Anil Gulecha’s Musings

[The below article appeared in the Times Of India, dt 12-12-07 in the extra edition. It was, however, modified and not posted in it's entirety, and few sentences were reworded that made my stance on the subject of Ayurveda and Yoga look a little lenient. In the future, I will note that any modifications to my articles need my review. Below is the article as I actually wrote it]

Open Letter: Challenges of Science

Dear Parents and Teachers,

As recent events have shown, science is under attack by superstition, and seems to be losing. Television has many campaigns that extol the virtues of various methods and objects without any verifiable evidence. Even more disheartening is that there is no active movement against these.

I would thus like to shed a little light into the future we are entering. The world is being fully interconnected and Indian children will interact with people around he world. A group’s intellectual powers are measured based on how rational their view of the world is. That is sadly not the future Indian children will thrive in.

Given the dominance of superstition and dogma in the country, the proponents of science have an uphill battle at hand. The first step would be to eradicate superstitious beliefs from the minds of it’s citizens. A seemingly scientific idea that is not based on any rational and verifiable studies is known as pseudo-science.

Pseudo science in India includes Astrology, Palmistry, Mind-reading, Ayurveda, many types of Yoga, Vaastu Shastra, Homeopathy, Chiropractic treatments, Lucky gemstones and numbers, Rudraksh necklace, etc. At best these ideas will waste time and money of it’s pursuers and at worst can cause bodily harm due to negligence of other truly scientific methods that would’ve worked. When any of the above has worked, it is due to plain chance, placebo effect or by processes that are understood by science.

Minds seemingly grow immune to change of ideas with age. Thus, emphasis has to be given to educating children on science and instill critical thinking into their bloodstream. This is ensure that the upcoming generation will be more open to ideas than the current. With this goal, we need to drive nation wide programs to spread the word of science. I’m not experienced enough to say what these could be, but there are many who could. Those in power need to encourage and those who promote science and take action against fraudulent practitioners of pseudo-science.

I hope we can look into a future where dogmatic beliefs would make way for rationality. Into a future where we would prefer reason over authority. If there’s a challenge we need to overcome, this is one.

I’ve come across a great article by Bhagat Singh, via Amit Varma’s excellent blog. Excerpts:

If, as you believe, there is an almighty, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent God, who created the earth or world, please let me know why did he create it? This world of woes and miseries, a veritable, eternal combination of numberless tragedies: Not a single soul being perfectly satisfied.

Pray, don’t say that it is His Law. If he is bound by any law, he is not omnipotent. He is another slave like ourselves. Please don’t say that it is his enjoyment. Nero burnt one Rome. He killed a very limited number of people. He created very few tragedies, all to his perfect enjoyment. And, what is his place in History? By what names do the historians mention him? All the venomous epithets are showered upon him. Pages are blackened with invective diatribes condemning Nero, the tyrant, the heartless, the wicked. One Changezkhan sacrificed a few thousand lives to seek pleasure in it and we hate the very name. Then, how are you going to justify your almighty, eternal Nero, who has been, and is still causing numberless tragedies every day, every hour and every minute? How do you think to support his misdoings which surpass those of Changez every single moment? I say why did he create this world – a veritable hell, a place of constant and bitter unrest? Why did the Almighty create man when he had the power not to do it? What is the justification for all this? Do you say, to award the innocent sufferers hereafter and to punish the wrongdoers as well? Well, well: How far shall you justify a man who may dare to inflict wounds upon your body to apply a very soft and soothing ointment upon it afterwards? How far the supporters and organisers of the Gladiator institution were justified in throwing men before the half-starved furious lions to be cared for and well looked after if they could survive and could manage to escape death by the wild beasts? That is why I ask: Why did the conscious supreme being create this world and man in it? To seek pleasure? Where, then, is the difference between him and Nero?

Let us see how I carry on. One friend asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said: “During your last days you will begin to believe.” I said: “No, dear Sir, it shall not be. I will think that to be an act of degradation and demoralisation on my part. For selfish motives I am not going to pray.” Readers and friends: Is this “vanity”? If it is, I stand for it.

Read the entire essay here.

Been wanting to get on with more woo-woo busting, and now found the time.

If you are kind enough to point your browser to http://science.krishna.org/Articles/2000/08/00082.html you will see some cowardly plug for irrationality by the Hare Krishna cult.

Let me quote a certain paragraph.

We realize that this is very difficult for you to accept, since it directly contradicts your established beliefs. But since you yourself have not actually gone to the moon, you owe it to yourself to consider why you are so confident that the astronauts actually have gone there. Why do you accept the popular version of the manned moon landing? Because you believe the authority of the scientists, the journalists, and the politicians who propagate that version. When we cite the Vedic scriptures, which state that the “astronauts” could not have gone to the moon, we are simply favoring another authority. In both cases, it is a matter of accepting an authority and believing what it says.

This seems to be the central defense for the entire essay. You base your beliefs on science as an authority and we on the vedic scriptures. The above is hidden in a fairly long FUD, and a naive reader may overlook the problem with the above logic.

To cite an analogy, consider a 6 year old boy at the edge of a high cliff. His parents (could be from a cult) tell him it is safe to jump off, he would descend safely as it is written in the scriptures. Reason, however, tells the boy that he wont survive it. Form the time he started walking (and falling), every time he fell off the stairs or off the window sill, or off the tree house, experience has taught him that it causes bodily harm, and risks his life. He is able to recognize that the higher the fall, the more he gets hurt. But being just a 6 year old, he also has learnt to obey his parents words. So what should he accept? Reason and experience? Or authority and blind belief?

Apply this analogy to the quoted portion when you reread it. When the cultists state “Because you believe the authority of the scientists, the journalists, and the politicians who propagate that version. When we cite the Vedic scriptures, which state that the “astronauts” could not have gone to the moon, we are simply favoring another authority”, they make it sound as if it our outlook were simply a matter of choice. As if it were a choice between the authority of the scientist and the authority of a divine person. It is not. It is a matter of Reason, which scientists represent, and Authority, which the ‘vedic scriptures’ represent. Make your choice.

Roughly translated, the cultists are saying “You choose to believe Reason, we choose to believe Authority”

Now that we have that cleared, we move to the apologist’s reasoning (pun unintended) for his choice of vedic scriptures over scientists’ opinion. It is because the vedic scriptures are based upon apaurusa, i.e, they emanate from God. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the classical loop aka Begs the question fallacy. Watch this to see this fallacy explained.

And then

The Vedic account of our planetary system is already researched, concluded, and perfect. The Vedas state that the moon is 800,000 miles farther from the earth than the sun.

Ah, bet the researchers were cultists too. Surely must have won the Nobel prize for such work. And solar eclipse, according to the vedic scriptures, simply cannot occur. Must be those damn scientists deceiving the population.

When we contradict the revered scientists like this and warn people that, through the use of brainwashing propaganda, they are being cheated out of billions of hard-earned tax dollars–we ourselves are accused of brainwashing. But which is better: a sober warning or a colossal multi-billion-dollar hoax?

And when I debunk your likes, I’d probably be accused by you and your followers of ungodly behavior. But which is better? A sober warning or colossal excreta spread across a whole page on the internet?

..before going there the scientists themselves predicted they could not live in that atmosphere, and upon reaching the moon they discovered the same thing–that they could not live there. So what is the value of this kind of billion-dollar excursion, which has produced only a few rocks?

Some men, unlike you guys, have a grand view of life, of success, of the limits of humanity. And they revel in pushing knowledge beyond the known. Through reason. And evidence. That in itself is a goal for some. There are those for whom goal of human life is not “to free the soul from its continuous transmigration among different species of life on various planets, and to transfer to the spiritual planets, where life is eternal”. Sooner or later natural selection will take care of you.

There is a lot more I’d like to talk about, including the mental state of the author of the article, and whether it was delusion or greed that gave life to the article. I’ll save it for later.

[EDIT: to all the folks who find this page using google searches like this and this and this : Seriously, stop being so easily manipulated by the scams of moon hoax. Even better visit Phil Plait's excellent page debunking the whole myth and the so called logical fallacies.]