Reflections On Two Recent Debates

Recently the Lallantop channel on YouTube hosted a debate between Javed Akhtar, an atheist, and a Mufti on the topic of Existence of God.  Some time back a similar debate had taken place between Zakir Naik and Dhruv Rathee.

This post is inspired by some reflections after watching the two debates.

Physics started out with what is now known as Classical Physics which dealt mostly with terrestrial objects in a, more or less, uniform gravitational field, close to each other in space and time and moving at speeds that are negligible compared to speed of light - that great constant in all frames of reference.  This is our immediate world that we experience with our senses directly and incessantly.

In this immediate world, Classical Physics came out with laws that seemed immutable and provided us with a sense of certainty, where given the initial state a later state could be figured out with compoete certainty.  This sense of certainty and absolute knowledge got shaken when Physics was required to accommodate the fact that the speed of light was an absolute constant in all frames of reference even though they may be moving relative to each other.  This gave rise to Special Theory of Relativity which was soon followed by the General Theory of Relativity where space, time and even mass all got mixed up.  

The turbulence got intensified as physics widened its ambit to subatomic particles on one hand and the immense vastness of universe on the other.  Some fairly bizarre phenomenon came to our notice for which the classical physics failed to be the correct model.  The sense of certainty vanished as probability took centre stage prompting Einstein to famously protest that God didn't play dice with us.  As Quantum and Astro Physics progressed, strange things emerged when developing models for the observable world on the very small scale on one hand, and very vast on the other.  Quantum physicists found that time disappeared altogether in their advanced equations!   Further, Quantum phenomenon, mostly probabilistic, seemed to crystallise into certainty in the presence of an "observer" - called collapse of the probabilistic wave function!  And to top it all, entanglement of particles in this strange Quantum world enables information to travel instantaneously, faster than light!

The world at the quantum level is far from mundane, it is mystical.  So mystical that many religious philosophies like Vedanta seek and claim to find a parallel for their tenets here.

While quantum physics concerned itself with very small, another branch, Astrophysics, found itself in an universe where Classical Physics faltered again.  In an attempt to model it,  Astrophysics came up with a Big Bang origin of the universe.  Again, time, which vanishes in the quantum world, is said to be non-existent before the Big Bang:  Space too.  It also had to accept existence of dark matter and dark energy to explain some of the observed phenomenon.  In a debate between the Islamic evangelist Zakir Naik and Dhru Rathee, Naik claimed that a certain aayat in Quran talks about Big Bang and this makes Islam the most scientific religion!  He probably forgot that science treats Big Bang as a theory, a model that is open to peer review and revision, or even abandonment, if alternate models can better predict the observed facts.  In fact, in science everything is open to review and being challenged if any experiments so suggest.

Even as physics was making these strides, and technologists were starting to find ways of putting to use the weird quantum phenomenon,  Information Technology too made rapid strides and achieved the most fascinating neural network and Artificial Intelligence.  The machines have finally passed the Turing Test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, much earlier than what was thought possible!  This has added fuel to the debate around the hard question of "consciousness."  This has become a free-for-all activity where religion tries to find a turf where it hopes to have an edge over science.

Ultimately what distinguishes science from non-science is what Javed Akhtar said in the recent debate.  It was to the effect that religion asserts definitive answers to every question and those answers must be taken as final, whereas science has the humility to accept what it still doesn't comprehend fully.  And then again, because science is open to being questioned and contradicted if observed phenomenon don't agree with the model in vogue, there is only one science all over the world.  Religions are numerous and the reason is obvious.

A debate between Zakir Naik and Srisri Ravishankar

Recently while wandering on the net I came across a video which showed a full program featuring a debate between Zakir Naik and Ravishankar.  The duration of the video was a little over two and a half hours.  Though the video was found on YouTube itself, it proclaimed "has been deleted from YouTube" alongside its title.  I watched the entire video with keen interest and mulled over it.  Later I tried to watch the video again, but failed to locate it.  I clicked the history item in the browser and YouTube, but to no avail.  During my repeated searches, I also came across a message on YouTube saying that the content has been removed.  It seems that someone had succeeded in reloading the video and I was lucky enough to watch it before it was removed again.  Fragments from this video are still available, but not the complete video that I had the opportunity to watch.  I feel truly sorry that I cannot give you an URL for watching this video.

I must say that the person entrusted with conducting the debate in an orderly manner did an excellent job.  Zakir Naik (ZN) - I am not prefixing Dr as he does not seem to be in that profession any more - came across as a seasoned speaker and debater.  RaviShankar (RS) - I am not prefixing SriSri as it sounds a bit too pretentious - surprisingly found the time allotted to him a little too long.  He also seemed to be ill at ease and a bit fidgety at times.  Once or twice he interjected too while ZN had the floor, which was perhaps against the format.  He got a bit provoked when ZN pointed out some errors in a book authored by him and admitted having made mistakes. But more about it later.

The speed at which ZN quotes book number, chapter number and verse number from a large number of scriptures from various religions, bears out an amazing memory and considerable breadth of his knowledge.  However he seems to be lacking in depth.  He repeatedly quoted from Vedas and Bhavishya Purana to make a point that the arrival of prophet Muhammad was foretold in these books.  Of course, I cannot recall the exact references that he gave.  He harped on three words, Muhammad, Nrishans and Mlechha, found in the Hindu scriptures.  He said that these pointed towards the prophet.  Mlechchha, according to him, merely meant a foreign origin, and Nrishans meant a Nar (man) worthy of adoration (Shansa being the tail end of Prashansa.)  This ignorance is shocking indeed.  Had he known the true meaning of the two words, he would refrain from using these words for the prophet: for it will be blasphemous to do so.  Nrishansa, as all students of Sanskrit and Hindi know, means merciless and cruel.  Making it out to be a combination of Nar and Shansa is far fetched indeed.  Similarly Mlechchha, though associated with persons of foreign origin in a sense, is a highly derogatory word that means impure or unclean.  The same applies to the word Mahaamad, which ZN takes to be Muhammad.  Mahaamad is a derogatory word that means a conceited person with an overarching ego and insolence.

ZN's ignorance could be excused but for the delight he and his followers take in his rattling off references to verses in various scriptures and then presenting their translation with an air of absolute authority.  However what really surprises me is the fact that neither RaviShankar nor anyone from the huge audience pointed out these errors nor did anyone stop ZN from making blasphemous references to the prophet.

Another favorite argument of ZN, one that he presented in this debate too, is that Vedas and Upnishads all say that God is one and formless.  And this is precisely what the Quran teaches. He takes Vedas and Upnishads to be the counterparts of Quran in Hinduism. Then he concludes that we should be worshipping God, the creator, and not the created.  But Hinduism is not restricted to such a single linear strand of thought.  It is more like a container of objects rather than an object itself; maybe a Pandora's box.  It also has in its kitty the Samkhya which maintains that there is no God.   It maintains that there are just multiple Purushas (consciousness principles,) each interacting with Prakriti.  Vedanta chooses not only to combines all these Purushas in one ParamPurusha but also merges the Prakriti with it.  Dualism and non-dualism both exist as valid philosophies and the debate goes on.  For the non-dualists, nothing exists but the God.  There is no distinction between the Creator and the Created.  The Creator, the Creation and the Created are all one.  The differentiation is just Maya and that too is an aspect of the only reality, the Godhead.  So in this container of Hinduism, monotheism, atheism and pantheism, dualism and non-dualism all co-exist and it sees no problem with such co-existence.

Thus any religion on the face of this earth could find parallels in one object or the other in the box called Hinduism.  And yet, any religion that wants to build bridges with Hinduism need not demonstrate any similarities.  Just a willingness to reside in the container is enough.  When you meet someone holding a view that is diagrammatically opposite to yours, don't scowl and growl, just wink and smile.  Yes, I understand and I am sure so do you.  Just accept the diversity and be at ease with it. It is this ability to wink and smile, rather than your belief system, that makes you a Hindu, or Hindustani, if you please.

Having said that, I must add that all is not hunky-dory in this container.  This container also has, for example, the most divisive and discriminatory caste system.  This single anomaly is beating down at the walls of the container to break it down.  There are many others too.  If a confluence of different and differing belief systems inside the container could join hands to cast away the toxic contents in the box, there indeed would be an utopia in this wonderful container.

PS: If you can find the deleted video on the internet, please post the URL as a remark to help other interested readers watch it.