From: "Avijit Roy" <avijitroy@hotmail.com>
Date: Sat Jun 9, 2001 6:46 am
Subject: Re: For Anwarul Kabir :
Anwarul Kabir : I live in Canada and this is my first such e-mail that I am writing. Could you please tell me what is really wrong with you? why can't you let the other people live with their own beliefs,
My reply : I have no problem sir with any "personal" belief as long as they keep it in their "personal level" (NOT spreading in Group). If you wish to express an angry retorts like "Faith is a personal matter, you don't have any right to criticize it"... then obvious question comes who's starting fast ? Please consider the following situation.Person A says : I believe in "X".
Person B says : Belief in "X" is irrational because [...], and hence I don't believe in "X".Then A says : Any criticism of my belief amounts to hurting my sentiment. Besides your not believing in "X" is as much a belief as my believing in "X".
Then B replies : If you call my "not believing in X" a faith ( lets call it faith "Y"), then by the same logic your "belief in X" amounts to not believing in "Y" and automatically implies irrationality of "Y" and hence is
no different from my not believing in "X" and hence I have equal rights to be insulted for your implication of the irrationality of my faith "Y", although I will not exercise my rights.I hope you have clearly understood my point.
Besides what is meant by a belief being hurt anyway?. Let us dissect this frequent expression of angry response. Does faith being hurt mean the faith is weakened? If so then its a reflection of the weakness of the person placing the faith and if the criticism weakens his/her faith then it is an indirect vindication of the validity of the criticism.
If faith is not weakened by criticism then the meaning of "faith being hurt" must be that the believer is mentally distressed that someone is not agreeing with his/her belief. In that case it indicates an intolerance of any dissenting views and a frustrated ego to know that others are not sharing in their favored belief. There can be no other meaning of "being hurt" in this context.
Anwarul Kabir: if you feel that their is no god then fine, it is your own problem don't try educating the other people who believes in God.
My reply: If I feel there in no God, then I have NO right for educating others ? On the other hand, those who believe in God...they must posses fullright and will enjoy ultimate freedom for spreading their belief? It is what you want ? Sorry sir, I cannot agree with you.
Moreover, we non-believers are NOT spreading any kind of belief like the believers are doing for a long time. Let's again consider the situation
carefully:Long ago a believer called B-1 formed a certain belief (due to a divine oracle, an epileptic seizure, temporal lobe stimulation or whatever). Now look at then diagram below.
B-1 (Somehow forms a belief "X") | | B-1 Preaches "X" B-2_____|_____N-1 (B-2 accepts "X", | N-1 rejects) | B-2 Preaches "X" B-3____|____N-2 (B-3 accepts, | N-2 rejects) | B-3 Preaches "X" B-4___|____N-3 (B-4 accepts, | N-3 rejects) etc..
So at the end of this three preachings we have a set of believers B= (B-1,
B-2, B-3, B-4) and a set of non-believers N = (N-1,N-2,N-3). Now what we see
is that members of the set B now randomly picking on the members of set N to
try to preach again or to criticize them for not accepting their belief, for
example B-4 trying to preach/criticize N-2 etc. This provokes a
backlash by the members of N and they also try to debunk randomly the
preaching of the members of B, for example N-3 debunking B-2 etc. The end
result is we have a tension between two groups as a whole, B vs. N.Now hold back just for a minute. Whom do you want to blame for this
situation ? What is the root cause? It is clear that the N-'s are hanging
free like a leaf with no trees below them (no preaching by them), whereas
the B-'s are each creating a tree beneath them and becoming the root of
that tree. Its the B-'s who are causing the birth and contributing to the
growth of the set B and N by trying to preach their believes onto others.Now what's the solution ? There are three solutions in general:
- The one way to avoid this group tension would have been if none of the B-'s ever tried to pick on the N-'s to try to preach again or criticize them for rejecting their belief. In a simple way -- if the believers stop declaring that their belief (read religion, god etc.) are the TRUE belief (religion god etc.).
- The other ideal way to prevent this polarization would be to stop preaching at all. If B-1 kept his belief in his "Personal level" and never tried to preach there would not have been this group polarization.
- Third solution is that You have to accept that both parties should have an equal right to deliver their speech without any restriction or censorship. You just cannot pick a specific party to shut them off or cannot insist them not to spread their thoughts whereas the other party unboundedly doing such for a long time. This to
me is the essence of democracy, and our attitude should display what we
stand for.I hope I have made the points clear.
Anwarul Kabir: You have to understand that it is one own Beliefs that keeps a person alive , you seem to look for evidence in every aspect of your life, here is a question for you - Do you belief that you are your Father's son ?
My reply: Before giving you the answer, I think I need to express some concept of logical reasoning. From the ancient time the thinkers and the pundits gave emphasis on assumption and presumption indication and hypothesis. In "Charak –Shonhita" we find three kind of
indirect assumptions:1) Current smoke leads us to assume previous existence of fire.
2) present-day pregnancy lead us to conclude previous sexual intercourse
3) Present nourished seed gives us the indication of future tree or harvest.Logically, My existence was NOT possible without having a prior existence of
a father. We know the biological procedures of getting a child. We know that according to embryologists pregnancy begins from the moment of fertilization of a spermatozoon with an ovum in the womb of a woman as a result of coitus.
It is not possible (not assuming the child is a cloned child or test-tube baby) for a woman to become pregnant without having sexual intercourse with a man. When a child is born this man is considered as “father” in our society. Theoretically,
this father may or may not be a life-partner of my mother. For every child there is such kind of possibility. why hould we call the life partner of my mother as father – it’s a question of social custom, not the question of biological proof.Anyway, you may not know, modern science can very accurately give a conclusive result that whether a child is really came from his own claimed progenitor (father) by Jene analysis of both. So your argument is no longer valid argument for the claim of existence of god.
Anwarul Kabir: please don't get offended but their is a logic behind it, it is basically your mother who can really answer that - Now, Do you want to question your own mother and go for test to find out the truth ?
I really did not get offended by your question; On the other hand it's my pleasure to discuss with you on such interesting topic. But you know the problem Mr. Kabir? It's actually a believer always get offended if I question similar manner to know -Who is the father of Jesus Christ? Does not our realistic thought prevents of accepting "virgin mother" merry - who gave birth without having any biological process of fertilization? I hope you would not mind for my quest for truth.
Anwarul Kabir: Tell me What proof have you got that their is no God ? have you done any test on that, unlike your Ghorar Dim which you love to say quite often, you also do not have any logic in saying that their is no God ? please put yourself on the other side of the coin.
My reply: I think, it is nonsense to say that nobody has proved the non-existence of god. Why ? if you believe that the god exists, it is you who have to bring the scientific proof, cause, it is your duty to establish your concept, not my duty to disprove it first. This is called "BURDEN OF PROOF". The burden of proof is always resides on the person making an extraordinary assertion or proposition (for e.g existence of god, angel, devil, alien etc.). It is a fallacy to push the burden of proof on the person who denies or questions such an assertion."If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments !!????!!!" -- Bertrand Russell
Regards.
[Credit: Aparthib]
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Published in eShomabesh ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eshomabesh/message/3165 )