OMNIPOTENCE

THE PARADOXICAL GOD

By Avijoy Haldar
Distributed in India by Notion Press

Distributed worldwide by Amazon Asia Pacific Holdings

Thank you Professor Richard Dawkins.

Your views of life itself and its underlying beauty
has been my inspiration and guidance.
 To Professor Ravi Prakash Diwedi,
your kindness and support throughout the years I
have known you has helped me immensely and
guided me through a lot of tough times.

To Professor Qi Nai Chen,

your way of life and values and moral lessons still
resonate with me and I have still kept them close to
heart.
Contents:

1. Preface
2. The Invisible Man
3. The Silent Killer
4. The Purpose
5. A Pinch of Humanity
6. A World at War

Preface
 The world today is more divided than you think.
The purpose of this book is not to give an opinion, since
we do seem to have a lot of them already. What I want
to portray and deliberate in this book, is the
perspective of science and reason. Perspective is a
beautiful thing, something which is seemingly fading
into the darkness as the shadowy forces of extremism
peek and lurk beyond the glimmering horizon as the
shining white clouds of the future roll in from the
setting sun, slowly and ominously, the black clouds
creep into view bringing with them the putrid smell of
hatred and intolerance.

Perspective is a beautiful tool. It is like a pair of

glasses through which you can see one object in as
many ways as you want. The objective of this book is to
help you to use this beautiful tool to see the world
through the eyes of logic, reason, and science, hence
bringing a touch of humanness to ourselves.

Chapter 1 – The Invisible Man

 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he
said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has
sent me to you.’ ~ Exodus 3:14, The Holy
Bible

There was a sudden knock on the closet door, and a

scratching sound. She sat up quickly. There she was,
alone in the darkness gazing intently into the steady
stream of moonlight, pouring through the tiny crack in
the window. It was a warm September night; the moon
was staring down at the earth. Out of the corner of her
eye, she thought she saw something move into the
shadows, silent, and sinister. Her heart started to
pound, her throat, dry. With a whimpering voice, she
called out; “W-Who’s there?”, but no answer befell
her. Now she started to feel the cold, growing on her,
creeping down her spine, like a spider, slowly spinning
its web around her, reining her in, an overpoweringly
frightful demonic presence gripped her.
She was petrified, and all sorts of horrid
possibilities crossed through her mind with blazing
speed, each more frightening than the other. She had
heard about the lady who had died in the cemetery just
beside the house and at that moment, a pair of
gleaming eyes stared out at her from below the chair.
She wanted to scream, but somehow no sound came
from her throat, she just sat there, staring into the
deathly haunting eyes. After a moment of this, she
finally got an idea. She whipped out her bible, and in a
frantic attempt, started muttering something under her
breath, hands quivering, feet cold and clammy. After
about a minute or two of shaky unintelligible
whispering, she finally got a hold of herself, and quickly
got out of bed and bolted towards the light switch. And
Lo and behold, there lying on the floor, curled up inside
her sweater, was Sprinkles, her pet tabby. She laughed
out with a relieved and borderline euphoric grin.
Suddenly the cold, dark and visibly menacing
environment in her room, the likes of which we can
experience in any Hollywood horror movie, was
instantly transformed into a warm and cozy bedroom.
So, what was it exactly that gave her this sudden
and newfound courage to overcome her gripping fear?
Why is it that a tabby, purring in the dark can project
such horrific images in our brain? And Why does
muttering a few selected words drive this fear away?
These are some of the questions that may arise in the
common mind. However, contrary to certain “beliefs”,
all of these can be answered by science. The reason
that I am not quite fond of any particular belief system
is that you can take the above situation and plug in
your own “belief” and it will evoke the same outcome
and emotion. If the girl had been Muslim, instead of
Christian, she would have whipped out her Quran, then
the “demon” would become “djinn”, while the story
still feeling real and unaltered.
There is an idea that is adopted by a sizeable
portion of the religious population across the world,
and almost all religious people, with whom I have
conversed during the course of writing this book. I have
experienced this form of argument and reasoning,
however, I never really thought it was that powerful a
notion until I came across a formal definition of it. It's
called; The God of the Gaps. What it is, is that it
basically says that all things that have not been able to
be explained by science, thus must be the work of a
God. This was first proposed in the 1880’s by German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and I came across this
while reading a book written by English ethologist and
evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins; The God
Delusion which I highly recommend that you also read
if the topic of this book does seem interesting to you.
So, the idea that anything that can’t be explained
by science must be God’s work is, to say at the very
least, a flawed idea. It did hold true for a long time of
relative stability in the scientific community during the
19th century, however recently due to a spat of growth
in the number of discoveries from the 20th century and
until now, the “gap” of unexplained things is quietly
becoming smaller and smaller as newer discoveries and
inventions file through to this world by scientists all
around the globe.
One of the implications of the “God Ideology” is
that there is an invisible force or entity, which is in
control behind the scenes of this wonderful stage
called Earth, and we are but puppets in this show called
Life. Now this intelligent engineer may be referred to as
Brahma by the Hindus, or Allah by the Muslims, or
Yahweh by the Jews and Christians. However, the
general ideology remains the same, simply put; some
time ago, God created the Earth and Mankind, and we
are all under his care and love. Here let’s tear down the
notion step by step. First of all, all these scriptures and
holy books are supposed to be the word of God, and a
hundred percent true. This statement has been
scrutinized and debated over a thousand times to the
point where elucidating the details would become a
mere redundancy instead of an argument. Christian
apologists believe that the Earth was created nearly
6000 years ago and we were the first inhabitants. We
were, the Chosen Ones. However, it will be of no
surprise that, that was not what had happened. Instead
the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and that many
living creatures have lived and dominated the Earth
before us. The evidence of this can be found in
something called “Fossil Records”. We have found
incredible creatures, whose bones were immortalized
in the depths of the Earth, not by God, but by Nature
herself. Today, the opposition to Darwin’s theory of
Evolution has dwindling but nevertheless, persistent
resistance by religious creationists as evidence for the
case grows stronger.
Now before we condemn or even ridicule religious
people on their “faith”, we must look at some of the
facts. “Faith” as it is, is sometimes quite important in
itself. This is exhibited in certain evolutionary traits. For
example, if a young human being, living in the vast
grasslands of the African Savannah during prehistoric
times, was warned of not going too close to, or running
away from Tigers and Lions, he or she would believe
the elder who gave the warning. This was in fact taken
up by the child without any proof or evidence. On the
contrary science would say to the child’s mind that it
was important to first investigate why lions and tigers
were a threat and needed to be escaped from. This
strain of logical thinking would definitely end up in a
quite gruesome and frankly heart-wrenching end for
the young child. So, in seeing that we must then
conclude that the child’s brain, by natural selection saw
it fit to accept any words uttered by his or her
immediate elders or parents for that matter, without
any confirmation of evidence in the strictest of senses.
Today, we no longer have to warn our children of lions
or tigers in the forests, but maybe not to accept candy
from strangers and other such common heeding that
you may have received from your parents as a child.
However, in this 21st Century we also have the
understanding, (however speculative and under
ongoing research it may be), of why we evolved the
way we did. Why did we have the power of language
while our competitors did not. As has been pointed out
by Israeli Historian and Professor, Yuval Noah Harari in
his book, Sapiens. It is an intricately woven story full of
delicate threads leading us all the way back to our furry
ancestors in the African Continent. A significant portion
of his book is dedicated to why we were the only ones
with the power of speech. One of the main theories
that we survived in place of our immediate human
cousins like the Neanderthals, was the fact that we had
developed the required brain power to synthesise and
recognize speech. This allowed us to communicate
much more than a monkey can, even with it’s
impressive intelligence. Thus here the decisive factor is
that we can communicate stories and things that do
not necessarily exist in our world. Religion began in just
that fashion. As a way of explaining things that exist, by
rationalizing it’s motives to be the work of someone.
But then if we cannot see that someone, then “it” must
be a God. Right? Well, when I put it that way, some of
you may see through it and decide otherwise. And I’m
vaguely glad that you do. It symbolizes the point in our
evolution where we start shedding the unnecessary
and old “beliefs” for new and more efficient ones. It
symbolizes humanity advancing by at least one step
further. Now, as you know, our beliefs in these Gods
were a method for rationalizing and personifying
natural events and disasters since we did not grasp the
exact reason for them. However we now do. So if we
know that lightning is caused by the negative charges
at the bottom of the cloud being attracted to the
positive charges on the ground, why do we need to
believe that there resides a great bearded man called
Thor who does that.Well, apart from the sheer
theatrical value of that myth, we have something more
to blame for this. You see, belief is not something that
is completely imparted to a person. We do still possess
some of the evolutionary traits of our prehistoric
ancestors. This is because even though we have
evolved a lot and advanced to new heights, our body
still thinks we live in the forests or mountains. This is
because it has not been able to keep up with the
fervent strides of advancement in our human history
from a purely biological standpoint. It is the same
reason why you find a creamy plum cake more
appealing than broccoli. That’s because our brain still
feels the need to stockpile on easily accessible fats
which can be converted into energy faster. But that is a
topic in a completely different direction. The fact is
that, belief without proper evidence is based on
something more primal in ourselves, one of them
being, the fear of the unknown. It is the same kind of
“gut feeling” or intuition to stay away from ghosts and
other such myths. There is a famous medical saying
which is as follows: “When you hear hoof beats, look
for horses, not zebras.”. It basically tells us to use logic
rather than our “gut feeling” which can be quite
misleading sometimes. But then you see, this is just an
adaption for more recent times. In the forest, if you
hear or see any evidence to suggest that an animal is
lurking nearby, the possibility of it being a harmless
herbivore is almost the same as that of being a tiger or
a lion, and you have to weigh in the chances for making
a decision to stay or flee solely on that information. At
this point, something called “risk calculation” takes
place in your brain, subconsciously or willingly, wherein
you weigh in the risks of your actions to your survival
instead of doing the logical thing. This is a concept that
to a certain degree manifests itself in what we now
know as modern day religion. As humans, we tend to
be more risk averse in such cases because it’s the best
option for survival. That is what is hardwired into our
brains.
So, to think that faith is completely unnecessary is
quite wrong. Otherwise natural selection would have
shaped our brains to completely ignore any such
notion. So now you would think, “Well! I guess faith
isn’t all that bad after all, is it?”. And there is the catch.
Like all good things, when used in excess, the outcomes
can be deadly. Too much blind faith and the result is
extremism, which has left its mark throughout history
in numerous instances, including Hitler’s rise in
Germany, Stalin and his communist Russia, the Klu Klux
Klan or simply, the KKK in the United States of America,
Osama Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda in the Middle East,
and so on and so forth. The examples are numerous.
On the flip side, we might have become extinct as a
species altogether because our ancestors would never
have survived the African wilderness if we didn’t as
children be hardwired to listen and believe the
warnings of elders.
In the previous paragraph I have talked about
mediation of faith. The problem of “faith” in children is
that it acts like a double-edged sword. The fact is that
even in today’s modern world, many of us do still
believe in meaningless traditions and superstitions. And
it is statistically probable that we will pass on these
traditions and superstitions to our offspring if we
decide to hold on to them throughout our life. So here,
a problem, or glitch, or bug in the child’s brain’s
algorithm is that it has no way of knowing which
advises it receives are true and useful, and which ones
are simple hollow superstitions. For example: A child
being warned that he or she should never play with
fire, and that he or she should never cross the path of a
black cat, will give both of these warnings the same
amount of priority even though we as adults know for a
fact that a child playing with fire is infinitely more
dangerous than avoiding crossing the path of a black
cat. These are just some of the things that we come to
learn as we grow up and eventually grow out of.
However, don’t go about concluding that all
superstitions are meaningless. There are some things
that are made into folklore by our ancestors and which
we call as superstitions, but which have strong real-life
connections and scientifically valid reasons. One
example is that in India there is a superstition that one
must never sleep under a tree during the night. Now,
for children the reason that is fed is that there is a
ghost living up in the tree which will kidnap you.
However, as adults we know that trees, during the
night, emit carbon-dioxide, which is a gas that, in large
quantities is quite harmful for you. Another reason for
such a superstition may be that during a thunderstorm,
the tree is quite likely to be struck by lightning thus
ending anyone’s life who happened to be sleeping
under that tree at that time.
 One of the main reasons for superstitions and
stories of ghosts and spirits springing up everywhere
around us is the result of a phenomenon called the
Chinese Whisper Effect, wherein, something that is
being passed around by word of mouth for a
considerable period of time tends to become distorted
or exaggerated as time passes. Another reason may be
that our ancestors were not that adept at
understanding the reason why the things happened in
nature. So, a particularly bad drought in some areas
might be attributed to the God of that tribe not being
happy with its people, so then emerges the
requirement to please that God, so as to bring good
harvest next year. This is because they did not have a
very good understanding of wind and rainfall patterns
and other climatic changes, that are brought about by
forces much greater than them and out of their control.
But in their minds, they needed someone to blame
since to them nothing happens without a reason. It is
just common sense to them and they are not mistaken,
in the very least. It’s just that the very reason they
strive to understand is way beyond their
understanding. One of the more sinister and horrid
side-effects of such skewed understanding is the
practice of sacrifice. Every culture in our history has the
practice of sacrificing certain things to their respective
Gods. For the Hindus of northern Malabar, in India, it
was a blood sacrifice to the Theyyam Gods, to the
Muslims, it is the goat sacrifice, and so on and so forth.
However, there was the gorier sacrifice of humans in
certain ancient cultures, like the Mayans. An evidence
of this was seen in the discovery of the Children of
Llullaillaco, in the Andes along the modern-day Chile
and Argentina borders. They were Inca, an ancient pre-
conquest civilization in South America. It was later
unearthed that these three children were drugged and
buried alive in a chamber in the Andes and
subsequently left to die a slow horrid death. Discovered
by Johan Reinhard in 1999, these children were found
mummified in surprisingly good conditions. So as
horrifying and outrageous this practice may seem, it
was a part of the culture of many people. Even the
practice of Sati, wherein the wife of a deceased
husband was sentenced to burning alive along with her
late husband was in practice in many Hindu sects
across pre-colonial India. However, these atrocities are
not remotely only related to religious and cultural
misinformation, and certainly not remotely a thing in
the distant past. The 20th century alone has seen some
of the worst atrocities meted out to humans by none
other than humans themselves. The mass genocide of
the European Jews in WW2 Europe, the purging of
homosexuals and other members of the LGBTQ
community in many parts of the world, the killing of
Russians by Stalin in communist Russia, and the horrific
and heart-wrenching Nanking Massacre of Koreans by
the Imperial Japanese Army, are, to name a few, just a
small portion of atrocities committed for non-religious
motives by otherwise quite technologically advanced
civilizations with evolved and more knowledgeable
human beings than our savage ancestors who arguably
didn’t know any better. But these people did know.
What drove them? Did they not see the plight and
pleading eyes of the numerous children and men and
women they killed? Did they not feel the need to help?
These are some questions that makes everyone
uncomfortable. Do rapists not feel the plight of the
helpless person in front of them? Do murderers not
feel the pain of the person who he or she has just
killed? Here comes the concept of repercussions. The
concept of God, is that there is an Invisible man or
person or entity in the heavens, for Christians, Jannat
for Muslims, Swarga for Hindus, etc... that sees and
judges the deeds of individual human beings. Thus,
after death, they are judged, and punished according to
their sins. Now you can see why this concept is so
elusive to many people. Say someone was just
murdered, and the police are seeking to console the
victim’s family. It is more pleasing to their ears, if they
were told that their beloved family member was in a
better place now and not in pain, while the murderer
was sure to suffer a gruesome fate even after they
were dead, than to say that the person who had just
been murdered was gone. Every semblance that made
him who he was, was dead and never going to return.
The truth, as it is, is very bitter, and hard to deal with
for people who have suffered terribly. So thus, you can
see why religion acts like a drug and eases the pain that
is experienced by such people. My feeling on this
matter was summarized quite well by Karl Marx, a
German philosopher when he said; “Religion is the
opium of the masses”. Thus, through this deliberation
we can see how and why exactly did these myths and
stories of an invisible being pop up simultaneously in all
civilizations around the world, irrespective of the time
frame and however geographically distant and
separated they may be. However, at this point of time
in our evolution as a species, we must ask ourselves
one crucial question; Is God required for us to do good?
Can these good things not be done without the
intervention or fear of repercussions from an all-
knowing God, but simply from the kindness of our
hearts? Is it not a good feeling to help someone in their
time of need than to leave them to their fate?
In today’s fast-moving world, we often see the less
fortunate on the streets, and in the shadowy corners of
shady alleys. A great many people ignore this and move
on with their lives. But I must then ask, that if for some
reason they themselves end up in that place would
they not wish that someone would be so kind as to
help them? So, in order to give this some perspective,
in my hometown of Kolkata, a city in the West Bengal
state of India, there are approximately 4.5 million
people living as of a consensus drawn in 2011.
However, there are also about 150,000 homeless
people according to some independent sources, in that
same year. So, for every 30 people there is at least 1
homeless person. So now if at least 20 to 25 people
help that one person, we may have at least a lesser
number of people living on the streets and maybe
eradicate homelessness altogether. But I know,
however rosy and easy-to-achieve my assertions may
be, it is in fact not at all simple. Many factors come into
play in such large-scale things. However, my point was
that if we could just feel the other person’s pain and
sympathize with them, they might not have to suffer so
badly.
In lieu of this, then I feel compelled to reiterate this
question; does it help us in any way to know that there
is indeed an invisible man sitting somewhere who is
watching us? Does it make us better people by doing
something good out of fear of harsh repercussions of
doing the opposite or just doing good out of the
kindness of our hearts? Such emotional questions are
almost always open ended and subject to harsh debate
between factions and endless personal pondering.
Does the saying; “The ends justify the means” also
work in the aforementioned case?
Religion puts us in constant fear and guilt to a
certain degree. It is a fact that someone who is dead
cannot come back, and certainly cannot see the actions
performed after his death. Atheism tells us that we
cannot say that there is a God due to the lack of any
concrete evidence for it. Science, unsurprisingly backs
up this claim. The invisible man, is thus not so much as
invisible or non-existent, but unnecessary.

Chapter 2 – The Silent Killer

“Among all kinds of killers, time is the
ultimate because time kills everything.”
~Bhagavad Gita 10:33 (Translated)
 The cool mountain breeze kissed his neck, flowing
past his frail body, like a tide through a calm sea. His
eyes filled with tears as he looked into the deep abyss
down below. “It didn’t have to end this way” he
thought to himself, as a single trickle of tear rolled
down his tired face, and disappeared into his worn-out
shirt. The bitter taste of regret filled his mouth as his
mind swept over the numerous happy memories.
Memories, though recent, felt as if they were of a
distant forgotten century. A time of simple happiness.
When everything was so rosy and promising. Until that
one day when it all came crashing down like a pile of
cards. It was nearly 4 years ago, and it still felt as if it
had happened just yesterday. He looked into the sky,
searching for her, tired, frantic, and desperate, for that
one glimpse. But he knew in his heart…. he knew…
she was never coming back.
Four years ago, on that spot, Sarah, his daughter,
had died. It was a car accident. One foggy morning on
her way to work, her brakes had failed at this turn and
she flew off the cliff into the dark abyss. Times after
that, had been hard. He lost focus, got diagnosed with
clinical depression, and all for good reason. After all,
this trauma was quite large.
But then one rainy night, sitting quietly on the sofa,
wallowing in his sorrow, pondering and simulating
thousands of ways in which he could have stopped this.
He could have just told her not to go to work that day,
or maybe if he was just a little more careful, he could
have checked the car before she started to drive. All of
these pointed to the guilt of losing her and every
muscle in his body screamed “If only I had known!!!”.
He felt responsible, guilty, and devastated….
There was a knock on the door. After a moment’s
silence, he pulled himself together and went to answer
the door, every fiber of his being trying hard, just to not
break down in tears. He opened the door slowly and
wearily. His wife came in exhilarated with joy. They
were going to have another baby...
It was on a morning, that they rushed her to the
hospital. And after hours of agonizing screams, came a
shrill voice, bawling. He went inside, and there it was,
on the bed; a baby girl. He picked her up, and looked
into her innocent wide eyes. Eyes that reminded him of
her; Sarah. After that, life kind of picked up pace. He
got a new job, a new apartment, and more importantly,
a new purpose.
It’s been 4 years now, and the nightmares seem to
have faded away, slowly and painfully, as he argued
with himself, time and again, each time emerging a
little victorious until finally the day came when looking
at her picture on the wall didn’t plunge him into
sorrow.
It’s funny isn’t it? How time can pass and years
seem so short. Why do certain events seem like they
happened just yesterday? Why do we forget certain
things with the passage of time?
A scientific explanation of this can be given by the
Cannon-Bard Theory put forward by Walter Cannon
and Philip Bard in the 1920’s which states that certain
memories are well recorded because of physiological
excitements that occurred during that event that
become recorded in neurological traces in the brain.
Now as time passes these traces grow weaker and
weaker so that your memory of the event and the
emotion tied to it is bound to go hazier as time passes,
losing clarity, ever so slightly.
Science has come a long way. You can look around
yourselves and everywhere you will find, small things,
that shape your everyday life, from the Alexa sitting on
your table to the car parked in your garage, even the
laptop I’m writing this book on. Everything was the
result of countless people toiling in silence, over what
they loved. Their ideas helped us in ways in which we
cannot imagine living without today. It’s simple. Try
switching off your phone and computer for one day.
You can’t. It’s really difficult now. Going further, take
away the electricity, the skyscrapers, the cars, the
planes, etc… and you will find the world,
unrecognizable. Every semblance of it, a reminder of
what we are without these things; apes who can walk
on two feet. That’s it. That’s all we are in the basest of
definitions. However, what differentiates us from the
rest of the apes, and for that matter, the rest of the
living creatures on this planet Earth, is our ability to
adapt, to learn, to build, and shape the environment
around us instead of merely adjusting within it. If our
ancestors had not been able to establish language, we
would be far, far away from the beings we are. To a
dog’s intelligence, we are, kind of like a God in itself,
are we not? A dog cannot articulate words, a dog
cannot build the Burj Khalifa, or the iPhone, but we
can. We were simply born into these advantages
without having to accomplish anything, that is the
beauty of evolution and natural selection. And to think
that this just happened because of some God, is
criminal in itself. It undermines everything that nature
in itself built. Over millions of years. Natural selection is
something like this… You don’t think of the numerous
servers and circuits your data flows through every time
you google something. You don’t think of the intricate
mechanics of your car every time you push the
accelerator. These things we just received and took for
granted as we were conceived. For a person born into
the 18th century, these things can seem odd, even alien.
But someone had to make these in the first place for
you to use them. Someone had to fail, then fix, then
rebuild, until the perfect solution was born. Natural
Selection is really the same thing. Species are born,
they adapt and learn, and pass on the knowledge to the
next generation, like a software update. And this cycle
continues forever, fine tuning the species. Those who
adapt, pass on their genes to the next generation while
the ones who could not survive, die. Thus with every
generation, the skills and features of that species is
continuously fine-tuned.
But don't think that we are the endpoint of
evolution on our planet. Just remember, it took
millions of years just to create the simplest life forms
on this planet, and millions more to create the first
dinosaurs, who were arguably the best predators of
their time. But it took just one stray asteroid hit to
bring down their entire ecosystem to its knees, an
event which we now know as the mesozoic extinction.
This tells us how small and insignificant, yet intricately
"designed" each one of us is. It gives us a perspective
into our place in this vast uncanny universe, a concept
explained really well by the American Astrophysicist
Neil Degrass Tyson in his book Astrophysics for People
in a hurry.
We are simply one single species of organisms
floating about on a tiny rock in the vast expanse of
space. Yet in the midst of this gloomy reality, we have
carved out a place for ourselves which no species on
Earth has ever done, which is to decide it’s own
destiny. This is the most humbling image of ourselves
that I could imagine. Our species, so advanced in a
myriad of fashions, yet so delicate. Yes, we all do have
our imperfections but we have been, for the most part,
been able to turn about ourselves and our very
existence. The key to moving forward is to slowly
flattening out our imperfections from the very fabric of
our existence. Just think about it, one person can build
such great a thing as a computer, faster than it’s own
brain, yet it simply takes just one tiny bacteria to kill
that person. A good example of this can also be found
in the 2013 movie; Man of Steel, where a highly
advanced race of beings living on the fictional planet of
Krypton died because their planet became unstable
due to the hundreds of years of exploitation. Now this
is a hypothetical scenario and we of this generation
don't need to worry about such calamities in the near
future. But there is nonetheless, always a chance that
that can happen in our generation. So if the much
advanced Kryptonians with their phantom drives and
World Machines couldn't save themselves from such a
disaster, then how can we humans even dream of it.
But, here lies the catch. Given enough time, we could
advance and not make the mistakes that they did. And
we are starting to see the flourishing of these kinds of
technologies here on this Earth in our lifetimes with the
Advent of Tesla and their electric car, the Solar
Powered Machines and many such wonderful things
that would have been near impossible nearly a century
ago. Here, I have now given you a bigger picture. Now I
leave it to your discretion and judgment on the matter
that, given the scale of things, what is going to save us
from imminent extinction? A God? Or some advanced
technology?. Now if your answer was indeed
"technology" then, why? The answer is that Science is
the harbinger of truth. Science cultivates meaningful
ideas and theories which are the embodiment of truth
itself. It is like a torch in the darkness that lets you see.
In darkness, science tells us that the natural thing to do
is to turn on the torch in order to explore more of the
dark room. But religion will lead us to think that the
few centimeters of vision we still have left in the dark,
is the entire extent of the room. This was alright to be
taught in a time when even science could not work out
the answer, then people needed some explanation,
however now since we have that ability, why should we
not explore? Why should we be happy with the limited
understanding we have.
The fact is opinions on matters, however obvious
they may seem, are in fact subject to change. Maybe
not in a few years, or even a hundred years, but surely
in the near future. Mentality will change, with time.
Don't believe it? Well 800 years ago, everyone thought
that the Earth was flat and there was little to no
resistance against it. However, with time, the idea of a
Round Earth was born and the people changed their
mind when being presented with the repeated
evidence for the case. Here, an injunction that I would
like to impose is that if something is true, then it will
stand the test of time. Like the laws of physics. The
gravity of the Earth that pulled on the dinosaurs a
couple of million years ago is the same force that pulls
your phone to the ground when it slips out of your
hand, a couple of millions years later. So , let's ask an
elementary question. What is time?
 Time, according to modern definition, is basically
the infinitely continuing existence of events, namely;
the past, the present, and the future, when regarded as
a whole. So then arises the question; How do we know
how much time has passed? Well the simple answer is,
hours, minutes and seconds. Up to this point most
people would feel satisfied with the answer they have
received. But that is just because they already assume
that they know there are 60 seconds in a minute and
60 minutes in an hour. But how do you know that after
waiting for some amount of time, that the
aforementioned 60 seconds have passed? Well here,
things get a little tricky. Something as simple as 60
seconds has its roots in advanced physics. It is
measured as the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of
radiation corresponding to the transition between two
hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133
atom. Here, a cycle of radiation is basically the full
length of a sine wave, so to speak and Hyperfine levels
are basically the small shifts in the energy levels of
atoms, molecules and ions when the nucleus interacts
with the electrons surrounding it. Now what I
attempted to explain was a blatant and humiliatingly
short description of the infinitely more complex
process that I mentioned and I'm sure there are
scientists who know and understand the entire
processes in the intricacies of atomic physics but sadly I
am not one of them. The point is, that something so
simple and rudimentary as 1 second has such a
complex definition. Now, just as we start to think that,
well, since 1 second feels the same whenever you
measure it, then it must be the same for everything
and should be of the same duration throughout the
Galaxy right? Well here, Dr. Albert Einstein brought us
to another eye-opening revelation, time is not
constant. This is explained in his theory of Special
Relativity. The essence of this is that space-time as we
know it, is like a fabric and can be bent by the Earth's
gravitational force or even it's spin around its axis. This
might be quite a mouthful for people who aren't
exactly physicists, but it is quite exquisitely explained
by the famous British Physicist, the late Dr. Stephen
Hawking. He says that as we move with speeds closer
to the speed of light, for us time will slow down, but
not for those around who aren't moving close to the
speed of light. This means that essentially we would
age lesser as compared to the others who weren't
moving with us. So in a way, it is kind of a one way
ticket to the future.
It just becomes, from here onwards, quite self-
explanatory, how intricately complex and infinitely
intriguing this concept is. But more fascinating still is
how the many different ancient civilizations of this
world tackled the concepts of time and the origins of
the universe, for it is with the help of these insights
that we can come close to understanding their point of
view, bizarre as they may be, that defined their entire
existence. The Chinese for example, had their own
creation myth surrounding the Hairy Giant called Pangu
who woke up inside the cosmic egg in the midst of the
Yin and the Yang which symbolizes perfect Harmony
and balance, and with his axe, separated the Earth(Yin)
and the Sky(Yang). This myth was historically recorded
by a Dong Wu official by the name of Xu Zheng during
the Sanguo Shidai or the period of the Three Kingdoms
in China and dates back as far as 149 AD. Now moving
down to the Indian Subcontinent we have the Rig Veda
which was written approximately back in 1200 BC and
is considered to be one of the oldest of the Hindu
Scriptures, which tells of the Hiranyagarbha which
literally translates to the Golden Egg which existed
before the Divine Creation. It's fascinating to hear such
far-fetched stories about their existence. For the
civilizations that were considered to be the Pinnacle of
innovation with texts like Sushruta Samhita from India,
and the Huangdi Neijing from China, reading of such
skewed interpretation of their origin is quite an
overpowering feeling. To me, it tells us of the many
things we as humans can achieve and the great extent
to which our understanding of this universe can take
us, but nonetheless we are prone to error, no matter
the greatness of our achievements. We will always
make mistakes. The important thing is to learn from
those mistakes and rectify them, and it is digs like
these, into our eventful past that give us a sense of
direction and motive on the eternal hunt for knowledge
in this world, as the famous Indian Politician, Dr. Shashi
Tharoor said in his book; The Great Indian Novel, "The
past is not necessarily a guide to the future, but it does
partly help explain the present."
 Having said that if we try and personify time, then
we get the image of a cold, unmoving, unfeeling being,
punctual and indifferent. Indifferent, to the metal, in
the rain as it oxidizes into rust slowly, indifferent to the
feeble heart, beating, in a senile man, as he approaches
the dark shroud of death, indifferent to the frantic cries
of the deer as it succumbs to its fate in the hands of the
lion… And without much difficulty, we can agree then
on the fact that however much you pray, however
much you wish time would stop, it never does. The
seconds still keep ticking on and on. Yet when the same
thought experiment is meted out to nature, it is seen as
a mother, caring for her child, a creator of unspeakable
wonders. Why is that? Just think about it for one
second. If mother nature were the caring and loving
being she is depicted as, ( Its funny why she is always
used in this context) then she would have given the
poor deer a better chance at survival by making it
harder to catch. But then the lion population would
conversely starve to death, but we always see the lions
as the typical "bad guys "; bloodthirsty and ruthless. Yet
mother nature seems to take care of them too by
giving them agility, strength and teeth designed to kill.
So it's confusing, which side is she on? The helpless
deer? Or the monstrous lion? These questions,
however strange and puzzling they may seem are really
a matter of perspective. If, for a moment, we forget the
picture of nature as a caring mother, and paint her in
the same colors as the personification of time itself,
then we can start to see the connections and
similarities. Hence, by that, then we can say that nature
is in fact another face of time, or vice versa. This brings
us to the then obvious deduction that our survival as a
species is not "guided" or, for a lack of a better word;
"dictated" by a loving and caring anthropomorphic
being, but by we ourselves. We fought and survived
through the ages, we discovered fire, we made the first
wheel. All these inventions were made by our
ancestors, long long ago. With enough time, we were
able to figure out such important inventions that set us
apart from the other animals on Earth.
Time, thus is simply the facilitator of events and
does not interfere with or even favor anyone or
anything in this universe. But as simple and
straightforward that notion may seem, it has a certain
philosophical value. It enables us to peek through an
open window into the heart of our reality and confirm
all the ideas that we have of our origin and evolution
on this lonely ball of rock in a forlorn part of the
observable universe. It puts our heads back into the
ground by showing us the grand scale of things. An
example of this can be demonstrated by pointing a
telescope into the sky at night. When you see any stars,
what you are seeing is practically the star, a couple of
million years ago. This is because, any star, at that kind
of distance from the Earth emits light which as we
know travels at a fixed speed, namely 3x108m/s. So the
light from a star which is say 8000 light years away
from Earth, will reach you approximately 8000 years
later. So you are always seeing it as it was 8000 years
before. This is elementary physics but it gives us a
glimpse into the past.
It is things like these that put a smile on the
numerous scientists tirelessly working day and night to
unravel the mysteries of the cosmos. This sentiment
was aptly portrayed and captured by the 1991 song
named “The Wind of Change” by the German Band;
Scorpions. It says…
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night,
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
In the wind of change.

The wind of change

Blows straight into the face of time,
Like a stormwind that will ring the freedom bell.

Time gives us a narrow window of opportunity; our

entire lifespan, to exist. The beautiful thing about it is
that it has no purpose, a topic which I shall address in
more detail in the coming chapters. We are simply born
into this world for a short span of time and we should
make the most out of this time, to explore it, and make
it a better place, for us and for the coming generations.
That is the beauty of time.
 Chapter 3 – The Purpose
“There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless
the counsel of the LORD, that shall stand.”
~ Proverbs 19:21, The Holy Bible (King James
Version)
The smell of freshly baked bread wafted through
the air from the nearby bakery as the children shuffled
through the narrow path leading to the church. Eyes
groggy with sleepiness and the general hum of a 100
students’ murmuring filled the cold morning air as they
made their way into the cavernous hall. They sat down
in the rows of wooden chairs before the altar as the
priest, a burly man with a short stature but an ominous
voice started reading out from a book; The Bible. “In
the beginning God created the heavens and the
Earth…” he said, as he gazed intently into the
gathering, as the little curious eyes followed him with
intrigue and awe as they listened to the epic story.
On the other side of the world, another group of
seemingly innocent children were staring in awe and
earnest admiration as their Imam began reading to
them the Quran and the wonders left behind by the
Prophet Muhammad.
Both of those scenes are pretty normal and even
you may have been a part of the congregation of
students mentioned above at some point in your life.
But that's alright.
There is something mind bogglingly alluring about
such myths and stories. It makes us feel better, and
gives us a sense of purpose and inclusion, maybe even
a sense of security. And that is nothing wrong. It just
confirms to how good they are as stories. The purpose
of a story is to engross the reader in them. For
example, if one reads the Harry Potter series of books
written by the famous writer J. K. Rowling, it is very
easy to become immersed into the world of witches
and wizards and magical spells. But at the end of the
day, that's all they are, stories. Meant to take your
mind off the mundane life that is all around us, an
escape into a magical realm. But sometimes these holy
books whichever religion they may be from, strive to
do a little more. They don't just engross the reader, but
engulf them. And it is very very difficult to untangle
yourself from such strong myths. Over time it becomes
a matter of unspeakable courage and determination to
detach yourself.
We've all heard the myths of the origin of life
haven't we? The story of Adam and Eve and how God
created the Earth. But one of the things that I think is
more vexing is, why?
One would not think that one simple question can
throw off so many people at once. This is because it
affects all of us. If you ask a Muslim person, he or she
will give you one answer, if you ask a christian you’ll get
a totally different answer, and the same goes for every
religion on the planet. We all seem to have different
opinions and stories which we “believe” to be the
truth. But as any logical person might know, there
cannot be several versions of truth. There is just one
truth. And that should be in my opinion based on facts,
logic and most importantly evidence. Something which
no holy book can give. It’s a very vexing concept if you
come to think of it. This was once elucidated by Richard
Dawkins. The general idea is that if you happen to be a
christian then you would have been brought up with
the Bible and think, as many religious fundamentalists
do, that your religion is the truth. But have you ever
thought that if you were to be born a Muslim or a
Hindu, you would have then conversely thought that
that was the truth and not Christianity. This is the
biggest “Red Flag” that sets me off to think that maybe,
just maybe, that is not the right answer. How can one
event have so many different truths and origins? So the
only logical reason which there is for people to hold on
to their beliefs in so radical a fashion is the direct result
of childhood indoctrination. Wherein something which
is taught and emphasized from such an early stage in
one’s life, becomes an integral part of that person’s
identity. This can be noticed in cases where a child of a
different origin, say Chinese or Japanese is brought up
in an English household, he or she will hold the
ideologies, habits and nuances there is to be an English
person. Here, his or her country of origin does little to
no good for her personality.
Another one of the questions that religious books
offer to answer so eloquently is the purpose of life.
What made life? Why do we exist? These questions are
not something that would often come up in parties or
casual dinner conversations. However they do hold a
certain amount of mysticism to them simply because
their answers are not yet fully understood by science.
Some of you may think that, well obviously God
created everyone. And I’m not just talking about the
Christian God; Yahweh, but just God in general. The
idea of a supreme being creating all life on Earth is such
a well known concept that it often passes for fact in
some people’s minds. However, that is not the case. I
think it’s more than just that.
Imagine if we were lizards. Now in your mind, think
about what might have religion looked like if that were
true. We would say that God created us in his image
like we still do. So then there might have been a
supreme being who’s image would be the form of a
lizard. Jesus may have been a lizard instead of the
bipedal apes that we are. Now coming back, you can
now see why our concept of God creating us in his
image is so flawed. This effect is something called
Confirmation Bias. A simple google search would reveal
its nature, being the tendency to interpret new
evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or
theories.
A lot of the work of respected theologians was to
answer the why questions in life. And the next half of
that was inadvertently "allotted" to science, which are
the how questions. Even today most people think this
way. It's something like this; You are roaming through
your garden when you see a rose blossoming in a bush
nearby. You see the color of the rose, breathe in its
beautiful fragrance. Now the question that may come
to your mind is "how?". How does the rose get its color
and its refined, sweet fragrance? How does it grow?
Now in today's world, we have the power of the
internet with us and a simple google search can, yet
again bring the answers to you in a matter of seconds.
But, if you were to think deeper, the next question that
would arrive in your mind would most certainly be
“Why is the rose red?”. Now no amount of google
searches would be able to satisfy such a simple, yet
complex question. You can say that scientifically
speaking roses are red because the pigments called
anthocyanins, which are in the class of chemicals called
flavonoids, which is what gives plants their color.
However I’m sure such a flat definition may not satisfy
many people. But you see that’s the truth. And that is
life. It is nature. Just because we see the color of the
rose as red doesn’t mean that someone had to choose
the color. We ask these questions because we have not
seen and will never possibly see the full extent of
change that evolution brings with it, as is explained in
detail in Richard Dawkins' book; River out of Eden,
which gives us a Darwinian view of life. It is simple logic
and not at all biased in any sort of way as we will see in
the paragraphs to follow.
Many of you believe that evolution is a sort of a
random process. But that is simply not the truth.
Evolution takes time; millions of years. The main driving
process for it is the underlying sole purpose of the DNA
which is survival. Not of a single entity, and not even a
sole group of similar entities, but of the entire species
of that entity. Fish, are a very concrete example of
evolution. Their journey began about 530 million years
ago during the Cambrian Explosion which is when most
animals and plants that we see today came into our
fossil records. During this time, the phylum chordata
which includes the fish that we see today, started their
change. Now, this change was not brought about by
some heavenly being, but by pure natural selection,
growing out of the need for it to survive more easily
which lead to the development of skulls and vertebrae.
However, in spite of those revolutionary adaptations
they were far from what we can say are fish. It took a
yet longer time for them to develop other features like
jaws, the first of which were the Placoderms and the
Acanthodii during the Ordovician Period about 486
million years ago. Now this is simple evidence. No way
to go around or avoid. So if God was to have created all
this why would he do it in so many steps, sacrificing so
many of these poor creatures on the way? Many of
these beautiful creatures sadly don't even have the
fortune of seeing the 21st Century because they
became extinct much longer before that. Therefore, if
there had been a purpose for all this, what is it exactly?
One of the stories that comes from the house of
purpose is the famous story of Noah and his ark. Now,
all of you who are Christians will have inevitably come
across this story of a man named Noah, who apparently
got word that God was about to destroy the world and
so he chose Noah and his family to take the immense
responsibility of saving the animals and themselves.
Now irrespective of the details which we all know, the
technicalities of such an endeavor can be mind-
blowingly complex, and arguably neither feasible nor
practically possible for a man with primitive bronze-age
tools. Think about it like this. The RMS Titanic, possibly
the most well known ship of all time for its tragic
accident required approximately 3000 men for its
active construction out of a group of 14000 men in
total as was recruited by Harland and Wolff Shipyard.
The entire project which began in 1909 was finished by
1912. And then you have this man called Noah who
apparently single handedly ( and with a little help from
his family) masterminded the creation of an ark,
probably of similar or even more complexity at a time
when the people he worked with didn’t even have
electricity or even a clue of basic structural
engineering. And yet we are to believe that by some
miracle, the ark was able to, not only house two
“kinds” of every animal, but also sustain them
indefinitely until the floods came to an end and the
waters receded. Notice when the Bible loosely employs
the term “kinds” with no biological specifications. This
is because no one at the time had any idea of Phyla or
Classes or even species denoting the different
classification methods of animals and plants. Another
one of the logical fallacies of this myth is the fact that
after the liberation of the animals from the ark, how
did they manage to return back to their original
locations on the globe once the flood subsided, without
leaving any fossil records of a trail of that species along
the way? And more importantly the most pressing
question would be How did these animals just know to
migrate from their place of origin hundreds, or maybe
thousands of miles away, to Noah’s ark? Some of these
questions and logical fallacies are quite meticulously
mentioned in the book; The Foundational Falsehoods
of Creationism, by the American author and activist
Aron Ra, who’s work I do sincerely recommend you to
read if these kinds of questions do plague your mind
too.
Have you ever wondered, what is the purpose of
everything? Why were you born? What is the reason
you were born a human and not a chimpanzee? Well,
some of these questions have been pondered on for
ages by theologians and have not been able to be
answered still in today’s world. I guess a lot of you
religious readers agree with me on this that, to you
those are the questions linked to God. It was in God’s
will that we are all here. But unfortunately, for lack of a
better word, that approach is in a way “mistaken”. The
sole reason for that is, if, for a second we were to
forget about God, and all his divine creations and
everything that entails with it, and then start to think
and approach those problems, you will see that
everything suddenly seems to make a lot more sense. If
we say that there is no God, then the first question,
How did we come to be? becomes a matter of simple
history. The easiest answer being Evolution. Then you
could start looking at the evidence in the fossil records
and our DNA and you would see how we gradually
evolved into the modern Homo Sapien. One more line
of questioning that would eventually come up is; What
happens after death? Well, scientifically speaking, once
your heart stops beating, your body shuts down.
Imagine it like this; your body is a computer and your
mind is the CPU. Your daily tasks and behaviour and
personality is all a file that is being continuously edited
and updated according to the different scenarios you
face in your life, everything from your memories and
experiences. But once you die, that computer shuts
down. So what would naturally happen to you then?
Logically speaking all your data would be erased
forever. There is no going back. And that’s all. After
death, purely from a scientific standpoint, we cease to
exist whether you believe it or otherwise, it doesn’t
matter. What matters is what we see through our
evidence. Our limp body is just an outer shell. The real
you is gone. Now if that is too harrowing to accept, and
to a certain degree, if the thought of vanishing into
nothingness seems too scary then I would like to offer
one more thought; Do you know what it was like before
you were born? I would imagine you said “No”. As do I.
None of us do. Because at that point in time you were
not in existence. So if you were not in existence then
consequently you had no body. And without a physical
body with a brain capable of recording events and
emotions and trauma how do you expect to know
anything for that matter? So on a merrier note, the
next time you talk to a person who’s seen a ghost or a
spirit, I do sincerely ask you to instruct him or her to
ask that ghost some crucial questions like “Where do
you exist?”, “How is it that you are invisible?”, etc.
instead of fleeing from it mindlessly. You never know!
You might gain some knowledge in the end!
Now like all of the questions given above that I
attempted to answer, there is one which strikes as
particularly more challenging than the rest of the lot for
the simple reason being that it is in itself a very
skewed, if not mistaken question. That question is
What is the reason we exist at all? I say this is a very
skewed question because it entails a lot of
presupposed notions along with it which I have no
choice but to refute first before I can start to give an
honest scientific, if not logical answer. The wrongful
presupposition is that there is someone who's will
allowed you to pop into existence. If that were actually
the case then it would indeed be a valid question to ask
why did we exist implying that we were questioning the
reason for the creator to create us. However since we
have no inkling of evidence in the slightest, of this
presupposed creator, then it would be scientific
treason. The logical way we can go about it is that
scientifically speaking since we have no evidence for a
supreme being, then the question falls flat on its face
since it's like asking What is the color of happiness?. To
that, there is no concrete answer that anyone can give
you, the simple reason being the question being put
forward here is invalid on it's own.
But as we know, we aren't the most logical of
species in existence and we do ask these questions. So
it is safe to assume that some of these questions have a
certain philosophical value to them and must be
interpreted that way. However, I can’t help but ask,
why do we need to have a purpose?
The concept of a predefined purpose, or as some
religious people call it “God’s Plan” or the “Grand
Scheme of Things” is somewhat dampening of the spirit
of life and what it means to be sentient. When you say
that God has a plan for all of us and everything that
happens, happens for a reason, it supposes that
although we have the element of free will, we do not
have complete autonomy of our mind, since God would
have to meddle in our daily lives if something goes
awry and begins to stray away from His grand “plan”.
This strain of thinking, however absurd it may be on the
surface, hides a more sinister implication. It means that
your prayers have no meaning. Since God has a plan
already in motion, then that means he already has
knowledge of the future, which in turn means that no
amount of praying will change that since we are not in
control of anything. To put into perspective how cruel
and unpleasant this idea is, say there was a little boy
who was suffering from cancer. The boy’s family prayed
to God to end his suffering and heal him. But if God’s
plan entailed that the boy had to die, then He, instead
of answering their prayers and saying that he was going
to die anyway so there was no need for them to do
anything, remains quiet and let’s the family hold on to
the hope that their prayers would be answered. God
would then see to that the boy go through the painful
procedures, the chemotherapy and everything else, all
for nothing. In the end he would snuff out this little
boy’s life anyway. So this God would in that case be
giving false hopes to them only to lead them to a quite
rude awakening of the reality, after maybe them losing
out so much money and practically bleeding out
financially.
I hope and imagine that now you can see, through
this analogy, how cruel and overtly condescending to
science and humanity itself, the idea of divinical
purpose may seem. But, aside from the sheer ferity and
sadistic inclemency that idea may entail, it reveals to us
a more absurd underlining. And here lies the real
paradox of the God Ideology. If God knows the future,
the present, and the past, and at the same time gave us
free will, then that free will is supposed to amount to
nothing because then whatever we do will be God’s
plan, and God would see to it that nobody can escape
that. So then we must chuck the concept of free-will
out of the window in turn making us the eternal slaves
of God.
 Thus, I would say that the beauty of life from the
perspective of a purely secular or atheistic point of
view in itself is that there is no discernable underlying
theological or philosophical purpose for our mere
existence in this universe. But that would sometimes
be downplayed by people then saying that if there is no
“Grand Plan” then there is no meaning or significance
to us existing on Earth. Some people, and I’m sure
many of you readers would implicate from this
perspective that without a divine purpose our lives are
no more significant than an ant crawling through the
forest floor. And to that I would say yes and no at the
same time. The reason being “meaning” and
“significance” are two very different aspects of life.
Yes! our life is no more special in any way than that of a
lion or a deer in terms of implicit meaning, but No! it
does not make it any less explicitly significant than that
of a lion or a deer. Just because we don’t have a
purpose doesn’t mean we have no value. It simply
means that there is no need for us to exist, but there is
a great deal of importance dealt to us simply because
we do exist. A great way to put this tantalizingly
profound idea into perspective is in the words of the
American Professor, Joseph John Campbell; “Life is
without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The
meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being
alive is the meaning.”

Chapter 4 – A Pinch of Humanity

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It
comes from an indomitable will..”
~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Say, a burglar comes into your house and ransacks
the place. However, with the help of the police, you
manage to catch a hold of him. Duly, in the course of
the proceedings in court, he is sentenced to prison.
 Now, after serving his sentence for the full term
allotted to him by the judge, he gains back his
precious freedom, and moves out.
Shortly after this, one day while strolling down the
street, he spots a child who had strayed away from
the park and wandered unknowingly onto the
adjacent highway. The child was now facing oncoming
traffic. Without thinking much, he took the decision
and rushed across the sidewalk and onto the road.
That day he saved the child from certain death. But
now, the question to be asked is this, because of his
good deed, is it alright to call him a good man? Or
does he still deserve scorn and loathing for robbing
the house. Is this one good deed enough to redeem
him from a life of robbery and theft? Where do we
draw the line? Some might say that yes, once he did
the good deed out of the goodness of his heart, it was
enough to redeem him. But others might disagree on
that completely and say no amount of good could
erase his shady and crime-ridden past. While a still
smaller handful of people would point to the severity
of his past crimes before passing the judgement on
his change of heart. The observation here is, since all
of these judgements came from genuine emotions
and personal points of view, it is really an incredibly
complex decision from a purely moral standpoint.
Life, much like the above scenario which, on the
contrary was completely hypothetical and much like a
thought experiment, does not usually present us with
a complete black and white situation. Sometimes
there are gray areas. And a lot of times, these gray
areas can be riddled with seemingly impossible twists
and turns and overtly paradoxical scenarios. So, what
we can say is “moral” in one context, may stop
existing to be so in the next, and thus it is of
paramount importance that we sort these matters
out since it is in situations like these, the lengths of
our humanity can be seen.
Most people follow a particular holy book for its
guiding morals and lessons in life which they may
adhere to throughout their lives. However there is a
problem. Some of these books were written in the
Bronze Age,( not specifically in that particular
chronological time-frame but during that time as a
rough estimate) and their ideologies may differ from
what we have in place today. For example, during the
Biblical times, it was alright to stone a woman to
death for the act of committing adultery, and this was
seen again in Judaism and Islam both. However, today
stoning is banned in most countries, save a few. So, if
these holy books are supposed to be the word of God,
didn’t he know already that stoning and other such
brutalities are not good for a society? Why have we
made so much progress in the past two centuries
both in terms of humanitarian work and open
principles? The answer, simply is secularism. Where,
under Sharia Law, and other such archaic legal
systems in place throughout the dark ages, where
women were not granted any kind of equal status, we
in the 21st century have been able to successfully
carry it out. When, there was a time when the
monarchy was the general government of the land,
we came in and changed it to the infinitely more
progressive democratically chosen government. This
was not something, however that was written in any
holy book. Women empowerment, LGBTQ Rights,
Human Rights, Child Protection Services, and a slew of
other progressive and protective measures that we
today take for granted. So, where do we get these
morals and how do we decide they are right and not
wrong? The simple answer is “ourselves”. We
ourselves, decided that some of the moral guidelines
laid down by many holy books were not really ideal
and hindered our development as a universal society.
So, in seeing that, I am forced to say that, once we
slowly take out the blindfold of these “Holy” books,
we can truly see the world in many more different
colors. For example, one of the major reasons for the
uproar against LGBTQ Marriage Equality was that it
hurt people’s “religious” sentiments. They said that it
was against their “belief” and that marriage should be
between a man and a woman. When asked where did
they get that notion? They simply said, “The Bible” or
the "The Quran", etc. So, a holy book hinders the right
for a couple to marry each other out of their mutual
love, simply because they don’t have the “correct”
pair of genitalia that it sees fit. This comes when there
is no reason at all and no harm done to anyone. The
couple being married will have no consequence
whatsoever on the protesters or even the supporters.
But this book simply “decided” it was wrong and
millions of people simply followed it’s command like
mindless sheep.
So now I hope you see the deep problems that
these books create in today’s world. It is a fact that
the more we move away from such books as moral
guidelines, the more we can progress.
Another example of archaic laws still being
followed is in my home country of India, where there
was, set in place, a kind of rigid social hierarchy which
divided people into predetermined roles in a society
even before they were conceived. This is known as
the caste system and is now however, thankfully
outlawed in any form within the territory of India
thanks to the brilliant efforts of one soul; The late Dr.
B. R. Ambedkar. But, even though, there are still
traces of the scars left behind by this heinous crime
even in today’s society, I’m sure they will continue to
fade through the coming decades.
Now, a lot of you would say, that since the holy
books were written in a time when these practices
were in place, so it was natural that they too reflected
the conventions and mannerisms of their times. This
is a concept called the Moral Zeitgeist. For example,
Abraham Lincoln, who was anti-slavery at the time,
and was probably one of the most liberal and
progressive men of his era, would be seen as
“backward” by today’s standards. So this constant
shifting in morality and its constant progression along
the slow march of time is what is referred to as the
“Shifting Moral Zeitgeist”. This concept is however in
direct opposition to “Moral Absolutism” wherein is
the concept that there is a set of “absolute” moral
laws which are universal and unchanging with time.
One of the main proponents for the shifting of
morality was the defeat of beliefs shadowed by false
empirical rationalisations. One of the most iconic
examples is the abolition of slavery. Propaganda
played a major role in those times where the slave
owners, in order to keep their businesses afloat and
steady drove into the minds of the general populous
that black people were somehow to be considered
less than white people. However once these false
rationalisations were taken away, the distasteful
concept of racial inequality mentioned above fell flat
on its face, giving rise to progress.
Today, our will should be driven by a sense of
equality, acceptance and love, rather than racial,
ethnic and religious discrimination. It will do us good
to momentarily leave aside our differences and
embrace this beautiful world as it is. It is easy to
condemn such hatred sitting from a chair in the safety
of your own home, I am aware of that. However, it is
equally important that such thoughts be heard. Brave
people have, over the years laid down their lives
readily for the cause of peace, and we sometimes are
too hasty in our declaration of hatred for one another
upheaving the very core of their sacrifice.
 Chapter 5 – A World at War
“And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge
the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”
~ King Henry VI, Act II
William Shakespeare
On the 12th of July 1997, unbeknownst to the
world, a little baby girl was born to a humble school
teacher in Mingora, Pakistan. In many ways she was no
different than the rest of the girls in her village, leading
a quiet, peaceful life in the Swat District of Pakistan.
It wasn’t until 2012 that we knew she had become
the prime target of the Taliban, a terrorist organization.
On the 9th of October in the same year, she was shot in
the head, at the tender age of 15 in a bus while
returning from an examination. But her story was far
from over. Airlifted out of there to a military hospital in
Peshawar, after a 5 hour long surgery, doctors were
able to remove the bullet lodged inside her. What
followed was an overwhelming support from different
nations as they rushed in to save her. The next few
years were a painful eye-opening experience for the
rest of the world that witnessed the incredible, and
undying resolve of a 15 year old Pakistani girl in the
face of brutal opposition, and in spite of mortal peril.
This bright, intrepid girl is none other than Malala
Yousafzai.
On another continent, approximately 7048 miles
away from Pakistan, in the United States of America, on
the 14th of December in that same year, a young man
named Adam Lanza committed one of the most
heartbreaking and spine-chilling murders. He walked
into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,
Connecticut, wherein he proceeded to open fire on
unsuspecting children and teachers, killing 26 people in
total, including 20 school children and 6 staff-members.
These heart-breaking crimes are sadly, no story at
all but a part of our reality and gives us a peek into the
dark side of humanity, so instead of shying away and
shielding the next generation, we should be preparing
them to be able to face these incidents head-on. The
first step to solving a problem is admitting there is one.
And in today’s generation, one of the biggest
intellectual crimes that is committed, is the act of
willful ignorance. The simple act of saying “I don’t care”
has been one of the most gaping flaws in today’s
society. When you say “I don’t care”, what you are
implying is a full blockade of any possible confrontation
and debate. This, at first may seem like a good way to
preserve your beliefs and ideas, but in the long run can
prove deadly to not only you, but to even a nation as a
whole.
Notice when I say “willful” ignorance, as in the act
of intentionally avoiding something. This is important
because being ignorant and not knowing something,
are two totally different things. Being intentionally
ignorant to hide being averse to a subject is different
from being ignorant in general of a subject. Here,
another tool to overcome said ignorance can be
curiosity. But this will only work if you want to know
about the subject. The same thing can be said about
remaining quiet. This is because history is made by
people who gave a “damn”, by people who cared. One
of the most precious examples of people giving a
“damn” was when German pilot Franz Stigler of the
Luftwaffe in Nazi Germany stumbled across another
pilot Charlie Brown, he didn’t shoot him dead, as the
story goes, on seeing Charlie’s helpless condition,
escorted him to safety in 1943. At that time both Nazi
Germany and Great Britain were at war and he didn’t
need to save Charlie. But in spite of their conflicting
ideologies, he came to his aid in the crucial hour.
It is stories like these that serve as a beacon in
humanity and reflects upon a growing trend in current
times. In today’s world, heated debates about which
political party or political course of action should be
favored has become a staple. While that is a good thing
in terms of a democracy. A kind of collateral damage is
being inflicted to the general level of tolerance,
wherein the world is becoming more and more bipolar.
And this chasm of disagreement is becoming more and
more hostile. This is a very deeply disturbing
development because this kind of deep, unmoving and
unforgiving disagreement which began as a strictly
political preference is slowly seeping into the other
aspects of life. I say this is disturbing because this
phenomenon in its prime leads us to remember the
times of polarization which rocked the world during the
first two world wars and even during the cold war
period.
One of the outcomes of intolerance is most
pronounced in the field of religion. Today we see mass
murders, rapes, bombings, and all round destruction to
the highest degree because of “religious intolerance”.
This can be attributed to two things mainly. Firstly,
comes the attitude of acceptance, wherein we have
forgotten to accept that the victim is also human.
Instead of that, we effortlessly paint their entire
existence on the basis of a belief while completely
ignoring the fact that he or she too has a family, that he
or she too has aspirations and dreams, and that he or
she too has a heart. Secondly, there exists, as I
mentioned during the starting of this chapter, a sinister
and insidious evil called “Ignorance”. Religious
extremists thrive on the ignorance of the masses. This
nature of being intentionally ignorant is one of their
greatest weapons against education. Yes education, of
all things, is their enemy and their Achilles Heel and not
beefed up armies with massive weaponry and
firepower. This is because, religious extremism teaches
to close the doors in our mind. To keep on “believing”
however much evidence is presented to represent the
contrary. It teaches to accept, without debate and do
without question pushing us in a constant state of
denial. However don’t get me wrong. Religion did not
have any role in this mess. On the contrary it is the
people who have managed to bend the said religion to
meet and blend into their personal judgements and
beliefs, so as to propagate their raving and distraught
hatred in the form of delirious propaganda. An example
of this can be seen in the widespread Islamophobia and
Homophobia in this world today. Ordinary people who
don’t condone or align in any way to the demented and
maniacal views of religious extremists are having to
face the full brunt of rage that is emerging from the
heinous atrocities faced by people in the apparent
name of religion.
One of the goals that help propagate and instigate
religious extremists is the idea of sole existence rather
than peaceful co-existence, wherein they feel the need
to spread their religion throughout the world and force
it on other people. This stems from the very
fundamental flaw in the concept of religion which I
have previously discussed. And that is the belief that
each person’s religion is the truth. So, a Christian would
believe the Bible, a Muslim person would believe the
Quran, a Hindu person would believe the Bhagavad
Gita and so on and so forth. All the religions of this
world tell that they are the ultimate truth and
everything else is false. This leads us nowhere as you
have seen. And amongst the utter psychotic, frantic
and desperate tussle between these ideologies, it
reveals to us one simple fallacy which shines through
the chaos and hysterical indignance with almost ironic
angelic luminosity and clarity. It is a paradox
surrounding the very holy book upon which numerous
people have sworn and been killed. The simple fact is
that the book tells us that it is the word of God. If you
ask a religious person why do they believe in a certain
God, whichever it may be, they will usually say “ The
Bible ( or Talmud or Quran, etc…) says so”. But then if
you ask why do you believe in the Bible ( or Talmud or
Quran, etc…), then they will say “Because it is the word
of God”. So now, do you see the paradox in that
conversation? It is akin to simply writing a book about,
say “The Boogeyman”, and saying that I believe in the
Boogeyman because the book says so. But when I’ll be
questioned about the credibility of the book itself, I
would say because the Boogeyman says so.
However, now some of you atheists would say
“Well! chuck all religions out of the window!” and to
that I would have to protest. You see, to everything
there are two sides. There is a bad side and there is
also a good side. In my book, as I said in the very
beginning, I am going to talk about both sides so as to
create a perspective rather than an opinion. The point
is that even in the face of religious extremism, we
mustn't forget the good things that religion has done
for us. The inherent principle of religion unites nations
and brings about a definite identity. No other subject
has been able to do this and maybe never will. The
collective will of many millions of people resonates
within religion. And not only that, religious leaders
have always helped in times of need. This can be seen
in the Gurudwaras offering free food to everyone
irrespective of their beliefs, social background, etc., the
Vatican’s aid to the poor migrants in North America
and its other humanitarian work can come as a stark
contrast to the ever present shadow of conflict in
today’s world. It tells us something important. Never
judge anything or anyone by a one sided perspective.
Always flip both sides of the coin before judging them.
For example, the Holy Bible, which contains horrid
scenarios and moral lessons, too has some pieces of
literature that were too ahead of their time. I’m talking
about pieces like the Sermon on the Mount. Beautiful
and serene on their own. Some of those passages
include
You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill
cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and
put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and
it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way,
let your light shine before others, that they may see
your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
~ Matthew 5:14-16
 and
You have heard that it was said, "Eye for eye, and
tooth for tooth." But I tell you, do not resist an evil
person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to
them the other cheek also.
~ Matthew 5:38-39

which as you can see are recipes for peace and

love.
Hence it is always wise to look at both sides of the
coin before you pass your judgement. Another
protuberance in this light of matters is the spirit of
appreciation which I have noticed has been slowly
fading away in the midst of such disarray. It is the
simple act of acknowledging someone’s perspective
even though you may not necessarily believe in or
agree with their opinion. It is so simple an act, yet so
challenging. For example; a muslim person visiting
France can be awestruck by the beauty of the Notre
Dame even though that structure stands for everything
that he or she does not believe in. But he or she can
still appreciate the intricacy and beauty of such a
structure. To me, similarly I appreciate all religious
works. Now this can seem to be coming out as a little
hypocritical, considering my stand as an atheist, but
you see, I appreciate their sheer value in terms of
historical works of literature, and even though I don’t
necessarily align myself with any of them, or believe in
anything which they stand for, I do appreciate them for
what they are. This is because I believe that when we
start acknowledging the subtle differences that divide
us, then and only then we will be able to see the
incredible similarities that unite us.