Religions: A Scholarly Journal - Volume 2014, Issue 2

كان التقاطع بين العلم التجريبيّوالمعرفة والدين واحدً من المواضيع الهامّة والحسّاسة التي أُثيرت خلال القرون الماضية ولا سيّما في الغرب. وهذه المواضيع قد تطوّرت بطريقة متنافرةتُبعدها تدريجيًّا عن بعضها.كان هذا التنافر بين المعرفة والدين قد أحدث تغييرًا عميقًا في كليهما، وخاصّةًفي الغرب، منذ الثورة العلميّة في القرن السابع عشر، حين انحصرت المعرفة بشكل كلّيّتقريبًا في المعلومات حول الطبيعة،وحيث أضحت ظلًّاللظواهر يلتقطه العقل الإنسانيّ، بينما أصبح الدين في كثير من الأحيان، وخاصّةً في القرون المتأخّرة،مجرّد اعتقاد متّصل بالعادات والمشاعر. ونتيجة ذلك،أصبح الدين اليوم نظام اعتقاد قائم على افتراضات وأسس حول معرفة الطبيعة والعالم بدلًا من كونه نشاطًا للبحث في الطبيعة ونظام الكون. الدين لم يعد علمًا بالمعنى المتعارف،أي وسيلةً لمعرفة الحقيقة المطلقة، ومن ثمّ معرفة الكون والذات.في الوقع، أصبح الدين،وبصفة متزايدة، متعلّقًا بالمشاعر الشخصيّة، وفقه المعاملات، والأوامر والنواهي، كمّا يتحوّل في بعض الأحيان، إلى مجرّد إيديولوجيا.يمكن تصوير العلاقة المعاصرة بين الدين والعلم الأشكال التالي:أوّلًا: هناك عداء يغذّيه شعور بأنّ كلًّا من جانبَي الدين والعلم قد يكون مهدَّدًا من قبل الطرف الآخر لأسباب تنافسيّة.ثانيًا: هناك تفسير متزايد من جانب الدين والعلم، متلازم من ناحية، من حيث فهم العالم،ومتكامل، من ناحية أخرى. وهذا يثري الرؤية الإنسانيّة.اعتمادًا على وجهة النظر هذه، قد يرقى العلم التجريبيّ من التحقّق من صحة الدين، أو بالعكس من رؤية مسبقة من العلم بالدين.إنّ الصراع بين الدين والعلم ليس دائمًا،ويمكن أن يحصل التقارب بينهما في بعض الأحيان. في الواقع، الدين هو الاعتقاد الجازم، بينما العلم يعبّر عن المعرفة الرقميّة التجريبيّة. ولكن،قد تختلف هذه القاعدة في بعض الأحيان، ومثال ذلك يفسّره حنين المسلمينإلى ماضيهم الذي كانت فيه المعرفيّة العلميّة تتمتّعبمكانة متميّزة.ولاستعادة هذا المجد، سلك المسلمون طريقةً تبني بقوّة نظريّة العلم الحديث،ومن ثمّ أسلمتها، مع بعض التحفّظات في مجال الأخلاقethique،وحصر القرآن في هذا الصدد في كونه مجرّد مرجع علميّ تجريبيّ.كما ظهر الغلوّ في النظريّة العلميّة التجريبيّة بين المسلمين.وفي هذا الإطار، حصل تغافل لدى البعض عن أن مصطلح العلم يشمل مفاهيم ومعانيأوسع ممّا أدركه الناس اليوم. ومن هنا فإنّ كلمة العلم، في القرآن الكريم،المذكورة في آيات مختلفة،تبقى تحدّيًا للترجمات والتطبيقات المعاصرة. ويعرّف علماء المسلمين،مثل الجرجاني في القرن الرابع عشر، العلم بأنّه ""الاستيقاظالجازم المطابق للواقع""، أي (اليقين الراسخ المطابق للواقع)، في كتابالتعريفات. وتحتوي العديد من آيات القرآن الكريمعلى معاني أخرى لكلمة العلم،قد لا يقتصر على المفهوم العصريّ للعلم.وفي هذا الصدد، يمكن القول بأنّ""العلم الإلهيّ اللدنيّ""، كما هو علم الخضر (""وَعَلَّمْنَاهُ مِنْ لَدُنَّا عِلْمًا"" [سورةالكهف: الآية 65])، هو متغاير عن العلم التجريبيّ المعاصر.في الختام،يمكن أن نؤكّد أنّ مصطلحَيالعلم والمعرفة يشتملان على مجموعة من المفاهيم الأشياء (والتصوّرات).وهذا التطوّرللمعرفة وسّع منإطار الثورة المعرفيّة الأوربيّة الحديثة.كما أنّتلك الثورة فتحت مجالات مادّيّة جديدة للبحث لم تكن معروفةً من قبل. ولكن يبقى أن هذا التقدّم العلميّ الكبير كان على حساب فقدان قيم الوجدان الإلهاميّ، وإدراك البركة الإلهيّة.باتريك لودرئيس تحرير

تتّخذ العلاقة بين العلم التجريبيّ والدين طابع التنابذ في عقول الكثيرين. بيد أنّ التمييز الواعي لحدود كلٍّ منهما يظهرهما متقاربين ومتكاملين. فالعلم التجريبيّ يسعى إلى كسف أسرار الكون كما أودعها الله فيه، ويُدرك بُعدها الجماليّ. وهو في الحالين لا يتّسع إلّا بالتواضع، وإدراك محدوديّته، ونبذ أنانيّته. فيتمازج مع التجربة الروحيّة المنغمسة في تقصّي الغيب، ويتوازن معها في معايشة التجربة الذاتيّة.

يتّفق ابن رشد وابن العربي في تشخيص طُرُق المعرفة. فالمعرفة إمّا عقليّة برهانيّة متاحة للجميع، أو كشفيّة ذوقيّة تدركها الخاصّة. وفي الحالين، فإنّ للشريعة مدخلًا ذا امتياز. إلّا أنّهما يختلفان في الأوّليّة. فابن رشد يرى العقل مقدَّمًا على الكشف، وابن العربي ينهى العقل عن طرق الغيبيّات. إذ العقل عنده له أن ينفي ويهذِّب، لا أن يثبت. وينسحب سؤال المعرفة عند كليهما على موقفهما من مسألة الحشر الجسمانيّ.

بعد مرحلة من التشكيك، وتقديم العلوم الشرعيّة على العلوم المعاصرة، تعي النُّخَب الدينيّة اليوم أهمّيّة الخيار التكنولوجيّ في تعزيز الحياة البشريّة. والدين من جهته، في مقاصده الكبرى، يرشّد التكنولوجيا ويحول دون تطوّرها في اتّجاه امتهان الكرامة الإنسانيّة، والفساد في الأرض. فالتكنولوجيا تحتاج إلى منظومة قيميّة توفّرها الأديان، وهي بدورها تقدّم الخيار التواصليّ الذي يجمع هذه الأديان، ويعمّق علاقاتها ببعضها.

يولد العقل البشريّ في أحضان الرموز البشريّة، وهي الجانب غير المادّيّ فيه، الذي يؤهّله لخلافة الله، وسيادة العالم. ولـمّا كان مردّ البعد الرمزيّ في الإنسان إلى النفخة الثقافيّة الإلهيّة، وهي كاملة وغير محدودة، فإنّ رغبة الإنسان في العلم غير محدودة، ويظلّ باب العلم مفتوحًا أمامه بلا نهاية.

عادةً ما يُنظر إلى القلب والعقل (الدماغ) على أنّهما قطبان في الوجود الإنسانيّ، يتنابذان أو يتضادّان، إلّا أنّهما، في الصميم متكافئان. بيد أنّ هذه الثنائيّة تذهب بوحدة الكائن، وهو أمر باطل. فالقلب والعقل محكومان لعلاقة من نوع آخر هي علاقة التبعيّة. وعلم القلب، أو العلم المقدّس، مؤسَّس جوهريًّا على المعرفة فوق-العقلانيّة، أو المعرفة الظاهريّة، ولا بدّ فيه من التحقّق، في حين تكون المعرفة العقلانيّة قابلةً للتبليغ، مستغنيةً عن التحقّق.

عادةً ما يُنظر إلى القلب والعقل (الدماغ) على أنّهما قطبان في الوجود الإنسانيّ، يتنابذان أو يتضادّان، إلّا أنّهما، في الصميم متكافئان. بيد أنّ هذه الثنائيّة تذهب بوحدة الكائن، وهو أمر باطل. فالقلب والعقل محكومان لعلاقة من نوع آخر هي علاقة التبعيّة. وعلم القلب، أو العلم المقدّس، مؤسَّس جوهريًّا على المعرفة فوق-العقلانيّة، أو المعرفة الظاهريّة، ولا بدّ فيه من التحقّق، في حين تكون المعرفة العقلانيّة قابلةً للتبليغ، مستغنيةً عن التحقّق.

The intersection of science, knowledge and religion has been one of the most important and sensitive areas in the last centuries, particularly in the West, as these domains have increasingly drifted apart from each other. The bifurcation between knowledge and faith has been a result of a profound alteration of both. Since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century in Europe, knowledge has been almost exclusively reduced to an acquisition of information about nature, mankind and the myriad of phenomena that are apprehensible by human consciousness, while faith has all too often been confused, especially in the last centuries, with a mere belief grounded in customs and sentiments. The result is that for many today, science has become a religion, that is a belief system based on assumptions and premises about the nature of knowledge and the world, rather than simply an activity of inquiry into the nature and structure of the universe. Religion, conversely, has largely ceased to be a science, in the full sense of a means of knowing the Ultimate, and through it the world and the self. Indeed it has become increasingly reduced to matters of private feelings, codes of morality, or prescriptive and proscriptive rules, when it has not been turned into an ideology competing with other ideologies. The contemporary relationship between religion and science can be schematically taken to come in one or several of the following forms. First, there is an antagonism fueled by a sense that either side of the polarity might be threatened by the other on competing grounds. Second, there is a growing interpretation of religion and science as converging in terms of understanding the world, or at least in terms of a complementarity between the two that enriches our human outlook. Depending on the point of view this may amount to a kind of validation of religion by science, or conversely a prefiguration of science by religion. This type of understanding may even sometimes take the form of a complementary vision of science as fulfilling the needs of human rationality, and religion as fulfilling those of morality and imagination, the two coming together in full circle. Thirdly, there is a rarer, more subtle and no doubt more fruitful, view that suggests that religion and science speak mostly about different things, and not only about the same things in different ways. This means that neither antagonism nor convergence, nor even symmetrical complementarity, can account for a fully satisfactory understanding of their relationship. The conflict between religion and science is not, therefore, inexorable, nor is the convergence of the two likely. In reality, religion has come to be identified with belief alone, and science has been by now exclusively equated with a certain form of quantifiable knowledge of the world; but this has not always nor everywhere been the case. For instance, many Muslims today look with nostalgia at a past in which scientific knowledge was paramount in their civilization, and wonder how to restore this glory. One unconvincing way to do so is to embrace the modern concept of science and to rename it Islamic, with a few ethical caveats attached; not to mention popular attempts at treating the Qur’_n as a scientific or technological handbook with the advent of a kind of “Islamic scientism”. This amounts to ignoring, among other things, that the Quranic term used to refer to “science”, ‘ilm, encompasses a range of meanings that is much broader than is ordinarily realized by believers today. The word science appears in the Qur’_n in contexts and with meanings that challenge facile and flattening down contemporary translations and applications. Islam tended to define science as the “firm certitude in agreement with reality” (al-isti’q_d al-j_zim al-mut_biq li-l-w_qi’) to quote only one standard definition, by Jurj_n_ (1339-1413) in his Kit_b at-ta’r_f_t. And the Qur’_n contains numerous mentions of “science” that can hardly be limited to what most contemporaries understand by this term, i.e. a verifiable, quantifiable, increase of information about the material universe that surrounds us. For instance, it is very unlikely that the science/’ilm received by the mysterious guide of Moses in the Surah of the Cave (wa ‘alamn_hu min ladunn_ ‘ilman, “and we taught him a science from Us”, 18:65) could be equated with the science of contemporary biologists or physicists. There is no question that science and knowledge encompass an extremely wide range of objects. The breadth of knowledge has been in a sense widened by the modern epistemogical revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by opening onto domains of reality, primarily on the physical plane, that had been relatively unexplored by pre-modern mankind. However, the question remains of knowing whether, for most, this analytic and quantitative progress has not been paid at the price of an atrophy of metaphysical intuition and the sense of the sacred.

In this interview Prof. Ravi Ravindra reflects on the relationship between science and religion. Is there a inherent conflict between the two? Can we know the Ultimate Reality or prove the existence of God through science? What are the limits of science? As he explains, so much depends on what we mean by God or science. But for him there cannot in principle be any conflict between scientific research and spiritual search. No true scientist can be untouched by the grandeur of the vastness of the cosmos and the harmony of the intricate natural laws. If such feelings are not suppressed by some cultural conditioning, the resulting rapturous amazement is bound to lead one to an ardent reflection on one’s place in this immensity. These feeling experiences are the intimations of the Sacred.

The “scientific worldview” is immensely influential because the sciences have been so successful. Yet in the second decade of the twenty-first century, when science and technology seem to be at the peak of their power, when their influence has spread all over the world and when their triumph seems indisputable, unexpected problems are disrupting the sciences from within. Most scientists take it for granted that these problems will eventually be solved by more research along established lines, but some, including the author think that they are symptoms of a deeper malaise that paradoxically creates the conditions for a new dialogue with religion.

From the very beginning of the European encounter with Buddhism, both Asian and western commentators have argued that Buddhism is compatible with Science, at the risk of producing a naturalistic interpretation of the teaching of the Buddha. If the dialogue between Buddhism and science is to be substantial, then it is critical to understand Buddhism better than many presently do. Better understanding means assessing the conflict between religion and science from a Buddhist perspective, rather than reducing Buddhism to the mere object of scientific validation or refutation. Buddhist assumptions are different from western ones and its major teachings—such as karma—are best not shoehorned into foreign philosophical frameworks like Cartesian mind/body dualism. In this paper, the author focuses on one salient example. The arc of Buddhist tradition probes and questions the belief that human language is able to articulate timeless and universal truths. If this skepticism about the capacity of language is justified, then it has direct significance for the modern western tension between religion and science because this conflict centers on whose propositions and narratives about the universe are correct. If we take Buddhism seriously, one must consider the possibility that neither religious nor scientific discourse can claim definitive knowledge, and that even a combination of the two is not adequate.

Questions about life and death have always engaged the human imagination. However, the question “Can we live forever?” has become prominent in the modern era with inventions in medical technology, such as the creation of artificial organs, the use of prostheses, and chemical contributions. The opportunities presented by the progress of medical technology have changed our understanding of life and death. How do these biotechnological developments affect our understanding of humanity? Are we turning into post-human beings? The author argues that subjects ranging from organ transplants, embryonic stem cell therapy, and genetic intervention to neurological treatments that change the chemical structure of the brain should be discussed not only on the practical level, but also at the metaphysical, religious, moral, and especially theoretical levels.

The potential of stem cell research to contribute to human understanding of human development, aging, ailment, and demise is indisputable. This essay surveys Judaic perspectives on these promising yet imperfect ways of securing pluripotent stem cells for scientific and medicinal purposes. As one might expect, there is disagreement among modern Jewish bioethicists about which modes of securing these cells is permissible. Yet there is overwhelming consensus among them that using such cells to improve scientific knowledge and medicinal treatments is indeed permissible if not obligatory. To appreciate these dynamics, we first look at some principles Judaism holds in regard to medicine in general. We then investigate in light of Judaic texts the particular strategies used to extract and establish pluripotent stem cells. The concluding section evaluates these principles and concerns.

Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) is primarily remembered today as a precursor of his grandson Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution, and secondly as a poet and serious medical scientist, although he was a much-celebrated versifier in his day and briefly one of England’s most popular poets. His style and poetic vision were quickly eclipsed by the Romantic Movement, however, and the explosion of scientific inquiry in the 19th century, but his influence, particularly the medical treatise Zoonomia and the scientific poems The Botanic Garden and The Temple of Nature, can be clearly traced in Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron and the Shelleys. This article trace Darwin’s influence on William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge specifically using a macro-historical and history of ideas perspective to contextualize Darwin’s impact within late 18th century intellectual culture– specifically radicalism, materialism, and spirituality.

In this article, Philip Clayton focuses on science as an important but underutilized resource to help Muslims, Jews, and Christians recognize what we share in common. There are at least five significant ways in which science can be helpful to the interfaith dialogue: 1) The common respect that scientists share for each other’s work can help them learn to respect each other’s religion just as deeply. 2) The very differences of the sciences from religion serve to draw the religions closer together. 3) Even the similarities between science and religion deepen our sense of the common threads that bind us together. 4)Science appears most noble when seen in the light of religion, and religion can perceive its essence most clearly when it is viewed in the light of science. 5) The study of the natural world and the study of God’s revelation through his prophets offer two forms of knowledge of the one ultimate reality. When we see both as means to divine understanding, we better understand the nature of religion.

The question whether or not God can be known or defined is central to Christian mysticism. On this topic, the writings on mysticism by the French Catholic priest and Jesuit, Michel de Certeau (1925-1986) are especially relevant and challenging. De Certeau was one of the most creative interdisciplinary thinkers of the late twentieth century as well as a highly original writer in reference to Christian mysticism. At the same time, de Certeau is particularly difficult to summarise or to interpret definitively. To begin with, he approached every subject from a transdisciplinary standpoint, drawing extensively upon history, theology, spirituality, cultural theory, politics, philosophy, psychoanalysis and the social sciences. De Certeau’s deliberately enigmatic style was also based on his underlying approach to epistemology – that is, to the nature of knowledge, its scope and its origins. Overall, de Certeau rejected what he saw as the dangers of philosophical fundamentalism that he detected in some aspects of European post-Enlightenment thought, notably a tendency towards rationalist positivism. Thus de Certeau questioned both the extent to which anything can really be fully known and also whether “knowledge” is reducible merely to a mental capacity to think logically or to make rational deductions about reality. Clearly this standpoint is particularly relevant to the question of whether, to what extent and how an ultimately mysterious God may be “known” or defined and plays a central role in his late, unfinished work on Christian mysticism, The Mystic Fable.

Faith and science – two mutually exclusive worlds or two aspects of the same God-given reality? Prof. Zelensky offers in this article a personal reflection on the topic of Science and Religion based on the film Stalker by the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky.

Expressions of human creativity in the form of technological achievements have astonished and amazed—consistently interrupting the experience and expression of reality. Yet many are gripped by the novelty of technological progress and the emergence of curious techniques, while continuing to remain confounded about where, or what, the boundaries are. The following article explores this topic further, identifying recent and regular scientific and technological breakthroughs that have challenged our conception of human life and death. For this, the author draws from some of the claims of Raymond Kurzweil, whose advocacy of transhumanism and life extension technologies have garnered wide public attention. In response, the following also explores how Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology might inform our understanding as technological and biological life are blurred and the panoply of scientific advancements constrain current conceptions of human being and becoming.

Every aspect of the Islamic religion from intellectual and doctrinal to jurisprudential and practical domains has its origin in the Qur’ān or the Sunnah of the Prophet. The concept of Islamic science, which includes all of the highly significant and enormously rich intellectual and scientific enterprise that Muslims and non-Muslims living under the umbrella of the Islamic civilization have produced for the past fourteen centuries, is of no exception. In this essay, the author discusses the Qur’ān as the main source for the development of Islamic science.

In 1926, the philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead published his seminal work, Religion in the Making, reflecting on the place of religion in human life in light of his innovative cosmology. In this work Whitehead lamented that neither Christianity nor Buddhism had engaged in a full dialogue with contemporary science and cosmology, and he hoped for such reflection in the future. Three years later, Whitehead published a more systematic reflection on God and the cosmos, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Departing from most traditional monotheistic approaches, Whitehead presented creativity as the ultimate in his philosophy of organism, and he viewed God as its primordial accident. For Whitehead, God does not create the universe out of nothing, does not radically transcend the world, and is not omnipotent. Whitehead saw God as constantly interacting with the world, receiving each event into the divine life and proposing a divine aim for each new occasion, operating by persuasion, not coercion. While Whitehead was not a professional theologian, his philosophy of organism had an important influence on many Christian theologians in the decades that followed, and Mordecai Kaplan developed the ideas for Reconstructionist Judaism in awareness of Whitehead’s work. In Religions in the Making, one of the most distinguished leaders of Christian process theology, John B. Cobb, Jr., invites scholars from a variety of religions to consider the relation between Whitehead’s thought and the perspectives of their respective traditions.