Thread by @dikgaj

I have long insisted on looking at astronomical, geological roots of many core narratives of the "Hindu": but I hv avoided publicizing this for a serious reason. For most touting "science", it is a replacement totalitarianism for another totalitarian belief that has failed them

For those for whom "science" is the new religion, the limitations and statutory warnings openly embedded into the "scientific" process - are either invisible or not understood. Incomplete understanding of "science" makes for quick theological style sweeping dogmatic declarations.

Reducing "Hinduism' to positional astronomy or geology, at the hands of quacks is dangerous because while it destroys, it builds nothing - and it fails to understand a critical process in creation and evolution of culture.

Science is an ever expanding, self-correcting process - and today's paradigm may well be replaced tomorrow when more observations and understanding pile up. A quickfire force-fitting of current science understanding to Hindu belief closes it off from future developments.

On the other hand even if the astronomy/geology is "correctly" tied to Hindu narratives, how the "Hindus" saw them and constructed their imagery and understanding - is an equally important part that cannot be simply trashed due to its roots in the experience of historical events.

Both the "natural phenomena", its "science" and the human view of it, models of it, and abstract constructions leading to a philosophy of thought and practice - are equally important.

Every Hindu narrative is important. Each tells a story that maintains a continuity through time, place, society that both constructs and is constructed by what we have come to know as "Hinduism".

Trivializing the Hindu narratives on a simplistic pseudo-religious understanding of science is a serious attack that seeks to dissolve that very matrix of Hinduism. Shivaratri's "astronomy" is not its end, its story is equally and perhaps more crucial from view of culture.