– Shaikh Danish Ahmed Abdul Naeem (B.Tech., Mechanical)
In this modern era of technology and advancement of science, it has given a false notion in the minds of academia, intellectuals, and not to forget the common masses, that Science leads to atheism i.e., the denial of a divine being. This false notion or assertion is based on the following assumptions;
1. Science is the only yardstick for truth
2. Since Science works its conclusions must be true.
3. Science Leads to certainty
Before breaking this false notion, we first understand what Science is? In a book written by ‘Bertrand Russell’ that goes by the name ‘Religion and Science,’ he writes “Science is an attempt to discover by utilizing observation and reasoning based upon it to discover particular facts of the world and laws connecting these facts”. In short, we say that Science is a combination of observation and reasoning to form conclusions. To understand it better let’s see an example, ‘When we release a ball, it falls to the ground’, so the observation here was that the ball fell down and now by our rational faculty we gave a reason that something must be pulling it down and thus we come to the conclusion that it is gravity.
OBSERVATIONS + REASONING = SCIENCE(CONCLUSION)
To begin with, the first assumption ‘Science is the only yardstick for truth’ this false notion comes into the picture only when we think Science is the only source for knowledge which is completely false. There are other sources of knowledge as well, while studying epistemology we see testimony, philosophy, history, religion, logic, etc are all sources of knowledge. Also, there are some drawbacks in Science, it is limited by the sample size of the observations as the sample size changes observations may change hence Science work on the probabilistic framework. It cannot answer ‘Why?’ questions. Though it can answer ‘How the universe came into existence? What were its causes?’ but, it cannot answer questions such as ‘Why the universe exists in the first place?’. Also, it has no foot in the door when it comes to a subject like ethics, morality, etc. For Science, human beings and stones are no different they both are just random arrangements of molecules. Science cannot deal with these questions. therefore, we can conclude that Science cannot be the only yardstick for truth.
Now coming to our second false assumption that ‘since Science works its conclusions must be true.’ Historically speaking it’s not true. Some theories were wrong but still worked, for example at the end of the 17th century the theory of the Phlogiston was proposed which led to the discovery of nitrogen by Daniel Rutherford but after few years it was found that the theory itself proved wrong. Philosopher Sameer Okashah in his book ‘Philosophy of Science’ writes “Historically, there are many cases of theories that we now believe to be false but that were empirically quite successful in their day”. Hence it is not true that Science works, so it must be true.
The third false assumption ‘Science leads to certainty’. To dispel this misconception, we must know that Science heavily relies on induction. But, ‘What is induction?’, It is the thinking process where we have a limited set of observations and data as a result of our limited observation and data, we conclude the next observation that we have not observed in the entire set of observation. For understanding it better we take an example if one observes 1000 white sheep so he will conclude that the next sheep will be white based on his observation. But is it necessarily true? The 1001st observation might be a black sheep so there are possibilities that we may have future observations that may contradict previous conclusions which may lead to new conclusions and this is the “beauty” of Science. Based on this argument we can easily conclude that Science doesn’t lead to certainty.
So, to sum up, the whole argument, Science is the application of reason to the natural world. It seeks to understand how the world works it does not always necessarily be right. Hence, clearing the above false assumptions we can say that Science is one of the tools to reach the truth but not the only tool. Therefore, we can say that the notion ‘Science leads to Atheism’ is completely false.
Masha ALLAH good.👍.