Science & Religion

Category Archive

Current affairs and Hinduism and Politics and Religion and Science & Religion18 Sep 2007 03:03 am

Burning bridge

It was the year 1996. Hyderabad was the city. The then CM Chandrababu Naidu was on a Hyderabad beautification spree. One of the main items on his agenda was road widening. Too many encroachments and the roads had become too narrow for the growing volume of traffic. If he wanted investment to come into Hyderabad he had to make the infrastructure attractive and make it easier for people to move around within the city.

During his road widening spree, there was one thing that he religiously followed. He would go around demolishing everything in the way of his proposed wide road except places of religious worship. It could be a temple, mosque, church or a gurudwara, he would just leave alone that area of the road that’s covered by the structure and convert it into a roundabout. He did that to respect the beliefs and sentiments of the religions involved. He did not want to arouse riots in the city because of relocating a structure of religous belief. He never thought about demolishing any of them.

I only wonder why our central Government cannot have an ounce of sense while deciding to go ahead in demolishing the Rama Sethu (Adam’s Bridge)! It is connected too deeply to the sentiments of the Hindu religion. It is considered to be the bridge built by the vanarasena for Rama to cross over the sea to Lanka to bring back his kidnapped wife Sita.

Now questions like: Whether the bridge was really built by man or not? (Technically, the question should be ‘whether the bridge was really built by monkeys or not?’) OR Whether Rama existed or not? OR any other such inane question is irrelevant. Rama is a Hindu God and he needs to be respected for it. If there is something in this world that can be connected to people’s faith about Rama then it needs to be respected. You cannot go and demolish it straightaway. Apart from the sentiments, faith and belief of the Hindus, you also need to consider various other points.

  • Underwater sea life is going to be damaged
  • Danger of tsunami increases with the demolition of the bridge
  • Livelihood of the local fishermen

    • In my opinion, the Government would be committing political harakiri by going ahead with the demolition. Even the US wants to preserve the Rama Sethu. [Link] And TN CM Karunanidhi (He leads a party called DMK that’s a part of the coalition government at the centre) isn’t quite helping matters by releasing statements like these. “Who’s Ram?”, he asks. Hey Ram!

    6 Comments »
    God and Hinduism and Religion and Science & Religion and Spirituality16 Aug 2006 11:36 am

    Co-existence of science and God

    An interesting article that discusses the co-existence of science and God in today’s world.
    Is God Necessary?
    C.S.RAMAKRISHNAN
    Sri C.S. Ramakrishnan is a long-standing and close devotee and a former editor of The Vedanta Kesari.
    Voltaire, whose massive scholarship and keen intellect are beyond question, used to say that if God did not exist it will be necessary to invent him. He felt that many things in life and the world cannot be rationally and consistently explained without assuming the presence of God. No doubt, at the time of Voltaire science had not developed as it has subsequently. Today’s science is an Aladdin’s lamp enables us to perform phenomena, which would have been termed miracles. All manner of indescribable phenomena can be attributed to modern science. So most scientists do not share Voltaire’s views.
    It will be interesting to see what a reputed scientist like Eric Cornell, the Nobel laureate in Physics in the year 2001, has to say in this regard. He gave a very insightful lecture while getting inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Eric Cornell explained his view by accounting for a familiar pheno menon, the blue sky. He offers two types of solution. The first answer of scientific insight is the Raleigh’s law of scattering of light. Light consists of a series of coloured rays starting from red and ending in blue. The rays in the red region are long waves whereas those in the blue region are short. When the light is flowing from the sun to the earth, the rays undergo scattering. The red rays get scattered more readily than the blue ones. Therefore by the time the rays reach the earth only blue rays are left, i.e. the source appears to be blue. The sky therefore is blue. This was the discovery made by Lord Raleigh on which subsequent developments in optics took place.
    But Cornell indicates a second solution. May be God wanted the sky to be blue. You cannot question why he wanted like that. The Nobel laureate points out that Raleigh’s law of scattering explains `how’ blueness came but not why. Science always explains the `how’ of things and not the `why’ of things. While how is scientifically explained, the why finds explanation only in religion.
    Eric Cornell suggests that in a scientific class only scientific questions can be raised. For a religious answer we have to be in a religious class. He suggests that we should not confuse by asking a scientific question in a religious class and a religious question in a scientific class. Not that the two solutions are opposed to each other but each has to be applied in a separate dimension. Suppose we are talking to a friend in English we have to follow the rules of English grammar but if the talk is in Tamil it is the Tamil grammar that has to be applied. Both the grammar rules are valid and not opposed to each other. Again, suppose you have the dream of a tiger chasing you. In the dream the chase is real. But once you wake up, the dream-tiger disappears. In the wakeful state we cannot ask where the tiger has gone, though it is the same mind which is witnessing both. The Ultimate Reality is one; it may manifest itself scientifically or religiously. In what way we wish to perceive the reality, the choice is ours.
    9 Comments »