There are two distinct traits that makes humans noticeably different from other life-forms in this planet, including our closest relative species in the evolutionary tree – the chimpanzees. One is our insistence on the religious belief systems and the other – our capacity to exploit our surrounding environment to our needs at scale.

Religion, or rather our collective belief in the existence of God is a strange, yet curious phenomenon. Of course, there are a few amongst us who are “convinced atheists”. There are many others – I suspect a sizeable proportion of human population who are strong believers – the theists. In between these two extreme ideological ends, there lies a spectrum of cultures and religions that span monotheistic, polytheistic, materialistic, spiritualistic, devotional, philosophical, gnostic, agnostic and deistic beliefs and practices.

Gods And Religions

When our ancestors could not find convincing answers to the grand questions—owing to their limited knowledge and observational skills—they invented the concept of “God” as a convenient explanation, attributing responsibility for everything to it. For instance, when humans did not know “when” or “how” the universe was created, some consistently tried hard to search for answers, while many others simply came up with the idea that “God” created everything—life, air, water, and every other perceivable thing around us and in the universe—and that we should not bother much about it. Eventually, this idea evolved, was indoctrinated into words and scriptures alongside moral values, and thus gave rise to the concept called “religion”.

It so happens that belief in “God” has become a more convenient and comforting solution to the unknown. When humans could not predict or foresee their future, they would place their faith in God to take care of it and carry on with their day-to-day lives. They believed that God gave them purpose and meaning in life and that they should follow the paths laid out by their religious and societal doctrines. When people collectively resonated with the same narratives put forth by religious doctrines, they became united, functioning as cells of larger organisms—tribes, cultures, and societies.

Religion, in this sense, has been a great unifying force that cohesively bound ancient tribes and cultures together through their shared narratives and rituals. It was undoubtedly one of the ancient social engineering projects – and a successful one at that. Tribes with shared narratives worked together more closely and their unity amplified their strength and might against their adversaries.

But not all humans think alike, and not every human resonates with the same shared narratives. This has often led to fractures in societies, forking off new religions based on differing opinions and ideologies. Some religions—primarily those descending from Abrahamic belief systems—believe in “one true God,” though they remain divided in their perceptions and narratives about that God, leading to different religious ideologies and also sub-divisions within religions.

The Dharmic traditions, believed to have originated in ancient India, however, have evolved with their ideologies based on their “deities,” with narratives changing and adapting across time. This culmination of multiple narratives, ideologies, and the reconciliation of diverse cultures across different tribes and societies in the Indian subcontinent gave rise to Hinduism. The core tenet of Hinduism relies on unity in diversity, accommodating a plurality of belief systems. Though there were forks within the Dharmic traditions—like Buddhism, Jainism, Shaivism, Vaishnavism, and many others—they largely coexisted as shared cultures, like branches of a peepal tree.

Today, though there are many religions with different perceptions of their “God” and moral values, they all have one thing in common: their belief that God exists; that God created the universe and everything around us; and that God is overseeing everything that happens to us and the entire universe. Whether this could be proven scientifically remained irrelevant, but their faith in God—cultivated through intuition and belief in God’s existence—kept civilizations functioning in order.

Science And The Inquiry into Objectivity

While religious scriptures and their ideologies seem to have answers to every question — and in cases where they don’t, they can simply say “God only knows!” and lie back with a sigh of relief, almost ceasing further quest to unravel the deepest mysteries of existence — they leave little or no scope for creative intuition, reasoning or broader perspectives.

As humanity in the ancient era accumulated skills and knowledge by creating complex tools, navigating lands and oceans, managing agriculture and irrigation, constructing houses, monuments, roads, and sanitation for growing urban populations – their perspectives broadened. For instance, replicating tools demanded accurate measurement techniques; building stable monuments required knowledge of geometry; and truly understanding and applying geometry across constructions called for abstract formalisms. Trade required accounting, and managing accounts necessitated symbolic abstractions with rules and formalisms. These symbolic abstractions evolved into numbers, and the rules surrounding them developed into mathematics.

One of the strongest guiding principles of mathematics has been “objectivity”. Unlike religious scriptures, which rely on subjective perceptions and narrative, mathematics is grounded in true objective reality. Its formalisms are repeatable, time-tested, and consistent. Religions have evolved and often-times forked, changing narratives to explain reality suited to the persisting environment, mindset and culture of their times. Trying to explain the world we dwell in today based on the narratives within religious scriptures formulated centuries or even a millennia ago, is similar to – as Einstein might say, insisting on using a medieval map to explore a new world.

While religions fragmented societies at large owing to collective subjectivity, mathematics forged cooperations and alliance by means of trade, commerce and shared knowledge of objective reality. Societies with different religious ideologies could trade freely as the math guiding their accounts are objective and does not change based on their religious faith and beliefs.

The rise of modern scientific inquiry accelerated during the Enlightenment era in the West was built on the foundations of this mathematical objective reasoning. Scientists, engineers and thinkers from different societies across the world irrespective of their culture, religious beliefs (or lack thereof) work together today as modern science has evolved to focus solely on processes that are objective – based on observations, research, experimentation and conclusion built on mathematical formalisms.

Scientific advancements in the recent times have yielded immense progress to humanity – be it in medical sciences, astronomy, weather forecast, agriculture, construction, navigation and many other areas. However, we are still left with unanswered questions: What is life? What is our purpose? Why do we exist? Science can answer “how” things happen or “how” they work, but shies away from the “Why?” type of questions, and these questions fall into the realms of philosophy, spirituality and religious narratives. More often these questions directly reinstate God as the responsible entity who knows the answers and mortal beings would need to “connect” to God to be enlightened.

It happens so that across time, “God” has been a convenient place-holder to explain the unknown. When our ancestors had little knowledge about astronomy and science, thunder and lightning were attributed to a capricious deity who is angry and needs to be pacified with prayers and rituals; a new moon was attributed to divine calls for self reflection, introspection, sacrificial rituals and honoring ancestors. With innovation of better instruments and improvised observational techniques – these events could now be explained without invoking God, but purely using objective reasoning.

The frontier of God’s intervention have been pushed further as science progressed. These days, you will find philosophers and thinkers invoking God and divine intervention in areas like quantum physics sometimes bootlegged and conflated as divine consciousness responsible for phenomena like the observer effect in quantum physics – where current science lacked a clear explanation using objective methods.

We humans have carried two realms of thought as part of our evolutionary arc:

• The subjective truth – that revolves around religion, culture, nationality-driven by intuition and shared belief.
• The objective truth – that is grounded on logical reasoning, mathematical formalisms and the scientific methods.

The subjective truth has helped humanity forge strong societies and civilizations, maintain social order and expects humans only to “believe” in the shared narrative without scrutiny – a baseline requirement to pledge loyalty and build trust within the community so that the community could function as a whole.

The objective truth on the other hand is subject to intense scrutiny and critique – it must pass these tests to be adopted, trusted and applied. This is a crucial requirement for building symbiotic relationships amongst societies with different belief systems.

While those who actively apply mathematical logic and scientific methods in their world-view and their perspectives tend towards atheism as they disband subjective realms altogether as it contradicts the scientific process, it seems that the evolutionary filter did not favour them over the majority population who are religious. One of the reasons could be that vast majority of atheists are also libertarians or freedom absolutists who disregard family structures and traditions as archaic and not aligned to their logical thinking.

The statistical average of an atheist who maintains a stable marital relationship and tend to raise children are far too low when compared to religious believers who are more conservative in their world-view and perspectives. Objective truth did not matter – only survival and persistence does in the long arc of evolution. Interestingly, religions and cultures with the most archaic doctrines and stringent dictums have time and again shown steep rise in their population. Religions that evolve to become more liberal and accommodative of objective reasoning into their world-view, generally result in their populations decline over time. Of course, there are other factors that decide population growth and decline, like economic status, education of women and others, while religious factor seems to be one among them.

What really matter is – the progress of humanity I believe relies on a balanced act of accepting both realms of influence – the subjective truth (religion, philosophy, faith and belief systems) and the objective truth (science, logic, rationality) as two parallel tracks that have defined humanity in the past, present and the way forward. It would be wrong to cling on to ancient scriptures as objective truth that scientific methods have debunked and equally wrong to completely discard the memories, the moral and cultural values, and virtues embedded in scriptures that guide towards being a better individual in a society. Tolerance and acceptance for differing world-views and perspectives would be key towards living in harmony.

Reflection (~ 2026)

When I wrote this essay in 2013, I was trying to understand a tension that seemed deeply embedded in human civilization: the coexistence of religious belief and scientific reasoning. At the time, it appeared to me as a balance between two realms of truth—one subjective and narrative-driven, the other objective and grounded in mathematics and empirical inquiry.

Over the years, my thinking evolved as I began viewing human civilization through a broader systems lens. What I now see more clearly is that religion and science were never simply competing explanations of reality; they served very different functions in the evolution of human societies.

Religion, in its many forms, acted as an early coordination technology. Through shared myths, rituals, and moral codes, it enabled large groups of humans to trust, cooperate, and organize themselves long before formal institutions or scientific frameworks emerged. Science, on the other hand, became humanity’s most powerful reality-testing mechanism, allowing us to model the universe, manipulate physical systems, and extend our capabilities far beyond biological limits.

Seen this way, religion and science were not merely belief systems—they were information systems that helped humans navigate different dimensions of existence: one governing meaning and social cohesion, the other governing our interaction with the physical world.

Today, however, we are witnessing the emergence of a third layer. Technologies that store, process, and generate knowledge—digital networks, algorithms, and increasingly autonomous systems—are beginning to externalize cognition itself. These systems are gradually reshaping how societies coordinate, how knowledge is produced, and even how humans construct meaning.

In that sense, the tension between religion and science may not be the final chapter of humanity’s intellectual evolution. It may simply have been an earlier stage in a much longer process: the gradual expansion of intelligence from individual minds into the collective systems we build.