Religion: A new era (Part I)

Before starting my post I would like put a brief disclaimer quoting Paul Graham. Paul Graham once said (not in exact quote) we all can talk about religion hours after hours but we barely talk few minutes about something technical. Does it mean religion is simpler than technological things or we all have profound knowledge about religion? I guess the answer is neither. I think we all have a view of religion and we know for sure that can neither be refuted nor proved. This is an idea I have in my mind and I just put it here for myself or random wanderers like early cavemen did painting. The second and most important reason is opening myself to the age of science.

Merriam-Webster defines religion as "a cause, principle, or system of belief held to with ardor and faith." So all a region requires is "a cause," "principle," "a system of belief," and "faith." Anything with all aforementioned criteria may be called religion. If so is the definition, there exist a whole lot of things that can be defined as religion including science. I have been thinking about the very idea of religion for couple of weeks. It struck into my head when Asif asked whether western people come up with any religion.

Let’s have a closer look on modern religion. Three modern religions (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) have monotheism: means single God, a written book and a set of customs. It is important to note that not all religions are based on monotheism; monotheism is a trait of modern religions. Another important distinction between modern religions and their ancestors is interaction between God(s) and human being. In early religions, God(s) have intertwined with human being in many occasions but modern religions are based on very lose coupling between God and human being. How about take a detour about birth of religion :).

At some point in human evolution human beings learn to ask question. They learn to seek knowledge. Asking question is solely human behavior unlike to any other living species on earth. Asking question is one of those most important qualities that makes human civilization moves further. What is so important about question? Asking question is the only way of requesting specific piece of information from second party. So asking facilitated collecting small pieces and connects them together for knowledge. Question is a single most important thing that pushed us beyond animal instinct.

It is a well established idea that human being did not start their early days on the top of the food chain; but human being did an amazing job that no other species have done before: shift the balance of power from one species to another (an event that never happen except the case of human: no other species start as a prey and eventually established themselves as a predator). The transfer of power happens because of enormous brain power of human being. The brain power not only puts them to the top of the food chain but also give them enough leisure time to think about themselves. At some point we (human beings) learn to ask question and begin questioning our existence; may our ancestors were trying to connect themselves to the nature or trying to explain their existence incoherence of numerous natural events. Whatever the reason is, the every religion tries to explain existence of human being and established our position in our nature. So it is convincing that ‘existence’ is the question that gives birth of religion.

We modern human being still cannot answer the question of existence; so we can imagine how helpless our ancestors were when they were thinking about their existence. The question was no match for their mental capability. But somehow they came with the idea of superior being. Modern psychology has proved how comfortable we are when we are just obeying the order of a superior command. If this same for our ancestors then the idea of God can be traced easily. So God came into existence.

God is the reason of our existence, God is the principle of our life, God is in the center of every rituals. God helps our ancestors by carry the enormous load of countless questions. However, perhaps Gods were very personal in the early stage of their existence. At some point those personal Gods became communal and a set of rituals were introduced in the transition phase. Rituals were necessary to bring the imaginary Gods into the real world; otherwise Gods are too imaginary to prevail.

Although our ancestors were intelligent enough to create Gods, it was difficult for them to characterize their God with supernatural properties so they characterize their God with earthly behavior. The ancient Gods were almost complete except there were too many of them. ‘Too many Gods’ gives birth of another problem: conflict of interest which eventually originates the idea of monotheism. Another interesting distinctive feature of monotheism is separation of God from earth.

In earlier religions Gods were in haven but they intervened in human activities time to time. It is indeed very difficult to imagine a God without any real existence without any intervention in earthly matter. Perhaps our cognitive processes were not ready for entirely imaginary God. That’s why ancient Gods often intertwined with human on earthly matters. As we progress the necessity of real existence of God in earthly matter become diminished over time and gives birth of modern religions.

Photography: A hobby

Photography is an expensive hobby? Why? You don't have to buy anything to take a new picture. This is not old film days; to take a picture all we need to do is point and shoot. So why is it expensive? Somehow to hobbyist it become gear oriented. Interestingly no one ever confess that this is so much gear oriented for hobbyist. Some of them are even in denial. They believe they can take good picture out of nothing.

I am computer programmer, my biggest hobby is coding. I don't hate computer. I never even claim I can make a program out of nothing. I don't know any programmer did. Why the photographers? One interesting explanation could they belief Photography is an art and being can artist they cannot rely on a technology too much. Anyway it's a classic debate of art and technology and I don't want to go in this direction. My point in all photographers owe to the technology and they should acknowledge it.

I have came across numerous vlogger claiming they will do a photo shoot with simply an iPhone. Well that's great why do you need all fancy stuff then? Well, most of them would probably agree because that will make their life little easier. huh! If I ask a photographer to take a picture of bokeh; they simply cannot do that with iPhone because it does not have enough depth of field. So what is the point of iPhone photography! Yes you can take certain kind of picture with iPhone and all they do is shoot that kind of photo with iPhone and try to establish they are great photographer all by themselves! huh! poor guys don't even know what they are claiming. There are all sort of things in all sort of purpose. 

If I ask a photographer to take a picture of the surface of the moon; is it possible without proper lens! Nah, why do they claim that gear doesn't matter then. If ask them take a picture of a honey bee, could they do it without macro? I mean there are numerous gear for numerous reason and all have a purpose. Yes I agree may they don't need the best quality product. Well that's the case in every aspect of life. Any dress can serve the purpose but better dresses make us prettier. I never heard of anyone saying: you know in't not the dress, I can make it out of nothing. Poor photographers don't know what they are saying. 

The hobbyists are worse. At the beginning most of them don't know what they want to do. So they buy even more stuff to do more things. Believe me not all kind of photography is everyone' forte, later they specialized on something and gears they bought before remain useless. And they late bravely comment, you know what gear doesn't matter! I can do a photography with my pairs of thumbs and index fingers.

Outliers: the story of success

Wow! I have finished the entire book. Probably this is the only book I finished reading in last year. So you get kind of the idea of my reading practice! That's pretty amazing huh! I used to read a lot! I used to read 4/5 hours a day and now I read one book in entire year! That's an interesting statistics. I used to surf and write a lot too; and now I seldom even write! What the hell I am doing? I don't know! I don't even do the kind of research I used to do. So what the heck I am doing!!! I know photography took a fair share amount of time from my life and so is Lipa. Another fare share goes to cooking and stuff like that, anyway that's the reality. I am not too worried, all are part of life; and the whole thing makes me a little more Shiblee. bla... bla... bla.. Let's go straight to the point, the book "Outliers."

My research area is sort of outliers identification, so I borrowed this book to get kind of a feeling of other people (other than mathematicians) think about the outliers. I wanted to address the most fundamental question of my research, what makes something an outlier? Well I know I can through a bunch of mathematics but none of them makes sense unless the noun Outlier makes any sense to me. So, I borrowed the book. Well my intentions were not fully gratified however it was a good read. In fact it's a very good read.

However, there is a big catch. The book, kind of point out the idea of being a man. I had come up with the idea of I = f(t) quite some time before. What I essentially wanted to tell is, I am changing every moment of my life and every complicated dynamics like social, economical, etc are shaping me in course of being me. The book almost brought up the same idea. What we see in every people is a complex collision and cohesion of intricate dynamics. Every little things make a little difference and end the result is a entirely different story! Let's start with an example.

Think about Shiblee. Shiblee was brought up in a lower middle class family. His family always had enough to eat but that's it. They never had enough money to spend on anything else. So he grew up in a sort of poor neighborhood. Well at least back in those days his neighborhood was fairly poor. Shiblee's mother and father came to Dhaka city around seventies, I presume after independence. Let's start with his mother. His mother used to know a guy named Sekandar Ali. This is guy is particularly important in many respect, because Shiblee's mother used to live in his house when she first came to Dhaka. But he is even more important for another tiny reason. He is the most educated man known by Shiblee's mother and he was very successful in terms of monetary concern; and guess what when Shiblee's mom came into Dhaka and find Mr. Sekandar Ali's upper class lifestyle she was kind of moved. (important note: Shiblee's mom and Mr. Sekandar Ali almost have similar family background). Shiblee's mom almost immediately conclude this is the education that change Mr. Sekandar Ali's lifestyle. So, in rest of her life she was kind of hoping one day her son gonna be like that and the only way known to her was a better education! She almost in her entire life she did numerous sacrifices for her children better education. Now you can imagine how important education was in Shiblee's family and what an enormous push he felt. Apart from eating the only thing was a ritual in his family is study. 

Shiblee however was not one of the brightest kind in the school. Certainly he was not living upto his parents expectation. However everything changed after class nine. The curriculum for nine and ten was massively redesigned during 1996/97. Every text book was re-written and those days the governing body was talking about redesigning the way science is taught. In that situation the teachers who were teaching for quite some years didn't know how to handle the new way of doing science. So people like Shiblee got a break. He was never good of collecting notes from previous years and doing the good in class. The teacher new well about old paper but they had no idea of how to correct their paper. They simply had no standard of which writing should get high score and which not because of the new science. So he did un-expectantly great in his SSC and finally become interested about study. bla.. bla.. bla.. Long story short, he graduated from BUET and doing his PhD. So. the key things are Shiblee's mother enormous push and a break of the curriculum change. Without one of those this story could have been entirely different.

Well that's the idea, Malcolm Gladwell tried to bring that up into the front. Einstein in not an Einstein if you disregard everything around him. The entire purpose of the book was pointing out the minor facts that shaped the successful people in later in their life. It is true: it is always easy to connect the dots backward but the backward connection of Bill Gates could really show the forward path of a kid in Washington today. I know backward connection of dots of the successful mind would not help us anyway, but what we can do is provide a guideline for future generation. Whenever a parent is confused, he or she may look at those dots to get some clue for their kids.

I don't know what was Malcolm Gladwell's intentions about the people itself, but I have no intention to vilify them. All my points were there are something due to the master minds' surroundings too and I wanted to acknowledge it with all due respect to them. Anyway lot of talking about Shiblee and very little about the book but I think I brought the idea of the book in front.

Color!

I have been moved by idea of minimal component. If a component does not add anything to the whole, why bother to use such a component. Well why the same idea cannot be applicable to photography? I am sure it does. If color is not relevant to a photograph, why bother to compose in color? If subject is the only thing that matters in a photograph, why bother to compose in color? Don't get me wrong, some composition can be made of color, I am not talking about those composition.  

Lost

Well, in this photograph all that matter is the girl and her emotions, why bother to use color! Is not it neater in black and white?

Going public again!

I have been thinking of going public again. It has been almost a year I have gone private. My best intentions was to hide from everyone. Why? It's a great question but I am not very sure why. Anyway I am planning to go public again. I have not decided when and why. This time I'll blog some tech post as well. I am thinking of establishing it as my profile. I am not sure how good it would be. I'll try to be more frequent from now.

One more thing this blog is kind of mixed, so not all topics are interesting to all topics are certainly interesting to me. I thing this kind of messy organization suits me pretty well. After all this is the blog for myself not for the readers. Well if so what is the point of a blog if there is no reader? This is a very good question but I think one important application of blog could be storage! However the appreciate the readers. They are my alternative eyes of seeing things.