Science is completely dependent on evidence but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.....
I was reading an article by the celebrated
Cambridge physicist, Stephen Hawking, titled “There is no heaven; it is a fairy
tale”. It is an interesting read, although it lacks any semblance of logic does
not present any scientific basis for his claims. However, when someone of his
stature makes a statement, it becomes gospel truth for the gullible readers. He
has written books, most of which, according to a great scientist, John OM
Bockris, makes for an interesting read, but is far removed from science. Present
medical science avers that patients with motor neuron
disease should not live beyond a couple of years of its diagnosis. In the
case of Stephen Hawking, this scientific rule has been proven completely wrong!
We are glad for that. May he live long!
If “science is measurement and measurement is
science,” as defined by Mary Curie, heaven cannot be a scientific concept. Even
if one were to take the definition of science by a noted
Hungarian-born American scientist, John von Neumann, that “science is
making models, mostly mathematical constructs, which with verbal jargon,
are supposed to work,” also makes the concept of heaven untenable.
Unfortunately, in biology including human physiology, one cannot measure a lot
of things. One simple example could be human thought. No one can deny that all
of us get different thoughts at different times, but can a scientist measure
human thought? Does that mean that thought does not exist? Absence
of evidence does not scientifically allow one to infer that it is scientific evidence
of absence!
All that one could say is that human consciousness, at the moment, does not
permit us to show the presence of heaven or God. Hawking goes on to make some
atrocious claims that the human brain is just a computer. When
the computer shuts down, man dies, there is no after-life, etc. Hawking
does not realist that there is research data, going back to 60 long years in
one of the US universities, trying to document after-life. Many of their papers
are published in indexed journals. Hawking bases his claim on the ancient work
of people, like the neurosurgeon, Penfield, that when you stimulate a part of
the brain, some part of the body responds. Hawking thinks this is same as the
GI-GO computer. The problem with conventional physics is that it does not
accept consciousness as a scientific concept. My rudimentary knowledge of human
physiology does not permit me to agree that brain is a simple computer. It
would be an insult to Jagadish Chandra Bose if we deny the existence of
consciousness which, he showed, exists even in plants!
Hans Peter Durr, emeritus president of the Max
Planck Institute in Munich, has elegantly shown the fallacy in some of the
physics formula which Hawking claims are sacrosanct. One example is enough. In
his paper, Matter is not made out of matter, Hans goes to show how
E=M (a duality) is the future physics. Physics had changed for good when Werner
Heisenberg propounded the, now famous, uncertainty principle (pq is not equal
to qp). Heisenberg was asked by the reporters about where he did his
experiments; his immediate response was Gedanken experiment (experiments
in his mind). If Heisenberg’s brain were to be just a computer, as claimed by
Hawking, he would not have been able to propound his theory. The book, Occult
Chemistry, by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater (originally from
Cambridge, like Hawking), in 1920 had graphically described their idea of the
atomic structure of nine elements from hydrogen to helium, using their ‘third
eye’ during yogic sidhis in the Himalayas. Their atom is close
to reality now.
One could just say that having a scientific temper
is vital for human growth and to save mankind from dangerous
superstitions. At the same time, one needs to be aware that science, as it is
known today, is not the be all and end all of human wisdom. A wise scientist
knows that science is just organised curiosity with a touch of logical septicemic.
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