# Science, Religion and Development

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Farhad Aghdasi, Science, Religion and Development, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Science, Religion and Development
> 
> 2002 – Port Elizabeth
> 
> Farhad Aghdasi
> 
> INTRODUCTION
> 
> The triple theme of science, religion and development initially emerged from an initiative
> taken by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), which is based in
> Canada and has promoted research on development for several decades. A few years ago,
> IDRC asked Dr William F. Ryan, a well-known economist and development practitioner,
> to travel around the world and interview some two hundred leaders of thought working in
> the field of development. His question to them focused on the role of culture and
> spirituality in development.
> 
> One of the interesting findings of Dr. Ryan’s study was that almost all those interviewed
> felt that development strategies and planning had not taken into account the culture and
> spirituality of the people of the world. There seemed to be uniform agreement that
> development had been too materialistic in its approach. Further to this conclusion, they
> confessed that within their own organizations and in their own life, they (the development
> workers) recognized the importance of spirituality and tried to incorporate it into their
> actions. However, knowing that such words and concepts were not welcomed by
> international aid agencies in project proposals and reports, they had developed two
> languages - one internal for their own work and the other external for making
> presentations to their donors so that they could obtain support. This is quite an interesting
> confession that came not from ten or twenty people but from a great many people who
> are running large development programmes around the world. 1
> 
> Following this research, IDRC invited a group of people from several countries to
> evaluate Dr. Ryan’s study. The questions put before the group were: What shape would a
> development policy take so as to acknowledge the spiritual dimensions of human
> existence and to integrate both the material and spiritual nature of human existence? How
> would the resulting programmes differ from thousands of projects to alleviate poverty,
> which have been operating for decades? What would some of the outstanding features of
> such programmes be?
> 
> One of the conclusions reached by the group was this:
> 
> It seemed to us, the group said - that we have to look deeper into the question of spirituality and
> culture if we are to succeed in re-evaluating the development enterprise. We have to go to the level
> 
> 1 Study Report is recorded on the book “ The Lab, the Temple and the Market”.
> of systems of knowledge, because in the final analysis, development efforts rest on the
> foundations of the various disciplines of modern science in which we have all been educated,
> irrespective of where we are from. Most of us have studied in universities and academic centres
> that have been influenced by Western tradition, which has defined the disciplines and professions
> that we bring to the field of development. Whether we are anthropologists, sociologists,
> economists, agronomists, medical doctors, social workers or educators, the knowledge system that
> underlies our thinking and according to which policies are formed, plans made, and programmes
> created comes essentially from that tradition. At some point in the evolution of Western Thought,
> it was decided by the academia - by the intellectual powers of Europe and North America - that
> science and religion were in conflict with each other. As a result, the knowledge system of the
> West became extremely secular. The question of religion and spirituality was either rejected
> entirely or, at best, left to the realm of individual personal concern, far from the public domain
> where important decisions about the structures and processes of society are made. 2
> 
> The group then had to ask its members whether they accepted this duality- namely that
> religion and science are in conflict, that religion belongs to the age of humanity's
> childhood, and that an educated humanity will either abandon religion altogether or
> regard it merely as a personal matter with no real relevance to the society.
> 
> If that is a basic assumption underlying development thinking and planning, then how
> could we talk about a new development paradigm that gives due consideration to the
> spiritual dimension of human existence? In response to this question, the theme of
> science, religion and development arose within the group. To address these issues the
> following observations need special attention.
> 
> 1. ALARMING TRENDS
> 
> The field of development became a formalized enterprise after the Second World War. In
> the midst of all the difficulties of the world at that time, with the conflict between Marxist
> and Capitalist regimes, with the cold war and a myriad adversities, a great deal of effort
> went into what was considered to be the social and economic development of the nations
> of the planet. Although five decades have passed, the results of these efforts are rather
> disappointing.
> 
> In 1972 Mr. Robert McNamara, then president of the World Bank, announced in a speech
> in Nairobi that the number of people who were living in absolute poverty in the world
> had reached eight hundred million - that was despite two decades of development effort,
> which had begun in the 1950s. This announcement caused a great deal of agitation
> among development workers all over the world. As a result, many programmes were
> created to alleviate poverty and policies were rapidly changed, even at the level of the
> World Bank. Three decades later, the number of absolute poor rose to over 1.2 billion. 3
> This is the tragedy by itself. But another tragedy is the fact that when this number was
> announced a few years ago, the announcement did not create the same kind of
> commotion that was created in 1972 as a result of the Nairobi announcement. The 1.2
> billion figure was met with almost no response. It would indeed be a tragedy if the world
> has become accustomed to worsening conditions, and all of the propaganda depicting
> 
> 2 Supra, p.
> 3 World Bank Report , Year
> material prosperity that the media is feeding to the masses has made humanity numb to
> the reality that things are not going very well.
> 
> One fifth of humanity is living in absolute poverty with less than a dollar a day income;
> another one fifth is somewhat better off. That is two fifths of humanity - 2.4 billion
> people more or less. Then, at the other extreme, there is about one fifth of humanity with
> access to eighty seven percent of all the resources of the world, using it and prospering.
> These two extreme groups keep moving farther and farther away from each other. The
> gap between the poor and the rich increases year by year.
> 
> After five decades of effort by development workers and other agencies, does the trend
> show that the fight against poverty and underdevelopment is being won? At the very
> least, is the trend encouraging?
> 
> The present situation is not, of course, due to any naivety on the part of development
> theory or a lack of ideas about development practice. The development thinking was very
> simplistic fifty years ago. Increasing the gross national product (GNP) through
> industrialization was the basic theory in the 50s. But development thinking gradually
> became more and more sophisticated as it incorporated a growing number of elements:
> agriculture, population, health, education, environment, distribution of wealth, land
> distribution, role of women and the importance of the participation of the people
> themselves in development projects and decision making. Every factor has been
> considered, and each one of them has been the focus of a long train of books whose pages
> set forth the most convincing arguments. When one reads the literature in this field and
> reviews the reports of related international conferences and international aid agencies,
> one is struck by the depth and breath of the ideas. It is people-centered development, and
> every possible factor has been analyzed. Then one looks at the reality, at the numbers, at
> the results – and one wonders why the gap between the rich and the poor continues to
> widen each decade.
> 
> This is not to say that development projects have not experienced success.
> 
> The governments of the world have, collectively, begun to acknowledge a spiritual
> dimension to development. This can be seen in the global action plans that emerged form
> the great world conferences held in the 1990’s by the United Nations. In 1991, the
> governments of the world, with significant contributions from global civil society, drafted
> Agenda 21, a remarkably forward-looking strategy for the achievement of sustainable
> development worldwide. 4 Agenda 21, called for “social, economic and spiritual
> development”, recognizing that “individuals should be allowed to develop their full
> potential”. A next step was the World Summit that took place in Johannesburg, South
> Africa, in August 2002 and was called to “identify major constraints hindering the
> implementation of the Agenda 21” and to “address new challenges and opportunities that
> have emerged since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.”
> 
> 4 Agenda 21, Chapter 6.3&6.23. Emphasis added.
> Another example is the Copenhagen Declaration where the governments of the world
> unambiguously affirm that “our societies must respond more effectively to the material
> and spiritual needs of individuals, their families and communities in which they live…not
> only as a matter of urgency but also as a matter of sustained and unshakable commitment
> through the years ahead”. In the Beijing Platform for Action, one reads that “religion,
> spirituality and belief play a central role in the lives of millions of women and men, in the
> way they live and in the aspiration they have for the future.” And in the Habitat Agenda,
> the world’s governments commit to “ achieving a world of greater stability and peace,
> built on ethical and spiritual visions.” 5
> 
> But as a whole, poverty and violence have increased, while security has decreased; hope
> has receded, and despair rules the lives of most of the people in the world regardless of
> where they live.
> 
> This does not mean that the programmes for the environment, for women, for
> agriculture, for micro-enterprise, for children, for education and others should
> discontinue. However, there are a number of underlying considerations that need to
> be examined and taken into account to arrive at solutions that go beyond a
> superficial treatment of the world's problems.
> 
> 2. WAYS OF LOOKING AT THIS DILEMMA
> 
> One way that is being proposed to look at the above dilemma has been articulated in the
> book The Lab, the Temple, and the Market: Reflections at the intersection of Science,
> Religion and Development, published in 2001. This was also the subject of a presentation
> by Dr. Firaydoun Javaheri in June 2002 in Zambia. It was proposed to look at this
> dilemma as the failure of materialism. The leaders of humanity, especially those in the
> West who held large shares of power, made some gross miscalculations during the early
> part of the twentieth century, which is when it became possible for humanity to come
> together as one for the first time because of scientific, technological and cultural
> advances. One mistake was to assume that material development was the only thing
> worth pursuing - that material considerations were the main determinants of human
> existence. Basically, they forgot, or ignored, the spiritual nature of humankind and the
> role of religion in influencing human attitudes and spirit with which people do
> everything, including development projects. Despite the brilliance of its thinkers and
> having the entire power of science behind them, they made a fundamental mistake about
> human nature. In all the theories they advanced, in the literature they wrote, in the
> educational programmes they spread around the world, and in the economic systems they
> took around the globe, whether falling into Marxist or Capitalist camps, they misjudged
> human nature. They somehow reached the conclusion that what mattered most was to
> improve material conditions. They failed to realize that unless both material civilization
> and spiritual civilization advance hand in hand, humanity could not prosper. It is not in
> 
> 5 Series of world’ conferences refers to the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development
> 
> No 3, platform for Acton of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Chapter 2, No 24,
> Habitat Agenda, Chapter 1, No 4, Preamble.
> human nature to be a material being alone, just as it is not in the nature of the human
> being to want to live in poverty, thinking of the next world only. Material development is
> important and essential to humanity to be able to pursue its spiritual and other goals.
> 
> 3. THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF SCIENCE, RELIGION AND DEVELOPMENT
> 
> It is the above-mentioned mistake on the part of the leaders of the world that now
> has to be corrected. Solutions lie not at the level of theoretical debate - whether to
> follow this or that development theory. The very foundation and assumptions on
> which developments rests must be redefined. It is true that we have to turn to
> science, as it is this knowledge system, which studies the material universe and
> teaches us how to generate material means to the advancement of humanity. But at
> the same time, religion should not be forgotten. However, by religion is not meant a
> specific religion or a specific sect, but religion as the spiritual heritage of humankind
> and the knowledge system that studies the power of the human spirit and is
> concerned with the demands and the desires of the higher nature of the human
> being.
> 
> It is in this sense that a discourse on science, religion and development is promoted. If
> such a discourse is to be successful, it cannot remain in the realm of appealing statements
> about the importance of spirituality. It has to go further and re-examine policy, rethink
> strategies and determine how these two sources of knowledge, science and religion,
> which have always motivated humanity, can be brought together to achieve progress. To
> do that it has to be accepted that there is no real conflict between science and religion. On
> the contrary, the two need each other - that science without religion becomes the cruel
> instrument of materialism, and religion without science falls prey to superstition and
> fanaticism. Furthermore, both science and religion would have to be viewed differently.
> The purpose of religion is to bring unity, without denying the diversity of expressions of
> the spiritual aspirations of the human soul. The great religious traditions of the world
> must become the cause of peace and unity. To this end, they must seek within each other
> those things that bind them together, those profound truths that exist in all of them and
> upon which they all agree. They cannot be the cause of strife and cannot be used to
> promote hatred. “If religion is to play a meaningful role in the work that lies ahead, there
> has to be some kind of a process to build harmony among the great religious traditions
> themselves. …It is becoming increasingly clear that passage to the culminating stage in
> the millennia long process of the organization of the planet as one home for the entire
> human family cannot be accomplished in a spiritual vacuum”. (A Statement to the World
> Summit on Sustainable Development by the Bahá’í International Community) 6
> 
> It is, therefore, inconceivable that a peaceful and prosperous global society – a society
> that nourishes a spectacular diversity of cultures and nations- can be established and
> sustained without directly and substantively involving the world’s great religions in its
> design and support.
> 
> 6 Issued ate August 26, 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
> The United Nations, the initiator of most of the projects on the global level, has been
> hesitant to invite religions for their inputs.
> 
> Unfortunately, the UN has been unable to move beyond its Declaration on the
> Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or
> Belief, to create a convention on freedom of religion and belief.
> Some of the global action plans from recent United Nations conferences suggest that
> misuse of religion poses an obstacle to development.
> 
> Agenda 21 mentions religion, but with no reference to the impact that its misuse has
> on development. It is observed that tragically, organized religions, whose very
> purpose is to serve the cause of brotherhood and peace, behave all too frequently as
> one of the most formidable obstacles in this path and lend credibility to the
> fanaticism of sub-groups within major religious traditions.
> 
> The real onus, however, is on the religions themselves. The followers of religions and,
> more importantly, religious leaders, must show that they are worthy partners in the great
> mission of building a sustainable civilization. To do so will require that religious leaders
> work conscientiously to exorcise religious bigotry and superstition from within their
> faiths and renounce claims to religious exclusivity and finality.
> 
> The attitude towards science has to change too. Not regarding its proven theories, but
> regarding its role. Science does not have the answer to every question about human
> existence. Although through science we can discover the physical laws of our universe,
> science alone cannot help us find the meaning of our existence.
> 
> If science and religion are truly to complement each other and help us come up with
> effective strategies and plans for the kind of development that is sought, certain
> adjustments need to be made in our thinking about these two sources of knowledge.
> Equipped with both, one will be able to do rigorous research in different areas of human
> endeavour.
> 
> 4. MAJOR AREAS NEEDING ATTENTION
> 
> At least four principal areas of focus come to mind to be re-examined. One is
> education. It is clear that educational systems of many countries are failing
> miserably. They have fallen far short of their intended goal to provide good scientific
> training and have also neglected almost entirely the question of moral development.
> Moral education is virtually non-existent in most school systems. The kind of
> educational system that leads not only to the intellectual empowerment of people
> but also to their moral empowerment, that teaches them not only skills and
> techniques but also the right attitude as well as how to use the powers of the human
> spirit and to see the patterns from which to draw meaning. Therefore, one can
> imagine a vast area of research and action to incorporate moral and ethical values in
> our educational systems around the world.
> Another area is technology. Society has to learn to make wiser choices about technology.
> It cannot allow itself to be a slave to technology created without regard to its
> consequences. It is essential to understand, from a scientific point of view, how to make
> decisions about technology, both about its development and its transfer. The matter of
> values needs to be brought to bear on technological choices. In other words, we cannot
> simply accept technology as a given- that whatever is developed and sold is good.
> 
> Another area of research is the area of governance. “Nations are much like human beings
> in that they are all similar in certain basic ways yet each also has a unique individuality
> and personality all of her own, coming from a certain historical background and
> experience. It also can be said that culture and religion are the factors that most
> profoundly impact on the character of a nation and on the manner in which politics and
> governance evolves therein”. (Inder Kumar Gujral, The Culture of Public Service, 261,)
> 
> The fourth area is economics. The entire field of economics has been called into question
> by the crisis in the environment, although the power of current economic structures
> remains strong and old ways persist as the standard. The present economic emphasis
> suggest that every human being is some kind of a machine which is programmed to
> maximize his or her utility and that a good world will appear in which all will prosper as
> everyone strives to do this. Inherent in the present economic policy is a definition of
> human nature, which suggests that maximizing human utility is what is expected of a
> human being. So one earns, spends, buys in order to satisfy the needs. These are the kinds
> of choices we make, and this is called being rational. If one does not do that, he or she is
> not being rational according to current economic theory. If one actually considers other
> things and allows concern for community, family or friends to prevail, it would be
> considered irrational. Yet every great religious tradition rejects this concept of the human
> being. That is not the human being seen in the tradition of Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism,
> Christianity, Islam or the Bahá’í Faith. The human being found there is very different. It
> is capable of the most sublime sacrifice for the sake of the common good. Unfortunately,
> human beings can be molded through constant propaganda into utility machines, but their
> real nature, as ascribed in the books and teachings of the great spiritual traditions of
> humanity, is something far from that.
> 
> It is not a question of forsaking material prosperity. Material means are necessary; but,
> there is a need for a theory based on correct understanding of human nature through
> which it will be possible to bring prosperity to all of humanity, one that will not produce
> the sharp divisions between rich and poor which we see today.
> 
> 5. INITIATIVES TAKEN
> 
> The group of people that worked together and produced the book “ The Lab, the Temple
> and the Market”, all scientists involved in development but from different religious
> backgrounds (Hindu, Christian, Muslim and Bahá’í), were enlightened by the initial
> finding of the discussion. Following their efforts to produce the book they wished to see
> if this discourse, that had began so successfully, could be extended to include a growing
> number of participants. The idea is that if the discourse is extended to a large enough
> circle of development workers, there will be some individuals who are willing to go even
> further and undertake research that will lead to alternative development policies and
> strategies, which take into account the spiritual as well as the material aspects of human
> life.
> 
> Following on, a highly successful colloquium was held in India in November 2000 with
> the participation of some one hundred and fifty leaders of NGOs and representatives of
> government agencies with partial sponsorship of leading international aid agencies. A
> cogent statement of its findings was prepared and disseminated at the provincial level and
> among various NGOs with the hope that a coherent concept that can serve as a proposal
> for future actions in India will emerge. The thinking is that, if a process similar to the one
> which took place in India could be set in motion in twenty to thirty countries over the
> next few years, and if the discourse became sufficiently broad and potent, a world
> gathering with the participation of representatives from various international agencies and
> countries would become an effective instrument for development strategies that are both
> sustainable and effective in closing the gap between the rich and the poor, as well as
> bringing developed and developing countries closer together.
> 
> CONCLUSION
> 
> It has been noted that the vast development efforts over the past 50 years, although
> including many projects that have been regarded as successful, have not been effective in
> reducing the overall gap between the rich and the poor. The main reason has been
> identified as the failure of materialism and the lack of recognition of the influence of
> cultural and spiritual factors in development. The solution offered includes the
> recognition of the vital roles of both science and religion in development. Specifically,
> the necessary influence of moral and religious values in the new systems of education,
> technology, governance and economics are mentioned as examples. It is hoped that
> worldwide discourse on such fundamental change of strategies for development will
> bring about the necessary conditions to achieve prosperity for humankind.
> 
> References
> 
> 1. Dr. Firaydoun Javaheri, Science Religion and Development, Talk, June 2002, Zambia.
> 2. The Lab , the Temple and the Market: Reflections at the Intersection of Science Religion
> and Development, International Development Research Centre, P.O. Box 8500, Ottawa,
> ON, Canada KIG 3H9, http://www.idrc.ca/books/ , or Kumarian Press, I294 Blue Hills
> Ave. Bloomfield, CT 06002, USA, http://www.kpbooks.com/
> 3. Dorsen N., Giffrod P., ( 2001), Democracy and the Rule of Law, Washington DC, CQ
> Press
> 4. Abdul Bahá, (1995), Paris Talks, 12 ed., London, Bahá’í Publishing Trust.
> 5. Agenda 21, UN.
> 6. Religion and the Public policy at the UN, Religion counts, 2002.
>
> — *Science, Religion and Development (Used by permission of the curator)*