My Grandfather and my Religious Affiliations

In our life there are there certain incidents that we remember forever. These memories are etched in our conscious mind because the time, the place and the company are all conducive to that adherence factor.

When I was about 12-13 years of age, my grandfather and I were walking along an almost deserted street. The fruit vendors closed their carts, with flashy bright colored plastic sheets. Few of the auto drivers alongside the road were safely ensconced in their back seats and gave in to the call of dreamless sleep. The cool breeze touched us and the moon shined on us as though it was a special moment.

The silence around us made me think deeper. I asked my grandfather, ‘What happens after death?’

‘You merge with nature. You become part of nature; you are in the rain, the clouds and the streams that make the land fertile. After that you are born based on the good or bad deeds you did in your previous birth. You must have done good deeds in your previous life’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You are born to good parents who take care of you.’

I nodded my head.

I want to be like a few of my friends who belong to the higher echelons of life, people who are devotees of science and not religion, who denounce the presence of God. I cannot. There are a few questions that Science has’nt been able to answer yet. My continued faith in religion springs out of the inability of Science to comprehend the un-experimentable phenomena.

The first question is, ‘Why is Science far behind nature?’ 

We know beforehand about catastrophes like cyclones or earthquakes, why can’t we stop them? The most we can do is to evacuate people from the area of calamity. Why didn't we make a monstrous machine that swallows this destructive energy and uses it to power up humanity rather than consume it?

The second question is, ‘What happens after death?’ 

This question leads me to pick up a book about how to prepare for death at one of the Ramakrishna Math’s bookstores. My husband was shocked to look at that book in my hands, he must have thought not even one year into marriage and she picks this book!

In the book Autobiography of a Yogi, Swami Yogananda answers the question of death. All living things are in a cycle of life and death. We are born in different socio-economic levels of society based on our karma and until we attain moksha i.e., become one with God, we are reborn. There is one problem with this theory; there is no way to test it until and unless we have knowledge of all our previous births, if we have any.

Science has been dabbling with creating micro-organisms in lab but it is still far away from creating a Frankenstein. The first law of Thermodynamics states that Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. When we are dead, the life energy should go somewhere. Science does not answer where. Take a new born child, who due to some unfortunate incident is killed in an accident or has been drowned. The child is brand new, why can’t we just like a new car which had an accident, repair all the parts and make it run.  Machines run on energy no matter how screwed up they are. You can fix them and they will at least run sputtering and muttering. Why can’t we do the same with living beings? Repair them and bring them to life from death.

These two questions still hold my affiliations with religion. The day Science answers these two questions I will denounce religion and join the bandwagon of atheists.

                                                       The quandary of Science and Religion

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