Pagan

Paganism is on the rise. By Pagan, I don’t mean ancient religion like Hinduism whose followers have been practicing their faith for thousands of years without conflict, severe repression or interference from other organized religions like Islam or Christianity.

I’m more interested in extinct religion like the belief system of the pagan of Arabia before the pre-Islamic era and also old western religions like Druidism, Wiccan and Asatru (before the emergence of Christianity).

While we can hardly find people claiming to worship or practice the ancient pagan religion of Arabia (maybe because we don’t exactly know what that is?), we can most certainly find some people (living mostly in western countries) who unashamedly and without even a slight hesitation confessing to have abandon their parents’ Christian faith and adopted the pagan religion of their ancestors.

Paganism is defined as

a broad group of indigenous and historical polytheistic religious traditions—primarily those of cultures known to the classical world. In a wider sense, paganism has also been understood to include any non-Abrahamic, folk, or ethnic religion.

You can find plenty of Youtube videos of folks who have embraced new version of old pagan religion like the Asatru (contemporary paganism )

Among reasons cited by them for abandoning the faith they were born into are:

• They no longer view Christianity as a divine religion. Christianity too has been deeply influenced by paganism
• They perceived Christianity as a ‘foreign faith’ because it originates from the Middle-East while the pagan religion of their ancestor has a very strong ‘local’ (western) root
• They reject organized religions (all of the main ones) because these religions don’t offer much benefit to mankind
• Paganism has allowed them to have a deeper and closer relationship to the nature

These are some of the reasons given by them.

Moving on.

We don’t know much about the pagan religion of Arabia. Did Islam ‘wiped’ out the old faith completely? I don’t think so because I’ve heard some people claiming that while the pagan concept of God of Arabia no longer exist but Islam has heavily borrowed many of the traditions/practices before Islam and incorporated in the new faith.

I’m not exactly sure if the Muslim community back then actively prosecuted people for following something unconventional or if the concept of conventional even existed back then. Based on the historical development of various sects and school of thoughts, people were not shy from expressing their ideas and we have written record of that. Unfortunately, it’s no longer the case now because if you have any opinions that seem unorthodox..you may get yourself kill..simply for even thinking about it. The society has really retrogressed much.

In the next few posts, we will hopefully look into the pagan religion of Arabia.

Eid is here

This has been an eventful month with lots of violence in the area known as the Middle East and elsewhere. In the Middle East, a band of rebels known as the ISIS or Islamic State is waging what they believe is a holy war against a few selective governments that they think are not Islamic enough for their taste. Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still going on strong and the idea of any form of a peaceful resolution is simply unattainable (right now) unfortunately. Egypt, the land of the Pyramids, has gone through a complete circle from dictatorship to populous revolution followed briefly by a democratic election and now they are back to military dictatorship. In other places greed is taking over every aspect of human life and even in places which are relatively safe (without conflicts), people are suffering in one form or another.

The fasting in the holy month of Ramadhan has finally come to an end. Celebration has already begun in many parts of the world. People who have fasted in this month, the children and those living in places with significant larger community of Muslim know the true joy of Eid.

Moving on, when exactly is the Eid year 2014 / 1435? Based on past experiences, the first day of Eid can fall on either of the three days depending on how you estimate and calculate the date and sight the birth of a new moon (moon sighting). There’s a historical precedence in the process of pre-determination of the first day of Eid. Some folks believe that this precedence is merely an optional suggestion/guideline and the expected outcome should/will still vary depending on various other astronomical/geographical/technological factors that either didn’t exist back then or were not explained clearly enough.

Last year, I blogged a bit about some of the issues related to the moon sighting. Based on my observation and despite all the challenges, I still think the best approach is to do-it-yourself moon sighting. Go out there and look for the hilal. If you are too lazy then take any of the days mentioned as the likely candidate and hope for the best.

Celebration of the Eid comes with some nice traditions that bring families and communities together (in the future, time and energy permitting, I think I’ll go deeper in the celebration of the Eid).

As of now, enjoy/ have fun.

Justice for the passengers of flight MH 17?

We are seeing some differences not only in the way how both these flights crashed but also on the way how the authority responsible to deal with this situation handled the investigation and also the behaviors from the victims’ family and the expectation of the world in general.

MH 370: The Malaysian Authorities (government and representative from the airline company) were proven to be very incompetent. They embarrassed themselves way too many times. Because the flight disappeared under such a mysterious circumstance, the people were more than willing to overlook the less than stealer search mission. Most of us hoped that they will find the plane because we were frustrated of not being able to solve the mystery of its disappearance.

MH 17: Because it happened in a foreign soil right in the middle of a conflict zone, no one knew exactly who was responsible to coordinate the investigation or how we can bring the dead bodies’ home.

MH 370: Cause of the crash is unknown. Did it really crash? We cannot say for sure without having some evidences to back it up but at the same time we also cannot say that the plane is still flying in the air! The most likely possibility based on the investigation is that it has crashed somewhere in the south western corner of the Indian Ocean.

MH 17: It crashed from 33 K feet above. The investigators have already dismissed mechanical failure or the weather as the cause (based on the evidence they have so far). They believe that the plane was brought down by a missile.

MH 370: Search mission was badly coordinated. The politicians who didn’t have enough expertise (or the know-how in the disaster-search) or were even skillful in communication were sending mix-messages in their daily session (briefing) with the journalists.

MH 17: The news cycle was equally dominated by reactions from whoever they put on tv (sometimes factual, many times it was just propagandas or blame-game, maybe because we know so much about the crash (even to the extent of knowing the type of missile that brought it down and the country of origin/manufacturer and where was it seen last)), and occasionally we see some raw footage of the crash site and victims. Because it happened in a conflict zone, it wasn’t easy to access the site. I heard that they are still denying the investigators the full access to the crash site that they need in order to do their job properly.

MH 370: The majority of the passengers were from China (Chinese origin). The families of the passengers were distraught and when they couldn’t get straight answers from Malaysia, many became angry and agitated. I also think that some of them were manipulated emotionally to act extra-aggressive (throwing tantrums and calling for boycotting).

MH 17: I didn’t see the same level of distrust exhibited by the families of the passengers, the majority of whom were of Dutch origin. They wanted their government to act quickly to resolve the standoff, get the bodies home and start the investigation. Most of the European countries are working on tougher economical sanction against Russia because of this incident, but a lot of people are still reserving their judgments until the investigation concluded.

Do you think that the people who brought down Malaysia Airlines flight mh 17 killing all the passengers will be brought to justice?

I really doubt that the justice will be served in this case because the criminals are shielded by very powerful people.

Do scientific miracles really exist in the Quran?

The discussion about scientific ‘miracles’ of the Quran can be very argumentative. I generally try to stay away from it, mainly because I’m not a very big believer of the scientific miracles of the Quran.

Some of the verses in the Quran appear to be very insightful (like human conception, life beginning from water, the concept of atom etc) but overall I don’t think the Quran contains extraordinary revelation about any branches of sciences (physical, biological, astronomy, quantum, etc).

Perhaps some Muslims have found some very extraordinary claims (interesting or mysterious) from the Quran and so they see this as something very ‘magical’ and hence it must be from the God, otherwise how on earth can someone even possibly know all those ‘scientific’ facts, some of them that only came into existence as recent as the 19th and 20th century.

See, this is the part that has always confuses me. The so-called scientific verses from the Quran are very interesting, no doubt, but they don’t really translate well into real scientific statements/facts/theories that is contained in the modern scientific corpus.

For e.g, A verse from the Quran claims that that the life began/originate from water. I would of course agree because if we had no water then human being would die from thirst, the livestock and animals would die and no plants could grow to sustain life for the benefit of human and non-human. So without a doubt, water is the most crucial source of life. This is intuitive.

The folks who seem to believe in the scientific miracles of the Quran claim that we cannot just look at the most obvious interpretation of that verse but go one step further, at the creation of life itself (or the origin of every living being on earth). And this is where I think the whole argument falls apart.

Science of creation of living being doesn’t really give you a nice one sentence statement. It is a very complex chemical and biological process way beyond the comprehension of most folks in which water may have played a small/big role depending on how you choose to look at.

I’m also aware that a lot of these Quranic verses are twisted and tweaked to fit in the ‘scientific’ description. For, eg there’s one verse that talked about how ‘the earth and sky/heaven were initially joined together’ but then it was split apart. Someone actually think that this verse is talking about the big bang theory of the Universe! Can you believe that?!

Moving on.

I’m not entirely sure but I think this ‘looking for sciences in the Quranic verses’ is a recent phenomenon. I remember reading about a book written by a Muslim convert (ex-Christian?) who was soo impressed by what he was reading in the Quran that he started to read way more than he should have. Yep, he ‘discovered’ interesting ‘scientific facts’. His book became a bestseller of some sorts in the Muslim World. Muslims were convinced that the Quran contains many hidden proofs/gems that matched exactly with the modern science. Maybe the convert who wrote that book had the purest of intention but the people who came later didn’t have the purest of intentions. I’m not going to name names but I think you can guess who those folks are.

Let’s now look into the ancient and medieval Muslim scientists who were making breakthrough scientific discoveries. Did they have a deeper connection to the Quran than at the surface level as we know it? Perhaps they were inspired by the book to ponder on the environment/nature they are living in, be curious and seek knowledge. People who are considered as ‘Quran experts’ (translators, historian and exegists) don’t go beyond the traditional methods. They may have utilized scientific process in their work but they could care less about anything specific from the realm of natural sciences.

Too many propagandas and conspiracy theories

Have you been noticing that we have been bombarded with an unreasonable high number of propagandas and conspiracy theories regarding the recent crash involving the Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17?

A few months ago we had another case of a Malaysian Airlines plane with almost the same size and capacity that went missing mysteriously (MH 370). I remember reading the many conflicting news reports about that incident. People mostly had no clue as to what actually happened to the airplane. When the investigation didn’t find/reveal anything insightful (as to the location of the crash, who and for what/motive), then all of the speculations started to sound believable. We couldn’t really verify or even reject any of the claims because we didn’t have access to the crash site, the black box or the victims.

This time everything is very different. We actually have a crash site, very good tracking capabilities (via satellites and flight trackers), ground reports of the incident, the black boxes, and even victim’s bodies. So, it shouldn’t really be that hard to piece everything together..right?

Wrong!

We are currently living in the age of technology where massive propaganda and conspiracy theories can be easily disseminated rapidly. If they don’t like the way you are thinking about something then they will try to change it, logically if they can, emotionally if they must.

I’m completely against these sort of mind manipulations (propagandas, conspiracies, false advertising, social experiments, what have you) because I think they are not entirely ethical.

Moving on.

I was trying to find a list of conspiracy theories about the crash, who said what, when and possibly a refutation of them. It seems no one has done a good job on it yet. I hope someone can do this in the future.

I saw an article today that analyzed one or two of the talking points (very narrowly in the context of what the American public might be interested to read). It is about one of the alleged comments made by the rebel leader after shooting down what he thought was a Ukrainian military plane which was later identified as flight MH 17. The site provided an evidence to support the claim; a screenshot of a post by the rebel leader which was deleted soon after.)

I think we should have a checklist of all the claims made; by who and when; and see if any of it can be supported with the existing facts.

I almost believe that we would be able to uncover all the facts truthfully if the investigators were given unlimited access to the site provided that the crucial evidences are not lost.