Battling war and waste What does it take to unite people around a common cause? Are tales of shared ancestry or the threat of a common enemy the only way, as religions as governments have been assuming far too long? Here are some glimpses of how commitments towards a cause can be kindled and how divisions can be made irrelevant, without resorting to evangelical or apocalyptic narratives, but by the simple process of identifying with a human story from beyond [...]

We may not yet win votes for freethought, but we seek to win voters for freethought. We seek to win over a group of thoughtful citizens, however small, who are committed to the moral progress of humanity and being the change they wish to see.

Our love’s more alive than any dead saint, But some Valentine’s cheer why not relish? These jolly rose hues won’t our culture taint! We’re free to share cards and flowers if we wish! Grown women and men don’t need to be taught, Their close relationships how to cherish! Why is this simple freedom so hard-fought? We’re free to share cards and flowers if we wish! Some faithful in whose eyes such fun is sin, Should first from their midst hatred banish! Sweet nothings sound better than hate-filled din. We’re free [...]

Many a time when freethinkers engage religious believers in a discussion, it quickly degenerates without achieving much in the way of a dialogue. So here is an exercise where we try to simulate a dialogue.

This article is a paragraph-wise response to Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s counterpoint to rationalist and atheist Javed Akhtar’s critical examination of the former’s ideas.

Presented along with the content from the original slide-show, what this is not is a ‘smackdown’ and what it is is a critique of how oversimplified a mythology-based ethical worldview is.

The mills of God grind small, we are told… But too slow for those in hunger’s grip! For whose sake is saved God’s hoarded gold? How much gold do you need for worship?

Icons of the national imagination who take birth in a poet’s mind, come of age in an artist’s canvas in every age, and today stand bereaved at the passing of this age’s best-known rearer and reshaper of India’s inherited iconography.

We insist the past is not wisdom’s sole source… But among us you’ll find no idol-smasher! Wielding high thinking, and never brute force, The reign of Reason let us now usher!

The scrutiny of freethinkers must be more sustained, continuing well beyond the videos into the conversations they start and the arguments they trigger. We need to equip ourselves with a battery of arguments that will help keep the spotlight on, unblinkingly and relentlessly.