In my time of peak premiedom, I was also a student studying microbiology, genetics, biochemistry. Day after day in the lab, we manipulated environments that we grew bacteria in to see how they adapted. We had evolution on display right there in front of us. We saw it in genetics, and the history of the development of biochemicals. So I was as convinced as I could be by our evolution by natural selection.
And yet I also accepted to a large extent Rawat's view as he was promoting it at the time, that we are all here by the grace of some divine force, with the purpose of a select few discovering how great Rawat was. (I know!)
I had a nascent bullshit detector, as I recognised the discrepancy, but it was turned on to just above zero, not high enough to spark rational thought. It seems like events have continually forced me to turn up the volume of the detector throughout my life to frankly scary levels. Mountains of bullshit. It seems the norm, and I sometimes think one thing Rawat may have got right, was the extent of maya, and the huge difficulty of navigating a way through it.
I'm keeping up distancing till we get a vaccine. I don't want the disease, and even if I get no symptoms, I don't want to be a vector and become part of the problem. My lifestyle makes this easy, and I appreciate very many people have much less choice in the matter.
