Meditation 25: The Most Dangerous Game

Which is more dangerous for human beings, science or religion?  Science gives us the means to kill each other and ourselves, while religion historically supplies a ready reason for killing.  In a blunt overview, we can contrast science and religions in the following way:  Science is rational, consensual and observational.  Religions are irrational containing superstitions and everything, indeed, that is a matter of faith.  Science is about gaining knowledge about the universe by public means.  Religions are about beliefs that are held, out of internal conviction alone, to be revealed Truth. There can be only one science, with many branches, but there are many religions, whose superstitions, alone, distinguish them.  A superstition is simply any belief for which there is no empirical evidence and to which people pledge allegiance.  It is a choice to believe a superstition, but knowledge is not a matter of personal choice.  I do not choose the speed of light, or the dispositions of the stars, the force of gravity or the way the human body ages.

The trouble with science is that has no soul.  The scientific observer is without personality, and without any interest or concern but to observe the results of carefully designed experiments and to state increasingly powerful theories.  There is nothing moral about science, nothing spiritual.  Its point of view is that of the third person, singular and plural, so it is always viewing things from the outside.  On the plus side, science is open to evolution, because our knowledge is never closed or complete.  Science is critical and asks the hard questions, but it does not prejudge the issues.

The trouble with religion is that it has too much soul.  The extremely religious person is all devotion, and without any interest or concern but to open up a connection to the infinite.  Unfortunately, since it is only on the basis of superstitions that religions can distinguish each other, they tend to become dogmatic.  Dogmatism is the enemy of open thinking, and the refuge of intellectual laziness.  An amazing thing about the human mind is its ability to think about things in some detail that cannot possibly be known by ordinary means.

Science and religion are both undeniably dangerous.  So which is more dangerous?  In my view, religion is the most dangerous game. Science and technology may kill us, but religion can make us zombies.  Without an open mind and a questioning spirit, the human being is as good as dead already, and the next life can only ever be a matter of hearsay.