Religion and Science

Should science replace religion? The answer is no. Is religion superior to science in the scheme of things? The answer is no. Both serve different purposes. Yet both share something in common. They are both meant for humans and not humans for either. They are both human inventions for human consumption. While one is emotional with unverifiable claims and most times irrational, the other is based on rational and logic. While one deals with esoteric claims the other one is scientific and practical. While one dwells on rhetoric, the other demand verifiable result. For those of us who do not understand how science work, some of its achievements can be likened to the claimed achievements of the religious gods.
How many times have you heard folks in the village say that the white man is God when they are confounded by science? Does that mean the white man is God? Those of us who are lucky to have gone beyond the borders of our villages know better.
Given the option to choose between both, I have this feeling that the world will be a better place without religion and the fear it spreads. It is just a feeling. Religion without doubt has its place in the human scheme of things. It is argued by some that without religion to govern the human race; science will not find a conducive environment to operate. The foregoing may not be entirely true because humans are governed by law, both manmade and natural laws. Religion served its purpose in the stone age and should be confined to stone age. Our intellects continue to develop and as rational animals, we must continue to rationalise and re-evaluate everything including religion. The principal difference between man and animal is our ability to rationalise issues but as am sure you are aware, religion does not tolerate rationalisation. It claims monopoly of knowledge and ideas because it speaks for the Omni potent and Omniscience.
Does this mean that I worship science? The answer is no. Do I have a religion, the answer again is no. What religion will find out sooner than latter is that science will soon manufacture human beings without copulation. It will shatter a lot of religious fixes! The human race would sooner than later get to a stage where we will determine who lives and who dies without compunction. Time is coming when people will live for a thousand years and still look 18! One does not need a soothsayer to foretell of a time when we will produce super humans.
While I am not advocating for science to replace religion, I certainly believe that science have served humanity as good as religion in many ways if not in every way. Both should learn to live together rather than religion arrogating to itself the higher moral ground. As much evil as we found in science exist in every religion. The arguments you advanced against science are clearly, seriously and perennially promoted in the bible’
The evil men do are not limited to science, it pervades all human endeavour and religion is no exception. It is not religion or science that commits these evils but its human faithful.
The subjugation (enslavement) of the black man found its root in religion. The white man seeing the black man as inferior is not his fault; the black man is the worst enemy of the black man, living in Minnesota in America ‘am sure you can appreciate this.
Religion and the bible as a matter of fact promote the vilest form of human inhumanity to human. Neither the old nor the much touted new testament promoted or have any serious rule to help man live like civilized people instead the laws arrogated to man have strived and continue to strive to create a civilize society.
Hear what Leviticus and Exodus have to say on the matter of slavery:
Leviticus25:44-46
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession for ever; you may make slaves of them, but over your brethren the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness.
Exodus21:2,4
When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh he shall go free for nothing ... If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's and he shall go out alone.
In the New Testament, while mark, Luke and Mathew and John are completely silent on this most bestial form of man inhumanity to man, the apostle Paul explicitly sanctioned it in his epistles to the Colossians, Paul you would agree more or less laid the foundation for Christianity: he said in the book of Colossians
Colossians3:22
Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not with eye service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord.
In his first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul gave us his religious justification for maintaining the status quo:
ICorinthians7:21-22
Were you a slave when called? Never mind. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ.
Paul’s teachings on the all important concept of freedom before God makes it unnecessary for us to seek freedom from any form of slavery, it makes any challenge to such unthinkable disparagement of the human species almost a sin, a situation that would make it difficult for anyone who call themselves Christian to challenge slavery. The Christian teaching of a life hereafter must surely had contributed to the lack of social action on the part of Christians against the institution and must have informed the support the slave masters enjoyed in western Europe, the seat of Christianity!
Paul's epistle to Philemon is actually a letter that accompanies Philemon's runaway slave, Onesimus, whom Paul was sending back to his master. Although he urged Philemon to be kind to Onesimus, the tone of his letter is obviously one that accepts slavery as a valid social institution.
Science does not claim to have all the answers like religion and therein lies the fundamental difference. Science admits its fallibility and it’s forever looking for better ways to correct itself but religion justices its fallibility with more fallible.
I accept your argument that science has been used to justify what I call the ignorance of the human race but one can see this for what it is; human error. Religion is supposed to speak with the voice of God! It is not suppose to be wrong or even have room for mistakes because the god of Christians is not man that it should lie or make mistake so whatever we read in the bible is an absolute truth. We must obey it without question and that include the quotations above.
Slaver Slavery as a way of life was so engraved in the social psyche of the era of nascent Christianity that very few voices of protest, if any, were raised against it. Even the few voices that rose against slavery were the voices of what Christianity called PEGAN! In slavery we found a confluence between Paganism and Christianity
‘Christian apologists to show that Christians were opposed to slavery: William Wilberforce (1759-1833). Wilberforce was a Christian and the universal claim is that his Christian conscience showed him the evils of slavery. But this claim is easily shown to be false. As a child, Wilberforce never had any affinity for the religion. For a long time he avoided taking a degree at Cambridge University because he could not sign the 39 Articles of the Church of England. It was in this skeptical mould that Wilberforce remained for the first thirty years of his life. Yet it was during these agnostic times that he developed his sense of abhorrence towards slavery. (For, as a boy of fourteen, he had written to a newspaper attacking slavery.) He was, at that time a Deist, as were his closest associates. Furthermore, his chief allies in his battle for abolitionism were Quakers, dissenters and free-thinkers, not the mainstream Christians. The support from the established churches for his actions was described by Wilberforce himself as "disgracefully lukewarm." In fact, many conservative members of the clergy actively tried to suppress and obstruct his anti-slavery cause.
The record is worse for the churches in America. The Christians there did not stop to think whether the institution of slavery is, in itself immoral. Their chief concern was whether the Bible condoned or condemned it. The answer, as we have seen, was obvious. Thus the Christians in the U.S. supported slavery.’
Until religion shed the toga of esoteric absolutism and give room for discussion on its core values like life after death, hell fire and damnation and Armageddon. Until religion come full circle to accept the fact that Devil is an imaginary contortions by self seeking leaders or some kind of euphemism in certain culture. And until religious adherents leave the devil alone and take responsibilities for their actions, we will continue to see staccato dissent in the religious world in support of science as seen in this Vatican declaration.
Inaju