Monday, May 22, 2006

Religion and Science...

Every religion in my belief, should be an attempt to disprove the science that refutes God. And every science in turn, an endeavor to prove God wrong. From this mutual and conflicting interest arises a wonderful symbiotic relationship, that would augment the development of the philosophies of religion and that of science.

Religion, in its quest to get closer to the almighty, and Science, it its fervour to get to the great equation that'd solve everything, including the almighty. In a sense both of them converge onto the same goal - one towards proving the existence of an entity, and the other towards defining that entity in terms of known values.

When one of these great powers lag, stop in its path, stumble either because of its inability to keep up with the other, or because of being stopped by the very barriers of human mind that it was supposed to destruct, then the thought process lags. It comes to a standstill. And the other philosophy needs to slow down a bit too, since unless there are new goals defined by one, the other does not progress.

Early man made huge leaps in religion. He tried to define everything that he saw and experienced in terms of a great power that was then beyond his comprehension. And from this arose some of the greatest philosophies, of which some may still be incomprehensible. It'd be foolish to stamp the men who existed millennia ago as undeveloped; since, even without the wonders of modern size, limited and inhibited by orthodox thoughts, his mind conjured an explanation for almost every Universal phenomena, albeit related to an unknown power. But as man developed, religion stalled. Narrow mindedness and refusal to delve deeper, some contorted interpretation, and the fear of being overtaken by the overwhelmingly developing sciences must've caused it to clam up.Rather than an ally, religion saw in science a refutal of all those that was believed to be of religion. Each of the wonders that had been attributed to being holy, being explained by simple scientific laws and represented in equations.

Is it not possible then, to strike a perfect balance between the two? Can there exist, a grey area, that would firmly reassure me that the Big Bang did indeed happen, and that yes, God created the world over a week?That the hubble telescope could capture a piece of a galaxy for us to see, maybe a part of what Ma Yasodha saw in Lord Krishna's mouth? Can't I agree that the Lord did incarnate 9 times to quell evil and at the same time agree with all Dr.Stephen Hawking has to say? Need I be an Atheist or a Theist? Can't I be jsut a person musing about the greatness of God and at the same time gaping at the wonders of science, admiring the great people who are architecting a way to make it better and understand my God better?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I dunno man. I don't think the relationship between science and religion is symbiotic. I'd like to say that it SHOULD be symbiotic - but I can't think of them even as being conflicting. Here's what I think. One is way of Life and thus is personal. It has a fancy way of telling you about it - with stories and myths to drive home the point. The other is way of explaining all your questions about Nature. They're not conflicting, they're not symbiotic, they can co-exist or they need not exist in the first palce because each has it's own "paranthesis". See?

I like the part about early man. And the last para is really good writing.

Booked my tickets to India. Aug 25 - Sep 15. We SHOULD meet!

Madhavan said...

20 days!! u r just here for 20 days!!
hmmm...have LOTS of catching up to do...
yea, we SHOULD meet..
reading Dr.Mani Bhaumik's Code name God...

Anonymous said...

"RELIGION WITH0UT SCIENCE IS SENTIMENTALISM AND SCIENCE WITHOUT RELIGION IS FANATISM"
SRILA PRABHUPAD