How to reconcile science and religion?

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Transcript

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so how do we reconcile science and religion so this is one circle of scripture and this is another circle of science however rather than, this is just for concept there are two circles over here but these two are not necessarily entirely like this separately so within within the knowledge that we get from scripture which we learn from Bhagavad Gita Bhagavatam, other books you can divide this into three parts there is some knowledge within scripture that agrees with science there is some knowledge that disagrees with science and there is a lot of knowledge that transcends science that transcends science, it goes beyond science so what do I mean by this suppose you go home today and you find that your mother has made a delicious cake for you now you wonder why has the mother made the cake suppose you are a scientist you say, let me find out why my mother made the cake now you can get the best scientist from different parts of the world and they may tell the chemical composition of the cake, they may tell the temperature at which the cake was cooked they may tell everything about the cake but can they tell why your mother made the cake then you just go and ask your mother and the mother says that you know say 12 years ago today was the day when the first tooth came in your mouth so to commemorate that day I have made something very soft and delicious for you and I made a cake for you now with no scientific advancement can science find out this even if we put some probes in the mother’s head you cannot find that out isn’t it so the point why I am saying this is science is a very powerful tool for acquiring knowledge but science cannot give us knowledge about everything there is a lot of knowledge that is as I said transcends science and we study scripture primarily for this when we study scripture we study it for this knowledge which transcends science so the knowledge about whether god exists or not that is just beyond science the knowledge of whether soul exists or not that is beyond science this is an elaborate subject of how exactly it is beyond science but I will just give a simple example to illustrate this if if a person goes for fishing and has a fishing net which has say holes which are about 1mm thick now any creature that is smaller than 1mm will slip out of it the fishing net will never catch that isn’t it now the fisherman may keep that fishing net in the lake or in the ocean for maybe 100 days or 100 years still no creature smaller than that fishing net’s hole will be caught, is this clear to understand the fishing net is there, it is meant to catch fish but it cannot catch creatures below a particular size although they exist they cannot be caught so we can compare science to a fishing net which is meant to catch knowledge so science uses material methods of observation so we use our eyes we use our ears we do experiments and then we also try to make hypothesis based on that but it is all material because we are using material senses and God is spiritual, soul is spiritual so no matter how science advances science cannot say anything about God or soul directly it can neither prove nor disprove God directly some people may infer from it but that inference is different so again I am saying the same thing that spiritual truth such as soul, God, these are in this area which transcend science so now our focus in studying scripture should be this and by this knowledge actually we can become happy science cannot really tell us how to become happy it can give us some gadgets so gadgets can give us entertainment but they cannot give us happiness some sleeping pills some medicines they can again cure us of sickness but it is not that just because a person is not sick that person is happy so happiness comes through this knowledge which is there in science now the problem comes with now this category is ok if science tells us something which agrees if scripture contains something which agrees with science that is not a problem now this can be a problem where science and scripture a scripture is saying something which disagrees with science now by dealing with this circle we need to know that at the material level things can be analyzed differently so actually I have a full powerpoint presentation on this but I will give a simple example now suppose you had a chalk and you make the chalk into powder that is which color will be the powder if you take chalk and make it into powder which color will be the powder chalk comes in many colors ok sorry sidewalk chalk ok suppose you have white chalk ok white powder fine and suppose you have coal black coal I don’t know if coal is also of many colors ok so you take coal and you make it into powder now what will be that powder color black black now you take both these powders and mix them together you will have what color grey now you see that color to be grey but you look at that same grey powder under a microscope there you will not see any grey powder you will see white granules and black granules so now what is it actually is it a grey powder or is it white and black granules sorry white black granules white black granules ya but I am seeing it as grey powder it’s both so if it’s both how is it it depends on the scale of observation so at a normal scale of observation it is grey powder at a microscopic scale of observation it is black and white granules so like that you know science and scripture they do not always observe at the same scale of observation it’s a different way of looking at things it’s like sometimes some person may look very beautiful very attractive face but if you look at that face under a microscope you will see all hills and valleys and troughs over there isn’t it it’s a different scale of observation now if somebody showed you the microscope and told this is the face of Miss America how is this possible so many troughs at a different scale of observation the same thing can look very different so when scripture says some things which seems to contradict what science is saying so one possibility can be that science is wrong there are many different scientific theories which come up some are right some are wrong but if some scientific theory is widely accepted there seems to be good evidence for that theory then we shouldn’t think that because science is right scripture has to be wrong or because scripture is right science has to be wrong we have to see according to each situation and it can be that the two are disagreeing because the two are focusing on a different scale of observation they are seeing from different scales of observation so based on usually scripture does not talk based on our normal scale of observation it talks at a different scale quite often so that’s why we don’t have to necessarily become confused when there is seeming contradiction between science and scripture you need to know that there are different scales of observation and more importantly if we focus on this we always stay confused but our purpose is not this our purpose is actually Navashila Prabhupada in the first canto in the first canto of Srimad Bhagavatam Krishna leaves Dwaraka and leaves Hastinapur and goes to Dwaraka so when he is going from Hastinapur to Dwaraka at that time there are many places it is described Krishna goes to this place, this city, this city, this city and then finally he comes to Dwaraka so there Navashila Prabhupada writes in the purport that researchers may try to find out exactly the path that Krishna took to come from Hastinapur to Dwaraka but it is an impossible task because the geology of the earth keeps changing and anyway for us what is important is not how Krishna travelled but for us what is important is now Krishna has come to his devotees and now he will be performing pastimes in Dwaraka so let us focus on that so the point is that we don’t have to focus too much on this so if some of you in the future become scientists then you may study science deeply you may study scripture deeply and you may figure out how to deal with this but for most of us we study scripture as I said to get a compass in our life to learn how to live how to become better human beings so that is in the field that knowledge is transcendental to science and we focus on that transcendental knowledge and we learn to ourselves become better human beings so let us say that science can make things better now you have this big computer earlier now you have a small computer with the same functions science can make things better spirituality makes people better spirituality can make us better human beings so the two have different focuses and by knowing what is the focus we can actually learn to live in harmony while being scientific and being spiritual both does it answer your question? thank you