Finding unity finally in deceit

At first sight it seems religion could have nothing in common with science because they’re so separate in context, meaning and purpose. Religion relies on belief and reverence for a supernatural power that’s regarded as creator and usually involves a set of values and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader which remain immutable.

Science on the other hand is an enterprise that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the natural world, consisting of observation , identification , description, experimental investigation and theoretical explanation of phenomena.

It would be difficult to find a more total disconnect.
Yet there’s one link that both the faith and empirical industry share: fraud. Whether it’s a question of sham peer review, plagiarism, deceit or out-and -out hoax in the acquisition of knowledge, practitioners are not always guided by logic or principles alone, but also by such dishonest factors as personal fame or monetary gain.

From the Piltdown Man forgery where the remains of a previously unknown early human turned out to be the lower jawbone of an orang-utan fused to the skull of a modern human, to the deliberate fudging of data by the great IQ psychologist Cyril Burt researching the heritability of intelligence, the examples are legion. And that’s only talking about 20th century science.

In the same century religion too has taken similar hits that border on criminality in the name of the Lord or some vague spiritualism.

Rasputin mesmerised the Russian Empress Alexandra into believing he had mystical powers of healing to cure her son’s haemophilia; the “reverend” Jim Jones convinced members of his Jonestown “Temple” to commit mass suicide by swallowing cyanide in the hope of a greater glory; the spiritualist Brazilian “psychic surgeon” Arigo was caught substituting chicken entrails while removing cancerous tissues from people who subsequently died.

This list also is endless and in India includes scores of fake godmen who take people for a ride while raking in their cash.

Evil it turns out has the power to unite in cahoots such wholly disparate systems which any amount of good intention has never been able to bring together despite the efforts of so many.

It’s ironic that the quest for truth which both science and religion strive after fails against the simple lure of the lie.