An interesting article that discusses the co-existence of science and God in today’s world.
Is God Necessary?
C.S.RAMAKRISHNAN
C.S.RAMAKRISHNAN
Sri C.S. Ramakrishnan is a long-standing and close devotee and a former editor of The Vedanta Kesari.
Voltaire, whose massive scholarship and keen intellect are beyond question, used to say that if God did not exist it will be necessary to invent him. He felt that many things in life and the world cannot be rationally and consistently explained without assuming the presence of God. No doubt, at the time of Voltaire science had not developed as it has subsequently. Today’s science is an Aladdin’s lamp enables us to perform phenomena, which would have been termed miracles. All manner of indescribable phenomena can be attributed to modern science. So most scientists do not share Voltaire’s views.
It will be interesting to see what a reputed scientist like Eric Cornell, the Nobel laureate in Physics in the year 2001, has to say in this regard. He gave a very insightful lecture while getting inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Eric Cornell explained his view by accounting for a familiar pheno menon, the blue sky. He offers two types of solution. The first answer of scientific insight is the Raleigh’s law of scattering of light. Light consists of a series of coloured rays starting from red and ending in blue. The rays in the red region are long waves whereas those in the blue region are short. When the light is flowing from the sun to the earth, the rays undergo scattering. The red rays get scattered more readily than the blue ones. Therefore by the time the rays reach the earth only blue rays are left, i.e. the source appears to be blue. The sky therefore is blue. This was the discovery made by Lord Raleigh on which subsequent developments in optics took place.
But Cornell indicates a second solution. May be God wanted the sky to be blue. You cannot question why he wanted like that. The Nobel laureate points out that Raleigh’s law of scattering explains `how’ blueness came but not why. Science always explains the `how’ of things and not the `why’ of things. While how is scientifically explained, the why finds explanation only in religion.
Eric Cornell suggests that in a scientific class only scientific questions can be raised. For a religious answer we have to be in a religious class. He suggests that we should not confuse by asking a scientific question in a religious class and a religious question in a scientific class. Not that the two solutions are opposed to each other but each has to be applied in a separate dimension. Suppose we are talking to a friend in English we have to follow the rules of English grammar but if the talk is in Tamil it is the Tamil grammar that has to be applied. Both the grammar rules are valid and not opposed to each other. Again, suppose you have the dream of a tiger chasing you. In the dream the chase is real. But once you wake up, the dream-tiger disappears. In the wakeful state we cannot ask where the tiger has gone, though it is the same mind which is witnessing both. The Ultimate Reality is one; it may manifest itself scientifically or religiously. In what way we wish to perceive the reality, the choice is ours.
I like it – Science always explains the HOW of things and religion answers the WHY of things.
Nice logic, even though I am not so religious…
Viky:
Thanks for your comment!
Yeah. I was also fascinated by that sentence.
I guess, I would go with what Scott Adams has to say here http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/06/relativity.html
shastri:
Though I can guess what the blog would say. For the record my computer says,”The page cannot be displayed”.
Copy and Pasting the article that Shastri sent to me by e-mail because typepad was blocked by my ISP:
We humans generally assume that reality is fixed and objective. Therefore we assume that the reason other people view reality differently is because they are ignorant and/or irrational.
The problem with that view is that there are more well-informed and rational people opposing your world view – no matter what your view is – than there are on your side. For example, lots of brilliant and well-informed people support my view that God is a delusion. But if we took a poll of the brilliant and well-informed people of the world, the majority would disagree with me. They’d be worshipping Allah or Jesus or Buddha or waiting to reincarnate. Likewise, every one of the brilliant and well-informed people in any of those groups is vastly outnumbered by people that disagree. This has always bothered me. So I came up with a theory to explain it.
Einstein’s great insight was assuming reality was not fixed, and that everything was relative to the observer. If the observer moves at nearly the speed of light, not only does reality appear different, it actually IS different. You would literally age at a different rate than your twin that stayed in place relative to you. We don’t notice the differences in our tiny, slow-moving life. But it’s there. The universe simply doesn’t exist as a single objective reality. It’s smeared all over the place.
I have extended that thinking to people. Let’s imagine for the sake of my new theory that people are always rational within their own reality. It only seems as if they are not because we all live in our own bubble of reality, with our own rules of what makes sense. Within any given bubble, everything is perfectly rational and logical and all the dots connect. It’s only when you try to send an argument from one bubble to another that the logic breaks down.
In my theory, it could be completely true for a Muslim that Allah exists in that individual’s bubble of reality, and completely true for the infidel skeptic that Allah doesn’t exist in his bubble. This is an extension of the old argument about whether people perceive the color red the same. For all practical purposes it doesn’t matter for questions of color because we’re all happy with our own perceptions and we can’t see what other people see. But for questions of God, it matters, because when you describe the reasons for your belief, and those reasons leave your bubble, they arrive as complete nonsense when they enter my bubble. And if I feel the need to point that out, you might feel the need to bore me or kill me.
As with Einstein’s theory of relativity, our different views of reality aren’t relevant for most of life. We only notice the difference with a few topics. For example, in some bubbles of reality, the following reasoning makes complete sense:
1. The earth couldn’t create itself. Something had to create it. Therefore, God exists.
In my bubble, and in many others, that line of thinking is indistinguishable from nonsense. It is the height of irrational and ignorant thinking. But only within my bubble and others like mine.
Now to be fair, my thinking sounds equally irrational and ignorant to believers even though it makes perfect sense in my bubble. For example, I think this explanation seems sensible even if wrong.
1. The earth couldn’t create itself. Therefore the universe must have always been here, even if compressed into a singularity so that time as we know it doesn’t have meaning.
When I make that argument to religious people, they look at me like I just took a wiz on the couch while announcing that I plan to marry their daughter. My reasoning makes absolutely no sense after it leaves my bubble of reality and enters theirs. Somehow it turns into nonsense on the trip. When I try to explain my reasoning, it’s like yelling English to a Chinese speaking guy and hoping the extra volume will help.
When I hear people say that they know God exists because he healed their aunt’s cancer, it sounds to me exactly like “Rocks are liquid because 5 is greater than 6.” It sounds like utter nonsense when it leaves their bubble and enters mine. But I know it makes sense in their bubble. So something must be different in there.
In this theory, our brains are nothing but rationalizers for a reality too complex to understand. When I see cars driving down the street, perhaps you see kangaroos. If we take a cab together, I think we’re sitting in the back seat and you think we’re in a kangaroo’s pouch. I think I’m leaving the cabbie a tip and you think I’m giving a treat to the roo.
If you doubt that reality differs for all observers, try watching some of the French Open tennis tournament this week on TV. Notice how many times the players see a line call one way, only to have the umpire point to the mark in the clay and prove them wrong. Then the TV commentators turn on the Shot Spot™ technology showing that both the player and the umpire missed it by a mile.
I welcome you to send your logic to my bubble, but don’t be surprised if I react like you’re a frickin’ moron. It’s nothing personal. It’s a bubble thing.
Click here full version of the article.
Shastri:
So, it’s the bubble thing, eh?! Good! Even I liked it. It’s a well-written essay to convey “To each his own”.
Of course! Of course!
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Great artciles! Both yours and the one “pasted” here.:)
I liked the HOW and WHY reasoning!
But I think religion and science can never get together. Though it’s common sense that they are meant to compliment each other.. and not contradict each other.
Why? Because religion is bound by boundaries.. and people just plain REFUSE to come out of that.. but science is unbounded.. every day new theories are proposed and proved….
Anyway I will continue to be a superstitious yet irreligious, traditional yet modern thinking woman of science ;-)
shark:
Thanks!
Of course you will continue to be a superstitious yet modern thinking woman of science and that will be your bubble!
Nice theory! This bubble stuff!