Man's Fate and God's Choice by Bhimeswara Challa (ereader for textbooks TXT) 📖

dominate our lives. But they are no longer independent of each other; the ‘fruits’ of technology are used in religious practices, and scientific inquiry draws upon the scriptures. And, despite predictions for over three centuries by social scientists about an impending dissolution of religion, that humans will outgrow their belief in the supernatural with the onslaught of modernism, religion is very much alive and kicking, even if one cannot vouchsafe for its

 

robust health. It is now widely accepted that the ‘theory of secularization’ — which states  that the unstoppable sweep of ‘secular’ modernization will hasten the ‘death of religion’ — is now passé, and that the world now, to borrow a phrase from Peter L. Berger, one of the foremost advocates of the secularization theory, is as ‘furiously religious’ as at any time in history. It is even being said that the time has come ‘to carry the secularization doctrine to the graveyard of failed theories, and there to whisper requiescat in pace [rest in peace]’288. There are those who argue that religious growth has occurred not because of any development in human capacities or divine grace, but because of a predisposition towards religious experience that was always innate but only gradually awakened. Coupled with a brooding sense of uneasiness and wrenching angst, religiosity has come to be seen as the ‘Aladdin’s Lamp’, the rubbing of which helps us overcome all our travails. ‘Secularization’ might be in retreat, but not modernization powered by science and technology. The other tenet of secularization, separation of private belief and public behavior also has not worked. Religion is now more in the public domain than ever before. So much of our ‘living space’ is public that it is unrealistic to think that it can be isolated at home. The real problem is not religion’s impact socially, but that we do not apply or practice what religions prescribe as desirable values in human behavior on the street or at the workplace. Religion is on the ascendancy, but religious values have been relegated to the background. We must remember that every religion reflects the place and time of its origin. In that sense, religious morality seems skewed for the present context. For example, it places too much emphasis on sexual behavior and not on social conduct. That has affected both social values and personal piety. Sex, more than any single thing, straddles the domain between the sacred and the profane. The mindset is that if we are sexually straight it is okay to be socially deviant. Sexual transgressions are more severely dealt with than social crimes. This imbalance has to be set right both for the sake of religion and society. For instance, adultery is both a crime and a sin, but adulteration, in most societies, is almost accepted or condoned as a part of economic life. This is, in fact, part of a larger problem which was incisively probed by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in his book Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics (1932). Niebuhr dealt with the growing gap between our private and public personas, and argued that while we know a lot about how to apply morality to our individual existence, we know very little about how to apply it to our aggregate existence, whether as nations, organizations, or communities. Modern, science-based technology (techno-science, as some like to call it), arguably the defining intellectual venture of our age, has itself become what we may call ‘secular’ religion, and it promises to give us what ‘sacred’ religions promised but could not deliver — eternal life on earth. Techno-science has escalated the size and scope of human inventiveness to such a degree that everything is mass-scale, almost absolute and universal: production, consumption, culture, creativity — and extermination. And paradoxically, contrary to the incompatibility and tension that is supposed to exist between the sacred and the secular — religion and science — what we have instead is cohabitation between the two. Moreover, there is hostility and rage between religions and even within the same religion, between different denominations or sects. No jihadi or a religious fanatic targets any scientist, however much what the latter says and does violates the basic tenets of his religion. The fanatic targets only those who profess and practice another faith.

The human mind is neither equipped nor trained to handle the avalanche of raw information on the one hand, and the disappearing distance between discovery and adaptation, creativity and adjustment, on the other. While it has without doubt enhanced the

 

 

 

288 Rodney Stark. Secularization. R.I.P. 1999. Sociology of Religion: a Quarterly Review. 60(3). p.270.

 

physical quality of life of the vast majority of humans (marginally for most and qualitatively for some others), science has also given birth to what M.D. Aeschliman calls ‘murderous science’, by which he refers to the role of modern science in atrocities like Nazi human experimentation, genocide, sterilization. Enhancement, that is the key concept that drives human ambition. We want to enhance everything — from body to brain — and move from ‘noble stoicism’ to distilled joy. And science dangles that primrose prospect. The fact is that science is not as clear-eyed or candid as we like to think. Time and again, one ‘established’ theory has been overtaken by another until that meets a similar fate, or it sometimes goes back to the beginning. Climate change and global warming are telling examples of our pathological — and pathetic — inability to grasp the import of the risks we face. It is mind- boggling but symptomatic of our state of mind that with possibly the very future of humanity and even life on earth at such clear and present danger, we still dither and debate. Our intellect cannot make up its mind if it is simply another natural vagary of the weather or if it presages an impending catastrophe. But such is the inebriating influence of science, that, in the words of a pioneering thinker in the field of science and religion, Denis Alexander, “the new atheists, as they have been dubbed by the media, those such as Dawkins, Atkins and Dennett, have declared their opposition to religion in the name of science, suggesting that science has all the answers that we need to know.”289 Skepticism or downright hostility towards religion did not begin with these ‘new atheists’. While technology and belief in a supernatural power were able to coexist, science from its very inception looked upon itself as the antithesis of faith, but that might be somewhat of an oversimplification, as many scientists have said. Despite the popular impression that scientists are hostile to faith, many celebrated scientists are believers in something that is beyond the control of human intelligence.

Contrary to popular perception, ‘scientists’ are not a homogenous lot, nor is one quite sure who qualifies to be called a ‘scientist’. And the ‘facts’ and ‘findings’ of science, change constantly, and no particular scientific theory is cast in concrete or considered unassailable. Even ‘scientific skepticism’ is also science. Many branches of science like geology found no incompatibility with religious principles. Some even speculate that it might be possible that our studies in earth science may so improve our understanding as to permit geology to re- enforce religion, and might even help in codifying ethical rules of conduct. Many great scientists were ‘believers’ in its broadest sense. Isaac Newton, whose discovery of the laws of gravity reshaped our understanding of the universe, said: “This most beautiful system could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”290

The British anthropologist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection along with Darwin, was an ardent advocate of spiritualism and wrote: “I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions. To the mass of mankind religion of some kind is a necessity. But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth…”291 And in the book What We Believe but Cannot Prove (2006), many scientists and ‘rational thinkers’ enumerate the kinds of things they believed, which we often ridicule as supernatural or superstitious. The

 

 

 

289 Cited in: University of St. Andrews. News and Events. Has Science Made Religion Redundant? 26 February 2008. Accessed at: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/Title,19733,en.html

290 Cited in: Steven Swinford. I’ve Found God, Says Man Who Cracked the Genome. The Times. UK. 11 June 2006. Accessed at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article673663.ece

291 Cited in: Wikipedia. Alfred Russel Wallace: Spiritualism. Accessed at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace

 

title of the book reflects the opinions of scientists like Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson — “there are true mathematical statements that cannot be proved”.292 The book quotes Dawkins as saying that “science proceeds by having hunches, by making guesses, by having hypotheses, sometimes inspired by poetic thoughts, by aesthetic thoughts even, and then science goes about trying to demonstrate it experimentally or observationally.”293 That description hardly sounds ‘scientific’, and it raises the question, who is a ‘scientist’? Is he some kind of a ‘saint’ in white robes laboring in a laboratory mindless of any material gain, or is he just another human being pursuing a profession, and morally — or materially — no different from others in that pursuit? Whoever he is or he is not, and whether or not he is to be held accountable for higher ethical norms, given the repercussions of his work, the fact that many ‘scientists’ feel that way is encouraging for the future, for forging a partnership between science and spirituality. If science accepts that there are forces beyond ‘proof’, and if spiritualists concede that empirical knowledge of the laws of Nature and of the universe could be an input to man’s spiritual quest, that by itself is a huge step forward towards reconciliation between science and the spirit of religion. The American physician-geneticist Francis Collins, described the Human Genome Project (HGP) as the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God. In his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2006), Collins says that scientific discoveries are an ‘opportunity to worship’, and that he was an atheist in his early years, but later walking through the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, USA, he had an epiphany, a kind of divine inspiration, and came to the view that man could not be a moral animal without the aid of a God-endowed moral law. Collins also said, “One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war.”294 The British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington wrote, “We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of the physical sciences leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols.”295 And the Nobel physicist Max Planck, who is regarded as the father of modern quantum theory said that “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of Nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of Nature, and, therefore, part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”296

Setting aside, for the moment, both the semantics and the skeptics, nuances and niceties, the fact is that religion and scientific technology, two of the most transformational forces in the universe, have thus far been unable to work complementarily, science relying primarily on empiricism, and religion on revelation. For at least three or four centuries, modern man has been trying to broker what the American author Ken Wilber calls the ‘marriage of science and soul’, the integration of science and religion. It has to be a marriage,

 

 

 

292 John Brockman (ed.). What