Scientists are often aesthetic people and religion has often caused persecution and violence – how to understand?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So yes scientific progress has been opposed by religion especially by science by the church and the scientists may also be aesthetically people and religion also has caused violence or led to violence.
Yeah see this was just an introductory talk actually I have a whole three-day seminar on science and spirituality where we go much more deeper. I’ll answer each of these points. Firstly, yes if you go into the political history of the times of the church it was not specifically the point of say not Newton but it was more of Copernicus and Galileo specifically who was opposed by the church.
That was basically a misunderstanding of the scope of scriptural knowledge. In religion also there is it often happens that the lot of accretions coming that means this the core texts of a tradition are telling something but many other things are brought into that tradition. So the specific worldview that was opposed that claimed that oh the earth is at the center of the universe not the sun that is not a worldview that is not a point given in the bible that was given by a Greek philosopher known Ptolemy and some Christian thinkers thereafter they took it and they brought it into the they integrated into the Christian world.
So many times if you see what the core texts of religion are telling I’m not going to talk here in detail about either the bible or the bible the point which is that if we carefully understand things there is the conflict is not over core issues the conflict is over peripheral issues. So as far as scripture is concerned the scripture may also show us some light over the ground floor and scripture’s primary contribution is the first floor and the second floor. Now sometimes there may be some contradiction and that has to be gracefully resolved.
Why do we talk about conflict between science and religion? There’s so much conflict between science and science. Different scientific theories there’s conflict and sometimes it can become very bitter especially when funds are involved. So people can get so conflict is just a fact of human nature and it will come in any field.
So it’s not if science and spirituality are intrinsically opposed to each other. They have their own scopes and sometimes like what you call it there are border tensions that are always possible. Two countries may be living peacefully but sometimes there will be okay is this my power is this in my zone or your zone.
Those tensions have to be resolved appropriately at its particular whenever they occur. The second point about scientists being aesthetically refined people yes there’s no denying that. The point is are they aesthetic because of their science or in spite of their science? There’s nothing in the scientific worldview itself that will promote aesthetics.
There are people who are by their upbringing by their church by their own nature they’re aesthetically good and they continue to be aesthetically good and the scientific worldview itself does not promote aesthetics. It’s not like it is intrinsically opposed but basically you know an artist may look at a flower this is so beautiful. A scientist will look at okay this is and that is also one way of looking at its valuable but there are two different approaches and both have their utility.
So scientists may be aesthetic people and that’s definitely possible just as there may be spiritualists who are very scientific. Isn’t it? So we can have this overlapping is always possible. The third point about religion causing violence again if you go deeper into it it is not so much religion but it is things which are accretions in religion.
Religion is a search for spiritual knowledge, for spiritual understanding, for spiritual growth. It’s ultimately a search for truth, search for God. Then religion can people upwards but many times religion gets mixed in the world with politics, with power, with position and then it can get distorted.
In the Vedic tradition there’s always been a separation between a spiritual power and material power. The spiritual power was vested with the Brahmanas. The material power was with the Kshatriyas and in this way now of course sometimes the Brahmanas also became proud and they became attached that we want material power also, we want material prestige also and then that led to degeneration, the caste system, discrimination but the concept was a separation between the two.
If you see in the great Buddhism also had this separation. Buddha himself was more of a, he was like a renunciate. So he was more of having intellectual power or spiritual power and with Ashoka when he had the martial power that he spread Buddhism.
There is normally separation. Now as religions gain power sometimes there’s confliction between the two and when this conflation happens then rather than religion being a spiritual search for the truth it becomes a political search for power. So when Christianity became mixed with the Roman Catholic Empire, the Roman Empire became the Catholic Empire and the Popes often had more power in the things and the Catholic Church committed a lot of atrocities.
So in today’s world Islam in many ways at an individual level what happened is that there are many pious Muslims who see Islam as a way to move towards God but a social level because in the formation of Islam there was not the separation of spiritual and martial power. Jesus was more or less like the, you know in Christianity Jesus was the saintly figure, he was a spiritual power and Saint Paul, he was primarily the person who evangelized the separation but in Islam there is, Mohammed is both the spiritual leader and the political leader. But whatever it is, whatever he taught some spiritual values but the point that happened is because of that subsequent generations of political leaders in Islam they follow Mohammed’s political example not a spiritual example and then that leads to problems.
So I’m not talking specifically about Islam or Christianity. It’s just a human feeling. So when religion gets mixed with other things, now it cannot stay unmixed but it needs to use those things for a spiritual growth but when its purpose gets diverted then even religion can lead to conflicts but then if you want to point fingers, the purpose is pointing fingers is not of much use.
If you want to say that okay religion is leading to terrorists who are becoming suicide bombers or who are destroying the building, that’s true but then if there had been no technology, how much could these terrorists have achieved? So actually whether it is technology or whether it is ideology, ultimately it is the human being who is responsible. Just as when bombs are used to kill people, we don’t each time blame the founder of dynamite, isn’t it? So similarly when religion is misused, we don’t have to blame the source of religion. That abuse needs to be corrected and that requires education.
To the extent education is there, to that extent whether it is science or whether it is spirituality, it can be used properly. To the extent that education is not there, then it will be misappropriated and misused. So here the purpose is not to say that oh science is all bad and religion is all good.
No, as I said right in the beginning, we are human beings and we are searching for knowledge. So we can use science for getting knowledge and we can use spiritual religion for getting knowledge. What is important is we who are responsible.
So the way we act will determine how we move forward in our life. Does this answer