Spiritual Side - Religion or Science ???

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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jainpushp/message/1843


Is Jainism a fanaticism?

What if some one trys ..... Is Jainism (Kanetheism) a fanaticism?

Kanetheism is a religious science, a scientific religion, Kanethism in this

vein is a.........

Help prepare me for a Weinburg type court and audience PLEASE !!!

Got a Constitution still for a while .....



Side jib ... if your an atheist, tooooo bad, keep it to your selfs already and do not impose a belief in no, nothing, non, nix, false on anyone that will believe -- keep the Heckle to you and yours Jeckle -- we need away from your un, non, none, nine, keinen, beliefs here. WE ARE YES MEN AND WOMEN - foooooool!

No is one's first 'majic' power -- get over it already.

Fear is one's most 'fun'-'da'-'mental' emotion -- master overcoming it and be brave - starts around saying yes. No more origional sin -- just keep putting out not OFF.


Jai Jinendra

Please read the following blog and my comments thereof.

With regards

Dev

Weinberg, Harris, Krauss

http://hokum-balderdash.blogspot.com/2006/11/weinberg-harris-krauss.html

http://beyondbelief2006.org/Watch/

Spent midnight last night (or should I say this morning) viewing the first

session of the Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason, and Survival

conference held at the Salk Institute some three weeks ago. The topic of

discussion for the first round of panelists was the conflict between science

and religion. The first speaker was distinguished physicist and Nobel Prize

laureate Steven Weinberg who made no bones about where he stood on

the issue. He noted how for him the conflict is paramount, more important

than science education or environmental issues, even as he believed that

the public was largely not antiscience. Weinberg was explicit and succinct

about respect of religious beliefs--they don't deserve it. And I gather that

this is so because, among other things, "so much of religious thought

seems to be nothing else than wishful thinking." He ended with the

following words:


I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious

belief. And anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion

should be done and may in fact in the end be our greatest contribution to

civilization.


That must be music to Dawkins. (And it certainly got the adrenalin going

for me)


Sam Harris was another speaker in that session and as we know Harris is

a staunch atheist (some may say extremist) who sees religion today as a

very probable cause for what could be the downfall of civilization, or at the

very least secularism and the scientific enterprise. I don't share Harris'

paranoia, and I'm with Weinberg who sees Islam (rather than the world's

religions as a collective) as the one to keep an eye on. In fairness, Harris

is pretty clear that it would be a freezing day in hell before we see

Buddhist suicide bombers, and that if there is such a thing as fanaticism in

Jainism then the more fanatic a Jain is the more nonviolent he becomes

(imagine one standing catatonically still for fear of stepping on tiny insects

and hardly breathing for fear of inadvertently swallowing and killing

airborne microbes). There is much in what Harris says about religion that

we can only assent to. Any worldview that remains intractably anchored in

Bronze and Iron Age mythologies must certainly be, at the very least,

intellectually debilitating. I'm with Harris in underscoring the patently crazy

beliefs that religionists have in their jam packed baggage. During the

session Harris gave the example of someone waking up in the morning

fully convinced that after chanting some Latin words over his breakfast

cereal he was now about to dine on the body of Julius Caesar. Plain

ludicrous, of course. Such a person would be rightly diagnosed even by a

non-psychiatrist as suffering from a delusion. On the other hand, everyone

who professes that a cracker similarly chanted over is the body of Jesus

are deemed sane simply because these are Catholic beliefs. Yet both are

delusions, only that the other has been institutionalized (won't we be

relieved if it were in the other sense of that word). The problem Harris

points out is that religious beliefs have been sheltered from criticism. It

has been taboo to speak out and criticize religion openly. Needless to say,

there is a difference between the free world and the Islamic nations where

criticism and questioning of religion has pretty fatal consequences.


Physicist Lawrence Krauss also gave his opinion on the conflict. While

being a person without faith, his stance on the conflict is closer to a

proactive solution wherein he wants to teach and educate the public about

what science is and share the discoveries of science. Ignorance of science

for him is what needs to be addressed. Doubtless, education is crucial in

waking people up. On the other hand, as Harris points out being

scientifically savvy is sometimes just not enough. He gives the example of

Francis Collins, the leader of the human genome project. I dare say

Collins knows more molecular biology than Harris does. But Collins is

completely head over heels over Christ and salvation. In his latest book

Collins reveals he finally accepted Christ during one of his hikes up the

mountain. When he saw this frozen waterfall he was completely awed by it

and he then fell on his knees, broke down, and gave himself to Jesus (and

he perhaps broke down because part of his grey matter accidentally fell

out). Clearly, as Michael Shermer points out in Why People Believe Weird

Things even very smart people (Mensans and those with PhDs) can fall for

and adopt pretty strange beliefs (James Randi would split hairs here and

say being highly educated is not the same as being smart). In Collins'

case, his critical faculties vis-a-vis religion were swamped in part by the

welter of emotions.


---


The nine Beyond Belief video files are huge--some 150 to 250 megabytes

each. If you've got a broadband connection you can watch them via

streaming video (the sessions last from 1 to 2 hours). If not, you can

download the files as I did. In my case each file took 10 to 15 hours. I just

love these types of lectures/talks.

posted by Edwardson at 11:35 AM


1 Comments:

Major religions of today are mostly warped in superstition and rituals. I

being a scientist can emphathise with the perception of most of the

speakers as summarised by this author. But, as a Jain, I must say, the

author's perception of Jainism, to say the least, is myopic. Only Jain

monks practice non-violence of the type he has picturised. The laity

among Jains live life just as anyone from other religion except that he or

she is a vegetarian, teetotaler, abhors alcoholic beverages and dating, I

can assure one and all, if the core principles of Jainism (care for fellow

beings, truth with concern, non-stealing, sexual discipline, limiting

possessions, accommodating others' views and space, vegetarianism, etc.)

is understood and practised, almost all problems in the world would

disappear.


I hope, while commenting on any religion, one is rather careful to

preserve one's intelligence among learneds.

Prof. Dr. C. Devakumar

By Dr. C., at 2:13 PM, November 28, 2006
_________________

“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.” - Thomas Paine