The need of reformatting religions by culling out the portions that have been proved to be wrong by science

If we critically examine — we realize that science covers only such things about the existence of which, we don’t have any doubt while it is not so in case of the religions.

Religions cover both types of things — the things we may be able to only visualize as well as the things that relate to the realities of life.

Examples of the things we may only visualize

Some of such things are:

(i) Things related to our souls

(ii) Things related to the heaven and the hell

(iii) Things related to the creation of the universe

(iv) Things related to the consequences of the type of karmas we may have performed in our past life

(v) The divine power.

Let us take the case of the souls.

The religions believe in the existence of the souls through such incidents that had occurred, say, in the life of Emma Calvé — the famous French opera singer of the Bella Époque at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, and the Royal Opera House, London.

Indians believe that our all thoughts get transformed into some form of an aura around our head that fly out into the cosmos and can be captured and read by the souls of a person even if he may be far away as she had been able to capture the shrieks of her daughter who got burnt in a kitchen fire, when she was performing in an opera — far away from her home.

At that moment she got warned of the fact that some un-fateful thing had happened at her apartment and expressed her desire to do not continue with the ongoing show.

But the fact is — even though such incidents suggest that souls exist, we are not able to put them on record by taking their photographs etcetera.

So while science does not entertain such things — the religions do not mind taking such things into their stride.

The Hindus even believe in the reincarnation of the souls, though the Muslims do not think so.

The very fact that the people of all other religions do not have the same stance about the souls, stands as a stout case that explains why religions are not branded as a part of science.

Another reason why religions are not branded as a part of science

Most of the religions believe that the pandemics occur by the will of the god in the life of the people who do not accept his supremacy and such pandemics do not harm the people who are his devotees.

But almost everybody has come to realize during the spread of the Covid-19 virus across the world during the year 2020 that it had impacted even the priests and many of the devotees of the god.

So it has highlighted that the people of the past believed that such pandemics occur due to the wrath of the god because they did not have requisite electron microscopes or had not developed the techniques of seeing the shapes of the viruses and to watch which reagents or antibodies could disintegrate them to neutralize them as mentioned at https://theconversation.com/five-techniques-were-using-to-uncover-the-secrets-of-viruses-144363, to develop the vaccines.

For instance, in the past, nobody could have known that the spike-shaped protein on the spherical body of the virus, shown below, pierces through the human cells to affect our body in a manner that our body is not able to fight against them.

Photo of the Covid-19 Virus

(Source: Getty Images)

So, now, people have realized that the old beliefs have lost their relevance.

Even the following meme based on the view taken by Levan Tonaganyan cries harsh on the futility of the past beliefs.

We get a clear view of the futility of the past beliefs that stemmed due to the lack of knowledge of the real cause why the solar and lunar eclipses occur.

The futility of the past beliefs that stemmed due to the lack of knowledge of the real cause why the solar and lunar eclipses occur

For instance, look at how they tried to explain why the sun and the moon disappear from the sky by doling out the following story of the demons Raahu and Ketu in India — only due to lack of the knowledge that the sun disappears from the sky when the moon intercepts the light emitted by the sun and the moon disappears from the sky when the sunlight falling on the moon is intercepted by the Earth.

During the dark ages, the Indians linked such disappearance as a consequence of the Sun getting devoured by a demon known to them as Raahu which was the head part of a demon named Swarbhanu who had been decapitated by Vishnu ( the Head of the deities) when they discovered that he had fled away with the vessel that contained the divine nectar (that had come out of the ocean when the respective teams of the devils and the deities had been churning it in a tug of war type of game) that could have immortalised anybody who would have sipped it, to become immortal.

Though the deities succeeded to recover the vessel from the demon, Brahma attached the tail of a snake to the severed head of the head of the demon Swarbhanu (and named this part of the demon as “Raahu”) and the head of the snake to the torso of the demon — which came to be known as Ketu later on and they believed that the moon disappears whenever Ketu devours it.

This story speaks volumes about the calibre of the people who had evolved the Hindu religion during that era.

Just imagine — can anything be more stupid than to have thought that a demon could have devoured things so large as the sun and the moon.

Quite obviously, they had no idea about the sizes of the sun and the moon.

We wish — they should have known that the diameter of the sun is of the order of 392,000 km and the diameter of the moon is of an order of 3,475 km.

This story adequately explains that it would be only foolish to think that they should have been able to produce any worthwhile thing in the form of a religion.

The story of Islam is also as funny as the story of the eclipses.

The prophet who delivered them their religion had told his disciples that he had flown up on a divine horse-like creature to the seventh sky where he had met Allah as well as the past prophets and had also gone to see the heaven as well as the hell — all, without wearing any spacesuit as the astronauts wear or without carrying any oxygen cylinder on his back as the astronauts carry with them.

It is also believed that his heart had been taken out of his body to wash a blemish with the water of a holy well and had been placed back in situ much the same way as we pick up a book from a book-rack and keep it back into the rack after reading it.

Not only these two religions — even Christianity has some snags of the same genre.

A word on Christianity

It is well known how much Galileo had been traumatised of blasphemy when he had told that the Earth revolved around the Sun which differed from what is mentioned in the Holy Bible.

So it is quite understandable — science has taken a lead over the people of the Dark Ages, in a way.

It has taken lead in several other fields also.

For instance — if anybody used to get lost in a forest or on the high sea in the past he couldn’t get any help from outside.

But today, if he has a mobile phone it is possible to find out his exact location through the current GPS.

We know any amount of praying to the god can’t let us know his exact location but science and technology have retrieved us from such tragedies.

So it has dawned upon us that we should cull out the portions of the religions that have been proved to be wrong by the science and be happy with what is left out after culling out what has been proved to be wrong by the science.