Reading Philosophy

Can we relate religion and science? I've been talking to a few people who have taken up this topic seriously and I have been getting some good inputs on how religion is a means for communicating science. The sages realised that for a mind to understand certain facts of science it would have to have had studied science in the first place. Those who had not studied science would not understand these facts. Hence they used what we call religion.

Looking at the Hindu religion in particular I find plenty such examples of which I am posting one.

The traditional custom in India is that one should not lie towards the North - having his head placed towards the Northern direction.

The religious explanation was as follows :

Goddess Parvathi was once necessitated to leave her abode for getting water. As there was nobody to keep watch over the house during her absence, she made a doll and gave it life and instructed it to keep watch over the abode and not to allow anybody inside till she came back It happened that Lord Shiva wanted to enter the house but forbidden to do so by the boy (i.e. the doll with life). Enraged by this obstruction, the Lord at once cut of the head of the boy and entered the house.

Meanwhile The Divine Mother entered the house and learnt the boy had met with his end at Lord Shankara’s hand. She demanded from Lord Shankara that the boy’s life must be restored at any cost. Shankara at once ordered that head of any person who slept towards the North must be brought for this purpose. The attendants of Lord Shiva found only an elephant in that position and the head of the elephant was brought and placed on the trunk of the boy and his life restored.

This is said to be the Lord Ganesa and he was given many boons one of which was that no good act can be started with out Worshipping Lord Ganesa. Incidentally Lord Shiva said that who so ever slept towards North shall lose all his fortune and goodness and shall be deemed to be great sinner.

Another seems to be that as Lord Yama- the Duty God—(DHARMA) resides in the south, nobody shall sleep towards North, as this would mean disrespect to the Lord of Dharma, as ones feet will be towards South in this position.

Now let us analyse the scientific explanation :

Our Sages thought that having born, as a human one should not fritter away his energy with out deriving any advantage. It is the Duty of any person born, to acquire Knowledge and proceed in the right line of thinking and try to reach the Omnipotent as his final goal. For this it is absolutely necessary to conserve one’s energy to the best of one’s capacity.

Our body comprises of Iron, Cobalt and Nickel in small proportion as necessary constituents to make us strong. In places situated in the area between latitude 0 to 40 degrees the Horizontal component of Earth’s Magnetic field exists in considerable magnitude. Its Value at Equator is 0.38 Oersteds (C.G.S. Units) and at 40deg. It is 0.31 C.G.S. Units. This means that a unit pole placed in this region is either attracted or repelled (depending upon the nature of the pole) with 0,38 to 0,31 dynes of force (depending upon the latitude of the place).

The magnetic lines of force runs from South to North When a man sleeps towards the North, these lines of forces run through him and his cerebrum and at each instant, the iron, cobalt, nickel present in his body is being magnetised and in a short time the human body becomes a mass of small magnets. Summing up all these small magnets becomeone big Magnet of magnetic moment ‘M’ which will be the resultant of pole strength multiplied by the length of the magnets. Thus the human body will be subjected to a force of MH dynes. Where H is the Horizontal component if the Earth’s Magnetic Field.

When a person sleeps towards North he will be making an angle of 0 deg. With the line of action of Force and as such the component of Force along him will be MH Cosine 0. But Cos 0 = 1. Hence full force of MH dynes will pass through his Cerebrum. What does this mean? Out of his conserved energy he will have to spend every time MH dynes to counter act this force, in order to keep the system in equilibrium. This means he is losing every time MH dynes from his reserves. Thus sleeping towards the North is a wasting disease as his energy is drained by this quantity.

When he sleeps towards the south then the component along his body will be MH Cos 180degrees as he is sleeping opposite to the line of action of the Force. Cos 180 = -1. And hence he loses _MH dynes every time. This means he gets MH dynes added on to his system and one therefore sleeps towards South to his best advantage.

Sleeping towards East or West would mean that the component of the force is MH Cos 90 or MH Cos 270 degrees which is ‘0’as Cos 90 and Cos 270 degrees are equal to 0. Hence the man is not subjected to any reaction.

Persons situated at higher latitudes are not subjected to influence of this force as the value of H wanes out as we go higher up. It is 0.18 C.G.S.Units at U.K. and 0 at the Pole

Hence the maximum effect is felt by the people living between the two Tropics and India being one such country, our ancestors rightly laid down, as one of the normal precepts of life to be followed, that one should not sleep towards the North as they wanted to discourage any wastage of Energy, however small it may be.

So, could it be possible that what we call religion is just a means for communicating science to the masses.

NI

Can we relate religion and science?

I guess we could, but I disagree with the example you gave.

Your scientific explanation seems to be - frankly - rather unscientific. First of all, I believe the effect is much too small to be measurable - if existant at all, but okay. However, it just doesn't make sense why you should lose energy if your head becomes the a magnetic north pole and gain energy the other way round. Some sages may have believed this, modern scientist most likely wouldn't.

Still, religion or more specifically some religious "rules" are clearly used to convey some scientific insights.

For example - note my knowledge about this is very vague - some religions incorporate hygiene into their teachings (ritual washings, be clean to show respect towards your god etc.)
Jews for example are said to have suffered a lot less from plagues like the Black Death (due to higher hygienic standards). (Ironically this lead to the believe they actually created the plague, so in the end they suffered a lot nonetheless, although indirectly).

However, I believe this to be only a possible "sideeffect" of religion. If we accept for a moment (I wouldn't, but still) that religion has been consciously created, I guess it was more likely for other reasons:

If we are nice, we could say that religion was probably created to impose some social ideas onto society: Someone realized we'd all be a lot better off, if we refrain from knocking down this guy over there with our real-big-club just because he wears this really nice necklace. So why shouldn't we? After all we're the stronger one. Just because we might set a bad example for someone else? Or rather because Someone real powerful is watching us and He doesn't like it that way?

If we aren't as nice, we could say religion is all about power: You might have to work hard to keep me satisfied, perhaps I don't treat you very nicely, but wait for the afterlife and boy will you be rewarded. Just be patient.

Disclaimer: I'm not talking about any specific existing form of religion. I'm talking about possible reasons that might have lead to or influenced the creation of some religion in a historical context.

'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman. 'Get stuffed!' the Harlequin replied, sneering.

Your scientific explanation seems to be - frankly - rather unscientific. First of all, I believe the effect is much too small to be measurable - if existant at all, but okay. However, it just doesn't make sense why you should lose energy if your head becomes the a magnetic north pole and gain energy the other way round. Some sages may have believed this, modern scientist most likely wouldn't.

The information I put forth in my previous post was explained to me by a scientist. ( I just might have to check out his credentials though ;) ).

However, further probing brought me to what is called 'Vaastu Shastra', an ancient Indian science ( if you might call it that ).

More on it can be found here :

Vaastu Shastra

The fact that this being a 'globally' practiced art does call for some thinking as it clearly states as one of its principles that sleeping towards the south is beneficial.

NI

My belief on the relation of science to religion is that it can be true, but only with some religions. There are little hints in every religion pointing at a scientific point, although the point you where making about sleeping north & south, that can be faulty. Anyone with a great mind can come up with concepts untrue, including people who enjoy getting others hooked on bad information (ex: con-artists). I'm not saying the theory is wrong, but you might want to do a little of the math. Humans aren't potent enough of any of those elements to create a great enough charge to make too great an impact on the body. Maybe over long term, but its hard to calculate such a thing without putting work into it.

Thought is for those who can think...

Can we relate religion and science?

Yes, I think it is possible to relate religion to science. And it's interesting that you brought this subject up, because I'm currently reading a novel written by Dan Brow entitled Angels & Demons, which deals partially with this subject.

The belief of one of the characters (which was murdered) was that through physics one could prove the existance of God. According to the Bible god created the heavens and the earth, light and dark etc. Or, more simply put everything and it's opposite. Likewise, scientificly for everthing created there's an opposite for that thing. Like when you stamp a coin from a sheet of metal there's the round hole where the coin left, or rather, the anticoin.

The same is true for atmoic and subatomic particles. When they are run through a particle excelorator and colide to form different particals, there opposite is left behind, which has been named antimatter, however it's immediately destroyed when it hits particles of matter.

The Big Bang:

A bunch of nothing exploded and produced the known universe.

As most of us know, christianity explains the origions of the universe as god deciding that there should be more something and less nothing and then the universe came to be.

The murdered scinetist in the novel believed that god did, create the universe and was on the verge of proving via shooting two ultrathin particle beams in opposite directions and trapping the antimater in a magnetic vaccum before it could destroy itself, hence creating a miniature universe of his own. And naturally, being that he did believe in god, this was his proof that god created the universe, by excellerating alot of antimatter at eachother till they collide, hence creating matter.

My highly breifed summery of the ideas expressed in the novel likely have a high margin of innacuracy however CERN has information on antimatter available at:

http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/livefromcern/antimatter/index.html

--Jami

P.S. I suggest the book to all of you it's quite good.

--Jami Yeah, that's gonna sting in the morning.

No religion is a science,no science is a religion therefore religion and science are not the same.Broadly speaking,religion is predicated on beliefs usually passed on from antiquity.It would be fair to say that what was espoused thousands of years ago may not translate well into our culture.For example,Bible interpretation is wildly subjective among various sects.On the other hand science,in it's mandate,is provable fact or studied theory.Before the modern era there was a great deal of pseudo-science.I think that's where the directional sleeping idea should be catagorized.If it where that easy and self evident every hotel in the world would be built on a north-south axis.And if it is science,ask the scientific questions.Is that magnetic north or true north?Why doesn't ferrous metal attract to my body?Even the tiniest amount.What happens to space travelers when they are out of the magnetic field?And why are we just affected by magnetism?How about radio waves and radiation from the sun?
Also infused in the Hindu story is the act of beheading.In some cultures it is belived that a body without a head will remain restless until the two are reattached.During the VietNam war there where many instances of slain American soldiers that where beheaded.Often times these heads where displayed on a tall pike to freighten the enemy.Also during the war in the South Pacific American officers would sometimes remove their embelm of rank,knowing that the Japanese would behead them if captured.
One last thing.In the legend the land was searched for someone sleeping the wrong way and all they could come up with is an elephant.Come on.There is more hidden meaning in that than there is in directional sleeping.

What would a discussion be without an argument.
Nice post dodger.

For example,Bible interpretation is wildly subjective among various sects.

I haven't read the Bible so I won't comment a lot on this, but the other day, I was watching the movie Gossip, and a character in the movie says that religion is a form of gossip because at certain parts of the Bible one thing is said and it is later contradicted at another part. I would really like to know if this is true.

If it where that easy and self evident every hotel in the world would be built on a north-south axis.

You could call this a stupid analogy, but everyone knows that cigarette smoking is injurious to health; how many people really quit it?

The problem in this case though is belief. These facts (like the magnetic axis one) are generally spread through religion and not science. Mankind as of today, believes more in science than in religion. Humans take facts into account, rather than some 'stories'.

And why are we just affected by magnetism?How about radio waves and radiation from the sun?

We are affected by all the elements. I just did not put it in the post.

During the VietNam war there where many instances of slain American soldiers that where beheaded.Often times these heads where displayed on a tall pike to freighten the enemy.Also during the war in the South Pacific American officers would sometimes remove their embelm of rank,knowing that the Japanese would behead them if captured.

I am sorry. I did not quite understand the relevance of this point.

One last thing.In the legend the land was searched for someone sleeping the wrong way and all they could come up with is an elephant.Come on.There is more hidden meaning in that than there is in directional sleeping.

I'll definitely try looking into this. If there was some other meaning to this story.

NI

First off, you must be careful about putting ALL religion into a single category. This argument is also based entirely off of the assumption that religion was a creation, not a discovery. There are countless religions across the earth, and each and every one has its own unique qualities. Saying that they were created to teach science to those who could not understand it simply does not even apply to some religions. Many religions, Christianity one of them, is not a religion of science but of faith. You do not search for scientific evidence of God's existence, you put faith in it, and through your own experience you may find it to be true. Any Christian you ask (who accepts The Holy Scripture) will tell you that the Bible is not a scientific textbook for our use to gain a better understanding of the universe, rather a document recording humanity's experiences with God. I would suggest you read the Bible and other religious works before labeling them all with the same generalization. In the Bible you will not find hints of the laws of nature, other than the simplest facts that anyone can accept (such as the fact that rain helps grow crops, fire destroys things, etc.).

And now to your questions (I will try to answer them as best I can):

1. The Bible Contradicting Itself.

Technically this is true, for in the New Testament, certain Jewish laws are no longer accepted, and in some cases are rebuked by the Christ. Some of these issues were simply done away with by Jesus, and therefore Christians accept his judgement (since they believe he is the son of God). Other laws relating to things like cleanliness (ex. Do not lie with a woman in her period) were also ended and Jewish law was reformed into what Christians (except for most liberal Christians) accept today.

2. The Magnetic Axis

First you must remember that smoking is MUCH more dangerous to one's health than sleeping with their head Northward. The affect of this Magnetic Axis are so infinitesimal it does not even really matter which way you sleep. One must also ask themself, did these "sages" even have a good enough understanding of nature to know these scientific facts?

3. I didn't get the vietnam thing either...

4. The Elephant

I really do not see the relevence of this either, since animals are not subject to the same laws humans are.

Ultimately, we simply cannot place every world religion in the same basket, first of all since the assumption that they were created and not discovered is in great dispute, secondly because every religion has unique qualities. It is true that science does not refute religion (as much as many scientists want it to...), but the two are not reliant one one another.

-Ecthelion-

-ecthelion-

So, could it be possible that what we call religion is just a means for communicating science to the masses.

I find your comments thought provoking.

Are assuming that science has “intent” to communicate?
OR
Are you saying people who look for reason and causation in the universe through empirical based evidence are trying to communicate to those non science types (not so empirically based thinkers)?

Are you saying people who look for reason and causation in the universe through empirical based evidence are trying to communicate to those non science types (not so empirically based thinkers)

Exactly what I was trying to say.

NI