When the search for God ends, so does the search for the truth. God has been discovered in the cow. He has been found in French cartoons. He is celebrated on burning crosses in redneck America. The most popular alibi for human misconduct is God. In that cosmic confusion, we stagger through the shifting sands of ever-changing morality and world order.
We forget the wonder of creation. We examine the past to conjure up nonsensical mythology and degradable dogma to suit our version of the present. Conviction is for the mediocre and the fanatic. Wonder, that comely cousin of science is the real pathfinder.
Last week, the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society hailed the discovery of a hidden wonder—a “fossil galaxy” lurking 180 million light-years away in the mysterious depths of the Milky Way. A fossil galaxy is the X-ray halo of an original galaxy that collapsed/merged within a large galaxy group like the Milky Way. Astroscientists estimate that this freshly discovered fossil galaxy collided with our 13.5 billion years old galaxy about 10 billion years ago.
The force added a multitude of new stars on a billion-year timeline. In this great cosmic mystery of creation and destruction, we forget the men we turn into gods and the ideas and gods we worship, ultimately become fossils in the long journey of history. History is a catacomb of fossils that archaeologists keep discovering only to conclude that nothing has changed since Cain killed Abel and Rama slew Bali. Change and contradiction are just the same old, same old. Ancient Athens had free speech. In India, the sovereign right goes to Arnab Goswami.
Athens was the only democracy among Greek city-states. The democratically elected Communist government in Kerala attempted to jail anyone who they interpret intimidates, insults or defames people. Sensibility being a subjective matter, Tsarist Russia chopped off the noses of smokers. Murderers in India are garlanded in public. Galileo affirmed at great personal risk that the earth revolves around the sun while Imran Khan made Germany and Japan neighbours. Akbar’s Mughal ancestors perpetuated the most horrible torture and pogroms on Hindus.
The emperor studied the Vedas and wed Hindu Rajput queens; Hindi heartland states will enact a law against ‘love jihad’. Chandragupta abdicated his throne and went to attain samaadhi in Shravanabelagola. Donald Trump is clinging to the White House like a succubus resisting exorcism. Such paradoxes form the nebula of contradictions that the human race is negotiating in its attempt to understand itself and misunderstand the Divine. God’s fanboys are challenging the courage and lucidity of science saying climate change is fake news and Ravan operated an airline.
But heretics of reason, in the end, become ideological orphans patrolling an illusory past they insist is real, little realising they are just meteors in the universe of knowledge. They foolishly see the Universe as a void. Last week scientists also developed the first family tree of the Milky Way—a step to know the secret to our origins. A collision between the Milky Way and the “Kraken” galaxy billions of years ago added millions of stars to ours. Using AI they connected globular clusters—related star batches older than other stars to their progenitor galaxies—which eventually merged to become the Milky Way. There will be black holes in the ideological universe for sure. But there will always be more stars.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com