: Why does science only answer 'what' questions and not answer 'why' questions?

Since modern science deals with matter only, science can offer us a very limited perspective of the world.

"Science is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us about red and blue, bitter and sweet, beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously."

--Erwin Schrodinger, a Nobel prize winning physicist

A new religion has evolved in the global culture. It’s called Scientism. Even though modern science has absolutely nothing sensible to say about the reality we live in, the general population is convinced that science has explained away the need for God and religion.

Scientific theories like abiogenesis and evolution, even though they are pure and unalloyed myths, are being taught in all educational institutions of the world as scientific facts.

But who has decided that technological expertise is the best way to measure our ability to understand the reality we live in? Those who are influential in defining peoples' realities - the producers, scientists, the media, politicians, etc. -- have made technological advancement the barometer of human progress. They claim that the advancement of technology is the most noble pursuit of the human race, that it has made the world a better place to live in.

As proof, they list all the consumer gadgets we use and are dependent upon - computers, cell-phones, televisions, cars, and so on - and say that the intelligence to build these things shows that we have advanced our understanding of nature and how she works far beyond our ability in the middle ages.

But is this assertion correct? To build a computer, one certainly requires advanced knowledge of physics and chemistry, but these disciplines describe only a tiny part of the reality we perceive. A far greater part of reality is our conscious experience of it -- something most people don’t even think about.

Few people ponder the fact that their understanding of the world is conditioned by the culture they grew up in. They automatically take it for granted that the way they perceive the world is the correct one, and that nature is best described in physical and chemical terms.

Modern science is very useful for making technology, in fact, it’s the only thing it is good for, and when we live in a world where the masses are kept in awe and reverence of technological wonders, science is, of course, a most important undertaking.

But the jubilation of modern people over the newest technology is no different from the gaping wonder with which people in the middle ages looked upon sorcerers and magicians firing off sulphur and gun powder. The magicians did this to dupe their audiences and secure their comfortable hold on society.

In the middle ages (in the West at least), the regents of society kept people in ignorance so they were easy to control and manipulate, and today the exact same means are used to enslave people in ignorance. In the global culture the slaves have just been upgraded to a middle-class with their own house and car.

People still slave their lives away in boring jobs and are marred by the same endless worries and miseries, people have always suffered from. They are still being ground down by taxation, victims of greedy politicians, exactly like they’ve always been.

There is no basis for saying that advanced knowledge of mathematics and physics enables a person to better understand the world any more than the cave dweller of some 2000 years ago who worshiped nature and various gods.

If the modern culture is based on a better understanding of the world, why is it ruining nature and her inhabitants at an alarming rate? If modern man is more advanced in his understanding of nature, why is he sawing the branch he is sitting on?

Despite the so-called advancement of modern society, people are till not able to transcend their mental conditioning. The proof is that modern society does not produce people with evolved consciousness. Rather, we see the exact opposite taking place - in direct proportion to the advancement of technology, people have become more and more base and idiotic in the way they treat and relate to each-other.

Some years ago, WHO published a report saying that the biggest health crisis facing the world in the new millennium is that more and more people will be born with mental defects. Is that the symptom of an evolved society?

Society, as it is, is not equipped to facilitate self-realized human beings. What need does a self realized person have for the plethora of useless products being produced by the few conglomerates that control world consumerism? Such enlightenment would indeed negate the necessity for the technological advancement upon which the world's finances now rely.

That is why, in the current global culture, a deliberate campaign exists to transform people into atheists. In such a culture, religion is being ridiculed and has been replaced with politics. Instead of voting for a particular religion, the public now votes for politicians, who are mostly hired by those multinationals with the biggest checkbooks -- all in the name of serving the people, of course.

The modern, global culture has already made the whole world into one big marketplace - a worldwide altar where technology is worshiped as the new opium of the masses.

Being fed endless propaganda from Hollywood where technology saves the day, we quickly forget that technology, despite assurances to the contrary, cannot save us from the onslaughts of nature. Time and time again, technology comes up short in the fight against nature.

The new high-priests of society, now clad in white frocks instead of black, fail to comprehend how the mechanisms of nature work. And how could they? They also suffer from the misunderstanding that everything is dead matter, and are restricted by the assumption that their knowledge of physical laws can explain the world.

Yet more important than understanding how physical matter works is the understanding how consciousness, false ego, intelligence and mind work. These make up a much greater part of the reality we perceive. As long as we fail to understand the difference between matter and consciousness, we cannot even be said to have evolved beyond animal consciousness.

That's why atheism is dangerous - it keeps the consciousness entrapped in a world of matter. It keeps the self from its rare mission in the human life form - to understand consciousness. It cultivates a perception of life where the consciousness cannot see itself - a deception where the self being absorbed in matter forgets itself.

Every individual is duty-bound to alter their consciousness and connect it with the whole - Sri Krishna. While Srila Prabhupada was a nitya-siddha, he was also a social revolutionary, as was the Lord he served - Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The political correctness that predominates in the world and passes as social etiquette should not stop us from assisting him in his mission - to silence the atheistic class of men, and to inundate the world with Krishna Consciousness.

Krishna says:

The living entities in this conditioned world are My eternal fragmental parts. Due to conditioned life, they are struggling very hard with the six senses, which include the mind.

The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another, as the air carries aromas. Thus he takes one kind of body and again quits it to take another.

The living entity, thus taking another gross body, obtains a certain type of ear, eye, tongue, nose and sense of touch, which are grouped about the mind. He thus enjoys a particular set of sense objects.

The foolish cannot understand how a living entity can quit his body, nor can they understand what sort of body he enjoys under the spell of the modes of nature. But one whose eyes are trained in knowledge can see all this.

The endeavoring transcendentalists who are situated in self-realization can see all this clearly. But those whose minds are not developed and who are not situated in self-realization cannot see what is taking place, though they may try.

— Bhagavad-gita 15.7–11