BBC Documentary on Scientology

You probably know that top Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta worship a religion called "Scientology". Scientology is highly controversial, and as for me, I just cannot understand why highly intelligent people like Cruise and Travolta would believe in this kind of pseudo-science stuff.

In May of this year, the BBC broadcast a Panorama documentary about Scientology which reveals the creepy way this wacko cult operates - the Scientology people actually hired spies to secretly follow the BBC crew around as they were making their documentary. This, and other devious tactics practised by the Scientologists, are aptly depicted in the BBC documentary which can be viewed on Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-126281853779690652

More facts about Scientology can be found at the Wikipedia website ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology ), and it makes for fascinating but disturbing reading. There is also a 3 minute South Park cartoon satirising Scientology, but which actually contains a condensed but accurate depiction about Scientology's beliefs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAmEO-oLHzA

The End of Faith

After 9/11, the Bali bombings of 2002, and the Jemaah Islamiyah threat to bomb the Yishun MRT Station, I have became more conscious that Islamist religious fanatics can seriously threaten and destroy civilisation. Without doubt, these Islamic terrorists must be stopped before more innocent lives are killed.

Indeed, Sam Harris was so affected by 9/11 that he wrote the book, "The End of Faith", as his response to it (S$17.33 from Kinokuniya). It is a well argued book on why blind acceptance of religious beliefs is a threat to civilisation, and why fundamentalist Islam is particularly dangerous.

Harris wrote a follow up book, "Letter to a Christian Nation", which emphasizes on the dangers of fundamentalist Christianity.

Both Islam and Christianity centre their foundations on the "divine" writings in the scriptures of the Quran and the Bible. The dogmatic interpretations of these ancient writings by fundamentalists in the 21st century poses a conflict with modern civilisation, and makes religion particularly dangerous - especially to people who do not believe in the same faith as the fundamentalists.

Many Christians believe that the Bible is a perfect document written (or influenced) by a perfect god and as such is an infallible text. Harris points out in "The End of Faith" that the Bible is actually riddled with contradictions, and that even way back in 1859, William Henry Burr has actually published a book called "Self-Contradictions of the Bible". The list of contradictions has been published here:

http://skeptically.org/newtestament/id19.html

These mistakes in the Bible should lead thinking Christians to query whether the Bible is indeed the handiwork of a perfect god, or that the book is as perfect as it is being claimed. With such revealing mistakes, it becomes suspect as to whether the writings in the Bible should be treated literally as divine truths.

I like another section in "Letter to a Christian Nation" in which Sam Harris talks about Christians who strongly believe that "The Ten Commandments" in the Bible is the strongest statement about morality which no other religion can improve upon:

The Ten Commandments

1. 1. You shall have no other Gods but me.
2. 2. You shall not make for yourself any idol, nor bow down to it or worship it.
3. 3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
4. 4. You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
5. 5. Respect your father and mother.
6. 6. You must not kill.
7. 7. You must not commit adultery.
8. 8. You must not steal.
9. 9. You must not give false evidence against your neighbour.
10. 10. You must not be envious of your neighbour's goods. You shall not be envious of his house nor his wife, nor anything that belongs to your neighbour.

In response, Harris quotes Mahavira, the patriarch of Jainism, who surpasses the morality of the Ten Commandments with a single one:

Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.

In fact, there is a very humorous skit by comedian George Carlin on YouTube about the Ten Commandments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CitfTtMIx8

There is another George Carlin video on religion in general:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uBAPbOWLxc

The God Delusion

I bought Richard Dawkins book "The God Delusion" at MPH Funan Centre on 19 May 2007 (price: S$18.90). This is the new UK paperback edition with a new preface (book details at Amazon.co.uk):

"The God Delusion" is an excellent book that uses science, philosophy, history, logic and reason to explain why the gods promulgated by Christianity, Islam, Judaism are extremely improbable, and debunks the idea that we need to believe in such gods to be good humans to lead meaningful and moral lives.

In fact, when I was young, I had already pondered on the following conundrum:

Christianity says it is the one true religion. Islam says it is the one true religion. But logic dictates that if Christianity is the one true religion, then Islam must be wrong. Or if Islam is the one true religion, then Christians must be worshipping the wrong god.

How can both religions be right? The only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that they could both be wrong!

As I learnt more about science and history, I gradually came to the realisation that it is not god who created humans, but it is humans who had created god.

Being educated in an English speaking environment, I was exposed to a lot of Christian evangelists who were extremely enthusiastic in their trying to proselytise me to their faith. I am very glad that my school education required me to study all the major religions of Singapore: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism. When you study comparative religions, and have a good grounding in science and history, you will be armed with enough defences to protect yourself against the shrill being blasted at you by the Christian evangelicals that "you must believe in Jesus Christ or you will be condemned to burn in Hell for eternity!" Talk about a loving god :-)

Despite my constant debates and arguments with these Christian evangelists, I knew these debates were always lost causes. I cannot possibly sway others who are set in their beliefs to my way of thinking, as they cannot possibly convince me about changing my stance without conclusive evidence that their god is a real entity.

However, I do not go about preaching to others about my atheism. The irritating thing about Christian evangelicals is that they do. And every Saturday, you will see them waylaying passerbys (especially people going to the library) to tell them about the "4 Spiritual Laws".

However, as the Christian evangelists are well funded and are always proactively promoting their religion, so it is inevitable they will gain new converts. Indeed, the dawn of the 21st century has not seen humankind stepping into a new age of science and reason. Indeed, in the sole hyper-power of the world, the United States of America, fundamentalist Christianity has greatly expanded its influence, and have gained significant power in the political arena.

The problem with fundamentalist Christians is that their stance is as rigid and as scary as the Islamic Taleban , as they both base morality on ancient scriptures instead of rationality and reason.

"The God Delusion" is a much needed book to educate the public on why the existence of the Christian god is highly improbable, and that morality should be based on rationality and reason, and not on ancient texts espousing values that have no relevance to modern living. The book is well thought out, well argued, well organised, well written, and well worth reading.

Richard Dawkins actually made a 2-part documentary for UK's Channel 4 station on a related theme prior to the publication of "The God Delusion". You can watch the documentary on Google Video:

Root of All Evil - Part 1 : The God Delusion

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9002284641446868316

Root of All Evil - Part 2 : The Virus of Faith

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7619161192220036050

Lingoes

A few years ago (2004), I wrote about the excellent Merriam Webster Online Dictionary (www.m-w.com) . I still find this online dictionary extremely useful today because besides giving you the definition, you can also click on the speaker icon to hear how each word is pronounced.

Try figuring out how to pronounce these words:

• Cheyenne
• Banyan
• Pyrrhic

and you will see why the pronunciation feature is a godsend.

However, if you are using a notebook computer, you may not have internet access all the time. It would be nice to have access to a dictionary that is installed on your hard disk in such situations. For this, I can heartily recommend this new freeware that I have just found called "Lingoes":

www.lingoes.net

Lingoes is not a dictionary. It is a dictionary engine. After installing the dictionary engine, you need to load the actual dictionary separately. However, it can load MORE THAN ONE dictionary! I loaded mine with the following dictionaries:

1. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
2. Oxford Advanced Learners English Dictionary
3. Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary
4. Collins COBUILD Advanced Learners English Dictionary

The interface is very user friendly. The dictionary interface will display the word definition from all the dictionaries you've loaded. Thus, if you do not understand the explanation provided by one dictionary, you can scroll down to read the explanations given by the other dictionaries to make things clearer. And because I also loaded the "Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary", I can also see the Chinese definition on the same page.

Mind you, the dictionaries available for download are ELITE stuff (from Longman, Oxford, and Collins no less). True, the dictionary publishers supplied only their "Learners edition" dictionaries for free, but that is actually good enough for the average user.

For your info, the Oxford and Collins advanced learners dictionaries only cover about 50,000 words, while the Longman dictionary covers about 100,000 words. That is why many a time, you will find a word defined only in the Longman dictionary, but not in the Oxford or Collins advanced learners dictionaries. Because the Longman dictionary has a larger word set than the others, I arranged for it to be the first dictionary in my results list.

In contrast, my hard copy "Oxford Concise English Dictionary" covers 240,000 words, which is more than double that of the Longman and 4 times that of the advanced learners dictionaries. Obviously Oxford will not provide their premium "Concise English Dictionary" away for free.

The "Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary" has a word set of only 25,000 words. However, for its limited vocabulary, its Chinese definitions are invaluable.

I noticed that the definitions given by the Collins COBUILD dictionary are the easiest to understand. This dictionary is very suitable for primary school children.

Lingoes also has a feature called "Cursor Translation", which allows you to display the dictionary definition of a word in other applications like Word, Excel etc. Just hover the mouse cursor over a word and click the Left Shift key to popup the dictionary definition.

Finally, Lingoes has a LIMITED pronunciation capability. It actually makes use of the built-in speech synthesizer in the Windows XP operating system to pronounce the words. Speech synthesizers do not normally pronounce words correctly. You can compare the pronunciation generated by Lingoes with those recorded in the Merriam Webster website. The difference in quality is very pronounced :-)

Letter to the Straits Times Forum

The Straits Times Forum published a letter of mine in the online edition today. I had commented on an article written by Dr Andy Ho, the senior science and ethics writer for the Straits Times, which actually contain hidden biases favouring Creationism and Christianity over science (I am sure Andy Ho is a devout Catholic based on the position he has taken in his other opinion articles). I submitted my letter to the Straits Times last Friday (25 May 2007), and thought that it was rejected for publication. I was quite surprised that they finally published it today (2 June 2007), almost 9 days later.

http://www.straitstimes.com:80/ST%2BForum/Online%2BStory/STIStory_124926.html

I believe the free site on the Straits Times website contains only a 3-day archive for free access by the public. If you are interested to read what I wrote, you will need to visit the link before Tuesday (5 June 2007).

For some strange reason, the Straits Times has made every sentence ending in a period (full-stop) a paragraph on its own. In my original letter, excluding the bulleted points, I had a total of 6 paragraphs. In the published version, this ballooned into 13 paragraphs! The Straits Times published my letter without deleting a single word from my original.

Regards, NJ