Daily Times

Six feet with a constrained physique and limited psychology, man’s cravings for short-lived things are unbound with no introspection and realization that things for which we are earnestly struggling in our physically and mentally ripe years would one day either converted into crumbles or they would lose their allure which we used to attach with them. Cosmologically, humans are highly tiny beings who according to Carl Sagan are like butterflies-dithering here and there, or according to Stephan Hawking, are a collection of atoms residing on one of the planets of an insignificant star, the sun.

With the beginning of rational inquiries based on scientific epistemology, several ground-breaking discoveries have fiercely attacked the socially established status of humans by vividly exposing the true nature of humans and their physical environment. The ‘Darwin Theory of Evolution’ argues that the life genesis of humans and their pattern of evolution are the same-only evolutionary trajectories are different-like other organisms which we often regard as low-level creatures. Similarly, the traditional dogmatists boldly say that there is a balance in nature and in the revolution of planets and stars– that is why they are not colliding with each other. My God! The recent space discoveries have unveiled that there is a heightened imbalance and disturbance in outer space but we-being so little with a limited age-frame in an expanding universe-cannot experience them.

Science and religion are two separate domains with different epistemological frameworks.

The question that what are the paradigms that distinguish humans from other living organisms out there in the universe? Yuval Noah Harari says that the faculty of imagination and fictionalization of concepts make Homo Sapiens distinct from other organisms. Imagination and aesthetic and moral senses give humans an edge over other organisms. However, the question are these qualities meaningful?

If yes, then who has the authority to decide about meaningfulness? Aren’t these self-declared qualities of ours? Surprisingly, these are the areas around which theologians pivot their arguments when debating with outrageous atheists. Humans effectively communicate and arrive at decisions, follow ethics, and indulge in introspection while other organisms cannot.

Humans have insatiable desires and never-ending greed to aggrandize material things that have no direct relationship with the real meaning of their lives. The unique attribute of humans to imagine and generalize things sometimes becomes a curse for them as humans surpass all limits in accumulating things which later become a hefty burden of agony, frustration, and distress.

Humans deceive themselves and are stupidly bent on self-abnegation-in the guise of doing something great-thereby unleashing disastrous consequences over themselves. Distressingly, the ultra-materialization of life has recently gained traction and humans have reached an apex where they have completely forgotten their origin, nature, and true identity. For instance, who are we and what are we doing on a tiny pale blue dot? Similarly, what is the ultimate meaning of all the struggles we have been earnestly doing for millennia?

Universally, achieving happiness is the sole motive behind every undertaking. But again what is happiness, isn’t it something socially constructed or the outcome of hormonal changes ie, the release of dopamine and serotonin, etc? These, among others, are some of the fundamental concepts that we need to know and effectively nurture in our young minds.

Unfortunately, our pathetic education system is not yet in a position to make a student able to solve a simple math question or fully comprehend a paragraph (the recent survey reported that 77 per cent of children going to schools are getting poor education), let alone conceptualizing things over which philosophers are pondering over for centuries.

According to Hamza Andreas Tzortzis in his book, ‘The Divine Reality: God, Islam, and the Mirage of Atheism’, basic questions of life’s origin and ultimate meaning should be fully consumed for a productive and oriented life journey. He snubbed some atheists who just said that life is an incident with no inherent meaning by giving an analogy that one would ask an air hostess if one finds oneself in an aircraft about the travel details. The same is the case with humans as we are born by a creator-Who is beyond our perception-with a pre-ordained plan for a limited time on the planet Earth in a vast cosmos. It doesn’t matter if an atheist like Richard Dawkins calls it a Designer or a Muslim calls it Almighty Allah. The point is that we have no control over ourselves but are extremely fragile and meek and even cannot sustain above 50 degrees temperature (distressingly, the recent rise in global warming is climate-triggered; it is our own created mess as the designer/Allah had intricately created the earth for humans).

Human psychology has passed through a convoluted evolutionary journey lettered with a plethora of multi-faceted thoughts and ideas. But with the advent of the twentieth century, humans, according to Well Durant in ‘The Pleasure of Philosophy”, have lost their collective share of ideas and social moors which were once grounded in humane values, ie, familial consolation, belongingness, unity, and a genuine sense of empathy.

While the unbridled forces of capitalism have significantly transformed priceless values into a materialistic currency, the highly eulogized school of philosophical naturalism has eroded the true sense of spirituality and soul, regarding them as mere psychological and neurological processes. However, the question that what makes atoms and molecules capable of making us conscious and arrive at grand decisions to explore the impregnable space or invent lethal weapons?

These are deeply philosophical and theological questions and are now complemented by scientific discoveries, that have been going on for centuries. The important thing is that we need to acquaint ourselves with these epistemological and ontological discussions to grasp the real meaning of life. Unsurprisingly, due to sheer ignorance and lack of quality education, we have denuded Islam of its real meaning, distorted the true nature of science, and ardently entrenched in toxic extremism and sectarianism.

Ibn Rushd in his magnum opus, ‘The Incoherence of Incoherence’ said that truth does not contradict truth, implying that philosophy and Islam are arriving at the same conclusion, but adopt different paths. Similarly, both science and religion are two separate domains with different epistemological frameworks.

Therefore, they both should be studied rationally sans prejudice and bias. The current quagmire we are indulged in can be surpassed through the pragmatic application of scientific knowledge coupled with Islamic ethics. Unwillingly, we have gone to two extremes, one group is ultra-liberal while the other is Islamist, and both uphold extremist ideology thereby excluding one another.

The writer is a student based in Mardan.