Religion vs. science in Frankenstein - Research Paper Example

? 16 December Religion vs. science in Frankenstein Religion and science are polar forces that seem to clash frequently. In the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the relationship between science and religion gets explored through the main character of the story Victor Frankenstein.This novel arouses readers to question their death and even existence for more than seventeen decades. Frankenstein comes out as playing with God’s and natures powers and gets lost completely in his ambition, realizing too late that damage was already done. Science is vital in everyone’s life, but all good things must have a limit (Grassie). Science gets misused by Frankenstein and causes more harm than good. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein explores the theme of creation of life. Frankenstein’s idea shows us how man can at times go too far in his exploration of the concept of life. Frankenstein raises the question of how far is too far in relation to medicine. Frankenstein puts together a load of body parts to form a new being which turns out to be an utter disaster. “It is vital to think about the fact that medicine has made it routine procedure to transplant organs from dead people to live ones” (Pizzino). This is something to think about even as the scientific overboard of the book Frankenstein gets discussed. The question is whether science has bitten more than it can chew or if the scientific revolutions taking place get justified. Frankenstein’s creation brings up the discussion of the meaning of life and its value. Frankenstein’s thirst for knowledge goes too far, and the deep moral value of science gets questioned. Victor took the role of God when he sets his efforts to produce a live creature. In the bible, we view this as God’s job. It gets clearly stated in the book of Genesis that God did creation alone from the first day until the sixth day. “Not once do we get shown that the angels or any other person assisted him” (Shelley and Genco). He created everything, and he saw that it was good. Science has gone too far when Frankenstein attempts to create a creature just like God, but instead of creating good, he creates a monster. This has a symbolic meaning to show that science is going too far, and it is creating more harm than good. Attempting to do exactly what God can do backfires. The cloning of human beings, which is a scientific endeavor, is the ultimate act of human arrogance. It clearly shows that some human beings are declaring themselves to be God. God said when he gave his ten commandments to the Israelites that, “there shall be no other God but me”. Trying to create a human being thus depicts competition with God. “Frankenstein had the aim of making a perfect human being without flaws” (MacWilliams). This is the goal of many scientists who attempt to clone human beings. They try to come up with a being that will not die or get affected by the troubles of life like diseases.We do not need or want a society that is physically perfect but morally degenerated. God is the ultimate creator and he had his reasons for putting a flaw in everyone. “It is so that every day we strive for perfection and consider the next important day as it is a chance to continue pursuing it” (Krensky). If everyone had achieved what they wanted, imagine what the world would be like. When is science too much science? If one can do something does that mean that you should do it? Are there some experiments that should never be done? These questions come to mind when observe science in Frankenstein. Is it true to say that human genetic engineering is an example where scientists have gone too far? “In Shelley’s novel, we see a monster that is in the bitter relationship with its creator” (Shelley and Genco). This gets viewed as a similarity between God’s creation and Frankenstein’s creation. Just like a manwhom God created has created turned against him, is the same way Frankenstein’s creation turned against him.Scientists are going too far in an attempting to copy God because what the monster did cannot get compared to the evils that man does. The human being that God created has a conscience and a soul. Some scientists argue that science without religion is lame, and religion without science is opaque.This is not true since science is what is blind (Shaw). Scientists get blinded by their exploration that they fail to see when things have gone wrong. Frankenstein got so caught up in his creation that he failed to think of the consequences of his actions. Scientists have repeatedly failed to step back and ask themselves why. They fail to ask themselves the reason for doing something or what they are trying to achieve. “They play with forces they claim to understand and yet they can never understand them” (Grassie). Frankenstein played with science without asking himself what he wanted to create. This ended up backfiring on him just like most scientific endeavors.The heart of Frankenstein is the pursuit of knowledge. Victor tries to go beyond human limits and access the secret to life. Robert Walton also tries to surpass human explorations that have been done before by trying to reach the North Pole (Krensky). This pursuit of knowledge without stopping to ask questions leads to the destruction of everyone dear to Victor. Walton, on the other hand, finds himself trapped between ice sheets. This extreme thirst for unquestionable knowledge drives him to his ultimate death. Science is a powerful entity but poses the greatest danger to humanity if uncontrolled.This fear gets demonstrated in the book because it drove Victor to create a monster that led to his own demise. Electricity, which got created by science, gets misused in the book to give life to the lifeless monster. The knowledge of the power of electricity is what triggered Victors to fantasize about the possibilities of creating life using electricity and the body of a once living man (Shelley and Genco). Regenerating life becomes his obsession. The first time Frankenstein noticed what he had the power to do, he wondered what he would do with that power. Scientific experiments get performed for a purpose yet soon after a common negative effect normally gets introduced. Frankenstein’s brings out the good versus evil within science. If well used science has been able to create solutions to some of the diseases that man suffers. This has helped promote human dignity and preserve life. Scientific discoveries like organ transplants have enabled doctors to preserve life. “Machines that scientists have invented like the thumper used in cardiopulmonary resuscitation has also been a positive for human beings” (MacWilliams). Most scientists create inventions because of greed and not good will. Victor creates life because of his own greed and the monster haunts him in the end because of it. The sheer monster he gives life strives to deprive Victor of his own. When we look at the Christian version of the creation story, God creates man and gives him his own life. He does not create man for his own selfish needs. “He creates him and gives him the whole world wide to own and be in charge of” (Shaw). This means he is still in control of the life of man because human beings turn to God for guidance. He does not seek to control man the way Frankenstein created the monster to be in control, but they frequently turn to him.There must be ethics to the study of science. Science must become conscious. Religiously it can get debated that the universe can get divided into two separate domains. One is of a man and another of God. Any attempt by man to play God with the use of technology gets repelled with dire consequences. It can become argued that what happened to Victor was the consequence of his actions to try and act God. We see many instances in the bible when people disobey God and bad things happen to them. What happened to Victor can hence get biblically supported (Pizzino). For example, when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden, they suddenly became aware of their nakedness. This made them to develop the knowledge of good and evil which followed them forever. This shows that God has repercussions for undesirable behavior.There is forbidden scientific knowledge that man should not obtain or use. Christians believe that this knowledge exists only for the purpose of allowing God to run the world and not a fellow man to run it. Any attempt to play God is immoral and gets severely punished (Krensky). When the people of Babylon attempted to build a tower to reach heaven, God made them to speak in different languages and was not able to communicate anymore. This shows that God cannot allow the man power to surpass his deeds. He has his reasons for the way everything is. Science plays a vital role in our lives. It is through Victor’s fascination with science that he gets to discover how to reanimate matter. It enabled him to discover something unique and stunning. It is true to state that he became obsessed with the idea that he failed to concentrate even on his life. He left home and his family to go and study science under different professors at a university. Victor gets so fascinated with the idea of being able to restore life that he begins to feel like a god himself. This shows how science in the world can brainwash one to the extent of them neglecting their families and everything around them. “Victor lives only for his creation, and this leads to his untimely demise” (Shelley and Genco). According to the bible we must not live in our own understanding because there is a superior being above us. Victor did not believe in anything else, but his power to create or to reanimate.Too much concentration on science causes scientists to stop believing in God because they begin to believe that science is logic and religion is illogical. Science and religion are meant to coexist. They should compliment each other. This is because without both, human beings cannot survive. We believe in God because religion requires us to do so. He is the one who created us. Human beings also believe in science, because without it they cannot live well. Scientific inventions make our lives more comfortable. Science allows us to advance ourselves in as a society. It provides us with medicine, technology and new discoveries every day. Science got used in Frankenstein with the intent of creatingsomething miraculous. “Victor lacked a religious understanding or morals of how science and religion need each other” (MacWilliams). Maybe if he had a religious upbringing he might have known how death works.When the body dies the soul continues to live on. He would have never tried to reanimate a corpse. He had no knowledge that a person who has died is not gone. The dead are at eternal peace and rest with God. Victor had no idea about the sanctity of life and this made him tamper with life. He was not aware that only God and God alone had the power to bestow life. He overstepped himself in an attempt to play God. Science allows us to explore beyond our minimal understanding, but religion is necessary so that we can understand our limits. This helps conduct ourselves with good moral understanding (Grassie). Victor failed in his attempt to play god. This is because the creature that he created did not succeed to be fully human like what God created. Its outward appearance was appalling that he was not even able to befriend anyone. Godcreates perfect creatures in his own likeness and human beings are not scary like the creature that Frankenstein created. Frankenstein’s family did not want to befriend the creature because of his outward ugliness. This caused the creature to hate his creature because he was not able to live a normal life like the other creatures (Pizzino). This causes the creature to begin to scheme on how to harm his creator. Victor created something that had no moral reasoning. Science allowed him to create but could not allow him to instill a moral code. The creature tricked Victor’s little brother and strangled him. He then planted evidence on Frankenstein’s servant girl so that she could get accused of the crime and hanged. This creature has no moral code. He feels justified for his crime. He feels that what he has done is okay to pay for what these people have done to him (Shaw). Science cannot work without religion. If it does, it gets misused, and becomes more harmful than good. This is what happened with Frankenstein. Science got misused and ended up causing harm. Works Cited Grassie, William. Politics by Other Means:Science and Religion in the Twenty-First Century. Indiana: Xlibris Corporation, 2010. Print. Krensky, Stephen. Frankenstein. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2006. Print. MacWilliams, Alison Bright. It Came from the Laboratory: Scientific Professionalization and Images of the Scientist in British Fiction, from "Frankenstein" to World War I. Michigan: ProQuest, 2008. Print. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Elizabeth Genco. Frankenstein. Minneapolis: ABDO, 2007. Print. Pizzino, Christopher J. Religion in the Postmodern Science Fiction: A Case Study in Secularity. Minneapolis: ProQuest, 2008. Print. Shaw, Bruce. The Animal Fable in Science Fiction and Fantasy. New York: McFarland, 2010. Print. Annotated Bibliography Grassie, William. Politics by Other Means:Science and Religion in the Twenty-First Century. Indiana: Xlibris Corporation, 2010. Print. The author presents twenty four essays that got presented at conferences in various locations around the world. The essays presented analyze scientific and religious stands determining the intersections of science and religion. The essays presented discuss the implications of both science and religion on cultural ambivalences. The essays focus on explaining the positives and negatives of science and religion in the twenty first century. Through the essays, science should get regulated to ensure that as the world transforms in the twenty first century it should not become misused to endanger the world. Krensky, Stephen. Frankenstein. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2006. Print. The author presents the story behind 'Frankenstein'. The book explains the plot around 'Frankenstein' as well as providing criticism of adapting the novel into screen and stage productions. Through the novel, the reader gets to understand the interaction of science and religion in the story. This helps to identify the position of explaining the impact of science and its negative effects on the human race. MacWilliams, Alison Bright. It Came from the Laboratory: Scientific Professionalization and Images of the Scientist in British Fiction, from "Frankenstein" to World War I. Michigan: ProQuest, 2008. Print. The author examines the professionalization of science in Britain. As the advancement to professionalize the movement sped up in the nineteenth century, social criticism of the movement also gained pace. The book presents the portrayal of scientists in the fictional story. the book provides a glance at the role played by scientists to gain public image and encourage government spending on scientific research. The book helps to examine the positive impacts of science towards the human race. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Elizabeth Genco. Frankenstein. Minneapolis: ABDO, 2007. Print. The authors provide the mythical status of 'Frankenstein' in the society. The book also provides various critical essays on the fictional story. The book discusses the role that the novel has played in the literary world. Pizzino, Christopher J. Religion in Postmodern Science Fiction: A Case Study in Secularity. Minneapolis: ProQuest, 2008. Print. The author provides a dissertation on the impact of postmodern science fiction on the secular impact of science and religion. The author provides examples of postmodern science fictions such as 'Frankenstein', to explain the impact of science on the secular values. the book proposes that science increases secular values instead of religious values. Shaw, Bruce. The Animal Fable in Science Fiction and Fantasy. New York: McFarland, 2010. Print. The author explains the role of science fictional stories towards the human race. The author examines that fictional science stories get used to provide instruction and amusement. The author also observes that stories such as 'Frankenstein' can get quite unsettling towards the reader. The book examines the negative and positive roles of science fiction books towards the human race. the book helps to provide the negative impact that science plays in unsettling the human race. Read More