Friday, July 31, 2009

Rational Smörgåsbord

I have been watching clips of A Bit of Fry and Laurie lately. While the clips are quite hilarious and gripping in and of them self, what makes them even more interesting is seeing Hugh Laurie (of House's fame) speak in his British accent.

I stumbled across the following video containing a series of clips of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (though mostly Stephen) talking about their views on religion and science -- part tongue in cheek, part serious. Have fun watching.


Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Fortuitous happenings

Its the little things that help strengthen people's belief in God and the unseen.

I had a series of fortuitous and not-so-fortuitous events recently that gave me -- well -- a pause.

I was in Ottawa for a talk I had to give and was scheduled to leave Ottawa for Toronto at midnight. The talk finished at about 3 in the afternoon and I had the rest of the day to myself. A friend who lives in Ottawa but was in Toronto for vacations, suddenly and unexpectedly decided to come back to Ottawa the day before thus allowing me to recharge and catch up with him.

I left for Toronto from Ottawa at midnight. My experience with Toronto's transit system was just plain horrible. It didn't have an online trip planner and was full of other annoying little quirks such as the ticket only being valid in a single direction and having different transit companies operate in the surrounding cities which meant that I couldn't use the pre-paid tickets I had brought earlier in those cities. I was asking around on how to get to my relative's place when I stumbled across a kind couple (a Pakistani guy married to a gori (a white girl)) who offered to drop me near my relative's place. They easily saved me about a hundred bucks that I would have had to give to the taxi cab otherwise. Not only were they kind enough to drop me off near my destination but even served me lunch at their place. It was pleasant, even if not totally unexpected, to see his gori wife make roti and chai.

The fortuitous streak ended when I realized that I had forgotten my relative's exact address and phone number at the couple's place. I roamed around the streets a bit, scouting for wireless internet so that I could retrieve her address from my email account. I was able to spot a mall where a guy agreed to let me retrieve the address and I finally made my way to the destination after about an hour of roaming around.

While such events can be explained off as statistical occurrences, they sure mean heck of a lot to the person whom they happen to, which is perhaps why it is so hard to label them off just as mere statistical occurrences.

Cultural muslim

I still make sure that the meat I eat is halal. I don't drink wine. I don't engage in sexual activities. My religious upbringing has a lot to do with that, but I believe that I don't indulge in these activities as I genuinely consider most of these activities to be unwholesome.

Its mind boggling to see how many different facets of your life are touched by religion -- from birth, to daily activities, to marriage and eventually death. While its easy to let go of certain rituals and practices as an individual, letting go of communal rituals and practices is a little harder to do. The coming ramadan will probably be the first (since growing up) in which I will not fast though I will probably celebrate eid -- not as a religious festival but as a cultural one.

I confessed my present state of belief to a friend recently. I had had extensive discussions with the same friend last year as I was drifting further and further away from Islam. Even though it was patently obvious to him that I did not believe in any of the fundamental tenets of Islam, I was surprised when he mumbled -- almost in a state of confusion and disbelief -- that I was still a muslim. It might have been that he genuinely believed that I was still a muslim at some level or it might be that being a muslim has got much more to do with your cultural values and traditions than a mere set of beliefs and that I was a muslim in the former sense if not the latter.

Officially muslim

My official religion is still Islam. I haven't made any efforts to change that either as I haven't talked things through with my family. I am also concerned about the legal repercussions of leaving Islam while being a Pakistani citizen. Has any of you readers ever considered renouncing Islam officially? Do you know of the legal repercussions? Can apostates legally be sentenced to death in Pakistan?

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Godless comedy

This one gave me a good laugh.

Defiling the sacred

We hold values of love, honesty and universal justice in high esteem. Honesty seems better than dishonesty. Love and compassion seem better than indifference or hate. Being just seems better than forgoing justice in the name of practicality.

These attributes matter to me. I am pretty confident that they matter to an overwhelmingly large majority of the human population. What bothers me is the alleged universality of such attributes. These attributes might appear universal to us because all humans, and perhaps most animals share the same cognitive machinery.

Why are these attributes significant? Why do they matter? What if their significance lies just in the way our brains are wired? What happens, as we gain the ability to alter our genetics and construct new life forms, we create a world where the things that we consider so sacred to life can be defiled with just a switch of a button, with the re-assignment of a variable and the rewiring of a bunch of neurons?

Will we want to create such a world? Will we want to live in such a world?

Update: I am usually optimistic and hopeful about the future -- it has its due share of challenges but it also offers exciting opportunities. I am feeling particularly disharmonious and agitated today, and your overall mood affects the thoughts that come to mind. I do consider the points I raised to be valid so I will leave the post as is but just note that I am rather hopeful that we will figure things out along the way.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Silent night

Just found this little gem on Butter's blog.



The song truly is a spiritual experience. It almost made me lose sense of time, freeing my soul and making me feel calm, peaceful and warm inside. My eyes were mostly closed the first time I heard it. I didn't know what it was about -- it didn't matter. I read the lyrics at the bottom of the screen the second time around, and the wordings and imagery, though beautiful, made me a little uncomfortable. Perhaps we need another set of metaphors and images, not associated with any of the major religions when talking about spiritual experiences.

I have always found the three part Christian conception of God to be utterly confusing. For the first time however, I realized how the father son relationship can evoke feelings of love and compassion in a way that a single God perhaps cannot. Our most potent experiences of love and warmth are associated with the relations we build and nourish with other humans and it is not surprising to see humans externalizing those relations when constructing notions of a loving God. This provides an emotional explanation of why most Christians stick with their beliefs even when it apparently makes no logical sense.