Does the improbability of extra-terrestrial life support more the Christian conception of God than the Vedic conception?

From Dr Roy:

Christians hold that life exists only on earth, whereas Vedas hold that life exists on other planets. So how can we use as evidence for God’s existence the scientific inference that life on other planets is improbable, as the below widely read article mentions?

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/eric-metaxas-science-increasingly-makes-the-case-for-god-1419544568-lMyQjAxMTI0MjMyMTYzODExWj

Answer Podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MqWZSgYIBw

Hare Krishna. Question, does the improbability of extraterrestrial life support more the Christian conception of God than the Vedic conception? Recently, there have been news about how the probability of extraterrestrial life is becoming more and more low.
And that indicates that our earth is uniquely positioned for life. And that can be used as an argument for intelligent design. So now we know that the Christians have the idea that life exists only on earth or the earth is specially made by God so that he could send his son and deliver earth.
So whereas the Vedic understanding of life exists everywhere. So does the idea of extraterrestrial life being improbable support the Christian conception of God and not the Vedic conception? Answer, we have to look at the Pramana that we are using and then understand what inference we can draw from that Pramana. So when we look at the world and try to understand about God, that is called natural theology or rational theology.
When we, on the other hand, study scripture and try to understand God, that is called scriptural theology. Now scriptural theology can also be rational and it may also have a natural part in it. That means scripture may also talk about nature.
But the foundational source in scriptural theology is scripture. The foundational source in natural theology is nature. So now when we live in a world, in a culture, where scripture is not considered as an authoritative source for knowledge, at least not in the initial stages, not by most people, then the same scriptural truths we may have to convey through non-scriptural sources such as science, which derives its knowledge from the study of nature.
So for example, when scripture talks about existence of God and surrender to God, now we may need to talk about, we may need to provide evidence for the existence of God from the study of nature and that’s what we do when we use scientific evidences. Now science can only point to the existence of the transcendental God, of a transcendental intelligent being who has made the world. It cannot tell us much about the nature, especially the personal nature of that God.
So when we approach, when we adopt science as a method for acquiring knowledge, then we need to know that it comes with certain assumptions and it has its worldview, whereas scripture has its worldview. So we shouldn’t indiscriminately cause the two to intersect and thereby lead to confusion. For example, when we are using science as a pramana for trying to provide evidence for the existence of God, then we should be clear what is our purpose.
The purpose is to prove to provide evidence that from within the methodology of science, we can show how things cannot have come by chance, things cannot have come by themselves. They need an organizing principle and thus they point to the supreme organizer that is God. So that is what is done in the in the argument for intelligent design from the improbability of extraterrestrial life.
So SETI, the search for extraterrestrial life is a project which had calculated some probability for extraterrestrial life and as the number of factors which are required for life on the earth is increasing more and more, therefore the probability of life occurring elsewhere or for that matter occurring on earth is itself decreasing and therefore the probability now is considered so low that it can, that it shouldn’t have happened only and the fact that it will happen means that it is not by chance because the probability of some event happening by chance is so low that it is almost impossible to happen. Therefore, it must have happened by intelligent design. So this is the inference which we are arriving at through science and now when we say the Vedic scriptures say that life is there on all other planets, we have to understand that they are talking about life in a very different sense than what modern science talks about.
Now of course we may say life is the same and it is but in the implication is when science wants to look for life on other planets, it looks for a biological environment, an ecological condition, biological, ecological, chemical and other conditions conducive for life and these are based on the assumption that life on other planets needs to be the way life is here and that is based on a very biochemical understanding of life that life is, life requires certain biochemical conditions for existence. Now the Bhagavad Gita tells us that life comes not from any biochemical conditions, it comes from the spiritual essence, the soul and that soul is not destroyed by anything material as Krishna tells in 2.23, 2.24 and therefore the soul can be situated in the near circumstances. So that’s why when we talk about life on other planets, when scriptures talk about life on other planets and science talks about the improbability of life on other planets, the conception of life that is being talked about is different.
So science talks about the probability of life in biochemical terms whereas science talks about it in terms of the soul who can survive in any circumstances whatever be their biochemical nature. So now how the soul can survive in some other conditions is difficult for science to conceive because science operates on the assumption of induction that means science assumes that okay this is what we have seen about life, in these conditions life is possible therefore wherever else these conditions are there that’s where life will be there but where those conditions are not there life will not be there but that induction is based on the wrong foundation that is that certain that life requires certain biochemical conditions but scripture operates from a different assumption, different foundation that life is spirit, life is the soul and that soul can acquire an appropriate body according to its circumstance and can survive there. So therefore now this is a different argument that can life be there on other planets and in what form it will be there that is a different argument entirely and that argument if we have to discuss we have to discuss further about the epistemology of science and the ontology of science there’s a whole different argument which we’ll have to take so we should not mix that argument here.
So does the improbability of extraterrestrial life provide a good evidence for the existence of God? Yes, within the methodology of science it is providing a quite a strong evidence for the improbability of chance as a causative factor and the concomitant necessity of a designer as the source of life on earth. So when we adopt scientific methodology it comes with a certain set of assumptions we don’t necessarily accept those set of assumptions as absolute truths but for people who do not accept scripture we can use them as tentative truths to show that okay even if you accept the scientific premises then even within those scientific premises we can demonstrate the existence of God and now if you want to know further about God then we’ll have to study scriptures and we study scripture then we will have many of the foundational assumptions which we had when we were studying science challenged and problematized and abandoned so that will come later so we focus on one thing at a time and that way there’s no confusion so rather than getting into a Christian conception of God or a Vedic conception of God when we are talking about extrapolation from science we focus simply on the point that there is an organizing principle there is a intelligent designer who is required and that is what the scientific evidence is pointing towards and that’s the primary focus. Now if you want to talk about life on other planets we can use other arguments and I have answered that question elsewhere on my site also which interested listeners can refer to but right now it is not a matter of science vindicating the Christian conception of God and not vindicating the Vedic conception of God it is only talking about a certain inference from within a certain set of assumptions and that inference within that sense of assumptions is compatible with both the Christian conception of God and the Vedic conception of God.
Thank you. Hare Krishna. So does the mind