See the enormous task ahead for us. Even many of the so called ' educated ' people among us believe in ghosts, spirits and paranormal activity, which is all superstition, nonsense and humbug.
The worst thing in life is poverty, and so our main national goal must be to abolish poverty. But for that we must spread rational and scientific ideas among our masses, and combat feudal and backward thinking, including belief in the supernatural. and superstitions.
The truth is that :
1. All religions are superstitions, the truth lies in science.
Of course science is something not finally developed, but always developing , and many things which we do not know and cannot do today ( e.g. cure many kinds of cancers ) we may be able to do in the future ( by scientific research and new scientific discoveries ). just as many things we did not know in the past e.g. the cure for T.B., we know today. We regarded small pox earlier as caused by the wrath of a goddess ( mata ), but later we found by scientific discovery that it was caused by a virus, which can be prevented by vaccination. Thus, as science ( which is based on truth ) advances, religion ( which is based on falsehood ) recedes.
2. There are no supernatural entities like god, ghosts, soul, angels, fairies, witches, etc and no such thing as transmigration of the soul or judgment day ( roz-e-mahshar )
3. Paranormal activity, e.g. telepathy, psycho-kinesis, etc is all nonsense, and humbug. Often it is the handiwork of charlatans who befool the public, e.g. claims that a child can remember his/her previous life, or methods like planchette for calling the spirit of one's dead relatives.
I remember in my youth reading books by a man called Lobsang Rampa ( 1910-1981 ) e.g. ' The Third Eye ', " Living with the Lama ', ' My Visit to Venus ', etc. He claimed to be a Tibetan monk whose spirit could travel in space. Later he was exposed as a fraud.
4. The only reality is nature, and natural forces. Nature consists of matter ( and energy, which is only matter in a different form ), but this is not stagnant but in motion, in accordance with certain laws, which can be discovered by scientific research.
5. Some people say that there must be a Creator of the world. This statement assumes that everything must have a creator. But this leads us to the fallacy of the infinite regress. In other words, if everything must have a creator, then this creator, too, must have a creator, that is, a super creator. And then this, too must have a creator, which means a super super creator, and so on and so forth.
The answer to the question where did matter come from is : matter came from matter. It evolved, it is in motion, and the manner and direction of this motion can be discovered by scientific research and scientific discoveries.
