Spirituality in the age of science - The hard problem of consciousness by Chaitanya Charan

Do we need spirituality in an age of science?

Multi-faceted human intelligence

“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.”

- Albert Einstein

Scientism is unscientific

When science claims omniscience, it becomes scientific imperialism or scientism

Eg. Nothing outside the room

Science - scope focuses & limits “I am very astonished that the scientific picture

of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us.”

- Noble Laureate Physicist Erwin Schrodinger

Science - scope focuses & limits “It cannot tell us a word about red and blue,

bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.”

- Noble Laureate Physicist Erwin Schrodinger

Is that scientific?

Different kinds of evidenceEg. Evidence for “What is the time?” vs

“Does he /she love me?

Consciousness “Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of

consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot.”

Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics

Does consciousness exist?

No scientifically measurable proof, yet it is the basis of all measurable proofs

Consciousness doesn’t exist?

Even the denial of consciousness is an affirmation of consciousness

Einstein’s dilemma If we are just chemical

robots, then we have no free will.

Then Nazis aren’t responsible for the Holocaust

“I love you”

I & you – biological robotsLove – Surge of

chemicals in cranial cavity

Who is the inner activator? “The brain is a computer . . . But it is programmed by something that is outside itself.” - Wilder Penfield The Mystery of the Mind,

The non-material source of consciousness

We are not programmed machines; we are the owners of programmable machines

Science-spirituality harmony

Science can make things better; spirituality can make people better