With the advent of science and the giant leaps man has made in making science do his bidding, he has started questioning all the established practices and belief systems. For people exposed to Hindu culture like me its very interesting because of the richness and the diversity in it.
Science has always been quest for how and why things are the way they are.
Two branches of science have been the Aristotelean and Galilean - Absolute and Experimental science. Absolute science tries to explain things based on pure reasoning with some empirical axioms as the basis - like trying to explain planetary motion using Newtonian laws as the basis. Experimental science is based on observation - you see something, try to repeat it and see if its the same, build a hypothesis based on your observations and then try to find a scientific basis for your observations. Like what Galileo did when he tried to roll solid cylinders and rings down a plane and formulate laws based on his observations.
Where does religion or more precisely culture fit in in this era of scientific exploration and technological boom? Does everything in religion including god stand up to the rigorous distillation by science ? If you cannot prove by experiment the existence of a metaphysical form then can you explain it using absolute science?
One of the main reasons for the existence of the belief system, either in God, religion or other "Practices", is that most of the people follow what a few people say. Current trend has been to overthrow such an autocracy by either the church or in case of the Hindu culture the scriptures, religious practices etc. This is a healthy practice even as advocated by Plato who said -"Question everything!".
But one of the pitfalls of such an approach is dumping everything and trying to start anew. Discarding all beliefs, refuting all religious theories, disregarding all social rules and call it Celebration of Science and Liberation (the hippie culture during the rock and roll era was the extreme form of this). A simple example of this would be the very anti-traditional and pro-science writings of Carl Sagan (of the famous Cosmos).
With all respect to the skeptics our ancestors would not have been so dumb. The main reason for the existence of religion and culture is the inability of the common man to grasp the deeper aspects of life and science. You cannot explain scientific reasoning to a person who does not understand the basics of science as was the case in ancient times ( and painfully, so is the case today too). So the concept of "God", "Heaven" and "Hell" was created to make people do the right things without resorting to lengthy and convoluted explanations.
All religions that I have come across teach the concept of being rewarded with "Heaven" if you do good and "Hell" if you are bad. "Good" according to different beliefs is basically living according to the social practices and following the social fabric of life.
It is the "Fear Psychosis" which makes people do things as told by their religion. "God" is nothing but a manifestation of the concept of "Fear". Elders instill the fear of demons if the kid does not goto bed on time. Ancient elders instilled the concept of "God" to make the kids of the world do things right. It was a concept devised to make the dumb sheep of the world to follow things which a few wise people thought were good for the world. Before overthrowing this concept of God by propping up science as an alternative we should first see whether we extracted everything that was good from this concept.
To tell the truth bluntly we need God even now. There are innumerable number of people out there who still stay away from bad things just because they believe God will punish them otherwise. As long as the resources needed to satisfy the greed of all the people in the world are less than the available resources people will tend towards satisfying their needs using other than socially acceptable means. Law enforcement will never be able to contain all the "anti-social" elements in our society.
Religion, caste etc. are not bad intrinsically. Govt. or reformers should never try to abolish them. Ever wonder what makes a poor man tick? He earns a few rupees a day pulling a rickshaw. Doesn't he have any ambition? How is satisfied with just leading a hand-to-mouth existence? The answer lies in religion and caste and community. His belief in god provides him a shelter. These people who sleep by the roadside in their rickshaws at night dance all across the town carrying a Rs 1.00 idol of ganapathi on their head. The frenzy and the shouts of ganapathi bappa moriya gives them a feeling of togetherness, bond and sense of being alive and being part of society. Same is the case with caste. It provides people to reach out, other than your blood relatives. "Vasudeva kutumbum" is too big to be realizable but in villages people of the same caste form a really strong community bond. I saw this on my own when I was young but never realized the significance till recently. It is not caste or religion which should be brought down but the discrimination, misconceptions or intolerance of them. Educated and self-sufficient people like me and you can discard religion or caste because we do not need it, whereas many in India need it. They can be abolished but only after everyone is provided for and it is not needed for philosophizing - "Gods Will! My state is becoz of his lila". People need psychological support which they draw from god. That is Devotion. As someone said - "An atheist is someone without any invisible means of support".
Devotion or Bhakti has heaped enormous rewards on us in terms of literature, music (ragas, krithis etc.), art (paintings, sculptures), dance etc. Listening to the Suprabhatam on the radio or MS singing bhajagovindam is a sublime experience. None of the other human emotions, including love, do not come any close to displaying such variety and volume of output.
Okay, if we need the Gods then why dont we just accept one god and discard all the religious practices and differences ( maybe embrace the Bahai concept?).
Not just the concept of God but even the religious practices have some validity. Since I have been intimately exposed to Hindu culture I can only explain with reference to it, but my strong belief is that every culture has a similar base. They have evolved through time (for better for for worse) and have included several good concepts. The scriptures and the common daily practices that we follow do have some scientific and psychological basis for their existence.
First looking at some very simple cultural practices. Temples have always been a mainstay of Hindu culture. Temples have been not just places of worship but an opportunity for extending other human endeavors. Most temples in India from Mt. Abu to Kanchi are excellent examples of architectural splendor. They used to serve as centres of culture by promoting Music, Dance and Drama. One of the basic components of the Carnatic Classical music are the devotional songs of the great South Indian composer Thyagaraja. Temples serve as a meeting place for people, increase social interaction and develop a sense of social group and community sharing. Festivals and Pujas are just a form of making people who believe in god to get together so that this culture is ingrained slowly and subconsciously.
Similar is the concept of "Vasthu"(the ancient Indian principles of architecture). The rules designed for construction were not ad-hoc but embody the results of observations over a long period of time of the right way to build houses. The rules have a solid base of scientific reasoning and explore various aspects of the architecture like the ample flow of light and wind, access to various functions, movement inside and outside the house etc. Since explaining the scientific reasoning for everything to the common man was difficult the rules try to make people follow the rules by predicting ills if the rules are not followed and promising rewards if the house is according to "Vasthu".
Even the countless number of gods in Hindu mythology are just manifestations of physical and metaphysical concepts.
Not just such popularly accepted things but also even obscure traditions also have some reasoning.
The first one was explained to me by my grandfather when I was sitting on his lap when I was really young, but the simple reasoning for such a vague practice stuck in my mind for so long.
In villages and even in most towns and cities people use a mix of Cow Dung (waste of cow) and water to spray the earthy patches in front of their houses and then sketch patterns using a mixture mainly consisting of powdered rice and white chalk (called Rangoli). It is supposed to be good since Cow is a holy animal and sketching patterns is supposed to be worshiping God. My grandfather explained that cow dung actually helps in settling the dust and prevent it from flying into the house, and is also a very powerful antiseptic and stops a lot of airborne germs from spreading into the house. As for the rangoli, it is a way of providing food for ants and insects which feed from it. I did not believe him till I saw in the afternoon a line of ants from the rangoli to a hole near the wall.
Another obscure tradition that I remember is a practice in some South Indian marriages. The bride and bridegroom place a mixture of jaggery (cane sugar) and Jeera ( a common Indian spice) in their hands and then place it on one another's head. Many people do not know it but this mixture is supposed to be a very good conductor of electric and magnetic fields and is placed on the nerve endings. If acupuncture and Chinese belief of Qi (the electrical energy in a body) are so widely believed then I dont find it very hard to believe that this tradition helps in experiencing one others "Energy". ( Though this still does not make me believe the myth that the vein of love runs from the heart to the third finger of your hand)
Some people question the origin of practices which are definitely gross and inhuman. A very simple explanation for this is the misinterpretation of culture by the quacks who are out to satisfy their own greed. Even otherwise culture also tends to follow physics like Heisenberg s Uncertainty principle. If you try to look at things with a microscope then just the act of looking itself disturbs the natural state(interpretation) of the things being observed.
The problem with science or rather the practitioners of science is to throw everything out of the window without a careful examination of all aspects of existing religious or cultural practices. Many a time has man been humbled by his mistake in assuming that what he does not understand is not important.