we are all stars

we are all stars

i dont mean in a corny american idol or a you can be all that you can be sense

we are all stars, we once were and someday will be, stars
or planets, or nebula or what have you....

no i havent finally lost it. and neither have i joined a cult.

someone asked me the other day, being a godless sod (ok maybe not in so many words but thats a good summary of everyone who's ever asked me that question or something similar over my lifetime), how do or would i find comfort someday on my deathbed, what would give me hope that everything's going to be ok, someone's watching out for you

well first off quite frankly i dont fear death, at least not right now, as far as i'm concerned when you die you cease to exist and along with that you cease to feel, yearn, think, long, desire, fear or any other inherently human sensation, in which case the point is moot, what is there to fear, and in fact wouldn't that give you a fresher perspective on the temporal nature of this lifetime, and thus evoke a corny "make the most of it" inclination?

i suppose the worse case would be i turned out to be wrong and i end up standing before some god-head, in which case my best defense is that i have been true to my inclinations, which quite frankly were as a result of how i was created by this god-head anyway.

that aside, i think when we die, we all become stars

current astrophysical theories tell us that matter that originally came from the energy that came from the big bang, was made up of nothing more than basic single-proton/electron Hydrogen atoms (and perhaps some other weird stuff, whatever i cant remember). astrophysics also tells us that all complex/heavy metals, including carbon, the building blocks of our life, were born in stars, formed out of nuclear fission in these factories of the universe

so all matter that is us, all the complex atoms that made up the complex molecules that make up our flesh and skin and bone and neurons, were once part of a bright shining star, perhaps millions or billions of years ago. and all the energy that is us, our consciousness, some may call it our soul, was born billions of years ago in a brilliant flash of energy in which everything came to be

and when we die, our matter and our energy 'returns' to the universe, although technically it never left it, and becomes part of whatever will be and is to come. we will become stars again. perhaps not immediately, perhaps only after millions or billions of years will some fraction of the atomic particles or energy that was once us will go beyond and become part of another bright, glowing, magical orb of energy, but id like to think that someday some of what is us (or was us, since technically the actual 'matter' in us changes repeatedly over our lifetime), will eventually be stars.

yes, i think our "soul" is just energy, that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon as an outcome of complex interactions between energy and matter in the system that is our body. emergent behavior doesn't need central intelligence or intent to form, it can "emerge", the "whole" being "more" than the "sum of the parts". emergence and systems theory is a long story that i'm not going to get into, although you can check out Steven Stogatz video on TED on sync in nature, e.g. bird flock and fish school swarms in reaction to the environment may seem like they are controlled by a central intelligence or a pack leader, but are in reality "emergent" from very simple rules that each individual follows, ie (something similar to)

1) if the birds right next to you turn left, go left
2) don't hit any other birds (or keep a safe distance)

just because we don't understand complex interactions and can only perceive them under the notion of intelligent design, doesn't make it true. reality doesn't follow our perceptions just because they make sense or give us comfort. we aren't the center of the universe.

we are all stars
we were once those bright orbs of light in the sky, that which inspired, guided, aroused all manner of dreams, hopes, fantasies, from ancient mariners seeking stellar navigation to their destination, to the lonely sheppard in the highlands or bedouin in the desert, keeping them company in the night sky, to the child who longs to be an astronaut, to the cheesy pick up artist with his line starting "your daddy must've been a theif, cuz ....".

for millions and billions of years, parts of us traveled the universe, perhaps becoming planets, asteroids, beautiful giant glowing clumps of gas or plasma, nebula, any one of those wonderus things Hubble shows us, perhaps even being part of some other lifeform somewhere in the universe. and at some point the parts of us ended up here and became part of this planet, going throught the millenia until assembling today with other such particles to become what we are right now, this instance.

now i dont know about you, but that inspires me, gives me hope. someone else once said to me that your "religion" is not about god or church or fasting or whatever, it is what inspires and gives you hope, gives you a frame for the world.

we are all stars
i think that is very romantic :)
who says science has to be dry?

enlightenment

i am often asked what made me turn atheist, in the conceptual sense, e.g. why, notions about belief, religion, divinity, etc, which i'm not going to go into in this post, suffice to say its a nonexistence of faith - incidentally i prefer this term (for lack of a better one) over others such as "lack of faith" or "not having faith", which seem to have negative connotations, implying a want or a need but not having it. if anything nonexistence of faith for me is a liberating notion. but anyway, stuff for another discussion..

..and also from a notion of "turning points" or some dramatic event that caused me to take an abrupt change of view. in reality its nothing like that, rather than an abrupt change it was an eventually progression and development or even evolution of conceptions of (my view) of reality, of a weltanshauung, if you may. everyday (figuratively of course) i continually develop, expand and deepen my views of reality, realizing if anything that it is an evolving conception, a neverending process of learning (some may find this 'lack' of overarching truth disconcerting, i on the other hand find awe in the mystery and pursuit of my constructions of reality, which needs no divine element or inspiration)

but i digress again. when i was young i tried hard to be a good muslim, trying to pray, fast, recite the qur'an and talk to god before sleeping, but of course that didn't work out very well. thinking it was simply the wrong religion, i tried christianity, going to church, reading the bible, adopting symbols etc, but again that didnt work. but in both scenarios what i did enjoy was the sense of community it entailed, the sense of belonging (although i didnt realize it at the time), e.g. being able to walk into the mosque or amongst fellow christians and think, i'm one of you, we have something in common.

its only when i stepped outside of the bubble that was my life and went to college did i really come to accept my deeply inherent though process and the consequent world view that is at complete odds with any notions of divinity or religion. of course this was a complicated journey, enabled by many things, including the very personal, experiences with different religions (so btw no one can say i didnt try :p), openess and exposure to different POVs in a new environment (and more importantly, acceptance of a culture of alternative POVs, granted this was the US, not exactly the epitome of free thought, but then again we're comparing with M'sia remember), and so on, all equally important.

here i'm gonna talk about the affect of a community of peers, if anything it was being able to be around others with similar worldviews, and here I dont necessarily mean only other atheists, but others who share a common paradigm and analytical approach to reality, even if the conclusions are different. the sense of need for community of the likeminded, or peers, is (in my view) of course genetically programed in us as social creatures, our survival depends on social relationships (or, more accurately, genes that promote affinity to like-minded individuals will propagate better in a socially-determined survival environment because we will tend to help each other survive).

In other words, the paradigms or belief constructs that i attempted to try out and explore in the beginning was really not about belief or the meaning of life per se (although related), it was really about finding a sense of belonging. so being able to gain acceptance into an (informal) "community", or rather finding an (informal) community of the likeminded to which I can attribute a sense of belonging, was an important factor in allowing me to shed these attempts at belief constructs, which were really nothing more than baggage, dead weight that masked itself as something else and really had no purpose (the radical humanist emancipation?). this allowed me to open up and freely and fully explore my views and conceptions, without worry of being ostracized. because in reality you never really belonged anyway.

Revision of Islam?

Interesting... i think its a great initiative that's long overdue, but i am skeptical of claims to completely strip cultural influences and return to core religion, because there is no core religion, as far as I'm concerned, only abstract notions that are fleshed out into reality through cultural lenses. a complete revision has the danger of replacing one set of cultural norms with another, through which the revision is being done.

on the other hand, if any, the turkish cultural lens would probably be the one we would want the most, for being most progressive? i also wonder what the reaction will be from the fundamentalist circles

BBC: Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts

semantics

interesting bits of knowledge

- the phrase "Tuhan Yang Maha Esa" is made up of entirely Sanskrit words

- 'sembahyang' [which] happens to be a pre-Islamic term and is derived from the words 'sembah' (to worship) and 'hyang', which refers to the 'Primal Ancestor': the original, primordial Human spirit-being that was also worshiped by our dear orang asli friends and neighbours, and who was for centuries associated with the earth-genesis cult of many an aboriginal group