Religious Claims and Contradiction

May 28 2019

Noncontradiction is a fundamental characteristic of valid knowledge in Hindu traditions. This places the teachings of the scripture in the wider stream of discourse about the nature of reality.

A belief or proposition that is contradicted loses its validity. If a religious teaching contradicts a well-established fact of experience, it cannot be considered authoritative. You cannot prove, Śaṅkara said famously, that fire is cold or that the sun does not shine, by citing sentences from scripture. These are facts already established by other authoritative sources of knowledge and a scripture cannot reverse facts.

If contradictions occur between different sources of valid knowledge, earnest inquiry is necessary for the resolution of these, and we must welcome and be active participants in such discussions. The Hindu tradition does not allow us to ignore science or to irrationally claim that the findings of science are false because these contradict scripture.

Religious claims that are refuted by valid sources of knowledge cannot be professed in ways suggesting that such contradictions do not matter. Religion cannot claim special privilege and be sheltered from wider engagement with the growing body of knowledge about our universe and life. Traditions ought not to fear truth, whatever its source.

Religion ought not to claim authority in those fields of inquiry where its methods and sources are inappropriate or limited. A similar humility is required on the part of the empirical sciences. The pursuit of coherence in knowledge is a shared concern of religion and science.

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