Ram Puniyani Last three decades have seen an unprecedented presence of religion in social and political space. Somewhere the acts of terror, somewhere communal violence and somewhere the political influence of religious right on society and political processes, all these phenomenon have overshadowed the deeper inequities in the society, the aspirations of people for dignity…
AN Moorthy Rao Let us consider how some people explain the existence of evil: “God bestowed on man, right at the time of creation, all the powers and qualities that man needed. He does not want man to be a puppet in His hands. He has, therefore, given man freedom of will. Man is free…
A.N. Moorthy Rao From the stage when man regarded nature forces and animals like the crocodile, the snake and the monkey as God, we rose to the stage of the ‘Trimurti’ concept and have presently reached the vision of a single God. We may rightly say that our cogitation has indeed progressed. It is true…
A.N. Moorthy Rao We have not succeeded in our attempt to understand the nature of God by the inductive method. Since each one of the gods that we encountered in our attempts has some shortcoming or the other, none of them could be the Supreme God, the Monarch of the Cosmos. We describe God with…
AN Moorthy Rao The issue of the superiority of Vishnu or Shiva came up incidentally. Now, let us return to our original subject. We began – didn’t we? – by considering the stories about God which are prevalent among the common people and trying to understand through them the nature of God. Now, let us…
AN Moorthy Rao It is possible that at least some of the myths mentioned above have a symbolic meaning. Whether the authors off these stories really meant to convey that meaning or they were stuffed with the significance later, it is difficult to say. Our innocent ancients did not write essays about what they learnt…
AN Moorthy Rao So far we have considered how the common man has answered the question: ‘Who is God?’ (Or, what is God?) Let us now examine the nature and antecedents of these deities on the basis of the stories put together by people. From the list of deities that we considered above, we may…
What is Rationalism? In Epistemology (the branch of philosophy studying the nature, sources and limits of knowledge) “Rationalism” is “the theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge”. Those who accept rationalism in this epistemological sense assert that knowledge is gained a priori (prior to experience) and it is often contrasted with Empiricism, which is…
Dr. Tom Arcaro, Professor of Sociology, Elon University, US and his team are conducting an online survey on international community of atheists. It is an exercise in understanding the community of non-believers the world over. Though it is designed to be an international survey, so far it has elicited responses mostly from US and Canada. Since…
B Kolappan Many decades before ‘Periyar’ E.V. Ramsamy launched his self-respect movement (1925) and propagated atheism, the erstwhile Madras presidency had seen a well-organised atheist-reformist movement (1878-88), which later faded into oblivion. The Hindu Free Thought Union, a movement launched in 1878, took inspiration from the London-based Anti-Church Movement of Charles Bradlaugh. In the middle of 1886, it was renamed Madras…