The Need to Bridge the Distance between Religion and Science

By Naseer Ahmed, New Age Islam 18 February 2023 A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous. Humans Are Vulnerable To Self-Deception, Flights Of Fancy And Jumping To Conclusions. The Fact That The Early Philosophers Displayed Such Behaviour Is The Reason Why Religion And Philosophy Parted Ways In The 11th Century. ------- The splitting of education into religious and secular is recent and goes back about hundred and fifty years. The earliest schools, madrassas, monasteries and Pathshalas taught both religious and secular subjects. The earliest scientists were priests, monks, rishis and religious scholars. What started the pursuit of science was the belief that the universe is the product of God who is perfect in knowledge and wisdom, who created Adam and his progeny, and gave them the mind to understand all the secrets of heaven and earth. The 17th-century astronomer, Johannes Kepler said, "God created us after His own image so that we could share in His own thoughts." Never have truer words been spoken. The pursuit of science, philosophy and logic, however, easily makes a person lose his mental balance and makes him think that he has understood it all. He then begins to look down upon the revelations as of no consequence or relevance. A little knowledge is dangerous. Humans are vulnerable to self-deception, flights of fancy and jumping to conclusions. The fact that the early philosophers displayed such behaviour is the reason why religion and philosophy parted ways in the 11th century. This was after a battle of wits between the Persian philosopher-theologian Muḥammad al-Ghazali and the Avicennian School of early Islamic philosophy. Imam Ghazali wrote a book titled “The Incoherence of the Philosophers” (Tahāfut al-Falāsifah in Arabic) in which he denounced Muslim philosophers Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, and Al-Farabi inspired by Greek philosophers for their philosophy which contradicted Islam. Imam Ghazali was dramatically successful in discrediting the philosophers and this was a turning point in the ascendance of the Asharite School of theology. The philosophers hit back. Ibn Rushd (Averroes) wrote a refutation of Al-Ghazali's work entitled “The Incoherence of the Incoherence” (Tahāfut al-Tahāfut) in which he defends the doctrines of the philosophers and criticizes al-Ghazali's own arguments. This text was not as well received by the wider Islamic audience. The reason is easy to see. The philosophers contradicted the letter of the Quran. No. What the Philosophers said Quran/Ghazali 1. The universe always existed and will continue to exist Ghazali wrote that God created the world in time and just like everything in this world time will cease to exist as well, but God will continue to exist. 2. The human soul is a self-sustaining substance that is neither a body nor an accident nor can it be annihilated There is no such thing as a soul according to the Quran. Read: The Seemingly Unanswerable Question That Religion Raised. 3. Bodily resurrection will not take place in the hereafter, and only human souls are resurrected. They therefore denied the accompanying pleasures of Paradise or the pains of Hellfire. We will be recreated in body and in every detail write upto our unique fingerprints. The Muttaqin (sincere in following religion) will enjoy the pleasures of paradise and the evil doers will suffer the pains of Hellfire. 4. Disruption of causality is impossible which means there can be no miracles Al-Ghazali wrote that when fire and cotton are placed in contact, the cotton is burned directly by God rather than by the fire, a claim which he defended using logic in Islamic philosophy. He explained that because God is usually seen as rational, rather than arbitrary, his behaviour in normally causing events in the same sequence (i.e., what appears to us to be efficient causation) can be understood as a natural outworking of that principle of reason, which we then describe as the laws of nature. Properly speaking, however, these are not laws of nature but laws by which God chooses to govern his own behaviour (his autonomy, in the strict sense) – in other words, his rational will. With this concept, miracles are possible The Ill-Effects of the Religious Scholars Keeping Away From Science Imam Ghazali has been a huge influence. While on the first three points, the philosophers have been proved to have been in error and on the fourth point Imam Ghazali cannot be said to be in error, but his framing of the response in the form of radical divine immanence in the natural world may have been one of the reasons that the spirit of scientific inquiry withered in Islamic lands. If God is actively involved in everything that happens, then a prayer to God will do the job is what people will tend to think. This is exactly what Muslims have believed and are therefore found wanting in making the required effort to achieve their ends. Science as a discipline can study what is observable and measurable. God and the Unseen are therefore out of its scope which is a good thing. If Allah does not change His ways, those ways can be postulated as the laws of nature, physics or human behaviour as the case may be. The Quran says Allah does not change His ways which means there is no scope for miracles but the foolish among the religious believe in miracles because they have not studied science and lack its discipline. Belief in pre-determination has kept Muslims backward. I have deliberately dealt with this subject in a provocative manner by asking the question “Was Muhammad (PBUH) pre-destined to be the seal of the Prophets?” and showed that the answer is in the negative with the help of the relevant verse in the Quran. This proves that pre-determination has its limits and that the choices that we make also shape our destiny. This is covered in my article: The Importance of Understanding Correctly, the Attributes of Allah – Pre-destination and the question, ‘Was Muhammad (pbuh) Pre-Destined To Be The Seal Of The Prophets?’ – Part Three Not only do the choices we make shape our destiny but nature is inherently probabilistic at the micro level while at the macro level, it may be more predictable. If it were not so there would be precisely one sperm per ejaculate and only if it is meant to impregnate. However, a man is considered to have a low sperm count if he has fewer than 39 million sperm per ejaculate. The chance of getting the partner pregnant decreases with decreasing sperm counts while only one sperm does the job and no two sperms are identical meaning which sperm out of the more than 39 million sperm does the job will determine precisely what the baby will inherit. So, there goes the theory of pre-determination out of the window. You have come into existence against extremely heavy odds and the chances that you never came into existence were infinitely greater. This holds equally for the prophets. Nobody was meant to be exactly what they are or were. Science and the Quran Are Converging Many of the verses in the Quran about our world were enigmatic because science had not caught up with the mysteries of creation. Some were not understood and others misunderstood. The scientific discoveries in the last couple of hundred years have made science converge with what the Quran has said on a number of subjects. Science has helped us understand the Quran better without undermining it. The following article deals with the subject of the creation of the Universe, and how science confirms the possibility of the end of the world (Qayamat) and Resurrection which is a certainty according to the Quran: The Quranic Truths of Qayamat and Resurrection The History of mankind according to science and the Quran also converge and are discussed in my article: A Brief History of Mankind The following article shows how science has helped us better understand some of the verses of the Quran Light upon Light The following article shows that explicit knowledge which we find in science was important even for the prophets to strengthen their belief which is why Allah showed them some of the phenomena which were then mysterious to man: Faith and the Importance of Explicit Knowledge There are many other subjects on which science has converged with the Quran and science has helped us understand the Quran better which should have made the religious scholars embrace science. What Is Keeping Religion And Science Apart? So, what keeps them apart still? The fact that Muslims who have pursued science have generally veered towards atheism and those who haven’t, have a very shallow understanding of their religion and cannot bridge the gap and on the contrary, have helped keep the two apart. This is discussed in my articles: Should Science And Religion Be Kept Separate? Dr Abdus Salam, Science, the Big Bang Theory of Creation, and the Quran Look For the Quran in Science but Never Look For Science in the Quran Another factor that keeps the two apart is that the atheists among the scientists have carried on a relentless attack on religion. This subject was dealt with in my article: Is There A Rational Basis For The Atheists To Oppose Religion? The atheist scientists have no ground to stand on. Their hollow scientific pretensions will be dealt with in my next article. ----- A frequent contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Naseer Ahmed is an Engineering graduate from IIT Kanpur and is an independent IT consultant after having served in both the Public and Private sector in responsible positions for over three decades. He has spent years studying Quran in-depth and made seminal contributions to its interpretation. URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-science/religion-science-allah-quran/d/129134 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism