Krishna is not an explanation for the unexplainable – he is the explanation for explanability Some people conceive of God as an explanatory alternative to science: “There’s so much about the world that science can’t explain; we need God to explain those things.” While such a conception of God may sometimes serve to highlight the limitations of science, it unnecessarily restricts his jurisdiction to the scientifically unexplainable. And if future advances in science explain the currently unexplainable, then the arena for God’s jurisdiction gets reduced, leading to what is know as the God-of-the-gaps fallacy. Krishna is not the God-of-the-gaps; he is the God due to whom the gaps are fillable Gita wisdom doesn’t entertain such a fallacious conception of God. The Bhagavad-gita (09.10) indicates that Krishna is the overseer of nature, implying thereby that he is the reason for the order present in nature. He is the God-of-everything, not the God-of-the-gaps. He is the reason that the gaps in our knowledge are fillable. If the universe were not guided by a supreme intelligence, why should it have any order at all? Why should its behavior have any explanation? Why should we have rational minds capable of deciphering those explanations? Thus, God is not an explanatory alternative to science; he is the explanatory foundation, the raison d’être for all explanations. Sometimes wisdom-traditions use the immense and inconceivable complexity of the universe as a pointer to God. But such pointers underscore primarily his intelligence, not his existence. If the order underlying the universe is so complex that it even the best brains in the universe require years, decades and even centuries to grasp that order, then it underscores how super-intelligent the brain of the order-maker must be. Such an acknowledgement of God’s glory doesn’t deny the possibility of future scientific research explaining what is currently unexplainable. If and when such explanations do come up, they won’t demonstrate his non- existence; rather, they would demonstrate his intelligence. This material nature, which is one of My energies, is working under My direction, O son of Kuntī, producing all moving and nonmoving beings. Under its rule this manifestation is created and annihilated again and again. Bhagavad Gita. 9.10.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 14:06:12 +0000