I recently read an article in State Press Magazine, “Looking for God in Academia,” and although the points expressed were specifically related to Arizona State courses in religious studies, I found myself attempting to apply the title to my own campus.
The Baha’i faith (Baha’u’llah) holds to the belief that all religions are, in essence, one. Also, that science and religion are actually a harmonious couple, and that each individual owes it to his or her self to investigate the truth of their reality instead of just accepting things as they’re presented. As a member of this religion, I can say that I have both sought and found God in academia.
In Paris Talks, the son of the Baha’i faith’s founder, Abdu’l-Baha, wrote:
“Religion and science are the two wings upon which man's intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. It is not possible to fly with one wing alone! Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism.”
Universities are considered places where science rules (although, engineering students may often try to tell you that ‘arts’ are not sciences), and we tend to create a dichotomy between science and religion.
No scrutiny here, dichotomies have helped us understand things in the past by separating them into categories and the like. Modern times, however, have helped us realize that things are much more interrelated than we often care to believe, and, that many of these dichotomies are either unnecessary or false.
When you type “science and religion” into Google, you get more than 63 million results. While ‘Googling’ something like “world hunger” only provides just over 13 million. This dichotomy is a hot topic, although we should make clear that we’re not talking about creationism versus evolution. We see exclamations from self-declared militant atheists, and from historically worshipped scientists who reconciled their beliefs with their work. But who’s right?
I see science as a tool that we use to measure the physical world — it helps us understand entities and processes that we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch all around us. We observe, hypothesize, and test our ideas until we come to a conclusion that helps us understand the way things work. I see religion as that same tool, but instead of testing physical truths, we’re dealing with spiritual ones.
Religion helps us understand and measure the processes of a world, for lack of a better word, that we can’t see, taste, touch, hear, or smell. And these two realities, spiritual and material, are intertwined.
Most religions share similar beliefs around the concept of prayer, for example. An individual or group prays because a particular task has come upon them, they have met with difficulty or they simply want to express their love of God. In return, God answers that prayer in whatever way, if at all. God knows it should be answered, thus affecting change in the physical reality.
So, when we’re looking for God in academia, what do we need to consider?
Clearly, not everyone can or will come up with the same answer, and I’m certainly not going to tell you where or how you should look. I’d rather give you some thoughts and ask you to think and look, and let you come to your own conclusion. All thoughts and conclusions, regardless of how different from mine they may be, are completely legitimate.
In fact, my beliefs are fairly new to me. I joined the Baha’i faith three years ago and it has helped shape my current understanding of the world. This idea, especially, that science and religion go hand-in-hand seemed fairly strange initially. However, the more I thought about it, the more I saw that the Baha’is were on to something. Not only do I see God in academia, but also I don’t see academia without God.