Why Sundays are not special
- Sivaraj Kumar
- Sep 15, 2019
- 4 min read
Sunday... It's the "LORD'S DAY"!
Holy Day of the week!
People visit their community gathering sites and listen to a man dressed in a long fancy cassock for hours even if people have so many errands to run on that day.
Are Sundays special?
NIGHT SKY
Ah The Night Sky! The sheer beauty of the Cosmos.
It all comes to astronomy eventually. Astronomy references are everywhere but most of us tend to not give attention to them.
But unlike "modern intelligent civilised homo-sapiens", our ancestors had nothing but the sky to wonder every night. They were afraid of the night sky initially. Humans have always been afraid of the unknown. Our ancestors wanted to make something meaningful out of the night sky. They tried to make sense of the Universe they had.
They drew patterns to connect the stars into bears, lion, kings etc;
They saw a pattern in this pattern.
THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND
Our ancestors told stories about legends to match the patterns in the nigh sky. Stories like Orion chasing the seven sisters (Pleiades) in the night sky or God’s resurrection after 3 days from crucifixion.
Can you blame our ancestors for making this up? NO!
When I was a child I remember making up stories from aerosols of water droplets floating in the sky during the evenings. I'm talking about clouds.
Our ancestors didn’t have science tools such as Hubble Space Telescope which can peer into deepest and darkest parts of the Universe. All they had is the night sky and imagination.
PATTERN IN PATTERNS
When a specific pattern such as Orion comes back in the western sky our grandfather's Universe (Earth) became cold.
When constellations like Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Draco were best seen in the night sky Earth became hot and drought came sometimes. Summer triangle is also best seen at this time.
When constellations like Canis Major, Canis Minor, Carina, Gemini, Orion appeared in the night sky Earth became cold and in some parts of the world, people froze to death. Winter Hexagons can be seen this time.
In between, they met devastating horrible hurricanes, rains, floods.
So it seems like, whatever happens in the night sky have direct effects on people’s life. Thus Astrology born and still, people believe in this wrong correlation.
CAUSATION AND CORRELATION
Causation and Correlation are important in science because it could be devastating for chickens.
Let’s take a look at a famous story told by Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. He talked about a chicken growing up in a farm.
Every morning the sun would rise and the farmer would come out and scatter seed and the chicken would eat. The chicken, being a small brain, naturally associated or correlated the rising sun with being fed, and eating, or good outcome. So over time, as days went by, and weeks, and months, the chicken made a quite plausible connection between this correlation and causation. The rising sun was obviously making the farmer come out and feed him. But one morning, however, the sunrises and the farmer comes out and wrings the chicken's neck for the dinner table that night.
The chicken has suffered a disastrous, a catastrophic failure of logic, because as confuse correlation with causation.
We should not end up like this poor chicken
SEVEN DAYS OF A WEEK
Why does a week have seven days? Why seven? Have you ever wondered?
In the night sky, there are seven solar system objects you can see with your naked eye. Pause here for a moment and guess those seven objects.
Okay….. Some of you didn’t try but anyway. Here they are
Sun
Mercury
Venus
Moon
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
(Uranus could be seen in the night sky but it is very very faint and only very few can see it in a less light-polluted area)
That's SEVEN celestial objects!
Now try telling yourself names of the seven days of a week.
Sunday
“Sun’s day” - Self-explanatory
Monday
“Moon’s day” - Self-explanatory
Tuesday
“Tiw’s day” - Tiw is portrayed as the God of War in Norse mythology. Mars is red which directly meant bloody wars. So Tuesday is related to the planet Mars.
Wednesday
“Woden’s day - “Woden” is derived from the Roman god ‘Mercury’. He is the god of the messenger. It’s that he has wings on his feet. Hmm. Talk about people’s imagination.
Thursday
“Thor’s day” - We are very familiar with Thor because of Marvel and GOW game. He is Odin’s son and God of thunder, lightning, and strength in Norse mythology. Thor has two sons. One of their names is Modi.
Friday
“Freya’s day” - Freya is the goddess of love in Norse mythology. Venus is the brightest object in the night sky next to Sun and the Moon. It is beautiful and stunning to look at in the night sky. So the planet Venus is often related to God of Love. But in reality, Venus is hell. I mean literally hell. I’ll write about Venus someday. I ❤ Venus 💕
Saturday
“Saturn’s day” - Self-explanatory
So there you go. Seven days of a week. People had no idea about Uranus and Neptune. If those planets were bright enough to see them with the naked eye then we might now have 9 days per week.
Days are man-made. Made by our ancestors to divide 30 days of a month. They used Sun, planets and the Moon to create one week and to respect the night sky and the Gods every day.
Every day is a special day if you make it that way
The night sky was a clock, a calendar, a map and stories to legends and myths for our ancestors. They celebrated the night sky with awe and wonder. But us, “ Modern chimps”, forgot to look up. I want to end this article by quoting a dialogue from the movie Interstellar,
"We used to look up in the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt"
Night sky is free and available almost every night. Go out and enjoy it while you can.
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