Why do devotees quote as authorities scientists who belong to Christian-funded institutes?

Transcript

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thank you Hare Krishna question in your article on the God particle you quote David Berlinski but he is belongs to the intelligent design movement which is actually funded by Christian organization by Christians so why do you quote a person like him answer where is it written that Christians are to be treated like untouchables intellectually that we can’t quote what they are saying Shri Prabhupada during his time he wrote to the Pope at that time and he said that actually we have to counter the spread of atheism and therefore we should work together of course the Pope unfortunately did not respond because the Pope at that time Catholic Church was very big and SCOAN was not so big at that time recently devotees have met the Pope and they are working and trying to do some interfaith work together also but the point is Bhaktivinoda Thakur also said that the religion shouldn’t think that they are competitors they should know that they have a common enemy and that is materialism and atheism so if anybody is using the method of science to establish the glory of God then that is a good endeavor and now as far as discovery institute is concerned the intelligent design movement is concerned actually it is the criticism of the atheistic fanatics like Richard Dawkins and others they say that intelligent design is simply Christian creationism in tuxedo dressed better they say that it is just Christian creationism in new garb but the fact is that it is not just Christian creationism they are not trying to prove 5000 or 6000 year old earth they are not trying to directly prove the literal meaning of the Bible what they are talking about is let’s go through science and through science let’s try to understand what the scientific evidence is so the important point is what is a person’s content of the argument now the source can be anywhere from anywhere if we are going to say that ok because this person is a Christian and therefore this is the attitude of the atheistic scientist they say that because you are a Christian that’s why you are going to try to prove you are right and if you are going to prove that you are right then that means your Christian beliefs are right you are trying to prove the rightness of your Christian beliefs and therefore you are not open minded but the fact is actually everybody’s ideas come from somewhere so now if somebody has if anybody is supposed to go and do research only by being by being ideologically empty then even the atheists should be banned from commenting on science because they are coming with an ideological preconception so anybody suppose is doing research on reincarnation so anybody who believes in reincarnation if they consider biased then anybody who disbelieves in reincarnation should also be considered biased because that is also a belief so everybody will come with some belief and if we are going to if we are going to reject people just because they come from particular belief systems then that should be applied not just to religion that should be applied to atheism also because ultimately atheism is also a belief system so that is something which the atheists will be appalled at the idea because it completely disrupts the strategy so we should focus primarily on the content of the arguments and what I have quoted in the God particle article is simply a fact which is accepted even by mainstream scientists that the connection between the world that we experience where there is colour, there is form there is beauty and there is so many sensory stimuli over here and the world that is revealed by physics which is where there are no shapes there are no colours and there are just fundamental particles which are just moving around endlessly and endlessly there is just no link between these two worlds so David Berlinski draws out the contrast between these two in a very eloquent and profound way and that’s why I quote him over there so when we are using the work of any scientist what is most important is to look at the content and whether that content is helping us to convey an important truth so if it is helping us to convey the truth then it is definitely valuable and that’s what we should focus on and if the truth is something which is debatable then that is also a part of science but in this case the truth is not even debatable so it is entirely wrong to label somebody and then treat that person as an intellectual untouchable and reject all the intellectual intellectual products of that person so what we should see is what is the reasoning, what is the evidence that is being used and if that is strong then that should be accepted so that is the criteria that Srila Prabhupada also used when he would quote some empirical scholars and philosophers and that is a criteria that is used even by secular scholars they quote others based on not just that person’s ideological affirmations but primarily based on the content of what is being said so if the content is meaningful there is no nothing wrong in quoting such a person. Thank you. Question from Varun Chawla Praveen