I had blogged earlier about 'Religulous' and how I wanted to talk a bit more about it. Well, here we are.
This isn't a review or anything. It's more along the sidelines of something that I was thinking about while watching it. Bill Maher, interviews a few people about the bible and generally expresses his disdain over how 'religious nuts' believe without any proof.
If you know me personally, you would also know that I consider myself an agnostic. Isn't that what a guy who "doesn't know-doesn't care" is? If there is one thing that I find strange it's the 'non-believers' (atheists). These are people who are sure that god does not exist since there is no proof of his existence. They reason that we need a proof to verify every single fact. Well, as things stand, we do not have sufficient proof that god does NOT exist either (this is complicated due to the fact that people conveniently keep changing their definition of who/what god is). And if atheists want to continue believing that they are right despite the lack of proof against god's non-existence….they are … believers.
I will leave you alone for a minute so you can reread that bit and make sense of it.
This post hasn't reached its topic yet.
Back to Religulous. Bill interviews a Rabi (jewish preist), who attended a holocaust denial conference. Basically these are people who believe that Hitler did not mass murder jews before World War 2. Bill, who is a staunch and vocal supporter of the state of Israel, walked out on him since he just could not accept the fact that someone could deny such a …(intense music here)…well established and globally known piece of history.
Okay…. Now this is what I am wondering.
Can we be absolutely, without a doubt, sure that any of the events that we have been told are historical facts, actually occurred? I don't mean to come across as a conspiracy theorist. So let me explain myself here.
For the sake of simplicity, can we divide the past into 'before video/photographical evidence' and 'after'?
So things like the Ramayana, Mahabharata all the way down to the Mughal emperors would find their way here.
Mahatma Gandhi, the freedom struggle, World War II, Ganesh drinking milk all the way down to the recent terrorist attacks would be in the 'after' category.
Right?
Let's tackle the former. We do have historical remains, artefacts, (the Taj Mahal for god's sake!!!), etc. etc. to support history. I can (but won't) argue that these could be explained by any number of bizarre theories (Aliens anyone?). Historians themselves contradict each other on several issues. Our journalists and media today are a bunch of thieving weasels. Do you believe every fact you read in your newspaper today? What reason do we have to believe that the people who wrote about the kings (and gods) were any less corrupt? I think it's romantic to hope that in the past everyone was honest and committed.
Coming to the 'history after proof' era…
Can we sub-divide it into 'before photoshop' and 'after photoshop'? By photoshop, I mean to include every one of these techniques which can be used to concoct or alter audio/video/photographic material.
You can probably construct the rest of my argument here… Again, I am not implying that everything we believe is false. I just think, we can never ever be 100% sure…of any 'fact'. I never went to space. I haven't even seen a space shuttle. I have just been told that people went up there and took pretty pictures, which I have seen. It's easy (and convenient) to believe that and go ahead with life. And that's why we do.
Let's say we all die out all of a sudden (its more probable than you might think). And some (bored) alien race was rooting through all our tapes and photographs. Would they be able to differentiate between 'fact' and fiction? A documentary and a movie? Think about it.
1. In all probability, Bill Maher did not question the legitimacy of his being and sought proof of his parentage. This by scientific measures can be verified only through DNA fingerprinting and nothing less! He must have simply believed his mother as we all do. Quite like an appetite for risk, we all also have an appetite for proof – some wouldn’t want even an ounce of it to believe, while others (Pakis for e.g.), no matter how much evidence you produce, would still find it short. There is a reason well grounded in logic for that. It is because information can be manipulated! (Satyamites know it better).
ReplyDelete2. Regarding the Jewish holocaust, you have discounted the role played by propaganda during the WWs and later. Propaganda war is where opposing parties using “the same tools of proof” to arrive at controvert reasoning.
3. In hindsight, we can never be “absolutely sure of anything”. We can concur on degrees of confidence a certain “proof” leads us to. Validation of historical artifacts/incidents is corroborated by lateral evidences too. Lack of agreement among historians is because of conflicting proofs or because the “proofs” lead to contradictory deductions. Let’s for the heck of it compare results of the effect of sumptuous intake of vitamin C has on people. You have proof in the form of statistical data by one section of the scientists about its relevance, while you also have equally compelling evidence against it.
There was one generation that believed atom cannot be split further. Then came another generation which believed electrons, protons and neutrons are the only indivisible particles. They were brought up with “proof available on hand in their generation”. Who knows one day our progeny will hit the unified theory and the atheists will be absolved of the “blame of not believing in God”
4. As I said before, any piece of information that appears consistently across media (lateral evidences) can be to a fair degree assumed accurate. So, even though Chand Bardai wrote gloriously of Prithviraj Chauhan, going by contemporary proofs, it is hard to come to a conclusion about what actually happened to Prithviraj and Ghauri’s suspected death by shabd-bhedi arrow.
5. If an alien chances upon our wares – both tinkered and genuine ones, he/she/it would be to a fair degree able to assort provided he/she/it has ample contemporary proofs. If it has access only to USAF’s military docs, its presumptions would be different than what it would presume if it has access only to the newspapers and articles for common consumption. Who knows they may have to schools of thought – one convinced that Bush invaded Iraq because Saddam wanted Euro in preference to Dollar to be paid up the oil bills while another school of thought would insist there really were WMDs hidden somewhere!