I have been reading with dismay the muck raking that is going on about the Sethu Samudram Project.  The parallels between this and the nonsense that goes on in the US about "belief" vs "science" is uncanny. 

The issue in the US is whether Darwin's theory of evolution can be taught in schools or should there also be place for "creationism".  For those of you who dont know, "creationism" argues that life systems are so complex that it is not possible that they were result of millions of years of evolution but they had to have been "created" by a "Creator".  Please note the capital C - the idea is to indicate an almighty God. Funny thing is that the Creationist theory has also evolved - from a blatant definition of creation in 7 days as defined in the Bible (which US courts kept throwing out as an attempt to introduce Christian Relgion into schools') to a more disguised, palatable and secular theory that a Creator (who is not named so that it could be a God of any religion) is at work (so that it may be acceptable to US courts). 

Creationists claim that their theory is not based on religion and Creationism is a secular science.  But suspiciously, Creationists are always fundamentalist christians who are against abortion, are members of the Republican Party and form the Religious Right.  They have taken over school Boards, won elections and they keep trying to get schools to teach "creationism".  They have failed in all their attempts to throw Darwin out of school  but have been partially successful in getting some of the schools to teach Creationism as an alternative theory to Darwin's theory of evolution.  However, most of the time, science teachers rebel, go to court and win a case which orders the school to junk the "psuedo science" of Creationism.

It is easy to understand how a religious Christian takes offense to Darwin's theory of evolution.  For a fanatic believer, eveything in the Bible is the literal truth - the word of God. So if the Bible says that God created the universe in 7 days there ends the matter.  The fact that over the last four hundred years, the Church steadily lost the Science vs Beliefs debate doesnt matter to the fundamentalist. The Church's theory of the Universe - "geo centric - the world is at the center" was proved wrong.  The world is flat was proved wrong. The Universe is at least 14 billion years old, if not more (a theory which is consistent with Hindu belief in vastness of time), which is completely inconsistent with biblical notion that the world was created a few thousand years ago.  None of Science's victories contradict the basic Christian premise of "turning the other cheek" but somehow fundamentalist Christians place more empahsis on denying the factual inaccuracies -whether the Universe was created in 7 days or over millions / billions of years has been part of a really big fight.

It is difficult to understand why factual inaccuracies in the Bible or the absence of archeological evidence that Ram built the coral reef in the Palk Strait should disturb the religious. Why should a person's belief in the noble message of Jesus Christ be affected by factual inaccuracies in the Bible?  After all the Bible was compiled by human disciples - knowing how history is full of examples where people have added their own agendas to religion, why cant the fundamentalist Christian accept that the Bible may contain factual inaccuracies because of what the followers of Christ did to the book?  Similiarly why should fundamentalist Hindus get furious when the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) says that they have no archeological evidence of Ram or his travel from North India to Sri Lanka in search of Sita?  The message that we need to learn from the life of Jesus and Ram form the very core of what it takes to be a good human being.  Let not religion blind us - focus on what is important and not the irrelevant. 

A coral reef is a natural formation.  Coral is formed by living sea plants - they become a beautiful eco-system.  It is terrible that a few people in ASI have been suspended for doing their job - sift through archealogical evidence and interpret it according to the scientific method.  The constitution of India requires us to develop a "scientific temper".  Its time that we show that we have one.