Thoughts To Provoke Your Thoughts

Science and Religion

Science is a tool. It is a human invention. It is not perfect, but it works and it can be misused.       It can heal in retail, but it can kill wholesale. But until now, it is the best        tool we have for understanding the world around us and therefore understanding ourselves. Indeed, we need science and with it we can improve our lives.

Science is a self-questioning and a self-correcting enterprise. It has two simple rules:     First, there are no sacred truths, no sacred books and all assumptions must be critically examined and argument from authority is worthless. Second, whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be revised or thrown away.

Behind science are simply the scientists. But if the church had welcomed science instead     of waging war against it during the Spanish Inquisition, surely today in the religious community, there should be more appreciation and fascination, over the power of science.
But can science and religion work together for the benefit of all? Can science, which is always tentative, ever be compatible with religion, which is always dogmatic? How can religion, which closes the mind with fear, tolerate science, which opens up the mind with courage? The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be commonplace in religion, but it   is not a path to knowledge and it has no place in science.

Theologians laugh at science because it changes. "Look at us," they say. "What we asserted at the council of Nicea we still assert; whereas what the scientist asserted only two or three years ago is already forgotten and antiquated."

"Men who speak in this way," wrote Bertrand Russell, "have not grasped the great idea      of successive approximations. When a change occurs in science, as, for example, from Newton's law of gravitation to Einstein's, what had been done is not overthrown, but is replaced by something slightly more accurate."

Religious leaders have said, "Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion   can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes." But on what grounds can religion purify science when there are no idols or false absolutes in science? Nothing is sacred in science; it has no final truths. Science is a never-ending process. "The scientific temper of mind," wrote Russell, "is cautious, tentative and piece-meal; it does not imagine that it knows the whole truth, or at even its best knowledge is wholly true. It knows that every doctrine needs emendation sooner or later, and that the necessary emendation requires freedom of investigation and freedom of discussion."

Scientist do not castigate; for the sake of scientific accuracy, they liberate. In the scientific community, no scientist is dammed for such things as heresy or blasphemy, no scientist is   jailed or persecuted or threatened for debunking present scientific knowledge. In the scientific endeavor, the fool of one generation can become the genius of the next.

Past wars have been declared because of religious conflicts and disagreements. In scientific disagreements however, what is declared is not war but open discussion, further experimentation, deeper analysis, more research and closer scrutiny, if not reformulation of mathematical equation.

Science gives us knowledge. Religion, on the other hand, should give us wisdom so that    we may use knowledge wisely. But religion has failed to do so because it fears knowledge, especially the growth of knowledge. How then can religion hope to purify and work together with science?
Everything in this world is connected with everything else in a delicate and complex web   of interrelationship. Indeed, science tells us that each of us part of nature and that nature is part of us. The first law of thermodynamics says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. We are energy and we will always be part of it. Today in one form; after death,  in another. So what is there to be sad or fearful about? We cannot change the laws of nature, we can only understand it. We must learn to live with it.

Religion tells us the exact opposite: that we are apart from nature, and that this world,   the world of people and nature and the flesh, is depraved and unworthy to those who    seek the religious life. This natural world merely a stopover in our journey to the next supernatural world. Therefore the less attention placed on it, the better. The purpose of religion is not to enhance civilization, but to seek salvation.

Man's future in this world, according to scientists, will immeasurably be longer than his past if we use science wisely.

Why then has religion been more popular than science? The answer: Religion does not doubt.   It keeps the mind at rest. It is easier to believe than to doubt. Believing is more natural than doubting. That is why the many are the believers; only the few are the thinkers. Religion has been in existence for thousands of years. Science is only some 400 years old, but it has already proved far more beneficial and powerful than religion to mankind. Medicine alone can attest to that fact.

Religion says that faith can move mountains. Science says, on the other hand, that what     is more essential is to remove the mountains of fear out of our lives so that we may begin to bring more light into this world of darkness.

Religion, however, will not evaporate; we shall go on looking for something greater than ourselves that we may love and respect. But science has already proved to us that the human family, our country and our planet are all bigger and much greater than we are. Therefore, if we hope to survive as a species, those are the beauties that we should love, adore and respect.

Science, with its power of reconstruction, or, as the case may be, total destruction, offers two choices for us: Either we choose to learn to live together in peace and in love with one another  as a human family or we can choose to die together and carry on human stupidity further into infinity. - - - Poch Suzara