“In Place of God”

Can secular science ever oust religious belief – and should it even try?

This is the title of the article I recently read at the New Scientist, 18 November 2006 issue, pp. 8-11. This article highlights the key points of a quaint symposium in La Jolla, California entitled, “Beyond belief: Science, religion, reason and survival” hosted by the Science Network, a science-promoting coalition of scientists and media professionals convening at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences. Unfortunately the article is not available at the NS website. I tried searching for it on the internet, and voila! – someone has managed to put the entire article in his blog. You can find the link here . Those who wish to hear more of the debate can access the following url: www.newscientist.com/podcast.ns .

In the symposium, they were asked to address three questions:

1. Should science do away with religion?

2. What would science put in religion’s place?

3. Can we be good without God?

Some of the prominent answers are given below:

Should science do away with religion?

• “It is just as futile to get someone to give up using their ears, or love other children as much as their own… Religion fills very basic human needs.”
  Mel Konner, ecologist, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
• “Religion is leading us to the edge of something terrible… Half of the American population is eagerly anticipating the end of the world. This kind of thinking provides people with no basis to make the hard decisions we have to make.”
  Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith
  
  
• “Religion allows billions of people to live a life that makes sense – they can put up with the difficulties of life, hunger and disease. I don’t want to take that away from them.”
  Francisco Ayala, biologist and philosopher, University of California, Irvine

• “No doubt there are many people who do need religion, and far be it from me to pull the rug from under their feet.”
  Richard Dawkins, biologist, University of Oxford
  
  
• “Science can’t provide a sense of magic about the world, or a community of fellow-believers. There’s a religious mentality that yearns for that.”
  Steven Weinberg, physicist, University of Texas, Austin

• “Science’s success does not mean it encompasses the entirety of human intellectual experience.”
  Lawrence Krauss, physicist and astronomer, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio

• My say: “Science and religion fulfill two distinct aspects of our humanity: science fulfills our intellectual aspect, such as our need to understand the whys of the universe; religion fulfills our emotional and spiritual aspects, such as our need for love and expression of that love. It’s analogous to the human body which consists of various systems that function independently. The thought of substituting say, the heart, for the function of the brain simply does not make any sense. We need science as much as we need religion.”

If not God then what?

• “It is the job of science to present a fully positive account of how we can be happy in this world and reconciled to our circumstances.”
  Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith

• “Let me offer the universe to people. We are in the universe and the universe is in us. I don’t know any deeper spiritual feeling than those thoughts.”
  Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, Hayden Planetarium, New York
  
  
• “Let’s teach our children about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is so much more glorious and awesome and even comforting than anything offered by any scripture or God-concept that I know of.”
  Carolyn Porco, planetary scientist, Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado
  
  
• “I’m not one of those who would rhapsodically say all we need to do is understand the world, look at pictures of the Eagle nebula and it’ll fill us with such joy we won’t miss religion. We will miss religion.”
  Steven Weinberg, cosmologist, University of Texas, Austin

• My say: “The concept of worshipping the universe is just so downright funny! Imagine people at Quiapo making images of solar systems and genuflecting before pictures of the sun. Hello? Okay lang kayo?”

Can we be good without God?

• “The axiom that values come from reason or religion is wrong… There are better ways of ensuring moral motivation than scaring the crap out of people.”
  Patricia Churchland, philosopher, University of California, San Diego

• “What about the hundreds of millions of dollars raised just for Katrina by religions? Religions did way more than the government did, and there were no scientific groups rushing to help the victims of Katrina – that’s not what science does.”
  Michael Shermer, editor-in-chief, Skeptic magazine

• “It doesn’t take away from love that we understand the biochemical basis of love.”
  Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith

• My say: “People are not good just because they are scared that Someone out there is going to punish them otherwise. In the first place, what is good, anyway?”

What about you, what’s your take on this?