During the last few centuries, and particularly during the last few decades, science has made rapid strides and consequently the world has also changed radically. It is this revolutionary change and the emergence of a new scientific culture, which has been posing some serious questions. It has raised some serious issues for scholars and philosophers who are engaged in discussing religious issues.

Our beliefs and values have been radically altered, and the old ideas and beliefs, which dominated the pre-scientific world, have given way to a radically different outlook. The new achievements of science in both the material and intellectual fields have earned for science an unprecedented prestige and all that is pronounced as scientific gets ready acceptance.

God has kept nothing secret from us. He has manifested Himself in His divine act which neither declines, nor decays, nor dies. A scientist as has been trying from the earliest times of human history to unfold these mysteries for himself, and our technologists have done their best to carry the benefits of science on a large scale to the common man.

Religion has been a universal human phenomenon since time immemorial. Man’s cultural and social life is very intimately inter-woven with his religious faiths and beliefs. The values and norms which guide human conduct are mostly derived from the religious beliefs and commitments of the people.

The conflict between religion and science has manifested itself in diverse forms ranging from a complete denial of religion in favour of a scientific outlook to a fervent assertion of religion with all it stands for.

A proper understanding of religion and of life requires not only an intellectual approach, but an endeavour supported by all the aspects of human personality. It is the total personality of man, with all its faculties and capacities, which must be harnessed if the aim is to achieve a fuller appreciation of religion and life.

Religion should have provided a high moral atmosphere for a scientist/technologist, a businessman and politician to function with noble standards of integrity and honest dedication. If it could not do so, we shall have to think whether it has really any value worth its name. Einstein has so often said that during the past several centuries, it were religion and fine arts (music, painting, poetry and folklores) which were the unifying forces among different nations. Science and technology with their international character also worked towards this end, but today it is the politician who establishes or breaks up, at his will, the ties of common relationship, so often on his personal whims or on the prejudices of his group and creates a disorder under the pseudo-pretexts of maintaining discipline and establishing human rights. Is it not ridiculous to talk about world peace under such circumstances?

In fact, religion is a system which aims at uniting man to God. Religions may be natural or man-made, or even super-natural based on a direct revelation from God. Most of the great religions claim divine intervention or revelation as their starting point. The teachings of these religions are, therefore, based on faith.

There can be no opposition between reason and religion. True religion can never be contrary to reason, for reason is given to man by God.  Whenever some religious truth clashes with reason, this could not have been revealed by God; it must be the product of some human aberration. As God is one, so truth is one. Neither religion and reason, nor philosophy and natural science can be opposed or incompatible. The mind of man is made to perceive truth. A true religious belief cannot go counter to reason.

Religion goes beyond reason, not against it. It removes a veil, opens a new perspectives. If you like, reason examines carefully all that is in the room we live in, religion throws the windows open and discovers to us new aspects of life outside the room.

Dr. S. Radhakrishnan has aptly remarked: It (religion) is the reaction of the whole man to the whole reality. We seek the religious object by the totality of our faculties and energies. Such functioning of the whole man may be called spiritual life, as distinct from a merely intellectual or moral or aesthetic activity or a combination of them.”

If man has to triumph over atom, the most essential condition is that he must remain a man. He must not give up, at any cost, those spiritual, ethical, moral, social, humanistic, cultural and scientific values which characterize him as man. He can succeed in his goal of divinity, if he relentlessly pursues, with all the strength at his command, all the human values he has inherited. Any compromise or weakness on the front of human and scientific values may ultimately lead to the triumph of atom over man.

(The author is a Reader in the Department of Chemistry, University of Allahabad. He is a prolific writer and has published about thirty books in Hindi and English on various aspects of Science and Technology)