derp
Forerunner
Really? Heard of a new monetary scheme which goes by the name of Gold Monetization Scheme?
India is second most ignorant nation of the world: Survey
- Thread starter v.Na5h
- Start date
- Status
Really? Heard of a new monetary scheme which goes by the name of Gold Monetization Scheme?
^^ Yes, but that is a recent proposal and one that is being opposed. They are also not going to take it away freely. The depositor of the gold gets interest. Can you name any present policy that is in place and being utilized to take away funds from temples for public use.
Secondly, Are you ignoring that 18,000 temples and mutts in a single state are being fed with tax payers money and not being audited for last 60 years or so? Auditing has started to happen recently.
266 Kg of gold disappears from a single temple (Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple) and nobody knows where. This temple said to have over 1,00,000 crore worth of valuables without all of it being accounted for and who knows this figure is after how much of it has already disappeared.
Secondly, Are you ignoring that 18,000 temples and mutts in a single state are being fed with tax payers money and not being audited for last 60 years or so? Auditing has started to happen recently.
266 Kg of gold disappears from a single temple (Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple) and nobody knows where. This temple said to have over 1,00,000 crore worth of valuables without all of it being accounted for and who knows this figure is after how much of it has already disappeared.
derp
Forerunner
Actually, the concept of gold metal deposit scheme is pretty old. The Tirupati Temple management has been earning interest (1%) on parked gold since ages.
Also, being ignorant and being religious has no direct linkages. It's a personal preference. I personally know many scientists, IIT toppers etc who are super religious yet they are steeped into modernity. This concept of "culture" grounds you and makes you humble. It morally binds you to a purpose. Hence, whoever says that the concept of religion is archaic and those who are religious are "gavar" is gravely mistaken. I would say HE is ignorant!!
Superbad
Herald
On one hand one says temples have abundance of wealth and on the other hand one says they need government money for maintenance. Isn't that contradicting your own statement.
All funds of almost all major temples are in the control of the local state governments. They appoint trustees to manage their finances and even have the right to dismiss the trustees if they are found to be misusing the funds.
That Said since the state governments manages those funds,it depends on the quality of the state government on how it uses those funds.
There was enough evidence of the then chief minister of andhra pradesh YSR used to tax the temples heavily and use those funds to give as aid to the churches in the state.
Traditions & beliefs have to change with time. Remember Sati & child marriage were traditions some time ago?
Bowing in the front of the lords does not mean throwing wads of cash or gold biscuits on his face. I go to temples, bow down, come back without paying a penny to those thugs known as pujaris, I go to churches, sit quietly, pray and come back.
Most gold in rich temples are under control of the temple trusts and are mostly stored as is while Indian economy suffers by importing more and more gold. Its good that the govt is trying to get that gold back using the recent schemes. Time will tell if the temples are eager to deposit their gold.
derp
Forerunner
As I have mentioned before, donations is a personal preference. If someone gets peace while donating his hard earned cash to temples, nothing wrong in that.
Secondly, you are comparing a social evil(sati) to philanthropy (donations). These two are not comparable what so ever. The thing is people donate with good intentions . however, they don't have control over what the temples do with the donated amount.
Thirdly, many nationalised Banks already have gold deposit schemes. The Tirupati management board, as I have mentioned above , already has parked excess gold in those schemes and is earning interests on it. Also, looking at the fragile global economy, gold actually is something to fall back to. One must have some amount of gold for contingencies.
P.s.:- the thread has totally derailed btw. There is no link between spirituality/religion with ignorance ...
Last edited:
Having a faith and being religious are two different things. Faith is a personal conviction and is not bound by external factors. You can for instance believe that Spongebob Squarepants is the only true god, but your morality is still your own and based on your own conscience and not dictated by others. Good or bad, its your own decisions to make.
Religion is a group behavior and groups are not intelligent. You blindly believe something without using your own brain because somebody else believes in it. You believe that lord Vishnu is a truly powerful god if your parents are Hindu and go to various temples and give offerings to idols of Vishnu, but if your parents had converted to Christianity or Islam before you were born, you would grow up believing that Yawweh is the true god and that Vishnu is a non existent god who is worshiped by heathens and that their acts are sinful. Some prehistoric books becomes your guide of morality and you try to abide by it without understanding it. Also, most of the time, because of the nature of groups and group mentality, the good bits in religious writings gets discarded over time and only the bad remains.
Religious people almost always have very little understanding of their own beliefs, or the the books they base it on. This was even proved though a test. A number of religious people belonging to various faiths and some irreligious people were brought together and given questionnaires designed to test knowledge on the holy books of various religions. The test was designed access the depth and breath of knowledge and result was that the the religious people knew very little of what is written in their own holy books while atheists have better knowledge of every religious book than the people who proclaim to be devout followers of those religions..
Its not that religious people are ignorant. Its more like religion demands you to remain ignorant and blindly follow something. Why is it that Brahmans controlled all religious books and knowledge of Hindus for eons rather than letting all people have access to them. Why is that Roman Catholic Church controlled the Bible? For nearly a thousand years, procession of a bible by any anybody except the clergy of the Catholic Church entitled them to death sentence. translating the bible was also a capital offense. Same goes for Quran as well. Ignorance is a prerequisite for Religion.
Humans claim to be superior to other animal species, but what sets them apart? its humans individuality and ability to think for themselves even while being part of a society. If humans blindly follow a group just because they were born into that group, then they are no better than a herd of animals that do the same thing.
Regarding your claim of many scientists being religious, any scientist who does not question the concept of god and accepts it blindly is no scientist at all. Doesn't really matter what their contributions are. The basic tenet of science is to question everything and base things on logic and reasoning. Blind faith without evidence has no place in science. I know there are quite a few personalities that made controversial statements, but such statements come out of arrogance than humility. Because they cannot explain something with their present knowledge and intelligence, they refuse to believe that its a simple concept that can be explained away by somebody else in future. They would rather declare that some supernatural entity is behind it than accept that there their current understanding is limited.
As for "IIT Toppers" please don't make me laugh. IIT topper is not some sort qualification. All you need to get through IIT entrance tests is repetitive practice and these days, even those tests have been dumbed down considerably. I have seen a lot of dumb people in IIT's (during education and at work) without basic understanding of the concepts that they were supposed to understand and be able to apply. There are lot of people who manage to enter without even a basic scientific temper leave alone a knack for engineering or interest in the subject they are trying to study there.
You cannot use spirituality and religion together like they mean the same thing. Spirituality/faith is personal preference and choice. It is as private as your underwear and it you won't try hard to show it off in public or try to force others to wear the same kind.
Religion is group behavior. Ignorance is a mandatory prerequisite for religion. Religion is what lets people impose on others or hurt them in God's name.
derp
Forerunner
You still couldn't establish the link between religion and ignorance.
The topic's soul was to throw light on reasons why India falls under the ignorant category, and you attributed everything to religion. For your kind information, my access to knowledge depends on my access to resources and many people in our country don't have that required access. Illiteracy and poverty is prevalent and when you can't even afford two square meals a day, you won't give two hoots to knowledge and being deemed as ignorant. In another thread, you have mentioned that businessmen have duped people during the rescue operations in Chennai. Although, many people are farse believers , but those who truly believe in the calls of religion would never do that. It is clearly mentioned in all our holy books that philanthropy goes hand in hand with spirituality. I agree that temples churches etc have maligned this concept but you cannot go against an ideology because of few miscreants. Going by your logic, all Muslims are terrorists then.
Also, one does not necessarily have to follow one single religion/belief. If people go by whatever you have said, it is clear that you have openly mocked luminaries such Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and Swami Vivekananda. One was a practicing Muslim and another was a practicing hindu. And see what contributions they have made in their respective fields. According to you however, they can't be called scientists/forward thinkers as they were motivated by the calls of religion???
And I would pretend that I didn't read the last paragraph. It clearly points to a classic example of sour grapes!
Darth Vader
Galvanizer
So should you and your religious extremist who can't keep their belief with themselves and goes on killing spree in the name of religion.
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Oh please, I can't count the number of times I have seen people indulging in questionable to get money citing that Goddess Lakshmi should not be turned down when she comes knocking on the door and they don't feel their conscience pricking them because they convince themselves that they are doing the right thing. That is religious morality for you.
No, its not specific to Muslims. Any people who attach too much importance to religion end up being terrorists. Terrorism is not just about some people with guns opening fire in public, a catholic school teacher who blinded a kid for reading harry potter (real incident) also falls under the same category.
This is way OT, but I guess you are referring to my categorization of IITan's? If so, let me answer. Do you really think so highly of people just for making it into an IIT which doesn't stand anywhere in the global list of top technology institutes? Maybe, you also believe that the people who make it there grow golden horns on their head to signify their superiority?
I didn't bother with IIT-JEE for my B.Tech, but I did go through GATE with no prior preparation and scored a good enough AIR to get a seat at IIT-R despite the fact that I had half an hour less time for the test due to a screw up of seating arrangements at the exam center and I could not complete the paper fully. However I chose to join another premier govt institute (IIIT) because they offered a specialization I was more interested in, compared to the run of the mill CS specialization.
This institute also had a policy at the time of getting post graduate thesis evaluated externally by panels at IIT's or BHU. Mine was evaluated at IIT Kanpur and has the stamp of HOD, CS Dept and I have a perfect credit score from her. She told us personally after the thesis presentation that our work was vastly better than that of the students at their own campus.
Lastly, both the companies that I worked at recruit from top tier colleges. My present company recruited 80 people from IIT's 3 years back (mostly B.Techs, some from combined M.Tech program) and many of them were fired later either because of attitude or performance issues. I have myself interviewed countless number of IIT graduates at various levels and have yet to find one worthy enough to be recruited. IIT stamp is not an indicator of anything. So your qualification of "IIT Toppers" is utterly meaningless for me.
Superbad
Herald
Trying to stick to the topic:
Check out @HoeZaay's Tweet: https://twitter.com/HoeZaay/status/674182268135596033?s=08
Check out @HoeZaay's Tweet: https://twitter.com/HoeZaay/status/674182268135596033?s=08
derp
Forerunner
ROFL! Before I begin, I would like to thank both of you for giving me a hearty laugh! It's been a while since I have had such a good laugh after reading something. These replies are so Wodehouse-esque! Pure gold!..
Anyways, coming back to our original discussion, @takemein , have you lost track of the original discussion topic or are you practicing your speech for some award show? Let me remind you that this discussion is about Indias position in the ignorance charts and not how religion makes a person extremist. Going purely by your logic and considering you are an Indian, some elders in your family must be practicing some religion! You just made them extremists, that too publically. I rest my case
Now, @Lord Nemesis , your need of justifying your education by giving a detailed chronology to an unknown audience proves the fact that you are so insecure about yourself. This also directly points to your levels of maturity, or the lack of it, where to prove a point, you had to reveal and justify that you are from some top rung educational institute of the country! I thought we are mature individuals here, but after reading that reply, I for a second though that I am debating with someone from the kindergarten! And not to talk about your extreme generalizations...
I want to conclude by saying that unless you have something new pertaining to the topic of discussion, please refrain from posting and save yourself from subsequent insults/humiliation! Thank you!!
avi
Keymaster
avi
Keymaster
How? My perception now is I am chilling out with an alien. But its not reality.
I agree, but I don't see why its irrelevant. Did I say anything to demean theists
derp
Forerunner
Well, I have some good news for you. No one will have any problems with your perception till you shove that down someone else's throat. Heck you can also form a group with similar perceptions and it is totally acceptable till you force feed it to someone else.... So...
Darth Vader
Galvanizer
I never said all religious people are Extremist and you know that very well. Keep twisting....as you're seem to be good at that. And about the humiliation, i have to LOL at you man. We don't get humiliated or feel insecure for believing in fairy tales.
Really ??? "Religion is an idea, and, as an idea, it should be eligible for criticism, discussion, and yes, mockery. The only reason so many believers demand special exceptions be made for religious ideas is because they know full well that their ideas don’t hold up well under scrutiny."
Anyways.....I'll stop here.
- Status