People Of Nepal - Blog Space

In the fall of 2008 I traveled to Nepal to visit my family.  During my visit I got a chance to spend some time with my Paternal Grandfather – a 76 year old retired English Professor.  My grandfather has always been a non believer in religion and religious rituals.  For him going to the temple and engaging in Bhajan and Kirtan seemed to be a waste of time.  But it was different this time.  I saw him participate in religious rituals and talk about religious belief with full faith.  I was very curious to know how all this happened and as it turned out, he had read many books that explained the relationship between science and religion.  Reading those books made him realize that religion and culture has a very deep meaning and that most of the things that we follow in our religion are backed up by strong scientific theories.

This whole episode encouraged me to do some research on how Science and Religion are related.  After reading couple of books and doing some research on the Internet I found couple of amazing scientific facts about Science and Religion that will astonish you.

In considering Hinduism – not because it is more important than any other religion, but because this is the one that I am very familiar with – it does not appear strictly to be a religion. It is based on the practice of Dharma, the code of life.  Vedanta explains that there is no conflict between science and religion and that in fact the two are complementary. In Hinduism there are two categories of knowledge – (i) para vidya – the spiritual knowledge, which includes knowledge of God, life and our purpose in life; and (ii) apara vidya – material knowledge, which includes scientific knowledge.  Science is concerned with the welfare of physical existence.  Religion is concerned with the wellbeing of the soul, including morality and ethics of life.

Hindus hardly leave any confusion regarding the worshipping of the Almighty. The worshippers basically believe in using the power of the nature for the betterment of life. For example, they use fire to dedicate stuff to the deities and use the burnt or ‘literally cooked’ food as the ‘Prasad’ of the god. Worshipping never meant to bribe a deity to provide the mankind with the necessities but literally was the form of expressing gratitude. The very foundation of the Natural Selection theory lies here. The deities or the powers of the nature do what they are ought to do. Hindus provide a clear deity family tree which is authentically scientific and indeed a philosophical expression.

Let’s look at a couple of different areas of science and see how its concept can be found in ancient religious thoughts.

Modern Psychology: Hinduism emphasizes reliance on a guru or teacher to empower seekers with education, knowledge and techniques available.  According to the ancient though, parents are not only responsible for giving birth and nurturing child but they are also the first “gurus.” According to the modern psychology, first five years of a child are the formative years to lay a solid foundation on which the edifice of life is then built during the rest of life and hence parents are the primary gurus during the formative period.

Mathematics: The Bakhshali manuscript from 400 AD covers mathematical topics such as fractions, square roots, profit and loss and interest calculations, simultaneous equations, quadratic equations, arithmetic and geometric progressions.   Sriyantra, an ancient Hindu geometric drawing, incorporates various special numbers such as pi, and the irrational number known as the golden ratio whose value is 1.61803.  (The golden ratio is found in the pyramids in Egypt and in Parthenon in Greece).

Cosmology: Hindu scriptures say that this universe lasts 310 trillion years, and then disappears for the next 310 trillion years.  This cycle repeats indefinitely.  Present day cosmologists speculate that the universe is caught in an infinite cycle of expansion and collapse.  Note the similarity to ancient thought. These scriptures also speak of multiple universes bridged by eternal time, a concept just now coming to the fore as “multiverse (multiple universes) theory”.  Many modern historians have documented that according to some ancient Hindu scriptures, the Sun is 108 Sun-diameters away from the earth and the moon is 108 Moon-diameters away from the earth. The modern scientific values for these figures are 107.6 and 110.6 respectively.

From Christian Fundamentalist point-of-view, God first created light  – Science has also clearly established that light came first, and the last event of Creation was mankind, which also happens to be the most recent major event in a scientific time scale.  Christians understand the early chapters of Genesis as separate acts of creation of all the different kinds of creatures. They see no necessary conflict between the Biblical text and an ancient universe, the evolution of stars, chemicals and living things. Their views are consistent with the scientific evidence available as well.

Buddhism welcomes scientific knowledge, recognizing it as another branch of learning about the natural order.  As stated in Henry Steele Olcott’s Buddhist Catechism, both Buddhism and science teach evolutionism, “that man is a result of a law of development, from an imperfect lower, to higher and perfect condition”.  Both Buddhism and Science teach that all beings are alike subject to Universal law, “law of Karma”, and “law of motion” that brings the universe into existence.

One famous statement of Einstein about Science and Religion connection is: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”. Lord Kelvin, one of the most prominent scientists of the latter half of the nineteenth century, declared, “If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God.”  The insights science has given us, especially in the field of development of the universe, provide even greater reasons for faith.

Now in the end, I do not think science has a solid way to prove or disprove Religious beliefs but the positive debate that is going on in the scientific community in recent time may make some headway about it.  All religions teach that we must do our Karma, that we must be generous, truthful, sincere, and faithful.  All this is reasonable, and logically the way in which humanity can progress.

Author : Komal Dutta