SCIENCE & RELIGION:

Not Counterparts

Sometimes it occurs to me that we mistakenly equate science and religion looking at them as if they are equivalents and counterparts to each other. They are not. Science is partial in outlook and religion is holistic in scope.  One cannot compare a part with a whole. One can compare two wholes or two parts alone. It will not be scientific otherwise.

Religion is like a very big building which has accommodated a lot many things within its four walls. One space is occupied by the science as well inside the boundaries of religion. Science is one of the many parts which we consider as a counterpart. Science has an atomistic approach. It separates one phenomenon from the rest and looks at that phenomenon in isolation. (It will be enlightening to hear more from the learned members on this.)

Science may explain the male and female of a species working separately in much understandable terms. But why do they work together and complement each other is not a big concern for science. Science as we find it today falls short of some basic questions always which the religion (i.e. the complete way of life – ad-Deen) provides.

Please allow me to illustrate it with an example. We go to a doctor when ill-disposed. I never came across a doctor who ever asked me why did I want to get well in the first place? What use will I make of my health? It is beyond the jurisdiction of a doctor who represents a particular science. But the religion has a much wider concern – encompassing the entire life in all its situations.

We, however, equate the two because of the wrong or incomplete exposition of Islam. Again the culprit is the painful division of knowledge into deeni and dunyaawee –‘religious’ and ‘secular’ – which I don’t know how we can do away with.