The speaker for this monthly meeting was the President of Lahore Astronomical Society, Mr. Umair Asim. He was with us live, via Skype. The talk started around 5:20 pm and went on for about 70 minutes with Q&A session taking another 20 minutes, bringing the total time to about 90 minutes.
A challenging topic, open Q&A session and the post-talk discussions and comments; these made this event quite special.
The talk began by Umair Asim sahib giving a comparison between religion and science. It was followed up by talking about different levels of understanding ‘the reality’ and attempting to create an acute awareness of a philosophical and epistemological background of the subject. A clear attempt was made to let the audience get a taste of how deep some questions, thoughts and arguments can get when it comes to addressing things like noumena / phenomena, experience / description of an experience, evidence, correlation, proof and the law of causality.
The speaker helped the audience sail beautifully through these hard-to-explain concepts while navigating carefully around controversial areas. Theological and philosophical references were given with frequency to clarify a particular point. The speaker stressed on the distinction between science and religion as two separate entities and suggested one should not mix the two, based on epistemological principles.
The most beautiful part of the presentation was the simplicity and a sense of cynicism with which Umair sahib was able to carry this difficult topic forward. Questions were asked at the end of the talk and it was very obvious how some of the things struck a chord in people and their curiosities. We had to actively tell our audience to keep their questions solitary, short and crisp; but this particular suggestion was seldom followed. It was an enlightening experience, overall. Participants were engaged in discussions after the talk, at the refreshments table.
Where this talk, very successfully, gave us an intellectual tool on how to think about these two entities, it also precipitated a barrage of unanswered and unsettling questions. I, personally, would not be surprised if these questions and deep thoughts on this topic keep coming back for the speaker to address for some time to come. This talk was like someone throwing a stone in a lake. The stone being a greater awareness of the enormity of some thoughts and ideas and the lake being our everyday states of mind, as mundane as us.
Lahore Astronomical Society thanks the speaker, Mr. Umair Asim for his time, its event manager, Mr. Alpha Bhatti for organising and managing this event and all participating members for making this a success.
