Kaka Kronicles: A Universe from Nothing

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I saw this video.

Then I saw two crows (presumably the ones that dispossessed my neighbour’s Labrador of his biscuit) deep in conversation. I listened and transcribed their conversation for my readers

By the way, conversations between science and religion have never been this civil

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Author: krishashok

I am a global citizen with a local attitude. I have been doing jalsa and showing jilpa for 30 years now, but was too lazy to blog about it. Now, I am.

48 thoughts on “Kaka Kronicles: A Universe from Nothing”

  1. hey this a relly good one… have you by any chance read a write up of Mahakavi Bharathi?, where he imagines two crows to be in deep conversation and transcribes it… and it’s a conversation on the nature of man… biting satire…

    Reply

      1. dont know to be exact… read a rough english translation some time back in a magazine… just struck me as i was reading the blog…

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  3. First of all you said as probable highly unlikely event. the probability of them occurring is 1 in 10 to power 100 as calculated by various scientist. Which effectively means zero. A logical person wouldn’t say that it is chance. I assume you must know the Arctic fern, it migrates from north to south pole every year. Why? You cant say to escape cold it can fly to Florida like other birds but why fly another 4000 thousand miles to edge of south America which is equally harsh. Thats because many things which libe there depend upon as their main food. The Arctic tern doesnt enjoy any advantage over it. Same goes animal crossing the Serengetti. This cant be chance this is design. Probability is just number to make us believe that we have a chance. Let me come to Big Bang theory and Darwin theory of evolution, there are numerous argument in the science cadres that both theories stated are wrong. A girl has went on to prove that light of speed is not constant and value calculated my Eienstein is wrong. Science is constantly evolving what was considered dubious are not now. So science cant claim to know everything because no one does know everything.

    Problems with Hindu cosmology is it uses a lot of figuritive speech like brahma sitting on lotus and those stuff. But if see through you really know what great things they have found which western scientists are finding now, ages back.

    Take a look at this http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=16672

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      1. If you call that shit you must the most ignorant person in this whole wide world perceiving to be the greatest but in reality in the ignorant one sided fool everything existed in this universe created out of nothing

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        1. @Venky” Where did you find out that the speed of light was “calculated” by Einstein? And who is the “girl” who “has went on to prove that light of speed is not constant and value calculated my Eienstein is wrong”? And what is the nature of this “proof”?

          By the way the theory of (special) relativity just postulates that the speed of light in vacuum is “constant” only with respect to all inertial frames. There are several potential pitfalls around this statement if one is naive at interpreting it: for example it does not talk about the speed of light in water or air but just vacuum.

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    3. Venky, this is just a comic strip that talks about the progress of science and its ability to explain the universe we live in. Traditionally, mainstream religion has always claimed (wrongly) that they have the answers to questions related to our origins and place in the universe.

      I really don’t think a discussion on Hindu philosophy is relevant here. Saying that Hindu philosophers knew about Quantum fluctuations or Doppler red shifts is as irrelevant as saying that Einstein had deep insights into the condition of man and his place in society.

      I wish to make a clear distinction between the metaphysical lessons and insights into human nature that are present in the Upanishads and most other religious texts and purely scientific knowledge that comes from observation, hypothesis, testing, theory etc. I think it is pointless to retrofit modern knowledge into ancient metaphors and claim that we already knew everything. We clearly did not, because if we had really known, the industrial revolution would have happened around the time of the Guptas, and it did not.

      So, let’s keep Hindu philosophy out of this. The Upanishads are brilliant in their own right, in their insights into human nature. But they are not cosmological treatises. Metaphors and allegories are useful in poetry, not in science. And also, let’s not make this yet another Science vs Hindu philosophy thing, because there is no “versus” here that applies. It’s like saying that Zinedine Zidane is about to take a free kick and Sachin Tendulkar, fully padded up, is batting near the goal post. We’d all get more things done if we stop comparing things that cannot be compared.

      Science, over the years, as had to contend with mainstream religion, which for most part, has been Christianity. Hinduism is far too diffuse and disorganized to a single, all powerful, controlling entity, which is why my cartoon does not take any names. Its simply goes after the general tendency of the human population to be gullible and believe in the supernatural despite perfectly natural explanations for most phenomena that we see.

      Reply

        1. Let me summarize Ashoks respectful reply for you in the way its supposed to be done (and increase the SNR of his reply):

          “Stop retrofitting modern knowledge into ancient metaphors and claim that we already knew everything. We clearly did not, because if we had really known, the industrial revolution would have happened around the time of the Guptas, and it did not.”

          All religions were first attempts to explain the natural world at a time when nobody had a clue that viruses/bacteria/electrons/protons/quarks/background microwave radiation existed. I would like to see a “poetic” quote in hindu cosmology about these to convince me that they actually had some semblance of an understanding about these. So stop quoting random internet forum posts and go read some actual science textbooks.

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          1. “Just read Text books” will not do. Think! Whether it is Science that you have read or Ancient Sacred texts! Thinking is the only first hand knowledge! Reading is second hand.

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          2. I am not claiming that we know everything but please treat our ancestor with disdain, because they have done some valuable things. Everything is old and ancient need not dubios.

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            1. I am neither a believer not an atheist i am agnostic. I am not biased towards religion or science. Someone will prove this theory of nothingness proposed to be wrong. In this video he says that the nothing changes so fast we cant see it or something like that i am not convinced and i am not sound enough to say why this theory may be wrong, i will leave it to science community.

  4. Coming to the rescue of Kaka 1,
    There is something called Incompleteness theorem by Kurt Godel, by which he proves that u cannot completely explain anything…. not even science(Hope my understanding is correct 🙂 )…

    Reply

    1. It’s ‘everything’ not ‘anything’ … That word changes the meaning completely …
      Which means you can fully explain a subset of all the truths if not the entire set itself i.e. there might be an answer in sight for physics …

      There simply doesn’t exist a symbolic (phrase-structured, algorithmic, turing machine parseable … all the same) language that can express all true statements in arithmetic ..

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_incompleteness_theorems

      Reply

      1. One more thing .. if indeed if the theorem explicitly meant that one couldn’t explain all facts within physics then research would have stopped long ago ! The fact that they’re still at it clearly states otherwise …

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        1. While that’s a good clarification by Jayadev, it does appear from the overall smugness that Kaka2 has an explanation for everything..so Godel could apply…..

          Well Kaka2 doesnt quite know how Saravana Bhavan’s sambhar tastes exactly the same at all its outlets 🙂 so we’re clear of that too.

          Thx,
          Jai

          Reply

  6. To supplement u r point, there is a something called higgs field and higgs boson which satisfactorily explain the creation of mass of any matter in space from nothing, in other words the creation of mass , however this theory is equally contradicted for there is no experimental evidence of higgs bosons or muons for which is being investigated at CERN, Geneva.may be it is more complicated than one can ever imagine… good post man!!!

    Reply

  7. Richard dawkins on stephen colbert….

    colbert(at his satirical best ) :” It would be simpler if we believed this complicated universe was created by GOD”

    Dawkins :”then who made GOD?”

    Colbert :”ah …god came from nothing”

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  10. So what is nothingness? Can “Nothing” be defined? If everything came out of Nothing then “Everything” is nothing but “Nothing”. So what is “Nothing”?

    Reply

  15. Hmm…this post was kind of unfunny, actually (if it was even meant to be funny). Since you follow up with a passionate defence in your comments, I’m assuming you tried to make a point.

    “I think it is pointless to retrofit modern knowledge into ancient metaphors and claim that we already knew everything. We clearly did not, because if we had really known, the industrial revolution would have happened around the time of the Guptas, and it did not.”
    –> Now (though I agree with the first part of the quote) that is opening up a can of worms. I like your “modernist” (as in the movement) way of thinking, but don’t be fooled into thinking Science has answered the origin of the universe, meaning of life, and much less, the “everything” you referred to in your post.

    PS: I really like your blog.
    PPS: I really really like the crow cartoons.

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  16. Why this rush to compare and play the no-no-this-is-better game? Religion and science are two different ways to answer the same question. According to your temperament, you pick one or the other. If you have the maturity to handle both, plenty fine. Why all this deeph pheelings?

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    1. Agree Ramaa. See my earlier response to Venky. It’s exactly this sort of pointless comparison I’d like to avoid. The cartoon simply satirizes mainstream supersitious aspects of religion that makes people gullible, not any specific religion or beliefs

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      1. Sometimes, I wonder why you bother. 🙂 The more you write and reply, the more they grow passionately defensive. Followed this blog for quite some time now. Kickass work. Oh, and Promoted Family’s blog is V Nice, too. 🙂

        Reply

  17. This is one of the best blogs (No, no, s/one of the/the ) I have seen . Would you believe if I say that I have finished all your posts in two days? 🙂
    The other thing I liked about is the way you answer in the comments section. I thought you will be sarcastic and tear apart every person’s comments , but you turned out to be a cool dude.

    This must be your Nth praise.
    Go on.

    Reply

  20. Although I am not a religious person, I do feel Richard Dawkins is a pompous ass. Lawrence Krauss, a little less.

    And you, Krishashok, although you hide behind the cloak of “its a funny blog”, you do try(and I use the word “try” loosely) to rid people of their prejudices. It is insincere to your objective of being funny. You are very funny in your other posts. And please don’t think I am sincerely trying to reform you. There are weirdos in this world, and one more wont do any harm! 😀

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  25. purely scientific knowledge that comes from observation, hypothesis, testing, theory etc
    One would have to explain observation first? All the information relayed by our sense organs are converted into perceptions in the brain. Believing that the objective reality is similar to our perception is naive realism or direct realism. (Eg: assuming that something is red, yellow or green is naive because there is no colour in the universe, they are just electromagnetic waves being interpreted as colour in the brain (according to science itself). 3D space in which we move about is a complex perception using only the 2D projection our retina receives and past experience and so on).
    If you consider a purely theoretical approach, all the methods of proof in scientific theories rest on mathematics which finally rests on axiomatic set theory. You should read about Kurt Godel and his incompleteness theorems

    Reply

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