Our View of Science

Unlike the major­ity of reli­gious groups and their sects who cling to anti­quated and dog­matic world views, Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism offers a uni­fy­ing, har­mo­nious vision of sci­ence and spir­i­tu­al­ity. We see this world as ulti­mately spir­i­tual and ema­nat­ing from God-dess. Hence we favor our sci­en­tist col­leagues in their pur­suits that fur­ther reveal the spec­tac­u­lar nature of God-dess.

Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism accepts a con­tem­po­rary, sci­en­tific view of the world. The big bang the­o­ries, evo­lu­tion, and quan­tum physics are accept­able in our world view. The holo­graphic par­a­digm devel­oped by physi­cist David Bohm and neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gist Karl Pri­bram sug­gests this world exists as a mul­ti­di­men­sional holo­graphic pro­jec­tion of the spir­i­tual world. We leave deci­pher­ing the mys­ter­ies of mate­r­ial nature to sci­en­tists who spe­cial­ize in that sort of thing. We stay informed of sci­en­tific views but focus on spir­i­tual matters.

In this post­mod­ern age of cos­mol­ogy, evo­lu­tion, and the human genome, we see a richly sat­is­fy­ing har­mony between sci­en­tific and spir­i­tual world­views. Accord­ing to process the­ol­ogy, the whole cos­mos, our knowl­edge of God-dess, and even God-dess evolve. Under­stand­ing the ori­gins and work­ings of the cos­mos char­ac­ter­izes most reli­gions through­out history.

Reli­gion tries mak­ing sense of life. Ancient reli­gions used the knowl­edge of the day to describe the nature of the cos­mos and its rela­tion to us. Such descrip­tions of the ori­gins of cre­ation, life, and humans fall under the head­ing of myth. These myths tend to show a God-dess imposed order, which elim­i­nates the sense of chaos. They assure us we are not alone, but we remain con­nected to a lov­ing, benef­i­cent God-dess who insures things work out well in the end.

Sci­en­tists con­stantly delve into new areas, observ­ing nature, inves­ti­gat­ing the mate­r­ial world in new ways, dig­ging deeper into areas where under­stand­ing remains incom­plete. We approach the spir­i­tual quest with a sci­en­tific atti­tude of dis­cov­ery. We do not set­tle for past truths, but ever seek new truth and expand human under­stand­ing. God-dess is not sta­tic but dynamic. In an ever-changing world, we need ever fresh ways to approach God-dess.

Our under­stand­ing of the ori­gin of the uni­verse fun­da­men­tally changed in the last seventy-five years. Spir­i­tual seek­ers ben­e­fit by adjust­ing their under­stand­ing of cos­mol­ogy, cre­ation, and ori­gins to facts known today, rather than res­olutely defend­ing out­dated ideas from thou­sands of years ago. We know things our pre­de­ces­sors did not. The big bang the­o­ries include pro­found con­se­quences for theology.

How­ever, sci­ence has its lim­its. Sci­ence can­not tell us the cause of the Big Bang, what hap­pened before it, or what exists out­side this uni­verse. Nev­er­the­less, sci­ence in no way negates the exis­tence of God-dess. The sci­en­tific view alone can­not answer all ques­tions about the ori­gin of the uni­verse. Belief in a cre­ator God-dess and what sci­ence reveals do not con­flict. Belief in God-dess solves some impor­tant ques­tions about what came before the Big Bang, and why the uni­verse appears so well tuned for our exis­tence. Obvi­ously, life has purpose.

God-dess cre­ated the uni­verse and the laws gov­ern­ing it and gave humans the intel­lec­tual abil­ity to under­stand its work­ings. Why dis­re­gard those abil­i­ties? Is God-dess dimin­ished or threat­ened by our dis­cov­er­ies about cre­ation? We don’t think so. The schism between sci­ence and reli­gion is arti­fi­cial and in today’s world, even absurd. We should use all our God-dess-given gifts to glo­rify God-dess and bet­ter under­stand his-her work­ings along with advanc­ing our con­scious and mate­r­ial well-being.

God-dess exists inside this nature as well as out­side this nature. Sci­ence can­not prove or dis­prove God-dess’ exis­tence. Sim­i­lar to reli­gious fanati­cism, athe­ism must be a form of blind faith, since it adopts beliefs it can­not defend with pure rea­son. God-dess’ exis­tence can­not be proven by reli­gion either. It ulti­mately comes down to our faith and under­stand­ing. Faith need not be blind. Rea­son and expe­ri­ence rein­force it.

Faith in a lov­ing God-dess can­not be built on a foun­da­tion of untruths about nature. The scrip­ture writ­ers wrote to the best of their knowl­edge and abil­ity at the time. If we per­sist in pre­sent­ing the old sto­ries as sci­en­tific truth in the face of new evi­dence to the con­trary, ignor­ing or deny­ing con­clu­sive sci­en­tific proof to pre­serve the author­ity of scrip­ture, we do a dis­ser­vice to scrip­ture, sci­ence, and truth.

DNA evi­dence of the relat­ed­ness of all liv­ing things is awe­some. We can per­ceive it as the mas­ter plan of the same God-dess who cre­ated the uni­verse and made its phys­i­cal prop­er­ties just right to cre­ate stars, plan­ets, heavy ele­ments, and life. Gen­er­ally referred to as the­is­tic evo­lu­tion, we call it panen­the­is­tic evolution.

God-dess, who cre­ated the uni­verse and com­munes with us through prayer, self­less love, mutual help and spir­i­tual insight, would not expect us to deny the obvi­ous truths sci­ence reveals to prove our love. Yet, many fol­low­ers of fun­da­men­tal­ist sects are asked to do just that and instead believe the unbe­liev­able. We need a ratio­nal approach to spir­i­tu­al­ity now.

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