Science in its earliest form was an attempt by man to understand
nature and to more systematically exploit its bounties to satisfy
a scientist to the extent that he could distinguish plants and animals that
instinctive need for food, shelter and protection. This prehistoric man was
were useful from those which were deleterious. He learnt to make fire and
built crude implements. The ancient Chinese, Indian and Arabic
civilizations not only cultivated crop plants and domesticated animals, but
also accumulated a fair level of knowledge of physical as well as natural
environment. This scientific beginning freed man from the drudgery of a
hunter and food gatherer. Settling down in groups and cultivating his own
food, gave him the security and desire to pursue a lifestyle quite different
from his ancestors. This inevitably led him to the subtler things of life,
languages, writing, arts, music, love and ethics.
One of the secrets of man’s ascendancy has been his cohesion, he
could not have survived without his tribe and the tribe in turn smoothened
and perpetuated itself through intrinsic bonds. This gave rise to immense
subjective power of the laws that guaranteed cohesion. Nobel Prize winner
biologist Jacques Mond has postulated that such social bands over stretches
of time “must have influenced the genetic evolution of the innate
categories of the hung brain”. This evaluation “must not only have
facilitated acceptance of the tribal law, but created the need for mystical
explanation which gave it a foundation and sovereignty”. It is his search
for explanation, the profound disquiet which forces us to search for the
meaning of existence. It has, created all myths, all religions, all
philosophies and science itself.
Thus science and religion have a common origin of the process of
civilization which distinguished man from the apes. Science enabled man
to practice and propagate religion gave him the conditions, including
cohesion, necessary for pursuit of science.
Throughout history, religion has tamed wild passions, refined man’s
soul and energised man to advancement. Religion apart from the oldest
and the holiest tradition of man, is also the ultimate binding force, a
powerful ethical deterrent, and the regulator of human conscience.
However much one may glamorise science, wealth, and riches, man
starved of spiritual sustenance, and the guiding hand of the Providence is.
say to say, in an unchartered desert.
Militarisation, catastrophic economic disorder, psychic distress on
the widest possible scale, piling up of nuclear bombs, and an unbridgeable
gulf between the rich and the poor, characterise the industrial mass society
to day in Europe and America. According to London TIMES, the gap
between the rich and the poor has become so great that the world’s 358
wealthiest people have assets equal to the combined income of 2.3 billion
people-half of the global population. How can the society of man survive
by preaching God on Sundays only, while practising the gospel of Mam
man for the rest of the time? Most religions preach righteousness, charity,
tolerance, love and peace rather than national and social pride, or war as a
means to settle differences.
Viewed in this back-drop no wonder Islam, a religion of peace,
moderation, enlightenment, and progress is being seen as the future
religion of mankind. Devoid of any intricate theology, unnatural
conformity and manifest contradictions, Islam is an impairing and
motivating force in central Asia, Africa, the Far East, China, India,
Turkey, Iran, as in Europe and America. It has survived political and
economic onslaughts as well as military crusades to emerge even more
dynamic, it is indeed the only religion today, which has the potential to
meet the modern challenges facing mankind to-day.
In ancient civilization scientific thought flourished hand-in-glove
with religious activities. Discoveries were considered revelations and
scientific knowledge represented the Greatness of God. Arabic
mathematician Al-Biruni insisted that his experimental work was subject to
the moral principles of Islam.
The Greeks about 2000 years ago were credited with initiation of
systematic investigations and application of Aristotelian logic in their
endeavour to understand the universe. These methods gained momentum
throughout the middle ages, but reason played subservient to the orthodox
religion. Whatever scientific knowledge has gained by man during this
period was interpreted in the praise of God. Thus when in 1543, Vesalius,
a Belgain physician, published a book on human anatomy based on
dissections and personal observations, he was driven to wonder at the
“handiwork of the Almighty, by means of which the blood sweats form the
right into the left ventricle through passages that escape human vision.”
Pursuers of science also avoided topics that might impinge an the realness
of religion. For example, in 15th and 16th century scientists totally denied
the existence of sex in plants since even a mention of it, considered in
appropriate and obscene.
It was under such circumstances prevailing during the early sixteen
century that the Polish-German mathematician and astronomer
Cepermicus, earned the wrath of society by stating that the earth is not the
center around which the sun, the plants and the stars revolve. This was
serious challenge to cosmological teaching of medieval church.
Religious bigots were further enraged when the double motion of
earth (a daily rotation on its own axis and an annual rotation around the
sun) was put forth as explanation for the diurnal and annual changes which
were till then considered handiwork of the heavens. A few years later
Italian astronomers Galileo discovered that the planet Jupiter had satellites
revolving around it and argued that the sun, and not the earth, was the
center of the solar system. The scientific establishment and the Roman
Catholic Church both promptly denounced these findings as “false and
apposed to the holy scriptures”. Galileo was tortured and forced to retreat
in 1633 by pronouncing that all his finding, which were contrary to the
holy scriptures were erroneous and based on hearsay. The Pope even
forced closure of a formal academy started by his students in 1656.
For from slowing down the march of science, the religious
fundamentalism of medieval Europe seems to have provided the right
setting for the growth of modern science. Hereafter the divergence
between religion and science between sharp and the conflict gradually
snow balled into a two-sided “Warfare”. When Newton propounded his
laws of attraction of gravity, Leibnitz described them as “subversive of
natural, and inferentially of revealed religion”. Newton held that the
majestic works of nature not only attested to his existence but also spoke
of his glory. However, he rejected the possibility of control of day-to-day
events by God. In 1796, Scottish naturalist James Hutton adopted the
Newtonian view that God always, acted through natural laws and
dismissed the theory of repeated divine control of events as
“Undemonstrable, speculative and unnecessary.”
The relationship of science and religion today is like that of a
divorced couple. The hardly interact or pore any threat to each other’s
existence, yet in some way they thrive on each other’s weaknesses and
assets. Millions, belonging to all religions successfully juxtapose
independent scientific and spiritual viewpoints. Some even regard science
as a purgatory of religion, constantly weeding out that which is wrong.
Nevertheless, the controversy that all once engulfed society still rages in
individual minds, particularly, those of the scientists. The dispute whether
or not there is a God is now to be resolved at personal level. It is
interesting to note that scientists as a group hardly react to religious
ideologists, although as individual they may hold strong opinions.
Ironically, in US there still exists a Church lobby which seeks legal
intervention to exclude study of evolution in American schools. Having
lost at the trial in 1925 the fundamentalists forced several publishers to
omit evolution from the school text books. A few months before the 100th
death anniversary of Darwin in 1982, the fundamentalists raked up the
controversy again, this time at Arkansas University establishment
demanding equal treatment to the evolutionist and creationist view point.
I However the Federal judge ruled it unconstitutional as it would force
biology teachers to journey into religion in science classroom. It is equally
revealing that the more recent resistance of religious groups to a scientific
advancements such as heart transplants, test-tube babies and gene splicing
has been lukewarm and only symbolical.
It is interesting to note how modern scientist as individuals respond
and pray indifferent manners to religion and God. Einstein believed in
Spinoza’s God, “who reveals himself in the harmony of all beings” and
not in God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of man. India-
born Noble Prize winner in Physics Professor Chandrashekar Raman was
an atheist. Pakistan born Noble Prize winner in Physics Professor Dr.
Abdus Salam was exiled from his home hold, he belongs to Ahmedia
Movement.
Western religious leaders generally opine that the scientific approach
has depreciated man. In the words of Francis Gerlad Endley, “astronomy
preclaims his microscopic size, biology claims that he had animals at beast
for first cousins in evolutionary series and chemistry affirms that he is a
compound of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and other elements”. In his
opinion, “if we added to the theoretical degradation of science the fact that
it has supplied the weapons whereby the human race can be liquidated, the
indignity is complete.”
Several philosophers have also emphasised that science is inadequate
as a way of life. It cannot give a truly meaningful explanation of any
subject of inquiry. Science is unable to answer the mind’s questions, why
which is quite as legitimate as what and how. This is because it eschews
both value and causation.