What Kind of World?

After a long break from blogging (again!), I engaged in a bit of narcissistic behavior today by re-reading some of my old posts and the comments on the posts. So, I was reading 'The Science of Religion' and this is a continuation of the chain of thoughts provoked by godfusion's comment on that post and my reply to it. A majority of people believe that there is an intelligent entity that created the universe and drives - as in actively controls - it. The three monotheistic religions are based on this fundamental idea and have each added a string of richly imaginative ideas to this basic concept. Ideas like praying to this 'creator' entity (they call it God), or ideas of heaven and hell, ideas like the 'messiah' or 'prophet' who is the creator's agent or messenger on earth, ideas about the second coming (or tenth if you believe in the Dashavatars - literally 10 avatars - of Vishnu) of messiahs etc. These people are "Theists". Some people leave it at the 'created' phase. This entity created the world with all it's laws and then let it run and evolve on it's own. These people are Deists. Furthermore, some people believe that after creating the universe the creative intelligence relaxed, kicked back with a couple of bottles of Yeungling lager and watched the creation unfold. These people are just kidding! They can't possibly know the mind of the creative intelligence which doesn't interfere in their universe let alone know what he did after creating the universe.

Anyways... jokes apart... this raises an important question: IF there is a creative intelligence that can create and drive a universe, what kind of a universe would IT create? Would that universe look like the one in which we exist or would it look different? Imagine yourself to be a super intelligent being that is capable of creating the universe (and I mean the UNIVERSE.. not just puny little Earth or puny little Sun.. the whole enchilada... all the things we know and all the things which we as of now don't know!). What would you do? What kind of a world would you create? Now I know that this is a daunting question. Our intelligence is of course NOTHING compared to that of the 'Great One' who created the universe. So we can't possibly answer the question in any meaningful way. So lets just try to answer a set of mini questions based on what we do know:

Using the intelligence we have been give, we have figured out within a great degree of certainty that the universe popped up (quite literally we are told by those in the know) ~ 13 billion years ago. Our own star 'the sun' and the solar system formed around 5 billion years ago. Single celled life appeared on our planet around 3.8 billion years ago. Modern humans arrived on the scene approximately 120000 years ago. So if the 'theists' are right, why did it take the 'creator' such a long time to bring on his 'chosen beings' into the game? Furthermore it took another ~117000 or so years for the humans to reach a level of sophistication good enough for the creator to start sending his agents down to tell us the great news about Him. Lets assume this seemingly improbable set of events did happen, the question then arises, why send so many many different agents down, each with his (and note the curious preference to male messengers here) own version of the story? Why not create a species that gets the right message in the first attempt?

Another commenter asked me about the anthropic principle. As I understand it, the anthropic principle suggests the following: "The fact that we (intelligent humans) exist suggests that there must be some law(s) as yet unknown at work which fine tuned the universe such that intelligent life would evolve in it at some point in it's history". In its essence it is a guide for future researchers to look for law(s) that explain the fine tuning of the fundamental constants. However there is great deal of argument about it and some use the anthropic principle as a clever disguise for the "design argument" - "the fact that humans exist means that the universe MUST have been designed with us in mind". The 'MUST' opens the door for the designer. Lets say this is in fact true. It still doesn't explain the preference for "humans" that is beings on this planet in this solar system. How do we know that the designer did not have some carbon based intelligent life (as yet unknown to us) based on some planet in some solar system in the Andromeda galaxy in mind?

I believe that opening the door for a creator leaves more to be explained about the nature, intelligence and intentions of the creator, than what the existence of the creator explains about our own world. Accepting a supposedly benevolent, active operator behind the universe raises even more questions than it answers. So shouldn't we apply Occam's razor and just let go of such ideas.? How about a simpler explanation? In the words of Don Rumsfeld - "stuff happens".

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The Way They Were

As I followed the 2008 presidential election campaign in America, I realized that the campaigns are in-part also a big battle of egos. Each candidate not only believes that his/her position on the issues is the right choice, the right direction for the country; but also that they are the right person to lead the country in that direction. In one way this is a highly egotistical claim which each presidential candidate is trying to convince everyone else of. Almost two years of constant campaigning to this end must inevitably be a transforming experience, changing the person completely.

Now that the campaign is over, the candidates have to face the results. In the case of John McCain, he has to face his defeat in a bitterly fought contest and its effect on his party and his own political career. In the case of Barack Obama, he now has to face the immense responsibility of leading this country in times of immense difficulties both at home and abroad. John McCain and Barack Obama are in a way completely different people from what they were a couple of years ago. In the backdrop of these facts, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at these candidates as they were before they got wrapped up in their respective campaigns.

Starting with John McCain: I have said that I used to like John McCain. From what I recall, he really was kind of 'straight talking', right of the center guy who was not afraid to spar with people in his own party on important issues. Here are some clips of Jon Stewart interviewing John McCain. The first one is back in 2002 before the Iraq war started. The second one is just after the state of the union speech in January 2004. What I like about John McCain in these clips is his candidness. He speaks his mind and he doesn't try to spin much. This is the John McCain I would have liked to see more of on the campaign trail.





Like most other people, I had not heard much about Barack Obama until he gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Back in August 2005, Barack Obama made an appearance as the guest who plays 'not my job' game on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, the NPR news quiz - one of my favorite radio shows. He talked about his views on important issues such as 8th grade graduation ceremonies. As I listened to the show again today, I couldn't help but think that this guy has a great sense of humor and is very witty. You can listen to the clip here.

This other clip is of Barack Obama on Monday night football back in 2006 where it seems like he is about to announce that he is running for president:



I guess we won't get to see this lighter, funnier side of Barack Obama more often now.

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Vignettes of Hope

America has voted. Barack Hussein Obama is the president elect of United States of America. I am happy that my cynicism about the American electorate, particularly in relation to the racial issue, has been defeated. I was following the results all night and here are some vignettes from a night full of hope.

Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic posted a note from one of the readers of his blog. I felt it is very beautiful. Here it is:

Nothing in my life has actually changed in the 30 minutes since it was announced Obama will be our next president. I have the same bills, the same amount of money in the bank, my dishwasher is still broken, and my 5 month old beagle won't stop peeing on my carpet. Everything in my life is exactly the same as it was 30 minutes ago; and yet I feel as though everything is different.

I feel so much hope. I feel so much pride. I feel like my one vote was a single drop of water in a great Tsunami of change. I feel like I was one of a million voices screaming in the night, " I love my country and I'm taking it back!" I'm so proud of the country that I love and have so much hope in my heart that we can together heal the wounds that have been such a source of pain and anger to us all.

I know Obama isn't going to fix the economy overnight, I know he won't be able to provide healthcare to all Americans by February '09. I know Obama isn't a Messiah who four years from now will have turned this country into a fabled utopia. But I also know Obama will make moral decisions. I know Obama will try to unite where others try to divide. I know Obama will help to make America the beacon of hope it once was to others. I know that at 27 years of age, I witnessed one of the most important and hopefully glorious chapters in American history.

I know hope.

The immense sense of soaring hope and the firm anchor in reality are both vividly evident in this person's comment. Thank you for voicing a shared feeling with such clarity.

In last few weeks, I was anxiously following the race in Pennsylvania and Ohio. This American Life covered the Obama and McCain campaigns in Pennsylvania in one of their episodes - Ground Game. For anyone interested in grass-roots political campaigns, this is a must listen. It featured the town of State College, PA (where I lived and studied for six years) and how the students campaigning for Obama are conducting huge voter registration drives. It featured a student volunteer named Kaycee (hope I am spelling the name correctly) who was the most active and most successful in getting students registered. It featured the union leaders in Pennsylvania who are persuading their fellow workers and union members to look beyond race, get past the animosity and vote for Obama based on the issues that they care about. I am listening to this episode again tonight. As the networks called Pennsylvania for Obama tonight, I can only imagine the joy these volunteers must have feel at the end of a successful campaign. Their HOPE was vindicated tonight. Oh! and Centre county went for Obama by 11% margin tonight! Go Nittany Lions!

When I was in India, the image of an "American" in my mind was always that of a 'white' man or women. This image was reaffirmed in so many subtle ways - through the movies, the images of American Presidents and other American leaders. After coming to this country I met and got acquainted with many Americans who didn't fit the stereotypical image and were still very much 'American'. What excites me about the Obama presidency is the fact that it will change this image of the typical 'American' for so many people including many Americans themselves. As the world sees a man of color as the president of America, going about the business of governing and decision making just like any of the previous presidents, somewhere in the subconscious the prejudices will start to melt. Barack Obama's face on national television will do more to remove lingering doubts (often based on unfounded fear) and deep-rooted hatred of people based on race and color of skin, than many other overt programs and campaigns to fight racism everywhere. That alone in my opinion will be a great achievement.

This is my hope today.

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Election Woes

I know it's a clique, but a picture is truly worth a thousand words. This presidential election is causing a lot of anxiety in my mind. It would take a lot of words to explain it all.. thankfully there is PhD comics.

These two strips explain my anxiety perfectly:

I am not a US citizen, so I can't vote in this country. However I work in this country legally and I pay taxes here. There are many ways in which the result of this election can affect me and my life directly. More importantly, for however long I stay in this country, I would prefer if the country is led by people who cherish the same ideals as I do. In this election, it means that I am hoping for a Obama victory.

I doubt it will happen. I still feel that a majority of this country will choose McCain and Palin. McCain would have been palatable but Palin is simply a disgrace. I used to like McCain before he made a U-turn on almost everything he claimed to believe in. Some of the U-turns too would have been OK with me. I come from a country full of flip-flopping politicians. However the most egregious one by McCain was the flip-flop on his views about the right wing God-nutters - the very people whom he called agents of intolerance a few years ago. To top it all, he went ahead and chose a God-nutter to be his running mate. And not just any odd God-nutter, a God-nutter who subscribes to one of the most extreme brands of Christianity that are out there. Her brand of Christianity believes in speaking in tongues, believes in witch-craft, believes in magic healing, does not believe in evolution by natural selection (although that's kind of par for the course for God-nutters), believes that rapture is imminent and will happen in her lifetime.

I don't believe that experience is the most important quality needed to be the President. No single person can have all the experience that will prepare him or her for the job of leading the USA. What is more important I believe is intellectual curiosity, the ability to seek and weigh different opinions on issues, the ability to make decisions by analyzing the implications of the various options. When I see Sarah Palin in the two interviews she gave, I see a lack of these very qualities. To me, it means that she will make judgments based on her ideology - which in her case happens to be extreme right wing religious ideology. It's not just her ignorance of issues, it's her pride in her ignorance of issues. It's not just her lack of intellect, it's her contempt for intellectuals. Elect McCain and Palin now and four years down the line, you will find Palin running for President.

The election still seems pretty close when you see the picture in the battle ground states. So the anxiety will continue for 8 more days. After that, I will either be glad that the country chose a reasonably intelligent guy over a pair of 'maverick' God-nutters or I will take solace in the fact that Jon Stewart and Bill Maher will have no lack of material for the next four years.

There are many who have said the things I have tried to say here with much more clarity and force. So I point you now to some of of my heroes:

Sam Harris: When Atheists Attack

Christopher Hitchens: Vote for Obama - McCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is simply a disgrace.

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Mavericks for Mediocrity

The more I watch the presidential election campaign the more depressed and afraid I become. Things have been going down-hill for a while now since John McCain selected Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Then came Sarah Palin's two interviews, first with Charlie Gibson and then with Katie Couric. Then there was the debate with Joe Biden. It seems to me that the politicians - especially the Republicans - have convinced themselves that most of the people in this country are dimwits who can be swayed by fluff.

Now, to be fair, the democrats are not a whole deal better, but predominantly the peddlers of mediocrity are Republicans. Consider for example the issue of off-shore drilling. John McCain and Sarah Palin have reduced it to a three word "mantra" - "drill baby drill". It is not "drill drill drill" by the way, as Sarah Palin promptly pointed out to Joe Biden in the debate, the right words are "drill BABY drill", as if it's a magic spell which looses it's effect if you don't say the right words. The oil-fairy won't give them any money if they don't get the mantra right. I think they believe that the voters in this country can be convinced about a lie if you convert it into a neat little sound-bite and repeat it over and over again. I don't blame them... it has worked for the last eight years. Consider the following examples from the not so distant past.

"Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction" (He didn't)
"Saddam Hussein caused 9-11" (He didn't)
"Tax-cuts will help the economy" (They didn't)
"We need less Government" (perhaps, but why are you running for a Government office then?)

If sound-bites like these, devoid of any analysis - any critical thinking - any logic - any substance at all is all that takes for the voters in this country to be swayed into voting for a candidate; remember it worked twice in last eight years; then I have no doubt that John McCain will be the next President of the USA.

I notice a strong anti-intellectual, pro-mediocrity streak in the McCain-Palin rhetoric. The "real enemies", we are told repeatedly, are "east-coast-elite" and "Washington insiders" (John McCain for example.) and " the liberal media". The best people in the country, the crème de la crème, live in a place called "small town America" and have names like "Joe Six-pack". All the women in small town America are either "hockey moms" or "soccer moms". Small town Americans are big on "family values". Perhaps it is because I have spent most of my time here in a liberal college town in the middle of Pennsylvania and the rest amidst "east-coast-elite" Bostonians, these caricatures seem a bit too distant and shallow to me. Furthermore we are told that small town Americans prefer candidates who they can "identify" with, someone who they can go hunting with (they love hunting), or have a beer with. It does not matter to small town Americans what these candidates think about important issues the country faces, they just want a "Joe six-pack" or "Hockey mom" like them in office. Apparently the last two times they elected a Joe Six-pack to the Oval office, things went spendidly. As far as I can tell, Sarah Palin does indeed believe in these crude generalizations of the American electorate which don't quite stand up to even the most simplistic analysis. I am not so sure whether John McCain himself truly believes in them, perhaps he doesn't, but he peddles them with equal glee and enthusiasm nevertheless.

Most of these caricatures are obviously code words to appeal to a very particular group - the mythical "base" of the Republican party. The "small town America" is composed mainly of evangelical Christian extreme right wing of the Republican party. The "family values" they cherish include among other - an opposition to a woman's right to choose abortion, opposition to equal rights for homosexual couples, opposition to "affirmative action", opposition to immigration and a wish to turn America into a Christian nation. Everyone is in on this game. Everyone knows this, I just wish that they were simply honest and open about it and stop speaking in code.

The more nefarious thing about the McCain - Palin campaign though is the deep anti-intellectualism. Their message to all the Joe Six-packs in America is, "Don't be like those college educated, east-coast-liberal-elites. They are the enemy. They are what is wrong with this country. They are the ones to blame for your woes and they want to take your guns (Joe Six-pack likes his guns more than anything in the world) and your God away from you." With this platform, any nuanced rhetoric is treated as "waffling" or "flip-flopping". Thinking with brains (like most normal people do) is for those elite liberals, Joe-six pack and his leaders think and make decisions based on their gut instincts. They make decisions in a swift second and pack it into a neat sound bite. Critical thinking is for sissies. Take off-shore drilling for example. Most experts (including those in George W. Bush's administration) have said that it would have no immediate impact on oil-prices or price of gasoline at the pump. Furthermore it would do nothing significant to make America less reliant on foreign sources of oil. But that doesn't matter, Joe Six-pack wants answers that he can easily memorize and anything more than "drill baby drill" is just too much to remember.

This tactic has worked before for George W. Bush and it may as well work for McCain - Palin. In four more years (irrespective of who wins the election this November) we may be seeing Sarah Palin again, this time running for President. If the portrayal of Americans in this crass way is what she really believes (which I think she does) then I think it represents a grave danger to the future of this country. The country is in further trouble if she actually believes that "east coast elite" are the source of all woes in this country. Another dangerous quality she reflected in the debate is the denial to look back and learn. "Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backward," Palin said in the debate. "Now, doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.", she said before starting to ramble on about something else. Joe Six-packs of small town America, consider your selves warned. As George Santayana put it, "Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it".

Critical thinking, a curiosity about how the world actually works, an openness to learn, receptiveness towards new ideas and imagination to think new solutions is what is required in future leaders of America (or any other country for that matter). Instead we are getting "gut instinct" which more often than not, turns out to be pre-cooked, ideological answers to every question. Instead of admiring education and intellectualism, we are told that it is the problem. Instead of receptiveness towards new ideas we get scorn and ridicule for the other views. I pity the Joe Six-pack who may get his "maverick" leaders elected to the highest office in the country only to find that his job has been shipped to someone in China, India or some other country in the world where learning, education, intellectualism are valued and admired, not scorned and ridiculed. If that happens (or perhaps when that happens) he may as well realize that the prosperity in this country is a result of the "ideas" which were a result of rational thinking, reason based discourse and profound intellect of the founding fathers of this country who were indeed the "east coast elite" at that time.

Most Americans think that terrorists driven by a hateful religious ideology are the greatest threat to the country. A greater threat to this society is a culture that has started to ignore the value knowledge, intellect and education. A culture that values sound-bites over reason based discourse. A culture that seeks quick answers rather than well-thought-out solutions that can actually make a difference. A culture that ignores history and fails to learn from it. The strength of this country lies in it's productivity and it's capability to innovate. The world is itching to take over America's lead in these domains. Where ever and when ever it is possible, this is already happening. The big corporations and companies know this and they are not going to stay here for the sake of some Joe Six-pack if Joe is unable or unwilling to learn long division.

The greatest threat to this country is not some Mullahs and their followers in some country in the middle-east or Persia following some bizzare bronze-age ideology. The greatest threat to this country are the home grown "Mavericks for Mediocrity" and their Joe Six-pack followers. They will continue to erode America's leadership in the world with their "shoot from the hip", "gut instinct" leadership.

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