If nature is inherently divine, then are the laws of nature, as explained by scientists, also divine?

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Lecture Summary

Can science and spirituality coexist, or do the laws of nature replace the divine? This post explores the fine line between scientific inquiry, methodological naturalism, and the shift toward scientism.

• Science is Non-Theistic, Not Anti-Theistic: Mainstream science focuses on natural explanations rather than proving or disproving God. Historically, many founding scientists like Newton and Kepler held strong theistic worldviews while practicing mechanical science.

• Levels of Explanation: Natural phenomena can be explained at multiple compatible levels. For example, an apple falls due to gravity, but a theological perspective sees a divine origin behind that physical law.

• Methodological vs. Metaphysical Naturalism: Science legitimately relies on methodological naturalism to study physical causes. However, stretching this into metaphysical naturalism—claiming material reality is all that exists—distorts science into “scientism.”

• Scientific Imperialism: Scientism acts like an intellectual empire, claiming a monopoly on all knowledge and dismissing any non-material or spiritual level of explanation as invalid.

• Replacing God with Nature: Some atheistic scientists treat the laws of nature as co-eternal with existence, effectively transferring divine attributes (like omnipresence and eternity) to natural laws as a substitute for God.

• The Dual Perspective on Divinity: Ultimately, the laws of nature can be viewed as divine because they stem from a complete supreme source, but treating them as a replacement for the divine hinders spiritual consciousness.

Full Transcription

If we talk about the inherent divinity of nature and scientists talk about the laws of nature, are they also divine? Yes and no.
Yes means that basically, okay let me start with no and then I’ll go to yes. So see sometimes the way, now I don’t want to essentialize all scientists as atheists, but let’s talk about the non-theistic worldview. The science itself is neither theistic nor atheistic.
Science is non-theistic. That means when science tries to explain the world, it doesn’t consider God as an explainable man. When Newton saw the fruit falling, the apple fell, some people say on his head, some people say in front of him.
Newton believed in the existence of God, but when he wanted to understand what made this apple fall, the answer he was looking for was not God, he was looking for an explanation at another level, at a mechanical level and that’s how he came up with the law of gravity. So now he of course considered that the laws that cause the planets to move in their orbits instead of gravity, that had a divine origin, but the point is that science, when science looks for explanation, at least science the way it functions in its mainstream version, it is non-theistic. Intrinsically, it is neither atheistic nor atheistic.
Scientists individually may be theistic or may be atheistic, or even scientists may be non-theistic, they don’t care about it. So most of the founding scientists, whether it’s Pascal or Kepler or Kelvin, all of them were theistic, quite strongly theistic. Many of the aggressive scientists today are atheistic.
So what has happened over the years is that when Newton saw that there is God as the ultimate causal explanation for everything, and gravity as an immediate causal explanation, so things can be explained at multiple levels. So for example, right now, here the air conditioning is on, and we are feeling comfortably cosy, some of us may feel cold, but none of us feel that there is uncomfortably warm over here. So why are we comfortably cosy, is it because the air conditioning is on, that’s one explanation.
Another explanation could be that, you know, Australia has got sustainable power resources, or at least they have got enough energy reserves, and that’s why even if there is an international fuel crisis, still, we have fuel over here, that is also a valid explanation. So the same thing can be explained at multiple levels. So what has happened is, for the founding scientists, this level of explanation, that nature functions according to laws, this and nature functions according to the plan of the law, these two explanations were just explanations at different levels.
And both were compatible at their level. So, but over a period of time, as science through its laws started explaining more and more things, so there was, you could say, overconfidence among some scientists. Or to put another way, that scientists who were atheistic, they started using science to propagate atheism.
That means that this particular level of explanation, that nature functions according to laws, they said, this is the only level of explanation, there is no other level of explanation at all. And thus, so what was, to just use more philosophical terms, so if this answer is not complicated enough, I’ll make it more complicated. That is, that science works on what is called as methodological naturalism.
That as a methodology, science looks for natural explanations of natural phenomena. An apple falls, science doesn’t say that, okay, God made it fall. When somebody gets a disease, science doesn’t say that, okay, maybe God causes disease because of some past bad karma or a curse or something like that.
Science looks for a germ, what caused that disease. So methodological naturalism. And that’s valid.
Even Ayurveda, which is a Vedic science, also is methodological naturalistic. If there’s a disease in the body, try to see if there’s an imbalance in the bodily driving in substances and how to rebalance. So methodological naturalism has one worldview, it’s fine.
But from this, science went on to what we can say is metaphysical naturalism. Metaphysics is the nature of reality. Philosophy.
They started saying that naturalism is all that exists. This level of explanation is the only level of explanation and there’s no other level of explanation, not only necessary, but no other explanation is even valid. And actually metaphysical naturalism cannot be proved by science.
Because science can only look at material reality. If God exists or if God does not exist, there is no way for science to either prove or disprove it. Certain indications can lead to the inference about God.
But you cannot directly prove the existence of God. So when this happens, when the methodological naturalism shifts to metaphysical naturalism, that’s when science gets distorted into scientism. Scientism is scientific imperialism.
Now when imperial rule was there, we say, most say Australia was also, industrial India were at one time ruled by Britain. So we are the only right and everybody has to go down, that is imperialism. So when science becomes imperialistic, and it says, we have a monopoly on all knowledge, we have the monopoly, our world view is the only level of explanation, no other explanation is allowed.
So the laws of nature, now coming back to a specific question, that Om Poornam Adah Poornamidam. In the Isha Upanishad it says that the Supreme Lord is complete and everything that comes from him is also complete. So therefore, the universe is complete in itself.
And that’s why if somebody wants, they can just be satisfied with this level of explanation. However, if they are deep thinkers, yes, this is one level of explanation, but this is not the only level of explanation. So this arrangement, the laws of nature, their arrangement is made by the Supreme Lord.
In that sense, the laws of nature are also divine. However, within the worldview of scientism, of metaphysical actualism, the laws of nature are seen not as having, as being sourced from God, they are seen not as an emanation from God, but they are seen as a substitution for God. So there are atheistic scientists who say, okay, what is the idea of God? God exists everywhere? Well, gravity exists everywhere.
The scientists, if they ask them that, atheistic scientists, if they ask them, where did the laws of nature come from? So they say that laws of nature are co-eternal with existence. The moment existence comes up, laws of nature come. From where do they come? No, they’re just co-eternal.
So basically, if you see how they explain it, they just shift all the attributes, not all, major attributes of God to the laws of nature. And then that’s how they’re not actually rejecting God, they’re replacing God with nature or specifically the laws of nature. So in that sense, if this is the worldview, then in their understanding, the laws of nature are not different.
They don’t see the laws of nature as divine in the sense of sacred. They just replace God and they make the laws of nature as the ultimate reality. That’s why I said, it’s yes and no.
The laws of nature are sacred in the sense that, are divine in the sense that they come from the divine. But if they are seen as a replacement for the divine, then that attitude towards them is not an attitude which will help us to foster divine consciousness. So does that answer the question?