"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
The description of deliberate cognitive dissonance may have been autobiographical. Lewis Carroll, or the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, to give him his proper name, was a priest-mathematician. He was well aware science could directly contradict the literal assertions of religion.
Science has made massive advances in the 150-odd years since Alice went down the hole with the White Rabbit. The cognitive dissonances have grown manifold. Anybody who is both religious and rational must emulate the White Queen: every religion makes some assertions that cannot be literally true.
There is no shortage of people who are both religious and rational, including scientists of the highest calibre. The Jesuit priest, Georges Henri LeMaitre, first conceptualised the Big Bang; Abdus Salam proved the unity of the weak nuclear force with the electromagnetic force and quoted from his holy book at the Nobel award ceremony. How did such giants reconcile glaring contradictions?
The evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, suggests that religion and science belong to "non-overlapping magisteria" and each has a "a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority", and these two domains should not overlap. It requires a great deal of mental discipline to ensure magisteria are permanently non-overlapping.
Some scientists seem to reconcile contradictions by assuming religions are metaphorical. Others lose, or modify their beliefs. Charles Darwin himself, James Watson and Francis Crick, and S Chandrasekhar would be among the examples of scientists moving away from dogma as their own work highlighted dissonance.
At the other end of the spectrum, the highly religious can abandon the rational, and head into crackpottery. The Dalai Lama is a rare religious leader in that he states unequivocally: "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims." More often, the religious go into denial when faced with scientific contradictions of their beliefs.
The repudiation of science can be dangerous in ways that are dreadfully quantifiable. Take polio, for example. It is a crippling disease, but very effective vaccines exist. If everybody is immunised, the disease can be eradicated. However, if a section of society refuses immunisation, the risks rise for the entire population.
The Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone was triggered by crackpottery and religious rigidity. First, a traditional herbal healer insisted she could cure Ebola and ended up infected herself. Then, her followers insisted on religious burial, rather than cremating her with all clothes and paraphernalia to ensure disinfection. As many as 14 people were infected at the funeral, leading to an epidemic. The World Health Organization now reckons over 20,000 people may die.
In other parts of Africa, wilful ignorance about AIDS by leaders such as Jacob Zuma have led to large numbers of deaths. In India, too, a herbal healer (he also teaches yoga on TV) claims he can cure AIDS. He's close to the current government.
The government itself is headed by somebody who said recently, "Climate has not changed. We have changed." Narendra Modi's views have certainly changed since he penned Convenient Action: Gujarat's Response to Challenges of Climate Change.
The Union water resources minister, Uma Bharati, also made the ludicrous claims that "the excreta of non-believers" caused the Uttarakhand disaster in 2013. Kashmir and Uttarakhand have suffered from a combination of unusually high rain and massive environmental degradation caused by unbridled deforestation and reckless construction. If the policy response is to tell people to toughen up, tolerate heat and cold, and avoid performing natural functions, India is due for many more such disasters.
Twitter: @devangshudatta