Religion of Science or Science of Religion

My upbringing has been with strong religious fundamentals but at the same time I was given the title as the future scientist (though I did not turn out to be one) in my school. Religion and Science never caused any conflict in my mind because for me one is water and the other oil. But as I grew up my education towards IT engineering kept me on a steady science path but my values and morals were always firmly religious. Against the normal belief that as one steps into adulthood the curiosity to know more dies, I contradict. I wanted to get all the questions answered. It dawned to me that the reason my nature has been as it now is, is because of a question that has always lingered in my mind and my inability of putting my finger on it all these years. This is what actually keeps the spirit in me alive. This is that “question”.

This is not the topic that has hardly been debated; in fact it’s the discussion that people from all classes of society have been having about over centuries. Some times its lightly spoken off over a cup of tea and shrugged off within a few seconds even before the cup dries up or it has been expressed with such conviction that few were ready to get convicted. The daring people who try hard to find the line and are brave to face the consequence what so ever are the ones who are adorned with grand titles by one team, while at the same time considered as outcasts or villains by the other. Galileo is an exemplary example. It’s because of these fantastic heroes of Science that humanity has achieved what we see all around us today. In the two hundred thousand years of human existence it’s only in the last few hundred years that such courageous people have changed the course of history.

I wonder sometimes is science the religion of the intellect class who have got all the questions that has troubled them, answered to satisfaction. Or is Science the white knight which is fighting the darkness of religion where the lesser intelligent mortals resort to as the final abode for their unanswered question.

Perhaps the craving inside of me to affirm which club I belong to at a subconscious level always has kept me thirsty to find the answers.

This physical world has always offered us unconditionally so much that almost all of it is taken for granted. Few of these gifts like the Sun, Moon and volcanoes were so beyond normal understanding and comprehension that folks from the religious clubs associated it with mysterious powers and gods. The science club members put their lives at stake to know what these are and why they all exist. The one remarkable difference between the two clubs is, when the scientist has the answers for one of the mysteries the folks from the “other” school of though have chased them with pitch forks and knives while the reverse has hardly ever happened.

A simple exercise to realise how little we know is to simply prefix a ‘why’ word to an existing fact. The answer to that must again follow the same process. At each step feel free to cross question the earlier answers. For example,

Q: Why is the Sun shining?  A: Nuclear reaction in the core.

Q: Why a nuclear reaction? A: There is enough mass which produced enough gravity, pressure and heat to start a chain reaction.

Q: Why was there enough mass? A: Before Sun came to life there was star which was much larger which exploded and gave off enough gasses which all accreted to form the critical mass.

Q: Why did the bigger star explode? A: Because it was too big and too hot.

Q: Will our Sun explode as well? …. And so on.

All these questions at just one heavily body, when one tries to apply this same methodology to every observable thing all around all the time then the number of questions that we do not know the answer to grow exponentially. That is the point when one decides which school of thought one should join. That can be the dawn of a new way to think about life, our purpose and how we fit in the grand scheme of things in this Universe. My belief is everyone has a role to play

The pace at which technology is racing ahead is unprecedented. In the four and a half billion years of Earth’s existence out of which two billion years it hosted life, only in the past two hundred thousand years have humans walked the grounds. In that duration it’s only in the last one hundred and fifty years human population has grown from just over a billion to seven billion. That’s all because of technology. If you spread this duration on a clock, it’s only in the penultimate two minutes did humans evolve and in the final few milliseconds has the entire demographics of species changed drastically. All thanks to our understanding of science.

On the other hand evolution is a constant process but is slow to catch up. In the past few thousand years of civilized existence of mankind, religion and belief in the Divine has played a significant role. The Rules of Darwinian theory does make room for such spiritual belief to make biological impact in the way our brain operates. Just like how the hatch-ling of a king cobra immediately devours the other eggs as its first instinct since birth. With such an evolutionary trajectory of human kind is the entire human race ready to make a sudden jump from faith to facts?

            Diving to the deep end to find answers to most of the questions might not result in success. It is a fact that in spite of intensive research by many scholarly scientists many of the questions still remains unanswered. Astronomers and Physicists have been enthusiastic in finding the details of the thirteen billion year history of this universe but what was before that, no one knows. Many theories are being speculated, but all if that is a “likely story”. Even a simple question as to why does few particles have mass has attracted the minds of genius physicists all over the world enough to spend millions in building the largest and the most expensive science experiment ( LHC). Surprisingly during the many days it took to write down these thoughts is when the news of the illusive particle that establishes the existence of a Higgs field is made known to the world, yet this hard core science fact has got a an ironic connection to Religion; “God Particle”

            In spite of all this multi billion dollar research, it still partially answers about the four percent of the observable mass in the universe where the rest twenty three percent of Dark matter and the Seventy three percent of Dark energy has still not been explained. The survivability of the faith in Religion depends on this void. Noticing the current generation whose inclination is gently moving away from Divine beliefs, in a couple of decades the transition will be complete.

Earlier this year I registered myself to a course; “Certification of Planetary Science and Astronomy” with Open University of UK. It is one year course and the first six months has been challenging with assignments that kept me awake till four A.M on weekends and exams for which I woke up at four A.M for a month to prepare. The word Hectic would be an understatement, but it has not squashed my yearning to know more. Now the decision has been made with my consciousness to go beyond and understand the natural Science ground up.

Given the progression of science will there be a point in future where religion ceases to exist? Which also sparks of the question that once the last ray of religion is wiped off from humanity will sanity and emotions survive in our hearts? I might be reading too far into the future where a one degree inaccuracy in reading now will vastly change the predictions and expectations in the future. But all I am can do now is gather knowledge that is available for free and assimilate that. Make sense of it all and help my next generation with the simple questions like why the moon is hanging up in the sky? Or who is god? , Might be that is my purpose of existence or is there anything else? Does God know what it is or will science provide me with the answer?