Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Monday, November 20, 2017
Saturday, November 18, 2017
Friday, November 17, 2017
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Monday, November 6, 2017
Saturday, November 4, 2017
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Monday, October 23, 2017
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Friday, October 20, 2017
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Lawrence Lobo sj RIP
FR. LAWRENCE LOBO SJ
(1938 – 2017)
Fr.
Lawrence Lobo SJ (GUJ ) 79 years
old / 56 years in the Society of Jesus, passed away on 18 October, 2017
around 06.30 AM in Lady Pillar Hospital, Vadodara, Gujarat.
Funeral
will be held on Friday, 20 October, at 11.00 AM in Rosary Cathedral, Vadodara.
Biographical Sketch
|
Father: Victor
|
Mother: Lucy
|
Fr. Lawrence Lobo was
born on 09 August, 1938, in Moodubelle,
Udupi, Karnataka. He entered the Society of Jesus on 20
June, 1961, Vinayalaya, Bombay. He was ordained
in St. Mary’s, Mumbai
on 14th March 1970.
He pronounced his Final Vows on 25 December, 1981.
Responsibilities Held
in the Society
|
Responsibilities Held in the Society
|
||
|
Responsibility
|
Place
|
Year
|
|
TREASURER AND VICE
PRINCIPAL
|
JAMNAGAR
|
1971-73
|
|
PARISH PRIEST
|
ROSARY, BARODA
|
1973-79
|
|
TREASURER AND
SECRETARY
|
ISI DELHI
|
1979-80
|
|
MINISTER, TREASURER
AND ADMINISTRATOR
|
DNC PUNE
|
1980-85
|
|
PARISH PRIEST
|
MT CARMEL CATHEDRAL
AHMEDABAD
|
1985-91
|
|
PARISH PRIEST
|
ST JOSEPH’S BARODA
|
1991-97
|
|
FARM INCHARGE; GORVA
PARISH
|
SEVASI/GORVA
|
1997-2000
|
|
PARISH PRIEST
|
KARAMSAD
|
2000-01
|
|
PARISH PRIEST
|
NAVRANGPURA
|
2001-03
|
|
PARISH PRIEST
|
LOYOLA CHURCH,
AHMEDABAD
|
2003-05
|
|
ADMINISTRATOR
|
GVD, SEVASI
|
2006-09
|
|
SUPERIOR
|
SEVASI TECHNICAL
|
2007-09
|
|
MINISTER
|
PREMAL JYOTI
|
2009-11
|
|
INCHARGE OF SHRINE
|
JEEVAN DARSHAN, VADODARA
|
2011-17
|
|
MINISTRIES
|
JEEVAN DARSHAN, VADODARA
|
Until last breath:
18-10- 2017.
|
╬
╬ ╬ ╬
╬ ╬ ╬ ╬
May
the good Lord grant Fr. Lawrence Lobo eternal rest and may his soul rest in
peace.
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
R.I.P. : FR. LAWRENCE LOBO SJ
R.I.P. : FR. LAWRENCE LOBO SJ
We are sad to inform you that Fr. Lawrence Lobo SJ (GUJ ) 79 years old / 56 years in the Society of
Jesus, passed away on 18 October, 2017 around 06.30 AM in Lady Pillar Hospital, Vadodara, Gujarat.
Funeral will be held on Friday, 20 October, at 11.00 AM in Rosary Cathedral, Vadodara.
All the members of the Province are to offer
One Mass and members of the community are to offer two masses for the repose of
Fr Lawrence Lobo SJ.
May the good Lord
grant Fr. Lawrence Lobo eternal rest and may his soul rest in peace.
Sunday, October 8, 2017
Friday, October 6, 2017
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Saturday, September 30, 2017
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Thursday, September 7, 2017
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Friday, September 1, 2017
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Sometime late last year, as I was playing a video game named Dishonored 2,
I did a routine YouTube search about how to beat a tricky section of
the game. As usual, I found a video to answer my question. But on my
next YouTube visit, the site offered me even more compelling Dishonored videos to watch: clips of people playing Dishonored without ever being detected by their enemies; clips where players killed each enemy in highly creative ways; interviews with the game’s creators; whip-smart satirical reviews. I had visited YouTube seeking an answer to my question, and it had revealed a universe.
Soon afterward, I found myself visiting YouTube several
times a day. For the most part, I visited without having a specific
destination — I had become accustomed to the site serving up something I
would like, unprompted. In January, I grew obsessed with a folk-rock
band named Pinegrove,
and within weeks YouTube was serving me video of seemingly every live
performance ever uploaded to its servers. I started cooking more once I
got a new apartment this spring, and after searching for how to make a
panzanella salad, YouTube quickly introduced me to its battalion of
in-house chefs: Byron Talbott, and Serious Eats’ J. Kenji López-Alt, and the Tasty crew, among others.
YouTube has always been useful; since its
founding in 2005, it has been a pillar of the internet. But over the
past year or so, for me anyway, YouTube had started to seem weirdly good.
The site had begun to predict with eerie accuracy what clips I might be
interested in — much better than it ever had before. So what changed?
Over the course of 12 years, YouTube has transformed
itself from a site driven by search to a destination in its own right.
Getting there required hundreds of experiments, a handful of redesigns,
and some great leaps forward in the field of artificial intelligence.
But what really elevated YouTube was its evolution into a feed.
It can be hard to remember now, but at the beginning
YouTube was little more than infrastructure: It offered an easy way to
embed video onto other websites, which is where you were most likely to
encounter it. As the site grew, YouTube became a place to find archival
TV clips, catch up on late-night comedy, and watch the latest viral
hits. Along with Wikipedia, YouTube is probably the web’s most notorious
rabbit hole. Your coworkers mentioned the Harlem Shake at the water cooler, and so you went to YouTube and watched Harlem Shake videos for the rest of the evening.
Meanwhile, Facebook had invented the defining format of
our time: the News Feed, an infinite stream of updates personalized to
you based on your interests. The feed took over the consumer internet,
from Tumblr to Twitter to Instagram to LinkedIn. YouTube’s early
approach to personalization was much more limited: it involved asking
users to subscribe to channels. The metaphor was borrowed from
television, and had mixed results. A huge subscription push in 2011 had
some success, but the average time a person spent watching YouTube
stayed flat, according to data from ComScore.
Channels no longer dominate YouTube as they once did.
Open YouTube on your phone today and you’ll find them hidden away in a
separate tab. Instead, the app opens to a feed featuring a mix of videos
tailored to your interests. There are videos from channels you
subscribe to, yes, but there are also videos related to ones that you’ve
watched before from channels you may not have seen.
This is why, after searching for straightforward Dishonored
videos, I started seeing the recommendations for stealth runs through
the game and satirical reviews. YouTube developed tools to make its
recommendations not only personalized but deadly accurate, and the
result has lifted watch time across the site.
“We knew people were coming to YouTube when they knew
what they were coming to look for,” says Jim McFadden, the technical
lead for YouTube recommendations, who joined the company in 2011. “We
also wanted to serve the needs of people when they didn’t necessarily
know what they wanted to look for.”
I first visited the company in 2011, just a few months
after McFadden joined. Getting users to spend more time watching videos
was then, as now, YouTube’s primary aim.
At the time, it was not going particularly well. “YouTube.com as a
homepage was not driving a ton of engagement,” McFadden says. “We said,
well, how do we turn this thing into a destination?”
The company tried a little bit of everything: it bought professional camera equipment for top creators. It introduced “leanback,”
a feature that queued new videos for you to watch while your current
video played. It redesigned its home page to emphasize subscribing to
channels over individual videos.
Videos watched per user remained flat, but a change made
the following spring finally moved the needle: instead of basing its
algorithmic recommendations on how many people had clicked a video,
YouTube would instead base them on how long people had spent watching it.
Nearly overnight, creators who had profited from
misleading headlines and thumbnails saw their view counts plummet.
Higher-quality videos, which are strongly associated with longer watch
times, surged. Watch time on YouTube grew 50 percent a year for the next
three years.
I subscribed to some channels and counted myself a
regular visitor to YouTube. But for it to become a multiple-times-a-day
destination, YouTube would need a new set of tools — tools that only
became available within the past 18 months.
When I visited the company’s offices this month, McFadden revealed the source of YouTube’s suddenly savvy recommendations: Google Brain,
the parent company’s artificial intelligence division, which YouTube
began using in 2015. Brain wasn’t YouTube’s first attempt at using AI;
the company had applied machine-learning techniques to recommendations
before, using a Google-built system known as Sibyl.
Brain, however, employs a technique known as unsupervised learning: its
algorithms can find relationships between different inputs that
software engineers never would have guessed.
“One of the key things it does is it’s able to
generalize,” McFadden said. “Whereas before, if I watch this video from a
comedian, our recommendations were pretty good at saying, here’s
another one just like it. But the Google Brain model figures out other
comedians who are similar but not exactly the same — even more adjacent
relationships. It’s able to see patterns that are less obvious.”
To name one example: a Brain algorithm began recommending
shorter videos for users of the mobile app, and longer videos on
YouTube’s TV app. It guessed, correctly, that varying video length by
platform would result in higher watch times. YouTube launched 190
changes like this one in 2016, and is on pace to release 300 more this
year. “The reality is, it’s a ton of small improvements adding up over
time,” said Todd Beaupre, group product manager for YouTube’s discovery
team. “For each improvement, you try 10 things and you launch one.”
The Brain algorithms also work faster than YouTube has
before. In past years, it might have taken days for a user’s behavior to
be incorporated into future recommendations. That made it difficult to
identify trending subjects, the company said. “If we wanted to bring
users back to find out what’s happening right now, we’ve kind of fixed
that problem,” Beaupre said. “The delay, instead of multiple days, is
measured in minutes or hours.”
Integrating Brain has had an immense impact: more than 70
percent of the time people spend watching videos on the site is now
driven by YouTube’s algorithmic recommendations. Each day, YouTube
recommends 200 million different videos to users, in 76 languages. And
the aggregate time people spend watching videos on YouTube’s home page
has grown 20 times larger than what it was three years ago.
That roughly matches my own behavior. Years ago I started
visiting YouTube’s home page regularly on my lunch break, to have
something to look at while I ate. But the suggestions were good enough
that I started taking more regular YouTube breaks. This week I broke
down and signed into YouTube on my PlayStation 4, so that I might watch
its recommendations on the largest screen I own.
That’s the power of a truly personalized feed. And yet
it’s striking to me how different YouTube’s feels from any of the others
that inform my digital life. Facebook’s feed is based on what your
friends post, along with posts from pages you like. It’s useful for
knowing who’s gotten engaged or had a baby, and yet I find little
pleasure in my friends’ posts beyond those milestone events. Twitter has
tweets from the people you follow, plus anything those people have
chosen to retweet. As a journalist I am all but required to live on
Twitter, even though these days the home timeline is little more than an
endless, anxious scream.
Each
feed still has its strengths, though 2017 has diminished them. On
Twitter, politics dominate the discussion no matter whom you follow.
Facebook’s momentary enthusiasms for features like events and groups
lead the feed to transform week to week in ways that are jarring, and
leave me feeling less connected to everyone I’m friends with.
(Image-heavy Instagram still feels like an oasis, and it’s little wonder
the app is still growing so fast.)
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram — it seems notable that all
these feeds ask you constantly to perform for them. YouTube is driven by
performances, obviously, and yet a tiny fraction of its users ever
upload a video — and YouTube never pressures them to. YouTube can be
enjoyed passively, like the television channels it has worked so hard to
replace. In a frantic age, there’s something calming about not being
asked for my reaction to the day’s news.
YouTube’s emphasis on videos related to ones you
might like means that its feed consistently seems broader in scope —
more curious — than its peers. The further afield YouTube looks for
content, the more it feels like an escape from other feeds. In a dark
year, I’ll take all the escapism YouTube has to offer.
In 2013, writing in the Atlantic,
Alexis Madrigal posited that the feed as we know it had peaked. The
future, he suggested, would belong to finite experiences: email
newsletters, Medium collections, 10-episode Netflix series. Endless
streams of content are, after all, exhausting. “When the order of the
media cosmos was annihilated, freedom did not rush into the vacuum, but
an emergent order with its own logic,” Madrigal wrote. “We discovered
that the stream introduced its own kinds of compulsions and controls. Faster! More! Faster! More! Faster! More!”
Four years on, YouTube’s approach suggests the feed is
only becoming more important. An ever-growing repository of videos,
matched with ever-improving personalization technology, will be
difficult to resist. YouTube now surveys users about how much they
enjoyed the videos that are recommended to them; over time, the results
will make YouTube smarter — and lead to more video being consumed.
Beaupre described this process to me
as crossing a chasm. “There’s stuff that’s closely related to what you
already liked, and stuff that’s trending and popular. But in between,
that’s the magic zone.” And if YouTube’s rivals can’t find a way to
cross that chasm, they may find it very difficult to compete.
Web
Twitch announces new Extensions program to let streamers customize their pages
Microsoft
Satya Nadella and Microsoft take strong stance against reported end to DACA
Circuit Breaker
Jabra’s new neckband headphones deliver up to 18 hours of battery life
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Monday, August 7, 2017
Monday, July 31, 2017
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Friday, July 28, 2017
Thursday, July 27, 2017
Saturday, July 22, 2017
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Monday, July 3, 2017
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Friday, June 30, 2017
Monday, June 26, 2017
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Monday, June 12, 2017
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Saturday, May 6, 2017
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Friday, April 21, 2017
Monday, April 17, 2017
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Monday, March 27, 2017
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Saturday, March 25, 2017
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Gravitational waves and the Future of Religion and Society by Prof Job DNC
The Discovery of Gravitational waves
and the Future of Religion and Society
The most recent discovery of gravitational waves
on 14 September 2015 along with its official
announcement on 11 February 2016 is one of the
greatest landmarks in the history of humans. Predicted
by Albert Einstein way back in 1916 on the basis of his
general theory of relativity, many doubted the theoretical
possibility of its existence as well as the practical
possibility of its detection. However, over 1000
scientists from over 19 countries, including 61 from
India, never gave up hope. These daring scientists
worked on two fronts – theoretical
and practical. In the theoretical front
India's contribution has been
significant. For over 25 years, two
groups – the IUCAA (Inter-
University Centre for Astronomy
and Astrophysics) Group, Pune,
under the leadership of IUCAA's
own Sanjeev Dhurandhar, and the
RRI Group (Raman Research
Institute), Bengaluru (Bangalore),
guided by Bala Iyer – contributed substantially. On the
practical front scientists worked for decades in
developing LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational
Wave Observatory), the most accurate and sensitive
device in human history. This patient and persistent
pursuit was rewarded at last. On 14 September 2015 the
leading scientists of LIGO were taken by surprise by a
cosmic message in the form of a “chirp.” The event lasted
only a paltry 200 milliseconds, but it opened a new
chapter in the annals of human's relentless pursuit to
unravel the innermost secrets of nature. Gravitational
astronomy was born. Hailed as “the discovery of the
century,” this involved a violent collision, 1.3 billion
years ago, of two massive black holes of 36 and 29 solar
masses each, ferociously merging into a single giant
black hole of 62 solar masses. The 3 solar masses that
disappeared in the collision process appeared in the form
of most powerful gravitational waves. Indeed we are
witnessing the beginning of a new era in scientific
research and development.
We know that for over 4 centuries science has been
serving humanity with many surprising discoveries and
inventions, particularly in recent years. We are proud of
what our gifted and hardworking scientists have been
able to achieve. But how are these and related
developments going to impact humanity, particularly
contemporary religions and human society? We know
the discovery of electromagnetic waves at the end of the
19th century transformed our world – mobiles, radios,
TVs, computers, etc., are results of this revolution. We
can expect a similar situation when gravitational waves
are ingeniously developed by science and skilfully
applied by technology in the future. When this happens,
what should our response be? How can humanity
respond to it so as to maximize its benefits and minimize
its possible ill-effects? These and related issues were
studied in depth and discussed in detail by a team of
international and national experts at the international
symposium organized by Indian
Institute of Science and Religion
(IISR) Delhi and Jnana –Deepa
Vidyapeeth (JDV) Centre for Science
and Religion (JCSR) Pune in
collaboration with other well-known
academic institutions at Jnana-Deepa
Vidyapeeth, Pune.
It was pointed out that discoveries
like the gravitational waves which
included world-shattering collision between massive
black holes could serve to transform what was previously
held as matters of religious faith into present day
scientific facts of experience. For instance, all theistic
religions believe that God is almighty. So far this
statement has remained a matter of religious faith.
However, today, thanks to the discovery of gravitational
waves and related cosmic events, the statement is
becoming a scientific fact of experience. In the case of
the discovery of 14 September 2015, the collision was so
powerful that some estimates show that the total energy
radiated as gravitational waves was 1049watts, which is
about 50 times the combined light power from all the
stars in the observable universe. The black holes
involved in this collision were very ordinary and
comparatively small-sized, being of 36 and 29 sun
masses. Incredibly far more massive black holes have
been spotted in the universe. According to reliable
sources, in February 2015 it was reported that scientists
had found a black hole of 12 billion sun masses. Again in
April 2016 they spotted a black hole of 17 billion sun
masses. There is good chance that in course of time other
such incredible power centres will be discovered. Any
collision between such giant black holes will be a display
of unthinkable power. Since no effect can come without a
cause, the source or cause of such black holes will have to
be an agent with almost infinite might. Similar
conclusions can be drawn with regard to religious beliefs
like “God is all-wise,” “God is all-caring,” etc.
Sparks
jAnuArY to mArCH - 2017 05
Furthermore, present day findings of the astronomical
world expose the untenability of the standard atheistic
attempt to explain complex cosmic phenomena in terms
of a play of chance. For instance, it has been estimated
that in the Milky Way Galaxy alone there are about 100
billion stars. Recent findings tell us that there are also
about 100 million black holes in the same galaxy of ours.
Now all of them are mobile, active and powerful. They
do not seem to get in the way of each other, and the whole
galaxy seems to be functioning with certain stability and
r e g u l a r i t y. I t i s h i g h l y
unconvincing to argue that all
these things have happened
and will continue to happen
by a mere play of chance,
particularly when we know
that there are approximately
one hundred billion galaxies
in the universe, and the
u n i v e r s e h a s o n l y a n
estimated age of 13.82 billion
y e a r s . A l l t h e s e
considerations prompt us to
conclude that the more
science advances, the less
convincing does the argument purporting to account for
the functioning of the super-complex universe in terms
of mere chance.
For one thing, it was very clear that the creative
confluence of the dimensions of science and religion
takes place not so much at the level of individual
scientific theories or religious dogmas, as at the level of
the lived life of the person. Thus the meeting is taking
place at a higher plane and between areas that have many
dimensions, and any method of a creative meeting
between the two needs to be sensitive to this fact. Human
life involves not only the rational but also the affective.
In fact, many experience that humans treasure dearly
extend far beyond the realm of reason, e.g., the depth of
love between two young lovers or the self-sacrificing
love of a mother for her child. It is well known that the
criteria of validation for the rational and the affective are
radically different. Thus, although both science and
religion have the same goal of assisting humans in the
building up of a better world and a better humanity, they
approach the goal very differently. To develop a
methodology that can do due justice to both this
similarity and dissimilarity still remains a challenge to all
those engaged in developing a meaningful and workable
methodology of science-religion dialogue. One response
to this challenge has been the complementarity
relationship between science and religion in the sense
that at the lower level these two have serious differences,
but at a higher level they converge creatively and
constructively. They both have different approaches, but
they move to produce an integral, unified final product.
Their approaches and resources are different, but this
difference, far from leading to conflict and
impoverishment, contribute to enrichment and
completion. Religion brings in
some elements which are
necessary for the building up
of a better humanity, which
science is not able to provide.
Similarly science brings in
something necessary, which
religion is not equipped to
s u p p l y. D e v e l o p i n g a
methodology that can put the
complementarity relationship
on a firm footing seems to be
the challenge of sciencer
e l i g i o n d i a l o g u e
methodology.
Closely related to the second point was a third one:
developing the “Eastern Wing” of science-religion
dialogue. In the past few decades, science-religion
interfacing has made remarkable strides, particularly in
the West. However, this contribution principally from
scholars from the West has remained mainly in the
academic, intellectual and rational level. It has made very
valuable and necessary contribution to developing
creative ideas and penetrating insights. But it has not
given sufficient attention to the affective dimension of
human life. It is informative and even formative of the
mind, but has fallen short of being trans-formative of life.
I think that the noble and sublime goal of science-religion
dialogue is not only to provide information and assist in
formation, but also to bring about a transformation of the
person so that a better and new humanity and cosmos can
emerge. This transformative function still remains
incomplete. In other words, science-religion dialogue
should touch and transform not only the head but also the
heart, not only the rational, but also the affective
dimension, so that the total person may be transformed.
and the Future of Religion and Society
The most recent discovery of gravitational waves
on 14 September 2015 along with its official
announcement on 11 February 2016 is one of the
greatest landmarks in the history of humans. Predicted
by Albert Einstein way back in 1916 on the basis of his
general theory of relativity, many doubted the theoretical
possibility of its existence as well as the practical
possibility of its detection. However, over 1000
scientists from over 19 countries, including 61 from
India, never gave up hope. These daring scientists
worked on two fronts – theoretical
and practical. In the theoretical front
India's contribution has been
significant. For over 25 years, two
groups – the IUCAA (Inter-
University Centre for Astronomy
and Astrophysics) Group, Pune,
under the leadership of IUCAA's
own Sanjeev Dhurandhar, and the
RRI Group (Raman Research
Institute), Bengaluru (Bangalore),
guided by Bala Iyer – contributed substantially. On the
practical front scientists worked for decades in
developing LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational
Wave Observatory), the most accurate and sensitive
device in human history. This patient and persistent
pursuit was rewarded at last. On 14 September 2015 the
leading scientists of LIGO were taken by surprise by a
cosmic message in the form of a “chirp.” The event lasted
only a paltry 200 milliseconds, but it opened a new
chapter in the annals of human's relentless pursuit to
unravel the innermost secrets of nature. Gravitational
astronomy was born. Hailed as “the discovery of the
century,” this involved a violent collision, 1.3 billion
years ago, of two massive black holes of 36 and 29 solar
masses each, ferociously merging into a single giant
black hole of 62 solar masses. The 3 solar masses that
disappeared in the collision process appeared in the form
of most powerful gravitational waves. Indeed we are
witnessing the beginning of a new era in scientific
research and development.
We know that for over 4 centuries science has been
serving humanity with many surprising discoveries and
inventions, particularly in recent years. We are proud of
what our gifted and hardworking scientists have been
able to achieve. But how are these and related
developments going to impact humanity, particularly
contemporary religions and human society? We know
the discovery of electromagnetic waves at the end of the
19th century transformed our world – mobiles, radios,
TVs, computers, etc., are results of this revolution. We
can expect a similar situation when gravitational waves
are ingeniously developed by science and skilfully
applied by technology in the future. When this happens,
what should our response be? How can humanity
respond to it so as to maximize its benefits and minimize
its possible ill-effects? These and related issues were
studied in depth and discussed in detail by a team of
international and national experts at the international
symposium organized by Indian
Institute of Science and Religion
(IISR) Delhi and Jnana –Deepa
Vidyapeeth (JDV) Centre for Science
and Religion (JCSR) Pune in
collaboration with other well-known
academic institutions at Jnana-Deepa
Vidyapeeth, Pune.
It was pointed out that discoveries
like the gravitational waves which
included world-shattering collision between massive
black holes could serve to transform what was previously
held as matters of religious faith into present day
scientific facts of experience. For instance, all theistic
religions believe that God is almighty. So far this
statement has remained a matter of religious faith.
However, today, thanks to the discovery of gravitational
waves and related cosmic events, the statement is
becoming a scientific fact of experience. In the case of
the discovery of 14 September 2015, the collision was so
powerful that some estimates show that the total energy
radiated as gravitational waves was 1049watts, which is
about 50 times the combined light power from all the
stars in the observable universe. The black holes
involved in this collision were very ordinary and
comparatively small-sized, being of 36 and 29 sun
masses. Incredibly far more massive black holes have
been spotted in the universe. According to reliable
sources, in February 2015 it was reported that scientists
had found a black hole of 12 billion sun masses. Again in
April 2016 they spotted a black hole of 17 billion sun
masses. There is good chance that in course of time other
such incredible power centres will be discovered. Any
collision between such giant black holes will be a display
of unthinkable power. Since no effect can come without a
cause, the source or cause of such black holes will have to
be an agent with almost infinite might. Similar
conclusions can be drawn with regard to religious beliefs
like “God is all-wise,” “God is all-caring,” etc.
Sparks
jAnuArY to mArCH - 2017 05
Furthermore, present day findings of the astronomical
world expose the untenability of the standard atheistic
attempt to explain complex cosmic phenomena in terms
of a play of chance. For instance, it has been estimated
that in the Milky Way Galaxy alone there are about 100
billion stars. Recent findings tell us that there are also
about 100 million black holes in the same galaxy of ours.
Now all of them are mobile, active and powerful. They
do not seem to get in the way of each other, and the whole
galaxy seems to be functioning with certain stability and
r e g u l a r i t y. I t i s h i g h l y
unconvincing to argue that all
these things have happened
and will continue to happen
by a mere play of chance,
particularly when we know
that there are approximately
one hundred billion galaxies
in the universe, and the
u n i v e r s e h a s o n l y a n
estimated age of 13.82 billion
y e a r s . A l l t h e s e
considerations prompt us to
conclude that the more
science advances, the less
convincing does the argument purporting to account for
the functioning of the super-complex universe in terms
of mere chance.
For one thing, it was very clear that the creative
confluence of the dimensions of science and religion
takes place not so much at the level of individual
scientific theories or religious dogmas, as at the level of
the lived life of the person. Thus the meeting is taking
place at a higher plane and between areas that have many
dimensions, and any method of a creative meeting
between the two needs to be sensitive to this fact. Human
life involves not only the rational but also the affective.
In fact, many experience that humans treasure dearly
extend far beyond the realm of reason, e.g., the depth of
love between two young lovers or the self-sacrificing
love of a mother for her child. It is well known that the
criteria of validation for the rational and the affective are
radically different. Thus, although both science and
religion have the same goal of assisting humans in the
building up of a better world and a better humanity, they
approach the goal very differently. To develop a
methodology that can do due justice to both this
similarity and dissimilarity still remains a challenge to all
those engaged in developing a meaningful and workable
methodology of science-religion dialogue. One response
to this challenge has been the complementarity
relationship between science and religion in the sense
that at the lower level these two have serious differences,
but at a higher level they converge creatively and
constructively. They both have different approaches, but
they move to produce an integral, unified final product.
Their approaches and resources are different, but this
difference, far from leading to conflict and
impoverishment, contribute to enrichment and
completion. Religion brings in
some elements which are
necessary for the building up
of a better humanity, which
science is not able to provide.
Similarly science brings in
something necessary, which
religion is not equipped to
s u p p l y. D e v e l o p i n g a
methodology that can put the
complementarity relationship
on a firm footing seems to be
the challenge of sciencer
e l i g i o n d i a l o g u e
methodology.
Closely related to the second point was a third one:
developing the “Eastern Wing” of science-religion
dialogue. In the past few decades, science-religion
interfacing has made remarkable strides, particularly in
the West. However, this contribution principally from
scholars from the West has remained mainly in the
academic, intellectual and rational level. It has made very
valuable and necessary contribution to developing
creative ideas and penetrating insights. But it has not
given sufficient attention to the affective dimension of
human life. It is informative and even formative of the
mind, but has fallen short of being trans-formative of life.
I think that the noble and sublime goal of science-religion
dialogue is not only to provide information and assist in
formation, but also to bring about a transformation of the
person so that a better and new humanity and cosmos can
emerge. This transformative function still remains
incomplete. In other words, science-religion dialogue
should touch and transform not only the head but also the
heart, not only the rational, but also the affective
dimension, so that the total person may be transformed.
Friday, March 17, 2017
Monday, March 13, 2017
Sunday, March 5, 2017
Friday, March 3, 2017
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Monday, February 27, 2017
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Monday, February 20, 2017
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Monday, January 23, 2017
Friday, January 20, 2017
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
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