Science and the faithful
Before 2015, Pat Robertson was the politician whose remarks I always made fun of because they were so awful that laughing was the best and only way to deal with him and his remarks. Yes, I referred to that religious broadcaster as a politician because he was; he even tried out in the Republican primaries leading to the elections in 1988.
Remember his (in)famous utterance after the devastating earthquake in Haiti? The guy said “Haitians made a pact with the devil to be freed from their French colonizers in the 18th Century” and the earthquake was one of the many curses Haitians have had to endure since then.
(Of course, Robertson didn’t care to inform his evangelical audience how the enslavers, France in particular, bankrupted Haiti as a result of Haitians kicking the French out.)
Robertson is gone, but his spirit lives on forever in the Republican Party.
After the earthquake last week—a mild one—in the New York region, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said, “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.” Reminds me of the former Fox News ratings star, Bill O’Reilly, who vouched for for god when he said on many occasions, “Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.”
Somebody forgot to tell these Republican shining lights that the timing of tides and eclipses are easy for science to forecast based on calculations. But then their dear leader stared right at the Sun from his perch in the White House during the solar eclipse in 2017 despite all the warnings not to. Science is for snowflakes, I suppose.
It is not uncommon for people steeped in religion to interpret celestial events and terrestrial catastrophes as god’s actions. I know; I grew up in that kind of a setting.
Despite the fact that my father was educated in the sciences—he earned his undergraduate degree in engineering and had a long career in the profession—and despite the fact that my grandfather was a metallurgical engineer, the religious background at home meant that we observed eclipses as something divine.
In the Hindu faith, an eclipse (ग्रहणं in Sanskrit, pronounced as grahanam) happens because a demon managed to gulp down a serving of the nectar of eternal life—amrutham—by pretending to be a god. The sun god and moon god knew about this pretense and warned the supreme, who then realizing the error decapitated the demon as the nectar was going down his throat. The head came to be known as Rahu, and his body was Ketu.
Because the son and moon gods outed the demon, Rahu/Ketu hates them and regularly attempts to eat them. But because the demon does not have anything below the neck, well, the sun and the moon re-emerge after having been eaten.
These stories lived on despite Hindu astronomers having known for centuries that eclipses can be predicted way ahead of time. About 1,600 years ago, Aryabhata wrote about earth rotating about its axis; elliptical orbits of planets around the sun; eclipses as a result of shadows cast by the moon or earth; …
Scientific knowledge coexisted along with faith, which is why in my childhood we observed eclipses as dark, bad times, during which one shall not carry out any activity. No cooking, no reading, no nothing. Foods that had already been prepared were to be protected with holy darbha grass. If we were awake during the eclipse—solar or lunar—we had to bathe after the eclipse ended.
But, I don’t recall any leading politician or pundit ever making any public pronouncements about eclipses and tides as divine messages that cannot be deciphered by us mortals. Faith was personal but science was public. (Until Hindu nationalists were elected to govern India a decade ago.)
It is not only during eclipse that Rahu makes his presence known. Everyday, between sunrise and sunset, a designated time block is Rahu kaalam (Rahu’s time period). The 90-minutes of Rahu kaalam is inauspicious for anything out of the normal routines that we humans might want to do. Well, for humans who are steeped in the Hindu faith.
As kids, we humorously recited a mnemonic that easily helped one calculate when it was Rahu kaalam on any given day. Mother Saw Father Wearing THe Turban. The letters in bold refer to the days of the week, with the 90-minute period shifting along: It is from 7:30 to 9:00 on Monday, 9:00 to 10:30 on Saturday, and so on, ending with 4:30 to 6:00 on Sunday. And, yes, my parents, like most in the faith, would not begin anything auspicious during Rahu’s time.
Even now, I suspect that most Hindus practice this. Perhaps even among the Hindu diaspora here in America, though the faith holds that the rules do not apply when one has crossed the oceans and no longer lives in “Bharatha Varshe Bharata Khande”—the Vedic phrase that refers to the geographic region of the Subcontinent.
Blogging about science and faith is not new; I have blogged in plenty in the old platform. Like in this post in which I brought in a quote that is apt for this post too: “In previous ages, natural philosophers had attributed the causes of processes to invisible, occult forces and emanations — vague and insensible agencies.” Science has uncovered the cause-effect relationships behind many phenomena like the eclipse, which were once mysteries to us humans. In the forward progress of time, we will uncover more and more mysteries.
A typical complaint is that the more we systematically analyze the universe, the less everything is charming. Scientific thinking reduces the “wonders” of nature to their material components, and then we decipher the components of those components.
It simply isn't so.
The fact that such inquiries enabled humans to walk around on the moon has not made the sight of a full moon any less poetic, has it?
The phenomenal polymath physicist, Richard Feynman, articulated it for all of us while talking about the beauty of a flower:
I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.
Yes, the marvels we discover adds considerably to appreciating and enjoying this world. Ah, "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" like how eclipses are explainable and predictable.