Science, religion and ethics in the Malaysian setting: A comparative study

Abstract

This paper reports a study on the perception of the people toward the need of science and technology to follow religious ethics. 640 respondents participated in the study. The respondents, male and female from the age of 20 to 55 years who were obtained randomly from all over the Malaysia were given booklets containing statements on various issues on science and technology. The raw data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), to obtain the means and the percentages of the responses, and the difference of mean were tested using the t-test and one-way ANOVA. The results of the study show that 79.2% of the respondents accepted the statement that “Science and technology should follow religious ethics”, while 6.5% of the respondents rejected it. The result of the study also shows that the difference of means between the respondents based on the gender is not significant, but between the respondents based on the academic backgrounds. Moreover, the age groups and also the religions backgrounds are all significant. Hence, the findings of the study could be used by the government to map out the future planning for educating the people on the importance of ethics in science and technology.