When science and spirituality never meet how can they be reconciled?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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so science and spirituality never meet together should we choose the scientific path or should we choose the spiritual path actually science and spirituality are basically both pursued by human beings so it is in the human consciousness that science and spirituality naturally meet now we humans when we explore knowledge of the world around us the observed world around us that is how science progresses but when we seek answers to ultimate questions that is how we progress spiritually so it is not that the two don’t meet together the two primarily talk about two different domains of reality and these two domains they are not contradictory they can be parallel I will give you two examples to illustrate this first is say if somebody is playing if somebody is watching a billiards match and say a ball goes into a hole in billiards now how that ball went into a hole that could be explained in terms of the laws of physics this stick came and hit this ball with this velocity with this momentum at this angle and this ball hit this ball and that caused this momentum that caused this momentum and then that ball went into the hole now this explanation of how the ball went into the hole is correct in terms of the laws of physics if we were looking from above the billiards board this is the correct explanation but if you went we expanded the scope and we looked there is an expert billiards player over there that expert billiards player hit the ball with the stick and that is why the ball went into the hole is that a correct explanation? that is also correct explanation so the laws of physics as having caused the ball to go into the hole as an explanation for the ball going into the hole and the expertise of the player in as an explanation for the ball going into the hole these are not contradictory they are complementary depending on the scale of reference that we are having these two explanations are complementary similarly when we are looking for material explanations for material phenomena we come up with scientific laws and we can explain things in scientific terms which is fine but just like the activator who raised my hand that activator is is not in the brain similarly the laws of physics are not the activators the laws of physics can explain how the ball went into the hole now suppose there is a cricket match and there is a last ball a team needs a sixer, six to win and the baller bowls and the batsman hits and the ball goes to six and then if somebody asks the commentator afterwards how did you hit a sixer? by the laws of physics now the laws of physics they are themselves not causes they explain the pattern of behavior that happens in correlating causes and effects but the causal agent is something different so similarly when we talk about science and spirituality science often offers a correct explanation but science explanation is not necessary the complete explanation and the correct explanation at the level of science we can also leave room for another correct explanation at the level which is outside the scope of science so if we basically understand properly what science does and what spirituality does science explains the interactions of material objects with other material objects whereas spirituality focuses primarily on explaining the functioning of consciousness and how consciousness interacts with matter then we can be both scientific and spiritual so it’s not that we have to choose between science and spirituality rather we have to recognize their domains and progress as required for us in both domains thank you