SCIENCE, RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP

SCIENCE, RELIGION AND FRIENDSHIP BY GAVAMUKULYA YAHAYA BSC III (BIOCHEMISTRY, BOTANY)   I know how true it is in science that a good experiment is much more convincing and appealing than reading or talking about the truth it demonstrates. A human being acting truly has a tremendously greater impact on us than discussions about what our conduct ought to be. I believe that science and religion are far closer together than most people think; in both of them, truth is most complete in action. Ideas are secondary. Religion, or should I say the religion that I and most of my friends care about, is concerned deeply and fundamentally with what happens between one person and another, with the mystery of friendship and love, and their transforming power. This religion must have a supernatural being at its centre; nothing less will do, no dogmas or rules or pseudo-scientific notions will suffice, for these are all thoughts produced by persons and therefore less than persons. Nothing less than a living person can give us the complete truth about humanity. That is why Holy Books are significant. If I have any conception of God – otherwise an incomprehensible mystery – it is through them. To love a person – friend or husband or wife – is I think the most satisfying of all experiences; it seems supremely what we are made for; nothing else is so meaningful, however incapable we may feel of expressing that meaning in words. It seems to me logical that if we are to find some essential truth about our existence in the universe, it must be something that includes this most meaningful experience in our lives – it must be truth in a person. Whatever God is, there must be a person in his mystery. This thought will encounter strong resistance in many people – especially those whose experience of love has been unhappy or trivial and passing. Others cannot accept it because the scientific search for truth occupies their minds exclusively. They think of the vast material universe, its immense expanding distances, of spiral nebulae, hydrogen condensation, cosmic rays, and short-wave radiation. If they think of it as a mystery, it is a cold impersonal mystery. They forget that there is another mystery – the mystery behind the eyes of another person. If the material universe is tremendous in its extent, endless in its possibilities of exploration, so also is the world inside the minds of the people who sit beside us, every bit as mysterious and fascinating. I don't mean fascinating in the way it is seen by a psychologist but as it is experienced in the warmth of friendship and love. This warmth is as real as any of the particles of physics, indeed far more unchanging, and it is as dependable and eternal a truth as Einstein's ε=mc² may prove to be. If the heart of the universe is warm, there is a supernatural being at its centre – God. The fact that religion – seen in the understanding and daily living of humble people – has survived the terrible strain, to which it has been subjected from within, is a testimony of the strength and truth of its original message. There are people in perhaps every section of religion who have got beyond the quibbling about words and began to discover what God meant by abundant life. Such people are not distinguished by the religions they accept but by the quality of their lives. They make one aware that the abundant life is a life lived very much in the physical world, using all our material and bodily resources and energy with as much insight and understanding of each other as possible. It is not a vague ecstasy achieved during religious devotions, not a condition of spirit to be reached in the life to come; yet it in no sense depends on wordily success, power, or property. It is an everyday life lived richly, deeply, sensitively, and adventurously; and it can include in its wholeness, very significantly, the delights of love.   Gavamukulya Yahaya is a 3rd Year student and the Outgoing President Makerere University Biochemistry Students' Association (MUBSA)