“Science and Atheism” (SB 3.18.5)

TRANSCRIPT:  Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 3, Chapter 18, Text 5. “Science and Atheism.” Alachua - Summer, 1996 / (034)

[Text 5]

The demon continued: When You fall dead with Your skull smashed by the mace hurled by my arms, the demigods and sages who offer You oblations and sacrifice in devotional service will also automatically cease to exist, like trees without roots.

Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda: 

Demons are very much disturbed when devotees worship the Lord in the prescribed ways recommended in the scriptures. In the Vedic scriptures, the neophyte devotees are advised to engage in nine kinds of devotional service, such as to hear and chant the holy name of God, to remember Him always, to chant on beads Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare, to worship the Lord in the form of His Deity incarnation in the temples, and to engage in various activities of Kṛṣṇa consciousness to increase the number of Godly persons for perfect peace in the world. Demons do not like such activity. They are always envious of God and His devotees. Their propaganda not to worship in the temple or church but simply to make material advancement for satisfaction of the senses is always current. The demon Hiraṇyākṣa, upon seeing the Lord face to face, wanted to make a permanent solution by killing the Personality of Godhead with his powerful mace. The example of an uprooted tree mentioned here by the demon is very significant. Devotees accept that God is the root of everything. Their example is that just as the stomach is the source of energy of all the limbs of the body, God is the original source of all energy manifested in the material and spiritual worlds; therefore, as supplying food to the stomach is the process to satisfy all the limbs of the body, Kṛṣṇa consciousness, or developing love of Kṛṣṇa, is the sublime method for satisfying the source of all happiness. The demon wants to uproot this source because if the root, God, were to be checked, the activities of the Lord and the devotees would automatically stop. The demon would be very much satisfied by such a situation in society. Demons are always anxious to have a Godless society for their sense gratification. According to Śrīdhara Svāmī, this verse means that when the demon would be deprived of his mace by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, not only the neophyte devotees but also the ancient sagacious devotees of the Lord would be very much satisfied.

So, this is the desire of the demonic personalities. So, here we have Hiraṇyākṣa, who is having a direct confrontation with Lord Varāha, who’s an incarnation of Godhead. And he would like to destroy him so that the activities of the Lord's devotees would also be destroyed. Just like when you cut the roots of the tree, the flowers and leaves and so forth will wilt. So indeed, we see this mentality manifest in many different forms at the present time. Actually the modern philosophy of science is being used by persons of demonic mentality to achieve the same basic goal. So, in and of itself, there's no reason that science has to play this particular role. Basically, the word science means knowledge, coming from a Latin root. You see the same word in nescience. We have this word nescience, which is the opposite of knowledge, or ignorance.

So, the basic idea of science is to observe nature and see what's happening. The idea is that if you make correct observations you'll have correct knowledge of what is going on in nature. And that seems innocuous enough. But science has been taken over as the vehicle for presenting, basically, the philosophy of atheism. And the idea is to destroy God at the root through philosophy. Of course nowadays, it's not possible to kill God by throwing a mace. Of course, it never was possible. But at least Hiraṇyākṣa thought he had a good chance of doing it, because lord Varāha was pretending to be an embodied being who you might be able to kill by throwing a mace. Of course, actually, that wouldn't work, because Hiraṇyā... Lord Varāha was a being of a somewhat different nature than Hiraṇyākṣa was thinking. 

[5:37]

But nonetheless, he thought he had a good opportunity of smashing the skull of God with a mace. So nowadays, the technique is to smash God using philosophy and to give credence to your philosophy using the findings of science. So scientists have made certain advances using their particular insights into nature. It's rather interesting that modern science began with a theological concept. The original idea behind modern science is that God is a mathematician. God is supremely rational and the language of God is geometry. Well, this is perhaps not exactly correct, but at least it is certainly a theistic concept. It assumes that there's a Supreme Being who thinks and is rational and, in fact, who has an interest in mathematics. So this idea was very prominent at about the time of the protestant reformation, as it's called. Various pioneering scientists adopted this point of view, and it led them to think that they could successfully investigate nature using mathematics. Because after all, if you think that nature is just something inscrutable and complicated with no rhyme or reason to it, then you won't have any great motive for studying nature, because what's the use – it’s just too complicated. But this idea that nature is a very rational system created by a rational being using comprehensible mathematical principles, this led to the idea that you could study nature fruitfully and learn something about it. 

So scientists proceeded to do that and, lo and behold, they had a lot of success. They found that it was really possible to explain a lot of things in nature using mathematics. So they ultimately came up with what is called the mechanistic picture of nature. This was really developed most prominently by Isaac Newton, of undying fame. So according to the mechanistic picture, you can write down certain equations describing what is there in nature and how it's going to change with time. And by calculating according to these equations, you will know exactly what's going to happen in the material world. So it turned out that this can be done to a very large extent. People have had a lot of success using this basic approach to understanding nature. 

So unfortunately, this led to an erosion of the original theistic standpoint of the scientists. The idea was initially developed that God has created the world according to a mathematical scheme. Then the idea was: Well, the world is running according to a mathematical scheme, and this really leaves no role for God except as the original mathematician. Ultimately the idea was: Well, there's just the world that runs according to mathematics. We just dropped God out of the picture altogether. And you might wonder, well, why this development took place? It could be argued that basically, it's due to the basic mentality that we see here in Hiraṇyākṣa. Namely there were people who wanted to eliminate God and so they took this mechanistic philosophy, and basically, they cut it at the root. The idea is the original concept was you have God at the root of the material world. God is rational and so God creates a world that can be understood in rational terms. Another aspect of this that I didn't mention is the idea that God created the human mind to be rational also. So, the reason that the human mind can understand nature through mathematics is that God created nature through mathematics and God also created the human mind, which can understand mathematics, and so that's why we're able to understand nature with this kind of investigation.

[10:48]

So this philosophy, or worldview, is basically cut at the root by eliminating God in the picture. So the idea is somehow you have mathematical equations, which are not known by anybody – nobody ever thought of them. In some sense they just exist, some sort of abstract sense. We won't say exactly what that means, but anyway the universe follows these equations. And as for us, well, we evolved from primordial slime, by a very long and gradual process. And somehow or other primordial slime, over a period of maybe three and a half billion years, gave rise to beings that can understand these equations which exist in some sense. We don't know exactly in what sense they exist, but at least once the primordial slime created us through the process of evolution, then finally the equations could be thought of by someone. And that was the first time these equations were actually thought of. Meanwhile, the universe was following these equations since time immemorial. 

So this is the present philosophy, and there are scientists who've noticed that there's something strange about this philosophy. For example, there's a Nobel prize-winning physicist, Eugene Wigner, who wrote an article many years ago on the unusual effectiveness of mathematics in describing nature. And he certainly knew about this, because he was a physicist. But he said, “Well, it's really quite unaccountable and remarkable that we can write down a few little, simple equations and then we find that nature is moving and transforming according to these equations with as much precision as we're able to observe, using our various measuring instruments. This is very odd; in fact it's unaccountable as to why this should be.” In fact, even Stephen Hawking, the rather famous physicist, holder of the Lucasian chair at Cambridge University, which was once held by Newton himself… anyway, and of course he's become famous because of having a degenerative disease of the nervous system. 

But anyway, he was saying that, “Well, we have these equations and the universe seems to be following these equations completely. Therefore, we've eliminated God from the picture.” He said that, “The pioneering scientists denied God and they got away with it.” That's one of the interesting phrases in his best-selling book on the subject; Brief History of Time I think is the title. But anyway, he said, “Well, we know that nature is following these equations, but what is it that creates a universe for the equations to follow? I mean to follow the equations.” In other words, suppose you have some equations existing in some abstract sense, we know not what it is. Why should anything be following the equations? Why all these, you know, 1080 subatomic particles? Why do they actually exist following these equations? This is unaccountable.” And he said, “I don't think we'll ever find an answer to this one.” 

[15:00] 

So, it is sort of recognized by some of the scientists that there's a bit of a problem here. And the problem is that the original intelligible philosophy in fact got cut at the root and the original source of the equations, the divine engineer, was eliminated from the picture. So, of course, you could say, “Well, this was done by what's called Occam's razor.” The idea of Occam's razor is that we eliminate superfluous hypotheses. Anything that we don't need in order to explain things we remove by mercifully slashing it with Occam's razor. So, the idea is that one can remove God; for example, one of the pioneers of this was a mathematician named Laplace, who was very famous. It turns out he was also a friend of Napoleon. So he wrote a book on celestial mechanics in which he explained the orbits of the planets, using Newtonian mathematics. 

So, anyway, Napoleon one day was leafing through his book and he said, “Well, I see that you've made no mention of the creator in your book.” And Laplace is said to have replied, “Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis.” So it's interesting, by the way, that Newton himself thought the hypothesis of God was necessary in order to explain the motion of the planets. What Newton observed was that it would seem that the motion of the planets in their orbits might get disordered after some period of time and he thought that God would be necessary to readjust the motions, so that everything would run nicely.

So Laplace of course didn't think that that would be necessary, and he spent a great deal of effort trying to show that the solar system would be mathematically stable. That is, that it would just run automatically according to Newton's laws forever. This was his ambition. Curiously enough, it has turned out within recent years that the motion of it... of three or more bodies, according to Newton's law, are apparently unstable. This has now been demonstrated mathematically. There's a thing called deterministic chaos, in which you can show that the trajectories of objects governed by certain equations will become wild and disordered. It turns out that this applies to the motion of planets according to Newton's laws. So in fact, we do not know that the solar system is stable. The planets could go out of their orbits and collide with one another and all that sort of thing.

So, in any case, this idea of eliminating God is very much there. What you will see is that the persons of demonic mentality basically start with their conclusion and they look for evidence to support it. And if evidence is brought forward which goes against the conclusion, then the person who's attached to this particular demonic point of view will become angry and reject the unwanted evidence. In fact, there's a great deal of evidence indicating, for example, design within nature. But you will find that this evidence is not accepted in the world of modern science. In fact, it is considered to be anathema. If you, in the context, say, of modern biology, bring up evidence for design, basically you are immediately kicked out. You probably won't get tenure. And your outlets of publication will be terminated. Your grant applications will also be rejected, and so forth. This actually happens. There are many cases in which it's turned out that a person in the realm of modern biological science was found to harbor creationist notions. And they were kicked out of school, didn't get their degree, and so on and so forth. So, this kind of thing goes on. 

[20:11]

So, anyway, well another interesting thing that came up recently not too long ago, I was on a radio show, which is broadcast from Baltimore, Maryland. And this was a show dealing with the book Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science, that I wrote a few years back. But one topic that came up on the show was the negative theological argument. And it's kind of interesting to consider that. Actually, I haven't thought about it for a few years. But the interviewer sprang it on me, right in the middle of the show. But what this deals with is the following thing: one of the main supports with the theory of evolution is that if you look at different organisms, you'll find that many of them have rather defective bodily forms, in many different respects. Of course, you can see this. Just look at all the animals that are dead by the side of the road, around here.

Organisms have all kinds of sort of arbitrary funny designs within their bodies. The human body is like that also. We walk around on two legs, but the arrangement of the muscles down here is not very good so sometimes we get hernias; and the... there's so many different defects. So, the argument then is, “Well, if God is supremely intelligent, then God certainly would not create things like this. But things are like this. Therefore, there's no God and therefore it must be that everything evolved.” This is the reasoning which is used – very standard line of reasoning. Darwin once put it by saying that “Are we to believe that God created several hundred million years of vile molluscan creatures?” Just consider a mollusk for example. Would God create a mollusk? You can ask yourself: Would a Supreme Intelligent Being create this little creature between two shells that basically eats sewage and so forth? 

So this is the argument that is made. So the point though is this is actually a theological argument. It is based on underlying ideas of what God must be and what God must do. Therefore, this argument falls solidly in the domain of theology. In fact, it's a variation of the argument from evil for the non-existence of God. The basic argument is: Well, there's imperfection and suffering and evil within this world – if God is perfect, he wouldn't have done that. Basically, this is a theology that says that God could only create the spiritual world and not the material world. If there's a material world, that just stands as a disproof of the existence of God. So, this is a theological argument. It can be answered only by theological arguments. You see, if you try to answer this argument within the domain of empirical science, you can't really answer it. But you can answer it theologically. But what the scientist does is he presents this theological argument as science and he demands a scientific answer. And if there's no scientific answer forthcoming, then he says, “Well, the argument holds and therefore there's no God and everything happened according to evolution.” So, a comment on the negative theological argument.

 So, in any case... let's see... oh! It's interesting also, by the way, that theological arguments do inevitably come up in the context of scientific questions. I had an experience of that recently when I gave a lecture at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, up in Massachusetts, I guess, near Boston. I had given a basic description of how the world might work, in which mind is introduced into the world as a fundamental agency causing things to happen. And you can do this within the context of science, because one can talk about different kinds of energy and it is also possible to talk about a mind energy, just like Kṛṣṇa in Bhagavad-gītā speaks of the different separated energies. There's gross matter and then there's mind, intelligence, and false ego. 

[25:41] 

So, I was presenting a basic model of that form and various questions were asked by the students. And lo and behold, the question finally arose of how the conscious entity became entangled in matter. In other words, this is the origin of the conditioned state of the jiva question. So I said, “Well, you've raised the theological question and so I have to give you a theological answer, which in fact would be related to the theological answer you would give for the negative theological argument in the theory of evolution. Basically, it's the question of how imperfect conditioned consciousness ever came to being... came to be in the first place. If everyone is a perfected jiva soul serving Kṛṣṇa in Vaikuṇṭha or something like that.

So the... there was some scientific skeptics in the audience who were horrified that I was bringing up theology. And this one lady especially was quite upset and she said, “The whole purpose of your presentation is just to present this theology concerning the soul.” And of course, she was right. But I pointed out though, that actually all of these different things fit together – the theological questions and the scientific questions all fit together inextricably. So that if you follow the strand of scientific reasoning far enough, you're going to wind up confronting basic theological issues, which means that science is a strictly mechanistic, empiric endeavor. If it is followed to its ultimate limits, you find it branching over into other domains of discourse: theological and philosophical domains. So science cannot be all-encompassing in and of itself, within its mathematical and empirical framework. It has boundaries that lead over into other realms of discourse. So, I’ll stop there. Are there any questions or comments? Murli? 

Question:  [unclear]

Answer:  Well, yeah well, the first point of course is that if nature is following laws, the laws of the physicists cannot be the last word on the laws of nature because there are phenomena that don't follow the laws of physics. And in fact, physics has shut out a whole category of phenomena as impossible, because they don't follow the laws of physics. The reasoning of the physicists is: these so-called phenomena don't follow the laws of physics therefore, they don't exist. Now, another way to look at it is: these phenomena exist, therefore something's wrong with the laws of physics. So that's another way to look at it. But that would be the way... the approach that we would take. Now there are, for example, these mystic siddhis: prāpti-siddhi, aṇimā-siddhi, laghimā-siddhi, and so on and so forth. You can show plenty of empirical evidence that these things really do exist. And you can find names for them in all kinds of different languages of different societies all over the world. For example, more or less in English, the word for what happens in prāpti-siddhi, would be ‘apport’. One speaks of an object being apported from point A to point B without crossing the space in between, which is what happens in prāpti-siddhi. 

[30:19]

And this of course is impossible according to the laws of physics except for electrons which can tunnel from point A to point B without crossing the space in between; but it works for electrons only, not for large objects, in quantum physics. So the question then comes: Well, could you formulate a series of equations which would also explain prāpti-siddhi, laghimā-siddhi, and all these different things? Possibly so, but then the question is: Well, how does mind come into the picture? Well, mind is a kind of energy – there's mind, intelligence, and false ego, which are material energies described in Bhagavad-gītā for example. Could one ultimately have equations that would govern how these energies operate? Maybe so and maybe not. Nobody has done it, that's for sure. It is not necessarily the case that these things can all be explained by mathematical equations. It is possible that equations might not exist that account for these phenomena, or these energies. It's merely a working hypothesis that ultimately you can use equations to describe anything. 

So, ultimately what it amounts to is that it's a matter of experience. If you find that equations work in a certain area, okay, that's fine; but if you assume that they work in some other area, it's not necessarily so. In fact, even when it comes to the motion of planets, we don't know that is describable by mathematical equations over the long run. You can write down Newton's equations, and you can integrate them and calculate a table called an “ephemeris” for the motion of the planets. Over a period of a few years, astronomical observations will show that that ephemeris is very accurate. That can be done. It's part of the day-to-day functioning of astronomers to deal with that sort of thing. But what were the planets really doing in 2,000,003 BC? We don't know; we haven't the faintest idea. Could it be that the exact motions of the planets over a period of a million years might not follow any simple set of equations that you could write down? Possibly. But then how would we find out? We have no way of knowing. So, these considerations are there. 

Question:  [unclear]

Answer:  Well, that’s... [unclear]... siddhi, and well, how does that work? You know some of these siddhis get rather powerful. For example, there was Viśvāmitra, who was creating a whole new set of planetary systems. And the powers that be got upset, and he was told to stop. But what he created was allowed to remain. So, there are things like that. 

Question:  [unclear]

Answer:  You'd be surprised of the extent to which they don't accept it. You see, they'll accept it as long as certain crucial issues don't come up. But suppose you were to say this, suppose you were to say, “Yes, the laws of physics are approximations. And this provides a loophole, which allows Supreme Consciousness to regulate the affairs of nature.” Well, at that point suddenly they'll say, “No, they're not approximations, they are perfectly precise and exact.” Therefore, the Supreme Consciousness does not have any opportunity to manipulate the phenomena of nature. As soon as an important issue like that comes up, they're going to want to close off that loophole. So, but certainly there are approximations in the obvious... for the obvious reason that anything you measure has to be approximate. No measurement is perfectly exact. Yeah? 

[35:52]

Question:  [unclear]

Answer:  Excuse me, I couldn't hear, speak up. No just… 

Question:  [unclear]

Answer:  That's the thing, that's what I was saying in class. It's a bit of a mystery. You see, the original idea was that there are thoughts in the mind of God. So, at least that gives you a comprehensible idea of where the equations came from. But they don't really exist anywhere. Yeah, that's better. Don't ask that question. Yeah, they don't really exist anywhere. Now in mathematics, it's very interesting. There's what's called the “platonic approach to mathematics” according to which you think that real numbers are actually real. That's a way of summing it up. Namely that the entities of mathematics somehow exist – but of course that really makes no sense in terms of the physical picture of the universe.

For example, mathematicians will talk about the set of infinitely many integers. Well, in what sense do infinitely many integers exist? Do you imagine this abstract Platonic realm that's out there somewhere in which infinitely many integers are there? If so, you may as well imagine God. I mean, if you can accommodate a Platonic realm with an infinity of integers, then what's wrong with having God? And if you don't allow a Platonic realm with an infinity of integers, that means what the mathematicians are talking about don't really exist. So, then what are they talking about? So, it becomes a bit curious. But anyway… All glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda.