Reflections On Two Recent Debates

Recently the Lallantop channel on YouTube hosted a debate between Javed Akhtar, an atheist, and a Mufti on the topic of Existence of God.  Some time back a similar debate had taken place between Zakir Naik and Dhruv Rathee.

This post is inspired by some reflections after watching the two debates.

Physics started out with what is now known as Classical Physics which dealt mostly with terrestrial objects in a, more or less, uniform gravitational field, close to each other in space and time and moving at speeds that are negligible compared to speed of light - that great constant in all frames of reference.  This is our immediate world that we experience with our senses directly and incessantly.

In this immediate world, Classical Physics came out with laws that seemed immutable and provided us with a sense of certainty, where given the initial state a later state could be figured out with compoete certainty.  This sense of certainty and absolute knowledge got shaken when Physics was required to accommodate the fact that the speed of light was an absolute constant in all frames of reference even though they may be moving relative to each other.  This gave rise to Special Theory of Relativity which was soon followed by the General Theory of Relativity where space, time and even mass all got mixed up.  

The turbulence got intensified as physics widened its ambit to subatomic particles on one hand and the immense vastness of universe on the other.  Some fairly bizarre phenomenon came to our notice for which the classical physics failed to be the correct model.  The sense of certainty vanished as probability took centre stage prompting Einstein to famously protest that God didn't play dice with us.  As Quantum and Astro Physics progressed, strange things emerged when developing models for the observable world on the very small scale on one hand, and very vast on the other.  Quantum physicists found that time disappeared altogether in their advanced equations!   Further, Quantum phenomenon, mostly probabilistic, seemed to crystallise into certainty in the presence of an "observer" - called collapse of the probabilistic wave function!  And to top it all, entanglement of particles in this strange Quantum world enables information to travel instantaneously, faster than light!

The world at the quantum level is far from mundane, it is mystical.  So mystical that many religious philosophies like Vedanta seek and claim to find a parallel for their tenets here.

While quantum physics concerned itself with very small, another branch, Astrophysics, found itself in an universe where Classical Physics faltered again.  In an attempt to model it,  Astrophysics came up with a Big Bang origin of the universe.  Again, time, which vanishes in the quantum world, is said to be non-existent before the Big Bang:  Space too.  It also had to accept existence of dark matter and dark energy to explain some of the observed phenomenon.  In a debate between the Islamic evangelist Zakir Naik and Dhru Rathee, Naik claimed that a certain aayat in Quran talks about Big Bang and this makes Islam the most scientific religion!  He probably forgot that science treats Big Bang as a theory, a model that is open to peer review and revision, or even abandonment, if alternate models can better predict the observed facts.  In fact, in science everything is open to review and being challenged if any experiments so suggest.

Even as physics was making these strides, and technologists were starting to find ways of putting to use the weird quantum phenomenon,  Information Technology too made rapid strides and achieved the most fascinating neural network and Artificial Intelligence.  The machines have finally passed the Turing Test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, much earlier than what was thought possible!  This has added fuel to the debate around the hard question of "consciousness."  This has become a free-for-all activity where religion tries to find a turf where it hopes to have an edge over science.

Ultimately what distinguishes science from non-science is what Javed Akhtar said in the recent debate.  It was to the effect that religion asserts definitive answers to every question and those answers must be taken as final, whereas science has the humility to accept what it still doesn't comprehend fully.  And then again, because science is open to being questioned and contradicted if observed phenomenon don't agree with the model in vogue, there is only one science all over the world.  Religions are numerous and the reason is obvious.

Do we still need religions?

Early in my career I had the opportunity to undergo a training in Behavioral Science.  It was a fascinating new subject and one of the many insights that it provided was the difference between needs and wants.  Needs are universal but their manifestation as a wanted thing is influenced by the culture one is raised in.  It is best illustrated through an example.  Nourishment is a fundamental need.  But what food items does one want to satisfy this need differ widely.  One person may want a dosa, another rice with curried fish, yet another may want parotha with lots of butter and so on.  It is not uncommon to find that two persons may find each other's wants disgusting though these are in satisfaction of a common need.

What has been said above would suggest that there must be a basic need behind divergent religions followed by the humankind and that all of these serve to satisfy that same universal need.  And, as in the case of food, though followers of one religion may feel repelled or unsettled by another religion, it will do well to remind ourselves that each of the religions caters to the exactly same human need.

Apparently all our biological needs are in common with the whole of animal kingdom.  However religion seems to be the manifestation of a need that only humans have.  What exactly is this need?  Is this an emotional need or an intellectual one or a need that arises from the combination of emotional and intellectual faculties?  It is certainly not physical in the biological sense.

Many feel that it is an emotional need for security - need for an element of certainty in the very uncertain human existence.  As children we get a feeling of security from our parents.  As we grow up we realize that they too are frail human beings like us.  And so we think up of an entity that is truly omnipotent and omniscient. Thus, it can be said that it is the emotional need for security through a protector that makes us create an omnipotent and compassionate God or a multiplicity of gods.  Well defined and strictly enforced social practices through a commonly subscribed religious code too add to a sense of security by eliminating uncertainties.  Each society passes on these beliefs and social codes to each successive generation.  And thus a particular religion becomes what the members of this society want for satisfying their need for security.

This view of origin of religions also explains why most people become increasingly more religious when confronted with adversities and calamities.  This viewpoint is also borne out by studies that suggest that atheism blossoms in affluent societies where most people feel economically secure.  Such societies have reduced the uncertainties and insecurities in human existence to the bare minimum.  Click here to read a related article.  (However, some of the oil rich Arab countries seem to be an exception to this observation.)

Religion and God could also be a response to the strictly intellectual need to find out how the world came about and the causes for the goings on around us.  This is a strictly human need as no other species has been endowed with the kind of intelligence that we have.  Intellect subscribes to a cause and effect model and hence asks questions beginning with why and who.  It also inquires into the nature of things and asks questions beginning with what.  This suggests that the theories like Karma, and the postulate of an universal consciousness as the original cause are all the responses generated by the earliest intellectuals to this need to know.  It need not be gainsaid that these are merely enlightened guesses in the absence of a methodology to find the answers to the bewildering questions posed by the universe to our limited intellect.

Further, it also appears that these early intellectual elites must have thought that the future generations of intellectuals will not rest content with their explanations and definitely make further efforts to know the ultimate answers.  They must also have thought that this will be a waste of intellect and time because human intellect could see only that far and no further.  And thus it must have been with a view to dissuade the coming generations from wasting their talent on useless pursuits that they attributed their thoughts and words to an ultimate authority, the God, and firmly propounded the finality of what they had said. They made a contrary view punishable to dissuade further inquiries.  But the forbidden fruit is sweet indeed.  While at this point, it may also be added that the Day of Judgement and Heaven and Hell must have been propounded by these intellectuals to dissuade the hoi-polloi from indulging their animal passions and losing the productivity required to keep the human society together and ensure its progress.

As we know, this attempt to quell further inquiries failed to deter the pioneer intellectuals' increasingly capable successors who adopted the scientific inquiry method to find the answers that human intellect craved for.

This curious group made rapid strides, developed tools for their inquiries and came out with verifiable answers to many of the queries bothering the human intellect.  They also proved their ancestors wrong in several cases.

Could this impudence of the unstoppable inquirer be at the root of antagonism between science and religion?

Now science and economic progress have reached a stage where they can cater to the emotional need for security as well as the intellectual need to know.  Yes, it is true that there still are unanswered questions.  To wit, nature of human consciousness, the evolution versus intelligent design debate and so on.  But these can be assigned to secular philosophy instead of competing and dogmatic religions.

And so the big question is, is there still a need for religion? If yes, why? Do you think that giving up religion will make the world too monotonous and colorless?

The bigger question is that though a (superior) alternative is available how to ensure that people want it instead of antiquated religious beliefs?  Isn't this somewhat like asking how to draw people towards a healthy diet that they don't want for reasons of liking?