My thoughts on Religion (v1.0)

 

I am not a spiritual person. I am a technologist and will not really venture beyond what the scientific method can answer. The focus of religion is to answer questions beyond science and to give practical teachings for humans to live out their lives and sometimes find some purpose. The major religions also show a way to spirituality although one can be spiritual without being religious.

I was taught Christianity throughout my school years in a Scottish school in Mumbai that I went to. I was taught both the Old Testament and the New Testament. I was taught Hinduism at home. I read a little about Buddhism on my own. Although I am not spiritual at all, I could clearly see that throughout history, extremely spiritual people appeared from time to time, who saw and understood things others couldn’t. This includes ancient sages in India more than 1500 BCE, Moses, Jesus Christ, Buddha, etc. Many of them left behind teachings that promotes morals, kindness to others, path to seeking spirituality, and what happens after death. This helps human society by making it easier to live together in communities, and have people follow laws that are passed by those communities. But unfortunately, religion has also been exploited by people to trigger conflict and bloodshed between people of different faiths. I think the spiritual originators of the world’s major religions would be appalled. I believe in people of all religions or no religion to live harmoniously with each other. To me all the major religions offer different paths to spirituality. They are all good. People are searching for answers and any path they believe in is fine.

My sister is a Vedanta student, and I learnt a little from her. The pinnacle of Hindu thought is the brahma sutras which delves deep into the true nature of reality and the creative force (brahman) and the true nature of self (atman). She studies the advaita school of thought reinvigorated in modern times in the 8th century by Adi Shankara which says atman and brahman are one. The other texts at the pinnacle of Hindu thought are the upanishads and the Bhagwad Gita. My sister has devoted her life to that study and hopefully she will reach enlightenment like some of the other spiritual greats. But what I know is I will not embark on the same journey she did, but if I did, I would have had the opportunity to evaluate for myself the reasoning processes behind the conclusions, and if it holds muster for me, may have understood the nature of the creative force, the universe, reality, and self. It is my loss, but hers is a long and lonely and arduous journey. As a scientist I cannot postulate any of these conclusions, but I cannot discount those others have reached this level of understanding. So, I will forever remain an agnostic. However, I also consider myself a humanist.

An article my sister sent me is the musings of Erwin Schrodinger. He saw the parallels between the quantum mechanics wave particle duality and how observation collapses the wave function in some of the teachings of the brahma sutra about the nature of reality and self. I found that interesting. I sometimes think plank's constant is the most fundamental in the universe, and someday, quantum physics may decipher what happened a minute instant after the big bang (called the plank epoch) that put in stone the rest of the complete history of the universe. What caused the big bang and what was before it is more the domain of religion and philosophy. Here is the article on Schrodinger: https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/erwin-schrodinger-quantum-mechanics-philosophy-of-physics-upanishads/

I have not found personally that I need religion for a strong moral and ethical fiber. My moral fiber was injected into me when I was growing up and I credit my parents and school to imparting them to me. It is unshakeable and has stayed steady and strong throughout my life.

All I can accept is that some phenomenon whose nature is unknown, and cannot be answered by the scientific method, caused the big bang, but imparted into it, assembly instructions in terms of the well governed laws of physics, laws of chemistry, and the laws of biology and evolution. These shaped the primordial universe to what it is today – one with great order and beauty, yet complexity, and a world teeming with intelligent humans on earth and likely intelligent beings on other planets too. Are these laws the guiding instructions put into the primordial universe by God that resulted in such order and beauty, yet complexity? Doesn’t that signal the existence of an intelligence and purpose? I leave that up to you to judge. Einstein said “God does not play dice” when first presented with quantum mechanics. That implies he believed in God and likely saw beautiful and elegant equations like E=MC **2 as the handiwork of this intelligence.

Here is a fascinating article on Einstein's beliefs about God.

Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein - Wikipedia