In Conversation With: Mr. Maran N., Chairman and Vision Holder of Kaar Technologies
In the backdrop of meeting Mr. Ratnakumar N. (referred to as Ratna below), I was settling down into contemplating on our discussions and setting into a mindset of not meeting many people especially because of one of the takeaways for me from the meeting which was to take to a patient approach towards the activities that I was going to participate in. Just as the reclusive vibes were getting concreted about a week after the meeting, I was met in person by Ratna casually who again asked me to drop-by Mr. Maran N. (referred to as Maran below)’s place. He told me that he had given him a brief on me and that it’d be a good time for some knowledge share between us.
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As advised, I obliged and immediately set up a meeting with Maran on a date about two weeks later. Since it was a quiet Friday evening and also because I had completed my work for that day and the entire week, I decided to take a ride near-by and went a few kilometers along the Bengaluru-Tirupati Highway only to settle down at a Juice Outlet to have a drink and some snacks, especially considering the fact that I had skipped lunch that day. It was a nice ride especially because the weather was favorable and I too decided to revert back soon, as I had no major plans for the ride.
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Unexpectedly, as soon as I returned, I was invited by Maran to meet him right away presumably because he was unavailable on the date on which I had booked an appointment. I did go in unprepared and let him know of the same too for which he told me that I could relax as he also wasn’t necessarily ready and that we could start off a conversation now as a precursor and discuss more at a later time.
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Of course, since I wasn’t very prepared, I decided to talk to him in the lines of the insight that Ratna had given me about him that the Chairman and Vision Holder of Kaar Technologies was an atheist. Well, not all atheists have similar ideologies and not all of them necessarily put in much thought into why they choose to become one but Maran told me that his definition of his atheistic stand was a more rational one.
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While discussing in this regard, he made it clear that his rational thinking lead him to trust in the findings of Science, which both of us agreed as a mere observation and not that which decided the hows, whys and whats of the things we find around us. In that, the hows, whats, and whys happened or happens every day and at a later time, human beings observed and compiled them into a bundle of scrolls titled Science and hence it can answer the hows and whats but is not the hows and whats and hence can presumably never answer the whys, which indeed is what we are all in search for.
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Religious contexts deal with such matters though what can confuse any rational theist is how wide, numerous, and diverse the conclusions have been, making us wonder if they are all myths. Answering the whys, one must understand, will further enhance and exemplify the answers behind the whats and hows too because once you know why the dots connect in a more seamless manner. This, Maran agreed was in a scope that, to date, is beyond Science though he did say that it could be answered one day or the other by those who venture in these lines for long. I too used the same line of discussion to say that since Science is mere observation and because no rational theist would ever decline its findings, it itself would one day be the reason for solidifying the presence of an intelligent design upon which the universe was built unlike how Science thinks of it to be a random Big Bang currently.
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I mentioned to him about Ravi Zacharias, the Christian Apologist, who often mentions about the incident that happened once when Stephen Hawking, who is an atheist too, was delivering a lecture in the Lady Mitchell Hall at Cambridge University where he said during a scientific lecture that ‘I have told you what and how but if I told you why then I would have the mind of God’. This statement indeed didn’t go well with people who considered him a fellow-atheist and often proudly quotes his works as that of an atheist, though he did soon clarify that he was just using the term God as a metaphor.
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We were pondering on these lines and of course, we stumbled upon the works of Richard Dawkins, the Evolutionary Biologist, whom I didn’t have much respect for especially due to the contempt with which he deals with the argument of God and because such people always raise a red flag due to their rather arrogant approach of dealing with anything that is in front of them. He belongs to the ‘Four Horsemen of Atheism’, all of whom I never was able to reason with due to their closemindedness in dealing with topics regarding creation. Their arguments were always very primitive and it would be a waste of time dealing with their discussions and in this regard, I had mentioned in my email to Maran how the approaches of Ravi Zacharias and an American Pastor Timothy ‘Tim’ Keller differed and how the latter was sincere enough to such an extent that he never used the knowledge he had about God for arguments but rather for tending the lost sheep towards the shepherd, which is what I wish to do in my life.
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David Berlinski, being agnostic not a theist, is one such author who argued against Richard Dawkins, for being so sure of the inexistence of God, through his book ‘The Devil’s Delusion’ and some of his words were really expressive of today’s world, which though true, isn’t something you would find coming out from many of the authors who work in these lines –
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“…. Has scientific atheism become a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.“ - David Berlinksi, American Author – Book: The Devil’s Delusion
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Given all the above points, Agnosticism according to me was a more rational way out than Atheism, for those who had doubts, as being sure of God’s inexistence due to our dependence on Science didn’t hit the logical buzzer, at least not for me.
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Well, I was occasionally letting him know that I wished I was more prepared to discuss with him so that I could discuss with him on more diverse topics and as a conclusion to this knowledge transfer in the lines of the creationist discussions, I asked him if there was any possibility that he or many of the atheists could be wrong in their contemplations, for which he was optimistic of his stand though he confirmed that it wouldn’t worry him much if he was proven wrong. It did surprise me a little when he told me that some of the theories which Dawkins had mentioned in his older books were debunked because I have seen only more of the recent debates of the biologist.
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Just as I discussed it with Ratna, I was telling Maran how the Indian ambiance was becoming more and more hostile towards goodness and that the rich and powerful had it easier. I was mentioning to him how the younger self of the character Ambi in the film Anniyan described accurately how we are trained during our early ages so well to be perfectionists and were punished sternly for deviating while as we grow older, we only see the society separated into classes and individuals who have privileges that help them get away with the nonsense that they manifest. It has become so severe that idealism is considered a curse and people are questioned for being idealistic. He understood where I was coming from, though I concluded that I could think of change that could be achieved in less aggressive ways.
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Since I knew that he was a voracious reader, I tried playing the Devil’s Advocate, as usual in these lines, by asking if there was any chance he felt he was reading so much that other people’s judgments came in the way of his analytical abilities. I was sharing with him how Einstein too wrote in these lines as to how beyond a certain stage, reading should be limited as our analysis and contemplations must trump over our urge to know what another person is researching about.
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One of those interesting discussions we had was how he felt that many religious people were having delusions and that there was a specific part in our brain that propagates such ideologies, which I didn’t agree with and wanted to know more about before accepting the same. I told him how the American Evangelist Billy Graham’s statement about his faith was corresponding to mine too –
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“Even if all the scientific proofs in the world tell me that there is no God, I will still believe in Him because of what he has done for me in my life – the peace, tranquility, wisdom, and understanding that I received as a gift from Him” - Billy Graham, American Evangelist – Lecture: Who is Jesus?
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Of course, Maran too agreed that a personal experience should always trump over the other things that we hear and read. All said and done, I did know deep within that the age difference between us would have a huge impact in our discussions and judgements and it was made evident when he said that many of the questions I have currently and am trying to answer through the teachings of Jesus Christ are something that he was able to conquer through other means.
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He then went on to mention about one of Steven Pinker’s books titled ‘The Better Angels of our Nature’ where he says that many of us have good (angel) and evil (devil) faces that are manifested from time to time though my immediate question to him was, “Could man always choose to be an angel?, for which he replied that it was absolutely not possible thought I did tell him that this exactly was what Jesus Christ offered and that those who got transformed through Him, especially the Disciples and early Christians like St. Paul showed tremendous transformations and could any day be challenged for their goodness, without breaking.
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Though we spent very less time owing to his busy schedule and because it was the weekend just before Diwali, we were glad that there was so much that was discussed between us at least for us to know what each of had to know in a more deep and wider perspective. I did accept without being told that I had a long way to go especially with respect to reading in the lines of Biology, Anthropology and so on, many topics of which Maran stated that he had been reading all along.
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While he was happy that I was in a similar quest as his, he urged me to carry on both by word and through a reply email to me, which really did delight me. As we concluded, he told me that he was pursuing a B. Lit. program in Tamil and that immediately made me ask him if he was interested in teaching, especially because I was – I am interested in gathering a small flock of sheep that can grow in to become shepherds themselves and as Jesus Christ had said, ‘to let the light in us to shine as brightly as we could’. He told me that though his dad was a Professor, he had no interest in teaching and didn’t feel he’d make the cut or would make a teacher material and that he was doing the course only to learn more in the lines of Tamil Literature.
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Clearly, as I had guessed, though we had points where we could find similarities, I personally felt that our wavelengths were pretty different thereby resulting in occasional disconnection of thoughts and repetition or an inhibition towards discussing and at least partially agreeing upon, on certain aspects.