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Our View of Science

Unlike 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.

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Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism accepts a con­tem­po­rary, sci­en­tific view of the world. Big bang the­o­ries, evo­lu­tion, and quan­tum physics are accept­able in its 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.
Prac­ti­tion­ers leave deci­pher­ing the mys­ter­ies of the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion to sci­en­tists who spe­cial­ize in that. They stay informed of sci­en­tific views but focus on more per­sonal spir­i­tual matters.
In this post­mod­ern age of cos­mol­ogy, evo­lu­tion, and the human genome, a richly sat­is­fy­ing har­mony between sci­en­tific and spir­i­tual world­views is attain­able. Accord­ing to process the­ol­ogy, the cos­mos, knowl­edge of God-dess, and even God-dess evolve.
Under­stand­ing cos­mic ori­gins char­ac­ter­izes reli­gions through­out his­tory. Reli­gion springs from the insights of inspired indi­vid­u­als and tries to make sense of life. Ancient seers used the knowl­edge of the day to describe the nature of the cos­mos. Such descrip­tions of ori­gins gen­er­ally fall under the head­ing of myth. These myths tend to show a God-dess imposed order that elim­i­nates the sense of chaos. They assure peo­ple they are not alone but 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 phe­nom­e­nal world in inno­v­a­tive ways, dig­ging deeper into areas where under­stand­ing remains incom­plete. Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism approaches the spir­i­tual quest with a sci­en­tific atti­tude of dis­cov­ery. It does not set­tle for past truths but ever seeks new truth to expand human under­stand­ing. In an ever-changing world, peo­ple need ever fresh ways to approach God-dess.
Human under­stand­ing of the ori­gin of the uni­verse fun­da­men­tally changed in the last seventy-five years. Spir­i­tual seek­ers ben­e­fit by under­stand­ing cos­mol­ogy, cre­ation, and ori­gins based on facts known today, rather than fol­low­ing  out­dated ideas from thou­sands of years ago. Peo­ple know things their pre­de­ces­sors did not. Big bang the­o­ries include pro­found con­se­quences for theology.

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How­ever, sci­ence has its lim­its. This is where spir­i­tu­al­ity steps in and helps. Sci­ence can­not say what caused the big bang, what hap­pened before it, or what exists out­side this uni­verse although spec­u­la­tion on these sub­jects abounds. Nev­er­the­less, sci­ence in no way negates the exis­tence of God-dess per­vad­ing and sus­tain­ing the entire cre­ation as well as tran­scend­ing it. Every day, fresh sci­en­tific insights con­firm the whole­ness, inter­con­nect­ed­ness, and amaz­ing com­plex­ity of cre­ation and its elements.

The big bang for instance calls for a divine expla­na­tion since the mate­r­ial man­i­fes­ta­tion had a clear begin­ning. The uni­verse could not cre­ate itself. A spir­i­tual force out­side space­time cre­ated it or trans­formed itself into the uni­verse. That spir­i­tual force is God-dess.

The anthropic prin­ci­ple, the sci­en­tific notion that the uni­verse is planned and finely tuned to develop (human) life, sup­ports the idea that humans are cre­ated in the image of God-dess to estab­lish a lov­ing rela­tion­ship. Sym­bol­i­cally, the uni­verse is God-dess’ play.

Sci­en­tific for­mu­las alone can­not answer all ques­tions about the ori­gin of the uni­verse. Belief in a cre­ator God-dess and sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies can be har­mo­nized. Belief in God-dess solves some ques­tions about what came before the big bang and why the uni­verse appears so well tuned for human exis­tence as well as cur­rent sci­ence does.

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 threat­ened by dis­cov­er­ies about cre­ation? The schism between sci­ence and spir­i­tu­al­ity is arti­fi­cial and in today’s world, even absurd. Peo­ple ben­e­fit by using their God-dess-given gifts to under­stand nature along with advanc­ing con­scious­ness and gen­eral well-being.

God-dess exists inside nature as well as out­side this nature. Sci­en­tific efforts 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 faith and understanding.

Sci­ence can­not dis­count the great world reli­gions that are based on mil­len­nia of his­tory, moral phi­los­o­phy, and the strong evi­dence human altru­ism pro­vides. If sci­en­tists can humbly admit the lim­its of their scope, reli­gion­ists should humbly admit the lim­its of their beliefs too.

Through­out his­tory, scrip­tures revealed the nature of God-dess to humans within the lim­its of their rea­son and vocab­u­lary. Would it have served God-dess’ pur­pose thou­sands of years ago to talk about radioac­tive decay, geo­logic strata, and DNA?

Faith in a lov­ing God-dess can­not be built on a foun­da­tion of untruths about nature. Scrip­tural authors wrote to the best of their knowl­edge and abil­ity at the time. If dis­crep­an­cies are found in their words, sci­en­tific and philo­soph­i­cal meth­ods can be employed to under­stand why such things occurred. This deep­ens mod­ern insight. If fun­da­men­tal­ists per­sist in pre­sent­ing old sto­ries as sci­en­tific truth in the face of new evi­dence to the con­trary to pre­serve the author­ity of scrip­ture, they do a dis­ser­vice to scrip­ture, sci­ence, and truth. This hurts reli­gion more than science.

DNA evi­dence of the relat­ed­ness of all liv­ing things is awe­some. It is the mas­ter plan of the same God-dess who cre­ated the uni­verse and made its phys­i­cal prop­er­ties just right to cre­ate galax­ies, stars, plan­ets, heavy ele­ments, and life. Gen­er­ally referred to as the­is­tic evo­lu­tion, Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism calls it panen­the­is­tic evolution.

Reli­gion answers ques­tions tra­di­tional sci­ence never intended to address, such as: How did the uni­verse get here? What is the mean­ing of life? What hap­pens after death? Devo­tees under­stand the lim­its of both sci­ence and reli­gion and do not con­fuse their dif­fer­ent world­views and spheres of exper­tise. Peo­ple need them both to live bal­anced lives fully con­scious of them­selves and their environment.

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