If we shouldn’t use questionable empirical sources to support scripture, why did Prabhupada do so?

Transcript

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Oh, okay.
Hare Krishna. Question. If you should not use questionable empirical sources to support scriptural points, then why did Srila Prabhupada use such sources when he talked about, say, the male-female brain size or things like that? Answer.
That’s because at that time, those sources were reliable. When Prabhupada quoted particular statements, he heard it from some empirically reliable sources. He heard it from his college professor.
And his college professor quoted some scientists. And Prabhupada, in a Bhagavatam purport, gives that reference. So, essentially, what Srila Prabhupada is doing is, is using sources that are reliable at his times.
So, by using such sources, Prabhupada is actually bringing credibility in the eyes of, is getting credibility in the eyes of people who respect those sources. Prabhupada also told us that the empirical sources are ultimately unreliable and that’s why we have to be careful in using them. So, if certain empirical sources are shown to be wrong, then we shouldn’t use them.
And so the point is that there may be certain sources which may be reliable at a particular time. At that time, they can be used and later on they become unreliable. We may not use them.
So, for example, something might be considered to be a common knowledge at a particular time. And maybe a few decades later, that may be considered to be completely distributed knowledge. That is the nature of the changing material knowledge.
So, now does that mean that we should not use material knowledge at all? Not necessarily. We may use material facts and statistics and material examples and things like that to help people develop faith in certain spiritual principles. But then we should also be clear when we are speaking such things that what are we doing and what is the main point that we are going to make.
So, once that is clear, this is the main point and this is the example. The examples are contextual and the examples may change. Change in terms of they may not be relevant to people or they may not even be considered true because of the emergence of new facts.
But that is not the important thing. The important thing is the principle is conveyed. So, Srila Prabhupada conveyed his principles based on scripture and apart from that, whatever he conveyed was contextual examples which were from sources that were considered reliable in their times when he quoted them.
So, if those sources are not considered reliable now, that doesn’t mean that they were not reliable then and that doesn’t mean that Prabhupada shouldn’t have used them or that we should use them now. So, both the approaches are wrong. Something was reliable then, Prabhupada would use it.
Something is not reliable now, we shouldn’t use it. If something is considered reliable right now, we can use it. By the same time, if sometimes some things are not considered reliable even now or considered reliable by only a very small number of people, then we have to be even more careful while using those sources.
So, we rely primarily on Shabda, but then secondarily we can use Bhaktiksha Anuman with caution.