Science and Religion: Nature of the conflict(III)

History of the conflict

If we consider the historical beginnings of the opposition between science and religion, as well as some of its contemporary manifestations, the issue seems to be rooted in certain widespread human attitudes towards power.

The broad allegiance which a belief system can command creates a reservoir of power. If the belief system is institutionalized in such a way that this power is easily available to certain individuals or groups (for example, priests, experts of various kinds, or political leaders), the tendency may naturally arise for the favored group to maintain its position of power by resisting new beliefs and theories, however valid, progressive or socially helpful these latter may in fact be. In other words, so-called ideological battles are often not ideological at all but only symbols for a power struggle between people. This is largely what happened in the case of Renaissance science and the religion of the day. Exponents of religion perceived the emerging science as a (latent or overt) challenge to their authority and proceeded to discredit various aspects of the new science, but not from a truly rational point of view.

Following this initial split came the incredible success of the new science, a success which was clearly not attributable to the religion which had so clamorously disowned science. But the spectacular development of this increasingly materialistic science has only served to heighten a general sense of discomfort. For, secularizing science has not provided theories of sufficient depth and breadth to give adequate, satisfactory answers to many of the fundamental questions of everyday life—questions concerning meaning, death, consciousness, self-sacrifice, love, suffering, etc.

At the same time, religion has not been able to provide much comfort since its continued rejection of scientific principles of inquiry renders it incapable of giving any guarantee of the validity of its belief system. People are faced with the unpalatable choice between highly validated scientific theories of limited scope on the one hand, and unsupported metaphysical speculation on the other. Moreover, circumstances have more often than not forced people to make a choice between these extremes and to live their lives accordingly.

The dilemma described in the last sentence continues to characterize the intellectual and spiritual milieu of the late twentieth century… It is astonished to see how uncritically so many theologians and religious-minded thinkers had accepted the positivist description of scientific method. In accepting the exclusion of religion from the domain of scientific method, such religionists thereby acquiesced to their inability ever to give epistemological justification to the content of their belief systems. Perhaps this attitude on their part was a vestige of the reflex of their Renaissance predecessors: their unwillingness to subject their thought to the critical methods of science represented a desire to carve out for themselves an area, however small and devoid of genuine social influence, in which they reigned with unchallenged authority, without the nagging necessity for justification and response to criticism.

Truly appalling was the spectre of the unbridled power of secularized science, a power whose ultimate limits could no longer be discerned. This power, divorced as it largely was and is from any fundamental commitment to a humanistic, much less ethical or spiritual, value system, could not fail in the end to be exploited by the basest and most selfish of human interests.

The systematic application of scientific method in certain specific areas of material development coupled with the continual refusal to apply this same method in the critically important areas of the spiritual, the ethical, the social and the political has led man to the brink of destruction. He now has the certain knowledge of how to destroy himself, but only the vaguest, unsupported speculations about how to prevent such destruction. As Carl Jung once expressed the idea: through science and the use he has thus far made of it, man has conquered nature; but he has not yet understood or conquered his own nature.

It was in this frame of mind that I(Dr.William Hatcher)became acquainted with the Bahá’í Faith through the profound writings of Bahá’u’lláh and the commentaries and interpretations of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi. Here was pure religion, unflinchingly addressing itself to the deepest of human questions and yet not only tolerating but inviting critical study. And here was religion one of whose basic principles was the unity of science and religion.

Concerning the relationship between religion and science, the writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in particular, forthrightly condemn dogmatic religion for its rejection of science. At the same time, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá lays bare the inadequacies and limitations of the strictly materialistic, positivistic conception of scientific method. It is fair to say that his analysis and observations, made in the decade 1910-1920, anticipate by almost fifty years the general realization of these same limitations on the part of the philosophical and scientific community.

The Bahá’í writings deal trenchantly with another crucial problem involved in the religion-science controversy, namely the lack of any clearly objective content to religion. With the continued development of science, religion has come to be regarded as an activity which deals essentially (and unscientifically) with the irrational, subjective, mythic, and emotional aspects of human life. Viewed in this way, a religious belief system appears as no more than a collective neurotic mechanism for dealing with the difficulties and sufferings of life: such beliefs are illusions which may give some comfort but which have no basis in any reality other than human imagination.

The Bahá’í Faith addresses this problem through its concept of progressive revelation: religion is an objective, periodic phenomenon called “revelation”. The Bahá’í concept of progressive revelation furnishes a theoretical model for human history and social evolution as well as giving objective content to religion, a content independent of the subjectivity of any particular human being. In this view, religion becomes a phenomenon which can be studied, approached, and experienced scientifically without losing any of its multidimensional richness and capacity for emotional enhancement.

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

Ref.: The William Hatcher Library