Science as Bertrand Russell has defined is an attempt to discover future occurrence based on particular facts about the world. The basic process of this scientific reasoning is from specific question deductive or inductive methods. The main point in this regard is that science always specific.
On the other hand, science is also the result of experiment and observation over the fact of this world with mostly done by the trained and competent person. So than it may be said that science is impersonal. Furthermore, science does not concern with good or evil, beauty or badness with which the religion concern.
Religion is belief, doctrine and preaching which may defined as a way of life. The characteristics of religion basically, opposed to those of science. For religious experience only belong to exceptional religious persons, who have in insight which is not given to common man.
Religious experiences are fundamentally different from the natural observations and experiments and of science. Again, religious knowledge is involved knowledge, in which the commitment of personality, and some feeling, is necessary apart if the knowledge is to exist at all. It may be said that religious knowledge is very different from impersonal scientific one. Moreover, if science is a matter of fact, religion is not. It claims insight into good, which is not human trough scientific scrutiny; and it claims that in religion there is a strange and uniquely infinite form of the divine knowledge, in which divine being is not an object to be examined or defined. In human affair, this divine relationship is in complete contrast to the attitude of science.
The root of this misunderstanding is undoubtedly lack of knowledge of the theology among the scientists, and a lack of science among he theologians. Often the theologian’s idea of science is derived from little pamphlets, news paper which draw no distinction between what is observed, and what is conjectured, or between established and what is hypothetical.
Likewise the scientist’s idea of religion is sometimes a compound of nursery religious stories vaguely remembered from the distant past, and perhaps some sickeningly native pious pamphlet he has encountered. So the misunderstanding between religion and science are due to mutual lack of knowledge and make statement that are not justified by the evidence.
No religious man can look back of the writings and actions of many theologians with unmitigated satisfactions, and scientist will readily admit that they have been just guilty.
Instead of coming into conflict which each other, religion and science should cooperate and help each other. The general impression on the spirit of science opposed to religion is unfortunate and untrue. In fact both can be of assistance to each other.
In the future there is no doubt than most of religious beliefs are such that science can have little effect on them. But in a more modest way science can be of some assistance to religion. For example, all religion teach to know God through created things. All things reflect in some way the perfection of God; they bear the imprint of they make. Now science can help us to learn about them, and thus learn more about God.
Science can also be of much assistance to religion in another way . All religion command to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty and to cloth the naked, and it is obvious that science enables us to this much more efficiently than our for fathers could. Further more, modern methods of communication from printing radio to greater audiences then could be reached before they were invented.
The main way in which religion can help science is by what it does for the individual scientist as man. And also by providing the climate of thought necessary for its growth. During the middle ages, the main intellectual effort was concentrated on philosophical and theological problems, and so the development of science was rather slow. Nevertheless, many important advances where made by men such as Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who did much of found experimental of science. As Prof. Whitehead said :”The middle ages formed one long training of the intellect in the sense of order. The greatest contribution of Medievalist to the formation of the science was inculcate the inexpugnable believe that every detailed occurrence can be corrected with is antecedents in a perfectly definite manner exemplifying general principles.
At present, it is essential that religion and science should cooperate because neither science nor religion alone can solve the modern problems. All the claims made on behalf of science are admitted, but no one can deny the fact that the command of the nature has been put into man’s hand before he has learnt how to govern himself.
At the present time such spirit of selfishness and hostility are being shown by the two power blocs, that it is probable that the western world along with many of its fine achievements in the domains of human culture may b consumed in the Holocaust of strife and destruction. It is clear that solution of these problems cannot be achieved by politicians, for they represent the egoism of nations groups and people saturated with egoistic ideals cannot look upon a problem of higher point of view. Neither can such problems be handled by the scientist who are usually immersed in problems of their own far removed from life.
Religion can come to our help, but in order that it may again become a living force, it necessary that religious leaders should take the help of science, and study existing religious knowledge as a science. Moreover, these studies should by supplemented by a scientific study of the problems of human life, careful analysis of the human mind, in fact as Spinoza put it : “Not to laugh or weep over actions of men but simply to understand them and contemplate their affections and passions, such as love, hate, anger, arrogance, pity and all other disturbances of the soul, not as vices of human nature, but as properties belonging to it, in the same way of heat, cold, storm, and thunder belonging to the atmosphere.
For these though troublesome, are yet necessary, and have certain causes through which we may come to understand them, and thus by contemplating them in their truth, gain in our minds as much pleasure as by knowledge of things that are pleasing to the sense.
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