Science and religion: Will it blend?

December 4th, last day at my first international science conference.

I am waiting for my uncle to pick me up from the university, when I overhear an interesting conversation between a student from the university and a guest.

The student says "My family is a family of pundits (Hindu scholars of religious scripture). We've been pundits for the last ten generations, and I'm the first to break the tradition and venture into science. My father's never impressed with my work. He just says "His (God's) power still holds, where science reaches it's limits." I don't think he'll ever appreciate what I do."

Similarly, my uncle asked me about stem cells at the dinner table that night and after listening to me talk for the next 10 minutes, he laughed it off ,saying "Great! But I'm not impressed until they can make a soul."

My neighbour's daughter, 12 years old, asks me "Our theology teacher at school says that science is a bad thing. And learning science is wrong. Do you think so?"

My reply, of course, was that her dear teacher is wrong. And if she is right, she should immediately stop using anything that is the product of science. Which, I know for a fact, isn't possible.

So, are science and religion compatible?

The answer is not simple.

So, what's the issue?

Religion has long been portrayed as the enemy of science and reason, supposedly due to lack of evidence of a higher power, and the failure of religion to solve mankind's problems.

This idea of incompatibility between science and religion, I believe, arose in the West prominently due to famous incidents such as the case of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for being a heretic. His fault? To conjecture that the stars are like our sun, each having their own planets, and that the universe is infinite.

Galileo Galilei is famous for being labeled a heretic by the church for advocating the heliocentric model of the solar system, rather than the Aristotelian geocentric model.

The Muslim world, once flourishing in the sciences, went downhill after the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, who claimed that falsafa (which literally meant philosophy, but included logic, mathematics and physics) are fundamentally incompatible with Islam. The Islamic world hasn't recovered from that downfall, ever since.

This scares the scientists, who believe that religious indoctrination necessarily implies the loss of one's scientific inquisitiveness. Which is not necessarily so.

The situation is very similar to the West being so afraid of Islamic terrorism, they began to abuse and insinuate Muslims who are looked at with suspicion for no fault of their own.

The theophobia associated with scientific thought these days, is disturbing.

To me, my religious beliefs are a very, very personal thing. And I do not bring them up unless I need to. It is the same with science. I do not try to mix the two aspects of my life. My spiritual life is my own, and I believe no one has the right to question my belief in anything, Just as I do not question theirs.

As I've mentioned earlier, I believe we are all a collection of belief systems, and so, I believe I cannot and should not force my opinions on those who might have a different worldview.

My suggestion?

Atheists condemning and ostracising religious people as non-scientific based solely on their religious beliefs is ridiculous. Of all the people, I believe scientists should be the ones to have an open mind, and be more tolerant towards different belief systems, regardless of whether they appeal to you or not.

Nevertheless, I also believe that religious leaders from all major religions should embrace science, just as they have embraced it's various offerings. And I encourage religious people to learn science, even if it is to know the mind of God.

I'll end with a quote from one of my favourite characters, Mr. Rzykruski from the film Frankenweenie. This quote beautifully explains the reason behind the rejection of science by various religious fundamentalists.

Pretty neat, right?

The Pale Blue Dot.

Something beautiful that I wanted to share with you guys.

We are so self-absorbed that we seem to forget how insignificant we are.

To remind yourself of the humbling grandness of the cosmos, we need to take a look around us.

The picture, famously known as the "Pale Blue Dot", is a picture of Earth as taken by the spacecraft Voyager 1, six billion kilometers from Earth.

Can you see it? Me and my crush, in one picture. Yay!

All we can see, is a pale blue dot. It might seem like a dream, to imagine that life exists, in all it's glory, on that tiny speck of dust in the vastness of the cosmos.

The above video has an audio clip from the audio-book version of Carl Sagan's book Pale Blue Dot, published in 1994.

For those who cannot watch the video, I'm providing the text below, although I would suggest that you watch the video.

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1997 reprint, pp. xv–xvi

Your mind's fingerprint. (The uniqueness of one's set of belief systems)

First of all, I'm sorry for being away for so long. I was up to my neck in a lot of things. Basically, I did bite off more than I could chew. Also, the cluster headaches only make it worse.

But, I've decided that I'll start blogging regularly, with two posts every week. One on Sunday and one on Wednesday. 

Anyways, this post is not going to be a long explanation about why I was away for so long. 

This post is basically about a conversation I had with a friend of mine. I wanted to know your thoughts regarding the issue.

Well, we started out with a conversation, and with some hot tea and chocolate cake to go with it, it turned into a discussion about human behaviour and how we perceive things.

I suggested that we humans are nothing but a thought. And we are nothing more than a set of biases and preferences. And we're a collection of belief systems. 

All belief systems, combined, give us a unique pattern, something like a fingerprint. Unique for every single being on this planet. No matter how alike two people are, there will be certain differences in their approach to a common subject. Which makes their set of belief systems unique.

These belief systems, I believe are dynamic. But the transition from a set of belief systems to another, will further lead to a unique set of beliefs that is still unique to the person and the same exact set of beliefs does not exist elsewhere, I believe. 

Now, all of these belief systems, although rigid in nature, can be flexible and subject to change over time when subjected to influences. Among these belief systems, there is perhaps no other belief system that is as rigid as religion. 

I believe, for example,  for a non-religious belief system A and religious belief system B, to make an effective change in system A, it is easier to influence change when it is by-passed via system B, implying that religious belief systems hold influence over other belief systems, and the easiest way to alter someone's belief system, is to give your argument a religious edge.

This might seem like a good explanation as to why or how certain terrorist organisations convince people to do ridiculously stupid stuff. They alter their belief systems about life and death, and war, by using religion as a tool.

And we both agreed, that to control the masses, there is no tool that is as effective as religion.

Now, to test my idea, I sent out ridiculous random occurrences cloaked as miracles to religious friends on social media, and I didn't even need to convince them, many of them readily accepted the validity of my claim and praised God for the supposed miracle. 

Anyhow, I should also mention that many of my friends were smart enough to see through the whole thing, and instead explain to me why the claims I made were not miracles at all.

 This further strengthened my belief in the idea.

Anyways, I'd love to know what you guys think about it.

Does a unique fingerprint of the mind exist, although dynamic?

Why do religious beliefs have such influence over our other belief systems?

What are your thoughts about using religion as a tool to influence people effectively?

What other belief systems do you think have influence over other belief systems?

I would love to know your thoughts on the subject, and I'm waiting for your responses. 

You can reply here, in the comments section, or tweet me on twitter.

I'm also on instagram, ask.fm, kik and snapchat.

My username on all platforms is SyedAsif93.

See ya!