Hacker News Reader

Comment by jayadevan | Hacker News Reader

One would imagine that scientists believe less in rituals. ISRO scientists pray at the Thirupathi temple before every mission.

View on HN

Yes, that's the tradition :)

Former Isro chairman G Madhavan Nair on Monday said, “This has been a tradition. I had also gone to Tirupati before the Chandrayaan mission.”

But more than religious beliefs, he said these temple visits helped des-stress the mind and offer clarity.

But beyond this, do superstitions and other beliefs have a hold on the scientists?

“Not really,” said Mylswamy Annadurai, the project director of moon missions Chandrayaan 1 and Chandrayaan 2. “I read a page of Bhagawad Gita daily and will do so on Tuesday.”

He added, “But yes I have just got a jar of peanuts and a good luck card from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Nasa. This is a very nice gesture. I will distribute these peanuts in my office on Tuesday morning.”

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) consider circulation of peanuts auspicious.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news-feed/science/ahead-of-mar...

Regarding the peanuts (in case this was lost on others): it's a JPL tradition that mission control open and share a jar of nuts right before the launch / orbital insertion / landing, for good luck. The point, obviously, is that space programs everywhere have good luck superstitions, many of them making less sense than a religious ritual.

>> is that space programs everywhere have good luck superstitions, many of them making less sense than a religious ritual.

Why so ? How does a religious ritual makes more sense than good luck superstitions ?

Religious rituals tend to have a more developed sense of internal consistency, and a framework or at least a rationale that makes several different rituals fit together. Simple good-luck superstitions tend to be more ad-hoc. (All IME)

As I see it rituals are set of elaborate steps involving a lot of ceremony, where as most of superstitions are usually in form of pithy aphorisms. A lot of ceremony doesn't necessarily mean consistency, though it might give a semblance of being so.

Forgive my naivete, but what is the point you are trying to make here? Or is this an attempt at creating some kind of fallacy?

My point is there is no rational bias to distinguish between ritual and superstition and to tell that one form makes better sense than the other. In my opinion both doesn't make any good sense.

Ritual is a description of a kind of routinized action; superstition is a description of belief. You might engage in ritual because of superstition, but they are very much not the same thing, and you can have ritual without superstition and superstition without ritual.

Agreed, ritual and superstition are not the same. But both are similar in nature that one cannot rationally question the set of steps that are followed (as in ritual) or the belief (superstition). Most of the times they are supposed to be accepted as given/prescribed. Any challenge to them and deviation from them is not well tolerated. Also the probable rationale attached to them might have been have been relevant during a distant past and might be no longer relevant in present day.

Have you ever tried to understand the rationale behind a religious ritual? Not from your viewpoint - but from the viewpoint of why such a ritual came into existence? Did you equip yourself with the tools to undertake such a study?

For e.g., I perform a religious ritual called Sandhyavandanam [1]. This ritual comprises of many components. I see merit in many components of this daily ritual. Some components, I have not been able to appreciate their rationale. But I trust the seers who would have formulated such rituals. I do not have the time to go into every detail of every ritual and understand the underlying motivation(s) and perform the ritual as is. Same with science. I do not question every theory/law/hypothesis. I just trust the scientists and researchers. If and when "I" perceive an inconsistency in a ritual or a scientific law/theory/hypothesis I question it or try to understand more about it.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhyavandanam

Religious rituals are meant to connect with the divine. The idea being they are not inventions of ordinary people. Some created superstition just gives some order in someone's life and is just a shadow of a proper ritual.

You seems to be reasoning that rituals are _not_ inventions of ordinary people where as superstitions are, hence one should give more credence/weight to rituals. My point is rituals are creations of ordinary people, just that they are ceremonious doesn't make them any higher truth.

It does, to those practicing them.

Its not like NASA scientists don't have their rituals too. The Russians, as well, have a history of sticking to their superstitious habits also.

Science doesn't mean you have to be an emotion-less robot.

Everyone has rituals. Read them here: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/space-mission-supe...

India's superstitions are far more deeper and affect common people in their daily life. Kudos to ISRO on this mission, as they might have faced lots of opposition to their operations from many sides. Even the Nobel laureate scientist C.V Raman opposed space explorations in his time, saying that they are meddling with Gods.

For example, Mars is considered as a malicious planet in their astrology and people fear its effects next to Saturn. It is hard for one to find a matching person to marry if he/she is are afflicted by Mars, because one of the belief is that such afflicted person's in-laws will face untimely death. This belief causes so much grief for the parents looking for alliance (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangal_Dosha).

Hopefully scientific missions such as this will help the people to shed their unfounded fear and live better life.

>>> Even the Nobel laureate scientist C.V Raman opposed space explorations in his time, saying that they are meddling with Gods.

Could you provide some citation here? As far as CV Raman's religious inclinations were concerned, my understanding is that he was an agnostic [1].

Being a scientist himself, I don't think it would have been in his nature to stifle the spirit of scientific inquiry in the name of religion.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._V._Raman

I have read about C.V Raman's objections to space missions in Tamil language sites only.

I dug up the following for your reference:

http://new.modernrationalist.com/2012/07/science-vs-religion...

not just isro scientists. even when our aircraft carrier INS Vikrant was launched, we had an elaborate pooja

As an atheist, it bothers me, when the "secular democratic republic" uses public money to hold ceremonies that cater to one community/religious traditions

I think the rise of the BJP has made it clear that the non-dominant communities are expected to know their place.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com