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It is one of the most favourite subjects of official historians in Pakistan. Their books tell us that Dahir was a brutal and promiscuous ruler who had married his sister. It is indeed true that he had married his sister but the official historians deliberately leave out two important points.
1. The marriage was never consummated.
As Chachnama states:
It was he who, by the advice of a credulous minister, solemnised his marriage with his own sister, to prevent the working of a prediction. The marriage was not intended to be consummated, and, as a matter of fact, it was not consummated. [1]
2. That the act was socially abominable in that society and Dahir had his brother alienated from him due to this act.
Dahir’s brother Daharsiah wrote the following to Dahir when he learnt of this news:
What you have done is wicked and infamous. Whether you did it through necessity or of your own free will, you can never be excused, and whether you considered it allowable to do such an illegal and detestable act, in order to secure worldly pomp and power, or took the initial step by reason of the temptation of the devil, what you now ought to do is to turn from your evil ways, to forswear year sin, and to grieve (for your transgression), so that you may not be shut off from (the communion of) our religion, and our alliance with you may not be cancelled. If you fail to turn from this sin, in accordance with our suggestion and advice, you will make yourself deserving of opprobrium and will receive (your) punishment. You would have then to thank yourself for the consequences of these ugly deeds. [1]
By leaving these two subtle but important points, official historians create a generalization which implies that incest was a norm of that society. One can easily find such impressions upon conversing with people who have been exposed to such biased version of history. Such intellectual dishonesty helps in creating an image of the promiscuous, immoral, barbarian ‘Other’ that our ruling elites to create in order to produce and sustain hatred against Hindus.
The above lines from Chachnama clearly indicate that Dahir’s act was clearly a deviance and not a norm of that culture. Though this conclusion does not even require a background in history if one is aware of some basic principles of biology, genetics and evolutionary psychology. The taboo against incest is not only social but it also lies deep within our biology. The abhorrence we feel towards it is embedded into us by the nature. No society or culture could have survived if it had made incest a norm as the biological penalty is extremely high. Nature is a cruel administrator and that we can observe in our society where excessive cousin marriages have led to fatal blood diseases in extreme cases and minor aberrations in others.
Notes
by Awais Masood
I always believed that there are limits to credulity and ignorance but I was proven wrong when I watched Zakir Naik presenting ‘arguments’ against evolution. [1]
It was difficult for me to digest that a large number of people present in the live audience and watching on screens could buy into such third grade arguments. Moreover one can raise strong questions regarding the credibility of such a (pseudo) scholar. It is understandable – in the context of low literacy rates, much lower rates of scientific education and suppression of rational inquiry in our region – that general public could misunderstand science and take things for granted but it is criminally ignorant to let people like Zakir Naik churn out rubbish in the name of science.
In this series of rebuttals, I intend to take on Naik’s arguments, statement by statement and debunk those claims and expose what I perceive as either abject ignorance or criminal trickery.
Argument : Zakir Naik claims that evolution is a theory and not a fact [1]
It is perhaps the most popular and actually the most ridiculous argument presented by creationists. It actually exhibits a complete ignorance of science and scientific method and raises serious questions regarding the academic credentials of Naik who claims to be a doctor of medicine.
Anybody who has gone through elementary courses in science knows that there are other ‘theories’ of science such as ‘Theory of Gravitation’ and ‘Electromagnetic Theory’ but nobody declares gravity to be theory and jumps of a thirty storey building in a hope that he/she will start floating in mid-air rather than falling downwards.
The reality is that in scientific jargon, the terms ‘theory’ and ‘fact’ carry very different meanings. The colloquial usage of term ‘theory’ which stands for unsubstantiated claims is not valid for the scientific theories of Evolution, Electromagnetism and Gravity.
What is then a scientific theory? Biochemist, Science Fiction writer and popularizer of science, Isaac Asimov explains:
Creationists frequently stress the fact that evolution is “only a theory,” giving the impression that a theory is an idle guess. A scientist, one gathers, arising one morning 
with nothing particular to do, decided that perhaps the moon is made of Roquefort cheese and instantly advances the Roquefort-cheese theory.
A theory (as the word is used by scientists) is a detailed description of some facet of the universe’s workings that is based on long observation and, where possible, experiment. It is the result of careful reasoning from these observations and experiments that has survived the critical study of scientists generally.
For example, we have the description of the cellular nature of living organisms (the “cell theory”); of objects attracting each other according to fixed rule (the “theory of gravitation”); of energy behaving in discrete bits (the “quantum theory”); of light traveling through a vacuum at a fixed measurable velocity (the “theory of relativity”), and so on.
All are theories; all are firmly founded; all are accepted as valid descriptions of this or that aspect of the universe. They are neither guesses nor speculations. And no theory is better founded, more closely examined, more critically argued and more thoroughly accepted, than the theory of evolution. If it is “only” a theory, that is all it has to be. [2]
Similarly, Paleontologist Stephen J. Gould states:
If the vernacular word FACT has any currency in science, it can only be defined as “confirmed to so high a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” By this definition, evolution – the observation that all organisms are connected by unbroken ties of genealogy – is as much a fact as anything discovered by science – as well confirmed as Copernicus’s claim that the Earth moves around the sun.[3]
Gould states at another place:
Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s 
data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin’s proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.
Moreover, “fact” does not mean “absolute certainty.” The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. [4]
Skeptic, Psychologist and historian of science Michael Shermer comment on scientific thinking:
Scientists agree that the following elements are involved in thinking scientifically:
Induction: Forming a hypothesis by drawing general conclusions from existing data.
Deduction: Making specific predictions based on the hypotheses.
Observation: Gathering data, driven by hypotheses that tell us what to
look for in nature.
Verification: Testing the predictions against further observations to confirm or falsify the initial hypotheses.
Science, of course, is not this rigid; and no scientist consciously goes through “steps.” The process is a constant interaction of making observations, drawing conclusions, making predictions, and checking them against evidence. [5]
Shermer further explains:
Through the scientific method, we may form the following generalizations:
Hypothesis: A testable statement accounting for a set of observations.
Theory: A well-supported and well-tested hypothesis or set of
hypotheses.
Fact: A conclusion confirmed to such an extent that it would be
reasonable to offer provisional agreement.
A theory may be contrasted with a construct: a nontestable statement to
account for a set of observations.The living organisms on Earth may be
accounted for by the statement “God made them” or the statement “They evolved.” The first statement is a construct, the second a theory. Most biologists would even call evolution a fact.
Through the scientific method, we aim for objectivity: basing conclusions on external validation. And we avoid mysticism: basing conclusions on personal insights that elude external validation.[5]
Conclusion
I consider the above arguments enough to explain why Naik’s statement holds no ground. It may seem wasteful to spend so much time refuting a single statement (rest of them will be refuted too in future) but I find it important as it leads us to another important question. Is he totally ignorant of the scientific method or he deliberately uses false statements in front of his audience. In first scenario he comes out to be a totally ignorant speaker who holds no credibility to take part in debates regarding science. His shameless arrogance is appalling in this regard. How could he stand in front of millions of people in audience and argue regarding things, he is totally ignorant of? Is such a man worth listening to? If he is deliberately lying, the case becomes more severe. He is charlatan who cheats and deceives his audience with verbal trickery and false arguments and all that in the name of religion!
References
1. Zakir Naik on Evolution, Video
2. Asimov, Isaac, The “Threat of Creationism”, New York Times Magazine, 14 June 1981
3. Gould, Stephen J, ‘Creation Science ‘ is an Oxymoron, Skeptical Inquirer Vol. XI, no. 2 / Winter 1986-87
4. Gould, Stephen J, Evolution as Fact and Theory, Discover 2 (May 1981): 34-37
5. Shermer, Michael, Why people believe weird things: pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time, 2002
Editor’s Note:
Zakir Naik aka The Ignorant
As the world moves forward, our society still faces the twin curses of ignorance and superstition. Science serves as a tool for expanding our knowledge of the natural world and it is the best tool we have. Only a scientific outlook based upon the the urge to learn and reason can take us out of the misery we find ourselves in. It is a tragedy that education of masses has been deliberately neglected by our ruling elite. Science is a special target of the oppressors as it can free minds from obscurantism, superstition and ignorance which in itself can endanger the very rule of these oppressors.
We suffer from a double tragedy when our educated youth falls victim to ignorant idiots such as Zakir Naik who do not know anything about science and scientific method but are readily available to malign, distort and destroy science. The basic underlying values of science such as Empiricism, Skepticism and Rational Inquiry are absent from the skewed worldview of Zakir Naik and his blind followers who shamelessly indulge in ridiculous retrospective evidentialism.
I present here a brief by renowned paleontologist late Stephen Jay Gould that puts light on scientific methodology and explains why Creation Science (a pseudo-science invented by fundamentalist Christians in USA) is a threat to science. The arguments, though mainly deal with US education system, are quite valid in Pakistan where creationism is still a holy truth for the majority.
Stephen J. Gould
‘Creation Science’ is an Oxymoron
By Stephen Jay Gould
Skeptical Inquirer
Vol. XI, no. 2 / Winter 1986-87
p 152-153
Science, above all, is a methodology for acquiring testable knowledge about the natural world – “the art of the soluble,” in Sir Peter Medawar’s apt phrase. It is not, and cannot be, a compendium of certain knowledge. If the vernacular word FACT has any currency in science, it can only be defined as “confirmed to so high a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” By this definition, evolution – the observation that all organisms are connected by unbroken ties of genealogy – is as much a fact as anything discovered by science – as well confirmed as Copernicus’s claim that the Earth moves around the sun. Evolutionary biologists argue intensely about mechanisms of evolutionary change – and such meaty debates are the soul of exciting science, the chief sign of its good health – but we all accept the fundamental fact of genealogical connection.
As a methodology of research, science adopts as its cardinal postulate – proved fruitful by its enormous success since the time of Galileo, Newton, and Descartes – the commitment to explain empirical phenomena by reference to invariant laws of nature and to avoid appeals to the miraculous, defined as suspension of those laws, for particular events. The notion of “abrupt appearance” – the origin of complex somethings from previous nothings – resides in this domain of miracle and is not part of science. Punctuated equilibrium, catastrophic theories of mass extinction, hopeful monsters, and a variety of hypotheses about rapid rates of change in continuous sequences – not about unintelligible abrupt appearances – are part of scientific debate and bear no relationship to the nonscientific notion of abrupt appearance, despite pernicious and wishful attempts by many creationists to distort such claims and misquote and half-quote to their alien purposes. Punctuated equilibrium, in particular, is a claim that evolutionary trends have a geometry that resembles a climb up a staircase, rather than a slide up an inclined plane. It is, in other words, an alternative theory about the nature of intermediate stages in evolutionary trends, not, as creationists have claimed, a denial of those stages.
As a term, CREATION SCIENCE is an oxymoron – a self-contradictory and meaningless phrase – a whitewash for a specific, particular, and minority religious view in America, biblical literalism. As a religious idea, it differs sharply from the tenets of most other faiths – from the enormously lengthy cycles of repetition in Hindu thought, from the usual interpretation of origins in my own Jewish faith, and the allegorical readings of the Bible accepted by Catholics since the time of St. Augustine. Biblical literalism, like all notions in the diverse array of faiths professed by Americans, belongs in the homes and churches – not in legislatively mandated curricula of science courses in public schools.
It is particularly tragic that public understanding of science should be so threatened just when science has become so central and crucial in all our lives. This battle is for science itself, not only for the right of teachers to teach a fact of nature unimpeded by state commands. How can Americans hope to understand the nature of science if a partisan and minority religious doctrine, completely outside the norms and procedures of science, be taught as science, against the conscience and convictions of trained teachers, in the nation’s schools.
by Karen Armstrong
Excerpt from The Battle for God (published 2000) by Karen Armstrong.
- Evangelical Christianity, Zionism and Radical Islam
There have always been people, in every age and in each tradition, who have fought the modernity of their day. But the fundamentalism that we shall be considering is an essentially twentieth-century movement. It is a reaction against the scientific and secular culture that first appeared in the West, but which has since taken root in other parts of the world. The West has developed an entirely unprecedented and wholly different type of civilization, so the religious response to it has been unique. The fundamentalist movements that have evolved in our own day have a symbiotic relationship with modernity. They may reject the scientific rationalism of the West, but they cannot escape it. Western civilization has changed the world. Nothing — including religion — can ever be the same again. All over the globe, people have been struggling with these new conditions and have been forced to reassess their religious traditions, which were designed for an entirely different type of society.
There was a similar transitional period in the ancient world, lasting roughly from 700 to 200 BCE, which historians have called the Axial Age because it was pivotal to the spiritual development of humanity. This age was itself the product and fruition of thousands of years of economic, and therefore social and cultural, evolution, beginning in Sumer in what is now Iraq, and in ancient Egypt. People in the fourth and third millennia BCE, instead of simply growing enough crops to satisfy their immediate needs, became capable of producing an agricultural surplus with which they could trade and thereby acquire additional income. This enabled them to build the first civilizations, develop the arts, and create increasingly powerful polities: cities, city-states, and, eventually, empires. In agrarian society, power no longer lay exclusively with the local king or priest; its locus shifted at least partly to the marketplace, the source of each culture’s wealth. In these altered circumstances, people ultimately began to find that the old paganism, which had served their ancestors well, no longer spoke fully to their condition.
In the cities and empires of the Axial Age, citizens were acquiring a wider perspective and broader horizons, which made the old local cults seem limited and parochial. Instead of seeing the divine as embodied in a number of different deities, people increasingly began to worship a single, universal transcendence and source of sacredness. They had more leisure and were thus able to develop a richer interior life; accordingly, they came to desire a spirituality which did not depend entirely upon external forms. The most sensitive were troubled by the social injustice that seemed built into this agrarian society, depending as it did on the labor of peasants who never had the chance to benefit from the high culture. Consequently, prophets and reformers arose who insisted that the virtue of compassion was crucial to the spiritual life: an ability to see sacredness in every single human being, and a willingness to take practical care of the more vulnerable members of society, became the test of authentic piety. In this way, during the Axial Age, the great confessional faiths that have continued to guide human beings sprang up in the civilized world: Buddhism and Hinduism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in the Far East; monotheism in the Middle East; and rationalism in Europe. Despite their major differences, these Axial Age religions had much in common: they all built on the old traditions to evolve the idea of a single, universal transcendence; they cultivated an internalized spirituality, and stressed the importance of practical compassion.
Today, as noted, we are undergoing a similar period of transition.Its roots lie in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the modern era, when the people of Western Europe began to evolve a different type of society, one based not on an agricultural surplus but on a technology that enabled them to reproduce their resources indefinitely. The economic changes over the last four hundred years have been accompanied by immense social, political, and intellectual revolutions, with the development of an entirely different, scientific and rational, concept of the nature of truth; and, once again, a radical religious change has become necessary. All over the world, people are finding that in their dramatically transformed circumstances, the old forms of faith no longer work for them: they cannot provide the enlightenment and consolation that human beings seem to need. As a result, men and women are trying to find new ways of being religious; like the reformers and prophets of the Axial Age, they are attempting to build upon the insights of the past in a way that will take human beings forward into the new world they have created for themselves. One of these modern experiments — however paradoxical it may superficially seem to say so — is fundamentalism.
by Awais Masood
Freak Stage Magician
They use Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to find out the direction of Kiblah. Their smart phones, priced hundreds of dollars, are equipped with all the necessary software they need to perform their religious duties. Their black berry devices are all too ready to send out emails containing lucrative material preaching the ideology of the school of thought they belong to. They use World Wide Web to watch streaming videos of hate-mongers, pseudo-scholars and so called security analysts spilling out the most profound lies in the name of history. They watch TV Channels dedicated to bring stage illusionists, presenting self-sustaining and cyclic arguments as rational proofs of what they want to believe. They cannot help but clapping, along with all the mindless spectators present at those TV “entertainment shows”, at the most ludicrous arguments that any college freshman, taking a course comprising of epistemology, can debunk in less than five minutes.
They belong to the urban educated middle class of Pakistan. They are one of the luckiest people in this country who are equipped with the necessary tools of language and basic understanding to grasp the reality of this universe and the way this world behaves with an open mind. But here comes the catch. The method that has assisted us in learning how this world behaves is termed as a human invention, a faulty tool created by all so incompetent and “evil” human species. The way science elegantly describes this universe and challenges our dogmatic notions is ignored and most of the time comically challenged with the utmost stubbornness. It has become a custom of these people to dig
DNA could be used to confirm paternity or convict criminals but not evolution?
deeper into its intellectual ignorance by rejecting natural sciences and at the same time using the technology developed (by infidels of course) upon the foundations of science. It is therefore not strange to find a person rejecting Theory of Evolution, modern genetics or the Big Bang Model of the universe but it will not stop him from having a DNA test to confirm the paternity of his children (what else could one expect from male chauvinists) or play with the wireless inventions of the modern day that owe their existence to the underlying electromagnetic theory of Physics.
I can recall watching a discussion with Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg (who shared Nobel Prize for Physics with Abdul Salam and Glasshow). Weinberg narrated how Salam went to oil rich Gulf States, in order to convince them to develop universities in the Islamic world, where research in natural sciences would be given its due share. He was given a cold shoulder as most of the rulers of Muslim majority countries are interested in technology but consider natural sciences as corrosive to faith and hence to the hegemony of those monarchs who use religion as a tool of authoritarian rule and subjugation of their subjects.
What else could be more comical than a religious zealot using a computer connected to internet and within all his/her senses (if
Internet
he/she is left with any) denying the authenticity of science. What is more troubling is the fact that he/she does not even appear to understand the absurdity of that claim. One must need to realize that the GPS devices, desktops, laptops and the blackberries and all such computing devices are manifestations of elegant engineering achievements which are based upon the basic predictions and theories of natural sciences. Any powerful computing device of today consists of a large number of micro-processing devices. It is quite common these days for an average microprocessor, which itself is no large than a postage stamp, to contain millions of embedded electronic switches, turning on and off more than one billion times a second in a musical harmony which can easily disrupt a fundamentalist’s mind as it is usually unable to understand figures such as billions. It is quite natural because for most of the fundamentalists, planet earth is a few thousand years old (rather than four billion years, which is the actual age of the earth).
This state-of-the-art computing technology of today did not grow out of nowhere. It was not plucked from trees. It did not land from the heavens. It was not brought to us by extra-terrestrials traveling in U.F.O(s). It was developed scientifically, systematically, meticulously and (most importantly) intelligently. It is based upon some of the most important discoveries of natural sciences that explain how a certain element of nature named Silicon shows a peculiar electronic behaviour under certain conditions. The electronic behaviour is itself explained by
natural sciences as a phenomenon that exists due to the flow of an elementary particle of all matter, named as electron. If just for once, it is assumed that there exists no such particle named electron or that there exists no such phenomenon as the motion of electrons, the whole body of knowledge that was used to develop the world of today will collapse. There will be no foundations to support the sky scrapper of the modern day technology. Therefore whenever a fundamentalist uses his/her computer to post, on an online forum, an arrogant, ignorant and absolutist stance that science is not reliable, he/she actually exhibits a perfect example of self-contradiction, intellectual degeneration and cowardice.
The purpose of above example is to relate how technology exists due to the accurate and precise explanations predictions of the natural sciences.The same argument could be based upon the examples of breakthroughs in applied sciences such as medical science, mechanical and structural engineering to name a few. 
Therefore whenever a Science-Rejecting-Arrogant-Fundamentalist visits a doctor to seek cure for an ailment affecting him/her or his/her children, undergoes a complicated surgical procedure, drives an automobile, boards an airplane, switches on an air conditioner, makes an electronic financial transaction to his/her favourite Jihadi outfit or simply switches on TV to watch the renowned stage magician from India, play tricks with his/her mind, in the name of religion, he/she implicitly acknowledges the accuracy of the scientific theories and their predictions that led to those technological achievements. Natural science is the firm, solid and essential foundation of all the luxuries that these confused arrogant fundamentalists use to preach their baseless hypocrisy to unsuspecting youth, caught in the vicious ford between modernity and tradition.
Scientific Method
Scientific method allows human species to expand the circumference of its knowledge. These techniques, employed by scientists, allow us to understand this universe as it is. Science is elegant and beautiful as it incorporates both the beauty and creativity of human consciousness and at the same time requires the accuracy and precision of observation and evidence. Scientific method involves:
- Observation of natural phenomena.
- Formulation of a hypothesis – an outcome of the creativity of human mind which could be artistically aesthetic – to explain the observed natural phenomena.
- Usage of the formulated hypothesis to predict new phenomena or observable outcomes of the model, that are testable.
- Testing those predictions through experiments and hence falsify the hypothesis if those predictions are wrong.
By continuously applying the above method, human species has been able to expand the sphere of its knowledge to a level where children of both Secularists and Fundamentalists alike have much higher chances of survival through infancy as compared to their ancestors. Science has beyond no doubt helped us in reducing infant mortality rates. It has allowed us to live longer and healthier by providing better health care services. It has served to raise our consciousness by ridding us of the self-indulgent delusion of being the centre of a small pre-Galilean universe. It has saved us from indulging in the horrors of burning alive old women at stakes after declaring them as witches just because we had low yield of crops that year. It has freed us (or at least some of us) from the evil spirits and demons that ran amok during the times of our ancestors and caused great damage through storms, hurricanes and thunderstorms. It has allowed us to stop exorcising demons out of anguished psychological patients and instead provide them with proper medical care and finally it has enabled us to challenge the tyranny of those ruling in the name of divine rights. Science is a perpetual, systematic quest of seeking the unknown and turning it into the known. It requires respect towards facts, the ability and courage to shed already present notions of the world, when finally contradicted by evidence, no matter how dear and personal they are to the scientist. Most importantly, science operates on the principle of methodological naturalism, that is; this universe, which is to be studied, is a closed, self-sustained system where we strive to explain the unknown. But whatever remains unknown in this system does not belong to the supernatural. It only remains “unknown” to be later explored, sought, explained and hence converted to the “known” by the systematic study of the world.
Had it been a habit of the scientists to attribute, what they could not understand- during the course of their work- to the supernatural, we would not have known this world as we now know it today. Had Benjamin Franklin and Michael Faraday used supernatural explanations, rather than conducting experiments, to study and explain the phenomena related to electric charges, our beloved fundamentalists would not have been able to appear on TV screens and shamelessly deny the discoveries of science. Had Galileo and all the following astronomers, made use of tradition instead of observation to explain a model of the solar system, these modern day stage acts would have been using their putrid arguments to explain how their scriptures prove that sun and everything else in the universe revolves around the planet Earth. Had Newton (and every one else) attributed motion of objects and their fall towards the earth to a divine presence rather than the inherent laws of this ordered universe, we would not have even developed a basic theory of mechanics and hence pop-artists-turned-fundamentalists would not have been able to travel in Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV), priced millions, along with their fellows in order to preach what they thinks is right. In fact no fundamentalist would have been able to drive a car, board a plane (or crash those cars/ planes into buildings) because there would not have been any cars or planes.
Modern astronomy has shown us that this universe is extremely vast for our minds to fathom. We live on a a small sized planet, revolving around a middle sized star, located at an insignificant spiral of a galaxy, that contains billions of such stars and we are in an expanding universe that may contain billions of such galaxies. Not to forget the theoretical possibility, that there could be many, perhaps billions of such universes. 
To imagine such cosmic loneliness may turn out to be one of the most horrifying mental experiences by opening doors to an intolerable feeling of despair and hopelessness. But perhaps all is not that bleak as we expect. The same doors that can make a human mind plunge into despair, may lead a way towards the realization of the most cherished gift of nature to human species. The very same, not yet fully understood, human consciousness that allows us to realize the vastness of this cosmos, look at it, touch it, feel it and perhaps love it, is what makes us special. It is exactly when Descartes exclaims, “Cogito, ergo sum“, a human is defined. Our brain creates a visual model of this world inside us, which is then interpreted by our subjective consciousness as the world we see. This world is all what our mind shows us to be. It is, at the end, only our ability and capacity to think that differentiates us from lifeless matter and most of the other animal species. Being extremely insignificant creatures of this universe, the very thing that makes us special is the ability to realize, understand and explore this insignificance. Such a realization can open new doors towards appreciating the beauty of life, consciousness and last but not the least, every other being that can think, feel and understand like us. To develop a very humble feeling of pride in being a human and to be able to feel and care for every other human being is perhaps not a bad deal at the end. Note: The example of electron is inspired from an audio recording of a Keynote address delivered by Pervez Hoodbhoy.
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