As the Piano-Sized New Horizons Spacecraft Approaches, Pluto and Charon Are Coming Into Intriguing Focus - ImaGeo

As the Piano-Sized New Horizons Spacecraft Approaches, Pluto and Charon Are Coming Into Intriguing Focus - ImaGeo

The Science of Being and Becoming

In the last post (Genesis of Dogma), I talked about how an intimate knowledge of the reality by the masses is perceived to be dangerous. The knowledge of life's irrelevance is unsettling and this knowledge would let lots to lose respect for it. This disregard for the sanctity of life would lead to a reign of chaos in the society and humanity would be in the dark ages in a matter of decades if not years.

'Honesty is nothing but lack of opportunity'. The same holds true about Morality. Our morality, our sense of good and evil and an innate compunction to stay true on the righteous path is only a reaction to assuage a fear of supernatural retribution. It has been drilled into us that 'we shall reap what we sow', that 'the Judgement day awaits all of us' and so on and so forth. Was it necessary to spin this yarn of untruth to keep us humans from going berserk?

I agree that the burden of realization of this bitter truth about 'accidental life' is a heavy one. It is disconcerting to say the least and the more I think about the lack of meaning of it all, the more depressing it becomes. But, a significant minority of us would perhaps react to this knowledge in a very different way. There would dawn a realization within them that there never has been any worthwhile criticism of depravity. All this talk of divine recrimination was just that, only talk. There is no horned-tailed Satan burning their behinds in fires of hell if they sully their non-existent 'soul' in a gratifying muck of turpitude and corruption. The world would be theirs for the talking, might and bullets doing their bidding for them. Their would be robberies, murders, financial scams (we don't have any less of them anyways largely because they fall in a grey area as far as personal morality is concerned). There would be cases of sexual violence and moral turpitude in every house.

The fear of God keeps people from being criminal sociopaths and probably keeps order on our roads more than any number of police force put together can.

Does this mean that it was necessary to spin this yarn about God, Soul, Judgement Day, Creationism, Magic, Miracle etc? Was it necessary to bury the simple message of love preached by past and present prophets (human beings who saw the malaise in the world and dared to speak against them, who dared to spread a message of love and tolerance and right conduct) in layers of dictates and dogmas? Was it necessary to elevate them to status of Gods and demi-Gods and to actively coerce and cajole people to follow in their paths? Most of the so-called religions of the world are nothing but matters of opinion and rules read out from a book. People forget the seers and prophets and remember only their sayings; half of which haven't actually been said by them. Guardians of these 'opinions' forget that at the heart of every prophet's sayings is a message of love and one of inspiring people to exalt in their 'being and becoming'.

Instead of teaching people to follow a rule-book and punishing and persecuting those who do not, it could have been about developing a scientific temper. It could all have been about having the curiosity to learn from our surroundings and about nurturing nature and our fellow creatures. The burden of having developed intelligence is having a responsibility to safeguard a future for all.

I hope that in an alternate Universe, people have been different. They have had open minds to experiment and accept facts presented by science. I hope that they haven't persecuted the scientists amongst them and haven't thwarted knowledge with dogma. I hope that they haven't had the need to invent God in their lives. I hope they have realized that there can be happiness in pursuit of science and art in their daily lives and that it could in fact be richer for it.

I see people complaining about science and all the miseries it has brought upon us. Science has been blamed for pollution , environment, depleted resources, cancer, obesity and almost every other ill visited upon us. We forget that if not for science we would still be in dark ages with a life-span of thirty and odd years (no chance of getting fat or cancerous if you are going to die at 33). No point in blaming science for all the flab you accumulate plonking your ass on a easy-chair, gobbling soda and fries in front of your telly. No point in blaming science for getting a cancer if you continue to indulge in booze and smoke knowing full well that science was asking you to stay away from it.

No point in blaming science for the environment if you do not heed the warning signs that have been blaring loud for decades, choosing to be in denial to serve your narrow and wasteful ends.

Adhering to scientific principles in our daily lives and drawing inspiration from the lives of our past and present prophets, discarding their rule-books and looking beyond the shroud of dogmatic magic and perplexing miracles that has been draped over them by self-serving middlemen, can still bring hope into our doomed lives and possibly prevent our future generations from the path of destruction we have set them upon even before they have set foot on this Earth. We should shun religion as it is practiced today which serves only for a plutocratic control of society at large. We should embrace religion as a means to 'being and becoming' in order to further our true well-being. Eating healthy, keeping standards of hygiene, pursuit of knowledge,, trying to uplift ourselves, our families and the lives of people around us are all examples of religion working for us rather than we slaving in front of a book of doctrines.

I will end this series of posts today and delve hereafter into individual posts about things which are currently keeping me excited form the worlds of science,sci-fi, arts, medicine etc...

Genesis of Dogma

In the last post I talked about the irrelevance of life in the grand scheme of things. I cannot deny that it is a simplistic and a very nihilistic view of things. What are the consequences of undermining the importance of life? It takes a certain level of awareness of one's surroundings to able to appreciate the implications of this understanding. Not only was the origin of life an accident, but by extrapolation each and every life is just the continuation of a chain of events that started with that very first accident. We are all carrying the burden of our accidental origins. If our origin is an accident, so would be our demise. Our lives are as ephemeral as the lighting up of a bulb. There was nothing before that and there will be none after the bulb is switched off.

Life starts when a pair of replicating live cells fuse with each other and form a full complement of genetics for that particular species, continuing to replicate and aggregate as per the genetic mandate of that species, which in turn has evolved under three and a half billion years of evolutionary pressure. So, we are all the products of that initial spark which ignited the proto-molecules in the primordial Earth soup. It is easy to deduce from these observations that we need not accord any special sanctity to the beginning of a life. 

The idea of a soul that is captured within an embryo developing in a womb is pure humbug to me. The foolhardy idea that souls exist in human beings and not in animals is preposterous and exposes the lie further.

That consciousness is a mere biological consequence of growth and development of a brain is not very difficult to understand if we follow the train of logic detailed above. It should therefore be not surprising that the human level of sentience is directly proportional to the brain body ratio. Our ability to feel and reason is what sets us apart from other lower forms of life and that is a direct consequence of our bigger brains. This organic explanation of our sentience and our conscience should be proof enough against any invocation of magic and fantasm to explain our evolution accorded abilities.

Are there social implications of this understanding? I am afraid that the high and mighty ruling over us think so. These simple logical truths have been buried under centuries of half-truths, scare-mongering and rote-religious dogmas. These dogmas have been viciously guarded throughout the centuries by hounding and persecuting those who have tried dispelling the shrouds of these untruths. 

What is the most effective way of obfuscating these simple truths?

Invent the idea of a soul, invent the idea of heaven and hell and of judgement and consequence.

How to make people fall in line and make them acquiescing of these dogmas zealously? 

Invent the idea of a supreme authority, of religion and of an all powerful omniscient God. Make this God the guardian of human virtues and make him the arbiter of right and wrong. Let edicts set forth from this God which would cloud human judgement and blinker his judgement for centuries to come. 

There would be people who would resist and desist following these dogmas. Such would be dealt with by meting exemplary punishments to them. Rhazes was blinded, Galileo was put under house arrest, Copernicus made to renounce his science as heretical, Bruno burnt at the stake - the list goes on and on.

What were these zealots afraid of? Was it a fear of losing influence or of being rendered irrelevant? Or was it for a perceived good of the society? What are the dangers of realization? Could it lead to a collapse of order and civilization?

Perhaps therein lies the greatest danger of atheism. The realization of being quick and dead in death is unnerving and depressing. The eighty or so years of life is all there is to it. There is no before and there is no after. Eons that have gone and eons to come are irrelevant because I won't be there. None who are here would be there. It doesn't mean anything at all. It is a depressing scenario. It robs us of the incentive to be fair and good. We will be good because we fear the law, not because there are compelling consequences like a cauldron of boiling oil in hell after our death. All life loses its sanctity.

LIFE loses its sanctity - that is a recipe for anarchy, depredation and hegemony in society. It would be jungle raj where might is right and there are kings and slaves (though there were that for most of human civilization and there are those who go by different names now). There would not be any sense of belonging and there would be no respect for other's belongings. This lack of fraternal respect would bring all humanity to a grind.

Maybe it is good that someone had a stroke of genius to invent God.

Maybe it is good that a majority of humans abide by a set of morals; morals that are ingrained in their minds by a fear of consequences in the afterlife, a fear of failing oneself on the judgement day, an overwhelming dread of sullying their pristine souls.

Is there no other way out?

I think there was a way out... (to be continued)

Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons, Flickr (labeled for reuse).

The Life-span of Life...

Is life important? Maybe it is to you and me but I was asking a more general question. Is life in any form important at all, other than to those bearing it?

What has been the life-span of life on Earth? Roughly three and a half billion years. The Earth had existed a billion years without it. Before that, there was a just a large gas cloud composed of trillions and trillions of microscopic dust particles that coalesced to form the Sun and the Solar System. Before that for at least 9 billion years the Universe had existed without life as we know it (that's almost twice as long as life has existed here on Earth).

SO, it is clear that Universe did not need life in any fundamental sense.

That brings us to the next question: Is life of any import at all?

There was matter, there was gas, there was water and this primordial soup, this primordial broth somehow got ignited (possible by an errant and a very naughty lightning strike). Complex molecules, possibly lipids (fats, oils) formed in this primordial soup and they organized themselves into tiny spheres due to their surface tension. More molecules aggregated together and reacted to form a preliminary metabolic unit. The biggest kicker came when these particles arranged themselves in a manner that allowed them to replicate.

These 'non-living' replicating assembly of complex molecules was the precursor of all life on Earth today. I know there are people who would tie a pillow over their heads and shove it in their behinds on hearing it, but I do need to mention the 'E-word' here. SO, here goes... Then E-Evolution happened. The process which transformed that single replicating quasi-life molecule into the 'mighty and yet fallible' dinosaurs and which in turn evolved into the 'shitty and sure to fall in future' humans.

But while it is all too complex to grapple with for some simple in the head pseudo-religious creation-espousing gouchos, it simple doesn't matter in the end. Because IT doesn't give a shit. Because wish as hard as we may and hallucinate all we can about all the ETs and UFOs out there, we are either alone in this whole wide Universe or we are never meant to find out otherwise (which actually means the same thing). Enunciated very eloquently by Fermi and Hart is a very simple question at the crux of the matter
'Where are they?'
Also known as the 'silentium universi' or 'The Great Silence',  it asks that if alien life exists in the Universe, Where the f*#k is it? Why has it not contacted us yet? Surely, many might have lived much longer than us and have had eons to evolve and conquer the problems of interstellar travel. So, why are they not knocking on our doors? There can be many wishful answers but the most pragmatic and uninteresting killjoy of an answer remains the one we choose to comfortably ignore (call it a case of selective dyslexia) - there is no one out there. We are all there is to it. Or that the spatial and temporal distances involved are sadly insurmountable and we may never meet our distant cousins on a different Earth revolving around a different Sun.

What an awful waste of space and time in Universe if we are the only ones in it? That's a pretentious question. IT simply doesn't give a shit. The life that started three and a half billion years ago will simply go out in another four billion years (it would probably be much sooner than that) when the Sun, in its death throes engulfs all the inner planets within its expanding self.

We might evolve enough to leave Earth and sail away in a generational ship with life extenders for a habitable planet far far away. Then we would be 'them'. We would become the aliens.

The downshot of all this is that life in a broader sense is not special. I and you do not and will not contribute to change anything. We started as a freak sideshow and long after we are gone, no one will be the wiser that we ever existed.


How bleak and how boring?
How depressing is that? The truth tends to be that away...bitter and boring.

So, let us liven up things a bit. Throw in a soul, throw in a few afterlife variants, throw in the concept of redemption and a Judgement Day and last but not the least throw in a 'fanatstique GOD' and we make things a lot more interesting for us.

That also gives us hope, morality and discipline and justice... (I will elaborate soon)

Bye for now

P.S - I am an atheist who believes in the necessity of religion.

Images Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Our Story So Far...

I am frequently beseeched with a question about our relevance in the grand scheme of things. The grand scheme, as we understand it today started some 13.6 billion years ago. It is impossible to imagine all the matter and energy that we see in the Universe compressed into a space smaller than a pinhead but that was how it was initially before it all went KABOOM!!!

THE BIG BANG happened, the pinhead 'exploded' and everything came into being. The being and becoming started at that moment, as did distance, direction and time. Since time started at that moment, it is foolhardy to ask what was there before it. 

There was no time before that. So, the concept of before and after doesn't arise. The same goes for space. Since there was no space before this seminal event, it is a stupid question to ask what was there outside of this clusterjammed pinhead. Space was born in The Big Bang and therefore there was no outside or inside of the pinhead before The Big Bang.

Science is uncovering hints to that question of 'before Big Bang' but the hints are actually just faint and uncertain glimpses through the thick haze of 'Big Bang'. So it is all too soon to talk about that now.

Matter and energy spread slowly across the length and breadth of the Universe as we see it today, the energy and the velocity at the beginning just right enough to allow gravity to weave its magic. Gravity, the weakest of the fundamental forces is perhaps the most important force on a cosmic scale. this force of attraction between particles drawing atoms together to build gas clouds which clustered and compressed together to give birth to the first stars of the Universe.

The moment of starbirth is one akin to firing a gaslight. The intense pressure of compression smashes together Hydrogen atoms, which fuse to form Helium, setting in motion gargantuan Nuclear Fusion furnaces that keep a star burning for a few billion years. Stars eventually burn out their fuel of hydrogen, whence fusion of helium into heavier atoms occurs, the process going on and on till all the elements in the periodic table till Iron accumulate within the star. 

When there is nothing left to burn, larger stars give up their lives in a cataclysmic disruption called 'The Supernova'. It sheds all these elements across space. It is hard to imagine but every shard of metal, every atom of carbon within us and in fact every thing we touch and breathe and feel was born within a star and dissipated across space and time by a Supernova. We are all 'Children of the Stars' and that is where we will go into ultimately. That will be our final 'resting place', our fiery cauldron within the Fusion furnace belly of a star.

All that material strewn across a newborn star slowly collects in accretion disks around that star forming all the planets, the moons, the asteroids, the comets and the umpteen other things that go into making a star system. Stars are gathered together by gravity into galaxies, galaxies form clusters, which form superclusters, which in turn forms the physical fabric of the Universe. A hundred billion stars make a galaxy and a hundred billion of them make a Universe.

So, where does that leave us? Us, surrounding a thoroughly unremarkable star in an equally unremarkable corner of the Universe. Why did we happen to be here?

This is where theism drags in GOD and all hell breaks loose...

(to be continued...)

Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Perspective

It has been a while, myself busy with sorting out my professional life, busy in shifting base and settling into the welcome inanity of a new life in a new city. Today, while I mark my return to my blog, I want to talk about perspective. The beauty of nature and life,the beauty of our fragility lies in us being a little perceptive and appreciative of our position in the grand scheme of things.

Whenever I lose sight of that, a quaint lil picture reminds me of who or what I am...

This is the famous Pale Blue Dot image taken by the Voyager 1 space probe showing, within a pixel and a half, our Earth and all that is within it. Our success as an individual and as a species, our magnanimity and our avarice, our industry and our boorish lethargy, our munificence and our indifference, all are contained within that pale blue dot we call home. Few images can be that powerful and even fewer can be more humbling.

The picture probably reminds us to not take ourselves too seriously.

Let me give you the complete picture. We are reduced to less than two pixels from a distance which is a tiny fraction, roughly 1/120th of the true extent of our Solar system (defined by the boundary of the heliosphere, or the area of influence of our star, the Sun).

Our Sun and the Solar System is but one of a hundred billion in our galaxy (the Milky Way galaxy) which is only but one in a hundred billion galaxies in the Universe, which may be but one of an insanely unknown number (probably nearing infinity) of Universes in a Multiversal reality. This mind-bending reality is humbling and a tad depressing.

What are we and what is our position in the grand scheme of things? Are we special or are we just a freak accident of nature? Is there a meaning to life and to all the rest of it? What is the significance, origin, purpose and ultimate fate of life? Can we ever understand life's relationship to existence, consciousness, conception of a God, soul or an afterlife? The biggest shocker of it all is:

Is it all real or is it just an illusion, a dream, a thought or an idea of us somewhere else?

These questions are real. There is proof leading to inescapable pertinence of these questions. I will elaborate on these in the future, to the best of my understanding and capabilities. Till then, I will just sit back, relax, breathe a little and be a little more appreciative of things around me, things that I love and things that love me back. Love is perhaps the only thing that has any meaning,if at all.

Image courtesy: Wikimedia Commons