Religion God etc - A Discussion

This is from a discussion on my Undergrad email group, I have pasted the conversation into the comments. Some times a joke, a flippant remark or even a single wise crack starts of a serious discussion, so even though I wrote something as a trite remark it started soemthing serious and I got serious too hhaha, all in all it was a great conversation.

adarsh:
I have been thinking about religion and hinduism, i think hinduism is the super duper religion of all time, there were initially 9 avtars of god, if you look at them closely, these 9 avtars correspond to the 9 stages of evolution, fish,tortoise,boar,little man,big man, uncontrolable angry man, decent man, perfect man, naughty man, and then we get to the future, but thats another story. Where hinduism is super cool is buddhists claim to be a big religion,I mean they are, all of china is buddhism, but since hindusim claims buddha as the 10th avtar of vishnu, all buddhists automatically become hindus, I hear somehwere they are working on making jesus and mohammad 11 and 12 avatars of vishnu then the whole world becomes hindus, world domination by acceptance muhahahahha muhhahahahha muhahahahha

What came first, God or Religion

Who came first, god or religion, this seems like a classic chicken and egg problem.

Who supports whom, god religion or religion god

Here are some ideas.

1) Religion was formed to enforce rules of society, and god to enforce religion
2) God was created to explain nature and someone used that to create religion
3) Religion was created to give meaning to life and god was then created to create religion
4) They existed independently until somebody joined them together
5) Aliens created both
6) This supreme being created itself and then layed down the tenets of religion
7) A quack came up with both to get free pizza

Purpose of Punishment

The purpose of punishment is not only to chastise someone for a crime, but also to discourage future occurences of the same. When the punishment doesnt deter someone from committing a crime it has failed as a punishment. In that regard, todays punishments have lost their direction, crimes have been on a rise, and will do so until the punishment system is corrected.

The law belives that it is better to pardon a 100 criminals than punish one innocent man, and also that one is innocent until proven guilty. These are the two basic tenets of Law or rather the basis on which the courts of justice function. Many places are doing away with the death penalty saying its inhuman, and there is more and more clamour or humane treatment of prisoners, human rights et all.

I think suffering, emotional and physical is a better form of punihment than death. We are all going to die, just a question of when and why, so death isnt such a big deterrent, but all of us arent goin to suffer emotional and mental trauma, well then thats a strong form of punishment.

We give to much credit to our ancestors

I was thinking about this yesterday, we give credit to our ancestors for many things, weathering the ice age, inventing religion, music, the creation of spices, creation of alcohol / wine, the wheel, the use of rice for food, salt as a condiment etc etc. The simplest reasoning is to think that everything came up randomly, by chance and through raw trial and error. Isnt it fishy that so many things came up through trial and error, agreed we are talking about thousands of years but look at the list of achievements wow thats a lot of success through mere trial and error.

Take rice for example, weve been eating rice since ages. I treat rice as a complex dish, in the sense you just cant eat rice raw like apples or mangoes or even vegetables, also by itself its just one grain and needs to be processed. It needs to be harvested, dehusked (maybe they didnt dehusk initially), cooked and then eaten. One cannot just eat one, you have a to gather a whole bunch of them, then boil them for an extended period of time (we assume fire already exists) and then eat them.
the simple explanation is, a whole bunch of rice grew together, and man used to look at the field and wonder as to what to do with those small seeds, they taste like stone especially with the husk and extremly time consuming to collect. He gets angry with his kids one day and tells them to gather a whole bunch, enough to fill a big pot (that will keep those brats busy for a day). The kids then labour on and leave this rice in a bowl (and probably with a whole bunch of pebbles to make up the volume, aha! the first adultrator hehe). It finally rains one day, pot gets filled with water, and then they eat it after many days, or their place catches fire due to a lighting or a wayward fire and this rice gets cooked (Let there be rice and then there was rice, enough to feed millions of people). Back to the story, this guy who was just trying to keep his kids busy, was rained upon, drenched, his place on fire, his stored stockpile of food destroyed, probably lost a few of his children, friends and wives (lucky him oops bad joke), notices that this thing rice tastes good now, he retraces the events that took place, and figures out aha I collect these thing called rice, put it in a pot, boil it and I will get food that tastes good and fills me up, hip hip hurrah chalk one point for humanity. Can you belive this.

This story looks straight out of a hollywood movie, similarly with making wine with grapes, making scotch and vodka and things more incredible like spices (that delicate blend), coffee, tea..... the list goes on, how lucky can man get, how smart or how many random strikes.
Another interesting thing is, lots of things evolved similarly in so many different palces, again going back to rice, Chinese have rice, Indians do, so do the Mexicans etc. Random acts in one place is say possible, but everywhere around the world hmmm.

I am not saying some alien race came and told us how to make rice, or something else happened, all I am trying to say is we might want to re-evaluate our history, our ancestors, and their accomplishments we take for granted. Leaving every explanation to evolution and chance chaos and randomness isnt going to cut the cheese (eeks make that mustard). we give them credit for figuring out way to many things.

Blue collar vs White collar camaradrie

I have noticed that there is a lot more fun and talk among blue collar workmen than professionals or white collars working together. Workmen joke around more, the are free with each other, they laugh more and give an appearance that they are having fun together. I usually see them climbing the train together, there is a lot more swapping of stories, fun stories, jokes on each other and they just seem to be enjoying each others company. Its almost like school, I remember the carefree laughter among friends while we were pulling someones leg or generally swapping jokes.

This is in stark contrast to the so called professionals or rather the white collared professionals. Its not that they dont have fun together. They go out the ball games, or play pool or whirley ball, good dinner, workout together etc but that care free laughter is missing. Seldom is there good natured bantering, and very rare is that laughter, that care free laughter.

Maybe white collars have a more sense of competition with each other, a sense that its one against another in a dog eat dog world. Thats the essesntial deterrent for carefree conversation. Ofcourse there is aways a boss watching in the neighbourhood, which strictens the atmosphere. There is also the stick the nose up, we are proffesionals aspect, sitting down together and having a happy conversation is an unknown here.

we spent 1/3 of our day at work/school, assuming we sleep for another 1/3 we spend 1/2 our living day at work/school. If we are not happy for that 1/2, life becomes a bore, for all we say about work being a satisfaction in itself, carreer, succes, reward, money etc one needs to have a fun work atmosphere to be able to bear it. The best work places have a casual atmosphere among the people there, they are happy together, they dont just work and go home, they share life with each other, consider this, we spend more time with our fellow employees than our parents or relatives, lets hope they are a good bunch.

Melancholic Friday

Melancholy, oh melancholy why does thou wrap me in thy arms, why does thou follow me like a moonlight shadow, dark and sinister, overhanging, a woeful reminder, a mirthless friend. Will I ever be able to escape thy wretched grasp. A feeling of desperation, lonliness and lack of inspiration is making this day a dreadful apparition. The mind is lost in some god forsaken twilight zone, neither here nor there, trishanku's heaven. As the heart and soul wander around without direction, I habitate zombie nation, in automatic, out of control. There is a cloud hanging over my head, a big dark cumulo nimbus one at that, one that doesnt pour but maintains a steady drizzle prempting any action.