The theory of biological evolution is based on concepts that are inconsistent with the notions of matter in modern physics, the problems of meaning in mathematics, what randomness entails in computing theory, and what game theoretic and ecological perspectives tell us about the natural world.
For morality to exist in nature, free choices must exist prior because if there is no free choice then there is no responsibility, and moral consequences of choices cannot exist.
Biology still lives in a relative time-warp of philosophical presuppositions that were acceptable in Darwin’s time but are now false.
Unfortunately, the fact of modern times is that most people don’t care enough about neither science nor religion, not because they don’t know of their existence, but because there isn’t an existential crisis in their lives of a large enough magnitude for them to start asking the big questions.
In other areas of science, randomness is considered a problem, not a feature of reality. In no field of science, except biology, are chance, uncertainty, probability, and indeterminism welcome features of science, let alone reality.
If there is complete determinism in nature, then we could not have goals and choices—not even of technology. On the other hand, if we were completely free, then natural laws themselves would not exist.
Modern materialism tries to answer the question of our origin, without addressing the issue whether that explanation can answer why we even asked that question.
The ability to perceive and conceive, to have intentions and knowledge, are issues central to an understanding of life. These are largely neglected in science and, by implication, in biology.
Imagine that the universe is a cosmic drama whose roles and events are fixed a priori by the playwright at the time of writing the play, but its actors have not yet been identified because the play hasn’t yet been dramatized.
If you are truly a materialist then what is so sacrosanct about life? Why would killing, suffering, and pain be problematic? Isn’t death another configuration of atoms, just like life?
A theory of reality must not just explain reality, but also knowledge about that reality because knowing reality is part of reality.
The semantic view substantially alters our ideas about change. If matter is physical particles, then change is motion. If, however, matter is symbols of meaning, then change represents evolution of knowledge.
Meanings in the Vedic view are fundamental and it is matter that is emergent. The causality in matter is therefore based on meanings and not based on physical properties.
The problems of incompleteness, inconsistency, and incomputability can be solved by bringing everyday language insights into mathematics.
The Vedic viewpoint presents a type of linguistic realism in which reality is the ‘text’ which is being processed by observer. Reality can also be modified by adding ‘text’ to it similar to how a programmer programs a computer by inputting a computer program.
The scientist observes the world dispassionately, thinks scruplously, and creates theories with honest intentions, but we cannot talk about passion, honesty, and integrity as something science needs to define and explain.
The virtues that we consider good qualities are not sustainable without God. We may exhibit some of these qualities occasionally, but you would generally not find reciprocation and inspiration to keep doing them continuously because the other living beings in the world are just going to use that kindness and not behave kindly in return. Only in relation to God are these virtues also permanent; without the connection to God, these qualities only appear and disappear.
In every perception we simultaneously perform three kinds of judgments—the judgment of true and false is tied to the concepts, the judgment of right and wrong is associated with the relationship, and the judgment of good and bad is connected to our purposes.
Free will makes no changes to matter, because matter exists as possibilities and all possibilities are eternal. But free will changes our experience by creating the combination of eternal possibilities. Instead of worrying about how the soul can change matter, we should be worrying about how free will combines possibilities.
The ability to own ideas is contrary to all human intuition because it is tantamount to controlling what people can think. The problem goes to the root of what we can call ‘property’. The things that we can control by our senses—food, housing, land, forests, minerals, etc.—can constitute property. But ideas—generated by our mind, and often simply obtained through inner inspiration—cannot be owned.
A socio-economic structure by itself cannot facilitate a happy society if the people are unprepared to lead moral lives based on principles of simplicity, honesty, organized and systematic living, besides transcendence. Our incentives for morality have been robbed by the modern ideologies of materialism and hedonism, which foster growing wants, and paint the purpose of life to be the greatest amount of sense pleasure. This results in selfishness, which then prompts dereliction of societal duties.
There are many examples of large-scale emergent behaviors. People who seemed to have been autonomous individuals suddenly organize into a cohesive system that acts with a common purpose, and large-scale congruent behavior emerges. People do things in the group that none of them would have done individually. What causes the emergence of cohesiveness when it did not exist before? The simplest explanation of group behaviors is the existence of a leader.
The demigods (polytheism) are different from the many forms of God (monotheism)—because the demigod is a role occupied by a person for a fixed duration of time. Unlike God whose person is the role—i.e. He never relinquishes the role—the demigods are powerful positions occupied by living beings only temporarily. Polytheism is true, but it is subordinate to monotheism.
At the bare minimum, we have to think of matter as not just things that exist, but also the meanings and truths of those existents. In other words, we have to study these existents as symbols rather than things.
Reason, experience, and open inquiry are compatible with theism but dogmatic materialism is not. In fact, dogmatic materialism is a hindrance even to the development of science. Progress in theism need not therefore begin from the recognition of God or the soul; it can also begin from the acceptance of concepts as real entities from which material objects are created.
The Vedas describe a five-fold process by which a self-image is externalized as a person’s individual reality. These five-fold causes are the efficient causes of bringing forth action. In Vedic thought, creation is a process that manifests in five stages called thinking, feeling, willing, knowing and acting.
Just as passengers in a car or airplane don’t need to change themselves in order to travel on ground, water, or air, consciousness need not change itself to experience different things. Consciousness only needs to change the vehicle in which it is riding.
A universe of classical particles is devoid of knowledge because the universe can only be itself and not be a representation of something else. If the universe was only composed of classical particles, then there would only be physical properties, but no meanings. The idea that we can have information about an object without becoming that object is central to all knowledge.
The expression of free will is better seen when consciousness begins to reject material allurements. If we want to observe the true free will of consciousness, then we must first create the conditions of true free will by giving up the identification with matter.