On the heels of philosopher A.C. Grayling’s comparison between science and religion, as discussed in the book THE FORM OF THINGS, ESSAYS ON LIFE, IDEAS AND LIBERTY IN THE 21st CENTURY, I want to discuss the relationship between science and religion from a more historical point of view. But one must take a look once again at what it was that Grayling said.
According to Grayling, religion is the ‘science’ of antiquity. Consequently, prayer and fasting can be seen as primitive ways of trying to control the outcome of our lives, but is today seen as opposed to technologies used derived from science. Grayling also makes the statement in his book that both religion and science is used by humans to try and make sense of who we as humans are and where we come from and where we are going. This conclusion that Grayling draws is not totally absurd. On the face of it, it makes sense. But is religion REALLY a primitive form of science?
Religion and science undoubtedly has some things in common. As Grayling points out, both can be seen as a vehicle for change, a means to influence the world around us. Both are also used at times to try and determine where we come from and where we are going. But it seems as if Grayling’s view of both religion as well as science is in some ways very primitive. I argue that most sciences very rarely concerns itself with where we as humans come from. In fact it is only a very few that tries to build thát puzzle, despite the fact that mays or perhaps most ‘sciences’ produce pieces for the puzzle, simply by being sciences. This is of course so because of the fact that science is not an OBJECT of study but rather a WAY of studying. The same cannot be said of religion. We can study language and politics and nature and yes, even God and anything else that can come to mind scientifically, but it sounds strange to say that we ‘study’ these things religiously. We can look at nature thru the eyes of a believer, but can we look at nature thru the eye of a scientist? Suppose we can, but what does it mean to look scientifically at nature? It means nothing. A geologist will focus on the rock formations of an area, a biologist on the plants and a linguist will listen to the sound of the languages the people speak while a palaeontologist will want to dig next to the archaeologist, the one more interested in old bones, the other in ancient artefacts.
Religion is no ancient form of science. But religious believers is often caught up in an ancient vocabulary when they discuss their god(s). This is very true of Christianity. If you ask any Christian if one can say that “God is too great for the human mind to grasp or for a language to describe”, the overwhelming majority of them will agree. Yet when Christians speak of God, they will often refer to “the Father”. This is of course, not because they think that God is their biological father, but because to Christians, God is very similar to a father. This is called a metaphor.
Science is much more comparable to philosophy. To add to the above argument, it is not very truthful to argue that religion always functions as a way to try and understand the origin of the world and mankind. Today, many religious folk does not read their holy texts as pure history, especially amongst quite a number of Christians this seems to be so. In fact, reading the Bible as history seems to be a modern development in any case. There are strong arguments to be made that the ancients knew for example that the Genesis creation story was no pure history. But what exactly religion IS, why it is around is perhaps one of the many questions that science seemingly has not answered yet. But one thing is certain, science is a METHOD of inquiry. Science that unique objects of study and detects from it ‘rules’ that is used for generalisations. Philosophy works in the same way, but whereas science always relies on TEST results and independent verification, philosophers relies more on logic. Thus, it is rather PHILOSOPHY that is the science of antiquity. Religion is no METHOD of studying the world. One can, as mentioned already, look at the world thru the eyes of a religious person, just like one can look at the world thru the eye of a geologist or a linguist etc.
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