Science vs Religion and My Persistent Ignorance

This is a topic that I have wanted to write on for some time, from nearly around the time I started writing blog posts.  But I never got down to.  It is a topic that engages me a lot mentally.  I wish I could say it engages me intellectually but I know that would be facetious, if not presumptuous. 

In spite of all the time I have spent thinking about it all these years I have made little progress in understanding it well – the question of my relationship with the Almighty. 

At one level I sense that the whole idea is foolish.  We are told that we are all nothing but manifestations of the Lord himself.  The Swami of Puttaparthi would often address everyone in the audience as Embodiments of Divinity.  So where does the question of a relationship with the Lord arise?

At another level many of us keep going back to the Lord in whatever form we revere Him, asking for various favours or at least for His Grace in general. 

My own relationship with the Lord has often been transactional.  I am constantly asking Him for something or the other, ranging from the trivial most of the time to the sublime on some very rare occasions.  Or what I think is sublime.

And then I wonder how does He process all these requests.  Here is where the true limitations of my cognitive abilities and my non-existent knowledge and imaginary intellect kick in.  I wonder about how He might go about His duties, referencing His functioning against my own, replete with my numerous limitations and innumerable personal foibles.  My nine year old elder (twin) son must be closer to reality when he tries to benchmark his own game against that of masters like Andy Murray than I am in trying to understand the working of the Lord in terms of my own standards of functioning.

In my endeavor to redeem myself of this embarrassing ignorance I indulge in some desultory reading.  One of my categories in this genre is the writings of  Swami Ranganathananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Mission, who tries to juxtapose ideas of spiritualism and religion with developments in scientific thought, drawing upon the writings of Haldane, Huxley and Capra to explain the nuances of the Upanishads and the sacred texts of other religions. 

I guess that this category of writings appeals to my intellectual pretenses and that is the reason I fancy them over others.  It probably makes my beliefs appear to be rooted in rigorous scientific thinking when I say that they are drawn from the works of writers like Gary Zuvak and Frijtof Capra. 

These writings constitute an antidote to the assault of writers like Richard Dawkins on our traditional faith in God; faith from which I draw much comfort in the conduct of my day to day life, even though I am not sure what the nature of true faith is, even though I have experiences in my own life that I could not describe as anything other than miracles. 

In a sense these writings accord intellectual legitimacy to a thinking and a set of beliefs that would be otherwise considered reactionary in the social and professional circles in which most of us move.

But deep within me I felt that at the end of all the persuasive discussion in these writings there seemed to exist a conceptual chasm between science and religion / spiritualism.  At the end of all the very well-constructed  arguments there was always a need for a leap of faith of sorts to arrive at the idea of God.

In my endless quest for bridging that chasm I recently  came across this book, Why Science Does Not Disprove God by Amir Aczel, when I was sauntering through the campus book store.  In the process of evaluating this book I came across an interesting article.  I enclose a link to the article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-why-science-does-not-disprove-god-by-amir-d-aczel/2014/04/10/4ee476ec-a49e-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_story.html

The article seemed to address this confusion in my mind that I had been struggling to resolve all these years.  Net net, the article seems to say that the twain, namely religion and science, shall possibly  never meet.  And our acceptance of one over the other has to be a matter of Faith. 

Interestingly, for all the intellectual rigour and logical water-tightness that we associate science with, given its advancement in the six centuries and some decades, starting with the Reformation and the formal advent of scientific thought into modern civilization, many areas of science still seem to require a pinch of faith too.

As for the idea of God, it does seem to fall squarely outside of the domain of the human intellect and into that of experience and Faith. This is where I consider myself fortunate. There are many instances which I can explain only as His largesse, including the job I presently hold. 


Will the Lord always bless me with all the candies I ask Him for?  Possibly not.  I can think of many instances in my life where my requests have been turned down, including some recent emotional travails.  

In the final analysis science appeals to the rational intellect for sure; but then it quickly runs off the shores of understanding into what feels like the dark and vast expanses of ignorance.  Those expanses feel like the deep dark oceans of nothingness that man and his intellectual vehicle, science, drift into, quite like an astronaut tethered to his spaceship. 

I find that the idea of God, in whatever denomination one may like, is a pragmatic alternative at this stage. And one that I am comfortable with and convinced about after many years of intellectual turmoil.

Nanni…Namaskaaram