| As a physician and researcher, I employ science to decipher human biology and treat disease. As an ethical person, I look to my medical ethical tradition as the touchstones of a moral professional and private life. Neither science nor the ethics need contradict the other; in fact, if one appreciates the essence of each, they can enrich each other in a person's life.
So, the question of obsolescence of an Allah/God (the state of being which occurs when a person, object, or service is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order.) is not a miscast, because science and a religious faith could not exist in separate realms. Science uses logic and experimental methods to measure and describe the material world. It yields knowledge about the workings of molecules and machines, mitosis and momentum. Science has no moral valence. It is neutral. DNA technology can craft a cure for a cancer or produce a weapon of bio-terrorism. It is only a person's application of science that takes on a moral dimension where ethics comes on the scene.
In that light, an atheist creates his or her own moral precepts in the absence of an Allah /God. A believer looks to religious texts for guidance in what was right and what was wrong when such texts were composed in ancient and medieval times. Right and wrong, for both, do not come from physics or chemistry or biology. Science does not instruct how to treat one's neighbor, whether black, brown or white in color, however, the science does prove that every human is made of the same flesh and thus creates en essential humanism. Science does instruct us how to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. The essential humanism of society-related science does raise the ethical considerations as to why it is wrong to murder, steal, bear false witness, and perhaps most difficult of all, subsume envy and covetousness. There may not be any ancient Ten Commandments in thermodynamics or molecular biology, but path to righteousness, charity and love have been deduced from Euclidean geometry and atomic physics. The truths of mathematics, biology, psychiatry, chemistry, and physics are not very different from the truths we seek in human behavior and human choices. The truths of science can be measured and experimentally verified and the truths of a moral life are matters of ethics—whether you are an atheist or a religious person.
The clash comes from the two extremes. Fundamentalist religious believers in the United States want to change the Constitution so that it includes injunctions about sex and prayer from the ancient and medieval times as one finds in the Bible. In the Middle East and in parts of Asia, their counterparts, the fundamentalist Muslims of one or the other sect, press for sharia, the socially backward and medieval Islamic proto-law, to prevail over a law-abiding liberal society. Atheists have their own fundamentalists who rightly characterize people of faith as naïve, infantile, and neurotic in their rituals, too irrational to live by the light of common sense and reason. The polemics of believers show an ignorance of science and what it offers to improve life ; the polemics of atheists, on the other hand, ignore the wisdom men collected while compiling their religious texts. The dogmatic religious believers seem threatened by diversity of reasoning and logic and wish to erase any doubt under a blanket of blind belief.
There is another way, a "third way" of articulating the benefits of science and the religious faith. On this middle ground, a person can hold two different sensibilities, two different types of thought, feeling, and action. Yes, there are times when a scientist like myself who may believe in God and equally be filled with doubt about such a God's existence, finds oneself in such a situation. But that should be expected. As the esteemed Protestant theologian Paul Tillich once opined, the basis of true faith is such doubt ; what a contradiction, a juggling with words !
In my own tradition, the rabbi, philosopher, and physician Maimonides, also known as the Rambam, embodied an apparent cognitive dissonance. He was a scholar of the Bible and Talmud while, at the same time, a scholar of scientific medical practice. He was a person of religious faith who rejected magic and sorcery as nonsense. He viewed the natural world as governed by laws familiar to us through physics and chemistry. But he also contended that each of us makes a personal decision about whether or not to believe in a fictional Allah/God. There is no need for mental gymnastics to generate a proof of Allah/God's existence; it is a futile exercise. God is axiomatic or not. Faith is not deduced but felt. Religion, at its best, becomes a vehicle to arrive at the good—the good for oneself, the good for others and for the world ; and at its worst the religion become a vehicle of evil, for oneself, for the others and for the whole world ; look at the religious wars and mas-murders all over the world.
Tolerance is actually a tenet of my ethical medical tradition. There is no need to conquer or erase differences in culture or perspective. The same tolerance should be found among atheists. They should not belittle or ridicule the fools who struggle to find meaning in life, to confront mystery, armed with a belief in a fictional Divine. Science does not threaten a rational faith, and a rational faith need not reject science. Neither will ever be obsolete.
------------------------------ ---- In the greater interest of civilization, all articles in this series may be reproduced or published in any language.
Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete ? Article 1:Necessarily, it does - says a physicist
<http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/humanist_international/ message/114> Articlw 2: Yes, of course - speaks a psychologist
<http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/humanist_international/ message/115> Article 3 : No, and yes - speaks a Christian Priest… ! <http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/humanist_international/ message/116> Article 4 : Absolutely - says an eminent scientist <http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/humanist_international/ message/117> Article 5 : Of course –responds a humanist philosopher.... <http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/humanist_international/ message/118> Article 6 : Not Really - says a biologist http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/120 Article 7 : Not but il should, argues an Atheist….. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/122 Article 8 : ? Not claims a priest….. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/123 Article 9: No, declares a rationalist Philosopher....!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/123 |
