Religion, Science and Literature

Hazara Singh
Religion, Science and Literature
Religion has been a quest for truth. Science has also been defined as a systematized effort to discover it. If the destination of both which have greatly influenced human destiny, is the same, where does the difference between them lie? Religion had been preaching unflinching faith in God, and forbidding a searching look into the working of nature on the plea that God's Will is absolute. The theologians denounced all such strivings and the entrepreneurs were despised and punished. Science does not accept a fact for granted, unless it has been ascertained. The basic difference between the two disciplines in their approach towards truth makes their paths diametrically opposed to each other. Science demands an independent way of thinking and religion disfavours it on the plea that Divine Will, having been revealed through His chosen prophets, needs no further scrutiny.
Religion is primarily based on moral canons which aim at making human life noble, pious and good. The approach of religion towards life in certain respects is negative, as it prescribes many taboos. It tends to make people lead good lives on earth by offering them heaven as a reward after death. It warns sternly that on being allured to follow the path of sin, they would be dooming themselves to hell. Science strives for the intellectual enlightenment and is neutral in its ethical approach. It does not bother to give the verdict whether an act or a fact is good or bad, because its function is to determine whether it is correct or incorrect.
Religion had been attaching too much importance to life after death and regarding the one on earth as a mere temporary phase. Science has discovered that the human evolution on globe has been an act of great achievement and there is nothing to feel repentant about it, as the Biblical Story of Creation suggests. The scientific inventions have scanned the universe and have exploded the myth of heaven above and hell beneath.
Many a religion had been glorifying poverty as a divine blessing. It had been prescribed as a sure passport to heaven. The pernicious contentment injected into the masses through the glorification of poverty made them reconcile with a life spent in squalor, starvation and disease. Progressive thought inspired by scientific approach towards life has revealed that poverty is not God-made but political injustice, economic exploitation and social indignity. The progress achieved through scientific civilization makes many of us proclaim that heaven on earth is better than the one after death.
In spite of the fact that all religions of the world had been based on fundamental virtues like truth, mercy, restraint, humility, etc., and had been proclaiming 'Where Love is, God is', the bloodshed committed in the name of religion and the devastation caused under its banner make the historians shudder. It failed to unify humanity. Even people professing the same religion had not been able to shed the prejudices of colour and race.
Science during the brief period of three hundred years or so had removed many misunderstandings and has knit the world into a sort of global unit. The use of science for selfless service of mankind has been suggested by many eminent scientists as the best mode of divine worship. It has led to a crusade against poverty, want, disease and ignorance.
Science had not been unmixed blessing. The industrial revolution ushered in the evils like unemployment and imperialism. The rich became richer and the poor became poorer. The world was divided into the rulers and the ruled. The exploitation of underdeveloped countries by technically advanced nations is a cruel chapter in the history of mankind.
In spite of the material comforts provided by industrial progress, an average man suffers from restlessness. The belief in the struggle for existence and the cry of survival of the fittest have tolled knell of moral restraint, sympathy and respect for elders.
The era of plenty and prosperity ushered in by science may be praiseworthy, but the constant threat, which the armoury of thermonuclear weapons holds to the very existence of human race, makes even the sanest among us feel quite uncertain about the future of not only of the human beings but also of almost the entire biological world. A scientist warned that the third global war is not necessary to destroy the world. If six hydrogen bombs wrapped in a cobalt case be exploded at the North Pole, the ice which had been piling up in the Arctic Ocean for ages will thaw and evaporate to form clouds within a matter of minutes. This tremendous thaw precipitating in the form of rain will lead to a rise in the level of sea by many feet. The wall of water rushing with a terrific speed will devastate all shores. They will be submerged under water. The discharge of rivers into the seas will be blocked, leading to the flooding of land around them. The sudden rush of water from the North Pole towards equator may even lead to a coolant earthquake. The depression in the atmospheric pressure will cause continuous torrential rains leading to doomsday.
Science, during peace, is equally dangerous. It has given us many means of quick transport. Statistics reveal that the Vietnam War did not cause as many casualties in a year as the Americans killed in road accidents within the States during the same period.
The pollution of water and air which has been let loose by the automobiles and industrial complexes hold a foreboding that this planet will become unfit for human habitation after decades.
The terrific rate at which the human population is increasing and the longevity which has been assured by numerous advances in medical science confirm that the population of the world is likely to be doubled within half a century. The scramble for food, leisure and privacy may start them. How it will end is only anybody's guess.
The genes which biologists have synthesized also hold out a threat that ambitious politicians with the aid of unscrupulous scientists may plan to dominate the globe with artificially bred superior armies.
Religion did not succeed to any appreciable extent in transforming mankind, because it could not inculcate in its followers a religious way of living. With respectable exceptions here and there, it either turned them into impatient recluses or trigger-happy fanatics. Science is leading the world towards its doom, because it has brought about intellectual awakening and bestowed material comforts upon making at the cost of moral laxity. The world may still be saved from such a catastrophe, if a proper co-ordination between religion and science is brought about. Can it be done? Who will do it? How will it be achieved? We should be confident of achieving such an aim. Literature can shoulder this onerous job. Religion in the absence of a rational evolution has been fabricated into mythology and superstitions. Science on getting bereft of the moral restraint preached by religion has led to in making man avaricious as well as egotistical. Thus, he has lost control over his own self.
Literature has been defined as the mirror of life. It is imperative to be clear about the image of the ideal life which literature should present and uphold.
In the past, men of letters too had been the victims of many inhibitions and injurious complexes. The glorification of war had been a favourite theme with many of them. No doubt, it inspired the composition of thrilling ballads and epics, but the arousing of passions simply led to the widening of gap among people. A source of pride for one section was an occasion of humiliation for the other.
Mythological beliefs led to the production of fine pieces of literature. But the attribution of human talents to the boons of gods and goddesses did not allow self-confidence develop among the masses. They became fatalists. Chance and destiny began to be regarded as more powerful than the human endeavour and perseverance.
Literature had also been misused by money-crazy publishers to corrupt the public taste through pornography. The cheap taste, perpetuated through works displaying nudity and sex led to a lot of degeneration in social and moral attitudes.
During the past three centuries, the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Freud and Karl Marx led to revolutionary changes in the way of looking at life. Rousseau raised the slogan of liberty, fraternity, equality and democracy. He made these ideas the keynotes of his life and books. One of them gave birth to the French Revolution. The other presented new concept of education, suggesting free expression and the use of a worthy practice in place of barren precept.
Freud elaborated the science of psychology. He emphasized the importance of study of man in relation to his environment and his reaction to it, instead of judging him with the time-worn standards based on heredity and tradition.
Karl Marx gave a new interpretation to history and attributed all the ills of society to class struggles.
The cumulative impact of writings and findings of these thinkers led to great social, economic and political changes. Inspired by the ideas of Rousseau, P. B. Shelley perceived man:
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, nationless
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself: Just, gentle, wise: but man.
The goal before the men of letters of today is to unite mankind with such a clear view of truth as makes all discord and conflict among them diminish. Condemnation of war in all of its forms and the denunciation of prejudices which divide humanity should receive greater attention from them. The vision that time is not far off when none on this globe will be naked, starved, ignorant, shelterless, and sick should offer a higher inspiration than the narrow patriotic consideration, racial superiorities and ideological conflicts.
Racial segregation and the imperialistic designs offer grave threats to human dignity as well as to liberty in the present-day world. Science has given brutal power to a technically advanced minority to govern ruthlessly and underdeveloped majority. When the surgeons successfully transplanted the heart of a Black into the body of a White, the men of letters should have availed themselves of this theme to expose how superfluous the racial prejudices are.
Though the skin may differ, yet beneath it the blood and flesh have similar qualities and throbs. William Shakespeare, in Merchant of Venice, through Shylock, proclaims a universal truth. The Jew voices the protest of the entire wronged humanity:
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, and passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as a Christian is?
If you prick us do we not bleed?
If you tickle us do we on laugh?
If you poison us do we not die?
Replace the word 'Jew' by either a Negro—contemptuously called nigger by his White countrymen—or by an unfortunate person belonging, just by chance of birth, to a majority community in a theocratic state, or by a trampled subject in a ruthlessly governed colony, or by an underpaid labourer in an industrial complex, and the word 'Christian' by the corresponding counterpart of a supercilious White, a fanatic belonging to a religious majority, a stone-hearted imperialist, a profit-crazy industrialist, the wails of humanity get aptly echoed. The remedy too has been incidentally suggested: We all are brothers, irrespective of creed, race, place of birth and station.
Rabindranath Tagore in one of his stories, 'Cabuliwala', depicts this truth in a still loftier manner. The two male characters of the story, Rehman and the Bangali Babu, have apparently nothing in common between themselves, as they belong to different nationalities, religions and professions. But the subtle art of writer finds a common bond between the two. Both are fathers. One enjoys the bliss of paternal affection and the other yearns to be reunited with his long-separated daughter, the only child in a far-off land. The Bangali Babu curtails the unnecessary expenditure on the marriage of his daughter to enable Rehman to go back to his native place for meeting his daughter with the money, thus, spared. The story aims at bringing mankind closer.
Take another literary piece of Tagore. In his discourse, 'Power and Progress', he reveals how a plane of the Royal Indian Air Force sent on a mission of bombardment on a hamlet in the no-man's land bordering on the former North-Western Frontier Province in the united India had to manage a forced landing owing to some engine trouble amidst the destruction caused by it. The English pilot apprehended the people, maddened with grief and revenge, would rush at him with daggers in their hands and hack him to pieces. A Pathan damsel came running reminding her people that whosoever came to their place, irrespective of his being a friend or a foe, was their guest and, according to their traditions, was to be extended protection and hospitality. How the scientific spirit crashed before the culture of an underdeveloped people. Science has given us means to conquer nature as well as to subdue human beings. But it is only literature which can teach us how to rise superior to our passions and, thus, become sublime.
Literature should not be subordinated to political ideologies, as has been done in a few totalitarian countries. If Golden Age is assured to people, but at the same time, the political system strives to keep them in an iron cage, channeling their thinking into pre-planned ruts, man ceases to be supreme amongst God's creatures.
The problems posed by dreaded population explosion and atmospheric pollution have to be solved through other means. But how to live with grace, restraint and love in the world of plenty and prosperity is to be suggested by the men of letters. The moral sweetness of religion and the logic of science have been blended through this stanza:
Where present is faced and not escaped
Past is not praised led by blind faith
And the mirage of future casts no spell
Such attitudes lead to a rewarding quest.