Dining with a monkey by Chaitanya Charan

1. Spirituality in the
Age of Science

3. Science looks for matter, not spirit
Methodological naturalism
Eg. Fishing net, Knowing
personality thru X-ray, Seeing
color image on a black &
white camera

4. What science can’t tell us
Origin
Value
Purpose
Quality

5. Origin
Nothing existed because of
nothing – nothing
exploded because of
nothing and gave rise to
everything

6. Origin
God is not the explanation
for the unexplainable – he
is the explanation for
explanability

7. Purpose
“The cornerstone of scientific method
is…the systematic denial that ‘true’
knowledge can be got at by
interpreting phenomena in terms of
final causes—that is to say, of
‘purpose.’”
- Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity

8. Purpose
Science “fails in the face of all
ultimate questions” (Jaspers) and
leaves “the problems of
life…completely untouched”
(Wittgenstein)
.

9. Value
Even the greatest forces and abilities don't seem to
carry any clear instructions on how to use them. As
an example, the great accumulation of
understanding as to how the physical world
behaves only convinces one that this behaviour has
a kind of meaninglessness about it. The sciences do
not directly teach good or bad. … ethical values lie
outside the scientific realm.
 Noble Laureate Physicist Richard Feynman

10. Value
You are right in speaking of the
moral foundations of science, but you
cannot turn round and speak of the
scientific foundations of morality…
Every attempt to reduce ethics to
scientific formulae must fail
 - Albert Einstein

11. Quality
“We cannot say that in experience one light has twice
the brightness of another. The terms in which we
measure experience of a sound are not terms of
experience. They are terms of the stimulus, the
physical sound, or of the nervous or other bodily
action concomitant with the experience.…The
search…for a scale of equivalence between energy
and mental experience arrives at none.”
- Nobel Laureate Neurophysiologist Sir Charles
Sherrington, Man on His Nature

12. Everything inside you is not you
“Materialism is the
philosophy of the subject
who forgets to take
account of himself.”
–Arthur Schopenhauer

13. Harmony
Science can make
things better;
spirituality can
make people better

14. Negativity
Fear is not the
problem – fear of
what comes after
fear is

15. Double role
Makes us do wrong
Castigates us for doing wrong

16. What’s inside us?
Superficial desires generated by
corporate-controlled media
Core desires according to our material
nature
Core desires according to our spiritual
nature

17. Living with the mind
Distance
Determination
Devotion