#14 Religion, Technology, Spirituality and Science – An overview of conflicts

Personal Qlists

1. Background deeper and wider questions –
   1. What makes members of human kind conflict with other members?
   2. What are the statistics of differences between communities in general and when do certain differences raise to a level of conflict? Eg: class (economic), religious (Hindu Vs. Muslim), intra-religious sects (Shia Vs. Sunni, Hinduism Vs. Lokayata), thought (Capitalist Vs. Communist), religious vs. atheism, religion vs. sciences, technology vs. science (Global warming?), gender (man Vs woman, mainstream Vs. LGBTQ) etc.
   3. What is the role of tradition in the above conflicts? There could be:
      1. Conflicts due to past traditional contempt of the other. – ritualistic conflict?
      2. Conflicts arising between traditional and new.
   4.  How many of the above can be categorized as significantly identity related conflict Vs. significantly abstract concept (from religion, spirituality, or any other thought level scriptures) Vs. scarcity of resources (economic, geographic, etc).
   5. Has science had a unifying role in the conflict landscape? Did science create pan-community linkages?
   6. How are conflicts solved and over what time scale this happens?
   7. Is science used to rationalize the divide – us vs other – or otherwise?

Session Outline plan

1. Aspects of human society – find out associated words – find conflicts
2. Conflicts of science Vs society
3. How science can help reduce conflict in Society.

 

What actually happened –

Aspects of human society and contradictions if any

Nature	Tradition	Social stratification	Religion	Identity	Daily Work	Trade	Leaders / Public administration / Government	Utilitarian tools	Science	Spirituality
Population	dogma	classification	dogma	Nationalism	survival	barter system	law and order	fashion	wonder	personal
Over exploitation of resources	blind following	caste	rituals	caste	farmer	money	borders	new!	questioning	sacred
One’s waste is other’s waste	no thought necessary	rich/middle/poor	mass following	tradition	technician	travelling	health of population	survival	discovery	pilgrimage
changing nature	ritualistic	us vs other	crowd	religion	teacher	exchange of ideas	infrastructure	practical	logic	mysticism
climate change	glue of society	gender	specific places of worship	gender	what one does 50% of time	marketing	housing	power	material world	thought
pollution of resources	binding	elitism	money	profession	survival as who?	consumerism	economic regulation and growth	mass-production	Development of tools	questioning
migration	touchy	communism	see beyond senses through inference	economic status	identity	artificial scarcity	dealing with other governments	market	see beyond senses through experiment	wonder
agrarian crisis	entertainment	capitalism	god-men/women	principles	tradition	economy of growth		consumerism	self-righteous	wander
	community spirit	aspirations	traditions	historical roots	social stratification	economy of conveniences/luxury		innovation	understanding of the world through experiment	self-reflection
	familiarity	by profession	value to poor	geographical affiliations	full-time occupation	jobs		wars	universal world-view
	crowd-mentality	age	easy knowledge transfer	historical narrative	need for escape – entertainment	entrepreneurship		fake news	method
	inertia = # of practitioners + time from which practiced	hierarchy	not-accomodative	self-image				news	documentation
	rigidity	tradition	peace	social-class				entertainment	peer-review
	culture		self-restrain against greed	language				believer-free	difficult learning process
			mine is better than yours	mine is better than yours				using science readily	arrogance
			Makes it easy to ‘understand’ the un-understandable – through inference and imagination	rigidity					god-less
			belief	ethnic					reductionism
			forgiveness						right and wrong with proof
			respect and care for nature						falsifiability
			humility

The above classification activity was proposed in the class, but could not be elaborated due to lack of time. I have expanded extensively based on my thoughts, the things i feel could map out the conflict zones. PK and RR and JP had an interesting discussion on the questioning not being sole reserve of the sciences. PK mentioned the traditions of questioning the authority as evident from the development of Buddhism and Jainism religions reacting to the dominant Vadic orthodoxy. Sufism was also mentioned here. RR and JP opposed saying that questioning resulted in aggressive reactions and will often do so even in current times. Modifying the question to “the reaction to questioning” rather than “freedom to questioning” helped ease the disagreement somewhat, with science theoretically winning the lead here as opposed to religion and tradition. But PK made an observation that everyone agreed – that if questioning is questioning the power structure and traditions of either science or religion – the reaction will be aggressive rather than welcoming. I wish i can find examples of such happening in the sciences, but it seems there will be plenty. Also at this moment it would have been nice to consider the type of questioning – A) Questioning with an intent to challenge authority B) Questioning with an intent to improve the practices of the past and becoming more logical and reasonable. If latter is the case what could be the reactions in both religion and sciences? Also PK mentioned that none of these aspects, religion (hindu mostly) or science, do not in themselves call for authoritarian structures. But this is more true for the latter, in my opinion.

Anyways, then followed the following presentation.

conflicts

1. After the word activity, a slide summarized the principal differences that science has from other activities of religion and traditions that may create conflict.
2. Another slide mentioned some selected examples of conflicts between science and our the religious society, both in historic times and currently in India. The latter was linked to the very recent (2013 onward) killings of intellectuals and rationalists in India, a trend that is alarmingly being accepted as OK by common people. Similarly, witch-hunts are not a rarity too here in India with killings just this year (eg. BBC article)! Surprisingly, except PK, no one knew about Dabholkar, but thankfully knew about Gauri Lankesh.
3. Then, we moved on to a classification of the relationship between science and religion as seen by Barbour (book : When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? Year 2000) and as summarized by a biologist and educator here , there are following ‘models’ ( interesting relevance here to Narashima Roddam’s article on ancient Greek model and axiomatic style of viewing the world)
   1. Conflict – The conventional and simply popular view that there’s only one winner between sciences and religion. A view that begins from right and wrong and ends there itself – with wrong outcomes. A quote from Rumi makes this type of argument disappear –
      “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing,
      and rightdoing there is a field.
      I’ll meet you there.
      When the soul lies down in that grass
      the world is too full to talk about..”
   2. Independence – Exclusivity of subjects between science and religion. No overlap, no interest in overlapping. Again too narrow and good for theoretical experiments.
   3. Dialogue – Both points of view on a subject are valid and welcome as long as one tries to understand and accommodate the other, while commonly acknowledging that truth about the subject is immensely bigger than each viewer can ever comprehend. Also requires mutual respect, mutual interest in searching for common ground. A great study in the process of dialog itself – where yearning for learning overcomes any petty attachments to a set of viewpoints.
   4. Integration – both are necessary to understand anything.
4. And then finally we moved on to “Why Do We See So Many Things as ‘Us vs. Them’?” by David Berreby – an article on how science could be used to understand and resolve conflicts between communities.

 

Analysis

The session seemed typical – a person (aka teacher) talks about some aspect of the world to students and the latter just sit and attempt to listen. I am not quite happy with this. The challenges here were:

1. Deliver a set amount of content to students, hoping they would find it interesting enough to remember and make sense.
2. Give them food for thought so that they process and reflect and question and get involved. That didn’t happen much.
3. The instructor, it seems talked about too many things, but without depth and conviction (because of lack of depth and insight within himself that only comes through sufficient reflection). This could have been apparent to the students.

The last is the most difficult part here. How can we improve that? I am still struggling to find out how to approach any subject from a platform that i have experience in – engineering research. It sounds more like preaching now, and that any sane thinking person must not be OK with.

Questions

As an exercise and mark of attendance here’s an activity that can help release the inhibitions to questioning (with intent of wonder) – make students ask 5 questions about the course topics and in particular current session content as well as teaching methods employed or agreement/disagreements, etc. It is declared that there’s no guarantee that there will ever be an answer, simply because A) I don’t know much B) I don’t have much time either. However, through this process there is A) Knowing of what students are thinking or wondering, that could help in future lectures and correcting past ones B) Simulating the mind because once one asks a question, one is more keen on discovering the answers!

• JP:
  • The mention and quoting of advanced technologies in the past could be a figment of writer’s imagination as well as interpreter’s creativity and ‘greatness’ bias. So how to go about confirming or disproving such claims?
  • How do we quantify or qualify authority in science or society?
  • Blind faith and sciences oppose eachother. But in a community, authority is important to whom members must submit with blind faith. So blind faith is more of a problem to society or only to the practice of science?
  • Climate change is condemned in some communities, despite insurmountable evidences. Then how this relates to the claim in the presentation that science has universal appeal?
  • Can the conflict of science Vs religion is based on power? Whoever has more knowledge or can explain things much better is given more power. With this show of knowledge power, many people turn blind. So what role power plays the conflicts of science and religion?
• UB
  • Why is questioning considered negative, when it is directed towards religion or traditions?
  • Humans have lead to major problems, like climate change, etc. Shouldn’t we focus more on awareness (read science) and try to return earth to a healthy state?
  • Is conflict necessarily a bad thing? It seems pretty obvious given that each member is unique and diversity is important. Is it ever possible to achieve complete peace and harmony?
  • Can society, which has benefited from sciences immensely, survive without science and without knowing? Are there other things, apart from the science, that can help society progress?
• MJ
  • Will science-society conflict be perpetual?
  • How can scholars from either science or religion or traditions can ever come together and find common ground about the world?
  • What are the ways in which one can systematically understand society and its structures with a scientific perspective? – (A: history?)
  • In a course like society and sciences, which encourages debate and discussions, wheat is the final outcome of all this in terms of self-development and intellectual progress? – (A: If one realizes that complexity is everywhere and there are no straight clean answers and that one needs to ask better and comprehensive questions and then put in effort for complicated but elaborate/encompassing answers, then the objective of the course is met Does it lead to self-development and intellectual progress – i dont know, but does it lead to awareness about the world – that could probably be true!).
  • Science and religion have more commonalities than differences, and yet they are arch rivals. Why is it so?
• RR
  • Is the concept of ‘identity crazed’ wrong? it is a basic survival instinct!
• PK
  • Lack of learning centers – the only reason for no-science in Indian past?
  • How do you address the claim made against science- for its instrumentality?
  • What happens when living being are treated as subjects of science, if you say that science is more relevant with deterministic patterns?
  • Does history of science in India only find its roots in Vedic and colonial times? How do you think medieval India stands in the history of science? (A: I admit my take on it was based on poor reading and that too a colonial-influenced reading of science histories as well as colonial-inspired understanding of sciences in India in general. This must be corrected, so i am working on it. Meanwhile, there’s no clear answer to this unfortunately now, maybe a few weeks later!)
  • Isn’t it important to define science, religion, tradition, technology and identity before we understand the conflicts between them? (A: true, but that is homework 🙂 )
• MM
  • How can reasoning be applied in religion?
  • Why is technology always attached to ‘modern’ society? (A: i guess you mean ‘attributed’ rather than attached?)
  • By saying everything is falsifiable, do you mean that life/existence/ideas are meaningless?
  • How can science give the best predictions as compared to religious studies?