Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication
You have no right to offend my scientific perception!
Blasphemy refers to an insult that shows contempt, disrespect or lack of reverence concerning a deity, an object considered sacred, or something considered inviolable.
Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code* lays down the punishment for deliberate and malicious acts, that are intended to outrage the religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs. It is one of the hate speech laws in India.
* (The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA), passed in Parliament last December, have replaced the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 respectively now).
This law prohibits blasphemy against all religions in India.
This hurt is caused by the "insult to religion" any person is following.
Now the word 'insult' is based on perception and can be interpreted in several ways.
When I say something, it need not be with the intention to hurt somebody, but that person can take it another way.
Let me give an example.
One of my relatives' daughters suffered some health issues some time back. Instead of going to a medical doctor, this person, my cousin, went to a 'babaji' (a godman) to tell him about his daughters' condition. This babaji performed some rituals and gave him a tawiz (we call it a tayettu in Telugu, a black thread with a silver locket to tie around peoples' necks and arms ). My cousin tied several of these things to the child's hands, ankles, and neck.
But still, the child suffered as there was no medical intervention to cure the health condition.
As a scientist, I really felt very bad because the child was suffering unnecessarily.
I scolded my cousin and told him to take his child to a medical doctor. "Do your belief in babaji and tying the tawiz he gave cure diseases?" I asked.
Then he said criticizing the babaji and his beliefs hurt his religious sentiments. And that I shouldn't do that. I was taken aback.
What I said wasn't intentional. I was just concerned about the child and her suffering. I was unhappy that my cousin wasn't doing enough to alleviate the suffering of his daughter.
If speaking truth hurts one's religious sentiments, what can you do about it?
I really was very unhappy with this argument.
I told him he was offending me too.
I am a scientist. I have some knowledge about a health condition and how it can be tackled. As a highly qualified specialist, when I say something, people should at least consider it. Instead, if they reject it, ignore my knowledge, and continue with their baseless beliefs and allow others to suffer, don't I feel bad? If they give more preference to an ‘uneducated’ man (babaji), as a highly qualified person won’t I get offended? Isn’t there any value to the right knowledge then?
I asked him the same question.
He was shocked and said, he never thought about it from this angle.
If you believe that the Earth was "created" in six days and quote your religious text in this regard over and over again, as a scientist, that hurts my knowledge base.
God created Earth in six or seven days. Genealogical records combined with the Genesis 1 account of creation are used to estimate an age for the Earth and universe of about 6000 years, with a bit of uncertainty on the completeness of the genealogical records, allowing for a few thousand years more.
But science has evidence to show that The age of Earth is (estimated to be) 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years.
This dating is based on evidence from radiometric age-dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the radiometric ages of the oldest-known terrestrial material and Lunar samples (1).
So it is evidence based and, therefore, is a fact.
The age of the universe based on the best fit to Planck 2018 data alone is 13.787±0.020 billion years. This number represents an accurate "direct" measurement of the age of the universe(2).
If you keep quoting your religious texts and stress that only you are right, that causes great inconvenience to me because I know that is not true.
If my stressing that what religious texts say is not correct - because I have evidence to the contrary - hurts you, your belief quoting based on religious texts written in ancient times using primeval thoughts and imagination that have no evidence causes great inconvenience to me. It ridicules my knowledge, education and evidence. Isn't that true?
Don't courts take my scientific evidence into consideration?
But why do our BNS, BNSS, BSA or whatever punish only me and not you? Isn't that discrimination? Can courts or our parliamentarians, or well educated people answer my question?
Your beliefs are yours, and my scientific evidence based facts are mine. You have every right to have your faith. But keep it in your mind and home. Don't bring them into the scientific world, debates and arguments. Because that hurts my knowledge, evidence and perception of the world based on them.
You have no right to offend my scientific knowledge based perception, like I have no right to hurt your religious feelings. Period.
My cousin is highly confused now.
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on
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Science and religion - the debateQ:Dr. Krishna, how should I respond when I'm told that my core beliefs and religion aren't beyond criticism?Q: Why do scientists hurt our religious sentiments by criticizing our beliefs?Krishna: If you are driven by emotions, you feel bad and start attacking the person who said it or the one who criticizes your beliefs.If you are a critical thinker, you first consider all that the person said with a completely neutral mind using evidence based facts as a guide.If what the person said is true - this conclusion is arrived at only if you are a real critical thinker - then you discard them immediately and mercilessly.Biased minds cannot do this - this is certain.If it is not true, tell the person why he is not correct. Provide genuine evidence, not what your imagination says.Then continue following what you think is a fact.Most people use imagiantions, baseless beliefs, just clueless opinions, irrationality, and silly points to argue. These things don't prove anything.They just tell us what type of idiots they are.Know what? Only one percent of people can do the first thing. The rest 99% of the people are emotion-driven.That is why people fight so much over petty things and suffer as a result.That is why this world is so chaotic.Now tell me can you respond responsibly?If you tell me I am hurting your religious sentiments by refusing your beliefs, I have this to say:If you believe that the Earth was "created" in six days and quote your religious text in this regard over and over again, as a scientist, that hurts my knowledge base.God created Earth in six or seven days. Genealogical records combined with the Genesis 1 account of creation are used to estimate an age for the Earth and universe of about 6000 years, with a bit of uncertainty on the completeness of the genealogical records, allowing for a few thousand years more.
But science has evidence to show that The age of Earth is (estimated to be) 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years.
This dating is based on evidence from radiometric age-dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the radiometric ages of the oldest-known terrestrial material and Lunar samples.
So it is evidence based and, therefore, is a fact.
The age of the universe based on the best fit to Planck 2018 data alone is 13.787±0.020 billion years. This number represents an accurate "direct" measurement of the age of the universe.
If you keep quoting your religious texts and stress that only you are right, that causes great inconvenience to me because I know that is not true.
If my stressing that what religious texts say is not correct - because I have evidence to the contrary - hurts you, your belief quoting based on religious texts written in ancient times using primeval thoughts and imagination that have no evidence causes great inconvenience to me. It ridicules my knowledge, education and evidence. Isn't that true?
Your beliefs are yours, and my scientific evidence based facts are mine. You have every right to have your faith. But keep it in your mind and home. Don't bring them into the scientific world, debates and arguments. Because that hurts my knowledge, evidence and perception of the world based on them.
You have no right to offend my scientific knowledge based perception, like I have no right to hurt your religious feelings. Period.
CKK -
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Q: Is it proper to compare or evaluate religious truth with scientific truth?Krishna: What is religious truth?
Truth is the quality of being in accordance with reality or fact. It can also refer to a true or accepted statement, or the body of real events or facts.
Now if you say something is a religious truth, can you provide evidence to show that it is a fact.
Then show me evidence that God really exists. That he created the Earth and everything on it in six days.
If you cannot do that, how can you say that it is true or a fact?
If somebody imagines something and writes a book, it doesn’t become a fact.
Scientific facts are evidence based. When I say that the age of Earth is about 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years, it is based on evidence from radiometric age-dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the radiometric ages of the oldest-known terrestrial material and lunar samples (1).
So science is incomparable in that sense.
But when people present religion as ‘truth’ to us, we naturally analyse and compare it with science and show which ones are genuine facts and which ones are imaginative stories written in the ancient times when the human mind was not evolved so much to comprehend things in the right way.
If you keep quoting your religious texts and stress that only you are right, that causes great inconvenience to me because I know that is not true.
If my stressing that what religious texts say is not correct - because I have evidence to the contrary - hurts you, your belief quoting based on religious texts written in ancient times using primeval thoughts and imagination that have no evidence causes great inconvenience to me. It ridicules my knowledge, education and evidence. Isn't that true?
Your beliefs are yours, and my scientific evidence based facts are mine. You have every right to have your faith. But keep it in your mind and home. Don't bring them into the scientific world, debates and arguments. Because that hurts my knowledge, evidence and perception of the world based on them.
You have no right to offend my scientific knowledge based perception, like I have no right to hurt your religious feelings. Period. (2)
If you don’t want us to compare, don’t bring irrational things into the conversations with us.
Like this one: “Science without religion is lame”.
In what way? Please explain.
Science doesn’t need religion. When I enter my lab, I never ever think about religion. Religion never had any role in my scientific endeavour.
In fact religion and the irrational beliefs it brings with it interfere with the scientific process and is a roadblock to its progress. That is my own experience. Creationism interferes with evolution.
So before I entered my lab, I left the religion at the door. And I never regretted it.
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