This is the first in a series of simple introductory articles and videos on naturalistic philosophy.
Many of those of us who call ourselves freethinkers are aware that there is some fundamental difference between the way we view reality and the way the superstitious folks do. We believe in a naturalistic reality and the others subscribe to the supernatural. But what exactly is this difference? What does it mean to believe in a naturalistic reality? What is ‘natural’, and how is it different from ’supernatural’?
Note: I will avoid discussion of the nature of evidence in this article since it will distract us from our objective here.
The key to understanding the natural universe is understanding the notion of causality. This idea can be stated simply as the relationship between two dependent events, where one is the caused and the other is the cause. Science works only because the natural world exhibits causality. In physics, causality is more accurately viewed as interaction between two events, objects or situations, with each of the two being both cause and effect at the same time. Read the full story
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Blair Scott is the Affiliate Director for American Atheists, an organization founded in 1963 by Madalyn Murray O’Hair to fight for separation
of Church and State and equal rights for Atheists in the US. He is also the Alabama State Director for American Atheists. Blair’s activism in the Freethought movement is not limited to his work with AA. He is also the Press Relations Director of the North Alabama Freethought Association, and has been a prominent figure in Alabama Freethought circles since he founded the organization in 2002. He uses the internet extremely effectively as a promotion tool, through social media such as facebook, twitter and myspace, as well as through his own website, alabamaatheist.org. Blair has been one of the most vocal Atheist activists in America and is widely recognized for his work in promoting Atheist and Freethought causes both online and off.
This interview covers everything from Blair’s early brush with religion and his experiences as an atheist in the US navy, to his current work in Atheist activism and his multi-dimensional approach towards promoting freethought. Blair Scott’s experience in Atheist PR makes him a valuable source of information for our quest to promote Freethought in India.
Nirmukta Radio is a production of Nirmukta.com. The host is Ajita Kamal and the music is Te Laudant by Cryptocrat
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Very few people are exceptionally well-read on any one subject, and fewer still are masters of more than one area of expertise. Only the most versatile of people extend themselves any farther than that. Dr. Prabhakar Kamath is one such man.
Dr. Kamath has been writing a series of articles here on Nirmukta, on the evolution of religious thought in ancient India. His training as a psychiatrist and his
years of research on the history of India have given him much insight into the nature of the Indian mindset. Dr. Kamath is also well versed in the Bhagavad Gita. What is unique in the way Dr. Kamath reads the Gita, however, is that he reads it side by side with the known historical accounts of the subcontinent. This has given him a unique perspective, apparent in his articles here.
In this interview, we shine the light on another aspect of Dr. Kamath’s life’s work - his activism. After years of practicing psychiatry in the United States, Dr. Kamath moved back to India and through a series of events ended up founding and leading the modern consumer rights movement, the first of its kind in the country. This interview gives us a peek into the life of this great man, in the hope that some of his ideas and principles will influence us in our quest to promote freethought and rational thinking in India.
At the end of a lengthy recording session, Dr. Kamath still had much to say. We have decided that he will come on the show again to talk a bit more about his activism. Future interviews are also planned to discuss Dr. Kamath’s insights into Brahmanism and Indian history.
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Introduction:
Every so often when reading books of non-fiction written by great thinkers you come across one that you find yourself hoping is wrong about the multitude of depressing facts it presents. Line after line, this is the emotion that Meera Nanda’s latest book, “The God Market: How Globalization Is Making India More Hindu”, evokes. Beginning with post-independence India, Nanda walks us forward in time, pausing at influential points in the story to build a bullet-proof case for her central assertion that- in her words- “Globalization has been good to the Gods in India”. While it is a fast and thoroughly engaging read with all references relegated to the back pages, the sheer quantity of facts is still overwhelming at times.
Since my position on Nanda’s work is familiar to most followers of this website, I will present this review in an unconventional format. I will first describe the structure and content of the book. Then I will present some popular criticisms. Read the full story
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Many Indians intellectuals who don’t believe in supernatural gods or powers fail to separate their non-belief from the ‘Hindu’ identity. The desire to belong to a dominant cultural group is so strong in us that these so-called ‘Hindu Atheists’ invent the most convoluted justifications for their acceptance of the Hindu label. But does it really make sense to call oneself a Hindu Atheist? What does one truly mean by the word Hindu in this context? The object of this article is to get rationalists and atheists from India who identify themselves as ‘Culturally Hindu’ to question this label with which they are associating themselves.
To make my position clear at the outset, I will state my fundamental claim below. Read the full story
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Thanks to Karen Armstrong, the author of The Case for God, we religious people FINALLY have a powerful strategy for combating reason. Contrary to its title, the book does not make a case for God at all. The story Ms. Armstrong lays out is, in actuality, the most succulent red herring that we can throw down to protect religion from critical thought. This is the basic idea: Atheism causes religious fundamentalism.
According to Ms. Armstrong, before science came on the scene people did not have any desire to know the ‘facts’ about reality. All pre-enlightenment Christians viewed the stuff in the Bible about Adam and Eve, the devil, the queers, the adulterers and the son of god, as metaphors for states of emotional well-being. They assigned no factual significance to all of this, until the atheists came along and forced some religious people to start understanding the scriptures as literal truth. Thus, atheists (and science itself) gave birth to religious fundamentalism! The same goes for all the world’s religions. Thanks for your awesome revisionism, Ms. Armstrong. In my religious apologetics I have always wanted to employ Karl Rove’s strategy of going for your opponent’s strength while ignoring the facts. Read the full story
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This question was sent in by Roope Kasvi and has been selected for this month’s Q & A.
Hi,
I’m an openminded sceptic from Finland. One of my friends (also Finnish) is an Ayurvedic consult and spreads all kinds of crazy stuff in Facebook.
Recently in the comments section of one of his rants he said that there are many diseases that Ayurveda can cure or treat better than modern medical science. Needless to say, I am sceptical about this claim and wondered if you guys knew of any studies that could point me to any direction at all. Read the full story
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This article is a response to Pankaj Kulkarni’s article, Why Should Rationalists Have all the Fun?, in which he discusses monetizing the rationalism movement. Pankaj suggests that the non-profit model of promoting rationalism is inferior to profit-based initiatives in achieving progress in this area. I disagree. However, I wish to make it clear at the outset that I am not denying the value in harnessing the profit motive. I recognize that this motive for profit has been one of the fundamental driving forces behind innovation in technology and culture. I have immense respect for Pankaj’s thinking in this regard. However, I don’t think that the instinct for short-term financial gain should/will drive the future of the rationalist movement. I also disagree that the non-profit movement is not as effective in general as the for-profit industry. I present my reasons in this article. Read the full story
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Few people have done more for popularizing the modern skepticism movement than Dr. Steven Novella. Once a week as host of the very popular Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, this unassuming academic clinical neurologist at the Yale University School of Medicine has tens of thousands of enthusiastic skeptics, rationalists and science aficionados hanging on his every word. Dr. Novella, together with his team of ‘Rogues’, tackle recent events in the news and cut through the B.S. to present a science-based view of things. The podcast has been a great resource for me personally, guiding me through the muddle of the mainstream news coverage on important scientific questions and providing me with the tools to think logically and within the bounds of reason.
I had the chance to interview Dr. Novella at the North East Conference on Science and Skepticism, held in New York City on September the 12th. He had just finished a live taping of the SGU podcast and was so kind as to allow me the pleasure of interviewing him despite my cutting into his schedule. He spoke about skepticism, science and medicine with characteristic clarity of approach.
Here are a few links to Dr. Steven Novella’s skeptical work.
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe Podcast : Find RSS feeds to the SGU podcast and the 5×5 podcast.
The podcast is produced by the New England Skeptical Society, of which Dr. Novella is the president. Dr. Novella also writes at the Science-based Medicine blog, Neurologica, The Rogues Gallery (along with co-hosts of the SGU podcast) and Skepticblog (along with other leaders of the skepticism movement).
Nirmukta Radio is produced by nirmukta.com. Technical production is by Salvatore Barra. The music is Te Laudant by Cryptocrat.
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Pierre-Simon de Laplace
The idea that all things can be explained by natural laws is as ancient as philosophy itself. Naturalism and Supernaturalism comprise a divide between the two most fundamental ways of looking at reality. If you don’t believe in Gods or an immaterial soul, then you are a naturalist. There are areas where the lines are blurred, and non-theists may hold on to specific non-naturalistic beliefs, but in general the division between the two ways of looking at reality holds good. The practice of rejecting supernatural claims was found among the Carvaka of ancient India and the materialist philosophers of ancient Greece. This tradition has continued down to the present day and has been analyzed and codified into different forms. The one that is the simplest to understand is the philosophical definition of naturalism. So let’s begin with this.
Philosophical Naturalism is the idea that nature is all there is. Also known as metaphysical naturalism, it is an outright rejection of all supernatural. Even in the presence of a seemingly supernatural situation, metaphysical naturalism will claim that there is a natural explanation underlying it. All human knowledge comes from such a naturalistic understanding. When philosophical naturalism is compromised, knowledge hits a wall.
A good example is Newton and the problem of planetary orbits. After spectacular work in the Principia Mathematica, describing previously undiscovered forces in the universe and a good many laws of physics than were known at that time, Newton reached an impasse. His model of the solar system could not explain why the planets did not spiral down into the sun. After asking naturalistic questions and answering them, providing humanity with some of the greatest inspirations in science, Newton finally proposed a supernaturalistic ‘explanation’. He theorized that God must intervene with the motion of the planets to set things right (notice that this is not really an explanation; saying “God did it” is like saying it happens by magic). Newton, after all that brilliant thinking, could not solve the problem because he evoked the nonexistent supernatural. A 100 years later, Laplace famously solved the problem by asking only naturalistic questions. Read more about this here. Read the full story
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