The subterfuge of Zakir Naik in the name of the Koran. Video 2 /15

Continuing our discussion on the video we find that Mr. Naik contradicts his own statement made at the fag end of the last video.

0.05 : He says "They called it the Big Bang"
How very convenient of Mr. Naik. He is the only person I have heard who has managed to drop the word theory. In all the scientific papers and magazines and journals I have come across not once I repeat not once has any scientist referred to The Big Bang Theory as the big bang. It is very much a theory and a hypotheses which might or might not stand the test of time. In his eagerness to prove that the Koran revels scientific facts Mr. Naik goes overboard and claims the theory as a scientific fact. This as I have already pointed out is inconsistent with his own statement that he will not be speaking about scientific theories and hypothesis. Perhaps the only proof Mr. Naik needs to prove or disprove a theory is the Koran.

0.55 : "The heavens and the earths were joined together"
This is the description Mr. Naik gives of the Big Bang Theory as stated in the Koran. Mr. Naik is so blinded by his fame and fortune that he either thinks that all the listeners are naive or plain stupid. This description is not only insufficient and vague it is also irrelevant. Mr. Naik there were no heavens or the earth preceding the big bang nor even immediately after it. I sometimes am surprised at the audacity of this man's proclamations and wonder does he himself believe in those or in the heart of hearts he is laughing at the sheer stupidity of his audience.

2.06 : He refers to the matter present immediately after the big bang to as smoke.
Well smoke for me is a product of combustion that is the process of the combination of other atoms with the atoms of oxygen. This reaction is exothermic, so normally smoke is at an elevated temperature. Well Mr. Naik the process of combustion was not possible immediately following the big bang. What Mr. naik is trying to pass off is that since the gaseous matter present was at an elevated temperature, he wants us to believe that it was smoke. There is a difference between a hot gas and smoke.

2:45 : The Koran according to Mr. Naik says that " Allah merges the night into the day and day in to the night"
well nothing wrong in the statement, but the interpretation that Mr. Naik draws from it. He says that since the Koran describes the process as "coiling" that means that the process was gradual. Well for starters we dont need the Koran to tell us that the transition from day to night and night to day is gradual and not sudden. This fact is known by mere observation to any intelligent person, but unfortunately Mr. Naik needs the Koran to tell him that. This fact must have been observed by millions of people who had preceded the Prophet, so there again is nothing new in that.
Mr. Naik draws one more conclusion from the statement that since it is said that the Koran says the process is gradual that means that the Koran says the earth is round. Now this is stretching the interpretation a wee to much. I mean millions of people who haven't read the Koran can also say the same thing.

09:27 : Mr. Naik went to a school that taught him that the sun is stationary.
Well I don't really know which school did Mr. Naik go to must have been some madrassa. Though I don't really remember what was taught to me, I am quite sure that I never had the impression that the sun was stationary.

The subterfuge of Zakir Naik in the name of the Koran. Video 1 /15

Came across a video by Zakir Naik the (in)famous wahabist preacher who goes about spreading lies, deception and pure fabrication to willing listeners who are drawn primarily from his own religious leanings and who do not posses the mental faculties to make up their own decisions. They depend on Mr. Naik to make those for them.

The video in question was titled Quaran and modern science. Being a science student all my life and given to scientific thinking I couldn't let the opportunity of viewing this audiovisual presentation pass. One thing I have to admit is that Mr. Naik posses phenomenal powers of recollection. Though I really do not have the inclination to go and check if all that he propounds from the stage is true or not. One more thing is he is a single person propaganda machine. Coming back to the lecture, I found so many contradictions within the lecture itself that I was shocked that he can gather so many viewers to listen to his lies. Probably Mr. Naik is using the ploy of the Indian politicians, where the size of the political gathering is directly proportional to the monetary power a politician or his party can muster. Most of the listeners have no interest in what the speaker has to say and they come in primarily because they are promised free food, booze and also reimbursed in cash.

I will try to refute some of the arguments made by Mr. Naik in his lecture. In doing so I do not propose to argue with him on his interpretation of the verses he is quoting. I do not posses any knowledge of Arabic nor do I posses the resources, nor feel the need to study the language. The best part being that Mr. Naik still gives me so much room to trash his proclamations that I really do not feel handicapped by the lack of knowledge of the Quaran and / or Arabic.

06:14 : He proclaims that "the Koran is the miracle of miracles".
Nowhere does he even make an attempt to back his statement. Taking in to account the fact that Mr. Naik has complete faith in the holy book that he propounds, this is not surprising, but also considering that the lecture is about modern science and science is based on proof and supporting facts, this is a huge lacuna.

06:32 : He again proclaims that " the Koran is the best Arabic literature available on the face of the earth"
Well I guess he is trying to sell himself short here. If the Koran is such a great piece of literature shouldn't it be the best across all languages and cultures.

08:32 : He quotes Albert Einstein " Science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind"
He forgets that Einstein was a Jew and had shown no inclination or even a soft corner for Islam and its teachings.

09.30 : Mr. Naik makes a statement "I will only be speaking about scientific facts which have been established, i will not be speaking of scientific theories and hypotheses which all of us know very well that many a time that theories and hypotheses take u turns."
Being a student of science I fully agree with what Mr. Naik says here. The fact is all theories are provisional and are held as true till a better theory comes along or a fact is revealed by observation or experimentation that is not consistent with the theory. As we will soon find out Mr. Naik contradicts himself within the next few minutes. 

Ego

Read a beautiful article about the human ego. Reproducing it in full below and also the link to the website.

There is so much confusion about the question: What is ego? Because our ability to recognise the true face of the ego, to see it for what it actually is, depends entirely upon how far we want to go on the spiritual path.

A simple psychological definition of the ego is something like the “self-organising principle,” that all-important command centre in the psyche that coordinates the different aspects of the self. And that command centre must be in good working order for a human being to be able to function in the world with any reasonable degree of competency. The ego as self-organising principle is neither positive nor negative; its function is mechanistic, and in that, it has no self nature. 

Arrogant Self-Importance

But there is another definition of ego, and the ego in that definition has self nature. The human face of that ego is pride; is arrogant self-importance; is narcissistic self-infatuation; is the need to see oneself as being separate at all times, in all places, through all circumstances — and that ego is the unrelenting enemy of all that is truly wholesome in the human experience. 

When this ego is unmasked, seen directly for what it is, finally unobscured by the other expressions of the personality, one finds oneself literally face-to-face with a demon — a demon that thrives on power, domination, control and separation, that cares only about itself and is willing to destroy anything and everything that is good and true in order to survive intact and always in control. This demon lacks any capacity for empathy, compassion, generosity or love; delights in its perfect invulnerability; and, worst of all, will never ever acknowledge that which is sacred….

I can’t tell you how many times I have witnessed the shocking and often frightening transformation of a human personality when faced squarely with the truth of its own division, hypocrisy and deceit: in an instant, a warm, intelligent, sensitive, apparently caring personality can change, becoming the face of pure ego, glaring with narcissistic rage because it has been exposed. It is because of many experiences like this that I have spent hours thinking about the questions: What is the personality? Who is the individual? 

Spiritual Heart Vs Ego

It seems that in the end, it really is black-and-white, simply because who we are depends upon where our allegiance lies. Is it with the narcissistic ego? Or is it with the spiritual heart? Of course, we can only really find out the answer to that question when we are tested because otherwise it’s inevitable that the truth of our own condition will remain obscured, masked by self-concepts that are based on the ego’s need to always see itself in a positive light — even if it sees itself as a victim.

Who we are and how we perceive our own experience and the world around us depend upon where our allegiance lies. The perspective of the individual who has surrendered the will of their own ego to their spiritual heart is drastically different from the perspective of one who has not…. 

Price Of Purity
To walk the spiritual path in earnest is to find out what we’re made of and how much we are truly willing to give up in order to come to the end of the division within ourselves. The price for that kind of profound and deeply liberating simplicity is too high for most, because that price is ego death... That means endeavouring with all our being to purify ourselves from every attachment, gross and subtle, to the narcissistic ego, that demon of false individuality that masquerades as our own self and whose task it is to keep us, at all costs, separate from our own heart.

http://www.speakingtree.in/public/view-article/Face-To-Face-With-Your-Ego

Egg Masala / curry

Well finished with the egg masala, tastes nice if I may say so myself. Going to a friends place in the evening with the egg masala, she's recovering from cancer surgery so deserves a bit of pampering. Well the recipe with the snaps of the finished dish is below for anybody who wishes to try it out.


Ingredients :

1. Eggs 4 nos.
2. Green chilies 2 nos or more if you want to make it more spicy.
3. Garlic 4 nos. large cloves
4. Ginger about half a finger length
5. Onions 2nos. medium sized
6. Grated coconut 1/2 cup
7. Red chilly powder 2 tsp
8. Malvani masala 2 1/2 tsp
9. Garam masala 1 tsp
10. Cummin seeds a pinch
11. Dry red chilly 2 nos.
12. Hing a pinch
13. Coriander
14. Salt to taste

Preparation :

1. Hard boil the eggs.
2. Add 2-3 tbsp of oil in a pan and heat.
3. Add sliced onions and fry till golden brown and slightly translucent.
4. Add the grated coconut and fry till it changes color.
5. In a mixer add the onions, grated coconuts, green chilies, ginger, garlic and water. Grind to a very fine paste. The paste has to be very fine otherwise the coconut can be felt while chewing and that is not a good idea.
6. Add 2-3 tbsp of oil to a pan and heat.
7. Add the cummin seeds when hot.
8. Add the hing and red chilies and fry for a minute.
9. Add the paste from the mixer and cook till a bit of oil can be seen on the surface.
10. Add water to thin the mixture to a desired consistency but remember it is not a good idea to make it too watery.
11. Add salt to taste. I normally add it to a bit of water and then add the solution to the mixture.
12. Cut the eggs in to 2 and add to the curry with the yellow facing downwards.
13. Allow it to cook for a couple of minutes.
14. Add the finely chopped coriander to garnish.

Lo the egg masala / curry is ready.

Egg Curry

Decided to make some egg curry today. With youtube and the internet it has become so easy to get recipes that it must be hurting the sale of cookbooks. The way of the world can be very funny and there might be some statistic in the world which says that the internet has actually egged on the sale of cookbooks.

Well will get back after the cooking is done ...............

Hobbies

I have always been a man devoid of hobbies. The only things I have enjoyed in life other than work and sex has been cricket, reading, cigarettes, beer and whiskey. Work I do still enjoy a lot whenever I get in the groove but with the other hobbies, if you can call them that, I have had to do a major rethink.


Smoking is something I no longer indulge in, having given up the filthy habit (11/June/2008). Digressing from the topic a lot of smokers with a hint of ridicule have asked me "why" I have quit. When the real question has been "How". In all the cases, on further probing I have been proved right. These are the people who wish to quit and have made multiple attempts and failed but hate to admit it. they do eventually come down to the actual question of "How'. A honest answer elicits a look of disbelief. Well a lot of you will also be shocked when I say that reading a book helped me to quit. Yes you read it right. Well to top it, I quit smoking after reading a "quit smoking" book. Am not a big fan of self help books, though I do admit to having quite a collection, but this book by Allen Carr "The Easyway to Quit Smoking" helped me to finally kick the butt. For those who want to try it out, here are a couple of links.


http://www.allencarrseasyway.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Way-Stop-Smoking-Non-Smokers/dp/1402718616


Playing cricket was a big pass time in school and college, but as all of us have experienced, a time comes when the spirit is willing but the body protests. The protests grow louder in the form of aches, pains and injuries, till they reach a point when the enjoyment of the game no longer outweighs the pain. Slowly the field looks intimidating, the pain feels like a monster, the sun saps energy faster than you can say cricket, the recovery time after a game becomes a couple of days and slowly the passion for playing the game manifests itself as the time spent in watching the game be it at home or in bars. But (my English teacher would have glared down at me) now I don't really watch the game with as much passion anymore. probably due to the fact that there has been an overdose of cricket. I remember the time when we as kids used to not sleep through the night (an alarm would wake up the whole household) to watch the matches being played in Australia. There was no cable TV in India then ( yeah that was a really really long time ago) so, thanks to Doordarshan ( I still remember the montage that used to play signifying the beginning of transmission, 24 hours transmission was a luxury a socialist country like India could ill afford, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfOQ-JvRG9k&feature=related ) we could only watch matches in which India played or triangular series in which we were participating. We would sit right next to the television, so as to not disturb anyone at home, to listen to the commentary in English by Richie Benaud and turn the knob to zero (we didn't have  mute buttons then) when the like of Sushil Doshi came on for their Hindi stuff. How the times have changed. With 24 hours satellite television and an explosion in the number of matched being played, we just have to switch on a sports channel to watch a match, live or recorded. In short cricket is no more the passion it once was.


Don't really have to elaborate what happens to the allure of sex to most people after marriage. I do enjoy it most of the times, though with the novelty, i seem to have lost the all consuming passion with which a school boy pursues sex. It has become more of a physiological necessity.


Now coming to the things that I still do enjoy, a mugs, lots of mugs of chilled beer or few pegs of good scotch whiskey. An evening with close friends and an unlimited supply of beverages of the alcoholic kind is something that I still do enjoy and look forward to, but its the morning after that I have come to dread. I wish someone would come up with a "morning after" pill for the debilitating hangover that follows with a frustrating regularity. I have devised my own mechanism of dealing with the condition, but still haven't perfected the art of not having one. There are four things that contribute to an enervated morning after, extreme acidity, acute dehydration, hypoglycemia and severe sleep deprivation. Have managed to control with some degree of consistency three of the four factors combining to make me get up in the morning and swear to myself that I will never ever consume alcohol again, a promise I generally forget the very next day.


Dehydration is easy to control by consuming copious amounts of plain water before, during and post the session before hitting the sack. Similarly hypoglycemia ( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hypoglycemia) can be handled by having a complete meal during or post the drinking spell, with an added dosage of dessert in the form of ice creams or milk chocolates. For acidity normally a couple of Ocids (antacids) suffice with another one in the morning if required. What I have really not been able to get rid of is the sleep deprivation. My ability to have a good nights sleep is inversely proportional to the amount of alcohol in the system. I have gone through nights where I have had three hours or less of sleep due to the effects of alcohol, normally I cant function if I have anything less than eight straight hours in the night. A very simple answer pops up in the head, can pop half a Restil or some other form of tranquilizer to help me sleep. I have a friend who does that every day, every single day, but am too scared to mix alcohol and sleeping pills.


Reading is something I do really enjoy. Used to read a lot of fiction, beginning with Enid Blyton, Hardy boys and Nancy Drew graduating to Sidney Sheldon, James Hadley Chase and finally  to the likes of Jack Higgins, Alistair MacLean, Robert Ludlum and Louis L'amour. Fiction is something that doesn't engross me anymore and have shifted my attention to nonfiction. Richard Dawkins, Dorris Kearns Goodwin don't write page turners.


Post a lot of thought and mental noise I decided to develop some hobbies that would make my free time more enjoyable than sitting in front of the idiot box and channel surfing for some inane serials. The list that follows is a bucket list more than a hobby list, but something that I would love to accomplish in the near foreseeable future. The list that follows is not in any particular order, some of it can be long term hobbies while some of them are one time activities  that I may have an opportunity to develop into long term hobbies. Only time will really tell.

1. Cooking
2. Carpentry
3. Playing the guitar
4. Modifying an Enfield Bullet in to a low slung mean machine in the true cruise mould.
5. Making a model plane.
6. Getting Paragliding pilot's licence ( I don't know if i would really be able to accomplish this since I have a morbid fear of heights. May not be as severe as to induce fainting spells but my legs do sure start to shake when am at any height above 25 - 30 feet without the protection of a railing or a wall of some kind. Hell even if the railing is anywhere less than waist height I begin to get the shakes). 
7. Sailing
8. PADI Open Water Diver Certification
9. Long distance cycling
10. Wind surfing
11. Travelling to Leh Ladhak on a bicycle or motorcycle.
12. Have a British girlfriend, I just love their accent.(This actually is sacrilege, I am married, but this is also a bucket list, so what the hell) 
13. Have a website on for having animations about the political life.
14. Running in the half marathon in 2013, and subsequently the full marathon in 2014
15. Angling
16. Photography

I do of course have grandiose plans to keep on updating the site and write about my experiences to anyone who cares to read. If a particular activity develops in to a long term hobby, might also create sections in the blog dedicated to it.

Ramblings of an unstable mind: India's war on terror..........

Ramblings of an unstable mind: India's war on terror..........: "Well does India have a war on terror. The knee jerk responses and policy changes after each attack keep on adding to my doubts. We as a cou..."