The Psychology of Faith

A DAY BEFORE Chandrayaan-3 was to launch, you saw an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) team going to the Tirupati temple to seek blessings, and so once again bring­ing to the fore the curious paradox of sci­entists believing in god. It is an anomaly because science might have been born out of religion, as an appendix to it, but broke away as soon as it realised that faith was an impediment to its develop­ment. The two fundamentally look at the world in contrasting ways. Religion asks you to take it on its word. God must be believed in before he deigns to come to you—you will only get proof if your faith is strong enough. Science needs to be convinced through hypothesis, experimentation and verification be­fore putting its stamp on any certainty. It demands an overabundance of proof before any faith and that, too, given begrudgingly in the anticipation that it will fall on the wayside of new findings.

How then is it possible for scientists to negotiate this dichotomy? There are numerous reasons adduced for it but mostly they keep work and faith separate, relegating religious belief to the personal space. But there are other factors. One 2016 study found that in some cultures, scientists are more tolerant of religion, and India was one of them. More than half of Indian scientists did not see the two as antithetical even if they were still less religious than the general population. Part of it might also be tradition. A puja or a temple visit be­fore a major event is a common practice, and it wouldn’t be surprising in India if even atheists decided to be present.

Rationalists could argue the participa­tion of scientists publicly in religion is a messaging against the scientific temper and perhaps that is true. But then ISRO still managed to remain one of the few successful scientific institutions in India. Plus, it probably makes no difference any­way. Invert the situation. Assume that every scientist in India will have nothing to do with religion. Does anyone doubt that the vast majority of this country will still be as religious as ever? Religion is irrational but it is ingrained into the brain through its development. Most human beings even know that many religious beliefs are unreal but, instead of shedding them, they just find new interpretations. In the past, every deity was a very real entity; now, most literate people think of them as representations or symbols of an unknowable, all-powerful god. Most of these ISRO scientists know that calcula­tions and engineering are responsible for the launch of satellites and god has little to contribute. But the temple visit is important because it is also a psychologi­cal support.

Pascal, one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, noted in his wager— nothing is lost by believing in god but if you don’t believe and he does exist, then there is much that can be lost. It is a somewhat specious argument because which god do you believe in when every religion has a different one to venerate? But having faith in even one is still taking some insurance against uncertainties in an uncontrollable world, which is prob­ably all there is to it.

Beyond BeliefChandrayaan-3faithIsroreligionscience