The event of dialogue of Science and Religion is not merely a theoretical question but a practical one. It is concerned with a promise of transformation of our society and our world. The event of this dialogue calls new people to live in fidelity to it. It is disruptive and hence transformative. Its disruptive character is in it the singular novelty that it promises to bring. We may express it in mathematical terms as its ability to bring about subtraction from the particularity of the known. It opens us to the new world to come. It pushes our limits and inserts us into the untried and the novel. It brings us to the discomfort of the unpredictable which is the realm of the Other. The new people to come are open to this coming of the unknown Other through the event of dialogue. Radical transformation can come only through the advent of the unknown Other and not so much through the coming of the known same.
1. The Truths to Come
The event of dialogue can open possibilities of truths to come. We understand truth from the perspective of Alain Badiou. The word truth (vérité), as Badiou uses it, means something close to the English expressions to be true to something or to be faithful to something. It is something to which we get converted. This indicates that a truth converts and subjects us to it. Either a person participates in it or draw a line and stays outside it. This process of conversion to the truth is subjectivation. It subjects us to the truth and we become subjects. In this light, we can see how we subject ourselves to the truth of the event of dialogue between Science and Religion. It has given the dialoguing community a commitment and mission to live. Badiou teaches that the identity of the subject rests entirely, unconditionally, on this commitment. It constitutes us: I am because I am (or we are) struggling (for a new society, a new art, a new scientific order, etc.). Thus the event of dialogue convert us and we set on a mission to work to bring an integration of Science and Religion. Truth, therefore, converts and transforms us into new people. There is no single truth emerging from the fruitful dialogue of Science and Religion. There are several truths to come and therefore there are new people to come. We live by the truths of the event of dialogue. Even when we are opposed to the dialogue between Science and Religion, we live our fidelity to the truth that has called us into being that there cannot be a dialogue between Science and Religion. We also have shared fidelity with the community on basis of our shared fidelity to the truth(s) that constitute us. The truths that convert us constitute us and call us into being as individuals and a community. There are more truths to come and more people to come as well as more communities to come. These truths will integrate the best of Science with the profound insights of Religions and will initiate the coming of new people who will be committed to the transformation of society .
2. The New People to Come
People show great admiration and commitment to Science as well as Religion separately. They are called into being by the truths that convert them to Science or Religions respectively. The event of dialogue of Science and Religions also promises truths to come that will have the power to convert people. These people to come to promise not just growth of knowledge through the integration of best of Science with the deepest insights of Religions but a radical transformation of our Society. The people to come are people converted to the truths to come. This means converted people are already transformed people. The truths are on the arrival are singular in their origin and universal in their scope. The new people that are to arrive are consistent with the death of Man celebrated by Luis Althusser and Michel Foucault. Being converted subjects to the truths of the event of dialogue, they are anti-Cartesian and non-triumphalist in character. This means that the subject of truth is no more a function of (neo- Cartesian) reflexivity than it is of (neo- Hegelian) negation or totalization. It is also not self- deferral and self-distancing subject that is generally central to those post- Sartrean resurrections of a subject whose very being is mediated through the categories of difference and the Other. They are subjects withdrawn from the logic of difference as well as from what we may call a secret interiority. The new subjects that will make the new people are born out of their affirmation of the truths to come.
3. The New Society to Come
The event of dialogue between Science and Religion promises us a possibility of transforming our society. The new people to come are the bearers of this transformation. Here we have to understand how the event of dialogue generates possibilities of churning out these transformations. The event of dialogue having Religion(s) as one of its partners opens high possibilities for it to be an emancipative transformation. Religions being custodians of ethics and values, a dialogue with Science and its Reason with Religions does promise benefits to both sides of this dialogue. Consequently, we can hope that it will bring about emancipative and salubrious change in our society. These transformations are not merely a result of new ideas, truths and doctrines. They are the fruits of transformed or converted people. The people to come are people converted to the truths that they draw from the event of dialogue. This is why the transformation of society is a necessary consequence of the dialogue. But these transformations cannot be immediate and instantaneous. They set in a slow and gradual process initiated by persons converted to the truths of the event of dialogue living their fidelity to those truths that emerge from it. It is this fidelity to the truths of the event of dialogue that gives meaning to them. Hence, people to come by living their fidelity the truths are themselves become the ushers of the new society to come.
Conclusion
It has been said, ‘tell me who is Plato to you and I will tell you who you are.’ Plato teaches that this world is a copy of the real world of ideas. Translating this statement into the language of Science and Religion dialogue means that the destiny of this dialogue is already predetermined or predestined. We are simply copying the path to it in our dialogue and eventually will reach the destination. There is nothing new to come. This is simply deductive thinking. All the premises of the dialogue in this state of affairs are fixed. Hence, the dialogue between Science and Religion is only dialectical and not genuinely dialogical. The evental dialogical process that we have proposed here is dialogical and inductive. This is why destiny as well as the path to it is not predestined. Therefore, there are truths to come, new people to come as well as new society to come as a fruit of this powerful dialogue.
