Science vs Religious Beliefs

With the message of peace this is Cemendtaur



I have gathered an interesting crowd on Facebook. In one of my recent posts I alluded that the religious beliefs we hold sacred today have been passed on to us through several generations--believing in them is not only believing in the ‘beliefs’ we hold true, but also believing that the original message has been conveyed unblemished, generations after generations.

One of my Facebook ‘friends’ did not like the thought. He wrote that the belief in the sanctity of the message through centuries is not unique to religion; the same happens in the field of science.  No one alive today has met Mr. Newton, but we still believe in his theories.  Reding this response, I knew how confused this man was about science.



We should understand that Science is not about respect of anyone or their ideas.  Science is about brutal honesty, about criticism, about raising questions, about being doubtful of any presented theory.  The scientific approach is diametrically opposite to religious beliefs. The students of science do not respect Newton because they blindly believe in the laws of motion he discovered.  They admire Newton because they find those laws to be true.  Two centuries after Newton died, human beings were able to send rockets in outer space by calculating the escape velocity using the Newtonian Laws.  Those calculations would have been still correct without knowing anything about the man who gave us those mathematical equations.



Unlike religion, science is on auto-pilot; it keeps correcting its course. Here new theories debunk old ones, and no one raises an eyebrow. When Einstein challenged Newtonian Physics for velocities approaching the speed of light, no Newton fan got offended.



Before the scientific method took roots, the world was a magical place where things happened without any reason.  The modern world is different; it is a world of cause and effect.  Before the era of science began, any unexplained phenomenon could be written off as a divine act or a satanic mischief.  Not anymore.  Today, even a staunchly Muslim country like Indonesia is not willing to call the recent Lion Air plane crash as the will of God; the investigators are trying to figure out why an almost brand-new Boeing airplane went down.

Science does not need any verification from any belief system.  On the other hand, we always find religious people trying to justify their faith through science.  Pursue science if you are curious about the physical world.  For things you cannot see, or are beyond the reach of your five senses, keep believing in whatever religious ideas you believe in.



This is it for today.  Hope to see you next time.