Understanding God through Science
God is not an all-powerful person but a ‘timeless force’ with unlimited energy, says Dr JOE D’SOUZA
Religion is essentially based on ‘Faith’. Faith should not be taken up blindly, but reasoned out. Religious beliefs have acquired unquestionable sanctity over time. India is a deeply religious country. Superficial study portrays our behaviour as a meaningless observance of traditions that are obsolete and not in keeping with modernity.
Fasting during ‘Shravan’, Lent and Ramzan, for instance, is often seen as a meaningless ritual. But ‘fasting’ not only helps keep the body’s wants under control, it trains the mind to relax and helps fine-tune one’s physiology. During ‘Shravan’, in July and August, the fish breeding cycle is on, and abstinence from fish and meat helps nature restore the ecological balance.
We fail to express gratitude to our forefathers, who understood the concept of a balanced exploitation of resources, and the laws and principles of diminishing returns. In an India ravaged by droughts, floods and famines, our ‘sacred groves’ served as storehouses for survival during calamities. The divine cow is man’s best companion, providing food, fuel and furnishings in the form of milk, dung, medicines, horns, etc. Worship of cows helped society make symbiotic use of the divinity for economic prosperity and survival in adverse times.
As science develops, matters of faith often get explained and revealed. Many religions preach the concept of a ‘Holy Trinity’. In Christians, it is the ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. For Hindus, it is Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva; the concept of three personas in one God. The word ‘God’ has ‘G’ for ‘Generation’, ‘O’ for ‘Organisation’ and ‘D’ for ‘Destruction or Dissipation’.
The concept of Generation is perhaps the most complex. Little is understood about how the universe came into existence. The ‘Big Bang Theory’, the evolution of our galaxy, the Milky Way and our planetary Solar System with the ‘Sun’ sustaining it, is a mind boggling hypothesis.
To us on Earth, everything seems fixed and stationary. But we know that over 15 billion years ago, our universe was born. Around 6 billion years ago, our Earth was a hot planet without any life. The formation of continents and oceans, the origin of water, the evolution of an atmosphere and the emergence of elementary cycles; it was all a well-organised phenomenon.
Sequentially, evolution – from simple inorganic elements to complex organic molecules like proteins, carbohydrates, DNA, RNA, to the simplest living unit – took over 3,000 million years. From this primordial soup to the evolution of humans took another 3,000 million years. The actual history of humankind is just over 100,000 years; yet it is humans who are today effecting major changes on Earth, the planet that is their only known habitat in the vast universe.
In the role of the Trinity, we see the Destroyer or the Dissipater as the final phenomenon. The Sun is slowly expanding. Over millions of years, it has been generating heat and light. After a few more thousand million years, the sun too will collapse and die, just like all living matter on Earth.
We know that from dust we came and to dust we shall return. But the theory of Karma says that there is a cycle of birth and rebirth. Elementary cycles in nature, like the food chain cycle and nutrient cycle, clearly indicate that life through birth and mineralization through death are collateral processes and will continue as long as the Sun shines and man does not interfere beyond limits in natural processes.
The ultimate forces in nature are also responsible for destruction or dissipation into ‘Energy’, also referred to as the ‘Soul’, which is considered indestructible. This goes back to the Generator to further initiate the cycle.
Apart from Earth, there must be organised life in other galaxies. Our souls or cosmic energy can give birth to diverse forms of life, which could be similar or utterly different from what we see on Earth.
The study of physics, biophysics, chemistry, biochemistry, geochemistry, biology, geophysics and mathematics, without understanding the power of spirituality, religion and morality, has led humans into extremism and waywardness. The realisation that God is not an all-powerful person but a ‘timeless force’ with unlimited energy is difficult for the human mind to comprehend.
Over billions of years, stars like our Sun, even much bigger ones, have born and died. There are numerous planetary systems revolving around stars, in a variety of galaxies, where Generation, Operation and Destruction (the Trinity process) is happening over unlimited time and space. Science can help us understand the forces of the ‘Trinity’ across the Universe, but it has severe limitations of concrete data.
Religion teaches us that these are finite objects created by God, that we have to play our definitive roles and understand the preaching of sages, prophets and wise men who were able to perceive God in its entirety.
From the birth of our universe to the final death of our sun, from the ‘big bang’ to the ‘black hole’, is 20 billion years. The Sun will slowly expand and cool down before dying, like millions of stars before it. Today, we are searching for planets in galaxies far beyond our Milky Way, to find life or even conditions fit for human beings to inhabit. While the destruction of our planet proceeds unabated, our search to find a new Earth-like planet too goes on.
Over past decades, Humans have immortalised life through Hybridoma technology. They have generated life from lifeless chemicals. They have simulated the creation of the Universe through the Big Bang. But they are doing precious little to protect, preserve and improve upon the quality of human life and dignity on Earth.
The work of the scientific community is sought to be negated in the name of religion by fanatics. That killing those who disagree with one’s views can bring instantaneous salvation, is the mantra of the terrorist and suicide bomber. Intolerance and hypocrisy in the name of religion is the route to human destruction.
We say that we are all equal and condemn women who would like to do priestly duties. In the name of God; who man created in his image, we exploit and harm other humans. Women who have abortions, those involved in gay relationships, atheists, etc, are also products of the cosmic ‘Generation’, ‘Organisation’ and ‘Dissipation’ cycle; irrespective of variance in faith, beliefs or religion.
Unfortunately, in Goa, instead of leveraging the benefits of the interactive association of Science, Religion and Spiritualism, we set up Science against Religion and fuel inter-religious rivalries. The meaningless demolition of religious structures, desecration of idols, thefts in holy places, gives Goa a bad name. The religious faithful become intolerant to controversies or criticism; witness the mob attack on the house of Calvert Gonsalves, who produced a CD targeting a priest.
Christians in Goa pose themselves as more Christian than Christ. Jesus told his followers to show the other cheek to the one who slaps. But in Goa, stoning, beating and abusing those who criticise is the order of the day. The decline in spiritual values has led to increasing incidents of rape, murder, theft, divorce, suicide, exploitation, cheating, gambling and prostitution, and quality of life in Goa is taking a severe beating.
Do we not have good shepherds in Goa? The black sheep are growing menacingly, as we have failed to realise God in its entirety, both spiritually as well as scientifically. God is the eternal transformation of cosmic energy over eons, of which we too are a minuscule part.
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The lost purse
By Vanessa Lobo
The other day, I dropped in at my friend Kellie’s house. By afternoon, dark clouds had gathered, threatening a heavy downpour any minute.
Kellie said, “Come on, don’t leave just yet. You’re bound to get drenched if you do.” I was glad I let her talk me into staying until evening, as it began raining immediately.
As we sipped hot tea and ate hot bhajjas, she said, “Hey! Did I tell you about my lost purse?’” I shook my head in the negative.
She continued, “The other day I went to visit Maggie’s granny, Mrs. D’Souza. I sat for a while until I could no longer bear to hear about arthritis and high blood pressure. I beat a hasty retreat, only to find I had left my purse in her house. I had to walk all the way back to her house in the scorching sun to retrieve.”
I asked “So did you find it there?”
“Nope.” Said Kellie biting into her fourth hhajia. “Mrs. D’Souza said she did indeed find a purse fallen near her sofa. But she gave it to Mrs. Azavedo who dropped in to visit her soon after I did. Mrs. Azavedo agreed to return the purse to its owner.”
“You obviously rushed over to Mrs.Azavedo’s house and found it there.” I replied laughingly. Kellie replied “You’re right about the rushing over part, but not about the ‘finding the purse part’.”
“What!” I exclaimed “You mean you didn’t find it even there?” “Nope, “ came the reply as she calmly bit into another bhajia and proceeded to chew on it slowly much to my irritation. “So what happened?” I asked burning with curiosity.
She said “I went to Mrs. Azavedo’s house only to find that the purse she had wasn’t mine. It was a brown one belonging to Mrs.Fernandes who is her neighbour. Mrs. Feraandes had gone to visit Mrs.D’Souza the night before, and had dropped her purse there. Since Mrs. Azavedo was her neighbour, she recognized the purse and agreed to return it to her. But Mrs.D’Souza assumed the purse was mine.”
“Go on” I said hastily “What did you do next?”
“Well” said Kellie “I walked back to Mrs. D’Souza’s house and hunted all over for it.”
“Did you find it?” I asked. “Nope” she replied. “It was the Mystery of the Missing Purse.”
“Come on Kellie, don’t keep me in suspense any more.” I pleaded.
Kellie took pity on me as she offered me some delicious cup cakes. She said, “I
gave up the search and walked back home sadly. I couldn’t understand how my purse could have disappeared into thin air.”
“I narrated the story to my sister who said the story was worthy of being published in the newspaper since I had wasted the whole morning walking round the village, exhausted, on a merry wild goose chase involving so many people.. .and I still hadn’t found the purse…since that purse had been lying on my bed at home all along!”
“What, I gasped. “But how?”
She said “Actually that morning, I was all set with my purse in hand to go and visit Mrs. D’Souza. I was about to leave my house, when I saw that my relatives from abroad had just entered as they had come to visit us. In the excitement and confusion, I threw my purse on the bed and rushed out to greet them. Once they had left, I continued on my way completely forgetting that I had left my purse on the bed. I just assumed that it was still in the plastic bag that I was carrying. I realized that my purse was missing only when I left Mrs. D’Souza’s house, so I obviously assumed I had lost it there. And the rest is history!”
We burst out laughing as she waved her purse around in the air. I guess the moral of that story is: Don’t look for something that isn’t lost!
