December is often the month for introspection about the year passed, and 2016 has been an eventful year by the reason metric. (Mind you, I am not talking about the national or world scene, where irrationality saw no bounds, and rational beings still wonder what ever happened to good reason!)
Spring was heralded by the privilege of an invitation by a close friend who had arranged an afternoon with Hamid Dabholkar of http://antisuperstition.org. A delightfully enlightening exchange of ideas about the extent to which superstition, god(wo)men, and irrationality thrive to this day, and the bystander apathy demonstrated by the population at large. Volunteers who run the organization endanger their lives to expose god(wo)men who exploit the vulnerabilities of the populace. The organization lost their founder (and Hamid's father) to an assassination a few years ago. Since then, there have been another couple of assassinations of rational thinkers in India. The audience in NJ offered a compassionate hearing, with no keenness to get involved and further the cause.
The meeting with Hamid inspired me to establish contact with a long-lost (to me) thinker, Prof. Akeel Bilgrami of Columbia University. Akeel had taught me Logic and Ethics during my undergraduate years four decades ago! A few email exchanges and phone calls later, Akeel agreed to speak on "Religion and Rational Thought" to an audience of about 30 at our house in the Summer. In his "stream of consciousness" style, Akeel explained why rationalists cannot be in denial about the relevance of religion to the society at large. He explained how the radical few are perceived as de facto spokespersons for an ideology, and how forces of democracy are an answer to curb such forces. He explained the concept of secularization (as defined by wikipedia: the historical process in which religion loses social and cultural significance. As a result of secularization the role of religion in modern societies becomes restricted. In secularized societies faith lacks cultural authority, and religious organizations have little social power.) and provided several examples from everyday life.
The Bilgrami talk resulted in a distribution list of open-minded folk (which I fondly call "The Philosophy of Reason" distribution list), and this list gradually grew to include several friends and acquaintances. Come Fall, I got into deep conversations with Prem Kamble, who has published an e-book, God in Two Minutes. Contrary to what the title may imply, the book debunks the concept of god in two minutes, and proposes a framework for psychological analysis, hitherto poorly played by religion.
A few more introductions, and an in-person rendezvous with David Silverman, the President of American Atheists! A lunch meeting on a cold, rainy day, David showed the vast collection of atheist writing that the organization has preserved in its library. An activist to the core, David ventures into conservative spaces, bracing death threats. He has authored a book, "Fighting God", which I had bought and started reading on Kindle, and the visit yielded me a hard copy autographed by David! Over lunch we discussed "what next", given the ground that the religious "right" gained in the recent Presidential election in the US.
2017 holds more excitement - a definite agenda item is the annual conference of American Atheists in August, scheduled to coincide with a total solar eclipse!
Spring was heralded by the privilege of an invitation by a close friend who had arranged an afternoon with Hamid Dabholkar of http://antisuperstition.org. A delightfully enlightening exchange of ideas about the extent to which superstition, god(wo)men, and irrationality thrive to this day, and the bystander apathy demonstrated by the population at large. Volunteers who run the organization endanger their lives to expose god(wo)men who exploit the vulnerabilities of the populace. The organization lost their founder (and Hamid's father) to an assassination a few years ago. Since then, there have been another couple of assassinations of rational thinkers in India. The audience in NJ offered a compassionate hearing, with no keenness to get involved and further the cause.
The meeting with Hamid inspired me to establish contact with a long-lost (to me) thinker, Prof. Akeel Bilgrami of Columbia University. Akeel had taught me Logic and Ethics during my undergraduate years four decades ago! A few email exchanges and phone calls later, Akeel agreed to speak on "Religion and Rational Thought" to an audience of about 30 at our house in the Summer. In his "stream of consciousness" style, Akeel explained why rationalists cannot be in denial about the relevance of religion to the society at large. He explained how the radical few are perceived as de facto spokespersons for an ideology, and how forces of democracy are an answer to curb such forces. He explained the concept of secularization (as defined by wikipedia: the historical process in which religion loses social and cultural significance. As a result of secularization the role of religion in modern societies becomes restricted. In secularized societies faith lacks cultural authority, and religious organizations have little social power.) and provided several examples from everyday life.
The Bilgrami talk resulted in a distribution list of open-minded folk (which I fondly call "The Philosophy of Reason" distribution list), and this list gradually grew to include several friends and acquaintances. Come Fall, I got into deep conversations with Prem Kamble, who has published an e-book, God in Two Minutes. Contrary to what the title may imply, the book debunks the concept of god in two minutes, and proposes a framework for psychological analysis, hitherto poorly played by religion.
A few more introductions, and an in-person rendezvous with David Silverman, the President of American Atheists! A lunch meeting on a cold, rainy day, David showed the vast collection of atheist writing that the organization has preserved in its library. An activist to the core, David ventures into conservative spaces, bracing death threats. He has authored a book, "Fighting God", which I had bought and started reading on Kindle, and the visit yielded me a hard copy autographed by David! Over lunch we discussed "what next", given the ground that the religious "right" gained in the recent Presidential election in the US.
2017 holds more excitement - a definite agenda item is the annual conference of American Atheists in August, scheduled to coincide with a total solar eclipse!
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