“Write short note: Religion and Science.” (2006, 2001)
Religion, in Émile Durkheim‘s definition, is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things that unites believers into a moral community. Science is systematic, testable knowledge of the empirical world. Sociology asks how the two relate, and its answer has changed over a century and a half.
Common ground and difference
| Criterion | Religion | Science |
|---|---|---|
| Object | The sacred, supernatural, ultimate meaning | The observable, natural world |
| Basis | Faith, revelation, tradition | Observation, experiment, verification |
| Attitude to doubt | Doubt threatens belief | Organised scepticism is a norm (Robert K. Merton, 1942) |
| Scope | Local communities of believers | Claims universal validity |
| Social outcome | Legitimates order, gives identity | Yields technology and control over nature |
Yet the two share ground. Both are cognitive systems that try to make the unknown intelligible, both train and certify specialists (priests, scientists), and both form communities bound by shared commitments.
Four phases in sociological thinking
1. Evolutionary replacement (nineteenth century). Auguste Comte‘s law of three stages and Edward Burnett Tylor‘s Primitive Culture (1871) saw religion as early, mistaken science. James Frazer proposed a sequence from magic to religion to science.
2. Classical qualification.
- Durkheim (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912): science inherits religion’s cognitive function but not its function of guiding action and binding society. Hence “something eternal” in religion.
- Max Weber: rationalisation brings the “disenchantment of the world”, yet science cannot answer how we should live.
- Bronisław Malinowski (1925): Trobriand islanders use empirical technique and magic side by side, each in its own domain.
- Merton (1938): Puritan values fostered seventeenth-century English science. Religion can cause science.
3. Secularisation. Bryan Wilson (1966) held that rational, technical thinking erodes religion’s social significance. Peter L. Berger (The Sacred Canopy, 1967) argued that science and pluralism shatter religion’s shared “canopy” of meaning.
4. Contemporary pluralism.
- Stephen Jay Gould‘s “non-overlapping magisteria” (1999) against Richard Dawkins‘s view (2006) that faith and science are incompatible.
- Berger’s own reversal: The Desecularization of the World (1999) conceded that most of the world remains intensely religious, Western Europe being the exception.
- Evidence of coexistence: Elaine Howard Ecklund‘s 2016 survey found more than half of Indian scientists religious.
Indian context
- Jawaharlal Nehru promoted scientific temper, which the 42nd Amendment (1976) made a Fundamental Duty (Article 51A(h)).
- Pew Research Center (2019–20): 97% of Indians believe in God. An ISRO team prayed at Tirupati with a Chandrayaan-3 model before the 2023 launch, and Milton Singer had earlier found Madras industrialists combining ritual with modern enterprise.
- Tensions remain: Maharashtra’s anti-superstition law (2013) after Narendra Dabholkar‘s murder, and protests at evolution being dropped from the NCERT Class 10 textbook (2023).
Conclusion
The relationship has moved from replacement to differentiation. Science now commands explanation of nature; religion retains meaning, identity and ethics. Conflict erupts only where either claims the other’s domain, as in creationism or in scientism that denies any place to meaning.