Science and religion in the modern world

[saidevo]

In his novel "Angels and Demons", Dan Brown, through the character of the camerlengo, speaks about his views on the relevance of science and religion to the modern world. I have attempted to paraphrase the relevant portions of Chapter 94, but would like the readers to refer to the original passages for better understanding the meaning and context of the words.

 

As a citizen of the world who is more religious than scientific, I agree with the view that science provides no accountability. At the same time, I think it would be interesting to know the views of the readers of this forum on the points raised by Dan Brown.

 

1. Science might have facilitated our life and health, but it has taken away the wonders of life: sunsets have come to be perceived as wavelengths and frequencies; the mysteries of the universe have been reduced to mathematical equations; even the self-worth of humans has been demolished.

 

2. The technology that seems to unite us actually divides us. We might be collected electronically across the globe, yet we are alone. Violence, division, fracture, betrayal and skepticism have become the new values of modern life, and cynicism and demand for proof the paths of the seeker. Nothing is sacred before science. As science probes deeper and deeper into God's creations in a divide-and-conquer manner, it raises only more questions than it answers.

 

3. The ancient war between science and religion is over, and science has won, though not fairly. In the radical reorientation of our society today, the old signposts of religion have become meaningless. In the virus-like and exponential growth of science, we are spinning out of control as our faiths are left behind, with the result, we have started seeking spiritual truths in UFOs and channeling. The modern soul is lonely and tormented, as it accepts no meaning in anything beyond technology.

 

4. Science is destroying, not saving us. The church might have tried to slow the unremitting march of science, occasionally with misguided means, but its intention has always been of benevolence. Look around you and understand that science has only brought in chaos and pollution, its promises never being kept.

 

5. Science, that seeks to replace God today, lacks accountability. It never warns us about the bad part of its technology. And when technology overshoots its benevolent mark and threatens to destroy the world, it is the church, the Pope, who tours around nations, calling for restraint. And yet science proclaims the church is ignorant and spurns it, whenever it tries to reach out to the people affected by science.

 

6. Actually it is science which is more ignorant: in the same way that the man who pays scant respect for the awesome power of lightning is more ignorant than the man who respects it but cannot define lighning. When science looks at the heavens through its telescopes and proclaims that the slightest change in the atomic levels of the universe would have rendered it as a lifeless mist, can't it find the hand of God in this grand scheme of life and matter? Believing in mathematical impossibility rather than a greater power signifies only spiritual bankruptcy.

 

7. If science does not believe in God, it must at least belive that when it abdicates its faith in a greater power, it abandons the sense of accountability, which creates only chaos and destruction. Whereas faith, all faiths, insist on accountability: to each other, to ourselves and to a higher truth, which is why it is voice of guidance to the common people to their simple souls, even though the faiths and its followers might be flawed.

 

Regards,

saidevo

 

[excerpt deleted by Administrator]

[TheBigDog]

I have read the excerpt twice. I disagree with much of the tone of the monologue. I don't think that there is a war between religion and science. I think there is an ideological debate, but at its core the purpose of science is not the destruction of religion, it is the discovery of facts and truths. There are those who wield science as a weapon to belittle beliefs based upon faith, but that is not the purpose of science, that is the use of science by individuals with an anti-religion agenda.

 

Examples: Science cannot prove or disprove the big bang, but belief in that phenomena as the start point of the universe is acceptable to the science community. Likewise, you cannot prove or disprove creation, but spouting its merits can quickly get people calling you a naive dolt around these science types. Like many things, there is a great polarization to the debate with the extremists on both sides unwilling to yield to the other despite the real science that leads to both cases. It is convenient when you can decide what is not so, and then selectively pick your evidence to support your closed minded preconception. And there are "scientists" out there that are just as bad about this as the most devout religious zealot.

 

The second theme is about morality. This is religion's strong point. I have a thread out there that has been very quiet where I asked people to spell out their moral code that has gotten very little play to this point. With a site filled with such bright minds, and such justified confidence in people's own personal power of thought, I am shocked by the overall "moral relativism" that I see among the participants. It is almost exclusively those people who profess to follow religious doctrine that actually take a stand against things that are wrong. From the anti-religion sect there is an overwhelming intolerance of people who pass judgment with the tendency to see what the religious might be saying, and then take up the other side.

 

Finally, there is no chance that science will ever replace religion. Science and religion fill two different needs. The can compliment each other, but they cannot replace each other. What are the obstacles?

 

1) Human evolution has built a genetic predisposition to religious belief. EVERY society in the the known world, no matter how isolated, has developed religious beliefs for itself. Those who followed those beliefs were successful in society, and likewise successful genetically. That trait got passed on generation and continues today.

2) Science does not supply a written moral code. Without a written moral code society breaks down into anarchy. With anarchy comes a need for people to group together for survival. For people to group together they create a common belief system based upon anti-anarchy ie - a moral code. Or it you like, for people who believe in God, when things get better, it is the grace of God. When things get worse, it is the wrath of God. Either way drives people back to God.

 

So if you are a believer, congratulations, and God bless you. All the science in the world cannot steal your faith.

 

If you are an athiest, congratulations, and peace be with you. All the missionaries in the world cannot make you believe.

 

Bill

[stevencarrwork]

Perhaps Dan Brown is right that science has questions that cannot be answered. Isn't that better than to have answers that cannot be questioned?

 

In the quote, Brown says that faith is an admission that there is something we cannot understand. Really?

 

You will find that there are plenty of people who will happily tell you what God's will is on all sorts of subjects.

 

Many people would simply be baffled by the claim that we do not understand what God wants from us in terms of sexual morality, abortion, contraception, marriage, divorce etc etc.

 

 

 

'When we as a species abandon our trust in the power greater than us, we abandon our sense of accountability'

 

In practice, the powers that are greater than us are religious leaders who want us to trust them with power.

 

Take the Regius Professor of Philosophy at Oxford Universit, Keith Ward. In 'God, Chance and Necessity', he writes that Richard Dawkins' beliefs are just 'a piece of wishful thinking', which panders to the wish 'to pursue one's own life without moral constraints, and to destroy traditional religious authorities.'

 

Whether that claim about Dawkins is true or false, Ward clearly thinks that traditional religious authorities are to be deferred to when designing moral constraints upon people. (Who did he mean? The Pope? The Chief Rabbi? Ward never says)

 

This is a far cry from saying there are moral authorities we can never understand.

 

The main difference between science and religion, is that religious beliefs are based on deference to authority, while science is not.

[stevencarrwork]

You proclaim that even the slightest change in the force of gravity or the weight of an atom would have rendered our universe a lifeless mist rather than our magnificent sea of heavenly bodies, and yet you fail to see God’s hand in this?

 

 

I do like the logic here. It uses ths slogan of advertisers 'if you can't fix it, flaunt it.'

 

Dan Bown proclaims that God's hands are tied by the force of gravity and the weight of an atom, and that not even God can change them without without rendering our universe a lifeless mass.

 

After announcing that God's hands are tied, he then says 'Look! God must have hands if he has hands which are tied!'. Brown can't fix the problem , so he flaunts it.

 

In reality, if a supposedly omnipotent God cannot create a universe where the force of gravity or the weight of an atom is different , without that universe being rendered a lifeless mass, then there is no omnipotent God.

[HydrogenBond]

There is some truth to science and technology outpacing other aspects of life. Say 50 years ago, almost any man could fix his own car. Nowdays, cars have gotten so complicated and compact, such that only a fraction can do the same. Back in the 60's and 70's, if one needed a computer program, they wrote their own software; now one gets it off the shelf. The basic science skill base of logic and ingenuity is more atrophied, except along narrow lines of specialization. If culture was to become disrupted, the basic science skills of imagination, logic, ingenuity for a broad based fight for survival would be sorely missed. With the all the fluff, one can create the illusion of knowledge by the accolades of specialty and the cultural support of everything else. I would want Thomas Edison, the master of everything, instead of the most knowledgeable person of one thing on my team.

 

One useful change, is generalist approach to education along side of the specialist approach. The specialist approach is what is pushing everything so fast in all directions, with one frontier specialist unable to know what another, in a different field, is doing because of the rate of change. We just absorb the technology, not because we know why for sure, but because we are told it is good and because the herd is moving. A generalist side of culture knows a little about everything, and have a greater ability to question the implication of change.

[HydrogenBond]

duplicate post

[saidevo]

Science and Religion are both after the Truth. That is, pure science and pure religion.

 

Religion, specially the Vendanta philosophy of Hinduism has proclaimed eons ago (and at least 7,000 years ago in the researched history of mankind), that the Truth is Brahman or Tat. This Brahman or Tat is both energy and intelligence that manifests as the universe and all its contents.

 

Modern science is already on the way towards a unified theory of everything, and only needs to account for how intelligence fits into this theory.

 

So, pure science and pure religion are both good and necessary for mankind's evolution towards the Truth.

 

Pure science, since it is after the Truth, cannot bother about the repercussions of its revelations. Pure religion, in its essence, is also not bothered about the acceptance or otherwise of the Truth it proclaims. While pure science chooses a materialistic path to the Truth, pure religion chooses a spiritual path.

 

Then why is the clash and strife between religion and science? Actually, the clash and strife is not between pure science and pure religion, but between applied science and applied religion. To be precise, while this clash and strife is rampant in the case of Semitic religions, it is far less marked in the case of Indian religions, which from their origins have fostered the growth of science.

 

For example, the four Upa-Vedas of Hinduism fostered the earliest versions of science and art known to mankind: Ayurveda, which is one of the current international buzzwords, is the science of health. Dhanur veda is the science of weapons and the military. Artha Shastra is political science. And Gandharva veda is the science of music. Thus science has been a way of life and, along with the six darshanas (philosopies) of Hinduism, an accepted path to the Truth in the Indian culture, which is why the name Sanatana Dharma (dharma that is universal), that unfortunately carries the misnomer Hinduism as its name today.

 

So the clash is between the applied sciences and applied religions and among the applied religions themselves. Both of them are bad, to a lesser or a greater extent, and delay the spiritual progress of mankind.

 

Technology, as the face of applied science, breeds desire in common man and greed in the powerful, and in both cases, blunts spirituality in man. As Buddha said, desire is the cause of all miseries in the world. Since science is after all for the welfare of mankind, why don't the countries pool their technological resources and strive to establish a hunger-free and disease-free mankind in all parts of the world, irrespective of creed and color, which are supposedly the bane of applied religions? It is not happening because of the greed (for wealth and power) of the key players--nations, politicians, corporate houses and people who matter.

 

Dogma and rituals, as the face of applied religions, divide mankind even more than the applied sciences. They pamper the ego of their followers: my god and my path are better than yours, or worse, my god needs me to convert you to my path or kill you.

 

When the followers of applied religions unite with mutual understanding, tolerance and help, then will be the time when technology will be cleansed of its ill-effects. But this is not going to happen in the foreseeable future, so the drama of strife goes on, on the stage of this holy earth.

 

Regards,

saidevo

[Tormod]

The difference here is that "Pure Science" (why bother narrowing it down...) is not after Truth but explanation and understanding. A good scientist will tell you there are no absolute truths, and in particular none with a capital T. Science evolves by discovery and insight. However, personal interest often makes it hard for scientific revolutions to occur (as we know).

 

I disagree that science has no interest in it's repercussions. Responsible scientists are VERY concerned about the application of their findings. I am however not so sure about the interest of the people who *pay*, ie the corporations.

 

Religious Truth is something else entirely and cannot be compared. Religious Truth is the "final truth" and can only be understood when viewed through the lenses of a particular branch of a particular faith. Questioning or even discussing Religious Truth is a heresy in many places.

 

In comparison, scientific fact should be apparent no matter where you live and what faith you have. A scientific truth can and should be questioned. Therein lies the greatest disctinction between science and religion.

[Boerseun]

My dogma got run over by a karma...

:eek_big: :naughty:

[coldcreation]

My dogma got run over by a karma...

:( :(

 

Hooooo hoooooo,

I love that Boerseun. You got my votes.

 

The rapport between science and religion is real. Both have evolved along with language for thousands of years as a means of officially stating certain concepts as true, and also of imposing order amongst believers.

 

The loner, the free-thinker, detractor, or atheist has always been considered a critical threat. Within the scientific community, too, there are overtones of religious censorship and infighting between community norms and liberal society. Today, at least in underground circles, and to some extent inside the mainstream, a new armada is come into view.

 

Popular repudiation of explosive models demonstrates that big bang fundamentalism is fragile because it lacks intellectual and physical substance. It is incapable of providing constructive answers to any reasonable question. Even so, this tutorial has not evidently cooled the attractions of fundamentalism elsewhere in the cosmological world. Beyond semantics, it was the big bang itself, rather than the inflation theory that melted away, and was left with little more than university recruits from the inflationary messianic message: “It's time to seek the Lord!”

 

The soul-searching has become even more tangled because of some distant supernovae observations and the intersection between a discussion in Britain over a new law of nature that would make incitement to big bang hatred a crime. Oh Lord.

 

One more transient point: pedophilia, rape, pillage and brutality are all common acts within the sanctuary of a church. So too is it common in cosmology and particle physics to abuse physically the natural laws: It's called new physics.

 

PS. Dog is god spelled backwards.

 

CC