V Religion and Science

V Religion and Science T he words ‘religion’ and ‘science’ have vast connotations. Religion is generally understood to mean the recognition of the existence of a supernatural ruling power, the creator and controller of the universe, who has given to man a spiritual nature, which continues to exist after the death of the body, and of man’s duty to be obedient to this power. As a concept of life, it is all-encompassing. Science, on the other hand, is the study of the perceptible world. Both are extremely broad-ranging subjects, and their respective spheres are in many aspects quite separate from each other. It is not my intention here to go into the details of these two subjects, but to deal only with the clash — real or unreal — which has taken place between science and religion on an academic level, and certain of its consequences. One of the reasons for this clash is the claim that scientific discoveries have proved religion baseless, and it is principally this point on which I wish to focus attention. The traditional conflict between science and religion made itself felt in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was during this period that, in the light of new scientific discoveries, many came to feel that there was no further call to believe in God. One of the most compelling reasons for believing in God, amongst others, was that without this belief, the universe was inexplicable. The antagonists of religion were quick to point out that we no longer required the ‘God’ hypothesis when there was no aspect of the universe which could not be explained quite easily by the findings of scientific research. To them, the idea of God was redundant and, therefore, baseless. This claim was quite flimsy from the academic or logical point of view