Nature of Religion & Dialogue Between Science and Religion

 Nature of Religion & Dialogue Between Science and Religion 

Dennett, Daniel C.. Breaking the Spells: Religion as a Natural phenomenon. New York: Penguin Books. 2006.
Barbour, Ian. Religion and Science; Historical And Contemporary Issues. Cambridge: HarperCollins, 2007.
McGrath, Alister. Science and Religion; An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell publishing, 2010. 

Religion is a way of life for its members. Every religious community has its distinctive forms of individual experience, communal ritual, and ethical concerns. Above all, religion aims at the transformation of personal life, particularly by liberation from self-centeredness through a commitment to a more inclusive center of devotion. 

Dennett define religion as ‘social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought’.

Dialogue between Science and Religion

Religion and science are two of the most powerful cultural and intellectual forces in today’s world. Science now seems to be opening up religious questions, rather than closing them down, or declaring them to be meaningless. It is increasingly being recognized that natural science can “throw up questions that point beyond itself and transcend its power to answer” (Polkhinghorne). The dialogue between science and religion sets out to ask whether, in what ways, and to what extents, these two conversation partners might learn from each other. Given the cultural importance of both science and religion, the exploration of how they relate to each other has the potential for both conflict and enrichment.

Three reasons are often given for this judgment.

(i)    Neither science nor religion can claim to give a total account of reality.

Science and religion are perhaps better thought of as operating at different levels, often reflecting on similar questions, yet answering them in different ways. The science and religion dialogue allows us to appreciate the distinct identities, strengths, and limits of each conversation partner. It also offers us a deeper understanding of things than either religion or science could offer unaided.

(ii)   Both science and religion are concerned about making sense of things.

Perhaps most importantly, science tends to ask “how” questions, where religion asks “why.” Science seeks to clarify mechanisms; religions offer meaning. These approaches do not need to be seen as being in competition, or as being mutually incompatible. They operate at different levels.

(iii)  In recent years there has been a significant increase in awareness within the scientific community of the broader issues raised by its research, and limits placed upon that community’s ability to answer them.

Historical Survey of Science and Religion Dialogue

Science as a discipline of learning came to us in the middle sixteenth century with the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and of course with Newton. The new development is known as ‘modern Science’ which bring the scientific revolution. The word ‘science’ was used only since the eighteenth century when it replaced the term ‘natural philosophy’. Till the middle of the sixteenth century, there is no antagonism, perhaps, the conflict between science and religion because of no proper distinction between science, philosophy, and religion during that time. In fact, during those times, the Scientist were philosophers, theologians, and clergy by themselves. Till the sixteenth century, in the Western world science was under the control of the Church. The Church dictated what to write, read and believe and under such conditions, there could be no viable conflict between science and religion.

With the publication of Copernicus’s ‘De Revolutionibus’ in 1543 the atmosphere set to turn in a new direction. With Copernicus, our Universe was inverted, the earth no longer at the center. With Newton, the living universe became an unthinking machine whose fully predictable, deterministic, clock-work regularity seemed to leave no room for us to act, let alone for God. The ‘age of reason' replaced the authority of revelation and the Church as a surer guide to knowledge and behavior. By the nineteenth century, the age of the earth had been multiplied from mere thousands of years to millions of years.

The intricacies of organic life, which had once seemed the product of a loving God, were being explained the opposite by Darwin as the product of natural selection and by ‘blind chance’. The real conflict between Religion and Science begun indisputably.

Relativity Theory, Quantum Mechanics, big Bang Cosmology, Chaos and Complexity, Human Genetic Engineering, etc are challenging even tearing down, the rigid and simplistic. The discoveries of Einstein, Heisenberg, Hubble, Hawkings, etc point towards a nature more open, subtle, numinous, interconnected than we have known for centuries. In and through the work of philosophers of science, such as, Popper, Kuhn, Polanyi, Holton, Fearabend, Lakatos, etc we came to know that scientific knowledge, scientific theories, and discoveries are subject to their socio-cultural and religious context.

These scientist-philosophers help us to witness the fading out of the negative the distinction between science and religion- that science is objective, universal, rational, and based on solid observation evidence whereas religion is subjective, parochial, emotional, and based on faith. This new discovery opens wide a door for science and religion dialogue. 

Please read ‘How to relate Science and Religion: Ian Barbour four Models, Ted Peter, Michael Stenmark’.