Are scientists like people who refuse a readymade meal and want to cook a meal themselves?

From: Puri Ashishkumar

Isnt it that ultimately scientists can be considered the biggest rebels since ultimately what science is doing is to go back to the root of everything which scriptures already reveal is Lord Krsna.Its like readymade food is offered to me and i still want to cook the same dish for myself.Instead of accepting the authority of the scriptures arent we wasting time in reality.Citing the word “Scriptures” itself ellicits the response “Old has to be Sold” rather than “Old is Gold”.Please provide inputs and guidance to understand the same

Question from Ashish Kumar isn’t it that ultimately scientists can be considered as the biggest rebels since ultimately what science is doing is to go back to the root of everything the scriptures already reveal is lord Krishna it’s like ready made food is offered to me and I still want to cook the same dish for myself instead of accepting the authority the scriptures aren’t we wasting time in reality citing the word scripture itself elicits the response old has to be sold rather than old is gold please provide inputs and guidance to understand this answer this seems to be more like a comment on which I am expected to comment rather than a question but often we equate science with atheism and that is a mistake science is an objective body of knowledge which neither talks about god’s existence nor disproves god’s existence but science has been largely monopolized and taken over by people who are atheistic and they have used science to justify their atheism so science is essentially a tool for acquiring knowledge we have microscopes and telescopes these are physical instruments and similarly we have mental modes of thinking so science is basically what there are external equipments and there are internal modes of thinking and through these two at gross and subtle level we acquire knowledge so when we equate science with atheism we are committing a mistake because science actually doesn’t come in to talk about atheism there are atheists who extrapolate the knowledge acquired from science and claim or conclude that to be scientific one has to be atheistic however science is primarily at least as it has evolved historically and as it is developing currently more and more it is more a functional body of knowledge I have discussed in another answer about the instrumental and the realist view of science and whether science is just an instrument by which we can control and manipulate the world around us or is it a tool to real knowledge of how the world actually is this has been a debate throughout the history throughout the history of science and of western intellectual knowledge at large starting from the time of Plato and due to the tremendous differences between quantum physics and relativity many scientists are now gravitating towards the instrumentalist view of science science is basically a tool by which we can control manipulate the world around us it is not necessarily giving us a factual view of reality and this is something which many scientists also acknowledge so that’s the first point now regarding the example of ready made food versus food cooked by one self actually it’s too simplistic explanation of the relationship between science and scriptures scriptures as they exist with us now do not give us much detailed knowledge about the material world so there was technology there was Vedic technology for example there is Vimana Shastra there is so many so many branches of knowledge are called as Aparavidya a non spiritual or material knowledge now most of the Aparavidya that is given in the scriptures is lost and that’s why for interacting with the world especially in the way that the culture has existing today we need to acquire material knowledge from science so the two don’t necessarily have to compete with each other scriptures primarily offer us spiritual knowledge as at least scriptures in the form that they are available to us now and science primarily offers us material knowledge so when some people extrapolate the authority of science from the material field to the spiritual field and when the metaphysical pretensions of atheists which they garb under a scientific banner those are what are the cause of conflict the conflict is not between science and scripture the conflict is between materialism and spirituality and materialism has been materialism has hijacked science today and as Shri Prabhupada wanted to establish forums like the Bhaktivedanta Institute by which this hijacking can be countered that science is a tool for acquiring knowledge can also be used to to point towards spiritual truths science cannot give us direct spiritual knowledge but it can point towards spiritual truths and at the very least devotees being in science can strongly counter the scientific pretensions of atheism so as far as Aparavidya is concerned science has given us a lot of technology which has transformed the face of the world and which people find as immediately beneficial now the long term consequences may be harmful of this but that is not what most people see so when we criticize science as a body of knowledge and people see that science through its product of technology is benefiting them people start seeing us as anti-progressive as obscurantists that means people who just want to take back society to its primitive stage that is not at all the purpose of Vedic literature there are sophisticated means of interacting with the world even during the Vedic times so we don’t have to misrepresent Krishna consciousness by proposing or assuming that there is an intrinsic conflict between science and scripture and that scientists are as you put rebels, the greatest rebels there are atheists who are the rebels against God and those atheists who put on a scientific garb they become the greatest rebels against God because they have intellectual pretensions for their atheism but we also need to remember that most people who use science through technology and even most people who do scientific research they use it for its functional or instrumental purposes and for that even devotees use it so that’s why we don’t have to necessarily be in a hostile confrontationalist mode where we demonize science and scientists we have to actually recognize the contours of the conflict very clearly, not science versus scripture but materialism versus spirituality and by redefining or by comprehending clearly the contours of the conflict we can avoid alienating people unnecessarily from Krishna consciousness and also be able to ourselves recognize what it is that we want to do in our lives we are not looking at scripture primarily for material knowledge and we are not looking at science primarily for spiritual knowledge so from science we can get some material knowledge to the extent that it doesn’t disagree with scripture directly, to the extent we can use it and scripture primarily is a source of spiritual knowledge of how we should choose the right course of action based on a long term understanding of the realities of life