Ramakrishna Mission

[Sajit]

"The Ramakrishna Movement and Scientific Temper" PDF attached.

This is how the swamis use scientific language and conflate real science with bullshit and confuse the listener.

Quote by Vivekananda from that PDF "Religion deals with the truths of the metaphysical world just as chemistry and the other natural sciences deal with the truths of the physical world.
Science and religion are both attempts to help us out of the bondage; only religion is the more ancient, and we have the supersti- tion that it is the more holy."


This is an example of a false equivalence between science and bullshit !

[Lije]

There is a fundamental misunderstanding of science in that article. The author describes science as:

Quote:Stage 1: Observation and identification of problem;
Stage 2: Formulation of hypothesis;
Stage 3: Experimental verification with same results in repeated experiments;
Stage 4: Establishment of laws or theories.

and then what Patanjali considers as proof (and by extension, what spirituality considers as proof):

Quote:Stage 1: Direct perception (prataksha);
Stage 2: Inference (from observations);
Stage 3: Competent evidence (authorities);
Stage 4: The proof.

and then a conclusion stemming from misunderstanding of science:

Quote:The first two stages appear to be the same in the modern and ancient concepts of scientific temper.

They are not the same. Science too is done through our perceptions, but it is with the knowledge that our perceptions are inherently biased. So science has corrective measures for those biases whereas Patanjali's system does not.

Quote:In the third stage, the ancient system accepts competent evidence from the authorities, but the modern system lays stress on experimental verification.

And that is why science is so successful. It doesn't trust authority. Religions do. To resolve that conflict, a logical step religious apologists need to take is change the meaning of science:

Quote:Endowed with a true scientific temper, Swami Vivekananda emphasized the need for proper investigation before discarding various extraordinary mental phenomena when he stated: ‘It is not the sign of a candid and scientific mind to throw overboard anything without proper investigation. Surface scientists, unable to explain the various extraordinary mental phenomena, strive to ignore their very existence.

And what constitutes proper investigation?

Quote:And then he insisted on experimental verification of the effects of Ràja yoga in the following words: ‘What little I know I will tell you. So far as I can reason it out I will do so, but as to what I do not know I will simply tell you what the books say. It is wrong to believe blindly. You must exercise your own reason and judgment; you must practise, and see whether these things happen or not. Just as you would take up any other science, exactly in the same manner you should take up this science for study.’

So the proper investigation is to trust our biased brains. That is the basis of spirituality - truth is what our brains tell us. But truth according to a scientific world view is - that which confirms to the real world that exists independently of us, not which seems right to our brains.

The rest of the article is just a nebulous word play that arises of that fundamental misunderstanding.

To apply the logic of the article, if 2 or more people have the same hallucination (say by tripping on LSD), the hallucination has to be real. But science will not consider such hallucinations as real.

[Sajit]

"Vedanta: the essence of Hinduism
Hindu religion is not based on a single personal founder or group of
founders; rather, it is based on revelations of the authentic inner experi-
ences of sages and seers deeply involved in the search for Truth.
The Veda, Puranas, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita form the basic spiritual literature of Hinduism. The Veda is the accumulated treasury of spiri-tual knowledge discovered by various seers and sages — perfected
beings — at various points in history. “The term Veda, according to
Sankaracharya, primarily means knowledge, beginningless and endless,
capable of leading to liberation, and verifiable by one and all”
(Ranganathananda1987, p. 40). That is why the Veda is the outcome
of an inquiry into Truth, very similar in nature and process to modern
scientific inquiry."

It is amazing how many people fall for such assertions masquerading as profound knowledge. It says clearly that these ideas are born out of wild imagination and irrational thought.

[Sajit]

More from that PDF file:


"Another important topic of deliberations by the modern scientists is the Unity of Forces. Scientists over the centuries have tried to unify the forces of nature at different stages in search of a grand unification as summed up below:
• Newton unified terrestrial gravity and astronomical gravitation.
• Oersted unified electricity and magne- tism.
• Maxwell unified all kinds of electro- magnetic radiations.
• Einstein unified space and time, mass and energy, but failed to unify GR and QM.
• De Broglie unified waves and par- ticles.
• Salam, Glashow, Weinberg unified electro-weak forces.
• Grand Unification was realized with strong nuclear force
• Super Grand Unification with gravita- tion is still eluding the scientists.
Scientists are now dreaming about a Theory of Everything (popularly called ToE) to answer all questions, as indicated below, and predict the future:
• How was the beginning of this Uni- verse?
• What is the state of matter within a black hole?
• Is spacetime curved, or is it flat?
• How many dimensions of space and time are there?
• What is the origin and reason of matter and energy?
• Is there a most fundamental particle? • What happens beyond Planck scales? • Why is momentum quantized? • Is the speed of light the fastest speed in
the universe? So the most fundamental search in mod-
ern science today is the search for Unity which governs everything in this universe.
This was realized by Swami Vivekananda, more than a century back, as we find from his address before the Parliament of Reli- gions in Chicago as early as in 1893:
Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus Chemistry could not progress farther when it would discover one element out of which all other could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfil its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are but manifestations. . . Manifesta- tion, and not creation, is the word of science today . . . .37"


Really? How?

[Lije]

(19-Apr-2011, 06:00 PM)Sajit Wrote: So the most fundamental search in modern science today is the search for Unity which governs everything in this universe. This was realized by Swami Vivekananda, more than a century back, as we find from his address before the Parliament of Reli- gions in Chicago as early as in 1893:

Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus Chemistry could not progress farther when it would discover one element out of which all other could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfil its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are but manifestations. . . Manifesta- tion, and not creation, is the word of science today . . . .37"

That's intellectual dishonesty. It hasn't been shown that the unification science seeks is possible. We assume that it is. Even then the unity science seeks is different from that of religion. Science wants a minimal set of theories to predict what will happen in the real world. Religion wants certain states of mind where the sense of "I" is lost. There is nothing wrong in trying to lose that sense. But if your starting premise is to know The Truth about existence, shoving your delusion on others as the only way to get to The Truth is just plain wrong. Not only do religious people not know The Truth or have a clue on how to get to it as they bowdlerize science with their spiritual nonsense, they are actively preventing others from knowing it.