The irony of Science, Religion and Society.

Due to holidays I have suddenly found myself with a lot of spare time on hand. I have tried to break the boredom by reading some books which I found at home. Last week I fumbled across a book titled “The essence of Hinduism”. Now as most people will know I am neither a believer nor a non believer in the concept of god. But I admire Hinduism for being its true message. When I say Hinduism, I refer to it excluding the superstitions, rituals and preaching .To me a true religion needs no preaching. It is for a person to learn himself. In this regard Hinduism I feel is admirable. It is a way of thinking more than anything and provides a framework over which a person builds his own ideas.
So now that we have my views on what true a true religion is we can proceed to the topic I want to discuss. As I was reading the book one of its statements made me think quite a bit. It said all religions try to answer some very fundamental questions. One of which Being : “Where does the universe come from? And Why?”Now this struck me as a bit odd. Was this not beyond the scope of religion. Because from what I can make out religion try to explain our activities in this Universe and not beyond it. So why try to look for something beyond this. Because all our activities are defined by time and space which are very much a part of this universe and not beyond it. Our minds are a part of this created universe and hence the concept of religion is very much a part of this created Universe. Unless of course if we take it that the universe always existed. I personally reject this as everything has to have a beginning. So we agree that the universe was created(I have not mentioned by whom or how).So by definition everything created in the universe has its limitation of time and space. So religion by the same definition cannot answer the question it is trying to answer. How can it?, when it is so entrenched in the very limitation it is trying to explain?
Now what then of Science? Does science do any better? The answer of course is NO. Funnily, in view of all their differences and arguments ,science and religion have a lot in common. Science has the same limitations as religion. It fails at the same juncture. But this is hardly surprising when you analyze the origins of both science and religion. It basically comes down to the fact that we have always have tried to understand things we probably never will. Science and religion are just two different ways devised in this futile quest of ours.
Now that we have hit a road block, we tend to smoothen things by using the word “Nature”. This is a word we so often use when we cannot give a reasoning for a occurrence. The other day when I was flipping through pages of the newspaper, I stopped to read an article about the legalizing of homosexuality in India. One of the main arguments used to oppose the bill was that homosexuality was not ”natural”. How funny does this sound??Is everything in society natural? Is Marriage natural? The author of the article raised this excellent point. Nature never intended us to spend our entire life with a single partner. But society insist that we do. Clearly this accepted norm of social life is not natural. In the same vein is contraception natural? Is abortion natural? So we can now safely conclude that Science and Religion created a structured society in trying to define nature. But unfortunately this society is so often against the fundamental laws of nature.
So we have the four words which have shaped the thinking of an entire species : Nature, Religion, Science and Society. What I have tried to illustrate here is a flawed idea. From the very beginning we have chosen the wrong questions, the wrong methods and these flaws are now so deeply ingrained in our identity that we would be lost without them. Where we go from here is uncertain. But at least we know how we got here.
Cheers