IN the post-scientific age, it became commonplace for many to register themselves as following ‘no religion’. People started to introduce themselves as ‘nonreligious’. It is true indeed that science opened up for human beings hitherto unknown knowledge. Man has penetrated macro- as well as microworld. Facilities and ease of life that a person enjoys today could never be conceived without science. Science proved many ideas about the physical world as unfounded. Scientific enquiries continued, by leaps and bounds, shattering one cherished article of faith after another. Though major scientific minds refrained from making a direct claim about the non-existence of God, a crop of academicians emerged who fashionably started calling themselves ‘atheists’. This practice had gained ground.
The question arises then if religion indeed is a vestigial part of human life. Is the universe as far as we know it, which is just 4% of the cosmos, enough to convince of looking no further? Is there nothing beyond this material world? Does science account for every question that is posed by everyday human experiences? These questions can be summed up as: Does science provide meaning to life?
The New Year celebrations of 2020 were shadowed by an imminent pandemic, which then became a reality. The blissful world we were accustomed to turned upside down. With the constant threat of contracting the disease, we were forced to stay away from our families and workplace. Suffering the loneliness and the pangs arising out of lockdown and the mental burden of a future that doesn’t bode well, our very ideas of life became shaky. The Guardian columnist John Harris contrasts a religious and a nonreligious person in this regard. March 28, 2021 issue of The Guardian carried a very insightful piece (How do faithless people like me make sense of this past year of Covid?) by John Harris that directly touches this question. He writes:
“I felt a pang of envy that has occasionally surfaced in the past – this time to do with a year of lockdown, the sudden fear of serious illness and death, and the sense of all of it being wholly random and senseless. Was this, I wondered, how religious believers were feeling? Or were they able to give their recent experiences at least a semblance of coherence and meaning?
An ideology that negates the authenticity of the religious narrative is quite incapable of finding meaning in seemingly negative experiences.
Like millions of other faithless people, I have not even the flimsiest of narratives to project on to what has happened, nor any real vocabulary with which to talk about the profundities of life and death.”
Thus, it becomes quite clear that an ideology that negates the authenticity of the religious narrative is quite incapable of finding meaning in seemingly negative experiences. When the limit of human intelligence is reached without providing credible answers, where do human beings turn to? The same article provides the following statistics:
“In the first phase of the pandemic, there were clear signs that a lot of us needed much more. Across 95 countries, Googling the word “prayer” increased by 50%, surpassing the level associated with Christmas and Ramadan. In April 2020, a service led by the Archbishop of Canterbury from his kitchen table drew 5 million viewers, described by the Church of England as the largest congregation in its history. And since then, as churches, mosques, synagogues and temples have been at the heart of some communities’ Covid experiences, the symbols and rituals of religion have made very visible comebacks. They were seen again in (…) doorstep vigil, complete with candles and massed silence, for the people lost to Covid.”
This human tendency is described in the Quran in these words: When man suffers some affliction, he prays to his Lord and turns to Him in penitence, but once he has been granted a favour from God, he forgets the One he had been praying to. (39: 8)
When an affliction befalls men, they cry out to their Lord, turning to Him in repentance. (30:33)
The truth of the matter is that religious narrative is an integral part of human life. Disbelief makes this world meaningless. The bad experiences in life are part of the divine test. Those who respond positively to this test would be rewarded in the Hereafter. The only possible explanation of this universe is to believe in a ‘universe with God’. The other option, according to John Harris, poses questions: “(…) life without God has turned out to be life without fellowship and shared meaning.”
