Science as One of the Forms of Religion - Essay Example

Science and Religion Science as one of the forms of religion Stephen Hawkins was one of the physicists and high priests who was involved in a highly insightful idea of knowing the mind of God. It is mainly because through his text e was able to exhibit a lot of light in many situations and circumstances that appeared dark to a number of people. For instance, he was able to provide in depth explanations to many activities that take place within the world without many people being able to understand the underlying circumstance behind them. Some of these include the ability to understand how it is difficult for the door of a closet to be opened or closed during periods when it is cold or how it is possible for plants to use chemical methods to convert light in the process of manufacturing their own food. These technical processes require a scientist to explain1. Thus, can be considered to be a high priest since he links most of the scientific concepts while explaining them through the use of religious ideas. It can be argued that the irrational social factors have acted as an influence for most of the things that include science and religion2. For instance, since the universe has a beginning and an end, it also has a creator. This is in the effort to sociologically relate different behavior in the universe to their causes and effects of actions that happen in the past, present and the future. According to sociology, there is always need to formulate various hypotheses for general empirical processes. Such hypothesis will no longer be the case when science becomes a religion on its own, it will provide answers to all the processes in the world3. Therefore, there will be no need to relate any of the processes to their cause or effects as all the steps will be made fully understandable4. Given that hypothesis links mysterious concepts in science with religion without having to open a bible or to visit a priest, it shows scientific activities are religions5. According to Hawkins they only require that you have the knowledge of God to understand them. Thus science can be considered a religion since it is through the application of religious facts that individuals are able to understand the world as a network of material causes that are made in a way to impact on each other. Although this explanation does not match that sophisticated form that is offered by scientists if offers an idea of what the earth is in general term6. It is because of this therefore that science can be considered as a religion since it can explain most of the spectacular and extraordinary states on its own without necessitating individuals and especially the layman to seek supernatural and divine answers for the same. There is no need to have this kind of hypothesis to provide an explanation of why and how things happen. According to Hawking,7 if a time comes when scientists will be unified to explain most of the happenings in the world, it will make science an entire religion since the belief in an existent supernatural power; God will be relative8. From this, a question arises as to whether the fact that sciences can all the happenings in the universe in its physical form in a theoretical way will make God irrelevant. In this case, science will be referred to as a religion since although the fact that the universe had its initial stages is proof that it has a creator, it will have become self contained to the extent that it has no boundaries or an end nor a beginning or end thus leaving no room for the creator9. Science and religions as social constructs A number of individuals usually contend that the social constructs available are mere relativity. This is however a wrong concept since from its meaning most of the aspects in the world are social constructs because in essence they depend on the emphasis that are mostly made based on the essential aspects of human beings in their social nature. In this sense, therefore, Hacking reveals that religion and science are social constructs as they are both creations of human beings. Their concepts and explanations are mostly provided depending on what human beings think about them. Thus none of them would exist without their creation since it is possible that if one plays the roles of the other in a perfect way, then the other will seize to exist. They can easily act as the replacements of each other10. This is the case exhibited with the efforts to make science provide the explanations of most of the experiences in the world. It will ultimately become the religion to be applied by most people11. Bibliography Alper, Matthew. (2008). The "God" part of the brain: a scientific interpretation of human spirituality and God. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, Inc. Bogossan , A. Paul. (2014). What is social construction? Retrieved 28 March 2014 fromhttp://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1153/socialconstruction.pdf Fog, Agner. (1999). Cultural selection. Dordrecht [u.a.]: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Hacking Ian. (1999). The Social Construction of What? Harvard: Harvard university press. Hawking, Stephen. (1988). A brief history of time: from the big bang to black holes. New York: Bantam books. Read More