Universe: Faith, belief and science

When we say we have faith in God, this implies that there is no scope for question, inquiry or any argument about it. When we say God made the Earth and the other planets go round the Sun, this stops any further inquiry. While talking about religion, we use the word faith, which means either you believe in a myth, an old scripture, some godman or not. Faith requires complete submission.

Unlike faith, when we use the word belief, it implies that, given sufficient time and resources, we can find and explain why one should believe in something. For example, when an X-ray picture of my broken leg is taken, we know exactly where the bone is broken. Thus, we believe an X-ray will let us know the broken bone in the leg. Finally, we can say that faith leaves no scope for any inquiry, while belief implies that we can ask questions to know why we believe in what we believe. Thus, in science, the word faith is never used.

In the scientific knowledge system, often the problem arises because it is not possible for a single human being to know the latest findings in all disciplines. Hence, we believe what the scientist tells us about their discipline only. However, we can always read the latest research papers and verify the correctness of our beliefs. Anyone can object to this. It can be said that today, even a religious citizen will give you the same answer — that the Sun rises because the Earth is rotating on its axis. But this will raise another question: Why is the Earth rotating on its axis?

If you have some knowledge of physics, then you can also answer that all the celestial bodies are rotating on their axis to conserve angular momentum. And then this question will arise: Why do celestial bodies tend to conserve angular momentum? Now, perhaps you have reached the limit of your present knowledge, and the answer will be — ‘God’s will’. In other words, when the questions arising from ‘why’ take us to the limit of our knowledge, the only answer is that the God who has created this universe knows the reason for it. His knowledge is infinite and our ability to learn is limited.

We often get to hear this argument in sermons. From here, the logic of faith, religion and spirituality begins, based on the question that starts with why. It is often stated that science possesses logic while religion does not. In my view, both have their own logic, but the foundations of religious and scientific reasoning are entirely different and often contradict each other. If you believe in an almighty God, it is logical to think that ‘He’ can break the laws of nature.

Once we have faith in a supernatural power, it becomes perfectly logical to accept stories that may appear illogical to others. Let us take this logic further. If that supernatural being is omnipresent, omniscient and immortal, we must worship and keep Him happy, especially if He decides our future as well.

On the contrary, if we start these questions with ‘how’, they take us to a very different logical domain. How is it that the Sun rises every day? How was the spherical Earth formed? How is someone born? Let us take a difficult question — ‘How does any living being die?’ The easy answers are — ‘When the soul leaves the body’, ‘If the lungs stop working’, etc. All these answers were once the answers of science also, but scientists asked this question repeatedly and the limits of our knowledge about death kept on enlarging. When no evidence of the soul was found, this theory was rejected.

Gradually, it became clear that even if the heart and lungs stop working, a person can be kept alive. It was discovered that the unit of life is not the body but the cells. And today’s science says that the unit of life is not even a cell. It is DNA or RNA. Centuries of investigation and experiments have led scientists to this understanding, yet there are many unanswered questions. For example, we do not yet know how to repair damaged DNA.

If the question starts with ‘how’, and we reach the limit of our knowledge and logic, there are no answers like ‘God knows’ or ‘God’s will’. Be it a scientist or a common man, when he reaches the limit of his knowledge in answering a question starting with how, there is only one answer: ‘I don’t know yet’. Questions starting with how are always open-ended; they may lead us to new questions and open the path to new research.

— Excerpted from ‘From Myths to Science’ (Penguin Random House)