Science may be the oil that lubricates the functioning of the planet, but religion is still its fuel. Without a scintilla of doubt, one can say that man's progress has modified religion but the roots of religion are so fundamental that nothing man made can even touch it. By religion, I do not mean the distinction that divides people into castes and groups. Religion is that quality of soul by the virtue of which a man forgives a perpetrator, a conscience pricks as someone does wrong, a silver lining exists in the darkest of circumstances. Religion is not just the physical thing as people see it to be. It is humanity, the immanent property of the human soul. Science is the produce of the human mind, the weapon by which a human being questions and improves the world around him to work out for his benefit. Needless to say, the statement under discussion diminishes not just the importance but the meaning of religion as well.
The survival of the planet is not based on science alone. If God is fictitious and the millions that believe him, stop believing him, then no rules could possibly stop the human race from its annihilation. What laws can stop a million perpetrators if they have no sense of guilt of what they have done. It is the fear that there is a God who looks over what we do and awards us appropriately after death, which makes us moral. From the eyes of science Mother Teresa would probably be a fool, squandering away her time helping the poor. What principles guided her could only be described as her religion, that all human beings are sons of God and all have rights to live happily.
Man is not a machine and no example is needed to prove that. Bill Gates deciding to give all he owns to the charity is not an act of reason. He could well have funded science, but the richest person that science made, realizes that science alone is not enough. The facts say, the percentage of atheists has risen considerably over time. But then, the sheer number of people that believe that a God exists can speak volumes. People living in unimaginable conditions survive not because of science, but because of a belief, the will to live that keeps that going. This will is not science but religion, the unexplainable nature of human soul. Science asks him - Why not die than live in this misery? And man replies - Life is still a gift, the God sees me, and would need a more solid reason for my death. These are not fairy tales that I conjure up, but are the facts that speak for themselves - Science can produce great stuff but religion is the only things that tells us whether to use them.
Science has been questioning the religion more often than not. But is that the religion I talk of? The religion under question by science is the man made patina over the religion. Science never questions whether it is right or wrong to do good. It questions whether it is justifiable to kill thousands because they do not believe the same God as we do. Science goes hand in hand with the religion. It is removing the unnecessary orthodox cover over the true nature of religion that man built over it. The questions doubting the Bible, the Quran or the Gita only try to scratch out the ills that came in due to the human errors and nothing else. There may or may not be God as a physical being, but there is this nature, the mother Earth, symbolized by Gia, that is catering to all our needs. And it is our religion to pay it back. This religion was never under question and never will be.
A keen observer would notice how man has been using religion as a mask for his ill doings, but religion in itself has never been bad, or mistaken in any way. If we define religion as the property of human soul to give justice to all, then science is removing the the dogmatism that we built over it. I would sum it up in much simpler words - Religion is a humanity which is so much more than people think it is. Man has been shaping its outer fringes so many years thinking that to be enough to define it. But rarely has man seen what actually the elephant is. Science has again brought about a revolution correcting the tampered edges, but the core of religion is so pure that nothing can make it obscure.