the same time the world over with the result that the whole world civilization established a deeper hold on the human spirit.

So please don’t throw away the work of these great sages in your anxiety to throw out religion. They established our entire moral and ethical basis; scientists whose work you hold in high esteem need to be controlled because they don’t have a clue about which course to take. Today we should look at Google and Microsoft and be suspicious and skeptical not because they are inherently bad but their ability to exercise enormous power over us and their ability to manipulate us. Religion did it for the past 2000 years, watch out! this time it is going to be machines and their manipulators.

frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck............ carlin (pbuh)

#46 hamidm2
"... however, since there are billions of people who believe in heaven and hell, i sometimes worry about it - what if they are right?"

You see you're more worried than I was ever about what happens hereafter or about my ties with God. I bother only about my relations with others around me. If there is ever a God, he'll understand and is certainly not going to be fooled by the arguments of a man.

I'm sure you must have heard of this anecdote from a physics quiz at Stanford in 1952 or so: Is the hell endothermic ( absorbs heat) or exothermic (generates heat)? Among many the best answer was: Given that all are burnt, it should be exothermic. But as all who have not converted to christianism and Islam and ... before death are going to hell, we're all necessarily being sent to hell. We can't be in all religions simultaneously. Thus hell is getting overcrowded and absorbing heat so endothermic. However Suzan had told me last month that hell will be frozen cold before she sleeps with me. As she slept with me last night so....

Tell me what were you doing last night in that supposedly business meeting?

Re: # 45

tahmed,

I am one of those who think that religions are all a bunch of fairy tales...however interestingly, do you know that scientists are these days seriously looking into experiences that many people have gone through when they have been clinically dead and have been revived....I think in the study it was about 22% of such people...they have had amazingly real experiences...in which these people have had out of body experiences, and could even recall conversations and situations, which were out of their vicinity and they had no way of knowing this unless they were there when they were clinically dead being resuscitated...this has led some scientists to wonder whether consciousness exists out of the body, and whether a body is like a computer, and consciousness like the internet...