Conversion from an Atheist to a Theist

Okay, its a long story but I'll make it short. It all started when I was in my X grade and I was very much passionate about science, actually my love for science started from seventh grade itself where I used to conduct some experiments and brake open my remote car toys and used to see what's inside it or use its D.C motor to build a hovercraft.

When I was in my X grade I bought the educational software CD called The History of Life from the original makers of The History of the Universe and they quickly introduced me on to a load of ideas and thinkers like John Maynard Smith, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Naom Chomsky, James Lovelock, Charles Darwin, Stephen J Gould, Rene Descartes etc etc. One of the things that they mentioned was that the biggest mystery facing biology today is this.

What is consciousness?

I was young at that time and Richard Dawkin's Selfish Gene theory appealed me very much and I openly declared myself to be an Atheist as none of the religions where making absolutely any sense whatsoever and they were entirely incompatible with science and with evolution by Natural Selection but my mind was not set for Anti-theism.

The History of Life CD-ROM for Windows. Science Educational Software. Core Biology Concepts: Evolution, Genes, DNA, Species, Memes, Natural Selection, Organism Classification, Extinction, Heredity, Origins of Life. Grades 6 and up - Middle school, High school Students. Ideal for use with Interactive Whiteboard.

It was the same time which is in the year 2007 that I joined SFN as I was searching for more information on the Selfish Gene theory over the internet and landed on to their site (Science Forums | www.scienceforums.net) and they had some very good Phd posters who were contributing to the site at that time.

Meanwhile I was trying to find what others are saying about consciousness over the Internet and it was now that I got introduced to Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff with their Orchestrated OR model. I liked what Penrose was talking about  Godel's incompleteness theorems more than his mumbo jumbo Orchestrated OR model and all the microtubules stuff which I didn't liked much. Penrose rocks when he sticks himself with in mathematics where he is the unsung hero. It was hard to swallow his theory all at once at that time.

Consciousness involves Non-Computable ingredients

I knew if I had to have a good understanding of Penrose's theory and his terminologies then I have to at least have a basic knowledge on Quantum Theory and Modern Physics and hence I went to the book store and bought these books.

Quantum Physics: A Beginner's Guide by Alastair Rae

Modern Physics - Serway, Moses and Moyer

As my interests in biology and science grew I again went to Sapna Book Store and bought the Webster World 2005 Encyclopedia CD which I usually used to do as a routine every time my pocket money reached a lump sum. I absolutely loved the scientific articles reported by the Webster reporters in that Australian encyclopedia.

Webster world - Journey into Knowledge

It had all the news of all the scientific advancements that was made till the year 2005 from the Standard Model in Physics to all the Nobel prize works in Chemistry, Physics and Biology along with thousands of scientific advancements from around the world. For example:- The 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Paul D. Boyer and John E. Walker for their work on how the enzyme ATP synthase catalyses the formation of ATP which is well worth reading and I absolutely loved the design solutions of the molecular machinery that was either designed or naturally evolved in living organisms and I decided that I wanted to be a molecular biologist as those articles excited me very much.

 My mind was fully set to take up an Integrated MSc-Phd course in Life sciences and again went to the Book store and bought Cell and Molecular Biology by E.D.P De Robertis and E.M.F De Robertis Jr

Cell and Molecular Biology

As I was researching about molecular biology I came across Hubert Yockey and he was talking about information theory and he came to a conclusion rejecting both Michael Behe's irreducible complexity theory and Intelligent Design and also the strong belief held among evolutionary biologists and Darwinists that the problem of origin of life can be explained by natural mechanisms. According to Yockey there is nothing in the natural physio-chemical system where codes and codons are being used to drive a set of chemical reactions. Yockey thought that the origin of the genome was something which cannot be explained through scientific means and he actually went on to define life as those entities which possessed a genome which can be used to classify living from the non-living. Yockey thought that the continuation of the genome was the very evidence that evolution by natural selection is true and its a fact of nature and the absence of fossils not found by palaeontologists was not such an importance to Yockey.

Information theory and Molecular biology - Hubert Yockey

The more I began to dwell deep into this I realized that it was not enough if a molecular biologist had mastered only chemistry without having any knowledge of information theory, communications theory, automata, programming, networking, artificial intelligence, computer modelling and other stuff. I was convinced that today's molecular biologists had to master all those fields or at least have some knowledge or working principles about those fields and hence I decided to do my major in Information Science which kick started my career in programming which I believe was the best decision of my life because in case you didn't know the world belongs to those who can write code.

What is code?

In parallel I was reading religious literature from our native scholars, some of those books were lying on the shelf which were originally bought by my grand mother and then borrowed by my mother from her. One of the book which caught my attention was Mahadarshana by Devudu Narasimha Shastry, a Sanskrit scholar and a ritualist.

Mahadarshana

Mahabrahmana

Hindu kids normally will not have a strong religious upbringing because we don't go to temples routinely like the way Christians and Muslims go to their Churches and Mosques every week and read the Bible and Quran every now and then.

So religion or being religious was an alien concept for me but just turned some pages to read it out of curiosity and to my surprise these books by Devudu were very interesting and although it is in the form of a dialectic novel every now and then he talked about esoteric and philosophical concepts from the Vedas and the Upanishads and conveyed the wisdom from the mouth of the characters of the novel just like the Socrates and Plato's dialogues.

It is a common practice just like in the ancient days to write a Gospel in someone else's name and obscure the real author from the Gospel. Initially I was not able to comprehend these things as I had no complete background on Hinduism, about its roots and origins. In case you don't know our parents will send us to Christian missionary schools rather than teaching us Sanskrit therefore most of the Hindus are not susceptible for radicalism, our parents should not be blamed for that instead the blame goes to Macaulay who introduced English education in India and undermined the Gurukula system of education. So majority of the Indians are sons and daughters of Macaulay which is a shame. Indian in blood but Christian in thinking.

I didn't give up, I read and read and read, had an strong introspection and contemplation on these concepts then came the irreconcilable contradiction that according to Indian psychology (Samkhya theory) Mind and Brain were two different things which can in no way be conceivable with in the scientific view. Indian psychology not only views the Mind and Brain as separate individual entities it also views Intelligence has a separate physical entity just like Platonic Forms.

But I was aware of Penrose's strong Platonism and his Lucas-Penrose argument was the main big reason that compelled me to take this idea seriously and to go further and experiment on it.

"Here is a summary of the new argument (this summary closely follows that given in Chalmers (1995: 3.2), as this is the clearest and most succinct formulation of the argument I know of): (1) suppose that “my reasoning powers are captured by some formal system F,” and, given this assumption, “consider the class of statements I can know to be true.”  (2) Since I know that I am sound, F is sound, and so is F’, which is simply F plus the assumption (made in (1)) that I am F (incidentally, a sound formal system is one in which only valid arguments can be proven).  But then (3) “I know that G(F’) is true, where this is the Gödel sentence of the system F’” (ibid).  However, (4) Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem shows that F’ could not see that the Gödel sentence is true.  Further, we can infer that (5) I am F’ (since F’ is merely F plus the assumption made in (1) that I am F), and we can also infer that I can see the truth of the Gödel sentence (and therefore given that we are F’, F’ can see the truth of the Gödel sentence). That is, (6) we have reached a contradiction (F’ can both see the truth of the Gödel sentence and cannot see the truth of the Gödel sentence).  Therefore, (7) our initial assumption must be false, that is, F, or any formal system whatsoever, cannot capture my reasoning powers."

The only way I could verify it was to practice Theurgy myself and luckily one day when I went to my grandmother's house a street vendor was carrying books on yoga and I bought a small book with just 20 pages which gave clear instructions on how to perform Yoga.

There were yoga postures for other benefits too but since I was after something esoteric the 12 step Sun Salutations caught my attention and it was in detail with Names of Gods and everything. As I already had a thorough theoretical background insight on the Upanishads and Vedas I knew how to perform the ritual of Sun Salutations.

Yes, many people do Sun Salutations but hardly a few do along with the silent utterances of the mantras in the mind which is used to invoke the gods and purify the subtle body.  I used to do it twice daily morning and in the evening every day for 1 year. I went after the supreme truth, the ultimate truth i.e. to know Brahman and its manifestation.

I was very pure and it was in this period that I had a glimpse revelation of what the Upanishadic seers were talking of, which strangely can be put beautifully in the words of Valentinus, an 2nd century Christian mystic,

It was quite amazing that the Aeons were in the Father without being acquainted with him and that they alone were able to emanate, inasmuch as they were not able to perceive and recognize the one in whom they were

(Gospel of Truth 22:27-32)

O Fosterer, O sole Seer, O Ordainer, O illumining Sun, O power of the Father of creatures, marshal thy rays, draw together thy light; the Lustre which is thy most blessed form of all, that in Thee I behold. The Purusha there and there, He am I

- Isha Upanishad, Verse 15        

The Aeons (gods) were nothing but light rays emanating from his body which is what Saint Paul is saying in Colossians 2:9, "In Christ dwells all the Aeons of the pleroma in bodily form". Yes the Aeons initially existed in the womb of the Father and they still exist in him, this is possible because the Aeons were not anthropomorphic instead they were in the form of light rays emanating from the Father who was anthropomorphic in form. It was just amazing.

Isn't it strange that I worshipped Helios-Mithras and the revelation which I had with him is described in a 2nd century Christian tradition named Valentinianism whose leader was Saint Paul of Tarsus. I cannot sleep every time I think about this.

I was acquainted with Valentinianism only recently and only after I had my revelations. It was piece of cake for me to understand what these Paulinists were saying because I already had the glimpse of Gnosis with me in order to really appreciate the works of this lost innocent tradition.

After that glimpse revelation which gave me so much insightful knowledge of the Platonic relam or Pleroma or Mandala whatever you wish to call it or the intelligible world I continued to do the Sun Salutations. I repeatedly use the word glimpse because I did not received a full revelation just a glimpse and an insight into that revelation.

One day I had this sudden spontaneous movement in my muscles like an electric shock and fell forward in the morning on my yoga mat and I was unconscious for a while and on the same day I fell backward in the evening.

My confrontation with the Pleroma

That's it, once this incident happened I stopped doing my Sun Salutations and returned to SFN after a long time then I met someone there on the discussion forum, got connected and had a Long Distance friendship with her, everything was going fine for a while but ended up being broken hearted for the various reasons which is not appropriate to discuss here. Obviously one can't expect much from a psychic Christian to be fully in Christ and expect them not to sin.

I was hurt, I was in pain and I thought it is right for me to take this pain to Christ since the pain was caused by a Christian so that he can heal me and take me out of this. It was at this time that I got acquainted with Valentinianism and it has been the only joy in my life. May be Christ realized my sincerity and answered my prayers for his help.

That's my story, I started as an strong atheist advocating selfish gene theory thinking that we are robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes and ended up being a Valentinian Gnostic Christian.

I feel I have to take rest now. 

Christians - whether you follow the Law or not follow it you simply cannot sin.

There are three salvation paths in Christianity, which are:

1. Strictly follow the Law of Moses to the last word. (Ex: Jewish Christians)

2. Accept Jesus Christ as your saviour, have blind faith in him and receive salvation by doing good deeds. (Ex: Catholics, Protestants, Mormons etc)

3. Abandon the Law, put your old self to death and live your new life in Christ and receive salvation through his grace and not by doing works of the Law. (Ex: Valentinian Christians)

The latter Christians (Valentinian) are preordained to be saved and the former two category of Christians will be judged according to the works of the Law and Faith respectively. So in the end all three category of Christians who have succeeded in their respective paths will receive the salvation in the end with the only difference being some will receive a higher salvation than others while others will receive a lower one. (Excerpt of Theodotus).

What many Christians, irrespective of the sect they belong to are not realizing is that irrespective of which ever salvation path you take the basic message is simply you cannot sin as a Christian.

Just because you have abandon the Law and have become free from all bondage and death it doesn't necessarily mean that you can start sinning now as much as you want, believing that Christ is going to forgive all your sins anyway as he has promised us having no responsibility on your shoulders what so ever. No, The Gospel of Philip is quite clear that,

Those who think that they will die first and then raise are in error if they do not receive the resurrection while they live when they die they receive nothing.

- Gospel of Philip

The third salvation path preached by the great doctor of the church Saint Paul of Tarsus is not an easy path and his letters were not definitely written to be read by every nut job in the world. Saint Paul wrote his letters to matured Christians who were already sincere followers of Christ and he wanted to raise them to a all new higher level by preaching the good news of his Gospel. Not understanding this, atheists and many of his detractors seeing the contradictions between his teachings and the teachings of Jesus Christ start yelling to the world that Saint Paul was a false apostle and start doubting him.

Jesus Christ gave different teachings to different people according to the measure of faith one possessed with in himself. Atheists and unstable men not understanding this come to the stubborn conclusion that scriptures are contradictory and declare that Saint Paul was a false apostle. They cannot see beyond those contradictions the beautiful harmony of the truth that both Paul's teachings and Jesus teachings convey the same message since they lack wisdom which was warned by Simon Peter long time ago.

 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

- II Peter 3:15-16

Saint Paul won out against Simon Peter and Jesus's brother, James because Gentile Christians were quickly able to grasp his message and soon his version of Christianity spread out like wild fire and conquered the whole world. If Jewish Christians and atheists are jealous of it and can not tolerate the success of Saint Paul and if you want to detract him by saying the worst things about him, you can go ahead and do it by all means and I'll leave the judgement to Christ.

The third path which is salvation through grace compels one to give up all forms of boasting and lead a simple life in Christ. It sounds easy but implementing it is hard and it is one of the reasons why such a character has to come by nature and not by doing good deeds i.e. one needs to have a pure heart by nature to be above sin and lead a sinless existence. Experience shows that the other two paths are far more easier to follow than this one and it is definitely not for everyone.

So whichever category you fall into as a Christian there can be no excuse for your sins and there is no free lunch for receiving redemption, anyone who is believing otherwise is basically destroying himself.

The world belongs to those who can write code

What is code? 

Why Are Coders Angry?

"Programmers carve out a sliver of cognitive territory for themselves and go to conferences, and yet they know their position is vulnerable. They get defensive when they hear someone suggest that Python is better than Ruby, because [insert 500-comment message thread here]. Is the next great wave swelling somewhere, and will it wash away Java when it comes? Will Go conquer Python? Do I need to learn JavaScript to remain profitable? Programmers are often angry because they’re often scared. We are, most of us, stumbling around with only a few candles to guide the way. We can’t always see the whole system, so we need to puzzle it out, bit by bit, in the dark."

This is a nice post describing the depressing world of programmers and programming on Bloomberg.