Facts and proof are determined by the age we live in. In 1633, Galileo was imprisoned for claiming that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around, as the Church believed. Ancient Greeks in 3 BC had already calculated the planet’s circumference, but pagans don’t count with Popes. Before Galileo, Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician who discovered pulmonary circulation, had suffered a worse fate. Deemed a heretic, he was arrested, tortured and burned at the stake beside Lake Geneva along with copies of his book on the subject.
Hitler never forgave Albert Einstein for the Theory of Relativity—the greatest scientist of the 20th century was stripped of all academic titles; his property was seized and his books were burned in public. In 2018, then HRD minister Satya Pal Singh declared the Theory of Evolution wrong and that it must be removed from textbooks because, “nobody, including our ancestors, in written or oral, has said they saw an ape turning into a man.”
The paradox of faith and physics is, that ‘believing is not seeing, but seeing is believing. The mystery lies at the root of both science and religion, the oldest adversaries on earth. Science insists on proof while religion harks on faith. But science confuses laymen when old theories are disproved by new revelations (Aristotelian physics superseded by Newtonian physics) and one discovery opens up a universe of a thousand hidden doors.
But Scripture is as immutable as the Universe. God doesn’t err, and faith secures your place and your family in a changing world. America is the world’s scientific leader and India has sent spacecraft to Mars, but science is being debunked the world over. Distrust of science is as popular as popcorn, driven by the expanding chasm between conservative and liberal beliefs. Psychologists argue that fresh concepts that contradict old beliefs bewilder people rooted in certain belief systems.
The arcana of scientific formulae and equations are inexplicable to them, who would rather believe in the mystical power of a divine Astra than e=mc2. The anti-vaxxer movement in the US against Covid-19 inoculation reflects a suspicion of science, which is being promoted fervently by conservative pastors and televangelists. This is in spite of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention annually distributing 75 million doses of different vaccines to health departments and private health providers to be administered to eligible children.
People look for miracles, and miracles aren’t scientific; even if a new drug or surgical protocol saves a terminally ill patient, it is hailed as a ‘miracle’. The irony of astrologers using software to decode birth charts stored on their laptops to predict the man’s future doesn’t seem incongruous to them at all. True believers will attribute technological feats to the work of supernatural agencies—like the Pushpak Viman or the flying chariot that took Ezekiel to the Jerusalem Temple and back to Babylon.
The world is regressing socially, even as it advances technologically. People without belief are people without roots. In these insecure times, dominated by the Politics of Othering, economic inequality and educational disparity, devotion brings comfort and stability. The God of the technological era could be a cybernetic genius who transcends all worlds: an Amun-ra who straddles science and religion. Since time immemorial, people have held on to the simple truth that what they can see and touch is what is real. Into that tactile galaxy of primitive perception, we retreat with a prayer on our lips.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com