Dear Joe Vaz and other believers on this list,
Your right to believe in a God and follow the religion of your choice is
as "hallowed" as my right NOT TO! GoaNet is a secular forum and
opposing viewpoints can be made without resorting to personal
invective. I was on Santosh's cc list but have not been spamming your
mailbox, just in case I get accused of doing so. My reply to GoaNet was
delayed due to formatting errors but I was grateful to him for keeping
me informed as I subscribe to the digest version of GoaNet which makes
for cumbersome replies in a timely fashion.
Every religion cannot be 'the true way' as they righteously claim and so
logically, none can claim that victory. Religion bashing is a poor way
of making a point as is claiming to be the 'only way to salvation' that
we keep hearing from the Christian evangelicals. However, one
occasionally has to resort to 'blasphemy' to make a point as we have
seen in Santosh Rushdie's case ;-)
Dr. Helekar has unflinchingly stated his agnosticism with reference to
the existence of a higher power (whether that be Catholic or any other
denomination) and you cannot seem to understand that there are other
atheists (like myself) who would go a step further to state that in my
opinion, the concept of an omnipotent creator God is essentially
man-made. Men (predominantly) have taken that concept and created
religions to further their own causes but in the process have lost the
fundamental reason of the goal of encouraging their adherants to strive
to live their lives as ethically as possible. Currently, if you follow
all the traditions of the faith and donate generously to their priests,
you are practically guaranteed a place in 'heaven'... wherever that may
be. Failing to do so will have adverse consequences for your soul, or
so we are told. No longer are compassion for non-human life and
tolerance to other viewpoints held high by the faithful. Secular
organisations like the Secular Humanists have created a practical
alternative to religion which eschews all external supernatural deities
as part of our creation story and necessary for a good life.
http://www.secularhumanism.org/intro/what.html
Fr. Ivo may eloquently argue theology vs. science which is neither here
nor there for his training has limited his thinking to a Christian
perspective. He mentioned recently that "There is nothing inherently
incompatible between an evolutionary view of life and a commitment to
the Christian Scriptures". This is a blatantly false statement for
anyone who actually UNDERSTANDS the facts of evolution, not merely knows
a few of them. Nothing he or you can say to me will change my belief
that we are thinking animals, evolved along a line of primate mammals,
who created Gods for our own psychological comfort. Believers have the
benefit of that psychological comfort in times of distress. Atheists
will accept life's hardships as part of one's existence and not a test
from God, including death, as a finality of life and not a passing from
this mortal existence to another everlasting one. That is in direct
conflict with the teachings of most religions, even those that do not
subscribe to a God figure like Buddhism (which teaches reincarnation -
abhorred by Christianity but supported by molecular chemistry!).
Much of what Santosh refutes about Christianity is common knowledge to
those who care to investigate for themselves rather than believe that
all the answers are contained in the 'Good Book'. Most recently, 'The
Pagan Christ' by Tom Harpur puts all the current thinking on the subject
in one place with enough references to allow the inquisitive to satisfy
their curiosity. However it is not entertaining reading for true believers.
http://www.tomharpur.com/Reviews/PaganChrist.asp
Our knowledge on neurophysiology has exploded within the last decade and
the effect of external (electromagnetic) and internal (temporal lobe
epilepsy) stimuli on our religious experiences have been studied by many
researchers, not the least being here at the Laurentian University in
Sudbury, ON. by Dr. Michael Persinger.
http://www.laurentian.ca/neurosci/_people/Persinger.htm
This work is ongoing and some interesting spin-offs can be found at
http://www.innerworlds.50megs.com/winshakti/rotating/
Again, these notions may not be welcomed by the religiously inclined but
are available online to any who care to know and learn.
Regards,
Kevin Saldanha,
Mississauga, Canada.
