In love with: Chapter 2: Doppler’s effect and religious orientation
Anyone who knows me when I am writing this would probably know how disappointed I am towards religion. Though I am open about people’s beliefs and tolerant of religions, I cannot say that I don’t have any problem with religion.
It is a wonder how religion escapes from the conviction of being a significant cause of racism. In many cultures, religious history overlaps with racial history. Any racial discrimination in history has been covered up and justified using the dominant religion of the period. Though subtle, Hindu religious beliefs have caused enough troubles to the dignity of the country. No, this is not about the caste system, gender inequality or other internal discrimination in the Hindu religion. This is more about how Hindu racial beliefs find pseudo-sources to all scientific advancements in their religious scriptures and belittle the scientific community.
I was under the influence of such a belief through the pseudo-science pages on social media. This influence caused a delusion that all the successful scientists worldwide had copied their work from Hindu scriptures. This guilt of falsely blaming the scientists for plagiarism makes me ridicule the religious community actively. Though I bully the modern carriers and saviours of the so-called Hindu Dharma, I am still a fan of the freedom in Hinduism to question and completely disagree with all the existing principles. That is the core behind the evolution of Hinduism over centuries to its current forms.
I argued against the scientists when a modern theory contradicted a statement made in Hindu literature. I “carried out my research on Google” to find favouring statements from notorious people in the science community. One of such an argument was against the big bang theory. In many scriptures, the universe is attributed to have neither beginning nor end. I was under the impression that the likes of Stephen Hawking could be completely wrong about it. This superiority complex to disregard years of hard work with a baseless blind belief has also had its origin in Hinduism, but that discussion is for a different day.
This google research to understand what the opposite side is trying to say was my first incident to understand that I was in a less-informed state, and I had to change my opinions completely. I read about how scientific research and publications work. So, I read even carefully to find flaws and grey areas in the arguments favouring expanding universe to fit in my religious ideas. The reason why “expansion-theory” is globally accepted is based on the evidence that the light from distant galaxies is red-shifted.
I got curious immediately because colours have always fascinated me. “Red-shift” sounded to be a term that I could understand. So, I continued reading about it. Red-shift is the phenomenon of the wavelength of light from a given source is getting stretched, so the wavelength gets shifted towards red in the colour spectrum. This effect is similar to how the frequency of the sound wave changes when the source of the sound is moving relative to the observer. This effect is popularly known as the Doppler effect as it was originally discovered by the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler.
Astronomers (not astrologers) have observed that the light from distant galaxies is red-shifted. Red-shift implies that the frequency of the light is decreasing, which is caused only when the source of the light is moving away from the observer. This evidence played a pivotal role in the conclusion that the universe is expanding. When I read about this, I was stunned for a few days. My mind was working day and night to construct a shield around my denial of a proven scientific fact. It was painful to give up my faith and switch sides, but it was one of the decisions that made me proud.
I was amazed by how this small discovery led to a transformation in the understanding of the universe. However, the person who had proposed it initially, Doppler, had no idea about it. It gives me hope that even small contributions in science can lead to a breakthrough in science. Though we feel that our little contribution is insignificant, there might be a fair chance that the small contribution could revolutionise the future of the field. So, as long as we stay committed to our hard work, there is nothing much to worry about the results.
Apparently, this is one of the principles from the holy Bhagavat Gita that I admire. It tells people to look for and appreciate hard work over natural skills. A child would have a better personality and future when it is appreciated for their hard work rather than its inherent qualities such as intelligence. I hope that people soon understand this essence of religion and adopt it as their core value instead of racial supremacy. Until then, the world is going to enjoy the fragrance of sarcasm and satire about religious people.
