The conference brought together around 40 experts from around the world. The theme of the conference was the challenges the modern religion-science debate poses to Muslims and Christians. In their opening remarks, Dr. Williams and Dr. John DeGioia, the president of Georgetown University, both expressed support for a Muslim-Christian dialogue on religion and science, but also pointed to challenges faced by the global community in relation to science, technology and the environment.Relations between religion and science have taken different forms in the modern period. Cooperation and partnership on the one hand and clashes and confrontation on the other have been part of the story of religion and science. But they have also taken different turns in Western and non-Western societies. The implications of the Scientific Revolution in Europe were different for Christianity, for it was the Christian tradition that had to confront the new scientific worldview of modernity firsthand and with lasting consequences.
Islam's experience with science was rather different in the pre-modern world. Muslims were the trailblazers of many scientific discoveries. The best scientists in the Middle Ages either came from Muslim cities or went to Muslim institutions of learning. Libraries, observatories, madrasas, research centers, hospitals and private circles of learning nourished a culture of learning for over 1,000 years. US President Barack Obama acknowledged this fact in his Cairo speech when he said the following: “As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam -- at places like al-Azhar University -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra, our magnetic compass and tools of navigation, our mastery of pens and printing, our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed.”
Despite Islam's long and honorable tradition of science, the Muslim world has been on the receiving end of modern science. This fact has not changed to this day. Muslim societies are way behind in the world of scientific institutions and discoveries. Muslim countries spend billions of dollars on science, but much of it is spent on transfer of technology rather than genuine and first-rate scientific research and development.
The challenges posed by modern science and technology go beyond religious and national boundaries. As the most powerful arsenal of modernity and global capitalism, science is seen by many as a dividing issue between Western societies and the rest of the world. At the intellectual level, science poses itself as a complete worldview, claiming to provide answers to all human questions. Modern education is founded upon such a rather simplistic understanding of science. But in reality Wittgenstein was right when he said, “Science leaves all the essential questions of life unanswered.”
At the practical level, science has become wedded to global capitalism. It is technology rather than science that is in demand. Technology as an application of science has gone way beyond the limits of pure science, and it is driven more by profit than the quest for knowledge. The gap between developed and developing countries is still so wide that the non-Western societies can only hope to transfer, not produce, science and technology.
There are other vital issues, such as the environmental crisis, which are exacerbated by the current applications of science and technology from the US and Europe to the Middle East and Asia. The dilemma is that the more developed you are, the more destructive you become to the natural environment. For instance, everyone sings the praises of China's economic development, but few notice the destruction of the environment in that country. Muslims countries fare no better.
These are huge and urgent challenges and must be addressed on a global scale. Bridging the gap between religious values and scientific practice is a key component of a long-term and sustainable solution to the faith-reason controversy on the one hand and the environmental crisis on the other. A healthy dialogue between religion and science can help develop an ethic of scientific inquiry and nourish a moral framework that is badly needed for dealing with the natural environment in a humane manner.
