13 June
Dear Ali Rizvi,
I came across a wonderful correspondence between Matt Thornton and yourself a few days ago. I say wonderful because it is rare to see two people from diverse backgrounds with different worldviews engage in a meaningful and respectful dialogue.
Your conversation (and a bit of Googling) led me to your interview with The Sun on ‘Leaving the Faith’. I got a lot out of that interview. Thank you for sharing your journey and perspective with such candour and clarity.
Your conversation also raised a question in my mind: Do you think it’s possible for science and religion to coexist together in a consistent, non-contradictory sort of way? I understand that you now identify as an atheist Muslim. So I have no doubt that you’ve given these questions plenty of thought.
For context, I have friends who are scientists who practice their faith regularly. They work in the lab on weekdays and attend mass on Sundays. I agree with you, of course, that “it’s a human right of all people to practice their faith as they choose, to change their faith, or to practice no faith at all, and to do this free from persecution and fear.” But I do find the combination of science and religion a tad strange. Science proceeds, for instance, on the principle of falsification, while monotheistic religions, to my knowledge, tend to impose absolute truth. When I ask my friends about this, they tell me that being a part of the church “feels like the right thing to do.” I suspect then that there is a sort of fuzzy compartmentalizing going on. While they believe in the scientific credo, they do not want to relinquish the familial connections and community that religion affords them.
But maybe that’s okay. Religion, as you know, offers more than an incomplete explanation of the working universe. For better and worse, they provide people with the values, ethics, and mental tools for living and organizing within a complex society. In The Great Degeneration, Niall Ferguson likened the evolution of our institutions to a slow moving landscape—structures that we shape and are shaped by over eons of time. I find the analogy helpful. Perhaps every institution then, from religions to capitalism to nationalism, are simply transitory phases in the long arc of development. One can only speculate as to where our common belief systems will go from here. But if I had to guess, it will be more human-centric. As Richard Francis Burton observed: “The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.”
As you can tell by my rambling, I am not well steeped in this topic and am simply thinking aloud (which is why I am writing to you). I did, however, find this passage from the physicist Freeman Dyson rather agreeable:
“Science and religion are two windows through which we can look out at the world around us… Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many common features. They share these features also with other enterprises such as art, literature and music. The most salient features of all these enterprises are discipline and diversity. Discipline to submerge the individual fantasy in a greater whole. Diversity to give scope to the infinite variety of human souls and temperaments. Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity there can be no freedom… Religion and science can live harmoniously together in the human soul so long as each respects the other's autonomy, so long as neither claims infallibility. Conflicts occur when organized science or organized religion claims a monopoly of truth. The ethics of science is supposed to be based on a fundamental open-mindedness, a willingness to subject every belief and every theory to analytical scrutiny and experimental test… [So] I am shocked to hear voices among the scientists sounding as arrogant as the voices of the creationists.”
Ali, what do you think? How should an uninformed soul like myself think about this subject?
Warm regards,
Tobias
Footnotes:
[1] Powell, Caleb. (2017). Leaving The Faith.
[2] Ferguson, Niall. (2012). The Great Degeneration.
[3] Burton, Richard Francis. (1988). The Book of a Thousand Nights and One Night.
[4] Dyson, Freeman. (1988). Infinite in All Directions.
Tobias Lim
Tobias Lim