Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
ATHEISM
ATHEISM: _____ Caveat: This article has no desire to insult anybody in any way at all. If anyone feels offended, it is a regrettable misunderstanding because the criticisms are aimed at the objectives of the belief, never at believers as individuals. I recognize and respect right of all individuals to believe in their faith and their God if that helps them to live better life in the brief period of human existence allotted to them. But religious beliefs and doctrines become dangerous if they threaten the liberty and the integrity of the individual or of the society. _____ _____ Prologue: According to Psalm 14 of the Bible, people who don’t believe in God are filthy, corrupt fools, entirely incapable of doing any good. Before the 18th century, the existence of God was so accepted in the western world that even the possibility of true atheism was questioned. This is called […]
SUPERSTITIONS
SUPERSTITIONS: _ _ Prologue: I was traveling from Yanbu to Jeddah by plane and it was my first experience with Saudi Airline. Just before takeoff, as plane was standstill, I heard “Allāhu Akbar (الل أكبر)” [god is greatest] thrice and then plane took off. I never heard similar thing in Indian airlines planes praying Hindu Gods. Is Indian Airlines plane less safe than Saudi Airlines plane simply because a prayer is not recited before takeoff? Has superstition become pervasive in contemporary culture? Did you know that insects could be tried for criminal acts in pre-industrial Europe, that the dead could be executed, that statues could be subjected to public humiliation, or that it was widely accepted that corpses could return to life? What made reasonable educated men and women behave in ways that seem utterly nonsensical to us today? Strange histories present a serious account of some of the most […]
THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION
THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION Caveat: The purpose of this article is not to discuss any specific religion but to discuss relevance of various world religions in the context of science and therefore specific details about various religious beliefs relating to the existence, nature, and worship of any deity; and the values & practices advocated by any prophet or sacred text will not be discussed. Also, no attempt is made to show superiority or inferiority of any religion with respect to other religions. Instead, an attempt is made to discuss all religions together vis-à-vis science. I offer unconditional apology to anybody hurt or offended by this article. I am willing to post any criticism of this article below this article itself provided the browser logs in my website. _ Prologue: When I wrote an article on my wall in Facebook about “The Coincidence”, my intention was to educate masses about the […]
COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE: Prologue: A well educated and qualified doctor from western country practiced in an underdeveloped tribal area of an African country full of quacks and god-men but became very popular. When asked how such a scientific and rational doctor became popular among tribal, he gave a simple answer. He said that one third of patients are psychic, another one third have self limited illnesses and the remaining one third have illnesses which need his attention. The quacks and the god-men can cure psychic & self limiting illnesses but only he could cure the rest and that is why he became popular. This is the difference between the conventional scientific medicine and traditional unscientific medicine. Thousands of years ago everybody believed that the sun revolves around the earth & the earth is stationary but today, everybody believes that the earth revolves around the sun & rotates on […]
