 | The text below this notice was generated by a computer, it still needs to be checked for errors and corrected. If you would like to help, view the original document by clicking the PDF scans along the right side of the page. Click the edit button at the top of this page (notepad and pencil icon) or press Alt+Shift+E to begin making changes. When you are done press "Save changes" at the bottom of the page. |
CHAPTER VIII
Science and Religion
The steady, victorious advance of science has tended not only to technologize but also to sccularizc the life of humanity. This has proved an advantage from one point of view, in that it has freed man’s mind and man’s creative activities from the chains and trammels of religious creed and tradition. Human beings are no longer burned at the stake for proclaiming scientific truth.
But the secularization of all human activities and affairs on the planet has been fraught also with tragic consequences. Man is a being—as diflerentiated from animals—with capacity for spiritual perception and spiritual motivation. Science, detouring the life of humanity from these precious and necessary goals, has almost completely stultified man’s spiritual powers—so far as daily living is concerned. The result is a secular civilization of shallow roots and sour soil; what Sorokin describes as a sensate culture; the kind of civilization which Toynbee finds, from his study of history, always to have culminated in collapse.
And despite all the efforts of religionists to infuse life with spiritual zeal and understanding, science continues to increase its devastating hold upon the human mind and soul. For science now controls the training of mental powers and the forming of human intelligence throughout our vast and powerful educational system.
Indeed there is every sign that the whole world is growing not less but more secular daily; not more spiritual but less spiritual as the years pass by. Modernism, with its magic and magnetic power of applied science and technologization, is revolutionizing old cul S5
[Page 59]
56 Tomorrow and Tomorrow
lures, sweeping away ancestral moorings and leading the peoples of the world adrift on a sea which becomes more stormy and dangerous with each ensuing year.
Traditional religion has nowhere in the world proved its ability to stem this vast flood of scientific secularization. On the contrary the enormous influence of Science —with its power to both know and do, to combat ignorance and inertia, and to create higher standards of living—is devastating the vitality of all the world’s ancient religions. Not one of these—not even Christianity, the religion under which this modern science has arisen ——is able to regain its waning influence and power of motivation.
To recapture the imagination and character of man, religion must first make terms with science; not by surrendering to science one jot of truth or principle, but by restating spiritual truth in terms compatible with the known and accepted truths of science. There must be a reconciliation between science and religion. Both are needed by humanity.
About the time when theologians of the “enlightened” west were battling with scientists over Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” and with geology’s findings that millions of years and not six days were absorbed in the creation of the earth, a clarion call of reason and clarification sounded from the Near East. It was unheedcd, overwhelmed by the clamor and excitement of the contentions. Bahá’u’lláh made the reconciliation of science and religion one of the cardinal points of the Bahá’í teachings. He upheld the authority of science. “Knowledge is like unto wings for the being of man, and is as a ladder for ascending. To acquire knowledge is incumbent on all, but knowledge
[Page 60]
Science and Religion 5 7
of those sciences which may profit the people of the earth, and not of such sciences as begin in mere words and end in mere words. The possessors of sciences and arts have a great right among the people of the world.” That the progress of the race was dependent upon the aspect of truth revealed by science and as well as by the aspect of truth revealed by religion—was unequivocably upheld.
In 1912 Bahá’u’lláh’s son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, told an American audience that science and religion were the two wings upon which civilization must fly.
“We may think of science as one wing and religion
as the other; a bird needs two wings for flight, one alone
would be useless. Any religion that contradicts science,
or that is opposed to it, is only ignorance. . . . Religion
which consists only of rites and ceremonies of prejudice
is not the Truth. . . . Much of the discord and disunion
of the world is created by these man-made oppositions
and contradictions. If religion were in harmony with
science . . . much of the hatred and bitterness now
bringing misery to the human race would be at an
end. I say to you: Weigh carefully in the balance of
reason and science everything that is presented to you
as religion. If it passes this test, then accept it, for it
is Truth. If, however, it does not so conform, then reject it, for it is ignorance. It is impossible for Religion
to be contrary to science, even though some intellects
are too weak or too immature to understand truth. God
made religion and science to be the measure, as it
were, of our understanding. Take heed that you neglect
not such a wonderful power. Weigh all things in this
balance. Put all your beliefs into harmony with science,
there can be no opposition, for truth is one. When
religion, shorn of its superstitions, traditions and unintelligent dogmas, shows its conformity with science,
then will there be a great unifying, cleansing force in
the world, which will sweep before it all wars, disagree
[Page 61]
58 Tomorrow and Tomorrow
ments, discards and struggles, and then will mankind be united in the power of the love of God.”
In promulgating the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh to the West, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá frequently stressed the point that for the first time in history the founder of a major religion championed the cause of science and clarified the interdependence of each in the path of progress. “Mankind hath been created to carry forward an ever advancing civilization,” stated Bahá’u’lláh. When speaking at Leland Stanford University in 1912, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá called science “the illumination of the world of humanity.” He stated:
“The greatest attainment in the world of humanity has ever been scientific in nature. It is the discovery of the realities of things. . . . The highest praise is due to men who devote their energies to science; and the noblest center is a center wherein the sciences and arts are taught and studied. Science ever tends to the illumination of the world of humanity. . . . All human discoveries were once secrets and mysteries sealed and stored up in the bosom of the material universe until the mind of man which is the greatest of divine eflulgencies penetrated them and made them subservient to his will and purpose.”
As in all conflicts, a mutual understanding of the role of each contestant would eliminate the struggle for power over men’s minds. If science needs guidance for the fruits of its work, religion can supply that guidance by its influence. If religion understands physical well—being and an ever-expanding knowledge of our environment to be part of the Creator’s plan for human evolution. it can look to science to nurture that wellbeing.
[Page 62]
Science and Religion 59
George Sarton, professor of Science History at Harvard University, stated the need for this wider understanding comprehensively and beautifully in his book “The Life of Science.”
“The greatest story which cries to be told is that of the rhythm of the mutual inter-relations between science, art and religion. The story is very difficult to tell because it is not a story of progress like the history of science, but of vacillations and vicissitudes, harmony followed by chaos, beauty mixed with horrors . . . the story of man’s sensitiveness to the fundamental problems and the main values of life.”
In delineating the four epochs of the history of science, Sarton brings out in astonishing manner how strong the rhythm has been. The foundations of science were laid for us by the Mesopotamian civilizations, whose scholars and scientists were their priests; and to them we owe the foundations of medicine, navigation. astronomy and some mathematics. The second development came through the Greeks, as taught in the traditional way in our schools and colleges. The third stage of development, however, is to be credited to the meteoric rise of Islam, whose Abbassid caliphs drank avidly at the fountain of the ancient Persian and Hindu, as well as Greek sources of knowledge. For nearly four hundred years Islam led the scientific world as from one end of Islam to the other, from Spain to India, the great body of past knowledge was exchanged between her scholars and the torch carried forward with new discoveries. Scholars of Christendom from about the eleventh century, were mainly occupied for over two hundred years in re-translating from Arabic into Latin the same knowledge that had been denied them when the church closed its doors on pagan Greece. Thus Islam paved the way for the Renaissance, which in turn led to science’s fourth great development in our modern western world.
[Page 63]
60 Tomorrow and Tomorrow
In two out of the four epochs it was the stimulus of religion that fostered science.
4
As if anticipating the needs of future generations born in a golden age of science, Bahá’u’lláh left a statement concerning God which seems keyed to the understanding of a scientific mind.
“Unity in its true meaning is that God should be realized as the one power which animates and dominates all things which are but the manifestations of its energy.”
The careful avoidance here of any definition of God is striking. The words are “should be realized,” as if, envisioning the great scientific age dawning, all scientific exploration of that energy could be encompassed entirely within that realization. For the words “all things” include mental energy and the vast field of man’s inspired intellectual accomplishments.
The statement does not stop there. It is prefaced by the words “Unity in its true meaning is.” What unity? Unity of thought between science and faith on truth, obviously. Also unity between religious systems. whose basic teachings could find only confirmation in the statement. With basic unity realizable between religions on their most fundamental point—the existence of God—and unity on basic truth established between science and religion, we arrive at an approach to unity in all other fields.
Like the British mathematician who confessed to
me that if he had not faith in a marvellous moral order
in the universe life would not be worth living, there
are millions of intelligent people who find church creeds
incredible, but long for the bread of a reasonable faith.
Even an agnostic scientist, however. would find sympa
[Page 64]
Science and Religion 6]
thetic insight into his attitude of mind in many state-ments of Bahá’u’lláh concerning the Deity and concerning the utter inability of the human mind to comprehend God.
Bahá’u’lláh reasonably points out that we do not know even the inner reality of our own selves nor of our fellowmen. We know what makes us tick physically—at least, we almost know——and our investigations into the human mind and lately the study of psychosomatic medicine have opened up the beginnings of our understanding of emotions and mental processes. But there are realms of consciousness in us far beyond that: and we do not even know the wellspring of the spark of physical life.
Our researches into psychology have started us on an understanding of what Bahá’u’lláh terms “characteristics and attributes.” The characteristics or attributes of all things are the standards by which we recognize them, including ourselves. This, then, would be the only manner in which we might apprehend the existence of the Deity—the evidences of divine attributes. Thus that theology professor was correct who accepted the majesty, beauty and grandeur of creation as an evidence of the energy of that “single power that animates and dominates all things.”
Truth, wisdom, love, mercy, knowledge, etc., are likewise attributes of that Power, infinitely greater than any one human being or all humanity together, but in which we all share and understand as something nearer the divine and far beyond our physical, animal being.
These characteristics and their inspiration for the human mind and soul are the study of what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá referred to as “divine science” as distinct from material science. Here is another point of reconciliation between science and religion. Just as humanity has benefited immensely from the intelligence of the
[Page 65]
62 Tomorrow and Tomorrow
scientist, so the scientist will find protection for his work by harnessing his intelligence to this “one power which animates and dominates all things.”
Faith in the divine attributes of truth, wisdom, love, mercy, knowledge, beauty, power, and the endeavor to practice them, enabled us to build the ladder of our ascent from jungle man to where we are today.
This is the only “creed” Bahá’u’lláh taught:—to resuscitate these attributes in each individual conscience and to bring their healing power to the cure of our maladjustments, our prejudices, our ignorance, for the establishment of that unified, peaceful, one—world society which is the only possible step forward that the march of human progress can take on this planet.
What quarrel could be left between science and religion on such a basis for active faith?
