Monthly Archives: March 2021

Completing the census should have been simple all you have to do is say who and where you are. In the grand scheme of history, its not like journeying to Bethlehem with nowhere to stay. But still it was an ordeal.

Separated parents who share custody equally are expected to list the kids at the house they are in on the night of 21 March. I would happily have done that if my kids were due to be with me today, but they are not. So, when the question came up, I merrily texted my former spouse: Sod it. Im putting them down anyway. You cant put them down anyway, he said, with some dignity and patience. Its a census. You know what, King Herod? Screw you! I replied with gusto.

Then I did what I always do when faced with a difference of opinion took the issue to Twitter. Apparently, population scientists study this exact conundrum: what do you do about divorcees who double-count for sentimental reasons?

A couple of people said there was flex built in, to account for anyone who was staying somewhere other than their main residence on 21 March. Most people said: Just put them in the house they are in that night and stop being an idiot. One censorious tweeter said simply: Time to be generous. That was my mother, ladies and gentlemen. Boldly siding with my ex in the open waters of social media. And you think you have problems.

Whether or not to mess with the system was not my only decision: the humanists were in touch almost daily, to remind atheists that we should answer no religion to the religion question. In about the strongest language I have heard a humanist use, they called the faith question on the form biased and leading and worried that it had previously encouraged many people with no religious beliefs and no religious identity to nonetheless tick a religious box out of cultural affiliation.

Its rather consequential, all this: if you get an inflated read on how many Christians live in the country, it not only encourages faith schooling, but also people who love the phrase Judeo-Christian worldview, which is the classy way to kick off a racist rant. (It is not that they mind foreigners no, it is just that everyone ought to adhere to the Judeo-Christian worldview.)

Atheism is a peculiar thing: so many of us live it 39% of those in Great Britain, according to ONS data from 2019 yet the word retains connotations that were already a bit rum by the 50s. To say you are an atheist is a needless provocation why cant you just say agnostic? Why deny God altogether when you could just not know? If atheist is insufficiently respectful, its also not respectable its like saying you dont have a driving licence. Its fine, society can live with it, but its not going to fall over itself to get you into the golf club.

So atheists should definitely say so, yet I have this embarrassing hunch that in 2001 I put Jedi. (It was funny then, OK? Times change.) In 2011, I may even have put Christian, thinking with a toddler-mashed brain that I should try to get the kids into one of the faith schools that I emphatically dont agree with.

Finally, there was a petition afoot to subvert the national identity question. Instead of putting British, English, Welsh, Northern Irish or Scottish if any applied the idea was to tick other and specify European. That way, if you disagreed with something significant that had happened recently perhaps you thought Brexit wasnt a brilliant idea you could really stick it to the man. Let him know how you felt. He would definitely be listening.

This sent me into a tailspin of futility. First, I dont think the man is listening and if he happens to hear, he will only smirk. Second, I have no view on my national identity. Mr Z has incredibly strong views if you accidentally say English about anything, he will correct it to British, unless you are talking about mustard or bull terriers (its surprising how often I am). He hates nationalist or regionalist sentiment of any stamp; he probably has views on Catalonia, should anyone be so foolish as to ask.

I, conversely, think nationalism is the outward sign that there is nothing more interesting going on, much like there is always a scrap at the end of a festival because the bands have stopped playing. I would feel a bit fraudulent putting European, given my scant language skills. If I were to put British, though, it would feel like the end of an era.

So, there was my answer: I would place the kids in my house, even though they were at their dads, and leave myself off altogether, so as not to mess up the numbers. I would no longer exist, but at least the children would be European atheists (thanks for asking, census-takers).

Of course, when it came to it, I filled in the form accurately. If there is one thing I hate more than a crisis of national identity, its a 1,000 fine.

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For divorced atheist remainers like me, this census was a minefield - The Guardian

Actor Kangana Ranaut in a series of tweets wrote about growing up as an atheist, mostly because of her grandfather, who was a man of science.

Responding to a tweet detailing the concept of 'kundalini', Kangana wrote that 'growing up', she was 'an atheist and studying science'. It was 'kundalini' that encouraged her 'to do experiments with various science of 4 Yogas'.

When one person asked her how she understood the concept of 'atheism' Kangana replied, "My grandfather was an atheist he engraved the concept in my mind, he was highly educated and successful person, a man of sharp intellect he debated with many against God and religion, he encouraged people to take up science somehow he separated the two, God and Science."

One of Kangana's fans jumped into the conversation and wrote that she didn't need to explain herself to the person, named Jawad Mohammed. Kangana wrote, "I dont think that, his tweets show he has great concerns about everyone around him, we cant judge or trust people based on their names, only their karma can guide us..."

Kangana often speaks about her family, and what it was like growing up in Himachal Pradesh. She wrote in a recent tweet that her family was dejected after she was born, as they would have preferred a male child. But because she was "beautiful", they felt marrying her off wouldn't be difficult.

Also read: Kangana Ranaut says her family didn't mind her as second daughter as she was 'very beautiful and easy to marry off'

"My birthday month, growing up grannies told stories that after a sister another girl child birth disappointed everyone but they didnt mind much cos I was very beautiful and marrying me off wont be a big burden, they all laughed at anecdotes but it pierced my heart every-time," Kangana had written alongside a childhood photo of herself and her sister, Rangoli Chandel.

PUBLISHED ON MAR 18, 2021 03:33 PM IST

UPDATED ON MAR 17, 2021 04:24 PM IST

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Kangana Ranaut responds to Twitter user who questioned her about understanding atheism as a kid, credits grandfather - Hindustan Times

Filling in the census form is very grown up. Here is my existence. This is my life. Count me in! But as with all form filling, its also completely boring and so I leave it until the very last minute before Im fined for not letting the state know that I live in a terraced house.

Non-believers, however, have had fun in the past with the religion part of the form. In 2001, there was a movement in many English speaking countries to put Jedi down as your religion.

It was a geeky protest by atheists (and a few actual Jedis) against being asked to record a faith at all. Nearly 400,000 people put Jedi as their religion in 2001, including me. There were more Jedis that year than Jewish people and Sikhs. At the time I thought it was hilarious. Who doesnt like to bring a Star Wars vibe to a tedious bit of admin?

Back then, I didnt think about the bigger picture. Not registering ourselves as having no religion excluded us from being counted and therefore not considered when it came to spending money on public services, or deciding whose views are expressed on the school curriculum.

The protest was fun, but the reality was that we were saying, you guys go ahead and do your thing, dont worry about us. Wanna build a state-funded religious school with an incredible music department where our children wont be allowed to go to even though we live around the corner? Go ahead! Ignore us, were still giggling smugly about the Jedi thing, while our kids play on guitars with one string.

As Yoda said, your path you must decide, and this year I decided the right box to tick was the no religion box. Why have I become such a killjoy? I shall tell you. When non-religious people skip this optional part of the form, or write a joke answer, or write other, the less represented we are, the less our values and views are considered when it comes to spending money on public services.

If you have no religion, it doesnt mean you dont want your voice to be heard, or your values included. I have no religion. I believe in trying to go through life without causing harm, for the sake of us all in the here and now, and my beliefs are as valid as those in a religious framework.

The views of Humanists and atheists cant be dismissed as irrelevant. Im a former president of Humanists UK and now vice president and let me tell you, I have met the most incredible minds in the role. I could give you a list of brilliant Humanist thinkers and artists so long and so far back in history that some of them we have only seen as oil paintings or statues (I wont as I know Ill miss someone out and theyll see this and my heart cant take the social nightmare).

They are people whose voices should be at the hub of any debate, any educational curriculum, any discussion of funding for a new school. But they wont be if we dont register ourselves.

As the Humanist UKs Tick No campaign points out, there are many atheists, Jewish people or Sikhs who dont want to relinquish that identity. I get that. There is an ethnicity question where its possible to ensure this identity is counted and you can still tick no religion.

Most state schools still dont accommodate the views of the godless. In primary school, my children were taken to mosques, gurdwaras, a Hindu temple and churches. My daughter cheerfully sang, Its Diwali festival of light! in assembly and it was gorgeous. She was Mary in the Nativity play.

I want my kids to learn about religion and to be respectful of other peoples faiths and to crash their parties, but I dont want them to be left out. Belief systems without faith in a higher power are as valid. Humanist wedding ceremonies and funerals are among the most meaningful I have ever been to. If enough people tick no religion, Humanist weddings would have a better chance of being recognised in law instead of atheists having to get a council official involved in their special day. Ceremonies arent just for religious people; humans have always marked significant events, had rituals and gathered.

Iranian new year is on Sunday and on Tuesday night, like millions of other Iranians, my children and I built a small fire in the garden and jumped over it chanting a rhyme in Farsi about throwing our negativity into the fire and gaining from it health and positivity. Just because Im an atheist, it doesnt mean I dont love the Zoroastrian traditions of my heritage and delight in having a cultural reason to play with matches.

Millions of us in the UK have no religion. We need to be counted properly. So, lets put our lightsabers away and tick no religion in the census.

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I will be ticking no religion in the census there is so much more at stake than you might think - The Independent

The tension between science and religion is old news to us moderns. Historical events like the Catholic Church's trial of Galileo or the Scopes Monkey Trial over teaching Darwin in schools, seem to imply that religion and science are incompatible. More recently, writers like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and other 'New Atheists' have been vigorous in their condemnation of the anti-scientific bias of religious fundamentalism. But if we take a broader view beyond these fundamentalisms, if we ask about the human inclination towards spiritual practice in general, do we still have to find the same antagonism? The answer, I think, is a definitive "No." And that answer is important as we consider the totality of what it means to be human.

First, it's important to distinguish between religion and what I'll call spiritual practice. In his excellent book "Sapiens," Yuval Noah Harari defines religion as "a system of human norms and values that is founded in the belief in a superhuman order." There are two parts of this definition that are important for our discussion. First is the "system of human norms." That phrase points to a lot of stuff, but it also means politics. There is an aspect of organized religion that has always been about establishing and enforcing social norms: Who is an authority; who justifies who is in charge; who marries whom; who tells you how to behave. This aspect of religion is about power within social hierarchies.

The second part of Harari's definition refers to a "superhuman order." Note that he does not say a "supernatural" order. Why? Because some religions like Buddhism don't pivot around the existence of an all-powerful deity. This distinction is important because it allows you to see a point many scholars of religion have made after looking at the long human history of what I'll call spiritual endeavor. From our beginnings as hunter-gathers, we have always been responding to a sense of a "superhuman order." That response has taken many different forms from beautiful paintings on cave walls to beautiful paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

In my first book, I looked in depth at this response, its history, and its relation to science. Even though I consider myself an atheist, experiences of a superhuman order have been with me since I was a kid. Heck, that's what science was to mean order expressible in mathematics beyond the purely human. In fact, many of my deepest experiences of being alive had come to me through my scientific practice. Working through some line of mathematical reasoning or encountering some image of a nebula or galaxy, I'd get thrust into an overwhelming sense of the universe's presence, of its perfect unity and wholeness. At first, I saw the laws of physics as the source of that order but as I got older my focus widened.

Now, one could say that my experiences were "just awe" and nothing more. But as the great scholar of religion, Rudolph Otto noted, awe is the essential component of a spiritual experience. It is an encounter with what other scholars have called "sacredness."

So, what are we to make of these words "spiritual" and "sacred"? Some strident atheists recoil at these terms because they believe they must entail a belief in supernatural entities. This is a mistake. Both can point to something much broader. Rather than ontological claims about what exists in the universe, spiritual and sacred can describe the character of an experience. Instead of a "thing", they can refer to an attitude or an approach. This is the central point William James made in his masterwork "The Varieties of Religious Experience." To speak about sacredness is to understand that some experiences (the birth of your child, coming upon a silent forest glade, hearing a powerful symphony) evoke an order that is more than just our thoughts about that order. And to speak of "the spiritual" can call to the highest aspects of the human spirit: compassion, kindness, empathy, generosity, love.

This kind of understanding of spiritual and sacred have always been with us and they may, or may not, have anything to do with a particular religion. This is where we can draw a distinction between a spiritual practice and a religious one. In a spiritual practice, people purposely attempt to deepen their lived sense of the superhuman order they experience. It is, literally, a practice. You work on it every day, perhaps using meditation or ritual or service to others. The methods differ but the daily application and aspiration are the same.

The important point is that spiritual practice has a purpose: transformation. It is to become a person who lives in accord with that sense of experienced order, that sacredness. Such a lifelong aspiration and effort can happen within an individual religious tradition if there are domains within that tradition that truly support this kind of interior work. Unfortunately, the politics of religion can sometimes keep this from happening. As scholars Joseph Campbell, Walter Houston Clark, and others have said, church can be a "vaccination" against the real thing.

It's also possible to build such a practice outside of established religious tradition. In that case, the difficulty comes in inventing forms that can support a lifelong practice. There is something to be said for traditions or rituals that have endured for many generations and the best of these often occur within some religious traditions.

The bottom line is human beings have felt the need for spiritual practice for a long, long time. That means that even as participation in traditional religions drops, people claiming to be "spiritual but not religious" and people who embrace science continue to grow. The writer Annika Harris and her spouse New Atheist Sam Harris are, for example, strong defenders of science. They have also both written about the importance of contemplative practice in their lives.

I have long argued that science is one way that the aspiration to know the true and the real is expressed. It is one way we express that sense of an order beyond us. But there are other ways that go beyond descriptions and explanation, and all of them make up the totality of being human. That means you can embrace science in all its power and still embed it within the larger context of human experience. All of us can be entirely faithful to the path of inquiry and honesty that is science while making it one aspect of a practice meant to embrace the fullness of your experience as a human in this more-than-human world.

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Can you be scientific and spiritual? - Big Think

ActorKangana Ranaut on Saturday morning responded to a Twitter user who asked her about how she understood the concept of atheism while she was young. In a series of tweets, shewrote about growing up as an atheist and then credited her grandfather for the same. The user's tweet read, "Growing up?? How did you know you were an atheist when you were a child?". As soon as theManikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi actor stumbled upon this tweet, she remarked that hergrandfather was an atheist and that he 'engraved the concept'in hermind.

Kangana added that her grandfatherwas a highly educated and successful person and that he was a man of sharp intellect. More so,he debated with many against God and religion andencouraged people to take up science, mentioned the actor in her tweet. She continued that hesomehowseparated God and Science.

In another thread, Kangana opined her views on the concept of 'Kundalini'. She wrote thatKundalini was one of the reasons why shewas intrigued by Hinduism. More so, she detailed that while she was growing up as an atheist, she was studying science and Hinduism as itoffers practical reason for all its theories. She added, "That gave me the courage to do experiments with various science of 4 Yogas I used Vivekanandas methods."

Kangana Ranaut has time and again, mentioned in interviews that she's a staunch believerofSwami Vivekananda's teachings, the Gita, the Sanatan Dharmaand quantum physics. The actorshared a post about her 'guru' Swami Vivekananda on the occasion of National Youth Day this year. She remarked that the ideals of the great philosopher gave her purpose when she had no hope. She added that Swami gave her a purpose to live when she was disillusioned by the world.

On the work front, Kangana will be seen in theupcoming movie,Dhaakad,alongside Arjun Rampal. The movie is directed byRazneesh Razy Ghai, who has alsoco-written the film with Chintan Gandhi and Rinish Ravindra.Ranaut also has another movie titled Tejas in the pipeline.Kangana completed thefilming of the samein Bikaner, Rajasthan, andshared a glimpse from the sets on March 19.

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Kangana Ranaut to user who questioned her atheism: My grandfather engraved it in my mind - Republic TV

Kangana Ranaut is one of the most-talked celebrities of Bollywood. She is an active social media user. The Queen actress always speaks her mind and often gets trolled by many for various reasons. Earlier today, Kangana took to her Twitter page and shared her take on Hinduism. The actress mentioned that growing up she was an atheist. Kangana's tweet read, "Nicely explained, growing up I was an atheist, was studying science, Kundalini was one of the reasons why I was intrigued by Hinduism. Hinduism offers practical for all its theories that gave me courage to do experiments with various science of 4 Yogas I used Vivekananda's methods."

One Twitter user reacted to her Tweet and questioned her as to how she knew that she was an atheist when she was growing up. The Queen actress replied to him saying, "My grandfather was an atheist he engraved the concept in my mind, he was highly educated and successful person, a man of sharp intellect he debated with many against God and religion."

The Tanu Weds Manu actress further added that her grandfather encouraged people to take up science and somehow he separated the two, God and Science.

On the work from, Kangana Ranaut has interesting projects in her kitty. The beautiful actress will be seen in Thalaivi. She also has Tejas and Dhakaad. She keeps her fans updated about her upcoming projects on social media who are eagerly looking forward to her films. With hardwork and talent, Kangana has successfully created a mark for herself in the industry. Today, she is one of the highest-paid actresses of Bollywood.

Image Source:Instagram/KanganaRanaut

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Kangana Ranaut Reacts To A Twitter User Who Questioned Her For Claiming She Was An Atheist As A Kid; Tweets A Perfect Explanation - SpotboyE