CHARVAKA

B Premanand Agni – God of Fire If we go through the history of the gods and religions organized around them, we find that the human mind created these gods and religions by propagating miracles and the belief in fate. The ruling classes and the priestly classes made gullible people believe in miracles and fate…

Carvaka Mountain of flowers for the Lord (The Hindu, November 4, 2011) The annual ‘Pushpa Yagam’ festival was held on Thursday at the famous hill temple of Lord Venkateswara amid religious fervour. Over seven tonnes of a wide variety of bright and aromatic flowers were used in the festival. Earlier in the morning ‘Snapana Thirumanjanam’…

B Premanand Our sense of touch comprises of five mechanisms registering pain, heat, cold and pressure, as well as physical contact with object at the most basic level. The innermost working of the complex network of nerves that communicates signal to the brain from all part of the body’s surface and the way in which…

<!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –>  B Premanand Every object that we smell throws of molecules, which are wafted by air towards the approximately ten million olfactory cells…

P L Rao       Image Courtesy: creations.blogspot.com “Why I am a rationalist?”  Each time someone asks me this question, it sets me thinking: “Is it a right question?”  As human beings, we are gifted with a brain largest among all species, which has been tremendously researched upon and according to this, the left side of…

B Premanand The four primary sensations of taste are sweet, sour, salt and bitter. Although some taste buds are situated on the palate, tonsils and in the upper throat, the tongue is the central stage. Its tip is more sensitive to sweetness than any other part because the highest concentrations of sweet taste receptors are…

B Premanand The outer ears designed to collect sound waves, and channel them through a can one inch in length until they reach the ear drum, a thin membrane that vibrates in response. These vibrations pass directly on to the adjacent middle ear, a cavity no more than a third of an inch wide and…

B Premanand What happens when we see? Information in the form of light waves is projected from the external world via the opening in the iris onto a highly sensitive screen called the retina, a layer of cells extending over virtually the whole of the inside of the eye. These cells translate the light stimuli…

Chapter II Illusion of the Senses There may be millions of devotees of godmen and avatars who have witnessed the apparent creation of objects from “nowhere” and are prepared to stand witness to the alleged creation. Can their testimony be taken at face value as true? No, because they are unable to see the phenomena…

Experiment -2 Effect: Making a match box disappear and appear Props: One match box Method: With the movement of the hands and the fingers one can make an object appear, disappear or change to another. Take a match box in the palm between the small finger and the index finger. While moving the hand vertically…

Experiment – 1 Effect: Creating Holy Ash – Sai Baba Style Props: Perfumed Vibhui, starch water extracted from cooked rice, a plate to make the pellets with vibhuti. Method: The perfumed ash is mixed in the starch water and made into small pellets and dried. This pellet is hidden between the thumb and the index…

Ram Puniyani Prasant Bhushan The condemnable attack on Supreme Court Lawyer and ‘team Anna’ member Prashant Bhushan on 12th October 2011, threw up many a questions. To begin with the attackers were congratulated by ‘ultra Nationalists’ like Bal Thackeray of Shiv Sena, showing the gross intolerance around certain issues in our society, more particularly those…

Under protest from Hindutva fanatics, the top academic body of the Delhi University has decided to withdraw an essay by eminent scholar A K Ramanujan on the Ramayana. We reproduce two news reports on this retrograde steps of the university. Deccan Herald (October 15, 2011) Delhi University’s top academic body has decided to withdraw from…

Innaiah Narisetti In their latest book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow declare positively that philosophy is dead. Alarming to philosophy lovers, of course. During 1940s, M.N. Roy, the humanist philosopher, warned that unless philosophy took into consideration the philosophical consequences of modern science, it would not survive. That is exactly the reason…

Ramesh Nagaragere         This commentary on the Judgement delivered by the High Court of Karnataka was published in the October 2010 issue of Indian Skeptic, an ezine now defunct. We upload the essay as the judgement continues to be relevant to the rationalist movement in India. There have been occasions when Indian judiciary has surprised, shocked…

B. Premanand Premanand’s popular book, “Science versus Miracles”, has not been available for some time now. Since Premanand himself was the distributor of the books he published and since he did not make any specific arrangement to reprint and distribute the books he brought out under Indian Skeptic logo, after his death there was noone…