I spent two of my best hours today watching 'Angels & Demons' ...the experience still giving me goose bumps as I write this...
The age-old debate of Science vs. Religion.
How do you explain the existence of one to another?
How to explain the co-existence of both? And for how long ??
As the mysteries of one century become the logic of the next - one may say it’s a losing battle for Religion but then look around you...the faith in the Faith is stronger than ever!!
Karl Marx wondered (and wondered aloud) if religion was opium of the masses...which may have led few of us to question the need for religion. Isn't the world a much simpler place to live? When all the phenomena stand perfectly rationalized? When the miracles of old world are nothing but scientific wonders waiting to be discovered? And then why do we need the religion to sedate us, delude us providing illusions of an existence that life certainly isn't! Isn't science just the perfect answer for the rationalists amongst us? Almost like an antidote for religion, isn't it?
But then how do you explain the faith? ..the belief that ran across the world for centuries in one form or other. Yes, blaming the Pope and his Vatican running like a smoothly functioning corporation selling us hope, faith, peace and respect towards that one Big Guy sitting up there; is a very tempting option. But then is religion nothing more than the biggest con job that mankind ever faced?
In the closing scene of ‘Angels & Demons’, Cardinal Saverio Mortati says something so profound that it almost explains the age-old fallacies of religion. Almost. He says, 'Religion is flawed only because man is flawed.'
Religion and Science. Yes, both are outcomes of Man's imagination and creativity. Both man-made; yet so different - one appeals to the heart and the other to the mind. It’s up to us to choose - heart over mind or mind over heart. Religion has made blunders in the past - the propagators of religion can almost share a bench with Hitler in hell for their atrocities and impositions. We still pay for it and would continue to do so for ages to come. But science functions no better. Its blunders are going to be the blunders of mankind in the future.
And may be..just may be..when man is tired of science one day - he will look back and seek solace in religion as we do now seeking solace in science from the misgivings of religion. Is this why they are meant to co-exist? To offer man some respite when he has had enough of the other? Well, who knows..Maybe.
When Karl Marx said, "Religion is the opium of masses," one might wonder if he was asking us wean ourselves from it. May be not! For a man who learnt from the sufferings of others - maybe he found the key to the existence and sustenance of religion. May be he found a reason for religion in man's life. In the full context his words were:
“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.” (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.)
How difficult this mortal human life would be if not for the illusory happiness that Marx talks about! How would life be if all things stood perfectly well explained and rationalized! ‘The Logic’ would then be our God and we all devoid of any hope or fear. (On second thoughts – Why does mankind always need someone/something to look up to? We remove God and replace it by Logic but the truth remains we replace it. But then again, it’s a better place to be – the last time one race made the others look up to it – it nearly wiped out the ‘others’!)
So are we saying that a flawed religion is better than none at all? Of course, it would be same as a flawed science (we are moving towards it) better than none at all. And since the situation of perfect religion and perfect science (just like a perfect competition) almost never exists..man has to make do with one of them...leaving the choice either to himself or going with the flow as per the societal context of his time and place.
Phew! That’s a lot of unanswered questions! But may be the point is to question rather than a muted acceptance! And yes, like all man-made creations – religion and science included, one needs to accept their flaws instead of overlooking them.
To quote Karl Marx again – ‘Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.’
