The Encyclopedia of World Religions

410 S Scientology

have the right to “play God” by altering lifeforms, or making computers that practically think? And does this suggest that the originals of body and mind also could have come into being without the traditional God? On the other hand, could it be that such works are simply exercises of the power God gave humanity over the Earth, but we still need God to keep from going too far? Unfortunately, another feature of modernity has been the terrible discov ery that science can be abused to produce EVIL as well as good, from the alleged depersonalization of human life in the industrial or technological city to the atomic bomb and other refined weapons of destruction. In the eyes of many, even the great advances in medicine and agriculture have led to crises of overpopulation and the prospect of eco logical disaster. Can we resolve such issues with out the help of religious values? These are prob lems whose solutions may await further develop ments in the conflict, or harmonization, of science and religion. Scientology A religious movement founded in 1952 by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, on the basis of his best-selling book Dianetics. Its fundamental practice is individual counseling, which enables individuals to discover the cause of their problems in “engrams” or conditioned responses caused by occasions of fear and suffer ing, implanted in this or previous lives. One can then “go clear” by removing them by Scientologi cal means. The tightly organized and economi cally active movement has been controversial in the United States and several other countries. It remains, however, prosperous and successful. scripture In all major living religions, a body of words or writings declared to have been revealed by the highest authority and containing the fullness of spiritually important truth: the B IBLE of J UDAISM and C HRISTIANITY , the Q UR ’ AN (Koran) of I SLAM , the Sutras of B UDDHISM , the V EDAS of H INDUISM , the Confucian Classics, and so forth. In Hinduism, the

impersonal, mathematical universe—though one in which these terms must be qualified at the most advanced reaches of physics and psychology. The religious worldview, though not in conflict with science on some levels, is one in which mind and consciousness are much more important, with a Divine Mind as Creator or Sustainer, and the human soul or spirit of central significance. The conflict began with the new astronomy of Copernicus, centered on the Earth revolving around the sun rather than being the center of the system as in the older view accepted by most religions, though in time virtually all religionists concluded that a flat or central Earth was not really crucial to religious truth and came to terms with it. More traumatic was the 19th-century conflict between Darwin’s evolution and the biblical account of cre ation in Genesis, climaxing in the direct creation of A DAM and E VE by G OD . Here the two views of human beings seemed to many irreconcilable: Either humans are creations of God and the B IBLE is true, or they are natural, evolved over time as are the animals, and God is not necessary. To some the issue seems still to be in those opposing terms. But many more liberal religion ists were able to conclude that the Bible is only a book of principles, not a textbook in science; God can still be the ultimate creator, while science just tells us how it was done over previously unimagi nable spans of time. At the same time, spokesper sons for other religions, especially B UDDHISM and Vedanta H INDUISM , and in some ways also J UDAISM and I SLAM , claimed that their FAITHS were “more scientific” than the C HRISTIANITY dominant in the West, since they ordinarily do not require a literal reading of the old creation story. In the case of V EDANTA and Buddhism, there are also some simi larities between their views of karmic cause and effect and the interrelatedness of all things and Albert Einstein’s scientific theory of relativity and the more advanced frontiers of cosmology. Moreover, in the 20th century, new issues have arisen, especially in connection with bioen gineering and “artificial intelligence.” These are often as much ethical issues important to religion as theoretical challenges to religion. Do humans