Desicritics Author: Diganta

The South Asian Water That Is Indian

Diganta — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:15:14 EDT

It's been long since I have written about Farakka - the barrage on the Ganges just before it enters Bangladesh. There has been no permanent treaties between India and Bangladesh on the water sharing at Farakka. However, there is a 30 year agreement between India and Bangladesh that ends after 2020. As per the agreement, India ensures 35000 cusec water for Bangladesh at even the driest possible season. The dam was supposedly for supplying more water to the dying Kolkata port, which has already died its' natural death and handed over its responsibilities to Haldia port - a new and better one.

If you Google the term Farakka, you will encounter a lot of documents and articles about Indian unilateral water withdrawal. Some of them are written on a factual basis but some of them are not. So far, I have found an excellent paper written by Mikiyasu Nakayama from Utsunomia University, Japan. This is an excellent analysis of the entire proposal and its history.

I was delighted to find that both the proposals I raised in my previous article were indeed discussed between India and Bangladesh. It was my pleasure to know that the proposal that I stressed on, was indeed put forward by the Robert McNamara, the President of World Bank in 1976. He proposed that dams and water reservoirs should be built in Nepal to solve the long term water crisis in the Ganges. The dams could be on the tributaries of the Ganges (map), preferably on Kosi and Gandak. It was supposed to release water during dry season and to store during monsoon. Canada and World Bank both agreed to fund the project. It was not only for the storage, it would have created huge amount of hydro-electricity for both Nepal and India. Bangladesh also agreed to the proposal. But India did not.

India rejected the idea since it was going to 'internationalize' the issue and will involve a third party (Nepal). Indian policymakers stuck to the point that they'd help Bangladesh to construct a canal from Brahamaputra to the Ganges. Bangladesh opposed with the claim that it would involve displacement of a huge population in a densely populated country and also the Brahamaputra river might not have enough water during dry season. And I don't see Bangladesh was wrong in that. Brahamaputra water is also diminishing (though better than the Ganges).

The other point India cited was the possible earthquake in Nepal could destroy thousands of life if the water breaks out of the dam. The same hold true for counter-Indian proposal to build a water-reservoir in upstream Arunachal to augment the lower supply in Brahamaputra. Either of these two is a probably bitter truth - a dam in either place can carry destructive effects downstream should there be an Earthquake. However, how else can we get extra water?

Nakayama noted that since India was not hungry for World Bank loans in 1970s, they actually did not even bother to care about the proposal. In 1950s, the situation was different when India and Pakistan signed the Indus Water treaty. The other notable observation was India basically stuck to the same pattern that it was successful with Pakistan - get total ownership of a few rivers and ask others to interlink (with compensation of cost of canals ) - something that Pakistan did after the Indus Water treaty. But, it is clear to me that Indian policymakers lacked 'out-of-the-box' thinking and were more committed to stick to their position and never thought in terms of development of the whole region.

What would have possibly happened if Nepal was made a party to Ganges agreement? Indian policymakers could have thought from both political and technical point of view. They viewed it as an agreement where Nepal would come to the driver's seat having the storage capacity. Also, they might think that it would be difficult to tackle both the countries instead of one at a time. The other point could be serious. A possible earthquake in Nepal would devastate high populated Indian areas including Uttar Pradesh. Well, that's always a possibility with a water reservoir and we already have a lot of them all though out the country.

Instead of adding extra water to the supply, India and Bangladesh are still vying for water, from Teesta (another Indian river that enters Bangladesh) and the Ganges. It is noted that India gets 39% of water from Teesta and more than 50% of the Ganges. However, the upper-riparian withdrawal is generally restricted to 20-25% in all resolved water disputes till date including Indus water treaty and the Nile river water sharing treaty between Sudan and Egypt.

The paper also noted the unwillingness of lower-riparian states to gain popularity. I was personally very critical of that in case of Bangladesh where political parties do make politics out of this issue but showed little commitment towards solving it. He ended his opinion with a few possible reasons of failure including the mediation of an effective and neutral third party. ICJ interfered in only a single case on record - with Hungary and Slovenia on river Danube. That seems to me the last place for arbitration.

It is said that "better late than never". Even if after 30+ years of bad policies towards Indians and Bangladeshis, some of Indian policymakers get rid of casual attitude towards development - it will be a bonus for the majority of Indians. It should be noted that the extra water could not only solve the dry season water crisis, but also could fix the diminishing ground water levels and the lower growth in agriculture for last couple of decades. In an era when the food prices are doubling every year, it's worth taking a fresh look at the age-old problem. After all, what's wrong if we have a few dams in Nepal?

Book Review: Phantoms in the Brain

Diganta — Sat, 7 Jul 2007 09:30:11 EDT

"Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is." - Bhagavad Gita.

Have you ever heard of Bill Marshal, an ex-Air Force Pilot, who met a stroke and lost some of his brain functionality? Since then, his capability of dealing with numbers was lost. He could explain you the fighter planes and share his experience of flying with them. But once you ask him about what is the value of one hundred minus three, he fails to answer. Not only that he can’t deal with numbers at all.

Did you hear the story of Mirabelle Kumar, a cheerful young lady, who was born without her hands? But she used to feel the existence of her hands from her childhood. Philip Martinez, who lost his arm in a motorcycle accident in San-Diego freeway, feels pain in his non-existing elbow and fingers.

One might not even heard of Diane Fletcher, a lady who survived an accident from carbon-monoxide fumes, could not recognize or count any object - largest letters on an eye-chart or number of fingers shown. Literally, she was a blind - would have failed all standard tests of blindness. But, she could pick up things or walk or even place a letter in the letter box with dexterity - without any help or even without touching the slit of the letter box.

A more interesting case was that of Ingrid, a Swiss woman, who suffered a brain damage to lose the visibility of continuity of motion. She could perfectly read books or cook in the kitchen but if she looked at a person running, she could only have seen a succession of static snapshots of the continuous motion.

The history of James Thurber sounds more common to us. He lost one of his eyes at the age of six, and later lost the vision of the other eye in a gradual process. At the time he became blind, he claimed that he could see a fantastic world full of surrealistic images. He could see bridges rise lazily into air, like balloons. He used his 'vision' creatively and drew a lot of whimsical cartoons and pictures, those became very popular.

There is a story of one-hand clapping also. Mrs. Dodds, who was paralyzed on her left side of the body after a stroke, knew that it was working very well. When she was asked to clap, she just made clapping movement with her right hand and was confident of her action.

Last, but not the least, the amazing story of Arthur, the son of a diplomat from Venezuela, who met a near-fatal accident and went to coma. Once he's back from coma, he could recall all the past and seemed to be normal with respect to outward appearances. But he had one credible delusion about his parents - that they were impostors, posing as his parents - and nothing could convince him. He even recognized the facial similarity with his 'actual' parents, but never agreed that they are his parents - even he conjured up some imaginary reasons as justification as why would they pose as his parent.

All these and much more are the topics of the book I am going through - Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran, an eminent neuroscientist. He explains all these cases in depth without using much of jargons in Neuroscience. He starts with an assumption of our brain as a set of black boxes and then gradually goes onto describe each one's functionality and how they interact with each other and the limbs. More importantly, other than the above mentioned and many more case studies, he devises a few simple experiments those let us understand his point of view properly. In one of his later chapters, he explains the relationship between our brain and the image of God from the angle of Neuroscience as well as Evolutionary Psychology. In his concluding chapter, he deals with the apparent philosophical question - what is a self and what is consciousness - and how these are closely linked with our brain.

The book I would recommend for the readers who like to explore new fields and want to know about a vaguely understood area of science - neuroscience. As a deeply scientific-minded reader, I enjoyed the book from beginning to the end. It gives me the feel that how correct Newton was when he said :

"I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

Restaurant Review: Indian Kitchen, An Indian Restaurant in Shanghai

Diganta — Mon, 2 Jul 2007 08:37:18 EDT

Today I visited the Indian Kitchen, an Indian Restaurant in Shanghai. To get the directions, I called them up and some Chinese girls greeted me. As expected, the conversation with them was futile; they called up an Indian to carry on. Getting the tone of an Indian in a foreign land is like the song of a bird in the morning. I wished to carry on the conversation a little more, but it was a short-lived one. I got the road directions.

In the evening, I started for Indian Kitchen. Before that, I took the address from the Internet and a Chinese transcript of the same from a colleague. The Chinese transcript proved to be the key to reach the restaurant. I could dare to ask the road directions (at least a few silent gestures and hand-directions) from the pedestrians. Contrary to the culture in India, whomever I asked was at least able to approximately tell us where the location is, despite the fact that it is not a famous place to visit. In India, most of the people on the roads of a busy city do not know about the surroundings at all. Soon, I entered the smaller roads from the broader ones. Astonishingly, even those smaller roads are equipped with pedestrian signals and cemented pavements. And the pavements were full of small restaurants, small shops and massage centers. The houses in the backyard are mostly like Indian houses (They resemble Salt Lake in Kolkata or Jubilee Hills area in Hyderabad). Each one is an entity separated by a tall wall surrounding it. The flat culture is thriving in Shanghai with skyscrapers all around yet these small houses do exist. They have at the very least a free view of the sky and a few more trees than the flat-dwellers.

The entry to the restaurant was decorated in an Indian style, with garlands and portraits of Hindu gods. I entered and felt the deviation from my expectations at first sight. The first and the most striking difference was the scarcity of Indians inside. Most of the customers, as well as the waiters were Chinese. However, after a close look, I saw that the kitchen cooks were all Indians – South Indians in particular. The Indian boy, with whom I talked to, met us with a smile. He’s Ambrose from Tamil Nadu. I saw that he was communicating with other Chinese waiters at ease – of course in Chinese. Soon, I became familiar with another Indian boy. They came to Shanghai three years back, and can speak in Chinese. I did not ask him more questions, although I think I should have.

Although the waiters are mostly Chinese and as usual are very poor communicators in English, they were dressed up in traditional Indian dresses. Men were dressed up in golden color Kurta-Sherwani and women in pink Salwar-Kameez, with golden color embroidery on it. The interior is decorated with Tanpuras and Tablas, to conjure up an Indian image. One can match the experience with a Chinese coming to India and having food at a so-called Chinese restaurant. The men and women are dressed up in Chinese traditional dresses and the people who come to eat are all Indians.

There were Chinese couples coming to experience Indian food for the first time. The waiter (an Indian one), was explaining Indian course sequence to him – kebabs first, biriyani-curry next and gulab-jamun at the end. To simplify the choices, they have what they call an Indian aggregate meal that we call a thali in India, consisting of one item each from all three sections. Besides, there were Indian versions of the Chinese foods as well. The couple ordered one such thali. Soon, the kebabs reached them and they were really happy with the food. We had a normal dinner with a lamb kebab and a curry-bread combination. The cost was 130 Rmb, with 6 Rmb tips. In Shanghai standard, I cannot call it costly.

Yesterday, while searching on the Net, I found many Indian restaurants around. I was a little skeptical of how really an Indian restaurant is defined, since I know that Indians are not present in high numbers here. The entire concept of Indian restaurants abroad, serving NRIs home-like food, has been trashed in Shanghai. There are Indian restaurants serving the local population, with the customized menus that suit the locals.

Tomorrow, I am planning to visit a nearby Uighur restaurant named Shanghai Xinjiang Fengwei Fandian. The Uighur-community is from the western-most province of China, named Xinjiang. They are mostly Muslims and have a strong cultural tie with Central Asia. After all, China is a big country. If Tibet is the link between India and China, then Xinjiang can be termed as the link between China and Central Asia, up to the Middle East. Same can be said for the food as well. The special item they produce is the juicy lamb-roast (kao quanyang), costs around 40 Rmb. The item is so popular, that it is advised to call them up before to confirm the availability. The other speciality is a square-shaped noodle, named miantiao. The Uighur cuisine includes laohu cai (salads with cucumbers, onions and tomato slices), da pan-ji (chicken with spices) and Xinjiang-pijiu (Xinjiang black beer).The restaurant also has a dance program starting from 7:30 in the evening and I have no idea how it will be. Chinese culture may not be as diverse as the Indian one, but there is no reason to think that it is a monolithic one.

From the above description we can easily identify the similarity between Uighur cuisine and the typical Indian Mughlai cuisine. After all, the Indian culture is an ecosystem of several cultures. And that helps us survive more smoothly inside a different culture with higher adaptability.

Pushing the Limits of Speciesism

Diganta — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 06:53:52 EDT

I heard about a lot of hybrids, but never of one involving humans, except in fiction stories. Now, those stories are becoming truth, may be sooner than I expected. Britain has dismissed the plan to outlaw an effort to create a human-animal embryo. Under the new guidelines, Scientists are allowed to create three different kinds of embryos. The Guardian notes :

"The first kind of hybrid allowed under the bill, known as a chimeric embryo, is made by injecting cells from an animal into a human embryo. The second, known as a human transgenic embryo, involves injecting animal DNA into a human embryo. The third, known as a cytoplasmic hybrid, is created by transferring the nuclei of human cells, such as skin cells, into animal eggs from which almost all the genetic material has been removed."

The scientists will be allowed to grow such an embryo for only two weeks - to develop new treatments for incurable diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. It also restricts the creation of "true hybrid" embryos, which would involve fertilizing a human egg with animal sperm or vice versa. It would also be illegal to put them inside human womb (don't know about the animal one). This kind of embryos would be the major source in the stem cell research.

The moral brigade is already started shouting against it. I got a few letters on the internet those describe it as 'Frankenstein science'. However, they might not know that Chinese have already created such an embryo for a similar purpose. Other experiments are proceeding quietly in research facilities around the world. At the Mayo Clinic, scientists created pigs with human blood. Stanford University in California is considering attempting to create mice with 'human' brains.

The new regulations came as a U turn over Britain's last decision to outlaw it. Many scientists like Dawkins put huge efforts behind it - to set morality free from religion. Dawkins said once that a human embryo is 'biologically nothing different from an Amoeba', yet we shout against its use in stem cell research as it is 'would-be-human'.

However these researches will definitely push to revisit our ancient way to describe a 'human-centric' morality. As Darwinian Evolution said and Genetics later verified, we are very closely related cousins. These experiments are taking that view a bit further. A rat with a human brain might possibly be able to suffer similar emotional pain to that of a human being. So, a 'human-centric' morality can be called an example of 'speciesism'. In this video, Dawkins talks in favor of animal rights and against speciesism.

"Today we live in a specisist world. We are automatically, without thinking, without question assume that there's one law for Homo sapiens and one law for the rest of the animal kingdom. That is speciesism. Now of course, if you object the speciesism, you are in a sense letting yourself wide open to reductio ad absurdum when people will ask - where will you stop? Should you care for cabbages because there is an evolutionary continuum between us and cabbages if you go sufficiently back? You'd be starved to death, if you are that insistent upon rejecting specisism. My answer to that is that we should not be any kind of '-ist' of that kind. We have rather a continuum as a sliding scale from Gorillas and Chimpanzees being very close to us and cabbages being very long way away. And there is no way why we should erect a wall at any particular fence. There are some animals who suffer, can think, can reason, can suffer emotions which deserve and must have a greater moral consideration from us than other animal."

He continued to make a case for other animals to be treated with minimal morality or to stretch the morality of our perception:

"What I am saying is that it's a matter of a merest accident that the intermediates happened to be extinct. That's the only thing that enables us to erect this great fence around Homo sapiens to say that there are humans in one side and the whole of the rest of the animal kingdom on the other side. It's very hard to make a purely scientific case for conserving any particular species. ... The only case I can make is the emotional case, and what's wrong with that? We are emotional beings. I feel emotional about it. I want to save gorillas, to save rhinos; I want to save these magnificent creatures which are built up over millions of years of evolution before they go forever. It's an irrevocable thing and that is an emotional argument."

I wonder what position the religious people would take on this since it cannot be called a 'human'. Will it have a soul? I'm pretty sure that liberalist and extremist religious people will fight once more. Let's wait and find out what their stance would be.

Reference : Dawkins write up on Speciesism. The list of books on speciesism at Amazon.

Towards a Science-Aware Society

Diganta — Sun, 3 Jun 2007 06:44:06 EDT

Of late I have been writing on the ill-effects of religion to resist the science and the scientific study of nature. After writing on the Memetics of the religions, I decided to look further deep to understand why exactly science is obstructed - is the religion the root cause or human nature itself blocks the development. I discovered that the intuitiveness, a virtue of a human being, is considered to be the worst enemy of science education. In other words, human beings are programmed to oppose science instinctively. The best explanation comes in favor of it by analyzing the natural learning process of a human being.

Prior to exposure to organized study of science, children use their intuition to judge and gather knowledge about the world they see - both physical and social knowledge. The examples social knowledge can include the identification of parents and close relatives. The physical domain experiences include the observational fact that objects fall in the ground or it hurts more if dropped from higher places.

The problem with teaching children the science is not what student lacks, but what the student has already assumed to be the truth as per physical domain experience. As an example, once a child 'knows' that objects fall, it's difficult to convince him that the Earth is spherical in shape, because they perceive that people should 'fall' out of the bottom half of the sphere. Also, a flat world fits their observation that they can see, sometimes, in a dilemma, they pick up a false idea of a flat livable flat place on top of a spherical Earth.

Michael McCloskey, a professor of Cognitive Science in John Hopkins University, conducted a survey among adult American students to find out how scientific they are. He took the domain of objects in motion, something that people both read theories and observe a lot of times in their day to day life. He presented diagrams to depict a physical condition and asked the students how the motion of the object would be in those conditions. He asked how a ball should continue after coming out of curved tube, what trajectory a ball should fall when dropped from a moving aero plane or from the roof and many more of these. The result was strikingly different from what was expected, people went by 'common perception' or what we see in life. Most of them told that the ball from the aero plane will fall straight, or come out of a curved tube in a curved motion. Interestingly, when asked about the motion of water out of a curved hose-pipe, they mentioned it to be straight, since it comes into their direct space of observation.

McCloskey concluded that everyone (children or adults) builds a na�ve theory in their brain out of the observations they make. These theories are often wrong and also carry casual explanations along with them. These naive theories are dominant in ancient scripts and continue to be the base of pseudo-science. A sustainable knowledge of science needs to overcome these barriers of na�ve theories within a human being.

To overcome this resistance, the establishment of trustworthy source is necessary. Children, when unable to verify most of the claims, try to verify the sources of the claim. To a child, parents and the closer relatives are the most trustworthy source. So, in case science teacher in school teaches them about evolution and parents back home opposes that, then, they are bound to take the parents' one. Not only that, they grow idea about books and newspaper those are trustworthy. They tend to believe ideas from an adult who is confident and who can map their theories to real life. Most notable point here is the trustworthiness they gather, carries to their adulthood. And it holds true for religious, political and moral beliefs also. The idea to overcome science resistance is to inject science at every level of information source, so that people understand them as trustworthy, even if it conflicts the na�ve theories in mind.

In India, the presence of na�ve theories in the form of superstitions is very potent. One example I can pick up, is related to "Snakes eating milk and banana". These theories are present from religious background and get verified by the children from their trustworthy adults. I used to believe that snakes really eat them as society elders talked about them. I came to the correct knowledge only after a science campaign run on television. The na�ve theories (example: firm land should be kept idle for a certain period of time to retain land-fertility) present among farmers are also the result of their intuitions, and campaigners find them difficult to replace with modern science (following crop-rotation).

The discussion above points out that we need more prominent scientists to come up at the stage, at public debates or at television programs to articulate and defend science as a unique process of acquiring knowledge. The society today, if it is superstitious and religious like that of India, is a result of egoistic apathy of the scientists, who ignore their social responsibility to convey their message to common people. More research and more innovations might bring more money to them, but ultimately, in a democracy, people rules. So, a social awareness of the science is the only way people can become scientific, or at least can consider science as a trustworthy source of information.

Science, Cognitive Science, Atheism, Evolution, Society, India

Memetics and Cultural Evolution: The Roots of Religion

Diganta — Tue, 29 May 2007 02:06:16 EDT

What is Memetics?
The term "meme" coined and popularized by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, refers to a "unit of cultural information" (cognitive or behavioral pattern) which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes (i.e., the units of genetic information). Some contemporary examples of meme can be popular proverbs ("Hard work pays"), gossips, health consciousness ("wash hands before eating"), nursery rhymes (or even epics and religious books), conspiracy theories, terms and phrases ("Whassup") and a lot more.

Memeplexe or Meme-complex is a group of Memes; those are interdependent and survive as a 'colony' of memes - such as religion, culture or political doctrines.

Memetics, coined as a similar sounding word of Genetics, is an approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme. The popular Memetics hypotheses that memes do not replicate only, but are refined, recombined or modified in new memes.

Propagation of Memes
The better a meme can be copied; more it will become a common part of the culture. This depends on copying fidelity (accuracy of copy), fecundity (rate of copying) and longevity of the meme. The successful propagation of memes depends on various things - experience of the individual, speculation of the individual, social censorship, distinction of source of the meme. Two communities, those who mix rarely, can be thought of as memetically isolated communities, e.g. Americans and Arabs.

Children as the medium of meme propagation
As per behavioral evolution, children who are more obedient to their parents get natural selective advantage over others. This unique nature of children enables human civilization to build upon past experiences. Children, who accept the words of adults as rule of thumb, as "Don't go to the edge of the roof", "Don't swim into the deep water" or "Don't go to the forest alone", are more likely to survive and reproduce later. When grown up, they propagate their memes, accumulated in the childhood to the next generation, and may be in a modified format. The memes that are more appealing tends to propagate more accurately than the others.

Religion as a Memeplex
Religion and the existence of God as a set of memes have got the unique appeal to human civilization. It provides plausible answers to deep and troubling questions of the nature, suggests the 'injustice' will be rectified in the next and one will be placed in relatively good or bad places after death depending on the performance in this life. Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion (pg 199) has provided a list of religious memes those had high survival values in human civilization.

The reasons for the high survival of religious memes include social experience, speculations and distinct source. The religious people always express their experience as positive to add the survival value to the meme, e.g. faith is a virtue and prayer is the way to seek help from God. People speculate about mysteries of nature, miracles, life and death that ensure high survival for the religious explanations.

Last but not the least, the revered and distinct source (religious leader/book) adds additional survival value to it. Presence of 'exclusivist' memes in the organized religion is striking. For example, punishment or ostracism for heretics, apostates and blasphemers are such 'exclusivist' memes. These memes protects the memeplex to get infected from 'outsider memes'. One of the distinct features of Indian culture is the lack of 'exclusivist' meme, that enables India to be built on top of a unique plural society.

A reflection on the above theories can provide you with clues as to why religious sects exist. Sects came into being due to different variation of 'interpretation', resulted out of different memetic evolutionary path followed by different sects. Same way, the recombination of different memes resulted in same religion to be performed in different ways in different regions.

The Roots of Religion
As we know how religion and the features propagate, we can proceed how it came into being initially. The best explanation, although controversial, I have got is from Daniel Dennett, in his book The Intentional Stance. He classified the stance of human beings with respect to an object in three ways - physical stance, design stance and intentional stance.

In a Physical stance, man tries to explain the object and its' behavior in terms of natural laws. The second one is design stance, to predict the behavior of the object as it is designed to perform that, e.g., the bird flies by flapping the wings or an alarm clock is designed to ring at a particular time. This is in effect a shortcut over the earlier one and provides advantages if established upon experience. The last one is the intentional stance, that enables personification of the object and predict the behavior as per the intention of the object. The intentional stance, very frequently gave humans advantage over other animals e.g., to identify predators (like Tiger) and cattle (Dogs).

The noticeable point is that the abstraction of objects is increasing in each stance. The human civilization is basically a race from the third one to the first - initially they had to take the more abstract ones due to lack of knowledge to go to physical stance. Dennett argues that it is best to understand human beliefs and desires at the level of the intentional stance, without making any specific commitments to any deeper reality to the artifacts of each and every folk psychology. The gods and the God, along with the Angels and Daemons are nothing but these personifications of these objects - survived in human societies as memes.

The Future
The clash of reason and religion is basically the clash of memes. The memes of reason are supported by evidences, those a human being can directly experience. The memes of religion are appealing and has high propagation value. The battle is likely to continue in future.

Conclusion
A memetic view of religion is undoubtedly better than any view proposed by the popular religions as the 'first cause' or the beginning of themselves. The explanation gives us idea on how the simple 'personification' of unknown objects turned into what we see as organized religion, by means of propagation of memes. The hypothesis, may have a lot of technical drawbacks, but overall is very effective in this case.

References
A bibiliography on meme.
The multi-dimensional evolution.
Susan Blackmore and her "The Meme Machine".
The Selfish Meme - a concept.
Intentional Stance made easy.

Atheism, Evolution, Meme, Dawkins, Religion.

The Atheism FAQ with Richard Dawkins

Diganta — Sat, 26 May 2007 00:36:10 EDT

Richard Dawkins, the author of the NY Times bestseller - The God Delusion - has been interviewed many a time recently. The questions asked were mainly related to his book, the views on atheism, morality and present world.

He answered all questions in a flawless and confident way. Each and every answer speaks about his passion and eagerness to explain his stance on every point. It's an amazing experience to watch him speak. I have tried to pick up a few commonly asked questions and his answers on different topics.

Why are you against faith?

Because, I am a kind of person who cares about the Truth. The religion and any sort of dogma are the biggest obstacle against the Truth. Not only that, I am worried about the position religion enjoys in our society. You can attack other's political view, criticize a football coach but cannot attack one's religious faith. It's a kind of immunity from criticism that religion enjoys, despite being proven to be mostly illogical.

There are billions of people across the world following their faiths and living their life. How do you describe them?

Of course, there are billions of people living their religious life and most of them are harmless people. But, they are carrying a virus of faith with them, that they transmit from generations to another, and could create a 'epidemic' of faith any time. As I said, I am a kind of person who cares about the truth and also want to see people following the truth. The truth is not a revelation, but truth that has been established though evidences and repeated experiments.

There are scientists who are religious. How do you feel about them?

Yeah, unfortunately there are many good scientists who do this. Although, I do not clearly understand their position in life, it seems to me, either they act like religious people consciously for some other purpose or compartmentalize their views based on the context.

Religious people claim they derive their morality from religion. Where from an atheist derive his morality?

Religious people do not derive their morality from religion. I disagree (with the interviewer) on this point. Almost all of us do agree on moral grounds where religion had no effect. For example we all hate slavery, we want emancipation of women - they are all our moral grounds. These moral grounds started building only a few centuries ago and long after all major religions were established. We derive our morality from the environment we live in, Talk shows, Novels, Newspaper editorials and of course by the guidance of parents. Religion might only have a minor role to play in it. An atheist derives his morality from the same source as a religious people do.

But all the religious books have given moral guidance to the people, like not killing the neighbors. Why do you think they are still bad?

The religious books do talk about not killing your neighbors, at the same time they talk about not showing skin of women or killing the infidels. The God of the Old Testament, as I described, is not at all a good 'person'. The God is certainly a lot better in New Testament. However, when you pick and choose the good verses out of a religious book, the parameters, those you use, does not certainly come from the religion itself. For example, when you say New Testament is better, you are certainly not using Christianity as a judge. The parameters you use, are the effect of the morality that is already with you, assimilated from different sources in your life time.

In your book, you've said that God 'almost certainly' does not exist. Why are you leaving open the possibility?

Any scientific people will leave open that possibility, that they cannot disprove whatever unlikely the event might be. I would be the first person to accept God once evidence comes in favour of it.

So you accept Science cannot disprove God. What is the problem if people follow religions till God is disproved?

Science cannot disprove God as well as they cannot disprove Apollo or Juju or Thor with his hammer or even a Flying Spaghetti Monster creating the universe. However, we do not believe them as they are unlikely to exist. We do neither believe in fairies of Hans Andersen although we cannot disprove them. To believe in an unlikely event or a deity only because we cannot disprove it, sounds foolish to me.

Why don't you think that the Universe, huge, complex and mysterious, is not a creation of a Supreme Being, where we see all complex things are in fact created?

First of all if you assume that all complex things are created, then a God, capable of creating such a complex Universe, should also be a complex being and should also have a creator. On the other hand, if you follow the Darwinian Evolution path, you'd see how a complex organism can be built upon relatively simpler beings by the process of Natural Selection. And it is far more logical to believe that we and the Universe in general, started from a simpler start that a complex creator starting it up.

When you stand on the top of a mountain doesn't the vastness of the world strike you? Don't you feel charmed by the beauty of the nature, and the mysterious laws of the vast Universe?

Of course I do. And I have mentioned about it in the first chapter of my book as the spirituality followed by Einstein. He was so charmed about the mysteries of the world and it was such an exciting experience to explore it. It's a kind of spirituality that does not require God, a personal deity to explain the mysteries of Nature. It is quite different from a religion centered around a God who can read mind, keeps track of sins, judges people after death punishes the disbelievers and rules the Universe.

What is your opinion about Stalin and Hitler as Atheists?

I have said in my book that Hitler is not at all atheist, as he was religiously biased against Jewish people. Stalin was following communism dogmatically. I have already said that none of us, in effect derive our morality from religion. Stalin, in fact, used the dogmatic communism as his source of morality - if we call it morality at all. Being atheist does not ask you to become dogmatic or communist, but only ask you not to believe in God. A person working in a Mafia group can also be an atheist although it will be illogical to say that atheism pushed him to the Mafia group. There are other colleagues working with him who are religious.

Why do you link religion with 'Child-abuse'?

I link the marking of children as 'Jewish boy' or 'Muslim child' as a child abuse, since, in childhood they are yet to choose their religious views. Not only that, they are brought up in a way that he gets separated from other religious groups and views so that he follows the religious faith of his parents. Obstructing the view of children clearly comes under child abuse.

Your ambition is that people reading this book should abandon their faith. Isn't it?

There is no harm in aiming high and you can say that is my ambition. But, in practice, we want the people who follow the middle ground, who never have thought deeply on this topic, to think twice and consciously reject God. Also, I can see that in United States 10-15% people are Atheists, larger than any minority religious groups. However, they don't have any political power or a lobby compared to strong Jewish lobby. I want Atheists to come together and establish a God-neutral political view, a view of their own, for a better balanced world.

References

1) Interview with Jeremy Paxman on BBC.
2) Interview on CNN on Darwin Day.
3) TV Ontario interview (part 1, part 2 and part 3).
3) The Hour interview, (part 2).
4) The debate - part 1, part 2 and part 3.
4) RichardDawkins.net for more video/interview resources.

Atheism, Religion, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion.

Atheism in Ancient India

Diganta — Sat, 19 May 2007 00:27:29 EDT

India is known for tolerance to difference in opinion and thoughts. There were multiple religions spawned in India due to diversity among Indian people. Although, in modern days, most of the Indians remain religious and do believe in God, traces of Indian history shows the existence of Atheism in ancient Indian societies.

In Ancient Hinduism, there were a couple of schools that taught the non-existence of God. The first one, Samkhya, used to believe in duality of existing things - as per the book, Saamkhya Kaarikaa. Prakriti (Nature) and Purusha (Consciousness) were thought to be the basic building blocks of everything. However, the school later incorporated Iswara as a third entity and became theist. The other Atheist school of thought was Mimamsha, which concentrated on Dharma rather than gods.

Other than Hinduism, most philosophies of Jainism and Budhhism denied involvement of God. Both of these religions did not deny the presence of God, but neither did they attribute any power of creation or judgment to God. The future of a living being was thought to be decided by the actions of the being - something that this more materialistic than the thoughts of core Hinduism. It suggests more of a 'way of life' than describing the 'way to satisfy god'. However, later most of the Buddhists started worshipping Buddha as god.

The other interesting school of thought that taught atheism in a materialistic sense, was Carvaka (or Charvaka), named after the its founder saint. The key features of the Carvaka philosophy, as described in Sarvadarshansamgraha by Madhavacarya, were purely materialistic and thereby rejecting the afterlife. Interestingly, it points out that soul and intelligence are parts of our body, something that I was trying to argue in a previous writing.

It looks at rituals being sources of living and not a way to get to the heaven. It contained the strongest atheistic viewpoint where it refuses to accept any 'creator' for natural things - and argues that any phenomenon can be produced by the inherent nature of things. Here goes a famous verse :

"Fire is hot, water cold,
refreshingly cool is the breeze of morning;
By whom came this variety?
They were born of their own nature."

The Carvaka philosophy was deeply down to earth - close to secular humanism. It questioned the caste system as a process imposed by Brahmins. It is amazing to observe how close they were to the modern view of humanity, when a verse reads :

If our offering sacrifices here gratify beings in heaven,
why not make food offerings down below
to gratify those standing on housetops?
While life remains, let a man live happily,
let him feed on butter though he runs in debt;
When once the body becomes ashes,
how can it ever return again?

Critics of the Carvaka school see this cleaving to only artha and kama, without regard of dharma (and ultimate moksha) as an extreme of self-centred hedonism. One can easily understand why modern day atheists are also classified as hedonists - the similar feelings were present in early India as well.

In medieval ages, the presence of Atheism was missing - something that led to a stricter grip of caste-divided Hinduism. The lack of balancing force resulted in dogmatic religious beliefs, superstitions and the society headed towards darkness, till the modern day renaissance, with major influence of Vedanta philosophy.

Atheism, India, Carvaka, Humanism.

The Rise of Pseudo-Science and Holy Cows

Diganta — Mon, 7 May 2007 12:58:02 EDT

The changes in life that Science has brought about are really outstanding. If one considers how humans lived a century ago and compare our modern life, one cannot deny the positive role of establishing truth by logical reasoning discarding the faith. At the same time, the rapid advancement of science has left millions with virtually no knowledge in science, where they tend to believe science as 'just another faith' and not based on pure reasoning. Moreover, common men, who even have some knowledge of science, don't always use their scientific acumen to reason everything around them. These gaps in popular understanding of science are hugely manipulated by neo-priests and 'religious' scientists.

The dangerous trend in these section of people spreads like a virus. A learned person, having a degree in science, is powered enough with scientific jargons to provide excuse for what actually is inspired by his faith. The 'excuse' used to 'justify' faith or a superstition, are all categorized as 'pseudo-science'. These 'excuses' spreads among the have-nots of science like virus. One of the classic examples could be what Sujai mentioned in his article on Vaastu. People follow Vaastu purely based on faith, having some excuses derived from scientific ground. And, as the virus spreads, Vaastu is also becoming more and more popular.

What inspires pseudo-scientific excuses from the people who know science? It is simple - ego matters - it's another case of self-denial. They want to defend their faith and also their knowledge in science. It's really difficult to pursue a 'pure scientific life' in India, since most of the population is still deeply religious. At the same time, widespread effort of educationists has opened the window of scientific education in India. Hence, a generation is created who are taught science at school and faith at home. Unable to reconcile both, people fall victims to pseudo-science.

Let me take a few more examples. Among Indian Hindus, not having beef is based purely on faith, still pseudo-scientists come up with their version against eating beef - pointing to the social value of the cow or promoting violence against animals by cow-slaughter as excuses. However, none of them will take beef even in the West, where the cow doesn't have any social value. They'll even refuse if the meat of a cow that was not slaughtered but died in an accident. Similar arguments are cited by vegetarian people as well. Muslims (Jews too), by their faith don't take pork, but often cite excuses that pig carries a lots of worms(tapeworm - Taenia solium). Even though it is scientifically proven that pork boiled above 100C for a minute (which is mostly done in all Indian preparations) is free from worms and parasites, it's hard to find any pseudo-scientist having boiled pork. To frustrate these pseudo-scientists, we can take a look at meat consumption statistics in USA. The major sources of meat are - beef, chicken and pork - confirming that these neither harm your economy, nor your health. Similar pseudo-science exists to defend the specific way of slaughter also.

To conclude, let me reaffirm that the purpose of my article is not to criticize faith, but to criticize the people who can't keep faith and science separate. A country, where 95% people are science-illiterate and superstitious, this practice can spread like virus and replace the original aim of science to educate people based on pure reason and logic. A war against the superstitions should include an agenda to fight against pseudo-science also. A better society is a society free of superstitions, let's uproot them before the grow more.

Gliese 581c - A New Planet on the Horizon

Diganta — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:26:31 EDT

I think that by now everyone has added a new name to their General Knowledge - Gliese 581 c. It's not only the name of a newly discovered planet having an environment similar to that of Earth, but also is synonymous to an ongoing threat to remove Humans and their beloved Earth from the center of life-creation.

It was long believed in ancient and medieval ages that the earth and human beings are special creation of God. Galileo and his follower Charles Darwin had broken into that house of faith with a powerful set of observations. While Galileo removed Earth from the center of the Universe, Darwin put humankind back into the nature, just another species who evolved through a complex natural process.

Coming back to possibilities of life beyond Earth, one can divide the approach in two different steps. The first would be to search for Earth-like planets, in the 'Habitable zone', the next could be the search for life on potentially life-bearing planets, one step following the other.

While the existence of 'intelligent life' in our Solar system is almost (Science really cannot disprove anything) impossible, the search for the preliminary form of life is still on. The best bet on this topic is possibly Europa, the 'moon' of Jupiter. It has a hypothesized ocean beneath its icy surface, which is supposed to contain life. It also has Oxygen in its atmosphere. The same kind of life might be present in Ganymede and Callisto. Jupiter and Saturn could have been a destination of Ammonia based life as hypothesized by Carl Sagan. Besides, NASA reported strong indications of life on Mars.

The extra-solar planets are still open to all kinds of life possibilities. That is why the discovery is such an important milestone in Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. However, these planets are detected via some indirect method, hence the confidence attached to the properties of the planet discovered is considered low.

On the 24th of this month, scientists at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile claimed they had found the first Earth-like planet. The planet orbits within the habitable zone of Gliese 581, a red dwarf star which is a scant 20.5 light years from Earth in the constellation of Libra. If oxygen or methane (tell-tale biological gases) are found in Gliese 581c's atmosphere, this would be good circumstantial evidence for life. Dr Malcolm Fridlund, a European Space Agency scientist, said the discovery of Gliese 581c was "an important step" on the road to finding life. Interestingly, Gliese 581c is so close to the Earth that if its putative inhabitants only had our level of technology, they could - just about - pick up some of our radio signals, such as the most powerful military transmitters.

One could remember the famous Drake equation to find out how difficult it could be to find an evidence of life on the Earth. It is not only extremely difficult, but also very costly. Due to lack of funding, a lot of projects could not take off in recent years. However, the importance of such a project can never be undermined. It would help us to identify how life grows, or possibly what life actually is. Maybe, also to create new forms of life.