Science and faith are not thought to be the happiest of couples. Yet some of the most profound developments in our understanding of the world have come from committed theologians. There is some delicious irony in the fact that the father of genetics (my own field, and a field which has been the terror of countless preachers of all denominations) was Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk.
But in a fairly obvious way, faith is no requisite for genius. For every scientific giant like Isaac Newton, who declared that the cosmos could only come about through “the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being,” there are just as many like Paul Dirac, for whom God was “a mere product of the human imagination”.
Just over polled in one American study believe in God or some higher power. I suspect the same is more-or-less true among Australian scientists. Some scientists believe in God, others do not. Hardly a groundbreaking insight.
But how might science fit with Islam? Medieval mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, chemists, and philosophers in the Muslim world contributed enormously to the history of modern science. It is why, for one, we have the word algebra (from the Arabic, al-jabr), or why stars are generally given Arabic names (think Aldebaran and Fomalhaut). I personally subscribe to the view that the birth of modern science might not have come about had it not been for contributions from the golden age of Islam.
Reason and rationality in the Islamic world has been in crisis for decades.
But this is not quite good enough. Reason and rationality in the Islamic world has been in crisis for decades. It is one thing to recognise a problem, and quite another to do something about it. Pervez Hoodbhoy, formerly professor of nuclear physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Pakistan provides this grave assessment: “the Islamic science clock stopped sometime in the 14th century and that plans for repair are vague, at best.”
I completed my final years of high school in the Middle East. In my penultimate year, I recall my biology teacher opening an advanced-level class on the theory of evolution with a face as pink as her hijab. “I have to teach you this,” she confessed, “because it’s on the curriculum. Don’t take it seriously.” After we had raced through the material (obvious reasons), she and the only other student in the class (obvious reasons) began a prolonged discussion on how Darwin’s insight into the tremendous diversity of life was “fundamentally flawed”. For my part, I bought a copy of the Origin of Species the next day.
See, I’m not too impressed by a god who goes about creation in a haphazard way, plopping species into existence every so-often like a teenager playing at the Sims.
Evolution is not just men coming from monkeys. It is a cellular symphony involving chance mutations, gene duplications, and chromosomal rearrangements, each fascinating phenomena in their own right. That these processes are even possible in the first place is dependent upon the nature of the molecules that encode and make up all life, and their constituent atoms whose individual properties are determined by the intricacies of quantum mechanics. At every level of creation, from the deepest secrets of the subatomic world to the spiral arms of Milky Way, complexity reigns supreme. In this system, all things emerge spontaneously: the stars in the sky to the countless species of life on planet Earth. This is the God I revere, the architect of a system that does not need constant fiddling to be genuinely breathtaking.
Fahad Ali (Image: supplied) Source: Supplied
Of course, there are still things we don’t know, like precisely how life came to be in the first place, or why gravity works. But we have some good guesses, and perhaps we might one day figure that out for certain. It’s dangerous to indict God when faced with scientific uncertainty. My version of God is not a synonym for ignorance.
I want to see bright young Muslims pursue careers in the natural sciences, and excel as I am fully confident they will.
There will always people who believe the sky is green when they can see otherwise. But I think Muslims have a duty, both to God and to themselves, to think, analyse, and explore. There can be no critical thought in a religious tradition encumbered by centuries of fetid orthodoxy, where the fallible interpretations of traditional exegetes are held sacrosanct, and where independent thought is considered the exclusive purview of religious scholars.
There are excellent minds in our community. I want to see bright young Muslims pursue careers in the natural sciences, and excel as I am fully confident they will. They will have done a great service to our community by removing the veil of ignorance that has held us back for so long. And greater still: for themselves, they will have gained a deeper appreciation of the majesty of all creation.
Islamic science collapsed when theologians replaced scientific method with scriptural dogma. But as the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote: “It is ludicrous to mistake the Bible and the Koran for primers of natural science. They treat of matters even more important: the meaning of man and his relations to God.” I agree.
