Translator's Remarks
Turkish intellectual Gökhan Bacık published an article titled "Reconsidering the Relation between Religion and Science" on a web site named Kıtalararası, literally "the intercontinental." The article argues that the devout must humbly acknowledge that religion and science are separate fields and science in particular is not in service of religion. It is almost frivolous that we still debate this issue in modern Turkey but such is the state of affairs in the public sphere. And this issue must be addressed for leaving it untouched may have grave consequences. Never forget that Boko Haram, a terrorist organisation active in Nigeria advocating that education of girls is forbidden in Islam, targeted geography teachers on behalf of religion for teaching that the Earth is round, a well established scientific fact since the time of Pythagoras and incidentally admitted and welcomed by Muslim scholars such as Al Gazali.
Kıtalararası intends to address the general audience in sociopolitical matters and as such the arguments in the article are not fully developed by academic standards and keep in mind that there also is a word count limitation. I have come across with the article through social media and asked author's permission to translate it.
Mustafa Demirplak, 25 October 2017, Çarşı
Reconsidering the Relation between Religion and Science
by Gökhan Bacık
In our modern world, Muslims are of the conviction that Islam offers a solution for each problem of mankind. As a natural consequence of such a belief, Quran is thought to encompass all kinds of information. This way of thinking then suggests a hierarchical model for the relation between religion and science and positions religion, when necessary, at an elevated status so as to check through the findings of scientific inquiries.
However, why should a physicist who has spent twenty years in observing, experimenting, and studying a natural phenomenon open up his hard deduced findings to the inspection of religion? More importantly, what would be the criteria to be resorted by those who shall inspect such scientific studies in the name of religion? Consider this. Who are the key actors that can inspect the works of the physicists from prominent institutions in the field of, say, subatomic particles on behalf of religion while fully understanding, discussing and, if necessary, criticizing the whole content?
The nature of the relationship between religion and science is another source that creates serious problems in the contemporary Islamic world. For that reason, there is interest to revisit this debate.
The Difference between Knowing and Believing
The first point that must be immediately emphasized is that knowing and believing are different. For knowing we require to have data produced by various methods inquiring the existence or nonexistence of a certain body which we call as knowledge. For instance, we all know that the Earth is round. The ultimate determining consequence of science is knowledge and the action of knowing that it produces.
However, believing is on the table when there is no conclusive information as regards to the existence or nonexistence of a body. Because of this, religion is founded upon faith, differing from science. For instance, Muslims believe in the afterlife. There is no means to attain a conclusive datum on the existence or nonexistence of afterlife. Likewise, people do not “know God” but they “believe in God.” While it may sound confounding, we must not forget that knowledge does annihilate faith. Consider that people somehow scientifically proved the existence of afterlife. In such a case, people do not believe in the afterlife, on the contrary they know there is an afterlife. Similarly, the statement “I believe the Earth is round.” is problematic as it is not a matter of faith. In short, believing and knowing are two distinct states. The two never perfectly overlap and refer to the same state.
Meanwhile, belief may defend itself through various propositions however these may be called as isharets, i.e. signs or remarks. (It is interesting to note that the Arabic word ayeh for Qur'anic verses also means isharet.) İsharets are frequently employed to defend a belief. For instance the harmony in the universe may be accepted as a sign [isharet] of God's existence. All isharets are significant however none are as powerful as knowledge. Hence, they can never lift any belief to the level of knowing.
Defining the Relation between Religion and Science
The aforesaid discussion underlines the following: There exist differences between religion and science. One strives to produce knowledge while the other produces faith. More importantly, neither of them can function so as to verify the other. Because, as stated above, things for which scientific proofs are available for their existence or non-existence cannot be a matter of faith.
Science neither verifies nor falsifies the existence of God or angels. In short, science has no capacity to provide a verification or falsification in these matters. Ergo, expecting science to verify or falsify certain religious propositions is a meaningless demand.
American Academy of Science has published an important declaration in this matter in 1972. The declaration of the Academy reads as follows: Science and religion are two mutually exclusive and distinguishing fields of human thought. This is the “nonoverlapping magisteria” which was named so, later by Stephen J. Gould. According to Gould, religion and science shall “respectfully” not interfere with each other's affairs by this principle. What matters here is that religion and science get separated as distinct fields. In other words, religion and science do not have to verify each other but they do not have to have a row with one another.
So there shall never be an affirmative or dissenting answer that science can provide to the question “Does God exist?” The efforts to prove or reject any belief through science are futile. However, as we acknowledge that science has no capacity in this matter, we must also criticize the efforts of the devout to prove their beliefs, such as the existence of God, through scientific means. The devout must admit that there is no scientific way to prove the existence of God or the angels.
A Question of Humility
The assumption that science and religion are separate fields would require both the devout and the scientists to treat each other with mutual respect. The prevalent impression in the Islamic world is that the scientists, both in natural and social sciences, attack and harm religion. Hence, nearly all Islamic groups have an anti intellectual stance. Consequently, political parties, communities, and brotherhoods in the Islamic movements, irrespective of their organizational models, deem scientists as haughty.
True, some scientists indeed have an attitude that pushes the basic scientific ethics in the matter of religion and such attitude must be criticized. However, at this point we must also ask the following question: Are the devout respectful towards science? Two issues need to be considered in the matter of the status of Islamic world when it comes to respect based relation between science and religion.
First, scientists of an average scientific understanding acknowledge that science has no capacity to verify or to falsify religion. The following quotation is from a legal opinion expressed and signed by 72 scientists, among them Nobel laureates, for an ongoing case in the US Supreme Court in 1986: “In its endeavors, science has no capacity to evaluate the supernatural explanations.” In its essence, this is a significant example of humility. 72 scientists, among them Nobel laureates, admit that they are in no position to make evaluations in supernatural matters. While the devout and the religion must establish similar lines of demarcation, modern Muslims do not accede to a similar position of humility, their slogan being “There is no field where religion cannot interfere.”
Second, exploiting religion as an instrument of pro or anti scientific attitudes is problematic just in the same way that political instrumentation of religion is problematic. Some may and indeed do fabricate the perception that accepting certain scientific findings may lead people to sin in order to refute the said scientific findings. Whereas this is structurally in no way different from legitimizing or refuting political matters through religion.
Well, then. Can Muslims be not critical of the outcomes of the modern science? They of course can criticize; but they should not do it on the basis of religion. For example, if a scientist says he has measured Saturn's rings with a certain method and tools and found it to be $x$, Muslim scientists who do not accept this may only show that it is wrong by making the same observation. Without doing so, it is meaningless to have a rejection based on the Quran, the hadiths, or the books of a certain scholar. If a scientist measures the length of a table as 45 cm, then the way to counter it is to show that the table is not actually 45 cm in length through credible methods. Without this kind of acceptable efforts, to initiate a debate based solely on religious texts is instrumentation of religion for science and is as repulsive as political instrumentation of religion.
Muslims need to acknowledge that information regarding scientific matters is not in the Quran or other religious texts. The Quran refers to the relation between human mind and nature/universe as the source of knowledge about the functioning of the universe and its faculties. The Quran, of course, is a source of inspiration for many scientific matters as it has been for other fields. Indeed, prominent scientists such as Al Biruni, Avicenna, and Ibn al Haytham expressed their inspiration from the Quran in their writings. However, inspiration is not knowledge. A man may also be inspired by Mozart. Lives of people of groundbreaking accomplishments such as Al Biruni and Ibn al Haytham are spent with observation or reading in a library or working in solitude on a mountain top. These great scientists produced their knowledge by making observations in their respective fields and not by studying the Quran. Therefore, the perception that “one day a shortcut will be discovered out of Quran to produce technologies so as to solve all of our problems” which almost poisons the minds of modern Muslims is extremely wrong and harmful. Such a fantasy, does not yield any outcome other than material backwardness and intolerance in faith related matters. Muslims can of course be inspired by the Quran, but if they want to produce information about Saturn, they have to do it as other scientists do.
Separation and Mutual Respect
In today's Islamic world, there is a need for a domestic reconciliation between science and religion, just as in the 1972 declaration of the American Academy of Sciences. Accordingly, religion and science must be regarded as two different and unrelated fields of human thought. Science has no mission of verification or falsification towards religion. The almost well accepted notion of “putting science in religion's service” both degrades the scientific development and produces a big problem against freedom of thought. The clerics must humbly acknowledge, in the same vein as the 72 Nobel laureates quoted above, that there exist certain fields in which they cannot intervene or assess.
