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Materialist View of Creation vs Consciousness (or God vs Science)

Materialist View of Creation vs Consciousness (or God vs Science)

Last updated on: November 20, 2006 at 4:57 pm by Desh Kapoor

Materialist View of Creation vs Consciousness (or God vs Science) 2006-11-20T16:57:32-06:00 Desh Kapoor

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There is a series of blog posts by Deepak Chopra on RIchard Dawkins book and his contentions of positing God vs Science. I invite you to read those posts (The God Delusion – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).. however here are a few “scientific” theories/facts that Deepak cites that I found fairly interesting and worth keeping for later contemplation and analyses:

About DNA

What’s wrong with this argument is that if you trace DNA down to its individual atoms, each is more than 99.9999% empty space. If you take an individual electron, it has no fixed position in either time or space. Rather, ghostly vibrations wink in and out of the universe thousands of times per second, and what lies beyond the boundary of the five senses holds enormous mysteries.

About the Sub Atomic and the Universe

–The various constants in nature, such as gravity and the speed of light, are too precisely fitted with each other for this to happen by chance.
–If any one of six constants had been off by less than a millionth of 1 percent, the material universe couldn’t exist.
–Events at opposite ends of the universe are paired with each other, so that a change in the spin of one electron immediately produces a twin effect in another electron. This ability to communicate instantly across millions of light years cannot be explained by materialism. It defies all notions of cause and effect. it defies chance.
–Every electron in the universe exists as a wave function that is everywhere at once. When this wave function collapses, we observe a specific isolated electron. Before the wave collapses, however, matter is non-local.

My Views

I also like the way Dr. Chopra handles this saying that his definition of God is also limited and does not have a Universality about it, if you will. Here’s what he says:

“But God isn’t a person in any strain of Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, the branch of Hinduism known as Vedanta, and many denominations of Christianity–he’s not a person in the Gospel of John in the New Testament.”

There is one major thing that I have observed – which is the difference between Vedanta and other religions that Deepak has cited…

… while in Abrahamic religions, the followers “extrapolate” what this non-personal God does or thinks and thereby reducing “Him” to a person in his basic characteristics though without form…

…. Vedanta often describes it as Unknowable or beyond knowledge and only an experience…

So in that sense, I would tend to argue that biblical God and that in Islam and Judaism may not be very different.. he is different only in nuance!

Until we approach God as a question mark – not understood, I feel in the basic sense Scientists and the Spiritualists are talking the same thing.

The main issue is however as I would argue the basic approach and construct of the path of science like Deepak puts it also:

“Science can explain Nature without any help from supernatural causes like God. There is no need for a Creator.”

The Modern Science for some reason did start with the assumption that Science was an Anti-thesis of God because they could only fathom God as a biblical god.

But that is not the only way to approach Scientific exploration.. I do tend to believe that Vedic Scientists went the other way.. to “Get” to God through understanding the Science behind nature and the world! Thinking, probably, that if they could understand nature and this world in its logical sense…. then they could fathom God better!

There, in my view, lies the entire difference!

Another point – the “biblical God vs Science” scientists somehow do not get the basic verity that Involution and Evolution go hand in hand.

The question is Darwin was looking at ‘Living Beings” and creatures when he postulated his theory.. is what he said aboutthe creatures also true of the stars and the other parts of Universe? Was darwin talking only about the evolution of the creatures or of the creation itself? Somehow, I believe, that the Scientists tend to create a Halo Effect of the Darwin’s Theory about the creatures to cover the Universe in general too!!

When an apple seed grows to be an apple tree – the wiring or the “Intelligence” to help it along its way in its evolution was encoded in the seed… how does the seed “know” it has to grow to become an Apple tree and NOT an Orange tree? DNA/genetics etc are a manifestation of an “Intelligence”.. .and Intelligence that somehow works to keep a balance!

Every great Saint and Prophet has come proclaiming they have learnt from the past “mistakes” and hereby they show a new path that will turn the mankind around.. did it ever?

Great Scientists came promising to bring to the mankind the greatest progress.. has it really progressed?

Great statesman came promising to take the world to greater peace and aerguing to learn from past “mistakes” and not to have more wars.. have they succeeded?

What is it that despite our Knowledge of our past – and deep, well educated one at that – cannot stop us from the same mistakes as our forefathers made? The pendulum of balance and inevitability, if you will, keep swinging from one end to another without regards to the nature or the results..

… the swinging of this pendulum is the Intelligence… that OVERRIDES the combined Knowledge, Power and Greatness of all the Scientists, Religious Fountainheads, and Statesmen (and women) COMBINED!

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