Today we are living in an age of science which has a profound effect on our thinking and behavior. Almost every sphere of our life and thinking has been conditioned by science. Today so deep-rooted this influence has become that we have developed a mistrust of all that which does not fall in the purview of science. Scientific spirit has come to characterize and determine our thinking, attitudes and ideas. Under this overwhelming influence of science, it was but natural for the modern man to judge the validity of all that he considers true against the touchstone of science. More recently, the word scientific has become a blanket term to denote accuracy and correctness. Unconsciously (and sometimes consciously) the adjective scientific is equated with true and perhaps the only true. Today, more than ever, the religious scholars and theists are desperately striving to reconcile religion with the advancements and discoveries of science. Scholars belonging to different religions are taking great pride in exhibiting and establishing the so-called scientific character of their religions without knowing that science itself is much given to change and revision. In this apologetic attitude there has been a tacit acknowledgment that perhaps truth is an exclusive monopoly of science and anything not confirmed by the empirical investigations of science is doomed to be untrue. We do not, at this moment, seem to realize that this attitude is not doing any service to religion and, more precisely, by vindicating religion through science we are not founding religion on a very strong basis. This study proposes to analyze whether this meaning of the word scientific is correct and really reflect the claim made by science. This paper will demonstrate that science, by nature, is falsifiable and changeable whereas religion is always above and beyond the vicissitudes and mutations of time and discovery. The study also proposes to demonstrate that science is not without its inherent limitations and contradictions and its much-celebrated accuracy and consistency is little more than an illusion. Much of science is based upon relativities and contingencies and any attempt to confront science with religion does good neither to science nor to religion.
I. The Scientific Factor
Herbert Butterfield (1900—1979), an eminent Cambridge historian, once said that the Scientific Revolution reduced the Renaissance and the Reformation “to the rank of mere episodes,” and that it marked “the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality.” (1) Given the overwhelming importance of science and the scientific world-view in the modern world it is easy to see what he meant. Today science figures very prominently in our everyday discourse and it has pervaded the entire fabric of human existence. From mythic and ritualistic beginnings, it has developed into one of the greatest and most influential fields of human empirical endeavor. Numerous branches of science investigate almost everything that can be observed or detected, and science as a whole shapes the way we understand the universe, our planet, ourselves, and other living things. The so-called Scientific Revolution of our time took the world by surprise and relegated all that was unscientific to the realm of skepticism and superstition. This onslaught of science tended to equate religious teachings with false fears and ornamentation of life of no intellectual value. Science began to explain religion as a way of responding psychologically to pressures in society. Belief in miracles and other supernatural forces was considered as a function of fantasy. Two factors, in particular, intensified the confrontation between science and religion. The first was the Industrial Revolution. Never has science been as pervasive and influential as it has been after the Industrial Revolution. David Burnie says:
For a large part of recorded history, science had little bearing on people's everyday lives. Scientific knowledge was gathered for its own sake, and it had few practical applications. However, with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, this rapidly changed. Today, science has a profound effect on the way we live, largely through technology—the use of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. (2)
The second factor was the publication of Darwin’s treatise On the Origin of Species in 1859—often referred to as the “book that shook the world.” In this book the origin of humanity, crucially attributed to an omnipotent Creator, was explained by scientific principles according to the theory of evolution, where only those species survive that best fit the environment. The weak and defenseless are weeded out in this relentless process of Natural Selection. We are not here interested in discussing the implications of this theory for religion as our task is to refute this very confrontation of science and religion.
II. A Fundamental Difference
We have an inborn desire to be abreast of time both ideally and practically. At no time do we like to be knowingly out of tune with time. There are, of course, periods of regressions and retrogression but they are more of an exception than rule and as a whole the march of life is onward and progressive. This urge to be modern (and in our time postmodern) gives us a sense of relevance. But in the face of this desire of relevance we are likely to lose sight of certain institutions whose very merit lies in the fact that they are perennial and timeless such as religion and morality. We are likely to forget that fundamental values and teachings propounded by these intuitions are always relevant and the revisionism of time cannot render them anachronistic. Science may pass through countless vicissitudes of time and passages of experience and in every age may be clothed in new grabs but these institutions are not to be affected by its discoveries. The propositions of morality or the teachings and beliefs of religion are immune from the changes which have so frequently come to characterize science. Khalifa Abdul Hakim, a prominent scholar from Pakistan and the founder of Institute of Islamic Culture, Lahore (d.1957), shows the timeless relevance of morality and religion:
Can the essentials of morality be successfully contradicted even by the apparent relativity of morals and manners ?…Can it ever become irrational to believe that the gradations of existence extend above the material, vital the mental level? Can it ever be demonstrated that soul is a product and an attribute of the body and perishes with it? Can it ever be demonstrated that our spatial and temporal existence is co-extensive with entire being ? (3)
Taha Hussein (1889—1973), Egyptian intellectual, social reformer, and professor of Arabic literature at the University of Cairo, is another intellectual who is critical of reason in the matter of religion. Reason, he maintains, is really one of the many faculties given to man and it shares all the weaknesses inherent in other faculties. To him religion is a knowledge from God which knows no limits while modern knowledge, like ancient knowledge, is limited by limitations of human reason.
Now the question arises why science with all its astonishing discoveries and modern inventions cannot invalidate the propositions and tenets of religion. The answer lies in understanding a crucial difference between not only their natures but their functions as well. Science is the analytic and inductive study of the phenomenon. It does not explore the values and ideal possibilities of things. It only shows their present and apparent actuality and operation. The matter exhibits regularities of behavior and these regularities enable a scientist to predict different effects but this too with no degree of finality. To a scientist only the empirical and inductive reasoning of these disciplines yields genuine knowledge. Primarily science is an experimental investigation into a physical phenomenon, where precise observations can be made and measurements taken, where experiments are repeatable and universally testable. Science does not claim to have any knowledge of metaphysical and supra-phenomenal realms of existence. Anything lying outside the purview of nature is summarily excluded from the domain of science.
Religion, on the other hand concerns itself with the question of ideal conduct and belief in the Unseen. This belief in the Unseen guides and prescribes human behavior in its totality. Being a manifestation and expression of God’s infinite wisdom, religious tenets and principles have been set in the light of eternity. Empirical investigation and inductive reasoning is of little use here. Religion is concerned with value judgments whereas science is concerned with only one value—the value of phenomenal truth, the discovery of laws and uniformities. Religion is concerned with the spiritual, the immeasurable, and the uniquely individual. It is concerned with an infinite spiritual reality where God is not just a probable hypothesis, but a living and experienced fact of life. Professor Stephen Jay Gould demonstrates the difference:
Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values. (4)
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