On The Shoulders Of Giants

The questions is: is there a god or not? Is the universe composed of matter only or there is more to it than that? I have looked at the arguments of both sides and found neither of them convincing. In my view, by argument alone, you cannot prove or disprove god. What about evidence? Is there any evidence that points to the existence of god or otherwise? In my opinion there is only one convincing evidence: the enlightenment phenomenon. The enlightenment phenomenon is when someone through meditation, solitude, seeking of truth or otherwise experiences something unique and as a result becomes enlightened. Of course, there are degrees to enlightenment and the experiences vary greatly. But in some cases we can say with a good degree of certainty that a person has been enlightened: Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, Ali, Rumi, Shams. These individuals and many like them have had unique experiences and became enlightened and transcended their backgrounds and rose to new dimensions. To me, that fact is miraculous and an evidence pointing to the existence of god. The rational mind would then want to know if religions came from god. My answer is most likely yes. The next question is if most religions came from god, how come they are tainted with misstatements, pandering and intolerance. In other words, for example why does god have a beef with homosexuals? I have thought about this question most of my life and I recently have arrived at an answer: the answer is that every religion was a political movement in a society that was far from Utopia, and in order for that political movement to succeed in such societies, it had to be tainted and it had to be brought down to the levels that people could swallow. I believe that homophobia in Islam doesn’t come from god but it is a left-over from the Arabian society of 1400 years ago. The reason that god said he created the world in six days, was that it was an easier sell back then than a scientific explanation of how the universe came about. The unfortunate thing is that religions are never honest about this fact because they can’t be. How can they criticize the same people that are going to carry the message to the future generations? It’s impossible. So we have to live with sketchy religions at best that are completely out of touch with the majority of us today. But not all hope is lost. If we look at religions as vectors, arrows that point from one social state to another social state, and put every religion in the context of the society that it was introduced in, I think the directions these arrows pointing are pretty clear.

So, New York Tims, what is the mood in China after the Olympcs? ha?

If you are thinking big, you have to have your thumb on the pulse of the time and when the moment is right and the stars are aligned, you have to move. I give Barack a lot of credit for having his thumb on the pulse of the time better than anybody else, especially better than the Clintons. Clintons have professionals who have dedicated their lives to taking that pulse and Barack outsmarted them. I guess all the community organizing paid off. Bravo.

Randy Pausch passed away last Friday. If you haven’t watched his last lecture video, set aside some time for it.

After reading my friend Khalid’s review of the Joker character in the Dark Knight movie and thinking about it, I started to think of Karl Rove. Most of us know what happened: Karl Rove indoctrinated W, made him the president and with the help of Dick Cheney ran the show for eight years. And all of us who are old enough, know what they did. Was Karl Rove the Joker who wanted to create as much havoc as possible? Was he a nihilist? And if he was, did a nihilist actually run the most powerful country in history for eight years? And if the answer to all of the above is yes, my next question is to Republicans: how did you let this happen to you?

In a sense, the past seven and a half years were Karl Rove and Dick Cheney’s shot at running this country through W. And what we saw of that show was not pretty. It was classless, crude, careless and arrogant. How could half this country let this happen?

My way of making sense out of all of this is to focus on powers of deception. How the “economy of mind” leads to intellectual laziness and becoming prone to deception. Why Americans are so intense on “economy of mind”? It’s just an observation that I have found out that it is easier to find someone help me move than to find someone to spend the same amount of time to help me go through a problem. Call me crazy, but I think this has to do with the Grand Jihad which is to work on the inside as opposed to the Minor Jihad which is to defend yourself on the outside.

Recently, I had a technical problem with NPR’s website. I emailed them and today - after three days - the product manager of that department personally got back to me and said he is working on fixing it. I have not had a remotely similar experience with Apple, Google and a few other companies, and I am not even paying them (directly) for their services.

I just had this idea. Somebody should design a cart for the homeless.

People are either rationalists or not. If someone is not a rationalist and doesn’t agree with me, it’s hard to engage in a meaningful debate with them. Here’s my suggestion to Obama campaign: try to engage the rationalist Republicans in a meaningful debate and win them over.

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And for god’s sake, stay away from the word “Reagan”

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A glimpse into how the Iranians treated the Afghan refugees:

“…Many told how unscrupulous employers offered them the drug, telling them it would make their work seem easier - and how in the end they had been rounded up and thrown back across the border, some after brutal treatment in Iranian detention….”