Conspiracies in Science, Religion and Politics
This is an introduction to my book that would be out on Amazon books.
It is probably going to be my last.
Internet of things is taking us to uncharted territory. I adore its freedom, anybody with proper portal could voice his or her opinion without hindrance.
There is no peer review or scrutiny.
It is a democratic institution if properly used but it can be a place for raging fire.
In Linux old terminology it was called “flame wars”.
The Idea was to bring forward counter arguments to forefront in developing the kernel, the core of the system.
There is community involvement and its spirit, not seen in the corporate world had contributed enormously to free software development.
There is secrecy, misinformation and conspiracy are commoner garden occurrence in corporate world.
Due to this reason I have used Linux philosophy and its development to illustrate the counter ploy to grand conspiracy.
I hope you bear with me for its inclusion.
I could not find a solution to conspiracy even in the major religions.
However, Linux with its copy-left and sharing (with the wider world) philosophy has become a household name.
I will always use this philosophy when misinformation and conspiracy rises its head above water.
The conspiracy should be sunk at all costs.
Like a lotus that flower above muddy bottoms, we should do all what we could to bring the truth to the surface.
I have to make a confession.
I have not “fact checked” most of the claims made by certain authors.
In conspiracy and speculations, “fact checking” is humanly impossible.
Errors are built into the system by repetition and the difference between “fact and fiction” becomes almost imperceptible.
In this context, some of the films made on verifiable facts, inadvertently become fiction due to inflation or exaggeration.
It works both ways, a fact becomes a fiction and a fiction becomes a fact.
In this scenario conspiracy thrives.
I am one who is averse to lies or deception.
I want scientists to be “bona fide” true gentleman / lady and when I find the so called scientists, deliberately lie for some personal or corporate gains, it is obnoxious.
Unfortunately, I have seen doctors working in alliance with representative from pharmaceutical companies, use lies, deception, partial disclosure of side effects and exaggerating flimsy benefits.
Having made unwitting entry into fields foreign to my own, as a preparation for this book, now I am convinced conspiracy in theory is universal, an Achilles tendon to scientific verification.
Wikipedia had been a major source and I am thankful to
all who contributed to Wikipedia.
But any errors of commission or omission are all mine.
I have placed many personalities in this book not knowing
their direct or indirect contribution to either science or conspiracy.
I had no personal choices, in the selections I have made, in this exercise and I may have inadvertently, left out many important personalities.
I present this book to those personalities left out unwittingly, but nevertheless, suffered ridicule and reprimand for their genuine interest and dedication in seeking the truth.
I hope this book will inspire for those who seek transparency in science, governance and politics.
The idea of this book was in my mind for sometime but deliberately delayed it, so that I could devote much time and effort on the final outcome. The idea was to have an overview of the human thinking over the last 3000 years based on written or oral material of the East and West.
How science shaped and developed my way of thinking is altogether a different kettle of fish.
I must say, I had the luxury of free thinking from my childhood and nobody tried to modify it.
In other words, I did not have a mentor.
Except for the sports master, in my simple village school who instilled in my mind, the golden rule in sports “It is participation, not winning that matters” under the Olympics banner and the late Professor Senaka Bibile in my undergraduate days, there were only a few personalities that I admired.
Only other exception to that rule was Sir john Kotalawala whom I used to see as a tiny tot. He was famous for his uttering “It is better, go fox hunting in England than do politics in Ceylon". Shooting foxes was a sport in UK then, I joined the cavalcade, vigorously opposing it, as a sport, in early eighties, on the lines of animals rights, while working there.
We won our campaign and it was abolished on the grounds of preventing cruelty to animals. Unfortunately in this country we still cause untold cruelty to our “Gentle Giant”, a political symbol of major party in the name of traditional Buddhist practice of parading them in procession.
Some cruel monks of our tradition are the exponent of this “cruelty sport” while illegally hunting the baby elephants in the wild joining hand with Ganja (hashish) growers.
Having said that, I did not understand the deeper meaning of Buddhism (till later years in my life), but its principle practices have had an influence in my thinking. It teaches us of simplicity and despise grandiosity and Avihinsa (non violence) the guiding principle which are antithesis to our grandiose high priests.
For a starter, I did not believe in creation of the world by a single god. That meant I did not believe in existence of any form of god dead or live. Advent of the Russian exploration of space when I was a tiny tot, not only made deeper meaning and admiration of its people without a religion.
For my luck, I was born with scientific outlook and learning science was a pleasure (language and religion were not) and a pastime.
To add to that there were plenty of reading materials, including local papers and scientific journals at the British Council Library. English language or literature (I hated Shakespeare but made a point to visit his birth place when I was working in UK) was not my forte but that did not deter me from grasping scientific terminology.
In other words, the outside world contributed a lot to my formative years. The fact, that I was born to a independent free nation was a feather on my cap.
There was no indoctrination and freedom to think and act were bonuses.
How, I went up the ladder was a shear chance occurrence with no prior programming.
The rationalist Abram Kovoor was making his presence felt and I had the audacity to pose probing question to him (but no need to record those flimsy occurrences, here). I never followed his line of thinking but admired him all the same.
Abraham Thomas Kovoor (April 10, 1898 – September 18, 1978) was an Indian professor and rationalist who gained prominence after retirement for his campaign to expose as frauds various Indian and Sri Lankan "god-men" and so-called paranormal phenomena. His criticism of spiritual frauds and organized religions was enthusiastically received by many enthusiasts, initiating a new dynamism in the Rationalist Movement, especially in Sri Lanka.
Professor Carlo Fonseka was active somewhat later in time to Kovoor but he did not make an impact on me.
But I loved his orations and style.
It was a revelation at that time.
A cursory look at the content of this book may look like there is lot of repetition, which I wish I could have avoided, but could not, for the simple reason, the grand conspiracy design was integrated with religion, science and politics.
