Respected sangom sirji,
will you please answer these questions:
1. all scientific truths and evidences are truths and acceptable evidences only within a certain frame work. So using scientific term we can say scientific truths are relative. relative to time and given conditions. Just one example to elaborate: the behavior of particles at macro levels and micro levels.
My question is this: How far is this kind of "scientific evidence" reliable?
2. My understanding of the situation is that science keeps exploring and when it comes across a dead end for the day, it just shrugs its shoulders and say "well. I know only this much with the current knowledge level. To know better I will wait until better facilities come. Then it goes to sleep peacefully leaving the individual observing to go mad. The question no 2 is this: How can you equate this science with the "exploration beyond" which is done in religion?
3. Religion does not stop with reaching the dead end. It rather starts from there, extrapolates, projects and reasonably assumes and hypothesises. Then it converts it into a faith and goes to sleep happily with its faith which is not just a cock and bull story. It is scientific upto a point and a certain amount of hypothesising beyond that. And that is not bad because it makes the human being a better one and a happier one too.
4. I understand well what you say when you talk about blind faith, folly and ego. But I, as one who understand all these and more of these which you have to offer, has thought about all these and yet has deliberately chosen to "believe". Would you still call me egotist and what I "believe" in as folly? My academic discipline is science (physics to be precise).
Prof. Vaagmi Sir,
Elsewhere you had observed, inter alia, as follows:
"...When society understood that knowledge is real power, it had to find ways to sustain that power. The physical might which was destructive came in conflict with this. So it had to be contained with the theory of religion and God. It was at the beginning thus a need based clever response by those who had better knowledge and not physical might.
Later a lot of reductionism and 'dukrun karane' happened/came into play and religion became a highly complicated matter. That too helped it retain an atmosphere of mystery and a halo. When there is something mysterious the tendency is to 1)keep away from it 2)to call it names from a safe distance 3)to fear it 4) to give it respect and give it its due without disputing. 5)try to be in the good books of it.
This is the history of religions."
I tend to agree with much of what was stated above, by yourself, except that I have difference about the "physical might" point. I feel, on the contrary, that when primitive human society found nature and its forces formidable and consequently supposed that there was some very powerful entity, much like themselves but enormously mightier, the "god" concept arose. Some who were very sharp, foresaw the chance for them to hold their sway over the rest by giving shape to this god, and claiming to know more about this god than the others. I don't understand what 'dukrinj karane' you are talking about, but it was all a question of successful marketing of the said 'god', just as successful marketing of Horlicks is, today. The details of religion comprise the strategies adopted for the successful marketing.
Regarding item no. 4 of your post, you have obviously followed the alternative 5 (try to be in the good books of it), possibly because your rational mind told you that this would be more beneficial for your material welfare and creature conforts, while I am following a sixth alternative, viz., deconstruct, religion.
Just as a visishtadvaithin believes that this jagat is not a mithyaa and that it is all for real, science also believes in the same premise. Only when its canvas got extended considerably from the most fundamental of the fundamental particles and the "strings" at one end, to the expanding universe and the probability of multiverses, etc., at the other, science, it seems to me, has had to forsake the earlier premise of this universe being the be all and end all of everything. Whatever evidence science has collected, and whatever theories or conclusions so far accepted by science, seems to be correct within that limited frame work, looking at the progress made by humanity ever since thus far. Hence, the reliability of scientific evidence is not in doubt.
I would say that science has the humility and commitment to truth, for it to admit "well. I know only this much with the current knowledge level. To know better I will wait until better facilities come." But then it just does not go to sleep; it ponders and ponders, and capable people come out with various possible and probable hypotheses and then each of these are considered with reference to the available evidences and actual observations. Wherever the new hypotheses indicate some new evidences might be existing, science diligently, though slowly, tries to corroborate the proposition searching for such new evidence/s; otherwise that proposition is kept in abeyance.
Religion is, in my view, not an "exploration beyond", at all; it is just exploitation of human gullibility by using most excellent sales techniques coupled with almost expert psychological conditioning of minds of those people who fall into the trap; sometimes, traps are very obvious and even ruthless, like forced proselytization. Whatever is doled out by religion under what you have termed as "exploration beyond" is pure snakeoil, but, for the unquestioning believers of religion, these become scriptural truths!
Religion just does not start from the science's "dead end"; even philosophies do not all do so. I am not aware of any instances of 'extrapolate, project, assume and hypothesize'; it will be illuminating to all the members here if you will kindly furnish a few examples of each of these. And, religion has not made Man better or happier, because it is a well-known fact that more people have been killed, more atrocities committed, (are being killed and being committed) in the name of religion than in all other kinds of wars and conflicts.
To "believe" whatever it is that you like to believe, as long as such belief is not illegal or prohibited otherwise, may not be a bad idea. But if it is religion that you are talking about, I will say that your mind has been so well brain-washed. Or else, your rational intellect made you adhere to your belief, because such a course was more conducive to your well-being in this frame of reference than questioning its tenets logically. You may or may not be an egotist and that will depend upon the kind of response which comes from you for this post.
Academic discipline does not, in my view, relate to this issue; it is more a question of understanding the basis of religion/s and what objective/s religion had in its origin and how rational its premises are.
