Editor’s Note: The following messages is from Dr. Vijayam, Executive Director of the Atheist Centre in Vijayawada.

We are  happy to inform you that  the 8th World Atheist Conference will be held at Periyar Educational Institutions at  Tiruchirapalli city (also known as TRICHY during the British time) in Tamilnad, India  on JANUARY 7, 8 and 9, 2011 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday).

The details will be informed to you soon.

We cordially invite you to the Conference.

Gora, (1902-1975) founder of Atheist Centre conceived the idea of the World Atheist Conference and held the first Conference in 1972.  In Post Gora period the the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh World Atheist conferences were held at AtheistCentre, Vijayawada in 1980, 1996, 2005, 2007 and 2009 respectively. The Third World Conference was held at Helsinki in 1983. Now Dr. Veeramani, Chancellor, Periyar Maniammai University, leader of the Draviadrar Kazhgam movement and the Rationalist Forum of Tamilnad, invited to hold the Eighth World Atheist Conference at Tiruchirapalli.

Tiruchirapalli city is overnight journey  from Chennai. It is 337 km from Chennai Egmore Station and a number of trains pass through Tiruchirapalli . All Trains from Chennai to Madurai and Kanyakumari pass through the city.

Tiruchirapalli has an international airport. Even if you land at Chennai, you can come to Triruchirapalli by Indian Airlines flight  or by train or  bus.

If you need any other information, please write to us. The theme of the Conference and the Registration details of theConference will be informed to you in the next mail.

Looking forward receive for a positive response from you.

With warm greetings

Yours humanly

Vijayam

Dr. Vijayam, Ph.D.,

Executive Director, Atheist Centre &

Editor, Atheist Monthly

Benz Circle, Vijayawada 520010, INDIA

www.atheistcentre.in

atheistcentre@yahoo.com

positiveatheist@gmail.com

Tiruchirapalli Railway Station

Bihar is one of the largest and most populous states in India. It also happens to be the most backward. However, the state has had a relatively glorious past. Bihar is well known for its intellectual achievements right from the time of Buddha. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi started his freedom struggle from Motihari in this state. One of the most well known movements of the post independent India against the authoritarianism of Indira Gandhi was started by Jayaprakash Narayan who was a Bihari.

In spite of such a progressive history, Bihar has become a state riddled with superstitions and obscurantism. For the past five years we have been associated with running a campaign in Bihar to inculcate scientific temper among people. It all started when a Minister of State for Science and Technology of the Government of India and the Member of Parliament from Navada, Sanjay Paswan, honoured tantriks at a public ceremony. Read the full story

A series of high-profile incidents over the past few months have stirred up conversation among Indians online on the subject of freedom of speech. Not surprisingly, parallels between the cases have been drawn at will to make ever possible argument for and against every side of the debate. This article is an attempt to look at the subject of free speech from a democratic and humanistic point of view.

I begin by outlining the essentials of four cases from the recent past. This will be followed by a short discussion on the notion of freedom of speech. Finally the implications of this discussion will be applied to each case. Read the full story

Nirmukta has recently crossed the 1000 member mark on facebook, and our team has decided that its time to celebrate by hosting an online event! This event will be held on Saturday, the third of July, at 7:00 PM, IST. All you will need to participate in the event is to go to http://tinychat.com/nirmukta at the scheduled time and sign in using twitter or facebook connect.

Tom Clark, director of the Center for Naturalism, will speak to us live on the influence of worldview naturalism. He is the the author of Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and its Uses, and has written various papers and articles on the influence of the naturalistic worldview on our lives. You can read more about Tom’s work at http://naturalism.org and on his blog at http://centerfornaturalism.blogspot.com/.

Go here for a Naturalism FAQ. Here is an excerpt:

Q. What is naturalism, anyway? And keep it straightforward!

A. Ok, naturalism is simply the understanding that there exists a single, natural, physical world or universe in which we are completely included. There are not two different worlds, the supernatural and natural. Since we are completely included in the natural world, there’s nothing supernatural about us. For instance, we don’t have immaterial souls that survive after death. We are fully physical, material creatures, and everything we are and do can be understood without supposing that we have souls, spirits, or any other sort of immaterial supernatural stuff inside us. Your thoughts, experiences, feelings, decisions, and behavior are all things your brain and body does. How they do all this is of course a very complicated story that’s still being discovered by science, but naturalism says there’s nothing non-physical involved. That the material world has produced creatures that are conscious, can reason, feel emotions, and ask questions is a pretty amazing fact. The “merely” physical isn’t so mere after all. Naturalism re-enchants the physical world.

During our conversation with Tom Clark we will explore some of the major implications of worldview naturalism on concepts such as god, religion, morality, justice, free-will, retribution, consciousness, etc. Since this will be a live streaming event, questions can be sent to us in real time through twitter and chat. Relevant questions from listeners will be selected and posed to Tom Clark throughout the entire duration of the event.

Date: Saturday, July 3rd, 2010, 7:00 PM, IST.

Venue: http://tinychat.com/nirmukta

Our twitter account: (for sending us your questions) http://twiter.com/nirmukta

RSVP on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120028841375938&index=1

Scroll below image for login instructions and known issues with tinychat.

Designed by Bala Bhaskar

Read the full story

This article was first posted here.

The May/June edition of the Skeptical Inquirer had on its cover an artist’s rendition of the human brain embedded with an image resembling either God or Jesus (take your pick) along with the caption “Why Our Brains Believe”. The feature article “Brain Science, God Science; Why Religion Endures” was written by two really bright guys , Michael McGuire and Lionel Tiger. Read the full story

This is the first part in a series of articles to check the facts and the analyze evidence concerning the recent Tehelka report concluding that radiation levels in Delhi are far above recommended safe levels.

On June 8, 2010, Tehelka reported on a survey they had done of the city of Delhi. The media outlet teamed up with Cogent EMR, a company that, as fellow Nirmukta member Sajith Unni has pointed out, manufactures a number of products that are extremely dubious. Tehelka’s report ended up being one of the most fear-instilling pieces of journalism on the subject. The reporter, Rishi Mazumdar, essentially concluded that Delhi is a radiation hot-zone with levels far exceeding the acceptable limits suggested by the scientists.

Read the full story

1. The Original Intent Of Religion And God

The original intent of Hinduism (Brahmanism) was to bring Law and Order into the lawless and chaotic society. That is why religion was known as Dharma -that which holds. The original purpose of creating various gods was to fulfill one’s desires and protect one from evils, both tangible (wicked people) and intangible (vagaries of nature). Gradually vested interests took over the religion, and it became a big business. This is consistent with Law of Solutions: All noble solutions for societal problems sooner or later become problems themselves. Read the full story

This is the last article in Dr. Prabhakar Kamath’s series on the Truth About The Bhagavad Gita. The complete series can be found here.

I am dedicating this final article in my series on The Truth About The Bhagavad Gita to the youth of India. In this article, we will examine how Brahmanism molded the Hindu mind for 3500 years, and how the vast majority of Hindus, deluded by Brahmanic brainwashing, is woefully unprepared for citizenship of a modern, secular democracy as evidenced by so many unsolved potentially catastrophic societal problems plaguing India since independence. The single most important factor contributing to these problems is masterful inaction by citizens of India. This might seem like a rather drastic statement on my part, but I urge readers to weigh the evidence presented in this article before rebutting my assertion. In fact I invite readers to present evidence to the contrary. Nothing would make me happier than someone proving me wrong in my observations.

Read the full story

The team of activists at Nirmukta have two big announcements to make. These announcements carry certain important implications for the future of organized Freethought in India.

Before getting to the announcements, here is a statement explaining our use of the words ‘Freethought’ and ‘Nirmukta’. The word ‘Freethought’ is a fairly well-defined term to denote a point of view that rejects dogma, tradition and authority in favor of reason, logic and science. As a category it forms an umbrella term that incorporates social, political and philosophical modalities such as skepticism, rationalism, empiricism, naturalism, humanism, atheism, secularism and so forth. The word ‘Nirmukta’ is a Sanskrit word that means ‘Freed’ or ‘Liberated’. It is often used to describe a state of mind when one is liberated from the unenlightened ideas and repressive social conditions that bind us, keeping us from realizing the true splendor of reality. Nirmukta is freedom from dogma.

The Announcements:

I. The first announcement is about the newly formed Nirmukta Advisory Board.

As regular readers will know, the Nirmukta team has plans to register Nirmukta as a non-profit organization in the near future. There will soon be management and advisory roles to be filled on a permanent and official basis, but until then the Nirmukta Advisory Board is an unofficial solution to facilitate organization and planning. The board will coordinate the work through regular online meetings and frequent discussions on the forums.

At present the Nirmukta Advisory Board consists of:

1. Prof. Narendra Nayak - President of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations (FIRA)

2. Dr. Prabhakar Kamath - Founder of the Consumer Rights Movement in India

3. Shobhit Gupta - IT Professional living in Florida, coordinating the Media Network.

4. Rakshi Rath - PhD student in Psychology, filmed Prof Nayak on his recent tour.

5. Siddharth Singh - Social Networking Director and Associate Editor of Nirmukta.

6. Pankaj Kulkarni - Software Executive from Bangalore. Coordinator for Nirmukta Bangalore.

7. Babu Gogineni - International Director of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU)

8. Ajita Kamal - Founder, Editor and general coordinator of Nirmukta

II. The Nirmukta Advisory Board has approved the appointment of Dr. N. Bala as the National Coordinator of Nirmukta, on a temporary basis until the organization is registered. Dr. Bala is one of the coordinators of the Orkut group, Atheism in India, which has over 2000 members. He is also the creator of IndianHumanist.org and is an active participant in the Nirmuka Bangalore regional group. Dr. Bala will work in concert with the Nirmukta Advisory Board.

Looking Ahead

The Nirmukta Advisory Board is working on two broad areas of interest.

1. Media Network - We are putting together a team of websites, journalists and writers, programmers, designers, artists, filmmakers and PR people to help form a network of media resources with the agenda of promoting Freethought in India. We have already held two meetings, and a report on the progress of the media network will soon follow.

2. Regional groups - The online organizational work at Nirmukta will run parallel with on-ground activism, beginning with the establishment of regional groups across the country. Although there are many rationalist groups in India, we feel that there is a need for a nation-wide network of groups that connect young and progressive Indian Freethinkers. Our Bangalore group is the most active one at the moment, although we are seeing interest from Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai.

Dr. Bala will begin acting in his capacity as coordinator, contacting individuals and groups across the country. His appointment helps bring the vast atheist community on the Orkut Atheism in India group together with the members of the Nirmukta facebook group, the Carvaka group on facebook, the Indian Atheists fan page on Facebook and the Indian Atheists group on Atheist Nexus, all of which have been under Nirmukta management since their inception.

Our plan is to build a large online coalition for Freethought in India. Join us, the movement needs you!

Email Us:

General Inquiries contact, Ajita or Siddharth: info@nirmukta.com, siddharth@nirmukta.com, ajita@nirmukta.com

Coordinating with Nirmukta contact, Dr. Bala : drnbala@nirmukta.com

Media Network related questions contact, Shobhit : shobhit@nirmukta.com

Video/Youtube related inquiries contact, Bala: videos@nirmukta.com

Note: This announcement has also been posted on the forums here. Please join us on the forums and become part of the Indian Freethought community.

Nirmukta Forums (nirmukta.net) Wallpaper, by Bala. (Click on Image)

Here are some news items.

1. Nirmukta Forums- The Only One Of Its Kind In India: Nirmukta.net, our very own online discussion forum for the Nirmukta Freethought Community, was launched successfully last Monday, the 5^th of April, 2010. Membership hasn’t sky-rocketed yet, but it is increasing steadily. These are the only privately hosted forums that deal exclusively with issues concerning the freethought community in India, as far as we know. Given the size of the country and the number of IT professionals that it produces, the potential for activism and community-building at these forums is all the more important. Read the full story