The Hindu's Microscope Dilemna
As the human mind is acculturated, the limbic portions of our brain, (the emotive parts), make neuronal connections with our cerebral cortex, (the analytical, computer parts), and frontal lobes, (judgment and executive parts). Antonio Damasio, in his book “Descartes’ Error,” demonstrates that our brain and our mind are inseparable; that humans are not Vulcans like Star Trek’s Dr. Spock. Thus, it is not surprising that geology, not astrology, largely determines one’s religion. That is to say that if your native geography happened to be the Indian sub-continent, you are highly likely to be one of the world’s 950 million Hindu’s by accident of birth; if your native geography happened to be the Arabian peninsula, you’ll likely be a convinced Muslim; if you happen to be reading this in the United States, you’re likely to be at least a nominal Christian. Furthermore, with rare exceptions, if you were born to Hindu parents in India, even at 70 you’ll likely remain a Hindu. Why?
First, because the non-rational parts of your brain made an emotional neuronal attachment to the rational parts of your brain. A close second is the fact that your geographical and cultural isolation determines that you are highly unlikely to be exposed to an alternatives to you “in-born” religion. In practice this results in certain fixed ideas, ideas which are extremely resistant to any contrary evidence, no matter how convincing from a rational and factual point of view. Third, your birth and parental religion has been reinforced by your early childhood education and exposure to significant others like elementary school teachers, neighborhood friends, community leaders. You unconsciously assume a certain religious identity almost as unthinkingly as you learn your mother tongue, assume a national identity or grow into a particular sexual orientation. Finally, you gradually develop what the Germans call a Weltanschauung, a general view of the nature of the universe and your place in it. You feel comfortable and secure with your view of the universe. If you were suddenly to discover that there was a major misalignment between your view of reality and reality itself, you would suffer existential angst. Something akin to a adolescent shockingly finding out that his presumed all-American father was a homosexual. Difficult to assimilate. Denial would be a likely first gut reaction.
We are all like the Hindu in the story below. We all have incorporated certain ideas, ideas becoming more fixed, rigid, and non-negotiable with time. What is the truth-seeking, scientific Hindu to do when he unexpectedly hits the conundrum of a religious truth smashing up against facts which contradict this “truth?” Read the story of the Brahman and the microscope and reflect on what you’d do if you’d been born Hindu.
There was a devout, third-world Brahman Hindu who was totally enamored of all the marvelous Western inventions. He was given a camera and enthused over the miracle of capturing his image. He was given a tape recorder and marveled on how it was able to capture people's voices. He was given a magnifying glass. This was his favorite. Suddenly small little objects were 10 times their size! Truly miraculous! Virtually divine! Surely his western friend and his culture were far superior to the backward Hindu Indians.
His western friend seeing the delight and amazement of his Hindu friend decided to present him with the most fabulous gift of all. So he presented him with a microscope. He anticipated his delight at being able to visualize scores of living micro-organisms. So he was dumb-founded when the next day his friend grimly returned the microscope telling him he did not want it and offering the following explanation:
“I don't believe that those creatures in the microscope exist!” “But of course they exist,” said his Western friend. “You saw them with your own eyes.” “No they don’t,” said the Brahman. “How can you deny the evidence of your own eyes,” said his friend? “Well,” said the Brahman, “You see I believe in reincarnation. Therefore, I do not believe in killing any living thing because they could be my ancestors, perhaps a grandfather or distant cousin. To eat and kill them would be like committing cannibalism. I would feel guilty and ashamed. It violates all that is sacred. I realize that if those creatures really existed, I would have committed millions of murders over decades of living. That cannot be.”
Galileo’s prosecutors refused to believe the rings of Saturn that they could see through a telescope. The Hindu refused to believe in the creatures he saw in the microscope. The telescope and microscope provided mere empiric, factual observations. What the Hindu and Galileo’s Papal Inquisitors had was inerrant Divine Revelation, a religious revelation that completely annihilated mere empiric truths.
Galileo’s anti-science, anti-intellectual, religiously-blinkered persecutors blackened the reputation of both the Catholic Church and God. Because they claimed to be acting as the vicars of God. Like Job’s three friends, they considered it their religious duty to defend God’s reputation. But of them God said: “They know not what they do.” Similarly, today there are religiously motivated obscurantists who vehemently proclaim that they know the mind of God, that they are the authoritative interpreters of the mind of God, and that all the rest of us common folks should defer to their inerrant Scriptural exegesis. Furthermore, they have a Scriptural word from the mind of God on every topic—from capitalist economic theory to the science of global warming which, according to Genesis, is a hoax perpetrated by some sort of world government scientific cabal. Galileo’s heliocentric THEORY of the solar system, (like the THEORY of evolution and the THEORY of gravity), eventually convinced all but inveterate flat-earthers. Bible thumping, geocentric believers were eventually, (400+ years later), shamed into recanting their one time inerrant Scriptural truth. However, by then they had largely destroyed whatever credibility their scientific/religious diktats may have once held. This does not, unhappily, make them any less hesitant about making similar pronouncements today.
Are you able to subject your “in-born,” geographically determined religious beliefs to scientific scrutiny? Or must you take the Hindu’s approach to a microscope to maintain your Weltanschauung?
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