Same methods of investigation apply to science and religion, says SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
A sage called Narada went to another sage named Sanatkumara to learn about truth, and Sanatkumara inquired what he had studied already. Narada answered that he had studied the Vedas, astronomy, and various other things, yet he had got no satisfaction. Then there was a conversation between the two in the course of which Sanatkumara remarked that all this knowledge of the Vedas, astronomy and philosophy was but secondary; sciences were but secondary. That which made us realise the Brahman was the supreme, the highest knowledge.
This idea we find in every religion and that is why religion always claimed to be supreme knowledge. Knowledge of the sciences covers, as it were, only part of our lives, but the knowledge which religion brings to us is eternal, as infinite as the truth it preaches.
Claiming this superiority, religions have many times looked down, unfortunately, on all secular knowledge, and not only so, but many times have refused to be justified by the aid of secular knowledge. In consequence, all the world over there have been fights between secular knowledge and religious knowledge, the one claiming infallible authority as its guide, refusing to listen to anything that secular knowledge has to say on the point, the other, with its shining instrument of reason, wanting to cut to pieces everything religion could bring forward. This fight has been and is still waged in every country. Religions have been again and again defeated and almost exterminated. The physical sciences are better equipped now than formerly, and religions have become less equipped. The foundations have been all undermined, and the modern man, whatever he may say in public, knows in the privacy of his heart that he can no more “believe”.
There are, of course, a number of people who seem to acquiesce in the so-called popular faith, but we also know for certain that they do not think. Their idea of belief may be better translated as “not thinking carelessness.
The question is: Is there a way outIJ To put it in a more concrete form: Is religion to justify itself by the discoveries of reason through which every other science justifies itselfIJ Are the same methods of investigation, which we apply to sciences and knowledge outside, to be applied to the science of religionIJ In my opinion, this must be so, and I am also of opinion that the sooner it is done the better. If a religion is destroyed by such investigations, it was then all the time useless, unworthy superstition; and the sooner it goes the better. I am thoroughly convinced that its destruction would be the best thing that could happen.
All that is dross will be taken off, no doubt, but the essential parts of religion will emerge triumphant out of this investigation. Not only will it be made scientific — as scientific, at least, as any of the conclusions of physics or chemistry — but will have greater strength because physics or chemistry has no internal mandate to vouch for its truth, which religion has.
People who deny the efficacy of any rationalistic investigation into religion seem to me somewhat to be contradicting themselves.
Excerpts taken from Swami Vivekananda’s discourses