[nukkad] Fwd: [wp] *Religion and Reason

[Kishor Valia <>]

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Dear Nukkad Members,

I am sending this article appeared on pakforum@yahoogroup.com



>Subject: [wp] *Religion and Reason
>
>Source: http://www.alrisala.org/Articles/relgsci/religion.htm
>
>Religion and Reason
>by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
>
>Advanced study has shown that there is more to life than meets the eye; all
>the great realities of life lie beyond our comprehension.
>In ancient times, water was just water. Then with the 19th century came the
>invention of the microscope. When water was placed under it, the startling
>discovery was made that it contained countless live bacteria. Similarly, the
>stars that could be seen with the naked eye were supposed to be all the
>heavenly bodies that existed. Now the skies have been scanned with powerful
>telescopes and information has been sent back from space probes, with the
>result that the true immensity of the universe is at last being understood.
>These two examples show the difference in thinking in ancient and modern
>times which has been brought about by modern technology. Other types of
>research in different fields have shown with certainty that there are many
>more realities than had ever been imagined by man when he was limited to the
>sphere of simple, unaided observation. But these new discoveries so excited
>the discoverers that they felt justified in claiming that reality was
>definable as that which could be directly observed, and that what we could
>not experience or observe was mere hypothesis and did not, therefore, exist.
>In the nineteenth century, this claim, made with great enthusiasm, was most
>damaging to religion. The fact that religious creeds are based on a belief
>in the unseen, that their truths are neither observable nor demonstrable led
>many people to the conclusion that religious dogma was hypothetical and,
>therefore, untrue.
>Twentieth century research, however, has completely reversed this position,
>advanced study having shown that there is certainly more to life than meets
>the eye: in fact, all the great realities of life lie beyond our
>comprehension.
>According to Bertrand Russell there are two forms of knowledge: knowledge of
>things and knowledge of truths. Only things can be directly observed: truths
>can only be understood by indirect observation. Or in other words,
>inference. The existence of light, gravity, magnetism and nuclear energy in
>the universe is an undisputed fact, but man cannot directly observe these
>things. He knows them only by their effects. Man discovers certain things,
>from which he infers the existence of truths.
>This change in the concept of knowledge which occurred in the twentieth
>century changed the whole situation so radically, that man was forced to
>accept the existence of things which he could not directly see, but only
>indirectly experience. With this intellectual revolution the difference
>between seen and unseen reality disappeared. Invisible objects became as
>important as visible objects. Man was compelled to accept that indirect, or
>inferential argument, was academically as sound as direct argument.
>In our own times, divine reasoning has become truly scientific. For
>instance, the greatest argument for religion is what philosophers call the
>argument from design. Nineteenth century scholars, in their zeal, did not
>accept this reasoning. To them it was an inferential argument and not
>therefore, academically tenable. But in the present age, this objection has
>been invalidated. Nowadays man is compelled to infer the existence of a
>designer of the universe from the existence of a design in the universe,
>just as he accepts the theory of the flow of electrons from the movement of
>a wheel.
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