How did God create black holes?
From Prashant P
Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Hare Krishna. Question, how did God create black holes? Answer, this question assumes a conflation. Conflation means a mistaken mixing up of two different worldviews and that's why without separating those two worldviews, we cannot answer this question.
To put another example, science operates on the, I'll just explain and then I'll give the example, that science operates on the principle of naturalism. That means everything is to be reduced down to the naturalistic world. This is not a natural, this is not a necessary implication of science.
Many of the pioneering scientists, starting from Newton onwards, have recognized that not all science has to be reduced down to naturalism. Science doesn't have to be metaphysically naturalistic. It can have spiritual dimension to it also.
But from a functional point of view, most science today is naturalistic. And within science, when we ask for an explanation, we ask for an explanation in terms of a naturalistic explanation. That means in terms of material factors and material phenomena and that is not intrinsically compatible with the spiritual worldview.
So if we have a billiards board and then on a billiards board, there is a person who hits with a stick and when the person hits with a stick, that stick hits one ball and then it goes and hits several other balls and different balls go in different direction and one particular ball goes into the hole and the person gets some points for that. Now the movement of the balls on the billiards board is in accordance with the laws of physics, laws of motion as discovered in physics. So that can be described and the force with which the stick is hitting is also in accordance with these laws.
That force determines the trajectory of the different subsequent balls which are moved and how they will go there. But still, this doesn't include the point of the skill of the person who is playing. That person was able to hit with the exact right force and get to the right destination because of the skill that the person had.
So recognizing that skill is also important and the recognition of that skill is something which is not exactly quantifiable and measurable in terms of science. So one can either look at billiards game in terms of only what is happening on the board or one can have a broader view and look at what is happening outside the table also in terms of the skill of the player. So similarly, one can look at what is happening in the world simply in terms of what is happening in the specific things that are there in the universe or one can look at the broader picture.
So in the Vedic understanding of the universe, God is the overseer but God doesn't act directly in the creation of everything in this world. So God has created a set of mechanisms by which the world works. So the fact that there are mechanisms and systems by which the world works is indicated in the Vedic literature where Krishna says he is the overseer.
He is not involved in the nitty-gritties of every single thing that happens in the universe. Yes, of course, the Vedic universe and Vedic conception includes the conception of the super soul but the super soul is actually overall sanctioning according to impartial laws. So there are laws and the super soul simply oversees the administration of the laws.
So the super soul doesn't intervene directly. So in that sense, the universe largely functions as a machine, as a mechanism but the overseeing of this mechanism is done by the Supreme Lord. So now within the mechanistic framework of the billiards board say, if there is a tenth ball that has been hit, then we can trace backwards.
This ball came from this ball, this ball was hit by this ball, this ball was hit by this ball, this ball was hit by this ball and then originally we came to the first ball and the first ball hit the subsequent balls. So when we go into the nitty-gritties, the technicalities of the universe, there are hundreds of details and the Vedic scriptures do not go into such nitty-gritties. They give us broad principles.
They give us principles about how the various elements that comprise the universe originate from the Supreme Lord and how they eventually lead to the creation of the universe. So this is a different view of the universe which is based on the interaction of consciousness and matter and the emanation of matter based on the elemental theory of matter. Matter is comprised of elements.
Today science uses the atomic theory of matter. So there are two different perspectives of looking at matter and looking at the universe beyond matter also. So asking how God created something as specific within a particular worldview, that is within the worldview of materialistic science, black holes, it reveals an incomplete understanding, this question reveals an incomplete understanding of God's role in the universe as is revealed in the scriptures, the Vedic scriptures.
So the Vedic scriptures give us broad principles and those broad principles explain to us how the overall universe functions and more importantly why it functions. So black holes are a conception that has been postulated within a particular worldview by a set of scientists and today we may say with our current evidence that it is true. Who knows 50 years, 100 years down the line, some other scientists may say that okay whatever we are observing say the shifting of the lines of gravity, shifting of the rays of light when it passes in a particular area by which we infer that there is a black hole over here because only black holes have such strong gravity pulls that they can cause the path of light to get shifted.
So there are various inferences from which, various observations from which the existence of the black hole has been inferred and who knows in future we may find those inferences to be untenable and if we find those inferences to be untenable then the concept of black holes may be abandoned. So the point is, I'm not saying black holes don't exist but the conception of black holes is a product of a particular worldview and within a particular worldview it may be reasonable but the Vedic scriptures talk about a different worldview and within that worldview the emphasis is not on an analysis of the integrities of technicalities of specifics of how things happen but it is on understanding the broad principles of how the universe functions and for especially why it exists and why it functions and how to fulfill that purpose. So overall rather than mixing up the two worldviews we can take the best of both the worldviews.
It is not that these two and other question answers I have answered how the modern cosmological worldview is not necessarily intrinsically contradictory to the Vedic worldview. The big bang cosmology is in many ways harmonious with the Vedic worldview. So rather than trying to mix up the two worldviews as we can take the best whatever modern science and scientific worldview is offering we understand that is one level of reality one perspective of reality and what Vedic scriptures are offering is a different perspective of reality.
If I take white chalk powder and black chalk powder and mix the two together I get gray granules. Now I only see gray granules with the visible eye but if I see under microscope I see something entirely different. I see white and black particles.
So what is the actual reality? What we call as reality depends on the frame of reference, the scale of observation. So the two worldviews talk from different scales of observation and rather than mixing the two up we see from the modern scientific worldview and take what is beneficial for us what is required for us what is relevant for us and we take from the Vedic worldview what is relevant for us. So in many ways science helps us to improve things but spirituality helps us to improve people.
It helps us to improve our inner world and through that improvement of the inner world it helps us to become better human beings, better contributors to the world and in one sense even better scientists. So don't need to mix up the two but rather take what is good, what is relevant, what is beneficial from the both and make ourselves better. Thank you.