Thanks for all who read my first post and gave comments. I will try to write a post based on your comments. But a topic on TV caught my attention, and thought will write about it.
World is celebrating the theory of evolution, its 150 th year.
All religions have their stories of creation, so how will they handle this? Does it tell that their faith is wrong, or can they accept the theory of evolution and still keep their faith.
Based on this, a TV presenator was questioning a religious person about the changes happening in religion. The question was based on the changes made in religion to accept discoveries that science bring forward. He was on the assumption that religion drastically reinvents themselves to be on par with scientific advance.
The questions he raised also made me think some points.
1. Do religions reinvent themselves ?
Yes, they do. They try to incorporate changes in society and technology into them.
2. Is this right?
Yes. They have to. If it is to keep up the moral aspect of people, it has to address the modern issues. When you live in a world of internet, you can not talk in terms of early civilization customs. But when this happens, be sure to do it in a proper way that does not turn up absurd. But the problem here is people can believe you are controlled by machines in a matrix, cloned by extra terrestials, but disbelieve that God created you. But why ? This is because we some times present before them things which can not be scientifically correct, and the reluctance to change when proved wrong. Rememeber the earth-centric theory.
3.Why this happens?
This may be because of the authorities and politics that enter religion. When religion moves away from real faith , and moves into a power struggle the world suffers, also the followers. Religions based on almost same faiths fight against each other. I have seen Indians and Pakistanis so friendly outside Asia. But the politicians want to keep them against each other so that they have a topic they can turn always to win elections. Is the same true in case of religious leaders ? Remember a leader who used to do the Moses stuff lately quoting words from God. I think the reluctance to change in religion comes from power struggles and unhealthy politics. Noway you can justify when you bless and send people to die. It is your brother against whom you are going to fight against. So it is unquestioning faith that is asked for here. But the unquestioning faith which should be directed towards God is demanded by mortal men. It is as good as keeping people illetrate. Religion has to honour the intelligence of man. This was put there by God for some special purpose. It is meant to ask questions. A man in his quest wil ask questions. But only religious dictators will stand against this.
4. Is science right ?
I do not think so. Science for that matter is not fool proof. How many theories have we changed and discarded ? The same problem you can see in science which religion faces, that people opposing the truth. They are of the belief that their theories are right- a blind hope. So science can evolve, but religion can not , is this right ? Science without religion is utter rubbish and dangerous. Before harnessing the power of atoms for peaceful use, we used it for military use. No wonder all new scientific advances happen in military, for first to test against your brother. Still no answer for reason of life.......... more hypotheses ..........When you dissect a smile and make it a mix of muscles and hormones, you forget the beauty.
Moral
Keep religion and politics separate. Do not try to mix science and religion. Do not institutionalize religion and oppose changes. There may be a unified theory, which will incorporate all these, but still the world is not ready for it.
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I am not sure in we should seperate science from religion. If all sciences either study or ultimately refer to the human being, why should religion, which functions at the most inimate part of human persons, should be seperated from science?
ReplyDeleteIf man is a complex being composed of body, mind, spirit, he needs to sustain needs of all these parts at the same time. Science helps him to meet the needs of his body and at times also the needs of the mind, and religion allows his spiritual needs to be fulfilled. Hence I think both science and religion should go hand in hand.
Ofcourse, I do not support the idea of politizing of religion.
First of all, if any religion claims to be the true religion, then by definition it must describe all reality, both physical and spiritual. It is both illogical and unwise to consider religion and science operating in mutually exclusive domains.
ReplyDeleteA dominant philosophy that holds sway many minds of the West is Naturalism; that the physical world is all that there is. This is partly responsible for this 'separation' of religion and science, in my opinion. In fact, until some 150 years back, theology was considered the queen of sciences in the West, because they believed if one does not understand God, the Ultimate Reality, how would he understand anything else? It is no accident that many of the outstanding scholars and scientists of the West were also ministers. Many of the famous universities in the West were established to train ministers and missionaries. The current mood in the West is clearly a departure from the soul of their civilization.
The religious person in the interview said that religions could invent itself. Does this mean that religions have to adjust their basic tenets of the faith? In that case the one true religion, truth by definition is exclusive, constantly changes itself too. Then, it cannot be true and changing at the same time, for truth does not change.
Earth-centric theory: one must not ignore that Copernicus was a Christian monk.
Do not make religion an establised institution? Does this mean that one's faith is purely a private matter and it must be brought into the public arena? So, one can believe or act according to his faith in private, but must conform to the society in public?
Keep religion and state is good, but this must not inhibit the public expression of religion, because one's faith is not purely a private matter because of the simple fact that we live in a society and we all have relations with most people around us.
A unified theory of everything? Well, Kurt Goedel's incompleteness theorem prohibits such a thing :). It just relates to the physical domain, but reality is not just physical and material, it extends beyond that into spiritual. Everybody comes with a bias and it is not bad to be biased. If a child and an adult saw a magician make something disappear, the child might believe that he really did so, while the adult knows that such a thing is not possible and the magician had a trick to make it possible. Here, the adult has the bias that making something disappear is just impossible and he views reality with those 'glasses'.