Welcome to the Creation Museum! Here, we believe the T-Rex was a vegan.

No, that’s not a typo.

The $27 million, 70,000-square foot Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, opened in mid-2007 with a view to “bring the pages of the Bible to life.” There’s a Wiki page that gives you more info on the institution; click here to get there and read the whole thing.

Adam, Eve & Dino: Who ate the fruit?

A Yahoo! News report on the same museum also took an opposing stand, quoting: “Lisa Park of the University of Akron cried at one point as she walked a hallway full of flashing images of war, famine and natural disasters which the museum blames on belief in evolution.“

… war, famine and natural disasters which the museum blames on belief in evolution.

My questions:

1. Can the interpretation of the founding principles of Christian theology get any worse?
2. Why take such a hard line against all things scientific? Mustn’t the visitor be given an option to decide for him/herself?

Does science make belief in God obsolete?

A few minutes ago, I came across the Big Questions Conversations, an even conducted and hosted by the John Templeton Foundation in collaboration with designer Milton Glaser, where questions that seek to harmonize science and religion are addressed by eminent scholars from around the world. The descriptive goal of the undertaking is quite general, and the questions range anywhere from the plight of the African nations to Darwinism. When I was going through the Wikipedia page that detailed their efforts, I came across one such question: does science make belief in God obsolete? I wanted to have a shot at it, seeing as I wasn’t invited to the gathering!

Even before we consider science and godliness, we must consider the cause of the existence of these two factions that bear the sole purpose of being able to answer our questions about everything around us. The inquisitorial nature is infused in our blood, and without it, we would still continue to be the apes we were. Evolution, a significant explanatory method, was a product of this inquisition.

Escapism & Knowledge: One At A Time

I had a nice little talk with a senior here in college. We call him Sawant, and I think he’d like for you to call him that too. Anyway, Sawant was a welcome change for me as far as conversational purposes go. We were talking about each others views on life and what could be done about it, until we finally hit upon two frames of though: pseudo-intellectualism and escapism. We decided that each one of us would come up with our own sets of ideas concerning the two notions. While Sawant is a man of many words, I’m a man of pen and paper. He will read what I have to write, I will listen to what he has to say!

First of all, I had to clarify for myself how I felt about escapism and knowledge, one at a time. I’ll put up a separate post on pseudo-intellectualism after this.

Notes

1. Institutionalisation
2. Varied perceptions
3. Acceptance
4. State
5. Society
6. Change

Escapism

I believe that the structure of the world around us today, be it in its religion, politics, science or philosophy, is erected upon the factors I’ve listed above. Institutionalisation recapitulates a fear of change, acceptance defies the basis of varied perspectivism, and the state and society play with each other to deliver a fairly acceptable social system devised on assumptions and history, a fable but agreed upon. For anyone, you, me, him, her, fitting in cosily amongst such chaotic scenery is a laborous task. The various strata that have to be mined through while simultaneously fashioning hopefully sensible opinions and judgments to gauge the nature of the people around you alone will take up a sizable chunk of your time; all this while you chalk out a superficial make-up to plaster on your face and choose willingly to assume the personality of someone else in a moment of self-loathing and on a whim of just thinking that these are matters to be bypassed in favour of convenience as well as a strongly denied sensation of escapism: our society is a maze.

Every time someone says “life is too short for all this”, I am only prompted to think. Obvious principles of argumentation has us all know that a true and infallible argument is that which is absolute in its standing and fundamental in its logic: it must be that a statement doesn’t exist which can negate the facts quoted in the infallible argument. Saying ‘life is too short fo all this’ is not absolute. If one were to take up the chronological aspects of living, all we have for our consideration are the inhabitants of the planet we ourselves live in: animals, birds. If one were to narrow the comparisons down to sensible footings, we only have the people around us to compare with. In this frame of thought, ‘life is too short’ is a statement without meaning. What are we gauging it against? Against the lifespan of others around us, people with the same biological composition as you and me. If you have 100 years to live and also think that life is too short, are you trying to say others around you try to live longer? And that is just but the chronological aspect of it! The state of which they are citizens, the society of which they are social units, the world of whose theatrics they are spectators – we are part of a similar society, a parallel state and the same wide world.

However, while stating all this, I do not enforce upon others that they take to the logical factors just as favourably as I do. All I am trying to establish is that although it is taken for granted that ‘life is too short’ is a convenient option to bypass those moments that have you making tougher decisions, it is also escapism because it is logically faulted through the inherent convenience itself.

I know. I’m just a silly, old fool.

Knowledge

Whenever I have been confronted with the need to ponder upon knowledge, the first thing that comes to my mind is its elemental standing. If you were to question me here, I will confess that ‘elemental standing’ is a term I have coined to imbue the element in question with the duty to declare its purposes with reference to mankind in general. The world we have built for ourselves is a world of extreme dynamicity and deeply rooted materialism. In such a basket, it is hard for anyone to stop for a moment and think as to why it is all the way it is. The innate ability to open a mind’s eye in the darker corners of our brain and perceive things differently has given birth to civilisation – a mensurable parallel to its biological counterpart of evolution. And today, it is too late to rewind through 4,000 years of civilisation and try to pin down the one thing that started it all. However, that is obvious: the quest for knowledge. The very purpose of evolving eyes is to see, ears to hear, skin to feel. Blame it on panspermia, divinity or luck, here we are.

For a civilisation spree sparked off by the want to know more by the second, it is only natural that what we have with us today is a scenario that is stable only as long as there are knowledgeable people to handle it. Now, knowledge, as it were, is a summation of all that we know, but just because such a thing exists doesn’t mean it is a necessity; those people who are devoid of the thirst to know more aren’t invalids. They are a hindrance, yes, but not an anomaly. Knowledge, by its existence, only confirms that it can exist, and the purpose we have assumed for ourselves – that of to know more – has nothing to with it. This is a very important point: knowledge and thought are different. When we think that we need to civilise along the same lines as our ancestors, we reach out to the pool of knowledge and partake from it. When civilisation is no longer a serious concern, as in when we are at the top of a graph that dictates sensibilities, knowledge separates itself from the pool of humanity per se.

(Imagine I am mixing up a bit of coffee. The mug being a metaphor of the absolute container, the coffee powder is humanity and water, knowledge. When the person holding the mug – in effect, the goal we have set for ourselves, the definitive plot of civilisation that we chart out – wants to have some coffee, water is poured into the mug and mixed. Coffee consists of the separate ingredients of powder and water, but it is coffee only when they are together. Similarly, the need to civilise consists of the perpetrators of the actions (mankind) and the knowledge that facilitates it. When they separate, it may or may not be civilisation as it originally was or was needed to have been.)

Blessed Death Psychedelium

Most of my posts concern themselves with how perception varies from person to person, and how understanding (of anything and everything around us) is innately tied up as a Gordian knot with it. It takes an Alexander to cut through it, and that is what constitutes self realisation. Anyway, today, I was pondering on death. All my previous contentions were as to how the experience of living seems to be the same even though its perception is varied. On stumbling upon the concept of death, I understood the meaning of the inevitability it carried around dignifiedly. Even though what we make of everything that comes between birth and death is different, the beginning and the end remain the same for everyone. They cannot be changed nor altered, and remain perpetually unasked for; a part of the package, if you will.

Suppose that there is a table. On that table are two objects, for example two wooden cubes – one painted blue and one painted red. If the table were to represent reality, and the cubes represent birth and death, you are now witness to the way I take to these phenomena. In one of my previous posts, I had described about the concept of Maya and Brahman in Hinduism. Maya is the universal illusion, whereas Brahman is the Universal Truth. Truth and realism are one and the same – although their perception is not. Truth is an absolute concept. If person A says person B is not speaking the truth, then it may or may not be an assumption on A’s part that B is not speaking what constitutes A’s realism. In other words, A sees something in one way, and the bone of contention happens to be that B does not see things in the same way. If the ability to conceive varied perception was unavailable, then realism will cease to exist. Only the Universal Truth will be present and understandable. 

However, the untruth and illusion are not the same. The untruth is the negation of the truth. On the other hand, illusion is the perceived truth – or realism as we see it. Therefore, under our perusal, we have:

1. Truth
2. Illusion
3. Untruth

Birth is truth. Death is truth. Realism is illusion. The children of Maya are not necessarily illusions. The can of deodorant in front of my eyes is illusion. The fragrance it emits is true. The lava lamp above the shelf is illusion. The light it emits is true.

That being established, I now come to the concept of the soul. The soul, as it were, is true if one wants it to be. I want it to be. Why? Going by my argument:

• Core argument 1: There is only One Absolute Truth.
• Core argument 2: There can only be one True perception of it.
• Parallel argument 1: we are all part of the same Universe.
• Parallel argument 2: we all concur to the same Truth because of CA2 and PA1.
• Parallel argument 3: Sight (or visual perception) of the body that contains the soul is varied.
• Core argument 3: One perception of the Truth recapitulates that the body outside the soul is illusory.
• Parallel argument 4: I think therefore I am; the illusion I perceive as being around me is so because I think that it exists. In other words, the illusion exists only because I do. If I were not here to be able to perceive it, then the illusion itself does not exist anymore.
• Core argument 4: An element other than the body constitutes the Truth.

The soul is a hypotheses drawn from these conclusions – like in a physics laboratory, a graviton is hypothesised and simultaneously believed to be existent just so particle physics agrees with its Newtonian counterpart. So, getting back to the topic at hand, I believe the soul to be existent. As a side note, I would like to stress the independency of the soul as such from religion and religious beliefs. Pondering on one’s existential truths need not have anything to do with God or any of His minions. Yes, I am a religious and God-fearing man, but that only means my Absolute Truth takes the form of a Supreme Being. To some, it may be moral values. To some others, it may be power. It can be anything. But everything that has nothing to do with the form of the Truth doesn’t have to be religious.

To be sitting on the floor of a 80 sq. ft. bedroom and contentedly typing away on a Razer (Arctosa!) keyboard is my realism. And thus is born life: as each one of us takes to Maya and Brahman in a unique way, we come across perceptions and experiences. Just as my senses bring to life the illusions of Maya, my experiences tell me that I am walking on the road that is life. Just as my experiences tell me that changes are happening and that I am finally blessed with the ability to track them, my death will tell me that my soul will break free from the container that is the body. Some people take to these things warily, and I don’t blame them. If we had been born such animals with the inability to look downwards at our paws, then mathematics would have been a distorted and bizarre dream. We are because we think. What we think of is up to ourselves. I believe in there being a Universal Truth. To a person to whom such a thing is absurd, his realism and his truths and untruths will lie elsewhere. The beauty of it all is that such things as the Truth and the Untruth will always exist in one form or the other. Our realism, as a last word, exists because of perception but, more so, in the self-assertion that whatever is perceived is real.