Who needs rockets and space probes? We have Dr P. V. Vartak an MD who does experiments in his spare time. Here’s part of his list:
First experiment of Astral Travel in Samadhi to the planet Mars was performed on 10th August, 1975. A report of his 21 observations was published, out of which 20 observations were fully corroborated by the spaceship Viking 1, after 21st July, 1976, i.e. almost one year after his observations. The 21st observation about ancient water and moss on the Mars was established by another spaceship, the Pathfinder in 1987, 12 years later.
In his second experiment of Astral Travel on 12th August, 1976, he observed by Clairvoyance the docking of spaceships Viking-1 & Viking-2. Advance observation by him was subsequently confirmed by NASA on 7th Sept. 1976.
In yet another Astral Travel to the planet Jupiter on 27th August 1977 , he made 18 distinct observations on the Jupiter. Spaceship Voyager corroborated his 10 observations in 1979, while the remaining observations are yet to be tangibly proved, may be, through some future space program of humanity.
In 1980, during his Samadhi, he saw a man on a celestial body in another Solar System . He has published his findings through this transcendental feat in his book , ‘Scientific Explanation of the Katha Upanishad.’
USA had planned to launch a spaceship to the Saturn to reach & study the planet in 2004. He, through his transcendental visit to Saturn visualized that the Saturn is a ball of three types of revolving heavy gases, having purple, yellow and black shades. The famous ring of Saturn is made of some material like slurry or mud along with floating rocks. There are no land marks on the Saturn because there is no formation of land. In the third edition (2003) of his autobiography ‘ Brahmarashichi Samaranayatra’, he has published his observations about the planet Saturn.
Take that, Phil Plait! Astronomy has just become superfluous!
Unfortunately, Dr Vartak’s credibility isn’t perfect. He was a surgeon, would you believe…would you let this guy anywhere near you with a knife?
One thing he’s good for: he’s a Hindu theologian. Point some of those fanatical Christians to his publishings every time they start asserting the truth of the Bible — Vartak plays the same game of treating holy writ as scientific data, and comes to the conclusion that the Upanishads were literally true and accurate in every regard. Besides, that Jesus guy was a Tamil Hindu, don’t you know.
A sample return should be a cinch.
Not that we doubt you, Vartak (no, really), it’s just that a sample return would be invaluable, and would shore up your claims immensely.
So pick up a damned rock next time you visit Mars.
Glen Davidson
I get the feeling, these assertions that his findings were corroborated on by various probes and missions are probably for findings that any amateur with a telescope could find, and were doubly confirmed during the space missions.
By the Emperor, am I tired.
Damn comma splice.
Better.
I know I’m not a native speaker but anyone else read the line above as
?
I truly LOL’ed before realizing my mistake… :)
Pathfinder was in 1997. Not the worst mistake ever, but it’s the kind that shows a somewhat cavalier attitude toward this all-important “confirmation” that is claimed.
Glen Davidson
I don’t understand what this is supposed to mean. Have you met surgeons? I very much doubt that the flakey, conceited, religious ones are as small a minority as we would hope. I’ve had two or three surgeries over my lifetime, and am scheduled for another in just over a week. I’d pretty much bet money that most if not all who’ve operated on me hold at least a few beliefs that would cause me to recoil in horror.
Skepticality and rationality aren’t anything like ubiquitous among health care providers, even among those held in high social esteem.
I’m still excited about the discovery of moss on Mars. Why hasn’t this made the news? Or is this another case of the findings of theist scientists being quashed by the Darwinian Hegemon?
Or, in other words, the unknown facts that he “predicted” were all wrong (just like the stupid and false claim about slurry or mud in the rings of Saturn), but, like with IDiocy, no claim is actually falsifiable and may prove to be true in the future.
Glen Davidson
Amazing how these guys see things millions of miles away where nobody can check it, but if you ask them what is written on a piece of paper in the next room they can’t give the answer.
All of those observations, and he missed the teapot orbiting Mars–I saw it on an acid trip, so there.
Shows how wrong he really is.
Glen Davidson
from his site:
“Rose plant bears fruits.”
golly
See, this is the value of interfaith collaboration. If he’d been working with, say, Islamic scientists, he would have described Saturn’s rings as consisting of ‘chewed lumps of flesh’ and been totes accurate.
He needs a knife? Can’t he just reach in from the astral plane and remove organs with his hands? I saw it done on TV like, 20 years ago. This guy isn’t keeping up with advances in his field.
“I very much doubt that the flakey, conceited, religious ones are as small a minority as we would hope.”
True. as supporting evidence for this, I would point to the braying font of idiocy that goes by the name Michael Egnor. Allegedly a neurosurgeon, Egnor’s preening dimwittedness resulted in the neologism “egnorance” which means “a combination of complete ignorance and overwhelming arrogance”.
It’s a common complaint when dealing with extraordinary claims that practitioners of these arcane abilities simply don’t make falsifiable claims. This one did, so I felt it only right to go check out what he ‘saw’.
Presented for your amusement, these are his claimed observations during his 1975 Astral Travel:
Pretty boilerplate stuff, could have been lifted from any pop-sci magazine of the time. I did laugh long and hard at the implication that Mars and Earth don’t have craters like Earth’s moon (or that no impact craters have ever been found on Earth!). I guess he hasn’t found a way to project himself to the Hellas or Argyre Basins. I’d also postulate he’s completely ignorant of erosion processes.
Also, good to know there are no mountains, valleys, stones, or pebbles on Earth’s moon.
“I’m still excited about the discovery of moss on Mars. Why hasn’t this made the news?”
Well the problem is that the moss only grows on the north side of the trees and since Spirit is now defunct it’s unable to cycle back around to take a sample. Opportunity apparently had the misfortune to land in a tree less area.
Mike.
(5) and (7) are wrong.
(3) and (10) are fractally wrong.
Neither Viking “docked” with anything. They were orbiters with detachable landers.
I thought these idiots believed either that Jesus was the ninth incarnation of Vishnu (the one after Krishna), or that he and Krishna were somehow the same “person”. Oh well, live and learn etc..
I wouldn’t trust this guy to pick up my rubbish.
Back in 1980, about 14 or 15 Saturn moons were known about. Today, it’s up to 62. If he’d reported the latter figure after his astral jaunt back then, he might have been more plausible.
Considering that Viking 1 and Viking 2 never docked with each other, that would be a neat trick. I’d like to see the NASA confirmation of this.
Was this man’s name John Carter? He might have gotten lost on his way to Mars, and Dr. Vartak could have pointed him in the right direction.
(BTW, saw the movie; good popcorn flick.)
(1) – Easy enough to guess, given the extensive telescopic exploration that was done prior to Pathfinder, and the fact that we hadn’t found a single shred of life anywhere else in the universe.
(2) – Factually wrong; there is water in the ice caps and beneath the surface. I MIGHT give him partial credit for specifying “neither flowing … nor stagnant”, which MAY mean he was implying liquid water.
(3) – See (10)
(4) – See (1); telescopic information provided that.
(5) – Morbidly false; we have many hundreds, if not thousands, of beautiful photos from Martian landers showing a red sky.
(6) – … Again, (1). Hell, we’ve known about Martian “canali” since the late 19th century.
(7) – Morbidly false, yet again. Even if it was true, the algae would have been sand-blasted into oblivion over the last few hundred million years. Of course, if we find any living “algae-like” critters in the polar ice caps creating those geysers, then he’ll just attribute this to that.
(8) – Wow, so the Martian rocks are red. Hum. That’s interesting, given that it’s a rock on a red planet. Well spotted, good Sir!
(9) – Patently false. Opportunity is currently exploring a crater, after exploring several other craters. Fuck, Opportunity landed in a crater!
(10) – See (3)
If astral travel worked, would there be the internet pr0ns?
Hey PZ, it’s not just astronomers who are superfluous, so are you biologists. Didn’t you read his “research paper” on Embryology and Chromosomes?
Full of gems such as “Modern science accepts only one function of the eye, which is the vision. However we have to admit the second function of the eyes that they store energy. We can observe that an energetic person has shining eyes. Intelligent person also shows lustre in his eyes. An ill person loses shining of his eyes”.
Pah, surgery? It’s not exactly rocket science, is it?
What happens to a person who has lost their eyes, I wonder? Do they store their energy someplace else? Fingernails? Shiny, shiny fingernails? Or shiny bald head?
Still this Astral Travel thing has got to be cheaper than blasting rockets and all these hi-tec electronic gizmos of into the ether. .. A bit like that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall where they can implant memories of your trip to Mars, because it is cheaper than actually going there.
My slight strabismus, myopia, and astigmatism tells people that I like piña coladas, getting caught in the rain, and cheesy 70s/80s songs, respectively.
<blockquotePah, surgery? It’s not exactly rocket science, is it?
Well, brain surgery isn’t.
It couldn’t hurt his case if he could be bothered to help give Spirit a nudge out of the soft soil and dust off its solar panels next time he’s in the neighborhood.
Please, Dr. Vartak?
I bet that kook has never actually looked at Jupiter or Saturn through a telescope…or can even identify them in the sky.
@David
What is fractally wrong?
There’s an infinite self-similarity of wrong as one examined it closer and closer?
From Vartak’s biography
See that? A renowned scholar. How many of us can say that? Sure we’re intelligent, educated, well-read, and even in Brownian’s case infamous, but renowned?
Scoff all you want, you scoffers. None of us can claim to be renowned.
Maybe surgery is more like engineering.
LOL. This blog subject has attracted sidebar adverts from MUM (Maharishi University of Management), where one can experience “consciousness based education.” Other universities have been attempting to educate the unconscious.
Oh yes they do. I’ve quite often been unconscious at lectures, to be honest. This is usually caused by an absence of coffee.
Okay. Good to know. I really needed to know that.
What a good example of spirally into an endless void of ever-more-detailed religious trivia.
Does it get more true and one goes down? Does it get more true as one adds detail?
Can Jesus dance with angels on the head of a Hindu pin?
People, please. There is no conflict between astral projection and science. Those who claim there is are confusing fundamentalist astral projection with real astral projection.
(waits for Templeton money to arrive)
Will the person who knows all the ins and outs of the Jesus-Ksna connection please also answer this question?
How does Brownian have gay sex with all the Pharyngula females?
“How does Brownian have gay sex with all the Pharyngula females?”
Respectfully, enthusiastically, and with great skill. All other details must remain eternally mysterious.
You’d better learn astral travel too, because NASA is going to be disbanded anyway, and hallucinating about walking on other worlds is pretty much the only thing mankind will be left with ;)
This guy has been spewing this nonsense for quite a while now. When I was in undergrad in Pune I read Dr. Vartak’s books in Marathi. I was interested in astronomy and had read a lot of popular astronomy books available. I remember arguing with friends that most of what Dr. Vartak claimed could be easily found in popular astronomy books of the day. In his books written in Marathi (the regional language of Maharashtra state), he makes many other claims such as ancient Indians, especially the characters in the mythologies in Ramayan and Mahabharat had mastered aviation and nuclear power and possessed nuclear weapons. Unfortunately this kind of nonsense is common in India but the audience has been limited to the local public so far. The common theme in the claims of these kooks is to “prove” that ancient scriptures in India (especially Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayan and Mahabharat) contain some hidden knowledge which proves that the people who compiled them were a scientifically advanced race. A lot of these claims also try to co-opt Jesus Christ in the hindu pantheon or try to prove that Jesus was somehow influenced by Indian mystics. Dr. Vartak has a book claiming that Jesus Christ was a Tamil brahmin!
I think there is a bit of anti-colonial streak in the work of these kooks. The desire to “prove” that we Indians were superior to them Westerners by glorifying the past.
Gee whiz…how can we afford to send things into space when contraception costs are eating up all our national budget. I’ve been watching a lot of Hannity and Limbaugh (it’s possible if you keep a syringe of adrenaline handy to restart your heart as necessary), and I estimate the costs to be in the hundreds of gazillions.
Given that this isn’t a real number, it’s especially devastating to the economy.
…what were we talking about again?
I think we were talking about astral abortions.
He observed the lolwut?
“First experiment of Astral Travel in Samadhi to the planet Mars was performed on 10th August, 1975”
1975? Thargfeathers!
E.R. Borroughs account of the 1868 travels to Mars on the Astral plane of John Carter , late of the Confederate Space Agency, appeared in print in 1917.
He was a surgeon, would you believe…would you let this guy anywhere near you with a knife?
What, you’d rather he be an internist and have your health depend on his getting the diagnosis and treatment right? Better that he should have a knife and no responsibility for actual thought.
Hmm…just so I don’t start a flame war with the surgeons reading this: My last comment was meant facetiously. Yes, surgeons make clinical decisions, usw.
baal said
I
Is astral travel worked Dr. Vartak would be using it to cut in line for gay sex with Brownian.
And yes, we would still have internet pr0ns, with new and improved homemade pr0ns!
They found moss on Mars all those years ago? Why the hell is NASA spending all that money finding evidence of life on the planet when it has been done already decades ago. We need more of this
assholeastral projection to answer all the big questions! It’s certainly cheaper than sending hundreds of million dollars probes and using real science!.
.
.
(For the newbies, yes that was sarcasm)
Is astral travel worked Dr. Vartak would be using it to cut in line for gay sex with Brownian.
How do we know he’s not?
“Surgeons don’t let skin stand between them and a diagnosis!”
“When in doubt, cut it out.”
“Heal with steel.”
Let’s not dismiss this out of hand.
Just think of the possibilities.
PZ could stay at home in bed while his astral self teaches his class.
Student #1: “I don’t remember Prof. Myers being ghostly white and translucent.”
Student #2: “He’s probably just under the weather.”
Student #3: “Or maybe he was bitten a radioactive jellyfish.”
You know, an edit button on this site would sure be nice.
Just saying.
@51: The classic joke about surgeons versus internists is: A surgeon and an internist go duck hunting. The internist sees ducks overhead and thinks, “Ducks! I’d better shoot. But wait…what if they’re quail or pheasants. It isn’t pheasant season. Or worse, domestic birds of some sort. Then there’s always pseudoducks…” By the time she finishes thinking about it, the ducks are long gone. The surgeon sees some birds overhead, lets loose a few dozen rounds with the shotgun, turns to the pathologist and says, “So what’d I hit?”
PZ says, ‘..plays the same game of treating holy writ as scientific data,’
Along those lines, if ya have a streaming Netflix account and wanna sit down with some popcorn for a good evening of laughable BS by various authors, publishers and a few with some abbreviated letters before and/or after their names (with special appearances by non other than Erich von Dainiken), then watch a few installments of ‘Ancient Aliens’.
If you’re bored and you want some good laughs, you’ll love watching these guys wade through layer upon layer of convoluted, contradictory, fantastically irrational, and laughably speculative baloney. Great entertainment (Warning: little science or reason–just entertainment.)
While visiting Mars on the astral plane Dr.Vartak was sued for malpractice for practicing psychic surgery without a license in an abortive attempt to cure Ming The Merciless’s warts.
Your comment comes across as narrow-minded. Why on earth should the Dasavataram be considered a bit of laughably obscure trivia? To those of us who were raised in Hindu households, the Dasavataram are as well known as the story of Moses parting the Red Sea, or the Garden of Eden. Not all atheists are ex-Christians.
From your earlier comment, you were under the mistaken impression that most Hindus believe Jesus is a Dasavatara of Vishnu. Anyone raised Hindu could have told you that was a big fucking mistake. If I said, “Christians believe that Mary gave birth to Mohammed!” I would quickly be corrected, and I would be glad to get my facts straight.
You mean you would be glad to get your mythology straight. No facts were harmed in the making of this discussion.
This so called as(s)tral travel is a common claim that we Indian activists have to face. A year back I had to face such a one from a Science teacher at a state level science meet. He told me that jsut the alst night he had been to a number of planets by as(s)stral travel.
So, I invited him to send his soul to my hand and read the serial number of a currency note I was holding he started walking towards me. I told him hold on hold your body there just send your soul and let that read the number. The assembled students laughed at him and he walked off in a huff!
My cahllenge for those who claim to as(s)tral travel is- just send your astral body into the sealed envelope that I am holding read the number of the currency note and go back to your body. The write it down. After that we will open the envelop and check it out. If you are right you will get all my worldly assets and also my other worldly too. Any takers?
The only real surprise is that there’s a surgeon who thinks that someone else is god.
Don’t disband NASA. Better way this is NOT.
(Why am I channneling Yoda all of a sudden?)
Wow, he “observed” all this one year before the Vikings! And, um, three years AFTER Mariner-9 shot thousands of photographs from orbit. Like riverbeds. No signs of vegetation. Dry and barren landscape. Clouds. Pretty much the claims that aren’t BS right away.
The Jupiter stuff is even more obsure, like this bit:
“I have mentioned half Moons. My right hand sides of these moons were lighted. The radiophoto dispatched by “Voyager” on 13 February 1979, shows one moon, in exactly the same position.”
http://www.drpvvartak.com/publishings/Jupiter.pdf
Lolwut? Moons are pinned to the sky of Jupiter?…
Awesome – think of the savings in money if they just got rid of NASA and all that unnecessary, elitist, scientific “stuff.” There’s a solution to the debt crisis – though not sure if it would cover a trillion dollars but here’s hoping…
The saddest thing is that, apart from Vartak, there will be other folks that buy this bollix hook line and sinker.
As a kid 60’s and early 70’s I had committed to memory every space shot of US and Russia…every mission and every result.
I am almost intimately aware of the Viking missions 1 & 2 …they never docked with anything and certainly not with each other.
They launched just under a month apart and arrived in orbit about a month apart and when V2 arrived in orbit V1 was already on the surface they touched down over a month apart they were never in the same piece of sky at the same time.
But of course reality is not the affect the good ole’ doc is about…it is to ensnare brain dead victims.
NASA has not a great deal to worry about in the scheme of things…but if one or two of the rethuglian hopefuls score this ‘data’ and they get to the Whitehouse…then of course all bets are off!
I use the Kuiper telescope located just north of Tucson AZ – it was specifically built to observe the moon and planets. Someone had put his book in the small library there. When I saw that, I also figured the telescope could now be shut down, and we just read the book.
Unfortunately, the book was gibberish. It talked of huge worms on Uranus, floating in the atmosphere like balloons. Of course the temperature on Uranus is far too low to allow such a thing. I don’t remember specifics from the other planets, but to say it is a far stretch to synchronize the book’s observations with results of spacecraft is a gross exaggeration.
How uncomfortable.
Sorry, I’ll get my coat…
Winterwind
As I was the person who first mentioned the Krishna/Christ thing maybe I should clarify this for you.
I said “these idiots”, meaning the (growing number of*) idiots, such as Vartak, who believe all this “Hindus had nuclear weapons/airplanes/visited Antarctica tens of thousands of years ago etc, and that everyone in ancient history was really a Hindu” bollocks. I was not trying to suggest that “most” Hindus conflate Krishna and Christ.
I’m sorry that your patriotic/cultural defensiveness rendered you unable to understand that. We’re equal opportunity sneerers here. And, anyway, why shouldn’t we laugh at the absurdities of Hindu mythology, such as Vishnu’s various incarnations (Half man, half pig? Really?)
Claiming Indians had nuclear weapons 26,000 BCE is just as laughable as trying to claim the universe is only 6,000 years old.
—————
* such as some of my Hindu in-laws in Chennai, so your “anyone raised Hindu could have told you that was a big fucking mistake” is completely wrong anyway. Was Vartak himself not raised a Hindu?
** who believe “sensible” stuff such as that there were once armies of flying monkeys etc.
Ring Tailed Lemurian,
since we’ve been discussing it lately on TET. You need to read up on the works of Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Chakavorty Spivak. (The latter two are from India.)
These lines here
really speak to an ignorance, or a dismissal, of the question of cultural dominance.
^ Sorry, during editing I lost the ** whch should have followed the word “Hindus” in the “I was not trying to suggest that “most” Hindus conflate Krishna and Christ” sentence.
Funny how he never mentions Venus and the Venera probes…
Astral exploration would be pretty handy on a planet where surface temperatures are around 450ºC and the atmospheric pressure is 92 times that of the Earth. Oh, and it rains sulfuric acid.
Pelamun, sorry, I should have said “I’m an equal opportunity sneerer”.
I missed the TET discussion. I don’t know Bhabha, Said makes sense (although I don’t recall him saying anything about how one cannot laugh at the absurdities of “other” religions), but I don’t have the up-your-own-arse academic mindset or jargon training to understand what the “deconstructivist” Spivak is arguing.
Ok, now everyone can have a go at me.
I’m far from being an expert on Orientalism myself.
But a statement like “I’m an equal opportunity sneerer” are nonsensical because they ignore the impression you make as a westerner (which I assume you are) in a post-colonial context. Your Indian in-laws don’t make you exempt from that.
I’m not saying PZ shouldn’t expose religious idiocy anyways like he does, I’m glad he does. But he usually doesn’t overgeneralise, or uses that kind of language that is easily misinterpreted.
You should have foreseen such a possibility when you first posted and defused it from the beginning. Maybe next time..
The problem in this case is how discourse about India is shaped in the west. Because westerners with expertise on India, be it due to their scholarship, or their in-laws, or whatever, often get to define it. In the worst case, this can lead to Indians not having their voices heard.
That doesn’t mean that westerners with expertise on India should shut up, of course not, but they should be more cautious in how they talk about it, as they should be mindful of how they shape the discourse on India in the West.
pelamun, you’ve now mentioned, twice, (slightly sneeringly) my reference to my in-laws. I did that, not to claim some supposed insight or superior knowledge of Hinduism, but merely to point out that Winterwind’s claim that “Anyone raised Hindu” etc was wrong and that I have met Hindus who do believe in the Krishna/Christ conflation nonsense. I fail to see how that can possibly be construed as “shaping the discourse” or “preventing their voices being heard”.
In your first post, you said
This is not very well phrased.
When called out on that you referenced your in-laws, and said
Yes, you’re shaping the discourse. You’re telling Indian people or (presumably) people of Indian descent that it’s their own fault when they were offended by your ambiguous statements.
I think the problem lies more with your reaction than your initial statement.
As my “these idiots” immediately followed me quoting PZ saying, about Vartak’s beliefs, “Besides, that Jesus guy was a Tamil Hindu, don’t you know” I think it was quite adequately phrased and that one would have to be looking for offence to not understand that I was referring to a small subset of Hindu woo believers and not all Hindus.
I’ve already explained that. Winterwind made an incorrect assertion (and, btw, was actually talking to Lynna, as you can see from the quote at the head of Winterwind’s comment, so it wasn’t me being “called out”). I gave (anecdotal, yes, but so what?) evidence that s/he was wrong. Was I supposed to not mention the fact that I have met people who believe exactly was Winterwind says they don’t?
As for my “patriotic/cultural defensivenhttp://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/03/12/disband-nasa-we-have-a-better-way/comment-page-1/#comment-286204ess” comment, it seems to me that it was pretty much in the same vein as, and influenced by, transmogrifier‘s comment “I think there is a bit of anti-colonial streak in the work of these kooks. The desire to “prove” that we Indians were superior to them Westerners by glorifying the past.”
You’re right, it was Lynna being called out and I do recognise her posts as coming from western privilege. But she hasn’t reacted to it yet, and she also hasn’t claimed any expertise regarding India. And it was you coming up berating winterwind for their alleged cultural defensiveness.
Transmogrifier is Indian, so their statements are interpreted in a different context than yours, see again the power imbalance issue in a post-colonial context.
(Unfortunately bringing in their in-laws is an all too common rhetorical device by self-appointed experts on a nonwestern culture. I’m not saying you are like that, but I hope you would be aware of that)
Look, I’ve said what I wanted to say because you seemed oblivious to the power imbalance/cultural dominance issue. To continue this discussion further would just derail the thread.
If you do want to continue, why not do it on TET?
I also don’t see the connection to transmogrifier’s comments here, because I don’t read winterwind’s posts as glorifying anything, just stating that it could be part of a Hindu upbringing.
a) I don’t want to continue, so I won’t respond to #79 either :)
b) I couldn’t continue it on TET even if I did want to because I’m currently using someone else’s internet and have it only temporarily as I’m homeless and have only been dipping in here as a break from the nightmare tedium of searching for a room. If I did start a conversation in TET I’d probably not be answer any points for a day or more at a time and you might think I was either unable to answer or being rude by not responding. And I’d get distracted by all the other posts and be homeless for ever. :)
(So far today I’ve had one person tell me “this is a Christian household” and two tell me that they only want “Muslim sisters”. I just wish they’d mentioned it in the adverts and saved me the cost of phoning them. Now, if I could do the astral travelling thing, I could sleep in 5 star hotels).
Well that’s fine, the topic will come up on TET from time to time, though.
Good luck on your apartment-hunting..
#58:
While I hate to detract from the lulz of your comment, the facts I was referring to here were facts about what people believe. I wasn’t suggesting the contents of their beliefs were facts.
“Most Christians believe Jesus is the son of God” is a fact. “Most Christians believe that Jesus was a flying dragon from outer space” is not a fact.
#67:
Thanks for clarifying. Based on his book title, Vartak doesn’t believe that Jesus was one of the Dasavatara. So it wasn’t clear whom your comment about “these idiots” believing that Krishna is a Dasavatara was aimed at.
I’m sorry that you feel the need to passive-aggressively insult my reading comprehension and suggest that people who have been the targets of racism and cultural prejudice need to just get over it.
If you’d bothered to read what Vartak actually believes in (his book title doesn’t say “Jesus was a Dasavatar” but rather “Jesus was a Tamil Brahmin Hindu”, so he’s not one of “those idiots”) you might have been able to express yourself less ambiguously.
It’s not about what mythology you sneer at. It’s about some mythologies being considered more important and worthy of attention because they are familiar to Westerners.
If I said, “Most Christian sects believe Jesus was a son of God. Jews don’t accept the divinity of Jesus.” I don’t think the response would be, “Hahaha! What an obscure and meaningless bit of trivia! Why would anyone want to know that?”
The point is that Christian and to a lesser extent Jewish mythology is more familiar to most of the readers here, and knowledge of it is taken for granted. Other mythologies are less familiar, and are more likely to be seen as exotic, alien, esoteric and ridiculous. This is a normal human cognitive bias that freethinkers should be aware of.
Where did I say one shouldn’t laugh at the absurdities of Hinduism? By all means laugh at the flying monkeys and sixteen-armed goddesses, which are just as irrational and absurd as sixteen-winged angels and rib ladies.
These Hindu myths are less familiar to the readers here, so they don’t understand the context in which these beliefs are played out. If you weren’t raised Jewish and had never met a Jewish person, and you decided to learn about Judaism by reading the Old Testament, you’d quickly come to the false conclusion that Jews are xenophobic barbarians who stone people to death for the most minor offences. Cultural context is important.
Yes, it is. And both are almost as laughable as claiming that racism, ignorance and cultural prejudice are not at play in the atheist community or sceptical movement.
All of these beliefs deserve to be sneered at. Which is good, because we’re all equal opportunity sneerers here, aren’t we?
I see your Hindu in-laws in Chennai and raise the stakes by one Vietnamese Buddhist brother-in-law, one Anglo New Age uncle, and an extended clan of Hindu relatives all over India, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and most of the known world. You don’t want to play Happy Families with me.
But seriously, while you’re generously doling out advice on reading comprehension to other people, you might want to try showing a bit of it yourself. You quoted one sentence from my comment. Try including the sentence just before it, too. Here, let me bold the significant bit for you.
So, apparently because you have some Hindu in-laws in Chennai who believe some bullshit, that proves that most Hindus believe in it? By that logic, I just have to find one Christian who disbelieves in Jesus’ divinity to prove that most Christians disbelieve in it. Awesome, that’ll make our job as atheists that much easier.
Maybe if you were, I don’t know, say, raised Hindu, you would have a bigger sample size than a few in-laws on which to base your impression of typical Hindu beliefs? Jesus Keerist!
Sorry, that should say “Jesus is a Dasavatara…”
Goddamnit, I arrived too late to make the first, second or even possibly third John Carter joke.
I like Burroughs’ version of Mars better. Why can’t there be red and green Martians and a Princess of Mars?
In fact, PZ, you should hold a poll and link this idiot to it: we’re allowed to vote on whether we think he’s right, or whether Burroughs is right. Or, we’ll be more honest about this poll’s allusion to Christian polls: the question is which version of Mars you PREFER to be true. How about it?
I was born in India a Hindu family and brought up as one. At the age of 11 I stopped believing all this stuff when I was a schoolboy. Wonder how this guy Vartak claims to be surgeon and yet believes this nonsense.
In many of my public interactions we have people claiming to all these powers but shut up when asked to demonstrate them. On further questioning they make claims like they know some one who has seen some one doing it long back and such blah,blah,blah. Its that those who have such powers are very shy and hiding in the Himalayas or would not like to show them off. However, all this reticence is not applicable in making such claims.
@ Winterwind #82
Ok, I have, unexpectedly, another day of internet access before I lose it for the next 3 days so I thought I’d better look at this thread again and see what’s happened.
First I would like to apologise wholeheartedly for the “patriotic/cultural defensiveness” sentence. That was wrong of me, on a number of levels. Mea culpa.
However, for whatever reason, you have failed to understand virtually everything I’ve said so I’d like to attempt to explain them again. (I’d prefer to do this in a private conversation but I don’t want to give out my email address here and nor do I want to clog up your blog so I’ll have to do it here).
You (#82) –
A) I did read it, and B) I said (#18)
because the Hindus I’ve met who believe, like Vartak, the “Ancient Hindus had nuclear weapons” rubbish also believe either of those things, but Vartak believes that Jesus was an actual, non-divine, Tamil human being. I was commenting that Vartak has yet another belief about Jesus, and that theory was new to me. What is so difficult to understand about that?
You (#82) –
Once again, it wasn’t me who said anything about it being an obscure bit of trivia, and you really shouldn’t have posted that in the middle of other quotes from me or as part of a response to a post of mine that you identify by number. You are misleading people and attributing to me things I never said. Even if you’d missed that the first time I’d already explained that to pelarum, so you had two chances to get that right, and failed. Next time you should make sure you’ve read things correctly before you accuse me of not having read what Vartak says.
WTF? I don’t want to play anything with you, but, once again, as I said to pelarum, I fail to see what is so heinous about what I said. You, misunderstanding what I said, claimed that nobody raised a Hindu believed in any Krishna/Christ conflation. I was giving evidence that, in my personal experience, that was not true. Why on earth should I not mention that the Hindu-raised people I’ve met who believe that happen to be my in-laws? Seriously, please explain to me exactly why you object to that. Without the silly sarcasm.
Then (#82) you go into another attack on my reading/comprehension failure and say
I never said anything of the sort, but, even if I had expressed myself badly the first time in my #18, I had addressed this in my #77 to pelarum where I explained
I’m afraid I have to quote your own words back at you –
Ring Tailed Lemurian,
I wasn’t gonna comment again, but it seems I must: are you really oblivious to the stereotype of the westerner who married an Asian person and now considers themself an expert on the culture of their spouse? I’m more familiar with it in the context of East and SE Asia, but I would be surprised if that didn’t exist in South Asia.
@ #87
So you’re admitting to treating me as a stereotype, not an individual? Not a good start.
*sigh* I said I’d met a few people who believed some (Hindu) woo. How is that in any way attempting to pass myself off as an “expert” on Hindu culture?
So you’re essentially telling me that because I married an (atheist) Indian 40-odd years ago I am now not allowed to comment on Hindu woo? (But you, and everyone else in this thread, from PZ onwards, are). How does that work?
If you are not going to conduct this discussion in good faith, and are going to police who can and can’t comment, please don’t.
You’re a fucking moron, right?
Fucking asshole, you have to be mindful of the stereotype so you can defuse situations like this. You also fucking fail at reading comprehension because in an earlier post I said probably you’re not it
However I’ve now come to the conclusion that you’re a fuckwit.
I’m not even going to address this because this again shows that you haven’t read and/or not understood any of my posts. Fucking idiot.
I had already bowed out of the thread, but in post 86 you showed you still hadn’t gotten my point, compelling me to comment again.
To see this as policing comments one must be an asshole like you.
In one word: Fuck off, asshole.
@89
This is probably a complete waste of time, but I’ll respond to the few non-insulting points in your post.
Maybe you’d care to tell me how I’m supposed to do that?
Should I have said, “some Hindus” instead of “some of my in-laws”? Why? (And, anyway, judging by your comments and attitude since, I now suspect that you would have accused me of making it up, or asked me for evidence, in which case I’d have had to say that they were my in-laws and we’d be back to square one).
Should I have said “I wish to make it clear that, although I have some in-laws that believe blah-blah, I am not one of those stereotypical westerners who marry non-westerners and then pretend to be experts on their culture, and am in no way am attempting to pass myself off as an expert?” Why should that be necessary? I was only talking about woo believers, not Hinduism itself, or Indian culture.
As you didn’t explain, even after I asked you, how am I supposed to understand your objections?
Well, as I’ve been responding point by point to your comments, and quoted you a number of times, it’s either daft, or dishonest, to accuse me of not having read your posts. You are quite right, however, that I haven’t understood the “stereotype” thing, but, when I’ve asked you to explain this to me you have merely repeated what you said, or said “I’m not even going to address this”, so I’d say that’s at least as much your fault as mine.
“compelling” you? :) Your choice. A) I was talking to Winterwind in #86, and B) I obviously did get your point about how it was wrong of me to have included the “patriotic/cultural defensiveness” sentence, as evidenced by the fact that I apologised to him about it. You couldn’t have missed that as you responded to that post.
I still don’t get your “point” about the stereotype, and, as you refuse to explain it, I guess I never will, unless you wish to do so now. (If, however, you are just going to swear at me then don’t bother).
[meta]
Pelamun, RTL is a long-term regular here, and one whose intelligence and acumen I respect.
(Your employment of ephithets are ain’t helping you, in my estimation; quite the contrary — it ain’t RTL who comes across as clueless)
JM – (it feels a bit weird to critcise someone for saying nice things about me, but…) that first sentence of yours is really just an argument from authority.
Even if what you said is true anything I say should stand or fall on its own merits.
But thanks anyway :)
I didn’t think anyone except me, pelamun and Winterwind (possibly) were still reading this thread. It must be very boring for anyone else.
Lynna OM, I needn’t address your question because I didn’t express an opinion on facts related to it.
Ring Tailed Lemurian expressed an opinion on facts when he or she wrote, “I thought these idiots believed either that Jesus was the ninth incarnation of Vishnu (the one after Krishna), or that he and Krishna were somehow the same ‘person’.”
It is an empirical matter that a certain portion of the population believe things or doesn’t believe them, regardless of whether the contents of those beliefs themselves are factual. Perhaps RTL was being flippant, but what RTL expressed was misleading nonetheless. I then pointed out that only a minority of Hindus (and the fact of the matter is that Hare Krishnas often argue that they aren’t Hindus) would make such a claim. Indeed, most of that minority exists outside India.
I agree that the details in question are, in a sense, very much an example of counting angels on the head of a pin. But the Hindu understanding of Dasavatara is far more widespread than western theological discourses on counting angels on the head of a pin ever was, and as such, it comprises a part of the Durkheimian notion of social facts–things we should endeavor to get right if we want to understand what makes people tick.
Indeed, it is highly probably that if Jesus were considered Dasavatara the horrific Orissa Pogrom of 2008 wouldn’t have occurred because Christianity could no longer be deemed an “outsider” religion and a threat to Hindu Nationalist Hindutva.
PZ Myers has suggested–rightly, I think–that atheists should study religions in order to better understand them. I’m one of those people, an atheist who is also a Hinduism scholar, and I teach religion courses at a major U.S. university. I am more critic than caretaker, but I believe that getting the picture right is important. Facts matter, even facts about beliefs we take to be misguided. It is a fact that the majority of Hindus do not believe that Jesus is one of the Dasavatara.
[meta]
RTL, that first sentence was no argument, it was a statement of opinion*; also, I have no more authority than any other commenter.
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* Which has been adjusted accordingly. ;)