My View of Science & Religion

The other day we have had as part of our Rotaract Club's activities a debate arranged within the members of the club and the topic was "Science and Religion: Are both necessary for a meaningful life of human beings?". It was a topic of hot discussion, members just pounced on the topic and came up with some interesting insights. I think it has been an everlasting topic of debate for scientists, religious leaders and philosophers.
We first need to understand why Man felt it necessary to have religion and why science has dominated our lives since the past few decades diminishing the importance of religion from our lives.
I personally do not believe that Science is meaningless without religion. And my belief has its roots in the answers to the aforementioned query.
Thousands of years ago, when mankind was still in its evolutionary stage and when it knew little about its own nature, its surroundings and the phenomena in nature, Religion was born. We humans were wanderers and nomads, we were barbaric and there was no certainty of life. Life was full of struggle. Fulfilling the basic needs such as food, shelter and protecting ourselves were the primary goals of men and women of those times and which they were grappling to achieve.
As they gained more control over the surroundings in terms of fulfilling the basic needs and as they started to settle down at one place along with their kins, thats when the religion was born.
A way of life that he thought if followed, his life would become more meaningful and also it offered him a sense of security. Most importantly religion was thought of as a moral way of leading human existence by its founders.
But during later years, especially during Middle Ages religion became dominant and took a centre stage in human life all over the world. The religious teachings were never verified scientifically by anyone or for that matter nobody had dared to challenge them hitherto.
During the period of renaissance in Europe, some iconoclasts started to challenge the traditions upheld by the Church. Their belief was, the only way to find the explaination to human enquiry and curiosity into the nature's phenomena was by means of observations through our senses, their verifiability and predictability by means of experiments.
Science is the only means by which we can know about everything in our universe. Of course as much as it has made our lives easier and meaningful, it has been a cause of destruction of our environment and life. But science can not alone be blamed for that and religion is certainly not an answer to minimize its devastating effects. The widespread destruction has been caused by irresponsible, barbaric rulers and political leaders (sometimes even religious leaders); the mishandling of science and technology emerging from it at the hands of criminals is a result of social and economic inequality prevalent in our society.
So is religion the answer to this? Does science search for meaning in religion for the unknown? The answer is a clear “No”. In fact often, contrary to this notion that religion would be the savior of mankind from the devastating effects of science, it has been noticed that religion has been responsible for modern barbarism, the conflicts that have been literally swallowing millions of human lives across the globe. People are seizing weapons under the name of religion and planning crusades on others.
Karl Marx had rightly said “Religion is opium to masses”!!

What we need is the right value system. A system that believes in basic human values such as Equity or Fairness, Human Dignity, Fraternity, Service. Modern theories of social systems such as democratic socialism, humanism, liberalism etc are all based on these basic principles which are a result of scientific enquiry into human nature and study of underlying social sciences and history.
Nevertheless, all the religions in this world have taken cognizance of these principles long back and in fact proposed that human life based on these values is the right way to lead the life. But simply a lack of scientific enquiry, incorrect interpretation of these teachings and too much of an emphasis on Rituals have led to the spiritual degeneration of religion and people who follow those practices.
I am not at all against religion. It’s a very private thing and as long as one is following the basic human values it is sacred. But to say that Science is meaningless without Religion is rather preposterous.