Science and religion

Moral knowledge and values can not be derived purely from facts and logic.

Galileo was forced by the Catholic Church to recant his discovery that the Earth moves around the sun; otherwise, he would be burnt as a heretic. This battle between science and the church continues to be significant to this day. Science operates on the material domain, while religion deals with the spiritual. These are complementary and the two developed harmoniously within the Islamic tradition. In contrast, the conflict between science and religion in Europe has led to many misunderstandings.

Peaceful coexistence is possible when the two stick to their respective domains. Science acknowledges that it has nothing to say about valour, dignity, sacrifice or love. Excellence of conduct and pathways to spiritual progress lie within the religious domain. Similarly, scientific and technological issues lie outside the principal concerns of religion, which teaches us the meaning of life and how to be human. In the Islamic tradition, Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) accepted the use of foreign technology (the ditch from Persia) for use in battle. In another incident, he stated that revealed knowledge did not cover methods for planting date trees. Many Islamic source materials point to the separation of the two spheres of knowledge.

The persecution of scientists by the church created a desire for revenge and ruled out peaceful coexistence in Europe. Intellectuals asserted that science was the only source of certain knowledge; everything else — in particular, religious knowledge — was ignorance and superstition. Philosopher David Hume argued that all books of religion should be burnt: “Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” The attempt was made to make religion redundant by deriving morality and principles of good conduct on scientific and logical grounds. However, in the early part of the twentieth century, it became clear to many that moral knowledge and values could not be derived purely from facts and logic. Morals, values and spirituality are beyond the scope of the scientific method. Since science became accepted as the only valid source of knowledge, this led to a gradual abandonment of morality. In her book The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality, Harvard Professor Julie Reuben has shown how universities in the US abandoned the moral mission of building the character of students and confined their attention to the provision of technical knowledge. Because of western hegemony, the vast majority of educated people go through this type of education.

Over 50 years of abandonment of character building as a central component of education has led to tragic consequences. Previously sources of social ostracism, infidelity and illegitimate children have now become socially acceptable. Unwed mothers commit infanticide by abandoning nearly 12,000 newborns every year in the US.

When asked about the effects of the atom bomb, physicist Oppenheimer first described the brilliant light show that would result and then the carnage in terms of human lives. It was graduates of the top universities in the US who created strategies for war, leading to the wholesale slaughter of millions of civilians in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the tragic consequences of teaching physics without ethics have become clear, many voices have urged the need to reintegrate morality and values into the fabric of human knowledge. As Iqbal stated, even the memory of Islamic traditions has been lost to contemporary Muslims during centuries of colonisation. Among these lost traditions are tolerance, racial equality and respect for all sources of knowledge. As even secular historians like Arnold Toynbee have acknowledged, the revival of these traditions is sorely needed by contemporary societies.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 1^st, 2011.