More on God, Science and Proof

[Jahnava Nitai Das]

Everything depends on one's degree of faith in a source. If one has absolute faith in a source, then regardless of how unbelievable the statement may be, one will still accept it as true. But if one has relative faith in a source, then the belief will depend on the degree of faith one has. Sometimes we hear unbelievable statements, or hard to believe statements from someone, but because the degree of faith in the source is very high, we accept the statement as true. If someone else had made the exact same statement to us, we would have rejected it as false. Not because the statement is hard to believe, but because the degree of faith in the source is less.

 

When my neighbor tells me he saw a lion on his roof, I don't believe him because the degree of faith I have in him is moderate. And a moderate amount of faith is relative, or measured and judged by being compared to something else. In the case of faith, we generally judge it against our direct perception, and past experiences.

 

If instead of my neighbor, it was my father who said he saw a lion on his roof, I would believe him, despite the fact that it is a hard to believe occurence. It is the degree of faith we have in an individual or source that decides whether or not we believe the statement.

 

We know from our common sense that most people have defects. The scriptures have classified these defects into four main categories:

 

One is sure to commit mistakes.

One is invariably illusioned.

One has the tendency to cheat others.

One is limited by imperfect senses.

 

With these four imperfections, one cannot deliver perfect information. Thus faith in an individual will vary according to our perception of that person according to these four defects. We may not consciously measure people against these four defects, but it is a spontaneous internal process that always occurs.

 

If we think someone may be trying to cheat us, we won't have faith in their statements.

 

If we think someone has committed a mistake in their own judgement, then we won't have faith in their judgement.

 

If we think someone's judgement was affected by his imperfect and defective senses, we won't accept it as truth.

 

If we think someone's judgement was affected by his subjectability to illusion, then we won't trust his statement as absolute.

 

In order for someone to have absolute faith in a source, he must be fully convinced that the source is situated beyond these four defects of the common man. Only such a source would be considered as infallible, and absolutely perfect.

 

Some people consider the guru, the sadhus, and Lord Krishna to be situated beyond these four defects, and thus they accept their statements as absolute truth.

 

In other words, some people do not think the guru, the sadhus, and Lord Krishna commit mistakes.

 

They do not think the guru, the sadhus, and Lord Krishna are covered by illusion.

 

They do not think the guru, the sadhus, and Lord Krishna have a tendency to cheat others.

 

And they do not think the guru, the sadhus, and Lord Krishna are limited by imperfect senses.

 

How they develop such faith in a source is another topic, so I will not go into it at this time.

 

The main point that we should all understand is that everything in existence is based on faith in some form or another. Some statements match our past experiences better than other statements, and so we consider some statements as more believable and others as less believable.

 

One flaw of this method is that it limits the belief in reality to what we have already experienced. I am sure we all would admit that we have not experienced the entire existence of reality in full.

 

It seems that unconsciously we have all accepted the limitation of experience, and thus we have accepted as truth many things which we have not experienced.

 

A simple example would be the atom. Nearly everyone accepts it as a reality. We even have drawings of it in text books which we are forced to memorize. But as far as I know, no one has seen an atom yet - at least it hasn't been proven to anyone I know. Some people may claim to have seen atoms through electron microscopes, but the computer image produced is based on the programming of the designer. He tells it to interpret sets of data into a visual image. We are not seeing the atom, we are seeing a visual representation of data according to the understanding of the programmer. Quite subjective in my opinion.

 

They may claim that they have even split atoms, and in the process produced huge explosions. But are they actually splitting an atom, or are they just producing an effect.

 

Maybe there is no such thing as an atom. Maybe an atom is just a dimensionless point in Euclidean space - more of a concept than a reality.

 

Such a discussion would be for a different time and place. For now, we can just focus on the fact that we do believe in things that are not directly experienced.

 

It is not that God is the only thing that we have not experienced which we put faith in. There are countless things, which if we compared them to our own experience would be "hard to believe", yet we still accept them as truth.

 

There is a reason for this, which I will try to mention next time.

 

[animesh]

Yes, it is true that faith very much decides what we believe and what we disbelieve. But faith is not the ONLY factor, even though it is a very important factor. The likelihood of a claim made is also important. If I have moderate faith in someone and he makes a statement which is very likely, then I may believe him. But if he makes a statement which is very unlikely (if not impossible), then I may not belive him.

[Gauracandra]

I agree there are a lot of things we haven't experienced that we believe in besides God. A coworker and I were having a similar discussion a few months ago and we also concluded much the same thing. At the same time an individual may have a spiritual experience, which he may not even be able to relate in words, much less prove. Should we dismiss that person's experiences? I don't think so. Many people have had near death experiences, seen their subtle bodies separate from the gross physical body, and then return. Many of these people experience profound, life changing effects from such an event. It totally changes their view of life. I saw one program on this subject and some scientist was saying that it was only a physical response. He said that man evolved over time a reactive response to make death as painless as possible. This is why many people when they die see beautiful images, feel wonderful and free, see the tunnel of light etc.... At first, I was like ok that kind of makes sense. Then I realized "Whats he talking about". In order to evolve a trait you have to be able to transmit your genetic code to the next generation. If you are on your deathbed, about to die, there is no way to distinguish between those humans thousands of years ago who had this genetic trait and those that didn't. When they died their genetic code would go with them. Thus out-of-body experiences cannot be explained as an evolutionary mechanism to make death less traumatic. Those who have such experiences can't prove it scientifically that it happened, and yet their lives are often profoundly affected.

 

Gauracandra