The Monk’s Podcast 73 with Shyamananda Prabhu – Does higher education make you atheistic

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Welcome back to the month. It's been a long time since we had before having me. Yes.

So I thought today we could discuss on the topic of does education make you an atheist or does education promote higher education more specifically promote atheism. I had some framework, but say you have any thoughts on this topic or how we should go ahead with it. Yeah.

What I would like to have here is a little bit of historical background and then how things like when we say historical, it is not going beyond say beyond the Renaissance period, 500 years maximum. And today we find a situation where the more research or more kind of surveys rather than the research surveys are done. And one can easily come to the conclusion that in lower education environment, students are more likely to say that they believe at least in a higher power.

And then the higher they go, high school, college, graduation, postgraduate studies, there you find the least, for example, out of hundred PhDs, maybe four or five or even lesser could publicly say in a survey that I need the presence of God, I believe in God. So there is a overwhelming belief among the general masses that the more educated you are, the higher IQ you have, you are proven to be more intelligent and therefore you don't need to believe in any God. Okay.

So two things you're saying that one is the overall versus a statistic that highly educated people seem to believe less in God. And the second is the possible reason that because you have more education, because you have more IQ, because maybe you are more rational, logical. So because of that, that disbelief in God is there, you naturally can't believe in things like God, or you won't believe in things like God.

So, yes. So first is, is this, I've also heard about this. But are the statistics for this, that decisive that the higher educated people do really believe less in God? Or is it more a perception than actual fact? Yes, nice point you brought up.

The Pew Research, their website doesn't actually correlate higher education and atheism. Because if you're speaking of Pew, that means you're speaking mostly of North America, mostly of the United States of America, and then people say, well, how do you define education then? How do you define belief? How do you define, somebody says, I don't follow any religious belief. So that people say, I don't necessarily pray every day.

So does it count that I am not a believer? So some say yes, because you don't pray, you are not a believer. And some say not necessarily, you can still believe by not taking part in rituals. So our topic is not exactly brick and mortar kind of thing.

There is a lot of ambiguity. So we will try to chase away the ambiguity as much as possible and try to focus on the general notion that, okay, just the mere background of training in education makes you kind of inoculated against this weird belief that there is a supernatural power. Inoculated against the weird belief.

That's a good way of putting it. Yeah. So, okay, like they said, there's ambiguity with respect to what people consider as either religion or belief in God.

So, so it's definitely true that as people become educated, study more and more, either they start thinking that they are more intelligent than others, or they in some ways may actually be more intelligent than others. So here intelligence means just the mere IQ number, right? It could be IQ, it could also be to some extent. That's why I said both are possible.

It the capacity to think logically, the capacity to evaluate ideas more, more critically. So, intelligence isn't here we are taking, you could say more use the word maybe we can differentiate intellect and intelligence. Intellect is basically information processing ability, or rationally analyzing issues.

So, maybe intelligence refers more to decision making ability. So, an intellectual might be addicted to some bad habits, they might be smoking and drinking, they may not have the willpower to resist that. But still, despite being a chronic smoker, somebody might be a great writer or a great, maybe a great logician, great debater.

So, I'm talking more in terms of that faculty for logical analysis and rational thinking, and, and critical evaluation of things. So, it could be that people become better in that, or at least they think I have become better than that. All right.

So, so I would like to begin with a historical observation. And then one question, I really like your way of explaining it. Once you had mentioned that Newton, then Faraday, or Davy Cavendish, or Louis Pasteur, or even before them, Galileo, then Bruno, they were not actually called scientists.

They were called natural philosophers. So, I would like to give my small observation and then over to you for a little bit of detailed analysis on that. So, when I say my historical observation, it is said that Bacon, Newton, Galileo, and their ilk, people of the same level, they talked about God, they publicly proclaimed their belief in a divinity, deity, and personal belief at the same time.

We don't know in that context, how, like where their regular church goers, because that also is a word found in Western parlance. Is there something like a temple goer in India? I don't think we use that. But yeah, there it is that every Sunday, if you go to church, you are a very good person.

So, one thing, just one difference is that, maybe this is a sociological issue more, that in the Hindu tradition, there is the idea of having a temple at your home, where you have an altar, where you have deities. Christianity does not have anything like that. They may have a prayer room.

But because in general, Christianity does not have, they have prohibitions against image worship. So, I haven't heard of any Christians having a church room or something like that. Sometimes some places may have a chapel kind of thing.

But most homes don't have a separate section like an altar. So, in that sense, for people, even the home is like a temple, but I have not heard people saying your home is like a church in Christianity. Yeah.

Basically, there is a very good reason. The word church, originally Greek, basically means a gathering of persons. It doesn't mean a building.

Okay. So, so when they say, Jesus said that I will build the church again, it means I'll have the room, I'll have the congregation again. So, so anyway, so if one were to be transported to the time of Bacon, Newton, Galilee, or whatever, one would see very famous, renowned personalities talking of God.

Again, we come back to America, basically, United States of America, in God we trust and help us God. Right up to 1945, General Eisenhower, when he was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, the day, D-Day, June 6, 1944, his whole proclamation as to why we are trying to defeat Hitler, Germany, is that this is between godly people versus ungodly people and free world versus totalitarianism. And the last line was to help us God.

So, till that time, we can say it is the fourth decade of the 20th century, important, renowned, or powerful people used to invoke the name of God, albeit in an official way or whatever. My second point is most of the colleges, institutions of higher learning, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Wharton, Stanford, Princeton, they, it was a fashion to have a Latin motto or some kind of a, how would you say, motto for the reason behind this place of higher learning. And it had something to do with God.

So, so today when a youngster, say a millennial asks us that, why do I see so many powerful, famous people, sports personality, rappers, Hollywood, Bollywood stars, politicians, they absolutely don't talk of God. Or in the talk, it's in a very official sense. So, I think that the more educated you are, the more clear headed you become and you don't need God.

So, this is where I want to begin and where we will take our discussion further. So, I would request you to shed some light on this scientists who were actually called natural philosophers. Yeah, that's a very good historical overview.

So, there is something very clear, which you can say the relegation of God from the public square to the private sphere. That means your faith is something, it's a personal matter. Don't bring it into the public sphere or public square as the word they use it.

So, this happened in my understanding because of broadly three reasons, many, but so as you talk in European history, people openly talk about God, even in India, if you see, when Gandhiji was having independent struggle, he would regularly have prayers and he would talk about Raghupati Raghav, Raja Ram like that. So, it was quite common in the public square. Now, India is a different ballgame and maybe we will come to that little later.

But at this stage, three factors from what I noticed, multiculturalism, extremism and rationalism. So, multiculturalism means that as the world started becoming closer, now, of course, with digital, it's become very close. But even from the 17th, 18th century, when colonization started happening, so people started getting exposed to various faiths.

And then the idea was that if, if people from different faiths start talking about their faith in public, and if their faiths are different, that will lead to conflict. So, one way to avoid that conflict is to just take, keep your faith, your personal thing. So, that's why prominent people don't talk about it, because they perceive that may cause division.

Now, whether it causes division or not, that's a different question. But it was seen that this will cause, it is likely to cause division and therefore keep it your personal thing. So, prior to that, whichever part of the world it was in, whether it was Christianity or Islam or the Vedic path, there were not so many alternatives.

So, either you are a theist or you are an atheist. But now even if you are a theist, there are so many and there can be conflicts among them only. Especially the, even in Europe itself, there is the protestant reformation which led to almost 100 years of war between the countries which were allied with the Catholic Church and the countries which were allied with the protestants.

So, that made people feel that you just, we will believe in God, but we will not talk about it publicly because that can cause dissensions. So, associated with that was the extremism. Now, religion has been associated, unfortunately, with various abuses of power, this kind of exploitation of people and violence in the name of religion.

So, what happens is, now, how I am correlating this with our subject is, the more educated a person is, the more people become aware of the existence of other faiths, the more people become aware, say, of how religion has led to violence or extremism. Now, what happens overall is that, religion often is a force of good or in general, belief in God can make people charitable, can make them more compassionate. But these are, these are, we could say, not high octane or high visibility activities.

Somebody gives some charity, somebody is taking care of some poor people. But acts of extremism are often high visibility activities. So, overall, when people are aware of things, in general, whether in history or in contemporary media, the what happens daily rarely makes the news.

What happens occasionally and what disrupts the daily routine, that's what makes the news. So, daily, if people are living a more virtuous life because of their religion, that doesn't make the news. But occasionally, if somebody in the name of religion starts causing violence, that makes the news.

That's extremism. Can I give a small, little bit interruption, I'm just tempted too much by this excellent, brilliant point. If there is a boat which carries pilgrims from the inland shore to a island temple or something like that.

And every day, 10 or 12 boatloads of people go there, that is not news. But in monsoon, if the ferry capsizes and 50 people are drowned. So, the invariable way of putting that in news is 50 pilgrims die in a boat capsizing or accident.

So, if I should not say that, but if in a bar or something, there is a fire and five people get burned. So, they don't say five people who were abusing alcohol died. It is five innocents burnt alive in a deadly fire.

So, it is just that how the bias has come in. So, those who die while going to visit a temple, they are pilgrims or devotees or whatever and their God or deity did not come to help them. But while at the same time, if somebody is drunk too much or whatever, then it's all right, revelers.

Okay. So, let's continue. You're saying that something which happens every day doesn't get their attention.

That's true. I heard another example. Yeah.

Yeah. So, it's a very good example of a ferry. And yes, the subtle bias is always there that in small ways, it is religion is supposed, the idea of religious belief.

So, why did you have to go on that pilgrimage also? It is stormy. If you had not gone, you would have survived. But people do not ask, why did you have to go to the bar? So, like even during the current pandemic, going to religious places of worship is banned, but many bars are open and people can go to the bars.

So, in that sense, there is that bias, but that's a different subject. But third one is what you were addressing rationalism. So, rationality, in general, okay, I would like to differentiate that there is, in general, most people who believe in religion or practice something, they are not necessarily very intellectual or philosophical.

That doesn't mean there aren't people who are theistic or spiritual and who are intellectual, but they are few. So, because of that, most people's exposure to religion is more in terms of the rituals than in terms of the principles or the philosophy. So, then when somebody gets education, and they say, oh, this is so rational, this is so sound.

And as compared to that, all those rituals, they don't make any sense. So, what happens, the way it's working is, the culture exposes us to the rituals, which sometimes can seem sentimental or even irrational. Whereas the education today exposes us to the rational way of thinking, which comes in through science.

And then even if in the education, there is no explicit bias against religion or God, sometimes there may be, sometimes there may not be. But even if there is not, if one just compares, hey, this is so rational. And that seems so irrational.

I think last time, in one of our previous conversations, you had mentioned that if somebody argues that I don't believe in God. So, one way to deal with it is to ask, which God do you not believe in? And then they will come up with some notion of God, which we can say, even I don't believe in that. So, in that sense, education makes people reject, education or the rationality coming from education makes people reject the ritualistic or superstitious conceptions of religion that they may have been exposed to.

And if they get exposed to a more intellectually sophisticated version of religion, then they may not go away. But otherwise, because these intellectually sophisticated versions are not so accessible in the media or the culture, people may go away from religiosity because of that. So, there is also a reason that these individuals are called natural philosophers, where they, is there a specific reason why this name was? Okay.

Natural philosophers was because, I just got sidetracked from that because I came later to this. I came to the later point. Yeah.

So, basically, they were studying nature and they were trying to philosophize about, we could say, the nature of nature. Now, why is nature the way it is? So, when they observed the orderly behavior of nature, Newton saw a fruit falling, and this is not just a fruit, every object falls. Then they tried to infer what is the basis of this order.

So, basically, they were not so much their primary focus was to understand the nature of nature. So, philosophy is the study of, or the seeking of truth, lover of truth, as you say, Philly and so forth. So, natural philosophers means those who were seeking the truth about nature.

So, truth about nature is, we could say broadly in two parts, how it works, and why it works that way. So, how it works is the domain of science. Okay, this is how this follows this law, that follows that law, this is how this mathematical, that kind of things comes up.

So, that's how it works. And then why it works that way, that is where they started talking about, it has to be because of a higher intelligence. Otherwise, how would it work like that? So, that's why they were called natural philosophers.

So, very good. Very good. So, today's STEM, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Does it equip a student today with this thirst for finding out the nature of nature? Or it is more like just a new biotech compound to make some corn product even more cheaper or give the burger a new coal-fired flavor or some cola drink, which will have less calories. So, I'm making it a bit more sarcastic than necessary, but that's true. But is the STEM today igniting that fire to question? Okay.

So, see, I read a very interesting analysis at one place of the pursuit of knowledge in terms of the three modes, goodness, passion and ignorance. So, in ignorance, one pursues knowledge simply to reinforce one's current understanding. This is what I know.

And how can I convince myself that this is right? That is the only purpose of seeking knowledge. So, I don't care about everything else. This is what I know.

And how can I reinforce this? So, they have not. So, that's knowledge in the mode of ignorance. In the mode of passion, it's pruthaktvena tyaj jnanam nana bhavan pruthakvidan.

So, passion is associated with controlling. So, and if you see one way of understanding the difference between science and technology is science is more about exploring, technology is more about controlling. And engineering is more associated with technology.

So, we want to understand nature, but after understanding nature, the point is, we should be able to control it, bend it to human will, so that it can, nature will provide us pleasure, or at least it will not cause us trouble. So, much because most of today's society is in the mode of passion. So, therefore, the way they explore is also in that mode of passion.

So, how can I control? How can I, how can I relate this knowledge with some tangible capacity for increased benefit for humanity? So, in that sense, exploration for exploration sake, or exploration for understanding the nature of reality is not so much a part of the current focus of science. There is, of course, some level of pure sciences and the study going on. But quite often, pure science is not as much the focus of most people as is applied science in terms of technology.

So, I wouldn't say today's science makes people atheistic. But it does, science and technology today, both of them are largely non-theistic. That because in the past, people are asking the question about how and why? Okay, how does this work? And why does it work like this? But most of technology is focused on the question of how, how does this work? And the why question, in fact, many, many scientists are often uncomfortable with the why question, because that why question can lead to God.

And they feel that. So, they feel better not get into that zone at all. And so, in that sense, today, it's not so philosophical.

Today, there's a different branch called philosophy of science. And I think between 19, between around 2000, 2010, there was, there's almost 10 years of war, what is called between the philosophers of science and scientists. Because philosophers of science were pointing out the limitations of the scientific method of how science often arises from a particular context, it has particular biases, it is not as objective as it claims to be.

And the scientists were claiming that the philosophers of science, they never do any good to society at all. They only criticize those who are doing some good to society. So, the most famous is Stephen Hawking, he said that, he eventually proclaimed in one of his books that philosophy is dead.

And today science has replaced philosophy as humanity's quest to gain knowledge of reality. So, paradoxically, while the critic of his book said that, he said that philosophy is dead. And then rest of his book, he's doing philosophy.

So, that's the overall context that science as such, in functionality, it's mostly non philosophical. Now, in terms of some scientists having their own ideologies, they may make philosophical claims. But that is not the thrust of scientific research most of the time.

All right, we move on, you said that there are three basic things you would like to address, I think, first, you already have begun. Is it actually happening that does actually higher education pursuit make necessarily make you an atheist? Yeah, so I think there is some correlation without you said that without getting into specifics, we will address the perception. So, overall, there is a perception like that.

And we then the second point I was going to this thought we could discuss is what in higher education leads to atheism. So, my understanding would be that we discussed some of the points, higher education leads provides one, one exposure to rational thinking. And then they contrast rational thinking with the ritual religiosity that they're seeing in society.

It also provides a greater historical awareness, which makes people feel that religion leads to extremism. And it also leads to comparative religion, which relegates religions claims to the private sphere. Now, apart from that, one more factor we could say, so, you know, when people go for higher education, there is the content, content of the education, and there's the context of the education.

By content means what they learn in the classroom, and the context of the campus environment. So, quite often, what is anti, I read one book, I read a review of a book by how I became an atheist and then became a thief, something like that the theme was. So, he says that this, this young this person, he grew up in a religious family.

And then he went into college. And then he says, I never rejected God, I just forgot God. So, the whole campus environment is such that it provides so many distractions, so many temptations, that eventually people feel there's no time for God.

So, there's another, there's one book written by one Christian sociologist. So, she says that, traditionally, it is said that, as rationality increases, religion decreases. But her theory is that, actually, as society, basically, there is no doubt that as modernity has progressed, religion has gone down in influence.

So, why is that? So, her theory is, modernity has destabilized the family. And as families break up, then the family, the primary transmission of faith happens through the families. And when families break up, then there is no one to transmit the faith.

And the primary reason for the lack of, or the increase of faithlessness in the younger generations is that, they have grown, most of them have grown up in broken families. That could be a sociological factor. Primarily speaking of the first world, right? Of course, first world.

So, but I'm relating this with the point that, it's often it is the culture that also influences, it's not just rationality. So, whether it is the culture at the home, which teaches you something. And even if there is a culture at home, once one starts going to the university, especially if they are in a residential university, then the campus culture is not at all conducive to anything religious at all.

So, even if the education does not erode one's faith, the culture itself, we could say overwhelms any facility for religious engagements with so many temptations and distractions and stuff like that. So, now we come to the third one as to what to do about that. Yeah.

But you have any thoughts on what I've spoken till now? No, no, no. That's good enough. Okay.

So, so what can be done? Now, I would say that if I consider my experience, I went through a phase of atheism, but it was during my higher education that I rediscovered, I discovered Krishna Consciousness. So, I could say I was in a, I was in a pious family, but we are more religious than spiritual. So, if now in the West also it's happening, but not to that extent.

The idea is that if I consider this to be ritual religiosity, then this is rationality. And above this is, say, you could say philosophical spirituality or intellectual spirituality. So, quite often those who grow up with ritual religiosity, when they are exposed to rationality, they will reject this.

They may or may not openly become atheistic, but they will reject this. However, with that same rational thinking, if they are exposed to philosophical spirituality, if they are exposed to how spirituality itself is rational, now rationality cannot lead to either conclusively, either towards atheism or theism conclusively. Simply by rationality, we can't know anything conclusively.

But a strong case can be made rationally for theism and actually for spirituality in general. And it can be in many ways stronger than what is available for materialism or atheism. So, then if people come to this level, that means when they are exposed to rational thinking, if rational spirituality is presented to them, then they can contrast.

Okay, it's not that everything that I learned in my childhood was bad. There could be some bad elements in it. There could be some superstition, some pointless rituals, but maybe the core of it was good.

So, I feel that I don't see any time in the near future that the mainstream education itself will be providing people knowledge of spirituality. So, it may happen, but it's unlikely. So, what is more likely is that we as a movement or in general, those who are spiritualists, they need to create systems for education.

They could be through clubs, through websites, through online courses, through videos. So, and in some ways, this is opened up avenues because with social media, in one sense, the means for outreach have been democratized. We can't control the textbooks.

We can't control what is published in the newspapers. But if we can make effective presentations and they are available online, then people can access, seekers can access and they can learn. So, in that sense, there is opportunity.

Any thoughts on this? Yeah, first is a small imaginary scenario. If a professor of any of the STEM disciplines, just as a matter of fact, reveals to his class that at age 14 or 15, he gave up his belief in God. From that age, I decided that God will have nothing to do in my life.

Today's scenario, will it become news? Will that become the talk of the town? Will there be a tweet storm after that? Hardly. Now the opposite scenario is in fact, age 14, the professor, a reputed person says that I discovered God. I read this book and now for the last 30 years, I am following this particular ritual.

In today's scenario, it would be professor tries to foist his own belief system on class. So true. What right do you have to talk about God in a STEM college? So, this is not a level playing field.

So, one simple kind of distilling of the whole thing is there is no scope for inquiry. There is no scope for a student pursuing higher education. As you said, number one, there is a lot of distraction.

The whole environment is such that you may not kill God, but you can certainly forget God in your heart. Although at a particular point in history, the very institution which you are now part of, had one of its aims to instill some kind of faith in divinity or pursue God along with your other disciplines. Then two small points, one from Bhagavatam, one from Chittaracharya Tamrit.

The story of Narad Muni as a boy. Sorry, just one minute. Yeah, sure.

I just want to. Yeah. So, what you are saying, what you're saying is a very significant point.

It's not a level playing field in the sense that if some professor uses, talks about their particular religion, they will be persecuted. But if that professor talks about atheism, they will not be persecuted. Because he's very honest.

That's his personal point of view. No issues. It is seen like that.

But if he praises, oh, he's evangelizing, he's proselytizing and that's not allowed. So keeping atheism, atheistic views is not keeping religion private. That you can say anywhere.

But giving supportive evidence about God's existence, then you have said keep your religion private. Don't talk about public. Of course.

There's a couple of incidents about this that Richard Dawkins was sometimes he's presented this point that atheism is also a religion. So he said he would get very angry and he would get very angry and he would say, no, this is logical. This is rational.

This is scientific. And then at one time he decided to turn around the argument and he said, okay, let's treat atheism as a religion. And in all religious studies, along with various religions, you should teach atheism also.

And he said, atheism will trump everyone else. But the problem with that was that two, three things happened by that. Once you start, if you accept that atheism is a religion, then all the restrictions about socialist figure or atheism about religion, they will apply for atheism.

And then it became exposed that often many atheists portray, now I'm not generalizing, atheists can also be good people, but many atheists portray as if they are like a persecuted lot and these religious fanatics are always targeting us. But once atheism was made and treated like a religion, then the atheists started realizing how limited space the religions have for expressing themselves. So then they said, no, no, atheism is not a religion.

So currently the idea is that some people in academic circles, they don't use the word atheism. They use the word non-belief, belief and non-belief. So there are types of beliefs and there are types of non-beliefs.

So within non-beliefs, they put in agnosticism, they put in atheism and they have various strands of atheism also. But yes, it is definite. So in that sense, does modern education lead to atheism or higher education? Yes, we could say that it can lead because it's not a level playing field.

People can propagate atheism much more easily in the educational environment than they can propagate. Atheism. Yes.

Yeah. So two very small points, but I feel significant, that Bhagavatam talks of Narad Muni as a young child, boy, going out and actually philosophizing, trying to understand the higher truths by studying the material world. He talks of going through orchards and mountains and mines and villages and forests and it's a very small part of the second canto.

But it is significant that anybody who wants to understand God and wants to study nature and your two significant points of how it works and why it works. So this has a long tradition in our Vedic heritage. Secondly, we have Krishnaskar and Goswami saying that Here the word vicharkarile is actually encouraging you in your pursuit of higher learning.

You can go as high as you can. He compares himself with a bird trying to go in the limitless sky. So at least in my mind, two central points, there could be many and there are many, which show that at least the Bhagavat philosophy kind of encourages as high as you can go.

The sky is the limit. And presumably for that end in mind, Prabhupada began encouraging initially Swarup Damodar Maharaj. He was the first PhD.

Just try to understand, Prabhupada might have got maybe two dozen musicians or a dozen painters. Do you find anywhere where you repeatedly speak about the discovery that ISKCON now has a musician or ISKCON now has a painter or a good cook? No. But a PhD in chemistry has joined us.

He's a scientist. Prabhupada made a point to encourage him, encourage his pursuits, gave a kind of a simple game plan, not a very detailed thing, but he encouraged him. And the BI, for example, the institute which he founded was specifically meant for, now again, other devotees or other lay members should not feel discouraged that, oh, because I am not learned, I don't have a high IQ, I don't have a degree from IIT or Harvard or whatever.

No, that's not the point at all. Here we are specifically having a surgically precise understanding of just higher education, how in the outside world, things which are meant to foster the purpose of higher education, those things are now kind of working against the system and they are producing people who are either burnt out, frustrated, angry, or in the case of Stephen Hawking, as you pointed out, saying that philosophy doesn't work, but using philosophy to prove that philosophy doesn't work. Very well put.

So this is my last point that historically, it is not as easy as it sounds. I think Hridayananda Maharaj was giving the example of Rabindra Sourav Prabhu who was pursuing his PhD and he wrote a letter to Prabhupada that what should I do? And Prabhupada said, please continue and once you finish your PhD, then we'll see how we can use it in Krishna service. Now the zeal, the enthusiasm of the majority of the recruits at that time, they were convinced that this is not what Prabhupada has wanted.

Prabhupada actually wants him to give up this materialistic education and join the temple full time. So he said, but read the letter. They said that is one meaning just to satisfy you, Prabhupada has written like that, but what will actually make him happy is if you give up this higher education.

So not to blame them, the whole atmosphere at that time was like the hippie movement was saying fall in, drop out and whatever, take some LSD or whatever. So go high, fall in, drop out, go high. So these big, big citadels of higher education, Prabhupada personally went there in MIT, he famously asked the question, where is the department which makes inquiries about the owner of the body? What happens to him when the body dies? He saw a fence around a tower, high tower, maybe at Oxford, Cambridge or somewhere like that.

And they said that is to prevent students from jumping down to their deaths. So higher education, we have come to the understanding, it doesn't necessarily make you, it should not necessarily make you an atheist, but the chances are that you could become one and kind of end up being frustrated or whatever. And the general feeling that religion is against higher education, or especially in ISKCON, we can have people feeling that, why do you need to read? Why do you need to inquire more? Isn't just chanting the basic process? So that's besides the point.

As a, as a movement, we need to have philosophy, we need to have philosophical inquiry. And our founder, Acharya, encouraged that. So yeah.

Maybe I think we could explore a little bit about the Indian context, since you brought these points. There are some things which are, now again, we don't want to essentialize or caricature religions. But recently I was talking with Radhikaraman Prabhu, and he said one of his students was asked by a Christian, he's a Hindu, what do you believe in? So then, now he was not a devotee in our sense of the word, he said, what do we believe in? So he said, we are vegetarians.

Okay, but that's not exactly a belief, that's a practice. So then, okay, so he said that, so then he asked his professor, so what is the answer to this, what is the right answer to this question? He said, before you answer a question, you have to question the question. This is what he meant is that, in my tradition, doesn't rest simply on beliefs.

So in Western traditions, okay, this is a list of things you believe in. These are creedal statements that you have. So in general, if you ask a Hindu or a Vedic follower, it's not just a matter of, say, beliefs.

Okay, there are certain things you believe, but a lot of what we practice. Okay, I do this puja, I do this. And then it's also a matter of culture, how we live.

It's also a matter of how we interact with saintly people, and it is the saintly people's behavior that is the basis of belief. So we could say that in the Indian tradition, broadly speaking, or Dharmic traditions, it is beliefs, was beliefs in the sense of creedal statements that one believes in, are not necessarily the basis of one's faith. So by faith, I'm talking about a broader thing.

So the point is that within our tradition, if you look at it, more than belief, it was inquiry that is stressed. Athato Brahma Jijnasa. Now Shraddha is talked about, no doubt.

But the idea is, when Prabhupada uses the word Adau Shraddha, he translates it sometimes as faith, but there are several places where he translates it as simply favorable curiosity. Maybe there is something more to life. Let me find it out.

So that verse in the first canto, Tach Shraddha Dhaana Munayo Gyaana Vairagya Yuktaya. So there Prabhupada translates Shraddha Dhaana as the seriously inquisitive sage. That's very striking.

It is translated as faithful. So faith is there. Faith means there is some higher reality that I want to know about.

So in that sense, it's inquisitiveness or at least an openness to knowing. So that is, in that sense, rather than when people think of religion as demanding belief and contrast it with, say, the dharmic traditions which encourage exploration. So now that you have a human body, inquire about what is life's ultimate purpose.

So it can actually appeal to the rationality much more than belief-centered religions. I'm not saying that there is not a rich intellectual tradition in Christianity or other religions, but as compared to what is central. So I talked about this ritual religiosity, then rationality, and then more of philosophical spirituality.

So if we consider, even in India, there are a lot of rituals, no doubt. But overall, at its core, our tradition is more of emphasizing inquiry because we have human consciousness rather than demanding belief and conformity because we are inherently sinful. So it's a very different paradigm.

The idea is that you are sinful and you are doomed unless you believe in a saviour. Here the idea is that you have evolved consciousness and you have the capacity to inquire about life's bigger truths. Why stay caught in pursuing the same things which animals are pursuing? So the whole foundational paradigm itself is different.

And that's why if, so people who are educated in rational education today, if they are exposed to dharmic spirituality, their very rationality can actually inspire them to practice the spirituality, to take up and practice the spirituality a lot. And we see today also that when there are educated, well-educated spiritual teachers and many young people get exposed to them, they are quite impressed and inspired by that. I never thought that when I met, first time a ISKCON devotee, I met Paramahamsa Prabhu, the Saffron Brahmachari, and the first thing that I was amazed by, how can a sadhu speak English so fluently? Then how is he so well-educated and things like that? So that exposure to philosophical spirituality is not there in the mainstream culture.

But if it is there, then it can be like a game changer in today's cultural scenario. Any thoughts on this? Yeah. Would you like to summarize? Yeah, sure.

So we today discussed about, does higher education necessarily lead to atheism? So I discussed, is it happening? But at least there's a perception statistically, whether it's actually there. It depends on how religion is defined, how higher education is defined. But overall, people feel that if somebody is educated, why would such a person believe in God? And certainly people who are higher educated seem less forthcoming about their belief.

And this is in sharp contrast to the past where scientific and social leaders, you talk right from the time of Newton and before to Second World War up to Eisenhower, the profession of one's faith was quite public and was seen positively. So then what changed over these years? So we discussed about three factors, multiculturalism, earlier that if different people of different faiths are there, then it can cause conflict. So better don't bring your faith into public sphere, keep it private.

Then extremism. So the whenever bad things are done in the name of religion, they get more visibility than the good things that are done as a normal part of daily life. And then there's rationalism, where people think that they are exposed to religion in its sentiment in ritual or superstitious forms.

And as compared to that, their education seems to be rational education seems much superior. So they reject that. And then we also discussed in the past, education was centered on, at least the pioneering scientists were centered on natural philosophy, which was a discussion of how nature works and why it works.

However, as scientific education has progressed or has come down the centuries, it is for all those 10 fields are there, the focus is much more on application. So it's more not knowledge for understanding the nature of reality, as knowledge for controlling reality to bend it to human will. And that is more Rajasic knowledge.

So Sattvic is trying to understand how things are. Rajasic is trying to control things more and more. Tamasic is trying to only reinforce one's beliefs.

So because the mainstream knowledge is Rajasic, so even if it is not atheistic, it's functionally non-theistic. And although it's functionally non-theistic, it's not that simple, because two things. One is the culture provides many distractions and temptations, wherein belief in any kind of practice of God or belief in God is considered uncool.

So even if people don't reject God, they forget God. And you also said that. So that's the context of the education.

In the content of education, what you mentioned is not a level playing field. So a religious professor can't talk about their religious belief, but an atheistic person, atheistic professor can talk about atheism and can seem rational, is not seen as sectarian. So then we discussed, okay, so what is the, what can we do about it? What is the solution? So one is that if there is parallel education provided through various channels, so then people who are rationally educated, if they see that there is rational spirituality also, then they will be attracted to that and their very rationality can lead them to a much more serious commitment than what some people who are just ritualistically or sentimentally driven.

And then we discussed about how you gave examples of Narada Muni and Chaitanya Charita Amrit how contemplate with your reason. Narada Muni explored and observed and Krishna's Kriya Vyajananda calls upon to explore. And then, so I talked about how our tradition, in our tradition, faith is not based primarily on beliefs.

It is a composite of many things. And the spiritual journey does not begin by declaring that we are sinful and need faith in a saviour. It begins by we are evolved in consciousness and therefore we deserve to explore the higher realities of life.

It behooves us. So the spiritual journey encourages exploration. And this kind of spirituality can resonate, can appeal to people with rational minds.

So higher education, if those in higher education are presented rational spirituality, then the education may not, far from leading them to atheism, can lead them to a stronger commitment to the higher values of life, to spirituality. Anything I left out? Thank you very much. It was a wonderful talk.