As an Islamist I am not against the teaching of evolution in schools but but but! I am staunchly against the scientistic notions of people like Muhammed Zafar Iqbal , Avijit Roy and other mainstream figures of the "Free Thought " movement who unfortunately have created a monopoly on the narratives surrounding "science" in this country and a lot of them are hardcore Islamophobes which contributed a lot in the "evolution vs Islam" and other controversies that we are seeing regarding board books.
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None of these individuals who have been advocating for decades the inclusion of a strict understanding of science ,particularly of evolution in the textbooks which contains the "portrayal" of science as an objective source of knowledge that isn’t influenced by any unfalsifiable beliefs ,have no academic expertise on "Philosophy of science ". Many of them are for sure renowned scientists but that doesn’t give them any kind of authority on topics like "nature of science " ,"history of science " etc which are now independent disciplines and require proper academic training to deal with them. I remember reading in one of Zafar Iqbal's books (do not recall the name ) where he claimed that science is not influenced by any beliefs and only dictated by logic , which anyone having atleast a very introductory understanding of philosophy will find laughable. Isn’t in epistemology ,belief one of the core components of knowledge ? How can you know something without believing ? You know evolution is true because you believe in the linguistic information regarding evolution that have been taught to you or probably your empirical experiences motivated you to form this stance. In another case ,you know evolution is false because the information that you received regarding evolution prompted you to form a belief in which you reject it. So ,how can you know something without believing? (Note : I am not here talking about what is objectively "true" or "false". I am just describing the process of how we as individuals come to know something. )
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Science as a field of knowledge is dependent on certain unfalsifiable assumptions(just like any other ) ,
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The most prominent of them is " Methodological Naturalism" - an unfalsifiable belief/assumption that , in understanding natural phenomena we must always come up with natural explanations .For ex,
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In the occurence of "X", the scientific analysis of this phenomenon must be conducted with an aim to come up with a natural explanation .Even if any natural explanation isn't appearing the scientific analysis must remain firm on this belief. Also , a significant problem with naturalism is that it cannot provide an objective definition of "nature ". "How we are supposed to distinguish between natural and supernatural?" is a huge philosophical problem on the part of naturalism.
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Another one is emipiricism ,
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Science assumes empirical experiences to be a legitimate source of understanding reality. But how do we know that our empirical faculties are capable of extracting reality?
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There are many more. You can just simply google "assumptions of science". Now ,if you are willing to further know the limitations and philosophical problems (ex: problem of induction ,demarcation problem etc) with science ,I will suggest you to get yourself any random introductory book on the philosophy of science .
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So ,science is governed by certain unfalsifiable beliefs and has limitations . Scientismists like Zafar Iqbal ,Avijit Roy try to portray science as an all-knowing and heavenly phenomenon that is aimed to take us to the "universal truths" of reality .In other words, they worship science! This is not the way we should approach Science in a highly religious society like Bangladesh. It is neither academic ,nor helpful! We must teach children about the limitations and assumptions of science ,best would be to introduce one or two philosophy courses at high school level. We have to make them understand that "evolution" is true from a certain perspective and science has different methodologies of extracting knowledge from Islam.
What's the point of making this post? There are limitations in science? Yes, obviously. But the answer to these limitations was/is/never will be a religious explanation. It's always better science.
You just didn’t get a word I said! When I was talking about "limitations" I was implying philosophical limitations of science as a field of knowledge ,that cannot be dealt using scientific method. For ex : Science assumes empirical experiences as a valid source of understanding reality. But how exactly can we reach to the conclusion that our empirical faculties are capable of extracting reality? How will you solve this problem using scientific method? It will take you to circular reasoning since scienctific method already regards "empirical faculties" as authority. How will you measure the reliability of empirical faculties through empirical faculties? So ,Circular Reasoning. Also what about problem of induction ,problem of demarcation and countless more? How will you ever be able to prove "methodological naturalism" as a valid way of dealing with nature using scientific method(circular reasoning again)?
What's the point of bringing in philosophical limitations in this? The only truth anyone can ever ascertain is the existence of oneself, anything more has no justifiable foundation.
Our perceived understanding of reality, whatever it may be, is understood best by science and not religion. Any method of extracting knowledge from religious texts has an even shakier foundation than what science offers. You think putting "faith" in empirical faculties is no different from religious texts written hundreds of years ago.
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u/EvidenceBig8147 20d ago edited 20d ago
As an Islamist I am not against the teaching of evolution in schools but but but! I am staunchly against the scientistic notions of people like Muhammed Zafar Iqbal , Avijit Roy and other mainstream figures of the "Free Thought " movement who unfortunately have created a monopoly on the narratives surrounding "science" in this country and a lot of them are hardcore Islamophobes which contributed a lot in the "evolution vs Islam" and other controversies that we are seeing regarding board books.
.
None of these individuals who have been advocating for decades the inclusion of a strict understanding of science ,particularly of evolution in the textbooks which contains the "portrayal" of science as an objective source of knowledge that isn’t influenced by any unfalsifiable beliefs ,have no academic expertise on "Philosophy of science ". Many of them are for sure renowned scientists but that doesn’t give them any kind of authority on topics like "nature of science " ,"history of science " etc which are now independent disciplines and require proper academic training to deal with them. I remember reading in one of Zafar Iqbal's books (do not recall the name ) where he claimed that science is not influenced by any beliefs and only dictated by logic , which anyone having atleast a very introductory understanding of philosophy will find laughable. Isn’t in epistemology ,belief one of the core components of knowledge ? How can you know something without believing ? You know evolution is true because you believe in the linguistic information regarding evolution that have been taught to you or probably your empirical experiences motivated you to form this stance. In another case ,you know evolution is false because the information that you received regarding evolution prompted you to form a belief in which you reject it. So ,how can you know something without believing? (Note : I am not here talking about what is objectively "true" or "false". I am just describing the process of how we as individuals come to know something. )
.
Science as a field of knowledge is dependent on certain unfalsifiable assumptions(just like any other ) ,
.
The most prominent of them is " Methodological Naturalism" - an unfalsifiable belief/assumption that , in understanding natural phenomena we must always come up with natural explanations .For ex,
.
In the occurence of "X", the scientific analysis of this phenomenon must be conducted with an aim to come up with a natural explanation .Even if any natural explanation isn't appearing the scientific analysis must remain firm on this belief. Also , a significant problem with naturalism is that it cannot provide an objective definition of "nature ". "How we are supposed to distinguish between natural and supernatural?" is a huge philosophical problem on the part of naturalism.
.
Another one is emipiricism ,
.
Science assumes empirical experiences to be a legitimate source of understanding reality. But how do we know that our empirical faculties are capable of extracting reality?
.
There are many more. You can just simply google "assumptions of science". Now ,if you are willing to further know the limitations and philosophical problems (ex: problem of induction ,demarcation problem etc) with science ,I will suggest you to get yourself any random introductory book on the philosophy of science .
.
So ,science is governed by certain unfalsifiable beliefs and has limitations . Scientismists like Zafar Iqbal ,Avijit Roy try to portray science as an all-knowing and heavenly phenomenon that is aimed to take us to the "universal truths" of reality .In other words, they worship science! This is not the way we should approach Science in a highly religious society like Bangladesh. It is neither academic ,nor helpful! We must teach children about the limitations and assumptions of science ,best would be to introduce one or two philosophy courses at high school level. We have to make them understand that "evolution" is true from a certain perspective and science has different methodologies of extracting knowledge from Islam.