The Pseudo-Problem of Science and Religion in Iran

The main claim of Dr. Hamed Safaeipour [1] in this piece is that raising the topic or problem of “science and religion” in the sense of examining the relationship between the claims of “the natural sciences and the sacred text” in Iran before and after the revolution is a “pseudo-problem.” Three key questions arise in response to this claim: 1. Why is “science and religion” a pseudo-problem for us? 2. What problem has been hidden from view by this pseudo-problem taking center stage? 3. What is the explanation for this phenomenon, and how has this “pseudo-problem” replaced the “problem”? By provoking reflections on how the subject of science and religion has been experienced in Iran before and after the revolution, the author has attempted to answer the first question and offer an initial idea in response to the second. The result of these reflections draws attention to wills not directed toward science and the problem of “translational thinking” in the selection of problems.

Introduction

The author spent years of his education and youth on the subject of science and religion, and more precisely, the relationship between certain claims of empirical science and certain propositions of the sacred text. He also wrote his doctoral dissertation on one of the sub-topics of this field within the framework of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion literature. [2] But he has now changed his opinion regarding the importance and priority of “science and religion” questions and their relevance to “me,” my lifeworld, and my cultural and social sphere in Iranian society.

Based on my current view, it can be said that raising the topic or problem of “science and religion” in the sense of examining the relationship between the claims of the natural sciences and the sacred text in pre-revolution Iran was a “polemical and theological” matter, and in post-revolution Iran, it has been a “political and identity-seeking” matter, and on this basis, it is a “pseudo-problem.”[3] Granting the status of “pseudo-problem” to a matter does not mean that the work done in this field lacks scientific and academic value and does not open a path toward discovering truths. Nor does it mean that this general judgment applies to all instances in this arena. Rather, the meaning is that pseudo-problems have replaced the main and fundamental problems and, in some cases, dissipate the necessary force for solving the problem and delay the principled treatment of pains. I have used pseudo-problem in this sense: it is a problem that does not encompass our fundamental and truly liberating questions and occupies our energies. Three key questions exist around this idea: 1. Why is the subject of “science and religion” a pseudo-problem for “us”? 2. What is the problem? In other words, what problem has been hidden from view by this pseudo-problem taking center stage? 3. What is the explanation for this displacement, and how has this “pseudo-problem” replaced the “problem”? The author’s capacity and the space provided in this piece are mostly for presenting answers or speculations in response to the first two questions.

Why is the subject of “science and religion” a pseudo-problem for us?

A: Science and Religion in Pre-Revolution Iran

One of the characteristics of a problem is its entanglement with the intellectual and social realities of a society. It seems that in the several decades before the revolution, the promotion of certain materialist and naturalistic views in the shadow of leftist social movements, with the defense of ideas of social Darwinism and dialectical materialism—whether in the guise of philosophical questions or in the guise of buzzwords and identity-seeking social slogans—was the seed of a kind of intellectual attention to the subject of “science and religion,” and more precisely, the “methodology of recognizing the correspondence or conflict between religious and scientific claims”; attentions that were often carried out with a polemical nature in defense of or attack on science or religion. In this type of encounter, which I have called the “polemical and theological encounter,” science (empirical science) is not the fundamental subject or problem; rather, the philosophical, theological, or even political consequences of science are considered.

On this point I may be met with the criticism that science has always and inevitably possessed a contextualist nature, influenced by the individual and collective purposes of scientists and societies, and that observing this is therefore nothing more than an instance of an accurate description of science; consequently, such a thing should not be considered surprising or in need of explanation. It might also be supposed that the author, in calling the attention given to “science” during this period apologetic, has presupposed an independent and distinct essence for science and has therefore regarded its entanglement with the personal religious, philosophical, or social motives of scientists as negating the rational nature of science, and has thus called it polemical. This is despite the fact that descriptive analyses with historical and sociological content concerning science show that science has always, in every era, been a contextualist matter [4] and mixed with such purposive inclinations and the temperaments of scientists; hence, there is no need to employ such a division by calling some attentions “polemical” and others “non-polemical.”

I must clarify that, as it happens, it is precisely on this basis that one can, through a phenomenological method, acknowledge that what has entered our experience under the general label of “science” has been dependent upon and influenced by all these purposive inclinations, and has taken shape and manifested its results through these very influences, understandings, and structures. On this same basis, our numerous debates about Darwin’s theory in pre-revolutionary Iran (the first period) did not elevate our contribution to first-order research in the field of biology, nor should it be expected to do so; for the will directed toward science was fundamentally absent, and the epistemological (or philosophical) ground for practicing science was missing among us. The various and relatively numerous works published in this field during these years by “apologists for science” and “apologists for religion or philosophy” describe the manner of our entry into and our mode of confronting the subject of science and religion.[5]

Our encounter with science in this era has taken shape along a path and at a level different from the tradition of Western thought. Although the introduction of new perspectives in the methodology of science and scientific research in the West also occurred in the wake of political and epistemological challenges in relation to Church religion—and indeed, the challenge spread from intra-religious discourse to other domains—it was ultimately, with the emergence of the scientific revolution and the dominance of science-oriented rationality, established upon the internal pillars and capacities of the foundation of Enlightenment thought, moving from a polemical level to a philosophical level, and from a philosophical level to a scientific level. For instance, in Erasmus's historical work In Praise of Folly—considered one of the most important works in the emergence of humanism and the new Western reason—there is no talk of science or scientific method; rather, the aim of Erasmus's satirical attacks is to criticize the free-handedness of Church clergy in interpreting religious texts, or in his words, "stretching the heavens." Erasmus's biting satires of the institutionalized and worldly tradition of the Church in interpreting and explicating the sacred text constitute an intra-religious dialogue with religious authorities and are considered a critique of the biased and free-handed manner of understanding and interpreting the sacred text. Bacon's critiques as well—who is deemed by many to be the most important promoter and exponent of the new science—in his books Novum Organum and New Atlantis, in affirming the new method and the necessity of attaining welfare and progress through the idea of the domination of nature by God's command, are based on intra-religious arguments, but in practice, with the formation of the materialism and naturalism of the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they became detached from their theological context and to a large extent developed an encounter with empirical science independent of religion. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the idea of the self-foundation and self-sufficiency of science emerges. This is the century that is the primary origin of the emergence of revolutionary theories in the epistemology of science and the philosophy of science, and it carries transformations that turn scientists, or more precisely, physicists, into "philosophers of science." The members of the "Vienna Circle," who are often first-rate scientists in their specialized fields and thus have a first-hand encounter with science, acquire the standing of a scientist, the standing of a philosopher, and in some cases, the standing of an active social and political agent. [6] "Philosophy of science" for the positivists and members of the Vienna Circle is not the textual study of textbooks and the translation of standard texts in this field; for fundamentally, no such texts exist. Rather, the texts of the philosophy of science are the product of the thinking and the stormy, unceasing dialogues of these scientists in contemplating the nature and methodology of science. [7]

I now compare this situation with our works on and attentions to the philosophy of science, which typically do not even contain a single real, lived example of the actual engagement of philosophers and instructors of the philosophy of science with scientific subjects, and are often summed up by referring to one or two worn-out examples from the history of science concerning the story of the discovery of "phlogiston" and the problem of the "anomaly in the observation of the perihelion of Mercury."

B. Science and Religion in Post-Revolution Iran The situation in post-revolution Iran is even more complex and convoluted than in the earlier period. In the author's view, the issue of science and religion in post-revolution Iran is a borrowed problem, concerned more with identity-seeking than truth-seeking in the matter of science and religion. The nature of our attention to the subject of empirical science and religion in the works of authors such as Dr. Mehdi Golshani, who holds a PhD in physics, is a theological encounter. Science enters the arena in his works in order to demonstrate the absence of conflict between science and religion (the minimal claim) or to speak of the agreement between the two (the maximal claim). The result of this is the restoration of religion's authority, an invitation to science to show greater humility, the ideologization of science, and a confrontation with the phenomenon of scientism. In this context, the key question is: has the extent of our scientific practice ever reached a level and seriousness that would manifest itself as a philosophy (scientific philosophy) or an ideology? Has science gained such authority among us that it threatens the authority of religion? In this era, in which empirical science have we progressed from the level of being a science worker (scientific occupation) to being a scientist (a disposition and life based on scientific rationality), and from the level of being a scientist to the philosophical level of science, such that we would face the danger of an irrational encounter with science and scientism? Has science fundamentally settled into the digestive system of Iranian science workers to such an extent that the challenges between the two sources of authority in the Iranian mentality—namely, science and religion—become a problem? If the answer to these questions is, in brief, negative, one hypothesis is that the raising of such topics as science and religion is a kind of haste in problem formulation and an example of the symptoms of "translation-based thinking" [8].

To strengthen this hypothesis and explain the inflated presentation of the topic of science and religion in post-revolution Iran, one can note the role this discussion plays in supporting the idea of establishing Islamic humanities and, in its institutional aspect, the idea of establishing an Islamic university; a challenge that, from the time of the "Cultural Revolution" to the present day, has been considered one of the most important epistemic challenges of the system. But if negating the conflict or establishing the agreement of empirical science with religion is not possible, how can constructing such an agreement in the field of humanities be possible? Here, it seems that achieving a passing grade in reconciling empirical science and religion is a hopeful step toward achieving a passing grade in a more difficult test.

Now the question is: has this minimal expectation—explaining the agreement between empirical science and religion—been fulfilled in the thought of Iranian thinkers? In the author's view, this answer has not been fulfilled, except in one case [9] which makes far more modest claims than other theorists. For example, two methodological errors in the works of Dr. Mehdi Golshani diminish the rational validity of his works. These two errors are: 1. Leaping from the possibility of agreement between science and religion to its actualization and necessity. 2. Confusing the methodology of "science and religion" with the discussion of "religious science." [10] Dr. Golshani often neglects this philosophical point that one cannot use an a posteriori method (posterior to experience) in the discussion of science and religion and always arrive at predetermined conclusions. The requirement of choosing an a posteriori method in the subject of science and religion is the emergence of an endless discussion showcasing the trials of strength between rivals and the occasional triumph of one over the other; a result that is almost overlooked in most of his works, including the book "An Analysis of the Philosophical Thoughts of Contemporary Physicists."

Another noteworthy example of addressing the issue of science and religion in post-revolutionary Iran is the works and thoughts of Ayatollah Javadi Amoli. His method in presenting this discussion is a priori, which can be traced, for instance, in his book An Explanation of the Proofs for the Existence of God in the discussion of the “argument from design,” as well as in the book The Role of Reason in the Geometry of Religious Knowledge. Through an a priori analysis of “science” and “religion,” the issue is simply resolved; for certain science is a report of the Divine act, and revelation is a report of the Divine word, and it is clear that no possible world is conceivable in which the Divine word and act are incompatible. By adopting this approach, the apparent and clamorous conflicts between science and religion are nothing but misunderstandings and incorrect interpretations of Divine words or acts, and fundamentally, every conflict is merely apparent and lacks philosophical significance. The important point is that this method, although it serves to dispel doubts about the conflict between science and religion, does not possess the strength to establish religious science and its institutional aspect, namely the religious university, in accordance with the ideas of the Cultural Revolution. The statement that in reconciling the claims of empirical sciences (for example, experimental psychology) and religion, “opposition by religious law is a hindrance, but its agreement is not a condition” [11] reveals a whiff of the dominance of a jurisprudential view over an epistemological and philosophical issue. Furthermore, Professor Javadi Amoli’s theory and the idea that science does not take on a religious or non-religious attribute, and that what accepts this attribute is the individual scientist, and that the presence of religion is merely at the level of worldviews, (almost) empties the idea of establishing Islamic science of its subject matter.

More important than these cases, which are examples of (relatively) scholarly and epistemological reactions on the subject of science and religion, are the author’s personal experiences, which further corroborate the fact that the greatest share of engagement with this issue in the second period lies in the realm of a will directed towards identity and power. This is natural for any situation in which the discourse of science is under the influence and dominance of the discourse of power and identity. History testifies to the claim that if an epistemological viewpoint is rewarded for its proximity to the standard reading, the temptation for mass, low-quality production prevails. Unconsidered works that disregard the methodology of science are among such works, whose claims’ weak foundations will be revealed if they are assessed by philosophical methods. As a prominent example, one can point to the works of Hojjat al-Islam (Dr.) Rezaei Esfahani, including the book A Study on the Scientific Miracle of the Quran (in two volumes), which was honored with an “encouragement” award at the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Book of the Year in 2003. This is while such works and their authors have been empowered to receive scientific privileges and budgets for establishing academic disciplines up to the doctoral level and gaining authority, even to the point of holding international conferences (for example, the Congress on the Quran and Humanities, 2016), and this is just one of a multitude of such cases.

Another aspect of these wills not directed towards science in post-revolutionary Iran is that the topics and issues of science and religion are taken from Western works, and their answers are extracted and inquired from Islam, Islamic philosophy, or theology. This in itself is an instructive and unproblematic research and academic activity, but the question is whether intra-religious epistemic concerns have truly drawn us to examine the science and religion debate, or have our minds become attracted to and interested in these discussions under the influence of the science and religion debates within the contemporary Western tradition? To what extent have our scholars been consciously familiar with the principles of modern science and its based methodology to naturally encounter the conflict and confrontation between science and religion? Also, how have our scholars of religion come to know religion such that they now find science to be its misleader and rival?

Evidence for the claim that the problem of science and religion in the contemporary West is a natural, living, and non-imitative problem is the observation of the multitude of articles written on the subject of science and religion, especially in America, most of which are published in a dialogue-oriented space and explicitly with phrases such as “in response to…”[12] in the form of back-and-forth articles.[13] This is while articles on science and religion in our society are published in a space devoid of dialogue and judgment, and in a sense, without discursive sensitivity. It seems that the publication of a position-taking article on the subject of science and religion in the space of American universities—for example, the back-and-forth articles between Alvin Plantinga (theist) and Thomas Nagel (atheist)—is comparable to the publication of a jurisprudential article on the denial of the obligation of women’s hijab. It is on this basis that I wish to consider the problem-findings of science and religion as pseudo-problems and not problems, and to regard intellectual effort in this field as more or less a kind of translational thinking. This example sets the stage for the second question of this piece.

By placing the pseudo-problem of “science and religion” at the center of attention, what problem has been hidden from the focus of attention? Answering this question without accepting the hardships of answering it is simplistic. Nevertheless, offering a modest conjecture in this regard helps convey the primary and initial idea of this piece. The key point in this ideation is emphasizing that the origin and context of science and religion discussions in the West and among us—both before and after the revolution—are different in various respects, and therefore, using a common framework of discussion and literature, despite its advantages, entails the disadvantages of translational thinking. In the author’s view, the fundamental problem appropriate to the social realities of Iran is not the issues arising from the incompatibility of science and religion, but rather the questions arising from the incompatibility of “jurisprudential understanding” with the “common understanding” of affairs. Common understanding means an understanding influenced by the foundations of the modern world and its institutionalized structures in contemporary society. If this conjecture is correct, the epistemic priority of Iranian society in the post-revolution era is not the Islamization of the university (as a consequence of the idea of Islamizing science) but a fundamental rethinking of “fiqh” (jurisprudence). In the author’s view, in the social and institutional aspect, the rational examination of the issue of “Istikhara” (seeking divine guidance) for believers takes priority over examining the “implications of Darwin’s theory for atheism” as a standard problem in science and religion discussions.

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[1]. PhD in Philosophy of Science and Technology from Tarbiat Modares University

[2]. The title of the doctoral dissertation was “The Consequences of Accepting the Anthropic Principle in the Two Problems of the Existence of God and the Purposefulness of the Universe,” defended in 2015.

[3]. The author’s conjecture is that what has been claimed in this note with an emphasis on the subject of “science and religion” could also be true, with further elaboration, on the subject of “philosophy of religion” and other similar topics, although this claim requires independent investigation.

[4] . contextual

[5]. For example, works such as Psychology; the Science of the Soul (Dr. Mohammad-Taqi Arani (1902–1940)), numerous works on the explanation and description of life (such as Life; Its Nature, Origin and Evolution, A. I. Oparin, first edition: 1979) and Darwin's theory (such as the translation of many books including "Darwin's Century," by Loren Eiseley; translated by Dr. Mahmoud Behzad) on the one hand, and books such as The Pseudo-Philosophers, the acclaimed work of Mr. Naser Makarem Shirazi during the imperial era, a critique of Marxism and dialectical materialism, whose seventeenth edition was published with a new preface on the pretext of the revolution's victory in 1979, and the book The Logic of the Faithful in Marxism, the neglected and overlooked work of Dr. Ali-Qoli Bayani, a philosophical critique of Marxism's claims in 1974, and the translation of books such as Scientific Philosophy in 1961 (Sokhan Publications) and works like Dialectical Contradiction; A Critique of the Method of Cognition and What is Science, What is Philosophy? in 1978 by Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush are noteworthy examples in this field. During the same period, the extensive translation of Popper's key works by Ahmad Aram and some works of the logical positivists and Bertrand Russell (such as the translation of the books Carnap by Arne Naess, 1973, and The Problems of Philosophy and The Analysis of Mind by Kharazmi Publishing House, with translations by Dr. Manouchehr Bozorgmehr) is, in a sense, considered an action aimed at outlining the methodology and, more broadly, the philosophy of science and religion. Although these cases are certainly an incomplete report of the genealogy of science and religion in its early period, the general and preliminary impression is that during this era, the theological and polemical approach was almost dominant.

[6]. I am not saying there is no political or ideological motivation in the positivists' engagement with science. Rather, it is clear that in their early thoughts and ideas, especially Carnap's, and fundamentally in the thoughts and ideas of Popper — who also belongs to the first period of the philosophy of science from 1918 to 1950 — these extra-scientific motivations clearly exist, but these motivations are not such that the foundation of scientific dialogues rests upon them to the extent of a polemical dialogue. Carnap and Popper, as scientists, are first-rate scientists and have been influential in the formation of knowledge without any privilege due to their philosophical works. I have taken this fact in favor of the claim that their will directed toward science was greater than the theological and polemical method in confronting science.

[7]. For example, I cite the disputes between Carnap and Neurath — two active members of the Vienna Circle — regarding their priority in insights related to "protocol statements" and the articles both wrote under this same title. This is evidence of the fact that the texts originated from the critical junctures of dialogue and the intellectual realities of these scientists concerning science.

[8]. In coining this term, I am mindful not to disparage the act of translation; for translation is sometimes the most profound philosophical action concerning an idea. The reproachful aspect of this term stems from the fact that in this type of thinking, problem-finding and the attribution of importance to problems are translation-tainted and unrelated to the archetypal and characteristic questions of the individual and their society. Translational thinking, in practice, leads to imitation in questions and the reduction of answers.

[9]. Here, I am referring to the works and thoughts of Dr. Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast. In my opinion, Dr. Khosrow Bagheri's works and research method in the book "The Identity of Religious Science" (1991) and the theory of empirical religious science are a unique example of methodological considerations on the subject of religious science, which itself constitutes one of the most fundamental critiques of the multitude of ill-considered conceptions on the subject of science and religion and religious science. The theoretical structure and the literature of Dr. Bagheri's discussion in the theory of empirical religious science — whether we agree with it or not — are commensurate with the standards of the philosophy of science and methodology for reconciling the claims of these two domains.

[10] . Substantiating this claim requires a separate and documented discussion.

[11] . An interview with a group of scholars from the seminary and university with Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, the CD collection "The Quran and the Age."

[12]. respond to…

[13]. In this context, the works of figures such as William Lane Craig (contemporary physicist, philosopher, and Christian theologian), Quentin Smith (physicist and atheist philosopher), Elliott Sober (atheist philosopher of biology), John Leslie (theist philosopher of science), and many others merit examination and scrutiny.

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