Why atheism requires more faith than theism – MORE acronym

[Talk at youth meeting, Toronto, Canada]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
I had a particular structure which I was going to speak on. I can speak that. And then if we have time, we can address these issues.
How much time do you spend on these points? How much, how long were you discussing? There’s Q&A and talk. You can go to 4. Okay, but how long have you been discussing these? Oh, just for last 15 minutes. 15 minutes, that’s a significant amount of time.
We just shared some of the points that were raised by many. Okay, so how would you prefer? Second. Okay, so I’ll speak what I want and then we can have a chance.
Okay. So, I was just about a month and a half ago, I was speaking in Stanford. And my topic was make a life, not a living.
And one common question that comes up usually, that is the spiritual stuff real? So, I was not really talking about science and spirituality. I was talking about more of how a spiritual worldview can help us to live life more meaningfully. So, but is this real? So, I asked what do you mean by real? Is it scientific? Okay, so then I asked, okay, what do you exactly mean by scientific? Can it be proven? Okay, I said, okay, can you prove that your mother loves you? What do you mean? Obviously, my mother loves me.
But can you prove it? What do you mean by proof? I said, no, can you mathematically prove that your mother loves you? How do you mathematically prove that? That’s not mathematical. I know the hundreds of occasions in my life and my mother extended myself so much for me that I know that my mother loves me. So, with respect to many of the activities in our life, we have appropriate ways of knowing things.
So, yes, science is a very powerful tool for acquiring knowledge. And with science, we can understand a lot of things. At the same time, it is one tool for acquiring knowledge.
And if now, if I ask you what is the temperature and what is the time in LA right now? Now, you could just Google it up and find out and say it is 1138. So, okay, now that says, and if you say this, I can confirm it by going on Google, I can call somebody and find out. So, basically, there are the way I can confirm what is the temperature now or what is the time now.
That is very different from the way we can infer that someone loves us. There are different ways of knowing things. Now, with all our scientific advancement, we cannot have anything called a love-o-meter.
And nowadays, one of the greatest fears of people is forming relationships. When we try to form a relationship, there is a fear of rejection. So, the person abandons me, betrays me.
So, now, if two people want to form a relationship at that time, if they want to know, does this person really care for me? Do they care for my money? Do they care for my looks? Do they care for, what do they care for? Now, if you want to, you could just have a meter, put it on their chest. Do you really love me? Yes. Oh, good.
Get lost. Now, get lost. We cannot have a love-o-meter.
Now, love is real, but it’s not measurable in the same way, let’s say, temperature or blood pressure is measurable. So, the point is, there are different ways of knowing things. And atheism often tries to reject theism by applying an inappropriate method for ruling.
Like, I insist, you prove that your mother loves you and prove it mathematically. Now, how am I going to prove it mathematically? So, if the method of knowing is not appropriate to the object of knowing, then whatever knowledge we get, it will be flawed. If somebody says that, if you can’t mathematically prove that your mother loves me, therefore, your mother doesn’t love you.
Now, that would be an invalid inference. So, now, with this background, I’ll talk about how faith as such is required in every walk of life and how we function with faith. But when we are going through life, we have to choose between different worldviews, broadly speaking, the theistic worldview or atheistic worldview.
And atheists are often aggressive, saying that, you religious people, you believe in some imaginary being who exists somewhere. You are so irrational. So, often atheism claims to be intellectually superior and more rational than theism.
But we’ll see if we go deeper into the matter, the reality is quite different. So, I’ll, the title was, what was the title today? Does anyone remember? Why? Yes, our atheism requires more faith than theism. So, I’ll use the acronym MORE and I’ll talk about four points.
So, M-O-R-E. So, M is meaning. Meaning, what does it mean in this context? Steven Weinberg is a Nobel laureate physicist and he said famously that the more the universe becomes comprehensible, the more it seems meaningless.
The more the universe becomes comprehensible, the more it seems meaningless. Now, what does it mean by, in what sense of meaning is he talking about and what type of comprehensibility is he talking about? First, let’s understand the paradox in this. Suppose, somebody hands you a message.
It’s very important. And you look at it and you find that it is actually in some strange script. What is this? This looks like some markings on paper.
But when you ask someone, you know it is in that particular script. It is a Sumerian script from ancient Sumeria. Oh, really? And then you start finding out what is the script? What does the marking mean? What does this letter mean? What does this word mean? And gradually, as you come to know about that script, then what happens? The more the message becomes comprehensible.
This symbol means this word, this particular letter. This means this word, this means this word, this means this word. And the more the message becomes comprehensible, what should happen? The more it should become meaningful.
Isn’t it? Oh, I understood this word, I understood this word, I understood this. So, the more something becomes comprehensible, the more it should become meaningful. But suppose you struggle through and understood the script, the letters, the words, and after that you found the whole thing does not make sense.
Hey, what is going on? You could say that somebody just crazily scribbled something on paper. There was never any meaning in it. That could be one way of looking at it.
But another way would be that maybe I am missing something. Because the scribblings are not just random. The scribblings do, at least each scribbling means something.
Each letter means something, each word means something. If the whole thing is not making any sense, then maybe I am missing something. Isn’t it? If the whole thing were meaningless, then why should the scribblings match any script at all? So, the same principle applies to the study of the universe.
If we see, the age of science more or less began with what is called as the scientific revolution. And Newton was probably among the pioneers. Of course, there were others also there.
But Newton is most famously celebrated. Does anyone know which is the most famous incident which is said to have started the scientific revolution? Yes, apple falling. Some people say the apple fell in front of him.
Some people say it fell on him. Whichever way. So, I had gone to Cambridge to speak on science and spirituality.
We passed by that same tree. So, that tree is preserved. It is like a pilgrimage place for scientists.
They go and try to get inspiration. Oh, Einstein was, Newton was so brilliant. Now, certainly Newton’s brilliance is to be appreciated.
Through an ordinary incident, like a fruit falling, he inferred about the nature of gravity. At the same time, let us look at, let us take a step back and say, he asked the question, what made this fruit fall? So, this question itself raises a question. That this question has an assumption to it.
That means, fruits do not just fall by chance. Newton assumed that there is some underlying order in nature. And then he was trying to understand the specific mechanism of that order.
So, if there were, if he were thinking that nature was completely arbitrary, random, then he would not even ask that question. Paul Davies is a sceptical scientist, one of the prominent scientists in the world. He said that even the most rigorous atheist begins the study of the universe with the unexplained faith that the universe has some order in it.
Science would not be able to function if we did not believe that there is some order. But all of scientific advancement is what we make repeated observations, then we try to make some patterns out of those observations. And on the basis of patterns, we make a theory, and we do experiments to verify the theory.
But the idea when we are doing the experiments is, either when we are doing the experiments, or when we are doing the observations is that there is some order in nature. And that is the order we want to discern. So, the point I am making is, if we consider nature to be like a message in some foreign script, we find that, okay, why do objects fall like this? That is because of gravity.
Now, why does the temperature rise? It is because of thermodynamics. Why is current flowing through this, but not through that? Oh, that is because of the principle of electricity. Some things are conductors, some things are semiconductors, some are insulators.
So, like that, science basically helps us to make sense of how nature functions. And in the last few several hundred years, we have been able to acquire so much knowledge, which was not there a few hundred years ago. However, as we are understanding more and more about nature, in terms of specifics, okay, this is how this works, this is how this works, this is how this works.
But in terms of an integrated picture, we are not understanding anything. So, okay, why do fruits fall down? That is because of gravity. Why does the temperature rise? Oh, because of thermodynamics, whatever.
But why do we exist? What is the meaning of life? Why does the universe exist? It is meaningless. There is no point to it. This does not make sense.
If we consider nature to be like a message, then each scribbling makes sense. The words make sense, but the whole thing does not come together. Might we be missing something? Now, you could say, consider that everything is just a random scribbling without any purpose behind it.
It’s possible. But then the question comes up, then why would any particular scribbling so precisely match some script? So, another Nobel laureate, Eugene Wigner, he has written a paper called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. So, his point is that maths is basically a tool which we human beings have constructed for analyzing nature.
What do you mean by tool you have constructed? At a very level, you could say, the imaginary number, square root of minus one. It does not exist in nature. So many mathematical concepts, they do not literally exist in nature.
But why is it that concepts created by our mind correlate with how nature functions out there? This correlation is very remarkable. Now, I am taking this a little further. What I earlier did with the example of the script, that the script means, there are some scribblings out there and those scribblings correlate with the particular script.
So, our mind has the ability to come up with mathematics. And nature has the ability to, or nature features patterns which are also in the language, which are also understandable in the language of mathematics. That means somebody has written the scribblings in a language that we can understand.
And yet, the scribblings are the complete picture do not make sense. So, why should it be like this? Might we be missing something? And this is how actually science functions. Science never, within its particular search for knowledge, never abandons the idea of order.
Say, for example, Newtonian physics. For a long time, it acted as a bedrock of science. But till the 20th century, the 20th, the start of the 20th century, as scientists started studying very small and very big, the microscopic and the macroscopic, they found that Newtonian physics did not work.
Subatomic particles, the way they moved, could not understand based on, based on Newtonian physics. Similarly, very big objects moving very fast during the speed of light, they also, their behavior could not be understood with Newtonian physics. Now, when Newtonian physics, which is a bedrock of science for that, that much time, when it stopped working, scientists did not say that, oh, there is no order in nature.
They said, maybe we are missing something, maybe there is some bigger order of which we are understanding some part. And that is how scientists developed two different theories. Does anyone know which one? Relativity is for the macroscopic, for the big objects.
And for the microscopic? Quantum physics. Yes. Thank you.
So, basically what happened is that science operates on the faith that the nature features Newtonian. And here, there is one important point I am making in this. I am not saying it is a science against theism.
Rather, science is a tool for acquiring knowledge. Theism is here, atheism is here. Atheism often acts as a parasite on science.
That means, atheism claims credibility based on science. But as I said, for science to function, there is a presumption that there is order in nature. And atheism has no explanation for that presumption.
So, we are not pitting theism against science. We are seeing science as a tool for acquiring knowledge. And it is phenomenally powerful.
And the validity of science itself, which does theism make science more valid? Or does atheism make science more valid? Make more valid means, the working of science, which worldview makes more sense? So, with atheism, there is no reason why science should work. I hope this point is clear. If Newton had been an atheist, he would not even have asked the question, what made the fruit fall? Why do these things happen? So, science started and science is sustained by the faith that nature has order.
And nature features some order. Where does the order within nature come from? That is best explained by a theistic worldview rather than an atheistic worldview. Okay.
So, as I said, I am going to talk about these four points. And this is a little heavy discussion. So, I would prefer that we break it apart.
And if you have any questions right now, after MOR each of these, we can have some questions. And then we can move forward. So, any comments or questions till now? Yes, please.
Prabhu, like, just the context. So, do you think that it could also be that at one point, like, science can agree with the religious views and perspective and we can actually function together, right? Because right now, we have seen that, you know, the theists and the atheists, they are like separating a bit more. In like 90s, they were at least much more closer and working together, right? So, do you think it’s possible because in the meantime, whether you follow religion or you follow scientific principles, the point for us is to understand the meaning of life and how to lead it in a better way.
Because I have seen a couple, they were like, okay, we are atheists, but we still have faith in each other. And they were like, the faith was so strong, they’re like, the woman can ask this husband anytime, can I unload on you? Because, you know, it’s human nature, you get angry at sometimes. And if husband says no, she will stop it off.
If husband agrees, then she will just unload and then husband will ignore that part, right? So, I think faith is still there, because we are talking about the meaning of faith itself. And so, faith can not be just in God, it can also be between people and faith in machines as well, right? If I have faith and don’t know how to find the system, I can come over here and say. So, in that sense.
Okay, good question. So, there are many points in this question, but I’ll address some of them. The first is that ultimately, we want to live a meaningful good life.
So, can atheists come together in the pursuit of a good life? And sometimes atheists might also be very understanding with each other. And they might care for each other and they might be able to live well. Yes.
So, there’s a question that can atheists be good people? And there’s a different question. Can atheism make people good? There are two different questions. So, can atheists be good people? Definitely.
There can be, because ultimately, our worldview, or specifically our belief system, our worldview, that is only one part of who we are. Hmm. So, the Bhagavad Gita explains that there are three modes of material nature.
Sattva, Rajas, Tamas. Goodness, passion and ignorance. And broadly speaking, what does it mean? That some people make things happen.
Some people watch things happen. And some people wonder what happened. So, that is goodness, passion, ignorance.
Atheists are thoughtful people. They think, they plan. No, not these.
People in goodness, they’re thoughtful people. They think and make things happen. Those are in passion.
They just run around doing this, doing this, doing that. And they don’t think or plan. They do one thing, but another thing goes wrong.
Another thing happens and they just make a mess of things. And people are just lost in their own heads. Maybe drunk or… And basically, they’re just not even aware what is happening around them.
So, now this division of human psychology, the Bhagavad Gita gives it independent of one’s spiritual orientation. So, you could have a theist who is in ignorance. That means somebody claims to believe in God, but they are violent, intolerant, they are irrational.
And you can have an atheist who may be in goodness. And they might be very calm, very reasonable. Very sensitive, very nature loving.
So, this we could talk about two terms over here. There are operational values and there are foundational values. So, operational values means how we live in the world.
Foundational values means what is it that we ultimately believe about the world. What is the foundation of our life? So, one example to understand this could be that say that if somebody is driving a car. So, operational value means how well do they drive the car.
Foundational value means where are they going by driving. So, if somebody is lost about where they are going. I mean, they’re driving very smoothly, following all the rules, taking excellent care of the car, not troubling other drivers by haywire driving.
They’re driving very well. So, in terms of the perspective on the road, say this person is a very good driver, that person is a terrible driver. So, somebody might be a very poor driver, but they might be driving to the right destination.
Now, of course, whether they will get there or not, that’s a different question. They’re driving poorly, they might cause a break. So, like all of us, we have functional or operational values and we have foundational or fundamental values.
So, in terms of functional values, all of us fall somewhere in the spectrum of the three modes, goodness, passion, ignorance. So, to the extent people come to goodness, there can be reasonable discussion and there can be also respectful disagreement. As I said, we can agree to disagree.
I was at an interfaith conference in Washington DC recently and there was a Muslim over there. So, he was telling me that I can communicate better with moderates from other traditions than with extremists from my own tradition. So, extremists mean those who are in passion or ignorance.
They’re intolerant. Although you might have one particular category, these are Hindus or these are Muslims or these are Christians or even these are atheists. That is sometimes theism or religion is such a big category that it can be very unhelpful.
Within religion, you can have the Amish people who, there was a movie called Amish Grace where there was a serial killer who rushed into an Amish school and killed many of the children and the Amish chose to forgive him and he killed himself. They went, not only they forgave him but they went and offered their support and assistance to his widow and his children. Now, they are also religious and we can have Jihadis who not only kill innocent children but they use children to kill children.
Many of these terrorists were indoctrinated. They might be 16, 17, 15 and they use them to kill others. So, religion is such a big category What do you mean by religion? I may say by religion, I am talking about the Amish and somebody else might be talking about the Jihadis.
So, you are not talking about the same thing at all. That is why we have to look at what are the functional values. From the functional perspective, in the world when we are living, the functional values are very important and in that sense, an atheist might live more harmoniously if the atheist is in goodness and the theist might live less harmoniously, more disharmoniously if the theist is in passion or ignorance.
So, to the extent our consciousness arises upwards, we become more thoughtful, more reflective. To the extent we come to goodness, we all can live with our differences more harmoniously. And so, can atheists be good people? Definitely.
But can atheism make people good? I will talk about this more in the last E. M-O-R-E E is going to be there. But atheism itself does not contain any imperative for inner transformation. So, if theism is understood properly, if I understand that I am accountable to God and each of my actions I will be responsible for them, then there is an impetus for inner transformation.
So, atheists can be good people and theists can be bad people. That is possible. But if instead of comparing good atheists with bad theists, we compare bad atheists with bad atheists and we compare good theists with good atheists, then the impetus for transformation is more if we have a theistic worldview.
The impetus and the ability, the resources also. I will come to that later. But yes, irrespective of our worldviews, if we come more to goodness, then we can all live more harmoniously.
So, say we talked about Newton and theory of gravity. Why is that kind of expression not there in scripture? See, each book has its particular purpose. And if we look at the book itself, it is telling its purpose.
Say, for example, Arjun, when he’s asked at the start of the Bhagavad Gita, is asking a particular question. Say, if you come for a class and it’s a question-answer session and you came after the question was asked and you are hearing the answer and you may understand each point. But what is discussed? What is the whole point being discussed? You’re not able to understand it, isn’t it? So, to understand the Bhagavad Gita, we have to understand what is the question to which the Gita is the answer.
And that question is, I’m asking you, what is dharma? Dharma means, what is the right way to live? What is the right course of action? So, the Bhagavad Gita is not a book talking about the physical nature of the universe. The Bhagavad Gita is a book talking about the right course of action. Shri Maitreya Dashrama, the Bhagavatam, if we consider, it is spoken to a king who is about to die, Parashat Maharaj.
And the thrust of the Bhagavatam is what? How to prepare your consciousness when you’re going to die. How to remember the eternal when we are ending our stay in the temporal. So now, the whole Bhagavatam is centered on that purpose.
And no book can have all knowledge about everything. And if somebody is reading, say, a book about English grammar, and then you ask, why is there no knowledge of physics in this? It’s a book about English grammar. If you want to study physics, go to some other language.
Galileo famously said that science tells us how the heavens go. Religion tells us how to go to the heavens. How the heavens go means, how do the planets move? That’s what science tells us.
How to go to the heavens means how to raise your consciousness and go to a higher level of existence. So these are two distinct bodies of knowledge. And now some people may say that, oh, scripture also contains the scientific knowledge.
Yeah, it may contain. But if we position scripture and science as competitors, by doing that, we devalue scripture. Scripture is not here to give us scientific knowledge.
Scientific knowledge is a very powerful way of acquiring knowledge, a powerful tool for acquiring knowledge. But science gives us knowledge about a particular portion of reality. What is the portion of reality? That is, science tells us, science operates based on a phenomenon we call as methodological naturalism.
Methodological naturalism means, science provides us material explanations for material phenomena or natural explanations for natural phenomena. That means that Newton saw the fruit falling and now he could have said what made the fruit fall? God made the fruit fall. Now he accepted the existence of God.
He also famously said that the orderly nature of the solar system, this could not have come without a great intelligent being behind that. But when he is looking for an explanation, he is not looking, when he is studying it as a scientist, he is not looking for God as an explanation. He is not rejecting God as an explanation, but he is looking for the material mechanism.
So, a material mechanism and an intelligent agent, these two are not contradictory, they are complementary. It’s like, suppose, so, did all of you have lunch or are you going to have some food after this? So, suppose you had, suppose there is going to be prasad after this. Of course, there is no suppose, prasad is there now.
But now, if something is cooked very nicely, now, you may, somebody may want to know, okay, who cooked this? And that is a valid question. And somebody may want to know what is the recipe for this? What are the ingredients? What is the process? Now, knowing the recipe and knowing the cook, they are two complementary knowledges, isn’t it? They are not contradictory. Just because I have a recipe doesn’t mean I don’t need a cook.
And just because I have a cook doesn’t mean I don’t need a recipe. Both are valid. So, if I want to develop a personal relationship with the person who made that, then I will ask about that and ask about the cook.
But if I also want to cook, I just need the recipe then. So, science basically asks for the recipe. Science doesn’t ask about the cook.
So, at least Newton did not deny the existence of cook. He accepted there is a cook, but I want to know the recipe. But what happened? Subsequent generations of scientists or more you could say, in the subsequent generations, atheists started taking over science.
And then they started saying, if you just have the ingredients, why do you need a cook? So, that’s how science started becoming atheistic. Or rather, atheists started taking over science. Now, even now, in America, a survey that was done, that about 50% of scientists are theists, 50% are atheists.
Now, you can define theism in a loose way. Specifically, you can say personal god or just some kind of organizing intelligence. The point is that we don’t go to scripture to seek scientific knowledge.
We go to scripture to learn about how to raise our consciousness. These are two different branches of knowledge. And if you understand their domains, then the conflict can be significantly avoided.
Now, there might be some areas of conflict and there has to be some intelligent resolution of that. But overall, they’re two different domains of knowledge. One way I put it is that science can make things better.
Spirituality can make people better. Science can transform the outer world. And spirituality can transform our inner world.
Did I answer your question? Any other questions? So, let’s move on. What is the acronym we are discussing? More. M was? Meaning.
Okay, thank you. Now, O is origin. Origin means that why does anything exist at all? Now, atheists often argue this question that, okay, if God made everything, then who made God? And I’ll come to the answer to that question quickly.
But let’s look at the alternative that atheism offers us. Earlier, I said meaning is, say, it’s like a message. It’s like a message written in a particular script.
And the script is making sense, but the whole message is not making sense. So, one way to make sense would be, let’s go behind and look at who sent the message. So, where did the universe, where did everything come from? So, what is the atheistic explanation for this? You can have many big, big terms.
But if you can remove all the names of big theories or whatever, the essential explanation of atheism for the origin of the universe is this. Nothing existed because of nothing. Nothing exploded because of nothing.
And nothing gave rise to everything. Three sentences. That’s all.
Nothing existed because of nothing. Nothing exploded because of nothing. And nothing gave rise to everything.
It’s spectacularly reasonable, isn’t it? This doesn’t make any sense. There’s a scientist cross, not C-R-O-S-E, C-R-A-U-S-S. So, he wrote a book called How Everything Came From Nothing.
And that book was hyped up by atheists. But even there are scientists who are not theists, they reviewed that book. And basically, his whole book, what is he doing? He’s not explaining how everything came from nothing.
He’s basically redefining nothing so that it is something. What is he doing? He says that nothing is a complex quantum mechanical vacuum that requires pages and pages of the most abstract mathematics to describe. And from that nothing, something came out.
But that only begs the question, where did that nothing come from? So, that is not nothing as is ordinarily understood. So, what suggests that putting nothing in double quotes? We don’t explain anything, isn’t it? That’s what they’re doing, redefining nothing. So, basically, within the atheistic worldview, why does anything exist at all? That is not explainable.
And we could further say that, that nothing has to have the potentiality to manifest everything. So, where did it come from? Stephen Hawking was a brilliant scientist. And he was a very poor philosopher.
In his area, he was brilliant. But what happens sometimes, scientists, because of over-confidence, they step out of their territory. So, he wrote a book called The Grand Design.
And what is the thesis of that book, basically? The design is so grand that it does not require a designer. That’s the thesis of the book. But that book is filled with so many terrible paradoxes.
And there are scientists themselves who have had strong issues with the book. So, one of the beginning sentences of the book is, one of the defining sentences of the book is, because of the laws of nature, the universe created itself out of nothing. Now, actually, I have a whole class on this one sentence.
I’ll not go into it. I’ll just talk about a few problems with this. Because of the laws of nature, the universe created itself out of nothing.
Now, here, what is he saying? The universe created itself out of what? Out of nothing. But then, because of the laws of nature, that means the laws of nature are already existing. So, it’s not nothing, isn’t it? If the laws of nature are already existing, then it’s not nothing.
That’s a big problem. And even if we assume the laws of nature are existing, the laws of nature do not do anything. Okay, quick question.
How much is 500 plus 700? 1,200. Do you have 1,200 dollars in your pocket? 500 plus 700 is 1,200. So, you have 1,200 dollars in your pocket.
See, what nonsense, isn’t it? See, the laws of nature, the laws of mathematics don’t do anything. The laws of mathematics only describe the connection between causes and effects. So, if you had 500 dollars in one pocket, and then somebody gives you 700 dollars, then the laws of mathematics will tell you that now you will have 1,200 dollars.
But the laws of mathematics themselves don’t do anything. Now, somebody can be a mathematician who can multiply 13-digit numbers with the twinkling of an eye. But that multiplying is not going to multiply their bank account, isn’t it? The laws of nature don’t do anything.
Say, now the cricket world cup is going to come up soon. Say, we have the world cup finals, and India-Pakistan match is there, and last ball. And we have, who is India’s top batsman? Kohli.
So, Kohli is batting. And last ball, we need a six. And the bowler bowls and he hits.
The ball goes over the boundary. So, sixer, and everybody celebrates. And there’s a post-match interview.
So, they ask, how did you hit a six? He says, by Newton’s laws of motion. Now, that’s not an explanation, is it? Now, by Newton’s laws of motion, you could say, oh, he hit the ball with this force. The ball and the bat collided at this angle.
And that’s why the ball went over the boundary. Newton’s laws of motion don’t explain why the bat existed, why the ball existed, why the match existed, why the round existed, why the boundary existed. Newton’s laws of motion only explain that if all these are existing, and if all these come in coordinated contact, then what will be the result? So, I hope this point is clear.
What are laws of motion? Laws of motion, first of all, there has to be certain things which need to exist on, and they need to interact, both things. There has to be existence, and there has to be interaction. And then the pattern of the interaction can be correlated by the laws of physics.
So, as far as origin is concerned, atheism can’t explain anything at all. So, because of the laws of nature, the universe created itself out of nothing. Well, first of all, nothing is not the laws of nature.
And secondly, laws of nature don’t lead to anything at all. So, the atheistic explanation of nothing simply involves redefining nothing, and it also explains nothing. But now, what about theism, we can say? So, it’s okay, you say, oh, what is the explanation for, you say everything came from God, God is origin, but then where did God come from? It’s a valid question.
But the question is like asking, if you ask who created God, is like asking who made a circle circular? What do you mean? Who made a circle circular? Who made a circle circular? What is the answer? Yeah, mathematics, a little more precise. Yeah, that is the nature, it’s a definition. It’s a definition.
So, when we ask who made God, actually, we are not, we are not, if somebody asks who made a circle circular, then you don’t know the definition of circle. A circle means it will be circular. So, the definition of God is, that God is the cause of all causes, sarva karana karana.
If you are asking who made God, that means we have not understood the idea of God. That’s why when we’re talking about God, we need to begin with definition, not with depiction. Depiction means we might say, oh, in the temple or in the church or somewhere, God is depicted to be like this.
How can this thing be God? That’s, that’s a valid question. But don’t begin with the depiction, begin with the definition. God, by definition, is the source of everything, the cause of all causes.
And if the cause of all causes had a cause, then the cause of the cause of all causes is the cause of all causes. So, wherever this chain stops, wherever the causal chain stops, that is God. So, now does it have to stop somewhere? Can you have just an endless causal chain going on? In atheists also, from the pure point of view of logic, they said it’s not possible.
Because it’s like, say, if you have a 100-story building, you start from the 100 level, this is level 100, it is finite, maybe 15 feet, 20 feet, then you come to the 99th, 98th, 97th. So, each of them is finite. From the, this is, this is again, you know, I am, this is a, this is a class with a PowerPoint and everything, but I am giving a simple argument, a simplified explanation of this argument, that if you have a series of finite objects, at the basis of that finite objects, you have to have something which is different category.
Like, if we have 100 levels, below that you have to have the ground. So, even from scientific perspective, science is very clear that the universe has a beginning. In the Big Bang theory, the specifics apart, the Big Bang theory, what it, what it proved, or what it, or what it was based on, rather not proved, that the universe has a beginning.
Now, scientists are almost near unanimous about, about that one thing, the universe is not eternal. So, if the universe has a beginning, then what was, what was there before the beginning? Or how did that beginning take place? That question comes up. So, atheism does not have any explanation for how everything came from nothing.
Now, does theism have an explanation? You could say that, that also does not make sense. But comparatively speaking, what we could say is that if there is a being with intelligence, and with energy, then from that being, things could manifest. If somebody asks, how did this building come about? Well, there was nothing in the building.
That does not make sense. If there was a, if there was a wealthy builder, with building ingredients, then the building could come about. So, what we say is that God, God is the supreme being who exists outside time and space.
And one of his energies is matter. And with that matter and energy, he creates everything. So, now, what do I mean by he exists outside time and space? It is like, suppose somebody reads a Harry Potter novel.
All of you too old for Harry Potter? What is the current fiction popular? Anything? Sorry? Game of Thrones. So, okay. So, somebody reads a, it is a book or it is a, I thought it is a, it is a, I know it is a TV show or a, it is a movie or a TV show now? Yeah, TV show, I know about it.
Yes. Suppose somebody is reading a, what is that, Hunger Games or something like that? Whatever. So, now, if somebody, okay.
Have you been able to hear me till now? Okay, sure. So, suppose we are, the Game of Thrones. Now, suppose somebody reads the whole book and, okay, this character, this character, this character, and then you come to know the book has an author.
Who is the author of, does it have an author? Sorry? George Martin. George R. R. Martin. George R. R. Martin, okay.
Thank you. So, suppose a child first time looks at the Game of Thrones and he is intrigued by it. And at the end he comes to know, oh, this is the author.
And he starts reading the whole book. Oh, where is the author in the book? This page, this page, this page. I read the whole book, there is no author in the book.
Therefore, the author does not exist. Your brain does not exist. See, the author, if it’s a fictional narrative, then the author does not exist in the narrative.
The author created the timeline, the author created the storyline, the author created the characters, but the author exists outside of it. So, similarly, God creates the, the framework of space and time. And God creates the mechanisms by which this framework interacts.
But God exists outside this framework. So, you might say, in the novel, you can say, oh, this character was born from this character. This character came from this character.
This character came from this character. But if you want to ask, where did the author come from? Well, the author exists in a different category. So, similarly, to ask, where did God come from? God exists outside the cause effect chain that characterizes the material world.
And that is why this question indicates that you have not understood the idea of God. So, that is why I said, asking a question about origin is like asking, what made a circle, or who made a circle circular? Circle by definition circular and God by definition exists outside the chain of cause and effect. So, this, now, you can, we can say that I do not believe in God, why should I believe? Okay, fine.
You do not believe in God, then what are you left with? You have to believe that extremely complex quantum mechanical vacuum existed. And from that, everything came about. And that, from a purely rational perspective, that requires far more length.
How did this quantum mechanical vacuum come about? How does the quantum mechanical vacuum have the potential to create everything? What activated the quantum mechanical vacuum? We do not know that. So, it is, it is a, it is a much, much more simpler and rational hypothesis to suggest that there is one conscious, intelligent being as a source of everything rather than an unconscious vastness of quantum mechanical vacuum, whose origin remains unexplained. Okay.
So, that is with respect to, what is the acronym? Oh, O is origins. So, any questions about this? Okay, that is a good question. So, Krishna exists in the Mahabharata, or Valmiki exists in the Ramayana, doesn’t the author exist in the book? Yeah, see, there are different kinds of books.
Now, if it is an autobiography, obviously, the author has to be there in the book, the author has to be there throughout the book. But if it is a history, then if the author was a character in the period of history being depicted, the author will be there in the book. But if it is either a history in which the author was not, the author did not exist, say, if somebody is writing a history of the 18th century, and they are writing in the 21st century now, then obviously, they cannot be there in the book.
Somebody is writing a fiction, then they cannot be there in the book. So, it depends on what kind of book we are writing. And now, specifically the point of the example of a book which I gave over here is different, the context is different from that context over there.
The context there is that Valmiki, how did he know about the Ramayana? Because Valmiki was contemporaneous. So, Valmiki was there, and Valmiki interacted with Ram also. So, in a sense, that storyline has Valmiki as a character over there.
And when we say that God exists outside time and space, whether it is Krishna coming in the Mahabharata or Krishna coming in the Bhagavad Gita. See, one of the principles of the Bhakti tradition is that God, although God exists outside time and space, that does not mean that he is forced to always exist outside time and space. From outside the fabric of time and space, he can also enter into this fabric.
And that is the whole concept of avatar. Avatar means avatarati, avatarati iti avatar, one who descends from a higher level to this level. So, although God is infinite, he comes within this finite realm.
He comes with a finite form. So, if we say that God is omnipotent, and you say, oh, God is infinite. So, he cannot come in this world.
Well, then how is he omnipotent? He is omnipotent, he can manifest in this world also. So, Krishna was on the lap of mother Yashoda. But when she asked him to open his mouth, he showed the whole universe.
So, although he is within the universe, still the universe is within him. That is his extraordinary ability. So, God can manifest within the fabric of time and space.
But that does not mean that he belongs within that time and space, within that fabric. He manifests over there and he becomes unmanifest over there. And he has his self existence beyond this world eternally.
Thank you, good question. So, let us move on now. R is, we are discussing more, M was meaning, O is origin.
So, R is reason or rationality. This is a little difficult to explain. And maybe, if you do not understand, you can help me to understand what you do not understand.
I will try to explain it. So, now, atheists often say that religion is irrational. And atheism is more rational.
Okay, we will put that aside. But right now, let us look at which worldview gives a reason for reason. What does it mean by reason for reason? If we look at, we consider purely atheistic worldview.
Now, every point that I am making, this is, I am not going to reference this, but there are very respected scientists and philosophers who have talked about all these points. So, if we consider a purely atheistic worldview, where we consider evolution as a completely unguided process, then evolution has shaped us primarily for the purpose of survival. Evolution basically has two purposes, survival and reproduction.
That is the purpose for which all living beings are shaped. Now, with this understanding, if we are geared for survival alone, then we are not biologically wired to know metaphysics. Our biological wiring is not to know the nature of ultimate reality.
Our biological wiring is simply to know the nature of the immediate reality. What can I eat? And how can I mate? How can I protect myself from an attacker? So, even atheists say that, you know, evolution, they do not talk exactly about aahar, nidra, bhaya, maithun, eating, sleeping, mating, defending. But that is what they talk about is for eating, taking care of the body needs, for reproducing and protecting oneself.
This is what evolution has wired us for. So, evolution has not wired us for understanding answers to ultimate questions. Okay, if we are just, you could say biological machines, who are not wired for anything like this.
We are just wired for survival. Then three questions come up. One is, why do we want to know about the ultimate purpose at all? Throughout history, there have been thinkers who have thought, what is the meaning of life? Even now today, we live in an age of extraordinary distraction.
Like today’s age has been described by one social critic as people are distracted from distraction by distraction. We are watching, maybe we are watching one movie, which is a distraction. And from that we are distracted.
Okay, let’s watch another movie. Let’s watch this. So, even in today’s age, where there are so many distractions, still there are people who are asking questions.
What is the meaning of life? What is the point of all this? Not many, but still people are asking. So, if we were simply wired by evolution for survival, first of all, why do we get this question? To whatever extent scientists have studied animals, then no dog asks, why do I exist? They don’t ask the purpose. So, why do humans ask? I say, okay, you know, our brain is more and more developed, our brain is bigger.
Okay, fine. But asking questions about the ultimate purpose of life, what evolutionary advantage does it provide? It doesn’t provide any advantage in terms of surviving or reproducing at all. So, why do we have this capacity at all to ask big questions about life? That’s the first point.
Second is that, why should reason work? Why should reason work means, why should our brains have the capacity for rational thinking? And how do we know that what we think by our rationality, that it is for real, that it is actually like that? You suppose, now you come to know that in the prasad after this program, there are pakodas. And say you like pakodas. So, now, pakodas, they pakad your imagination.
Pakodas catch your imagination and start thinking about it. Then what happens? Your tongue starts salivating. Now, when the tongue starts salivating, is that saliva rational or irrational? Is that saliva true or false? Okay, I mean, saliva is really there.
But that there is saliva necessarily itself talk about reality or unreality. Saliva is just saliva. There is a stimulus and a saliva.
Now, you can say the saliva is true. But suppose you go after that for prasad and you find that actually the idea that pakoda was just a rumor. There are no pakodas.
Then what happens? Then what has happened? The stimulus is not there. So, the point I’m making here is that if our tongue salivates, that saliva itself is just a bodily secretion. It does not tell us anything about the nature of reality.
The secretion of saliva does not tell us whether there is a particular food item out there or not. It may be there, it may not be there. I remember once I was somewhere in Pune or somewhere there and then, you know, the devotees had a program after prasad and I saw there were like 25 big cake pieces.
I thought, this is amazing. Now, how do they make so many cakes? And I said, give me one. I took that cake and then I ate it.
I realized it was bread. It was a thoughtless cake. It looked like a cake, but it was just bread.
So, what happened is our perceptions can go wrong. Now, these are not just perceptions. There can be secretions also within us.
But just because a particular thing is secreted, doesn’t necessarily mean that it reflects anything about the nature of outer reality. Now, within the purely atheistic worldview, even everything that happens in the brain is also just electrochemical secretions in the brain. And just as a secretion in the tongue does not necessarily tell us anything about the nature of reality.
Similarly, a secretion in the brain doesn’t tell us anything about the nature of reality. So, basically, an atheistic worldview is also a brain secretion. And a theistic worldview also is a brain secretion.
So, what happens if we rigidly take an atheistic worldview to its conclusion is that there is no reason for reason. That means there is no reason why reason should be able to give us reason and rationality. Reason should be able to help us understand reality.
Because in you, particular brains, particular ideas secrete the brains. And that’s why you feel this is real. In me, something else secretes it.
The secretes causes brain secretion. And I think this is real. Now, how do we assert? If there is no innate capacity within us for perceiving the truth, if we are simply biological robots, biological machines, then not only does it disprove theism, not only it doesn’t disprove, it doesn’t disprove anything, rather it disproves our capacity to know anything.
We cannot know anything at all. Neither theism nor atheism. But, you know, we all seek to acquire some knowledge.
So, if we, that means, here what I’m trying to say is that if we consider evolution as an absolute truth, evolution undercuts the authority of all knowledge, even our knowledge of science, and even our knowledge of evolution itself. So, if we take an evolutionary worldview to its extreme, it destroys our capacity for knowing anything at all. Because evolution reduces all knowledge to simply brain secretions.
And if the brain secretions come because of some false perception, that’s how the brain secretions are within me. So, I think this is right. You think your brain secretions are happening that way.
You think that is right. There is no ultimate foundation or basis for knowing anything. I’ll give you two examples quickly to illustrate what I’m saying.
If I tell you right now, I can’t speak a single word of English, what would be your reaction? Sorry? Why is it a joke? Exactly, isn’t it? If somebody makes a notice board, and there are like 100 notices on that notice board, and they put a notice board, every notice on this notice board is false. Now, what does that mean? If every notice is false, then even that notice is false, isn’t it? That means other notices can be right. So, these sort of statements are called as self-contradictory statements.
So, self-contradictory statements, the very assertion of that statement is a refutation of that statement. It’s like, suppose if I say, I don’t exist. What do you mean? I have to exist to say I don’t exist, isn’t it? So, each of these statements is a self-contradictory statement.
So, that’s why if we presume an atheistic worldview, and consider evolution as completely an atheistic process, a completely unguided process, then evolution becomes a self-contradictory assertion. If everything is just neurochemical firings and electrochemical secretions, then nothing remains true. Even evolution doesn’t remain true.
You could say that, okay, in the history of evolution, right now, we think this is true. But maybe in the future, our brain chemicals will be secreted in a different way, and we’ll come up with some other answer. So, a rigidly naturalistic worldview leads to the rejection of all knowledge.
We can know nothing about nothing. But none of us function like that. We seek knowledge as a serious pursuit, whether it is for earning money, whether it’s for developing relationships, whether it’s for curing diseases, we seek knowledge seriously.
So, even the most rigid atheist, that’s why even the most hardcore atheist does not live as an atheist. If you were living as an atheist, we would be constantly having doubts. It’s my understanding, right? Am I actually seeing this person? There’s a theist who has written a book called the Atheist Who Didn’t Exist.
So, atheism actually undercuts the existence of everything, including atheism itself. So, that is reason. Was this clear or is it too confusing? Yes, sir.
I think I could summarize it as like rationality is not causation, or I will be incorrect if I say so. Rationality is not causation. Yeah, that statement is true.
It’s like, again, laws of nature don’t cause anything. But what I’m talking about is slightly different. What I was saying is that if we reduce everything entirely to just unguided matter, then unguided material phenomena, they don’t lead to any reliable cognition of anything.
So, what do I mean by, say, for example, some people, their tongue secretes saliva when they eat a particular kind of food. I was in Hawaii a few months ago, and there was a couple who were hosting me. So, that Mataji said she came from Byelorussia.
And their profession there was they would actually catch crabs and make crab food and sell it. Now, crabs are among the few animals which are cooked alive. Fishes, at least, they cut and they’re cooked.
But the crabs, if you cut them or kill them, then they start rotting very fast, germs coming. So, you cut them. You just actually catch a crab and then throw it in hot water.
And you cook it alive. Horrible pain. So, she said, I didn’t even think about it.
When I came to Krishna Consciousness, I realized I just can’t do this. So, the point I’m making is that somebody who has been eating crabs, as soon as they see the crab fluttering and struggling for its life, their mouth will start watering. Now, for us, we might get horrified.
How can anybody be so brutal like this? Now, if that is the food that causes their mouth to water, well, they will eat that food. And somebody else, some other food causes their mouth to water. They will eat that.
Similarly, my brain starts secreting chemicals when I hear this theory. Your brain starts secreting chemicals when you hear that theory. Well, then what is real? No, the brain, apart from brain secretions, apart from tongue secretions, there’s nothing as real.
Because there is nothing, there is no, within the atheistic worldview, there is no conscious observer separate from the tongue secretions or the brain secretions. So, materialism doesn’t leave any room for a conscious observer. And our understandings are simply brain secretions.
So, we are locked into ignorance based on whatever causes stimulation of our brain fluids. That’s what I’m talking about. Einstein himself was very troubled by this implication.
He said that atheism, ultimately, this is one point, you know, you talk about, atheism has many rules and regulations. That’s true at a functional level, but you may say, my free will is restricted. I was at an interfaith meeting and then we were talking about how young people perceive religion.
So, there was a Christian pastor and he said that they need some service. So, one young boy, he says, what do you think about priests? They asked this question. So, this young boy said, a priest is someone who is constantly worried that someone somewhere is having some fun.
So, that was their conception. Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this. So many rules and regulations.
Now, that’s what you may feel that religion restricts and puts rules on us. But actually, the very fact that rules are told to us means there is an implication that we have free will and with our free will, we should follow a particular rule. But atheism rejects the existence of our free will itself.
Atheism, far from giving us freedom, takes away our free will itself. Because atheism says, we are simply biological robots and we are programmed in a particular way and that’s how we will act. So, Einstein was very troubled by the implications of rigidly atheistic worldview.
He said that the Nazis killed millions and millions of people. And Einstein himself was persecuted by Nazis. That’s how he came to America.
So, he said that you couldn’t hold the Nazis responsible if we were having a purely atheistic worldview. Because he says, their biological programming was such that they’re programmed to kill. Now, does anyone function like that? You know, if I suddenly come up to one of you and slap you in the face.
He says, why did you slap me? Well, my biological programming told me to slap you. You slap me back. My biological programming told me to slap you.
See, all of us, we hold each other accountable for our actions. The systems of justice are based on the presumption of free will. But a purely materialistic, reductionistic worldview leaves us with no free will.
Because we are just our brain secretions and our bodily actions. There is no conscious being with free will. That’s why there’s no way we can acquire knowledge.
So, reason and the capacity for reasoned reflection and the capacity for reasonable decision making, all of these are taken away by an atheistic worldview. Okay, that’s R. I’ll conclude quickly with E. E is effect. Now, by effect, ultimately, we want to live in the world.
And which worldview helps us better to live more effectively. Now, of course, religion often comes in the press for bad reasons, for all the bad, negative reasons. One of them is terrorism.
And oh, because of religion, violence happened here. Because of religion, violence happened there. Because of religion, violence happened there.
Yeah, it’s true. And it’s unfortunate. But what is the solution? Is atheism the solution? Will atheism bring paradise on earth? We try that.
We all talk about World War I, World War II, or terrorist attacks, which killed so many people. But atheism was tried as a state religion in Soviet Russia and China. And from the 1920s onwards, in about 1987 or whatever, in these two countries, 100 million corpses resulted.
And that’s a conservative estimate. 100 million is more than the number of people who were killed in World War I, World War II, and all other wars in the 20th century. So, atheistic regimes killed far more people.
Now, World War I and World War II, religion was not a factor in that. It was purely territorial grabbing. Power, hunger for power.
But even if you consider all other wars combined together, atheistic regimes killed people within themselves. Anybody who was suspected of being a dissident, just killed. Had an organized killing.
And this same lady, she told me that she’s now married to a Prabhupada disciple. She was 60, 65. She told me that she came to America because at that time, when she started, she got a Bhagavad Gita from Zambia, she started reading it.
And then at that time, in the Soviet world, every third person was an informer. So, in your home itself, there’s an informer. And she was, just because of that, she was fired from her job.
And she was told, unless you stop going for these meetings, no, we will fire your father from his job. And we will ensure that your children will not, that your other brothers and sisters will not be allowed to go to any schools. They’ll be kicked out of the schools and your life will be hell.
So, she decided at that time, instead of doing that, she just left the country. She came to Israel and then came to America. But thousands and thousands of people were persecuted and killed.
So, the point I’m making here is that history shows us very clearly that human beings are capable of violence. And those who are violent, those who are Rajas and Tamas, they will look for some reason to be violent. And religion can become a reason for violence.
Atheism can become a reason for violence. Materialism can become a reason for violence. Race can become a reason for violence.
Caste can become a reason for violence. So, there can be, there can be, there are people who will be violent. And if we consider, as I said, if you compare, religion has been a prevalent force in human history for quite some time.
Our oldest artifacts that science has found are religious artifacts. Among the oldest are the religious artifacts. So, religion has been around there for a very long time.
And again, see, what we are trying, we are not trying to, we can’t conclusively prove what is right or what is wrong. We’re saying what requires more faith. So, according to, if science and the evolutionary theory is true, then what does evolution do? Evolution eliminates that which is unfavorable for survival.
All those things that are unfavorable for survival, evolution eliminates that. And those things that are favorable for survival, evolution pretends that. So, religion, in the history of humankind, has had tremendous staying power.
You know, people who lived thousands of years ago, they lived in far more, we might think, oh, terrorists are there and terrorists may kill so many people. But we are not afraid of a tiger pouncing on us and killing us. So, people in the past lived in far tougher situations than what we are living, at least in the historically documented past that we have.
And did it have idle time to just think about some belief? If that belief were the burdening people, those having that belief would have been eliminated. So, if religion has survived for so many millennia, it must have some utility. Atheism has had power just for, it’s increasing in power just for about a century or so.
And the consequences have been devastating. Wherever atheism has been tried as a state religion, it has caused utter devastation. And this has been well documented that the, now somebody may say, actually, that was not atheism.
That was communism. But communism was strongly founded in atheism. And the persecution was very much targeted in an organized way against religion.
Going beyond such extreme examples of say religious violence or atheistic violence. If you look at a universal level, scientists have found there’s a handbook of religion health, which has compiled together 3000 studies done by people research studies, researchers from all over the world. And it’s published by Oxford.
It’s Oxford Handbook of Religion Health, they call it. So, it is the single most authority to study on the correlation between religion and health that has been done till now. And it’s not just a study, it’s a meta study, which brings it together various studies across the world.
And what they have found is every single study indicates that religious people are more mentally and physically healthy than irreligious people. Whether it is in terms of likelihood of getting heart attacks or strokes, or whether it is in terms of depression or suicidal tendencies, or in terms of sub-vulnerability to addictions. Religious people have it better.
In fact, this has been so well documented that there is published an article called that it was that on average, religious people live 11 years longer than non-religious people. And what do you mean, how do they define religious? They cannot really go into people’s hearts and look at their belief system. It’s just that if people attend a religious program once a week, that level of religious commitment they have, it seems to have tremendously positive effects on health.
And in today’s world also, I’m not going to go into the difference between the religion and spirituality in an elaborate way, but we see that in today’s world, more and more people are turning towards something higher in life. Meditation, mindfulness, so many studies are proving that they benefit. And many people were not able to be, have their stress treated by conventional scientific medicines.
They’re finding that they’re better able to manage their life and their emotions by meditation. I was in California and Silicon Valley. So I spoke at, I spoke there at Google as well as Intel and Salesforce.
So Salesforce has a whole, whole area devoted to meditation. And they have regularly mindfulness seminars conducted over there. And there are so many studies that are documented that such exercises actually improve the health of people.
And ultimately, the company is not concerned about what you believe. The company is concerned about how you perform. And from their performance perspective, people who do, are a part of these exercises, say mindfulness, meditation, they, the company has to pay less health insurance for them.
They perform better. So instead of just looking at some isolated examples of extremists, there can be extremist atheists, there can be extremist religionists. But if you look at the overall effect, the theism has a far greater potential to transform ourselves for the better.
In terms of the effect that we have, we can actually make greater sense of life and greater impetus to transform our life. With one last point, I’ll conclude that somebody may say that, oh, but you know, you believe in some God and then as you said, God has expectations. God lets you down.
You devote yourself to God and then some terrible thing happens to you. So when the atheist uses the ultimate argument against religion, they call it the problem of evil. If there is a good God, why are so many bad things happening in life? Why do bad things happen to good people? So once I was asked this question when I was speaking in MIT, So I told, I answered that, OK, why should bad things not happen to good people? What do you mean? Good things should happen to good people, bad to bad.
Why? What do you mean by? So no, if there is no God, then why should there be any correlation between our actions and our results? If there is no God, there is no organizing principle that any action can lead to any result. So the problem within the atheistic worldview, you cannot have the problem of evil itself because everything is just interaction of chemicals. There is nothing except subatomic particles moving according to impersonal forces.
So what is good? What is evil? And if one particular particle collides with another particular particle and something gets destroyed. Within the atheistic worldview, there is no reason why action should correlate with a particular action and correlate with a particular result. So the very fact that we talk about cause-effect correlation, that itself requires a theistic worldview.
So in terms of effect, bad things can happen to anyone. And there is a bigger spiritual framework which can explain this. That’s not what our thrust over here.
But the thrust is over here that atheism and theism, when bad things happen, nobody has an explanation for that. In terms of our illegit perception. Now atheism might say just, oh, why do bad things happen? Oh, the world is rotten.
This is how nature is. This is how it is. Live with it.
A theist may say, okay, that, okay, it’s, you know, it’s God’s will. Or he might say that it’s karma from a previous life. We don’t know either way for ourselves.
But the difference is that in both cases, the problems that we face, they are as it is. So there is disorder in the world. But, you know, whenever there is disorder, we don’t lose faith in the principle that there is order in the universe.
What do I mean by this? Suppose suddenly we go to a doctor because of some pain and doctor says you’ve got cancer. We horrify. Now cancer is one of those diseases for which the cause is almost very difficult.
In many cases, cancer’s cause is very difficult to know. But now after that, what do we do? Is there any treatment for this? Now, as soon as we ask, is there any treatment for this? What do we mean by that? That means we are still accepting cause and effect. I just don’t know what caused this.
I don’t know what caused the cancer, but still I believe in cause effect. And therefore, I want to know by what effect this cancer can be removed. What medicine should I take? Maybe this will be removed.
So there are some times in our life when some things don’t make sense. But we don’t reject cause effect connection just because some things don’t make sense. We still keep functioning.
So atheism has no right to ask the question, why do bad things happen to good people? Because atheism has no rational explanation for why action should correlate with result. Anything can happen to anyone. Why shouldn’t there be any order in the universe? Why should good people get good things? Atheism has no explanation for that.
So it’s like it’s asking a question. That question has an assumption and that assumption has no explanation in atheism. So atheism does not remove any problems.
Theism also you could say, now some people will say, who’s seen karma? I don’t believe in that. That’s okay. They’re not going over there.
When bad things happen, if we understand that there is some order in the universe and theism tells us that, yes, there are problems, there are many troubles in life, but there is an ultimate purpose. If we live faithfully, if we live in a God-centered way, we will grow through this. We’ll grow through this and we will evolve spiritually.
So atheism does not remove problems. Atheism only removes the hope that problems have a purpose. What does atheism do? It only removes the hope that problems have a purpose.
And it just sentences us to a very gloomy, pointless existence. And many of the atheists, like Frederick Leach, who was a famous atheist, who said God is dead. He also said that life is terrible.
So he said the best is if you are never born. Second best is if you died young. The worst thing that can happen in your life is if you live for a long time.
Alberto Camus was another atheist and he said that the world is filled with misery. Therefore, the only philosophical question worth asking is whether to commit suicide today or tomorrow. So, atheism removes any hope for life.
Problems everybody has to face, but at least atheism gives us the that there is an ultimate purpose, there is an ultimate plan. We are meant to evolve spiritually. And for our own living, having some purpose, having some orientation is very important.
Just as much as our body needs physical nutrition, our heart needs metaphysical orientation. What am I living for? What is the purpose of life? Some purpose we all need to have. But atheism removes all purpose.
Atheism provides us a meaningful purpose. And thus, atheism is much more reasonable than atheism. Atheism requires far more faith than atheism.
I’ll quickly summarize what I spoke. I spoke on this topic of why atheism requires more faith than theism. And I used the acronym.
What was it? MORE. M-O-R-E. M was? Meaning.
So in that I talked about how Steven Weinberg said that the more the universe becomes comprehensible, the more it becomes, more it seems to be meaningless. It’s like some message in some unfamiliar script. The more we decipher the script, the more we start making sense of the script and the words and sentences, but the message seems meaningless.
Something is missing. So what science does is that science offers us sensible explanations about why things happen within the universe. Why do fruits fall? Why do the temperatures rise? Why do certain objects conduct electricity? But within an atheistic worldview, science can’t explain, or atheism can’t explain the ultimate purpose of everything.
So we have islands of meaning, but we are drowning in an ocean of meaninglessness. So that is M. Then O was? Origin. Yeah.
So in origin I talked about how atheism explains how everything came from nothing simply by redefining nothing so that it is something. And it’s a complex quantum mechanical vacuum, which is certainly not nothing. The atheistic story of the universe is everything came from, nothing existed because of nothing, nothing exploded because of nothing, and nothing gave rise to everything.
Now what theism tells us is that where did God come from? That is like asking what made a circle circle? It’s an intrinsic definition. God is the cause of all causes. He exists outside the causal chain, just as the author of a fictional story exists outside the story.
So now both require faith, but the idea of an unconscious quantum mechanical vacuum creating everything is eminently irrational. By saying that because of the laws of nature, the universe created itself out of nothing. Well, it’s not nothing in the laws of nature existing and the laws of nature themselves don’t create anything.
They only explain the connection between cause and effects. The universe 500 plus 700 is 1200 doesn’t create $1200 in your pocket. So there has to be money already existing.
So relatively speaking, for the explanation of origin, the atheistic explanation requires far more faith. The reason was that if we consider evolution to be true and we consider evolution to be an entirely unguided process, so there’s nothing except matter existing, which is what atheism holds, then what happens? Our everything is simply just brain chemicals, just chemical secretion. And chemical secretion in the body is directed simply for survival and reproduction, not for answering life’s ultimate questions.
And why do we have that search for understanding, seeking ultimate answers? And secondly, how can we know if anything is true or not? Your tongue might get secreted on seeing a particular food. Somebody else’s tongue might get secreted saliva on seeing crabs boiling in water alive. So now, what is right, what is wrong? Just by the tongue secretion, you cannot say that.
So similarly, the brain secretions are all that happens whenever we analyze anything. So somebody’s brain secretion might happen when they study theism. Somebody’s brain secretion might happen when they study atheism.
So we don’t, a rigidly materialistic worldview leaves us with no reasonable reason for believing that our understanding is correct. All that we have is brain secretions. So that way, the rigidly materialistic worldview becomes self-contradictory.
Like saying, I don’t, I can’t speak a single word of English. And we may say that religion is restrictive because it puts limits on our freedom. But atheism actually denies our free will itself because we are just biological robots.
And Einstein was also troubled by this prospect. And lastly, E was effect. In terms of effect, I talk about three things.
If we consider extremist violence, then like earlier I said, there are operational values and fundamental values. So there can be atheists who are good people and there can be theists who are bad people. But in the cross-section of human society, there’ll be good and bad people both.
And if the bad people happen to be atheists, they will use theism for committing violence. If the bad people happen to be atheists, they’ll use atheism for committing violence. So at least in recent human history, the track record of atheism is far worse than the track record of theism throughout human history in terms of murderous wars, murderous campaigns that have happened.
100 million corpses in less than a century. No religion has that track record. All religions combined together don’t have that track record.
But if you put aside extremism, if you consider normal society, normal living, so the Oxford Handbook of Science and Religion, Religion and Health has 2000 studies combined together that religious practice leads to better physical and mental health, including a longer lifespan. And lastly, in terms of effects, all of us face problems in life. Atheists ask, why do good things happen to bad people? Atheism doesn’t have any right to ask this question because atheism doesn’t explain why action should be correlated with reaction.
So, but even if we face problems and even if we don’t have a satisfactory explanation for this within our framework, but still what atheism is, it doesn’t remove the problems. It only removes the hope that the problems have a purpose. Whereas religion is okay, there are problems, but they’re all ultimately meant for our growth.
And that gives us a purpose for our living. So just as our body needs physical nutrition, our heart needs metaphysical orientation. And that is provided much more by a theistic worldview than an atheistic worldview.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. So thank you for surviving this complicated class.
Thank you.