Can we be spiritual in an age of science?
Om Gyanatimrindasya Gyananjali Shilakaya, Chakshurunmulithamena Tasmai Shri Guruvenama. Hare Krishna.
So I welcome all of you to this Skype class on the topic of, can we be spiritual in the age of science? So we will be discussing this topic in four parts, and primarily the focus will be on differentiating between science and scientism. Just like we have communism, we have capitalism. So there is an ideology that develops around science, which is called a scientism.
So many times when we try to practise spirituality, we may ourselves get the question, or others around us may ask us, you are a scientific person, how can you do such unscientific things? Believing in God, believing in soul, chanting, all these things. Now, of course, at one level, we can answer this question by saying that there is scientific proof for the existence of God, there is scientific evidence for the existence of soul, there are scientific findings about the benefits of meditation, and that is what we do in the previous courses. So probably discover yourself or elsewhere.
We have discussed this approach. In this session, we will be taking a different approach. Now, if we visualise science as one circle, and there is a meta circle, a bigger circle, which is of reality.
So the earlier approach, the conventional approach is to show how science and spirituality has an intersection, and in that intersection, there is existence of God, existence of soul, benefits of meditation talked about. But here in this session, we will focus on something else, how the circle of science does not encompass all of reality. That means there is much in this world which is beyond the circle of science.
So scientism is the belief system that makes science into a God. It places around science the halo of omniscience. Halo refers to the bright light that is often shown around saintly people or around God.
So scientism is different from science. Scientism is the belief system that claims that science has access to all knowledge. And whatever knowledge we get, we should get it from science only.
And all other forms of knowledge are invalid. So now, most people do not understand the difference between science and scientism. But they, because of being impressed by science gifts in the form of technology, laptops, internet, cell phones, and other such things, people think that science must be having all the answers.
And therefore, they unwittingly subscribe sometimes to scientism. And the kind of questions which discussed, we started off this with, can we be spiritual in the age of science? It sort of assumes that science has ruled out spirituality. But that is not at all the case.
So firstly, scientism, which is the belief system, let us look at what it is and what are the problems with it. So first and foremost, scientism is self-contradictory. Self-contradictory means it contradicts itself.
So self-contradictory statements are, for example, if somebody says, I can't speak a word in English. Now that person has already spoken more than a word in English. So I can't speak a word in English is an example of a self-contradictory statement.
Or if somebody says, I don't exist. And the person has to exist to be able to say that I don't exist. So these are self-contradictory statements.
Now scientism is also similarly self-contradictory. How is that? Scientism says that science is the only way to acquire knowledge. Now the question comes up, who has determined this? This core claim of scientism, science is the only way to knowledge.
Has this been determined by science? No, science has not determined this because science is basically one tool for acquiring one kind of knowledge. In fact, we today consider Newton to be a great scientist, but at the time of Newton, he did not use the word science at all. He used the word natural philosophy.
In fact, he often used the word natural theology, but gradually it became natural philosophy, that means the study of nature. So actually the word science started coming in currency only in the 18th century. So before that there were scientists, but they did not call themselves scientists.
So the point is science is basically one way of acquiring knowledge. And natural philosophy, which was the word with which Newton identified himself, what does it mean? We study nature and try to understand how nature works. So that's what he observed fruit falling.
And now most people, if they had seen a fruit falling, they would just have picked it up and eaten it. But Newton didn't do that. He thought about why the fruit has fallen.
And that's how eventually he came up with the law of gravity. So the point is science studies nature to try to understand how it works. Now, science does not make any statement about whether anything exists beyond nature and whether there is any form of knowledge which is beyond nature.
So science will observe things and tell us how to make sense of those things. But whether science is the only way to acquire knowledge or not, that is not a scientific statement. That is a philosophical statement.
So this is not a statement which has come from science. There is no experiment, there is no theory, there is no postulation or demonstration by which somebody can say QED, code error demonstration. Now we have proven that science is the only way to acquire knowledge.
No scientist has done such experiment, nor can anyone do such experiment, because in principle, it is not possible to do this. So now that means the core statement of scientism that science is the only way to acquire knowledge has not come from science. Then where does it come from? It has come from the belief system of the advocates of scientism.
So they believe that science is the only way to acquire knowledge and therefore they propose this. And why do the people do this? Now there are four different schools of thought which are very related and I will specify the terminology right now, then we will discuss this. Scientism is the idea that science is the only way to acquire knowledge.
Naturalism is the idea that nature is all that exists. Naturalism that is. Then third is reductionism.
Reductionism means that things can be understood by reducing them to their components. And fourth is atheism. Atheism is essentially that God does not exist.
So now these four are related in the sense that atheism is usually rooted in reductionism, naturalism and scientism. How is that? So atheism is a belief system that no God exists. And how do atheists try to get credibility, get credence for their belief system? They use these three tools, scientism, naturalism and reductionism.
So now God is a supernatural being. So if naturalism becomes true, then God automatically becomes non-existent. And then because science can know only about nature, so therefore atheists say that science is the only way to acquire knowledge.
So atheists begin with becoming naturalists, then they become, then they become scientists, follow the scientism. And then now how does science work? It works largely by reductionism. So for example, if I am given a machine that is not working, then I'll try to see what are its components, break it apart into its components and see how can I assemble them together so that it works again.
So these four belief systems are all, that's all what they are. They are belief systems and they are very closely related. So what atheists do is that now atheism is a belief system, but atheists want to misappropriate the prestige of science for their belief system.
That means they want to portray that if you are atheistic, you are scientific. And if you are theistic, then you are unscientific. In fact, not only unscientific, you are anti-scientific.
That's what some aggressive atheists will try to portray. So unscientific means that you don't accept science and anti-scientific means you oppose science. So what are we talking about over here? Right now I'm talking about how scientism is self-contradictory.
So scientism, its core claim is that science is the only way to acquire knowledge. But this core claim cannot be proven by science because science studies nature in a particular way, but science doesn't make any statement whether there's anything beyond nature or whether there are other ways of acquiring knowledge. So that means the core claim of scientism cannot be verified scientifically.
It has to come from a belief system of the advocates of scientism. So what this means is that if scientism is true, it has to be false. If scientism is true, it has to be false.
How? Because if scientism holds that science is the only way to acquire knowledge, but this knowledge cannot be acquired through science. It has to be acquired from elsewhere. So therefore, for scientism to be true, for science to be the only source of knowledge, there has to be some other source of knowledge to prove this.
And in this way, scientism becomes contradictory, self-contradictory. Now if this science is too complex, don't bother about it. The simple point is to recognise that scientism has a lot of flaws.
First is of course it's self-contradictory. Now moving forward, the second major problem with scientism is that it requires us to believe in a pure, in a poor and pure fiction. Poor fiction means that which is not a very believable fiction.
So if somebody writes a story in which all characters are behaving strangely, unbelievably, then we call it poor fiction. And pure fiction means that which is completely unreal, that has nothing to do with reality. So now how does scientism lead to that? As I said, scientism is based on naturalism.
Science can study about nature. Scientism says that science is the only way to acquire knowledge. And naturalism says nature that all that exists.
So the naturalism holds that the laws of nature have produced everything. So the whole universe and the world around us, it has all come through nature. Now significantly, just before I go into this, I have an article on my website, and I am posting the quote from there, the website primscientist.com. So this scientism has been rejected by eminent scientists.
In fact, for example, Albert Einstein, he said that, that all branches of knowledge, so Albert Einstein recommended in his essay Moral Decay, he writes all religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed towards ennobling man's life, lifting it out from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. So now he's saying that religion, art and science, all are this branch of the same tree.
What is that tree? That is the human tree. It is human beings who have developed science. It is human beings who have developed art.
And similarly, it is human beings who explore through religion. And they are all meant to ennoble. So actually, Einstein is rejecting scientism.
And not only that, even more explicitly, there is a Nobel laureate, Sir Peter Medawar. So he states that actually scientism is injurious even to science itself. How is that? He wrote a book called Advice to Young Scientists.
And in that he states, there is no quicker way for a scientist to bring discredit upon himself and upon his profession than roundly to declare, particularly when no declaration of any kind is called for, that science knows or soon will know the answers to all questions worth asking. And that questions which do not admit a scientific answer are in some way non-questions or pseudo questions that only simpletons ask and only the gullible profess to be able to answer. So this is Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar.
So he is saying that actually scientists who say like this, they hurt science and they bring discredit to science. So he strongly does not recommend it. So atheists who try to misappropriate the prestige of science for themselves are countered by many prominent scientists.
Now, as I said, moving forward to the second point about pure fiction. So naturalism holds, so naturalism is that everything can be explained by the laws of nature. So the whole world, how did it come about? Oh, from something that exploded.
Eventually, the laws of nature brought it all about. So similarly, how did our mind and our consciousness come up? It came by the laws of nature. Now what happens, all of us have seen the laws of nature as reliable in the sense that we know that gravity works, that's how we have spacecrafts, laws of motion work, that's how we have all our automobiles and aircrafts and everything like that.
So now if somebody is saying that laws of nature things have come, people say, oh, maybe it's possible, laws of nature are very reliable. But this is a complete misuse of language and intelligence. Because laws are never causes.
Laws are simply modes that describe how causes act. Laws are simply modes that describe how causes act. To illustrate this, nowadays when cricket matches are going on, often there are replays which describe in detail, say how this batsman hit the ball.
And then suppose a batsman had hit a sixer, and that ball had just gone over the fielder and the ball had just hit the middle of the bat. On the other hand, somebody else has hit the ball and the ball hit not the middle, but the top of the bat. And that's why there was not enough force.
And the ball was caught by the fielder on the boundary. I suppose that was the last ball of the match. And if it had gone at the sixer, the match would have been won.
And because it did not go, because it hit the edge of the bat, so the match was lost. So now by action replays, television commentators can show, if only this ball had hit the bat, instead of at this angle, at this angle, they can predict the trajectory of the ball quite accurately. How do they do that? How do they do that? By the laws of motion.
Now the laws of motion are, as I said, modes that describe how causes act. So what is the cause? The cause is the batsman swinging his bat and hitting the ball. And then what happens after that will be described by the laws of motion.
But the laws of motion are themselves not causes. The laws of motion do not cause the ball to go into that trajectory. So to use the laws of motion, to call the laws of motion as causes is actually ridiculous.
It's like, say, if laws of motion were causes, then all street side cricket batsmen in India would become the cause. Because the laws of motion are always acting. So it's actually absurd idea.
Another example to illustrate how laws of motion, laws themselves don't cause anything. Suppose I have, say, 100 rupees in my pocket, and then I get 200 rupees more. I put them, now my pocket has 300 rupees.
The law of arithmetic can explain how and why my pocket has 300 rupees. But the law of arithmetic itself cannot cause those 300 rupees. If the law of arithmetic started causing money, then paupers would become millionaires.
So just as laws of arithmetic do not cause money, just as laws of motion do not make people into Sachin Tendulkar, similarly, laws of nature do not cause anything to happen. Laws are simply modes that describe how causes or causal agents act. So now this is not only poor fiction, it is pure fiction.
What is that naturalism? Why? Because naturalism holds that laws of motion and laws of nature are not only causes, they are also creators. So going back to the cricket example, according to naturalism, according to scientism, we will for practical purposes consider them both similar. So the laws of motion not only hit the sixer, but the laws of motion also created the bat, the ball and the cricketer.
This is laughable. And this is what naturalism boils down to, that nature is all that exists. We obviously know that is not true.
So scientism is unreasonable because it requires that we believe such fiction. Now another major problem with scientism is that it actually engenders disrespect for humanity. Scientism claims that we are respecting science.
Oh, science is such an authority source of knowledge. And anybody criticises scientism, these people say that, oh, how can you criticise science? Science is so glorious. But actually scientism is not respect for science.
Scientism, the end result of it is disrespect for humanity. Why? Because what does scientism imply? That science is the only source of knowledge, but there are many cherished fields which science has no authority. For example, if, say, if some famous musician makes a very good musical composition and then some other novice makes another musical composition.
Now can science decide which musical composition is mediocre and which is masterly? How would science decide that? Now it can measure, okay, the frequencies, the pitches, the decibel levels of the sounds that have come about. It can measure the rate of modulation of such things. But it is clueless about deciding which is a masterpiece and which is a ordinary composition.
Same way with literature. Now if somebody writes a masterly article or book and somebody else writes just a potboiler, ordinary book, how do we know the, can science determine the difference? Science can help us to decide, okay, how many words are there in this book and how frequently certain letters recur in the book. But again, it is utterly clueless about determining the quality of the literature.
So what this again points to is that there are many fields which are very important for us, but science has no authority over them. Science cannot give us knowledge about them. So this itself proves scientism to be faulty.
Now some advocates of scientism may say that no, no, no, actually these fields are not really important. Literature and music, these are all for time pass. The most important field is science because science is what leads to progress and in that science alone can acquire knowledge.
Okay, even if we say that is true, this raises another question over here, that can science tell us, if science can tell us everything, can science tell us what is the right and wrong use of science? I repeat the question, can science tell us what is the right and wrong use of science? So science may tell you that if you put arsenic in the lunch of your grandmother, she will die. But can science tell whether doing such a thing to get her estate quickly, is that right or wrong? No, science can t. Why not? Now most people, including most scientists will be horrified in the prospect. How can you do like that? How can you kill your grandmother just to get her money? So yes, we may feel revolted by this, but where does this sense of revulsion come from? This sense of revulsion does not come from science because science, one of the operating principles of science is that it is amoral.
There are three words, there is moral, immoral and amoral. Moral means that which follows somebody who lives according to morality. Immoral is one who refuses to follow morality and amoral is someone who does not care for morality or who does not, not does not care for morality, somebody who is, who does not, who is not involved with morality at all.
So science, because it has to objectively observe nature, science is amoral. Now science can tell how to make a nuclear weapon, but science cannot tell whether at this point a nuclear weapon should be fired or that should not be fired. No, it cannot tell whether killing people by firing a nuclear weapon is right or wrong.
In fact, actually, this sense of morality, in fact, the whole sense of morality according to scientism is useless because our sense of morality does not come from science. And where does it come from? It comes from our moral and spiritual fabric, which is acquired from somewhere outside science. Now again, scientism, if every, if all knowledge is to come from science, then our moral and spiritual sense, moral and spiritual sense, which does not come from science would be worthless.
But what happens when people consider people become morally, people become amoral, become morally unconcerned and they progress scientifically? Actually, this ascendance of science amidst the absence of morality that led to the greatest disaster, the greatest man-made disaster in recent history. What was that? The disaster of the Holocaust. Holocaust refers to the killing of, the systematic murder of 6 million Jews that was done in Hitler's Nazi Germany.
Now actually, Hitler was a great, was a passionate advocate of science. And Hitler's Germany, Nazi Germany prided itself on being scientifically advanced. They had some of the best scientists of those times.
In fact, Albert Einstein was himself living in Germany, but he was a Jew and his life was threatened as Nazi ideology started spreading and he left Jew, he left Germany and he came, he was living basically in Europe, he came and emigrated to America. So the point was that those scientists who did not subscribe to Nazi ideology were eliminated. And scientists progressed quite a bit, science progressed quite a bit during Nazi Germany.
But what was the result? Now, the scientific progress did not tell people that killing Jews is wrong. Now, of course, it was not that scientism killed the Jews, the Nazism that killed, but scientism would not have stopped it. Because scientism would have relied only on science and science is morally mute.
You know, mute means silent, it does not speak anything, just like I make a mute button. So science is completely morally mute at all times. So what happens is that science can lead to scientism.
Now, we are not blaming science. Remember, science is a tool for acquiring knowledge. But science does not tell us how to use that knowledge.
That has to be told by someone else. As Martin Luther King said that, now we live in an age of guided missiles and misguided men. Why? Because we have science which tells us how to guide missiles.
But if society becomes scientistic, then it considers morality to be unimportant, it considers spirituality to be unimportant. Then society has no way to tell people how to use those guided missiles. And that's why we have misguided men.
And misguided men using guided missiles can lead to disaster. So therefore, where does all this leave us? Actually, scientism is self-contradictory, it is disrespectful to humanity, it leads to, it demands, it is fictional, and it is overall unscientific. So therefore, we should not, we do not have to be apologetic just because we are practising spirituality.
Can we practise it in the age of science? Actually, surely we can, because science, no matter how much it progresses, it can never have a monopoly on knowledge. There will always be other fields of knowledge which will be equally important and sometimes more important. Because just as knowledge of science is important, knowledge of how to use science is much more important.
And that doesn't come from science. So this brings us to other sources of knowledge. Now as I said, literature, music, these are other fields.
Similarly, spirituality is another field. And in spirituality, we have an alternative source of knowledge. So the source of knowledge is scripture.
So how does scripture, scripture is the word of God, it is a revelation. And that is also an important source of knowledge. Now let us understand why scripture is important.
Suppose your mother made a beautiful, magnificent, delicious cake for you as a surprise. And suppose you have this friend who has been asking you, you know, why do you do such unscientific things? So then you call this friend and tell him, okay, using the scientific friend who is there, you ask him, okay, can you get all answers about, can you find all knowledge about this cake using science? He says, of course, I can find out. And immediately, say this friend summons a nutritional scientist, find out what are the calories, what is the nutritional value of the components of the ingredients of this cake.
Then that person summons a biochemist, okay, what are the chemicals, what are proteins, what are amino acids, what are the preservatives. Then that person summons a physicist, okay, what are the fundamental particles that make up this. Then that summons a mathematician, okay, what are the equations that describe the particle, the motion, the interaction of the particles within this cake, fundamental particles.
Like that you can have a whole battalion of scientists. And then suppose now you ask your friend, okay, can you tell me why this cake was made? Why did my mother make this cake? Now, the mouths of all those scientists will fall open with their best technology. They cannot find out why did your mother make this cake? What was the purpose behind the making of the cake? Suppose your scientistic colleague does not want to admit defeat and says, oh, actually, okay, because science cannot find out why this cake was made.
Therefore, there is no answer to that question. There is no purpose because of which the cake was made. It just happened.
It just happened. Now imagine your mother is right next to you. She is also waiting and watching all this tamasha.
And if she hears her labour of love, she spent so much time and effort in making the delicious cake. And if she hears her labour of love being dismissed as just happened, dismissed by a just so story, what will be your reaction? Now, she will be annoyed, she will be irritated, she will be angered. And that is natural.
But assume that your mother is a very level headed lady. And rather than getting angry, she dismisses this hypothesis. And she herself tells.
And if she herself says that this is, she herself says that actually, I made this cake, because today is a silver jubilee. Today is the 25th anniversary of the day when your first tooth came out. It is not your 25th birthday, but the 25th birthday of your first tooth.
And because on this day, I want to make something sweet and special and very nice for you. So I made this cake for you. Now, could any of the scientists have ever been able to figure this out? No, not at all.
And that is not a problem with the scientist. That is a problem with scientism. So there are questions about purpose that science cannot answer.
So why do we live? What is the purpose of life? That is something which science cannot answer. To answer that, we need to turn towards scripture. And scripture offers us systematic answers to the questions about life, why we live, what is it that will make us happy? What is the ultimate purpose of life? This is a question scripture can answer.
The Bhagavad Gita tells us that we are parts of God and when we love and serve God, therein we experience the highest happiness. And even science, when we use it in the service of God, that leads to happiness. But if we don't use science for that purpose, then science itself can become the cause of misery.
And that is what we see is happening in today's world. In today's world, we see that there is so much scientific advancement, but the depression rate is increasing, the addiction rate is increasing, the suicide rate is increasing. Now we have 1 million people committing suicide every year.
That means one person commits suicide every 40 seconds. That means since we started this talk, nearly 100 people have committed suicide. So why is it? Now it's significant that no animal commits suicide.
Now a dog does not cry, oh, this bitch has ditched me. And therefore, my heart is broken and now I will commit suicide. Why do dogs not think like that? Because you know, they don't have the potential for higher happiness.
They want higher, we human beings want higher happiness and that higher happiness cannot come through materialism. It has to come through spirituality. And when we don't get that higher happiness, then we search more and more for lower happiness and we get frustrated.
And then we become depressed, we become addicted, we become suicidal. So actually, not only can we be scientific and spiritual in the age of science, actually, we need to be spiritual in all ages and especially in the age of science. Because in the age of science, without spirituality, the mind will trouble and torment and eventually terminate humanity.
As the World Health Organisation has said that the mental problems are the biggest health challenges of the current century. So by connecting with Krishna, by practising spirituality, by chanting the holy names, we find that our life, our mind becomes peaceful, our life becomes meaningful, our heart becomes joyful. And that ultimately is a real success.
So to summarise, I talked about how can we be spiritual in the age of science? Why not? Because science does not have a monopoly on knowledge. The idea that science is the only way to knowledge is not a scientific idea, it is a scientistic idea. It is the idea coming from scientism.
And then we discussed problems with scientism. Scientism is self-contradictory. Then scientism leads to disrespect of humanity.
We discussed about how it cannot answer about, it cannot decide whether something is a good poem or a bad poem. It cannot answer questions about morality. It cannot tell us whether we should poison someone or not.
And then scientism leads to pure fiction. It makes laws of nature, just simply modes, it makes them into causes and creators. It is like saying the law of motion made a batsman into a cricketer, into a champion cricketer, Sachin Tendulkar.
And then we say how we need to, even when science studies and gives us accurate knowledge, that knowledge is not enough to understand purpose. Scientists can tell what a cake is made up of, but they cannot tell why someone made the cake. Similarly, why this world exists, that, for that we turn you to turn towards scripture.
And by turning towards scripture and learning what is the purpose of life, we can gain lasting happiness.