More material on Deification of Science; more generally, on The Nature of Human Knowledge
[1] Myth of the European Enlightenment [3] Myth of Progress
COUNTERING THREE MYTHS FOSTERED BY WESTERN EDUCATION:
PART-2: THE DEIFICATION OF SCIENCE
(Originally submitted to the Third Arab Turkish Congress of Social Science, May 2013, Istanbul == but I could not attend)
By Dr. Asad Zaman
As already discussed in Part 1 (The Enlightenment Myth), the purity and simplicity of the teachings of Jesus (AS) could not be preserved in the Christian tradition. A lot of elements of the Greek philosophical tradition were assimilated and absorbed within the teachings of the Catholic Church. In particular Neo-platonic Philosophy as well as Gnostic philosophy deeply influenced the fathers of the Catholic Church around the time of the Nicean Council, . Wwhen Emperor Constantine used imperial powers to forge consensus and create a unified Christianity at the Council of Nicea (325 AD), these philosophies became part of official orthodox Christianity. Much later, when the Europeans learned to question tradition under the influence of progressive Islamic Spain, they found many elements of Christianity in conflict with reason. The Catholic Church attempted to enforce its authority by banning dissent and punishing and torturing dissenters. Deviant philosophy and science led to the burning of Giordano Bruno and the forced recantation of Galileo. These efforts to suppress dissent backfired as the Catholic Church lost popular support during the process of the Reformation which occurred when Martin Luther, John Calvin and other protestants revolted against the corruption of the Church. In a long and complex historical process which has been studied and described from many different angles, secular scientific thought gained the upper hand while religion became confined to a private personal belief. This was a complete reversal of the traditional European society, which placed paramount importance on religion as the ultimate arbiter in all domains of life. This transformation had profound effects on all aspects of European thought and culture. The goal of this essay is to trace the harmful effects of elevating science to be the sole source of knowledge, and relegating religion to a private belief.
One of these effects was a reconsideration of the nature of human knowledge – also called epistemology. The rejection of religion by leading European intellectuals led to the realization that widespread belief by masses of people over centuries was no guarantee of truth or reliability of knowledge. Knowledge was re-defined as Justified True Belief; in opposition to tradition, citing authority was no longer considered as a valid method of justification. Instead, strong consensus emerged on the idea that justification had to be empirical and rational. Once authority and tradition were discredited as sources of knowledge, nearly all traditional beliefs were called into question. An extreme example is Pascal’s argument “I think, therefore I am” – the point is that even the fundamental issue of whether or not I exist becomes subject to examination by reason, rather than being taken for granted. In “Origins of Western Social Science” (2009), I have shown how social science arose in the west in the process of re-examining issues earlier settled by religious considerations.
Enlightenment thinkers had witnessed the failure of Christianity both at personal and at social levels. In addition to being personally corrupt, the Popes played an important role in power politics resulting in extreme cruelty, oppression, and misery for the masses. Abandoning faith in religion, secular philosophers put their hopes in the ability of observations and reason to solve social, political and moral problems in a superior way. They argued that the scientific method was the sole valid route to human knowledge, and that scientific reasoning would provide a basis for a superior morality to the one given by Christianity. This idea, that science can take the place of religion, has been called the “Deification of Science” by many authors.
In fact, as was conclusively established in early twentieth century, science cannot provide any basis for morality. And yet, morality is an essential component of human knowledge. The deification of science in the west led to a gradual loss of moral knowledge in the west which has had disastrous consequences. I have spelled these out in detail in “European Transition to Secular Thought: Lessons for Muslims” (2013). In this brief essay, we list just a few of the harmful effects.
Can we use reason to discover how human beings should behave? The secular thinkers in the West attempted to do so, with disastrous results.
On the personal level, utilitarianism was the philosophy which emerged as a consequence of rationality. That is, whatever makes you feel good is moral. Religion teaches us that we should be honest and fulfill our commitments. Reason asks why? We should do whatever serves our needs best.
Utilitarianism as a theory of morals fails on many levels and in many ways. The effects of these failings are obvious in terms of its impacts on Western society. There are two conflicts which cannot be resolved rationally. The first problem is: is it moral to inflict pain on others, if it is useful? When there are no absolute moral principles, then problems like those of Abu-Gharaib arise. Both German and US Scientists carried out experiments in inflicting maximum pain on test subjects, so as to learn the best torture techniques scientifically – The Kubark Manual of CIA is said to be the first real advance in the ancient art of torture since the times of the Inquisition. To discover the effects of radiation, US carried out experiments of the following types:
Administering radioactive iodine to newborns, and irradiating the heads of children
Feeding radioactive material to mentally disabled children
Exposing U.S. soldiers and prisoners to high levels of radiation etc.
As long these experiments can be justified on grounds that they are “useful,” one cannot make a moral objection to them.
The second conflict is that short term utility and long term utility are often in conflict. Children love chocolate and coke, and would have a very unhealthy and unbalanced diet if allowed to eat what they want. Similarly, they would often prefer to play hooky in preference to studying, even though this would be harmful to their long run education. Experiments on rats showed that they preferred stimulating pleasure centers in their own brains to food and water, and would die of exhaustion if given the opportunity to repeatedly stimulate these pleasure centers. Thus the pursuit of short run pleasure can cause serious damage to long run pleasure.
For this, and many other reasons, the pursuit of pleasure cannot be considered a moral principle. Nonetheless, a secular society has no other viable options; especially if there is no belief in afterlife and Judgment. In this case, what else can you do, other than maximize pleasure? However, the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure has destroyed family life in the west. The pursuit of pleasure as a moral principle has led to decline in morality documented in many sources; for example, “The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values” by Gertrude Himmelfarb (1995). Families and childcare require long term commitments and sacrifice of personal pleasures. A recent report on Fractured Families states that “the fabric of family life has been stripped away” in the past few decades in Europe and USA. Children in broken families cannot get the moral training required for a stable society. Statistics show millions of unwanted teenage pregnancies, highest infidelity and divorce rates in the world, more than a third of all children living in broken families, and record rates of alcohol and drug abuse, depression and suicide.
In fact, our lives are far more affected by human behavior then by science and technology. Vacuum cleaners and washing machines cannot make up for infidelity and lack of sincerity and affection. Learning excellence in conduct, and the path to spiritual and moral development is far more important than the technical knowledge required for producing bombs and getting jobs to make money. Islam teaches us to prefer simple lifestyles lived in the company of pious men seeking spiritual growth. A western education teaches the opposite lesson, leading students to prize careers and wealth over family and society. We need to develop methods of Islamic education which reverse these priorities; knowing that the educational system of the West is completely devoid of moral training, there being no scientific basis for morals, it is an imperative for Muslim scholars to devise methods of moral training for our children. Fortunately, the Islamic heritage is rich in this particular topic. However, there is a need for adaptation of the existing material to our modern problems. This moral training is both urgent and imperative to strengthen families in the Islamic world against the onslaught of the forces of modernity, which are causing much damage to family values.
In addition to morality at the personal level, we need rules to regulate social conduct. Religion provides such rules, but secular thought required new rules derived solely from reason. The most important of these new rules is the concept of the social consensus: whatever we agree to is moral. While this continues to be the basis of morality among secular societies, it has glaring weaknesses, just like utilitarianism. Lack of an absolute moral code means that there is no anchor or internal basis for morality. To illustrate, homosexuality was considered a psychological disease, a crime, and a social evil in the USA in the 1970s. The consensus shifted in the 1990s to make it socially acceptable and normal behavior with protection of law, and to speak against it became a crime. We now describe some of the harmful effects which resulted from taking reason as the basis for derivation of political theory.
Against traditional political theory which emphasized wisdom and justice, Machiavelli argued that political rulers should not be bound by any moral principles. They should be ruthless and cruel, rule by fear, lie to the people and betray their enemies, as required by political necessities. Many have remarked on the close congruence between Machiavellian theories and modern politics.
Building on Machiavelli, influential German philosopher Hegel argued that morality was created by the state. Political leaders can create consensus and hence morality. As creators, leaders themselves were above morality. Application of these principles of political necessity has led to an unprecedented amount of violence, cruelty, and atrocities in the twentieth century, documented by Jonathan Glover in “Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century” (2012). For example, the British continued a blockade of food to Germans after their surrender, leading to death by starvation of about 800,000 Germans. The idea that nations create morality and hence are above it was responsible for the two world wars, causing deaths of millions of innocents. These historically unprecedented slaughters have created a world in which the law of the jungle is the rule. The most powerful countries can invade and occupy weaker countries to possess their oil or for any reason at all, since the principle of “might makes right” is now universally accepted.
Similarly, Zygmunt Bauman in “Modernity and the Holocaust” (1989) has analyzed the Holocaust, in which millions of civilian Jews – men, women and children – were scientifically exterminated in specially designed ovens. Baumann argues that the rational philosophy that ends justify means, which continues to be taught at leading universities, was, in the final analysis the cause of the holocaust. That is, lack of absolute moral codes have caused, and will continue to cause human disasters.
The application of rationality and scientific method provide no guidance regarding human behavior either at the individual level or at the national level. In contrast, the Quran provides us with firm guidance. The fundamental principle is that all human beings are brothers:
O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise (each other)). (49:13)
Islam teaches us to be just, even towards our enemies. It teaches us to bear true witness, even against our own self. These rules cannot be derived from rational considerations of self interest. Thus, Muslims have the opportunity to create a new political science based on principles of fairness and justice sorely needed by the modern world.
Science and scientific methods fail to provide guidance on the most important issues which we face as human beings. What are the best ways of behaving towards each other, and how should we live together as a community of human beings? Islam teaches universal brotherhood, kindness and compassion, together with justice. Deification of science leads to the idea that these normative ideals are meaningless, and can be created or changed at will. Thus, the scientific knowledge of how to build an atom bomb is valuable, while the moral knowledge that it is wrong to kill innocents is “meaningless.” An Islamic education must reverse these priorities, and place excellence in human conduct as the top priority in education. Again, this is a task of burning importance for Muslim scholars today.
Three Myths: I -- the myth of European Enlightenment - Part 1 of 3 Myth Fostered by a European Education