This essay is my attempt to organize my thoughts related to the relationship between God Science and Religion. I have been thinking about it for last 20 years starting with my initiation in hinduism in 2002 but I have never attempted to document it. This is beginning of that so it is all bits and pieces which I hope to keep updating in future.
Generalization - Reason, Ultimate Reality and Philosophy of Life
I would begin by clarifying the notions of Science, Religion and God.Today Science is mainly associated with natural science but until few centuries science was not separated, and scientists like Newton was considered as Natural philosopher. So in this essay by 'science' I meant the general use of reason like experiments and logical reasoning. The main distinguishing aspect of reason is that it is intersubjectively verifiable, it can be verified by other people. Such verification is necessary for acceptance of it by the community.
Unlike science the notion of God and Religion may be self evident, God is the Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence creator and Religion is about following his commandments isn't it? But unfortunately this works only with abrahamic monotheistic religions.Some Hindu schools don't believe in creator God and Buddhists and Jains don't believe in creator of the universe and predictably the religion is not about following God's commandments. So I will generalize the concept of 'God' as Ultimate Reality and 'Religion' as Way of Life. The ultimate reality may be creator God as in abrahamic religions or anthropocentric creator in theistic schools of vedanta in hinduism. It can also refer to more abstract entity like Brahman (~universal consciousness) in advaitha Vedanta or Sunyata(Emptiness) in Mahayana Buddhism. In the context of materialism it refer to the view ultimately physical matter is real and mental consciousness is emergent property of particular arrangement of physical matter.It is mainly a metaphysical doctrine i.e. view about nature of reality, what kind of things exists.
The concept of way of life may appear very vague and I would define it as consisting of two aspects. First what is the purpose of life, what should we aim for? how we should live our life. Second aspect is how to go about achieving it? It may not be a detailed plan but general guidelines and maybe consisting of daily, regular practices.
Is Science True ?
The main question one faces when answering the question of science proving the existence of something is that is science True ? Does science actually describes reality or it is just a useful tool to navigate the world. One may say it is obviously true because it works, considering the accuracy of scientific theories, it will be surprising if they are not true. But one may counter it by saying scientific theories are constantly changing so the current theories can be superseded by other theories which can be very different from existing ones. The Newtonian mechanics is very accurate in macroscopic world but it is an approximation of general theory of relativity. This is referred as scientific realism v/s anti-realism debate in philosophy of science.
So based on how one answers this question one may take two routes to the question of science proving the existence of God or any entity. The first one is to say science is true description of reality and it justifies one's view of reality. But the fallibility of science creates a problem for this view, what you will do when current scientific theories are replaced by new theories, will one change one's faith?
Another approach is to say science doesn't describe reality, at best it describes the reality as it appears to human beings. The actual reality is what one believes. This requires the believer to provide a way to access the ultimate reality. If science doesn't describe actual reality, how can other methods provide access to it. how can be trust those methods are better than science.
Science and Religion - The is/ought Fallacy
The attempts to prove religion using science raises the question of relation between metaphysics(what exists) and Ethics(How we should behave). Is accurate description of reality is necessary or sufficient for deciding what should we do, how we should live our life ? It is true that consequences of our actions play important role in choosing between them. But ethics is not just about consequences of our actions, one may argue that one should do perform one's duty irrespective of the consequences. One cannot go from what the world is to what we ought to be doing, this is called as is/ought fallacy. when we do that , we are implicitly assuming that actions must be chosen based on their consequences.
Say we can prove that there is a God who will burn you will eternity in hell for not believing in him or nor following his commandments. It doesn't necessarily follow from this that we should be worshipping him.
The reconciliation of Pramanas
Another way to think about the process of relating science and religion is that reconciling different ways of knowing, what Philosophers in Indian traditions call as 'pramanas'. The main kind of pramanas are perception, inference and testimony. Perception refers to observation and experimentation interacting with external world. Inference can be broadly classified as deductive or inducting reasoning. Testimony refers to statement from an expert and in the context of religion testimony refers to the scriptures .
So different pramana may disagree, for example our we don't experience the rotation of earth but through inference we can understand that earth is moving very fast. Our world view created by reconciling the evidences of different pramana. In the context of science and God the question is mainly about reconciling the evidence from perception and inference with testimony.
God and Reason - Two kind of Believers.
Generally believers take two different routes to reconcile God and Reason. First group uses reason to justify belief in God and in the context of science they would argue science justifies or at least doesn't contradict belief in God.For example Thomas aquinas provides logical arguments for the existence of God. Similarly in Indian traction Udayana philosopher of Nyaya School wrote a text providing logical reasons for believing in creator God. In current times many people argue that latest discoveries in science justifies their religious beliefs like existence of God or concept of rebirth and Karma.
Thinkers in 2nd group who are also devout believers strongly disagree with the method of first group, as it gives more weight to reason and science. They see logical reason at best can provide justification of abstract God - philosopher's God not the God of devotees. Logical reason can be used to justify an abstract creator but it is not sufficient to justify specific God say God of Bible or specific deities like vishnu or shiva. So believers like Vedanta Philosopher Ramanuja uses scripture as their main pramana to justify existence of God, in his case hindu puranic deity Vishnu. Some thinkers argues science is only capable of explaining phenomenal world, world as appearance and ultimate reality the way world really is known by faith or scripture. Immanuel Kant argues that our mind plays an active role in creating the world we experience. This is the world explained by science, but ultimate reality is unaccessible to it. So phenomenal world of appearance is explained by science while the real world that give rise to it is inaccessible to it. In this way one can gave space to both reason and faith. In hinduism Advaitha vedantha philosopher Sankara takes a similar view arguing in the matter of empirical world observation takes precedence but one requires scripture to know the ultimate reality of Brahman. The notion of two-level truth in Advaitha Vedantha and Mahayana Buddhism helps in this regard, science deals with conventional truth while scripture. People who point out the fallibility of scientific knowledge and argue that therefore we cannot refute the existence of God can be considered to be in 2nd group.
My view is more inclined to second group, acknowledging the active role mind plays in constructing our view of the world and fallibility of our knowledge. I accept the possibility that the actual reality can be very different than the worldview given by our scientific theories.
