BHARATA BHARATI

Science and technology have radically changed our lives. A mere one hundred years ago people toiled long, tedious hours just to eke out a living. The material abundance provided by technology and the information flow accelerated by innovations have drastically altered our personal and professional lives, and remapped society.

Behind all of this is science, the result of extraordinary human inquisitiveness. We readily apply the gift of seeking to the pursuit of material abundance. Curiously though, we hesitate to aim its “laser light” to know the truth about ourselves. As humans we have, over time, evidenced an innate desire to answer persistent questions: Why are we here? Is there a purpose to our lives? Is there a Creator who brought us here?

Many scientists avoid addressing these profound, essential questions. It is cool to be agnostic, professing that one doesn’t know, or be atheist, proclaiming: “I do not believe in a Creator, and those who do, are deluded.” Such an attitude is perhaps unscientific.

The very scientific objectivity that once compelled us to question the existence of God has now, by way of advanced physics and cosmology, begun to unravel evidence that tends to support belief in some form of transcendent power, a universal architect, if you will. Like a child tiptoeing cautiously into the ocean, science has put forward, bit by bit, the startling possibility that the fundamental blueprint of all is ingrained in the fabric of space itself.

An impartial appraisal of the warp and weft of physical reality reveals that woven throughout the universe is an abstract intelligence that is akin to a Creator and Sustainer, in the sense meant by Brahman in Indic thought. This is not an anthropomorphic God who rages and rules and demands obeisance. The perception of the elegant order of the universe and its existence as a single significant whole, which Einstein called the “cosmic religious feeling”, is devoid of a god conceived in man’s image. Although science can now give us some lucid ideas of Creation, it cannot provide a clear image of a Creator.

Our understandable need to ‘see’ God in a concrete form leads to considerable problems. Devastating conflicts arise when we try to put God in a straitjacket of our own imagination, in our own image. Perhaps we ought to embrace new ideas of God that science offers. I would say ‘yes’, if only because an abiding awareness of an omnipresent universal force can substantially improve the quality of our lives.

The problem of God’s “likeness” has been resolved in a unique way in Vedanta. Vedic rishis realised that Brahman as Creator or Supreme Consciousness was too abstract to be popular. They reasoned, since everything in nature is God’s creation, it might be simpler to connect with Brahman through an icon of personal choice (ishta devta), as long as the icon was only a representation of ultimate reality. This is the genesis of the Hindu pantheon of gods and goddesses. If we could universally believe in all religious diversities as representations of a single, transcendent reality, the dreadful problems of fundamentalism and conflict would disappear and we might one day resolve the science-religion face-off.

That is why being an atheist in the age of science is rather unscientific. – Times of India, Chennai, Nov 18, 2010

The writer is a US-based physicist and author of Code Name God

Filed under: india | Tagged: atheism, brahman, god, hinduism, ishta devta, mani lal baumik, panentheism, pantheism, polytheism, religion, science, theism, theology, vedanta |