Because "disability never just is".
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
Sunday, 5 August 2012
Trip To Vailankanni
I joined my family for a visit to Vailankanni last Friday, a two day trip. My aunt's family was with us too. They all went mainly for religious purposes while I went for sight-seeing and to have some good time together. Looks like we both got what we wanted.
It was really a joyful experience. A long, fun trip after almost a year. So I am definitely not going to reduce it to the religious aspects, I'll remember it for the laughs and the good moments we had. That being said, there were some not-so-pleasant things I noticed which are hard to dismiss, and since this is the only place where I can pour out, thought I'd write it down.
We left on Friday evening. The journey was smooth and fun, except for a little trouble in the beginning where my dad had to lift me to the bus. I could have walked in with some support on my hand had it been a low-floor bus and I wondered how long it would be before manufacturers actually started realizing about the existence of disabled people, wheelchair users in particular. And what about the elderly who can't climb high steps? Don't they need to travel as well?
Throughout the journey whenever I look outside the window, I would check to see how many places has a ramp to its entrance. The result was disappointing as expected. I really felt bad that the need to keep a ramp next to a door is such a difficult concept to understand! I remembered about a disability rights activist I had met once who works towards creating accessibility in public places and wondered how much progress they might be making.
We reached there by next day morning and rented a single room house. After a quick freshening up (the salty water made you want to bathe because you bathed in it) and breakfast, we left for the shrine. The structure was absolutely stunning. More so the awe at how much our species has evolved from using primitive tools to creating such architectural sophistications. Simply being there made me marvel and feel proud of our human history.
The good feelings were however short lived, till the moment we entered the church. I felt like a drop of oil in a pool of water, not able to mix with the atmosphere of religious binding. I couldn't be a participant (didn't want to either), only be an observer. Many of the practices all so familiar and yet oddly, revealing new meanings that stayed hidden during those years of blind conformation.
There was this ritual of making people, mostly those with illnesses, sit as 'adima' (slave) to the Velankanni Mary and I was thinking, 'yeah right, that's some 'love' she's got there to require people to be slaves.' The name Vailankanni (meaning 'Virgin of Velai') itself made me cringe when I Googled it, the religious obbsession with virginity was so apparent. At one place there was a nearly one kilometer long paved way filled with beach sand for a custom in which people had to go through that full distance on their knees. My dad somewhat pressured me to participate but I stuck to my refusal. We saw a two year old kid doing it (mainly by his father forcing him) and everyone were like ''so cuute''. The words coming to my mind were 'child abuse'.. Later, on returning to our rented house, we were to find our neighbor sitting ouside with his knees bleeding after he went for that.. There was also a Thirupathi style head shaving and applying of a cinnamon powder misture. Many of our bus mates returned bald.
Some of the things actually made me laugh, the kind of unreasonable behavior even seemingly well educated people were exhibiting (like couples wanting children tying handkerchiefs in the shape of a cradle on sacred trees). Showed how deeply entrenched
superstition is in our culture and how education does not necessarily guarantee rational thinking. But the thing I felt most bad was when after the Mass, which had a huge attendence of people from different parts of the country and outside, I saw most of them crying, some badly weeping, as the procession brought holy water and statue of Jesus. I felt so bad that all these people were being cheated..the amount of faith they were having..all for nothing.. It was so unfair.. Many of them were spending money they otherwise wouldn't have. Many of them had left their medicines or given up hope on treatment and come with so much expectations for being cured. And some would even return with the false belief that they really had been, and stop their medications, where in fact the healing could be only a temporary placebo in effect. I felt so enraged at the same time, the fucking church spreading their lies and taking advantage of so many innocent people's trust and sorrow, mercilessly cheating them with their dogma for wealth, power and control..
It made me realize no 'loving' god, if there was one, would ever want to put his children through such an ordeal where they had to flatter him and beg for relief from a fate he himself impossed on them. No 'merciful' god would punish you if you failed to do so according to standards set by people claiming to have telepathic connections to him, unprovable to others.
Throughout the journey whenever I look outside the window, I would check to see how many places has a ramp to its entrance. The result was disappointing as expected. I really felt bad that the need to keep a ramp next to a door is such a difficult concept to understand! I remembered about a disability rights activist I had met once who works towards creating accessibility in public places and wondered how much progress they might be making.
We reached there by next day morning and rented a single room house. After a quick freshening up (the salty water made you want to bathe because you bathed in it) and breakfast, we left for the shrine. The structure was absolutely stunning. More so the awe at how much our species has evolved from using primitive tools to creating such architectural sophistications. Simply being there made me marvel and feel proud of our human history.
The good feelings were however short lived, till the moment we entered the church. I felt like a drop of oil in a pool of water, not able to mix with the atmosphere of religious binding. I couldn't be a participant (didn't want to either), only be an observer. Many of the practices all so familiar and yet oddly, revealing new meanings that stayed hidden during those years of blind conformation.
There was this ritual of making people, mostly those with illnesses, sit as 'adima' (slave) to the Velankanni Mary and I was thinking, 'yeah right, that's some 'love' she's got there to require people to be slaves.' The name Vailankanni (meaning 'Virgin of Velai') itself made me cringe when I Googled it, the religious obbsession with virginity was so apparent. At one place there was a nearly one kilometer long paved way filled with beach sand for a custom in which people had to go through that full distance on their knees. My dad somewhat pressured me to participate but I stuck to my refusal. We saw a two year old kid doing it (mainly by his father forcing him) and everyone were like ''so cuute''. The words coming to my mind were 'child abuse'.. Later, on returning to our rented house, we were to find our neighbor sitting ouside with his knees bleeding after he went for that.. There was also a Thirupathi style head shaving and applying of a cinnamon powder misture. Many of our bus mates returned bald.
Some of the things actually made me laugh, the kind of unreasonable behavior even seemingly well educated people were exhibiting (like couples wanting children tying handkerchiefs in the shape of a cradle on sacred trees). Showed how deeply entrenched
superstition is in our culture and how education does not necessarily guarantee rational thinking. But the thing I felt most bad was when after the Mass, which had a huge attendence of people from different parts of the country and outside, I saw most of them crying, some badly weeping, as the procession brought holy water and statue of Jesus. I felt so bad that all these people were being cheated..the amount of faith they were having..all for nothing.. It was so unfair.. Many of them were spending money they otherwise wouldn't have. Many of them had left their medicines or given up hope on treatment and come with so much expectations for being cured. And some would even return with the false belief that they really had been, and stop their medications, where in fact the healing could be only a temporary placebo in effect. I felt so enraged at the same time, the fucking church spreading their lies and taking advantage of so many innocent people's trust and sorrow, mercilessly cheating them with their dogma for wealth, power and control..It made me realize no 'loving' god, if there was one, would ever want to put his children through such an ordeal where they had to flatter him and beg for relief from a fate he himself impossed on them. No 'merciful' god would punish you if you failed to do so according to standards set by people claiming to have telepathic connections to him, unprovable to others.
In the end, I liked the trip. I really did, not just because it was a fun journey with family and cousins but also because it was an eye-opener for me. I went on a pilgrimage and came back more of an atheist. Life is only once. It's up to us to give, take and make the best of it, without relying on man-made myths and monsters. This world, with all it's beauty and indifference, can surely be made a better place if we lived and worked with that understanding.
Friday, 27 July 2012
Thursday, 19 July 2012
SkepFem Quickpicks 7.0
[ Content note: rape culture, sexual violence ]
- I found it very difficult to hold on to (and easy to leave) my religious beliefs after I read about the notion of the 'soul' being an imaginary construct. Although I accepted the horrible history of Christianity and didn't want to have any more associations with what it is still doing, the idea of dualism or an afterlife still lingered in a somewhat religious way. This post on Adam Lee's 'Ebon Musings' was an excellent learning. It's one of the first atheist sites I visted, I love his work here as well as on Daylight Atheism.
- The pathology of 'free' India where half of it's citizens are yet to get the freedom - Guwahati incident.
- Have a religious organization working to convert the cripple? You might not want to miss these tips.
- Daniel Tosh made some rape jokes at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. And got a lesson from Jezebel on how to make rape jokes.
- A little history on the engagement and wedding rings. (warning for newly engaged/married couples: ignore if you don't want to break from that happy mood)
- How do we define a family? A look at American survey results on what groups or living arrangements are perceived as 'family'.
My view I think is just this, ''any two or more people living together and identify themselves as a family''. I wouldn't count marriage, specific sexual orientation or blood-relation as a necessary eligibility requirement.
- I found it very difficult to hold on to (and easy to leave) my religious beliefs after I read about the notion of the 'soul' being an imaginary construct. Although I accepted the horrible history of Christianity and didn't want to have any more associations with what it is still doing, the idea of dualism or an afterlife still lingered in a somewhat religious way. This post on Adam Lee's 'Ebon Musings' was an excellent learning. It's one of the first atheist sites I visted, I love his work here as well as on Daylight Atheism.
- The pathology of 'free' India where half of it's citizens are yet to get the freedom - Guwahati incident.
- Have a religious organization working to convert the cripple? You might not want to miss these tips.
- Daniel Tosh made some rape jokes at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. And got a lesson from Jezebel on how to make rape jokes.
- A little history on the engagement and wedding rings. (warning for newly engaged/married couples: ignore if you don't want to break from that happy mood)
- How do we define a family? A look at American survey results on what groups or living arrangements are perceived as 'family'.
My view I think is just this, ''any two or more people living together and identify themselves as a family''. I wouldn't count marriage, specific sexual orientation or blood-relation as a necessary eligibility requirement.
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
Atheist/Humanist Quotes
A couple of quotes from famous atheists, freethinkers and humanists:
"Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man ... living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money." - George Carlin
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." - Richard Dawkins
"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski
"We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best mids at the stake." - Catherine Fahringer
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams
"The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation." - Emma Goldman
"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more." - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?" - Quentin Crisp
"Humanism involves far more than the negation of supernaturalism. It requires an affirmative philosophy . . . translated into a life devoted to one's own improvement and the service of all mankind." - Corliss Lamont
"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men." - Bertrand Russell
"In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality." - Clarence Darrow
"When I became convinced that the universe is natural – that all ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain . . . the joy of freedom. . . . I was free – free to think, to express my thoughts . . . free to live for myself and those I loved . . . free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope . . . free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the ‘inspired’ books that savages have produced . . . free from popes and priests . . . free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies . . . free from the fear of eternal pain . . . free from devils, ghosts and gods. . . . There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought . . . no following another’s steps . . . no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words." - Robert Ingersoll
"That so much . . . suffering can be directly attributed to religion - to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious taboos, and religious diversions of scarce resources - is what makes the honest criticism of religious faith a moral and intellectual necessity." - Sam Harris
"An atheist believes that a hospital
should be built instead of a church.
An atheist believes that deed must
be done instead of prayer said.
An atheist strives for involvement in life
and not escape into death.
He wants disease conquered,
poverty vanished, war eliminated." - Madalyn Murray O'Hair
"Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast." - Isaac Asimov
[By working to improve the world:] "One thing is certain: you will find plenty of worthwhile things to do. You will not be bored, or lack fulfillment in your life. Most important of all, you will know that you have not lived and died for nothing, because you will have become part of the great tradition of those who have responded to the amount of pain and suffering in the universe by trying to make the world a better place." - Peter Singer
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony
God is always the equivalent of "I do not know" - Annie Besant
"Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would've been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago. And by the way, I say "this guy", because I firmly believe, looking at these results, that if there is a God, it has to be a man.
No woman could or would ever fuck things up like this. So, if there is a God, I think most reasonable people might agree that he's at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe, doesn't give a shit. Doesn't give a shit, which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of these bad results." - George Carlin
"Theology is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
"Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions god's infinite love." - Bill Hicks
"There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages." - Ruth Hurmence Green
"The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it." - Matilda Joslyn
"We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge." - Christopher Hitchens
"It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama." - Richard P. Feynman
"I feel that we should stop wasting our time trying to please the supernatural and concentrate on improving the welfare of human beings. I think that, uh, we should use our energy and our initiative to solve our problems, and stop relying on prayer and wishful thinking. If we have faith in ourselves, we won't have to have faith in gods." - Ruth Hurmence Green
"Interviewer: "Didn't [Sagan] want to believe?"
Druyan: "He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know." - Ann Druyan
"What I have a problem with is not so much religion or god, but faith. When you say you believe something in your heart and therefore you can act on it, you have completely justified the 9/11 bombers. You have justified Charlie Manson. If it's true for you, why isn't it true for them? Why are you different? If you say "I believe there's an all-powerful force of love in the universe that connects us all, and I have no evidence of that but I believe it in my heart," then it's perfectly okay to believe in your heart that Sharon Tate deserves to die. It's perfectly okay to believe in your heart that you need to fly planes into buildings for Allah." - Penn Jillette
"If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world." - Sam Harris
"Today evolution of human intelligence has advanced us to the stage where most of us are too smart to invent new gods but are reluctant to give up the old ones." - Ruth Hurmence Green
"Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man ... living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money." - George Carlin
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." - Richard Dawkins
"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski
"We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best mids at the stake." - Catherine Fahringer
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" - Douglas Adams
"The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation." - Emma Goldman
"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more." - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?" - Quentin Crisp
"Humanism involves far more than the negation of supernaturalism. It requires an affirmative philosophy . . . translated into a life devoted to one's own improvement and the service of all mankind." - Corliss Lamont
"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men." - Bertrand Russell
"In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality." - Clarence Darrow
"When I became convinced that the universe is natural – that all ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain . . . the joy of freedom. . . . I was free – free to think, to express my thoughts . . . free to live for myself and those I loved . . . free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope . . . free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the ‘inspired’ books that savages have produced . . . free from popes and priests . . . free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies . . . free from the fear of eternal pain . . . free from devils, ghosts and gods. . . . There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought . . . no following another’s steps . . . no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words." - Robert Ingersoll
"That so much . . . suffering can be directly attributed to religion - to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious taboos, and religious diversions of scarce resources - is what makes the honest criticism of religious faith a moral and intellectual necessity." - Sam Harris
"An atheist believes that a hospital
should be built instead of a church.
An atheist believes that deed must
be done instead of prayer said.
An atheist strives for involvement in life
and not escape into death.
He wants disease conquered,
poverty vanished, war eliminated." - Madalyn Murray O'Hair
"Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast." - Isaac Asimov
[By working to improve the world:] "One thing is certain: you will find plenty of worthwhile things to do. You will not be bored, or lack fulfillment in your life. Most important of all, you will know that you have not lived and died for nothing, because you will have become part of the great tradition of those who have responded to the amount of pain and suffering in the universe by trying to make the world a better place." - Peter Singer
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony
God is always the equivalent of "I do not know" - Annie Besant
"Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would've been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago. And by the way, I say "this guy", because I firmly believe, looking at these results, that if there is a God, it has to be a man.
No woman could or would ever fuck things up like this. So, if there is a God, I think most reasonable people might agree that he's at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe, doesn't give a shit. Doesn't give a shit, which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of these bad results." - George Carlin
"Theology is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
"Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions god's infinite love." - Bill Hicks
"There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages." - Ruth Hurmence Green
"The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it." - Matilda Joslyn
"We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge." - Christopher Hitchens
"It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama." - Richard P. Feynman
"I feel that we should stop wasting our time trying to please the supernatural and concentrate on improving the welfare of human beings. I think that, uh, we should use our energy and our initiative to solve our problems, and stop relying on prayer and wishful thinking. If we have faith in ourselves, we won't have to have faith in gods." - Ruth Hurmence Green
"Interviewer: "Didn't [Sagan] want to believe?"
Druyan: "He didn't want to believe. He wanted to know." - Ann Druyan
"What I have a problem with is not so much religion or god, but faith. When you say you believe something in your heart and therefore you can act on it, you have completely justified the 9/11 bombers. You have justified Charlie Manson. If it's true for you, why isn't it true for them? Why are you different? If you say "I believe there's an all-powerful force of love in the universe that connects us all, and I have no evidence of that but I believe it in my heart," then it's perfectly okay to believe in your heart that Sharon Tate deserves to die. It's perfectly okay to believe in your heart that you need to fly planes into buildings for Allah." - Penn Jillette
"If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world." - Sam Harris
"Today evolution of human intelligence has advanced us to the stage where most of us are too smart to invent new gods but are reluctant to give up the old ones." - Ruth Hurmence Green
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