Science and Religion: Nature of the conflict(II)

The outline of the Bahá’í approach to the religion-science conflict now heaves more clearly into view. It is that, when the true purpose and nature of science are understood and when the true purpose and nature of religion are understood, then there is, de facto, no conflict. An essential unity is discovered, a unity which was there all along but which was hidden by the aberrations in the articulation of the two viewpoints.

A notable feature of the religion-science controversy as it has actually existed in our recent history is this: new science came into conflict with old religion. This fact must be borne in mind by anyone honestly seeking to understand the dynamics of the problem. Modern science is, indeed, new in any historical sense of the term. Even to date it from the Renaissance is a mistake. The chief features of contemporary science appear only in the nineteenth century.

But, even to date the “scientific revolution” from the Renaissance does not obscure the glaring fact that the religion with which it came into conflict was already past its prime, atrophied, and sterile. Even though it possessed strong political and social prerogatives, religion had long since assumed a position as champion of the status quo, a disbeliever in the possibility of genuine social evolution and progress in this life. No wonder that “religion” seems to have been so much on the defensive and so easy an adversary to discredit in the eyes of thinking men. Such men simply had no example of a religion which was a dynamic, creative, evolutionary force. There was nothing in their immediate experience, no analogy or example, which could easily allow them to view religion in any light other than that in which its most volatile exponents chose to present it: a reactionary social force.

But the new science also suffered from the decline of religion. Because man was socially and morally atrophied in so many respects, society tended to use science for prejudicial, unscientific, and irrational ends. Science tended to become a tool to obtain desired (but not necessarily justified) social ends, rather than an attitude toward life as a whole which, from the Bahá’í viewpoint, it should have been. Thus, we now see the specter of scientific achievements being used to destroy nations, render the earth uninhabitable, effect mass murder, disgorge a cornucopia of often useless gadgets, and even to bolster dogmatic and puerile political-social or philosophical points of view about life.

As examples of the latter, one might cite the attempt by some modern-day Marxists to use science to establish a religion of “scientific atheism” complete with dogma, rituals, and the rest, or the pseudo-philosophy of logical positivism whose inadequacy has not lessened efforts to popularize it.

(To be continued…)

(All above are excerpts from an article “The Science of Religion” by Dr. William Hatcher which I liked very much so to share it here with you.)

"Science and Religion:Nature of the Conflict(VIII)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the Conflict(VII)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the Conflict(VI)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the Conflict(V)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the conflict(IV)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the conflict(III)"
"Science and Religion:Nature of the conflict(III)"

"Science and Religion:Nature of the conflict(I)"

More of Dr. Hatcher's works: The William Hatcher Library