Fetullah Gülen's Idea on the Relationship Between Science and Religion
The study of the relationship between science and religion occupies a central position in F. Gülen’s thought. It implements a dialectical confrontation of two concepts as a strategy , leading to a decoding of islamic principles for the benefit of communities.
The Quran, the message that fell from the sky 14 centuries ago, still retains an esoteric dimension. The Muslim launch himself in a perpetual quest for deciphering. The great prolixity of coranic exegesis in the islamic world reflects the complexity of interpreting the divine message.
It is very rare to read a work of F. Gülen which does not comment on the natural laws of physics, chemistry, astronomy, embryology, subjects of experimental science ultimate. F. Gülen emphasizes in his approach on the interaction of rational arguments and the laws of logic applied to immaterial.
For F. Gülen, the cosmic pulse pre-event geophysics including the creation of the universe (structure of matter from the first elementary particles: Hydrogen and Helium) have structured the thinking towards the essential doctrines, the source of religions. This appears the first paradigm cosmographic founder of the science. Science and religion is manifested by a discursive approach that integrates the essential tenets of translation in rituals and behaviors.
Science is a cognitive process of producing answers to the eternal question. Therefore it moves in an permanent dialectical conceptualization based on the nature, content and interaction of its phenomena. It becomes a tool for understanding the messages of the prophets. The scientists who took science as their religion fall inexorably into the lot of agnostics redeemers, when modern science is often superimposed on wide ranges of convergence with the quran.
This was confirmed by Dr. Joe Leigh Simpson, head of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of medicine, Houston (USA), who sees no conflict between genetics and Islam even considering that Islam can guide science.
Note also that science inscribes in its activities a global approach that integrates the laws of logic, simulation and modeling. The man who represents only 0.06% of all animal biomass is an upper unit of biodiversity with the key attributes that place at him at the top of the ladder of living things.
The Quran frequently intervened in the creation of the activities of the person. For science, biodiversity is composes million known species. Tens of millions of species are unknown, while hundreds of millions of species have now disappeared, probably due to irresponsible human activities.
The sources of biodiversity plunge us into a great debate between Science/Islam. In Islam, life has a source and a common ascendence that can be only a unique creator, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent: God. This common ancestor produce offspring diverse and fragmented, generating perennials, while the Darwinian approach to the question calls for a modified descendants, polymorphic, generating mutant species suitable to produce new species.
It is useful to mention the primitive science of BAIT Al HIKMA in Baghdad (House of Wisdom), a source of knowledge and wealth of Muslims and non Muslims, corresponding to the golden age of Islam ( 706-809) during the reign of HARUN AL RASHID. The philosophy was the unique discipline to the bishop. The philosopher is a scientist imbued with wisdom. The first the work’s review of Plato and Aristotle are the work of philosophers aerophagia Arabic, Greek, Persian. The philosophy exploded and permited other disciplines to built around what will become of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology.
Impact of the Gülen model on the education systems in Sub-Saharan Africa
F. Gülen aims to change society through Education. The system he advocates gives priority to the teaching of SCIENCES, Science being considered as a tool for understanding the miracles of the Quran. In Sub-Saharan Africa, Gülen’s institutions have resolutely taken the option of scientific curricula specialization.
The option in the scientific fields can be seen primarily in infrastructure: In addition to classrooms, Gülen schools endow large numbers of laboratories with modern equipment. In Senegal, the last school was built with 20 laboratories.
Learning Sciences is entrusted to competent teachers who regularly refine their teaching methods in pedagogical units.
The Gülen schools include in their peri-and post school activities the organization of scientific fairs and mathematical olympiads. The curriculum of the College Yavuz Selim Dakar has in its agenda MATHLET: a mathematics competition held regularly throughout the country.
In addition to these activities come extramural education which puts the student in direct contact with natural datas.
Science and Religion
Areas of convergence
Areas of divergence
Many scientists are surprised at the perfect consistency of quranic discourse with modern science. Little subjectif minds have always considered Islam as the religion of conservatism and stagnation. But sometimes observed that the old Islamic discourse fourteen centuries coincides perfectly with the latest advances in scientific research. Science finds its birthplace in the Middle East. It is the Arabs who introduced the West Indian count. The Arabic mathematicians invented algebra (722) and its applications to geometry and astronomy. Through the rotation of the Earth, they have contributed to a better understanding of the universe. Ingenious calculations were used to determine prayer times, and especially mathematical applications in the calculation of the inheritance. Methods resolutions equations of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th degree also enrich the range of inventions.
Several areas of convergence Science / Religion can be highlighted:
• Creation of the universe (10 billion years)
Big Bang and creation of the first galaxies
The planet on which we find is an interconnected structure, driven by centrifugal forces that give it a balance from a programmed thermonuclear reactions. Previously, physicists had made the atom the smallest particle of matter (the atom is said to be unbreakable).
For 14 centuries the quran (34:3) proclaims the existence of a particle smaller than an atom. The quarks were discovered by science is a convergence space science / religion.
In posing the problem of the laws of gravity in the development of living organisms, the magnetic attraction of astronomy, the laws of germination, F. Gülen suggests the miracles of creation, scientific body created by the divine. Gülen integrates into its problematic role of elements like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide; radioactive products in which the cells derive their food. We have here an area of divergence Science / Religion Creation / Evolution.
Science, from an astronomical dating estimated 13 billion years the initial explosion the Big Bang, the creator of the first galaxies 3 billion years, the emergence of life, 3 million years that of australopithecus, ancestors of the genus Homo. Man, this animal has a higher conceptual understanding becomes the ultimate stage of the evolution of the first macromolecule that emerged early Precambrian oceans. Fundamental disagreement with the Quran that gives man a twofold creation: that of KOUNE FAYAKOUNE and that of NOUTFA.
In its approach, the Gülen’s model hold off an encyclopedic knowledge extrovert. He advocates an observable knowledge validated by the scientific community. The teacher becomes a tutor who advocates a transmission of knowledge from one situation to the problem. We want to assess the ability of the students to solve complex tasks. The curricula must be brought to situational data.
The Gülen model establishes a partnership with parents by involving them in learning. During weekends, students go all with their homework at home. The parent is thus obliged to follow the work of his child.
In the model Gülen, the school is a part of socialization. The institutions hold regular humanitarian activities in the fight against poverty, and it gives the child a sense of solidarity and sharing. The underlying ideology that radiates humanitarian activity is perceived through the HIZMET. It is difficult to find a rational definition of the word HIZMET as the concept seems to be flooded in a dialectical dimension scalable. HIZMET seems to identify with a philosophy of life that promotes attitudes of selflessness, generosity, self-giving to the other. The other is everyone, all biomass mineral, animal or plant is concerned. All creatures across the universe are targets and interlocutors of HIZMET which remains a sort of itinerant charitable and community service.
Understand HIZMET by the slogan "Live and work for all". HIZMET sets itself as the primary objective of obtaining the grace of God. The concept is therefore directed to believers. The process of obtaining the grace of God through a trajectory to make it available to the community and do something useful for balance and harmony of life. This earthly life full of pitfalls and failures, dotted balance offers people opportunities to appease the conscience often disturbed by the disparities and injustices of all kinds, by serving others.
A providential man shows his availability to absolutely serve the community. It is the opposite of the individualism of western societies grossly unequal and sectarian. Islam and its values transcend partisanship and challenge the conscience, the education sector (Gülen model) on shoulder strap.
The Gülen model uses a part of their vacations in camps for religious education. Gülen institutions transcend political problems of countries where they operate by observing a strict neutrality in the government guidelines. Gülen institutions involved even in countries in conflict or war. This applies to the opening of schools in Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mauritania, Sierra Leone and Liberia. "A war that broke out in a country does not stop us from going there tells me an authority to whom I posed the question." Education has proposed a virtual dose of magnetism could bring peace. The establishment of settlements F. Gülen in West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa started in Senegal a decade ago (1997). It is the Senegalese experience that inspired the other countries of West Africa.
Conclusion
Science and religion continue to fuel the debate in the Forums at the beginning of the third millennium. Practically it is an endless debate. From the confrontation of ideas will be born new behaviors. While science is a facies of alternative religions in the west, religious proselytism moves coexisting with positivistic science stripped of its dross reducing to the east and Africa. Gülen model completes a structural mesh especially in Africa. Positively impacting the education systems, structures the general curriculum of an innovative dynamic that goes from elementary to university in pursuit of scientific progress, welfare and population balance.
God has sent down from heaven messages and sent prophets for a specific missions. Dogmas and rituals essential that radiate Islamic thought were born simultaneously. Without any doubt, this meeting is an opportunity to make a review of paradigms and blaze new paths in the understanding of the binomial Science-Religion.
Prof. Dr. Adama Diop
1972 to 1979: Dakar University and Faculty of sciences Bordeaux I University
DUEL: Faculty of languages and humanities, Dakar University
B.A: Faculty of languages and humanities, Dakar University
M.A: Faculty of languages and humanities, Dakar University
DESS : of methods of physics applied to archaeology and Museographer, Bordeaux University
DEA: Geology of the quatermary and prehistoric times institute of the study of the Quartenary, faculty of sciences, Bordeaux University, 1979
Doctor in geology of the quartenary era and prehistory
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