“About what one cannot speak, one must remain silent.” These are the famous words of the atheistic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ironically, the saying now holds for scientists as well. While science is still the most reliable and certain form of knowledge, there are domains in scientific knowledge where there cannot be definite and certain answer. The questions regarding the ultimate meaning of life, death, God, etc., pertain to these domains. If scientists tend to deny God, it means they have violated Wittgenstein’s dictum. For, God and religion are not the domains of science.

The reputed Nature Magazine recently carried a column by Daniel Sarewitz, co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. In this column, titled, “Sometimes science must give way to religion,” referring to the discovery of the Higgs boson, Sarewitz says: “For those who cannot follow the mathematics, belief in the Higgs is an act of faith, not of rationality…in practical terms, the Higgs is an incomprehensible abstraction, a partial solution to an extraordinarily rarified and perhaps always-incomplete intellectual puzzle. By contrast, the Angkor temples demonstrate how religion can offer an authentic personal encounter with the unknown.” Sarewitz had argued that, for the layperson accepting today’s scientific findings is, to some extent, an act of faith. They believe what they are told by scientists without verifying the statements by the scientists. A. J. Iyer was a great philosopher who was once a member of the atheistic school of logical positivism. When he was asked in the 1970s as to to identify the key weakness of logical positivism, Ayer, said: “nearly all of it was false.”

Similarly, it is unto religious believers not to turn a blind eye to the scientific knowledge. As Galileo said: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations.”