Is atheism rational?

Transcript

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Thank you. I was just about a month and a half ago, I was speaking in Stanford. And my topic was Make a Life, Not a Living.
And one common question that comes up usually that is the spiritual stuff real? I was not really talking about science and spirituality. I was talking about more of how a spiritual worldview can help us to live life more meaningfully. So, but he was saying, is this real? So I asked, what do you mean by real? Is this scientific? Okay.
So then I asked, okay, what do you exactly mean by scientific? Can it be proven? Okay. Can you prove that your mother loves you? What do you mean? Obviously my mother loves me. But can you prove it? What do you mean by proof? No, can you mathematically prove that your mother loves you? How do you mathematically prove that? That’s not mathematical.
I know hundreds of occasions in my life when my mother extended myself so much for me. And I know that my mother loves me. So, with respect to many of the activities in our life, we have appropriate ways of knowing things.
So yes, science is a very powerful tool for acquiring knowledge. And with science, we can understand a lot of things. At the same time, it is one tool for acquiring knowledge.
And if now, if I ask you what is the temperature and what is the time in LA right now? Now, you could just Google it up and find out and say it’s 11.38. So, okay, now that’s this. And if you say this, I can confirm it by going on Google. I can call somebody and find out.
So, basically there are, the way I can confirm what is the temperature now or what is the time now, that is very different from the way we can infer does someone love us? There are different ways of knowing things. Now, with all our scientific advancement, we cannot have anything called a love-o-meter. Nowadays, one of the greatest fears of people is forming relationships.
When we try to form a relationship, there is a fear of rejection. So, the person abandons me, betrays me. So, now if two people want to form a relationship at that time, if they want to know, does this person really care for me? Do they care for my money? Do they care for my looks? What do they care for? Now, if you want to, you could just have a meter, put it on their chest.
Do you really love me? Yes. Oh, good. Get lost.
Now get lost. We can’t have a love-o-meter. Love is real, but it’s not measurable in the same way as a temperature or blood pressure is measurable.
So, the point is there are different ways of knowing things. And atheism often tries to reject theism by applying an inappropriate method for knowing it. Like I insist, you prove that your mother loves you and prove it mathematically.
How am I going to prove it mathematically? So, if the method of knowing is not appropriate to the object of knowing, then whatever knowledge we get, it will be flawed. If somebody says that if you can’t mathematically prove that your mother loves me, therefore, your mother doesn’t love you. Now, that would be an invalid inference.
So, now with this background, I’ll talk about how faith as such is required in every walk of life and how we function with faith, but when we are going through life, we have to choose between different worldviews. Broadly speaking, the theistic worldview or atheistic worldview. And atheists are often aggressive saying that you religious people, you believe in some imaginary being who exists somewhere.
You are so irrational. So, often atheism claims to be intellectually superior and more rational than theism. But we’ll see if we go deeper into the matter, the reality is quite different.