Its Mark* again. This time he’s brought up another topic: equating Rationalism and Rebellion. As explained in the previous blog i’d like to repeat: rationalism is judging situations based on facts rathar than on opinions of self or others. Mark also argued that these “facts” could also be opinions of others. i beg to differ. An example could be beneficial at this stage.
The best i think anyone would accept are of two extremely important views in science. One is the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, first proposed by Charles Darwin. The other are the Thermodynamic Laws. What differs in these? The former is a theory and the latter a law. A ‘theory’ is generally more based on personal opinions and is sort of an explaination for some situation that cannot be accounted for, without any prior verification. That’s the reason why the “Theory” of evolution has always been evolving to fit the limited minds of scientists bent on proving it right.
The Laws of thermodynamics are as far from being a theory as a chicken is from being a coconut. They’re basically a set of rules that can be verified in any experiment. Unlike a theory, a law can be verified.Period. It is a rational explanation for an event. The facts always add up when using a law. Check out some: The Laws of motion, The Laws of gravitation, Coulombs Law, E=mc^2, Ohm’s Law,etc,. You name it, each one can be proved experimentally. That’s the reason we don’t have any “Law of Evolution.” In the case of evolution its always: it could have happened or i might have happened. Surely there could be a million species under the same genus but that’s no reason to believe in Evolution. Since its proposal there have been numerous other theorys of evolution, each clarifying its predessor. They range from Theistic Evolution (where some kind of deity created/left the first living cells on earth which led to evolution and later to us) to one that proposes that life evolved from bacteria that came to the earth via an asteroid hit. There are still other bizzare explanations for life on earth. Each a modification of the Theory of Evolution v1.0. People have lost count of how many there have been since version 1.0. I consider it Open Source so any one can have his/her own opinion on it. The main reason i don’t buy the idea of evolution is because it goes against the laws of Thermodynamics, especially the one that says that the randomness of a system always increases if left to itself( Entropy, its called). It can be used to explain why people differ in faces and why there are so many species in the same family but the idea that a single celled organism could organise itself into one multicelled organism(without external interfernece) completely makes the second law of thermodynamics void. Sadly, any discovery (of paleontological importance) made in recent times is automatically assumed to have a great role played by the unseen hand of evolution, not realising that its just a theory which hardly answers many questions posed to us by nature and more importantly by physics. There is not so much to cheer for people of religion either, since (this article was not intended to be a fight of religion against evolution..) religion as a belief system too fails to give appropriate answers. As a matter of fact, both are an act of faith.
Coming back to where we bagan i’d like you to understand this: a rational mind would always equate facts and give an explanation based on verification of facts in other similar situations(eg. Copper would never displace Hydrogen from sulphuric acid at 300K Temperature and 760mm of Hg Pressure anywhere in the universe due to certain laws of physics governing the interaction of molecules). I now hope that we have a perfect idea of what i mean by rationalism.
Rebellion, on the other hand, takes many forms and has many flavours. Although starting out from a ‘rational’ mind, as the author of it might believe, it eventually crosses all bourndaries of rationalism. An example is the First War of Independance (of India). No doubt it was all in good interest but it took us 100 long years and a cartridge lined with cow fat to realise that we were in bondage. It later turned out to be a little more than mutiny. Its downfall was not its cause but the zeal in which the cause was undertaken which led its conspirators to make rash decisions and the cause soon fell apart when regional alleigence came to play. The idea of freedom was soon forgotten in the cacaphony of regionalism. That is the case with all rebellion, although the idea is rational but it is soon overpowered by such zeal that people soon forget the idea itself. Other examples of ‘rebels’ are the Naxalites, the LTTE, the armed seperatists of Punjab(in the 80s and 90s) and Kashmir and other Terrorist Organizations around the world serving the needs of the intellectually demented. It is possible that America might have brought much sorrow to many developing nations due to its foreign policy but that’s no reason to murder its citizens. It is also true that if people live acording to their own religious belief systems there would be none of the problems we face currently. But its all an optimistic hypothesis of a realist. A prominent Indian leader once remarked that Hinduism is a religion of tolerance but now they (the Hindus) have been forced in to intolerance by Minority communities. What i found very interesting is this that in making that statement he seems to tell that the Hindus have now decided not to be Hindus anymore. Have they changed their belief system? If so then they have changed it to something that causes pain to others in their vicinity. A completely irrational choice. They have just rebelled against their belief system that is inclusive of Tolerance. The same goes for the Muslims also. And for any community that takes to extremism to salvage pride.
I would like to make a special mention of Christians since they do not have any armed struggle going on that i know of. The main accusation against this community is that they perform forceful conversions. That is completely true. But is that allowed according to their belief system. Often in these cases more numbers added to the church by a pastor moves him to a position of great importance. For any rational individual if doing something causes him to propagate his chances of prosperity then he/she is likely to do it. Thus, false conversions result. In doing so they break their own commandments: Don’t propagate falsehood. They’ve just rebelled against their belief system causing ill feeling to others. An irrational choice. The idea was rational but the means were unethical. Christians believe in spreading “the Gospel of Christ.” Christ had told them to do it but not through forceful conversions. Conversion was to be an act of the person who believes.
The examples provided above reveal a marked difference between the Rational and the Rebellious. What people don’t realize is that questions are always posed by the rational but sadly, rational ideas and questions posed by many (especially in our country) are considered a form of rebellion against a governing authority so people have stopped being rational anymore. Which explains why we see lot of people funding extremist projects, sheltering goons and others helping terrorists build roads to destruction. In all this one question remains: Who is to be blamed for rebellion?
*Name changed to protect identity
