〔原创〕science man and religion man

Science man and religion man
 

　　Between November and December last year, I was making an educational tour around U.K. One of startling discoveries, among many others, is that all the pupils in U.K schools started each of their school day with a morning prayer right in the school. Right after the prayer, the pupils would go back to their science classes, learning theories of evolution, gravity, relativity, asymmetry, etc.

　　I say this is a startling discovery as, just like many Chinese, I think, or rather, I have been brought up to think, that science and religion are exclusive to each other. Science leaves no room for religion， the principles of which, in most cases, is non-scientific if not antiscientific. How could it be possible that the messages s/he get from the morning prayers and the knowledge obtained in a science class stay in harmony in the same boy or girl?

　　This discovery, for another time, has triggered in me a puzzlement that has haunted me for years: how come the science man and religion man is one and the same, as is in the cases of Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein?

　　Historically, there was a time when religion and science did not fare well with each other. Copernicus, for example, was well aware of the conflicts between his heliocentric theory and geocentric message from the Bible, published his works posthumously. Galileo, because of his heretical theory that the earth is a moving body, was sentenced to life imprisonment when he was 69 years old. Even as recent as 1927, science and religion were not reconciled to each other: In the world-famous Monkey Trial, an American biology teacher was accused of teaching evolution in a public school in the state of Tennessee.

　　The scientific and technological advancements, especially those made in the fields of astronomy, biology, genetic engineering, geography and physics in the past two centuries since Industrial Revolution, have made out-of-date the literal interpretations of the creation as is indicated in the Book of Genesis. As if all of sudden, scientists found that the world is created on the laws of science and the principles in maths were found, with great joys and surprise, to be capable of solving the problems in physics and astronomy. Scientific laws became the universal laws, the ultimate laws and science became a new religion. Scientists were so optimistic of the its power that Descartes, a French philosopher and mathematician, declared that the world is nothing but an elaborate machine (made by the God?) and there would be a day when scientists are able to describe the its workings with one single equation. And Nietzsche, a German philosopher, declared pessimistically: the God is dead.

　　When the human entered into the 20th century, scientists found the machine of the world is running wildly and is to fall apart. Many of the well-established laws in science, such as Newton’s laws of motion, are shattered in the new scientific paradigms. Even the scientists themselves were perplexed by the power of science: the physicists atom-bomb the world, the chemists pollute the world, the biologists clone the world and the computer scientists are working to conquer the world with a giant robot . While the human rejoice at the new discoveries, new technologies and the new approaches of perceiving the world, they feel lamentable at the prospect of the world as depicted by science man.

　　Now it seems time to ask the question: is science man really the spokesman of our world? Should science man, like Faust, sell his soul to the evils in order to seek the ultimate truth in the world? What can a science brings to the world if its power is boundless?

　　In my opinion, science and religion are two spheres of the human life. They do not talk in the same language and they are pursued in different approaches. While science works by persuasive reasons but religion transcends its message through intuition and faith. Science is concerned with the physical, the measurable, and the repeatable. Religion is concerned with the spiritual, the immeasurable, and the uniquely individual. It is concerned with an infinite spiritual reality. If science is an apple, then religion is an orange: both are needed by human but one doesn’t deny the role played by the other. Science and religion, both concerned with a pursuit for the ultimacy, approach it in different ways. A real scientist should be one committed to the truth, but guided by a moral concerns.

　　Karl Marx said: there is no royal road in the path of science. Only those who are not afraid of fatigue and hardships will have a chance to reach its summit.

　　But when the science man arrives at its summit, after triumphing over all the fatigues and hardships, only to find the God was already there, maybe with a cigar pipe, waved to the science man: “welcome back, science man!”