Though I do not wish to get involved in personal polemics because it is unproductive, I consider it important to challenge untruths that are allowed to pass off as knowledge. RMBS (name abridged not out of disrespect but for the sake of convenience) is given to the habit of polemically assaying the minds of others when he cannot counter any valid argument that defies his fanciful theses. Once, quite long ago, he used this type of polemic to deride me by saying that my mind rotates round a ‘narrow circle". In doing so he had borrowed a phrase from a mediocre English author. For all his proclaimed devotion to science and the rigorous method that goes with it, he failed to realize that the property of being narrow defines the ratio of length to breadth and is therefore not applicable to a circle. In his latest attempt to summarily dismiss my views, he makes the cynical comment that I have roamed far and wide in dealing with the "chance" remark he had made about Buddhists and Hindus. I suppose RMB must be familiar with that song ‘Home on the Range’ which starts with the words "O give me a home where the buffaloes roam". The buffalo’s freedom to roam and pasture in fields without being impeded by boundaries is the equivalent of a human trespassing on fields of knowledge without concern for relevance and validity.

While I do read many fine articles published in the Island – especially the excellent editorials – I do not read some articles including those of RMBS. I do this not out of disdain but because time is of essence when dealing with a vast pile of reading matter. I am also fond of the cartoon that goes by the name ‘Wizard of Id’, because it provides little doses of distilled wisdom.. I do read articles authored by Eric J. de Silva because he is analytical to the point of being finical and very modest in that he does not claim any proprietary rights in the matter of disseminating knowledge; be it education, the pharmaceutical industry or some other subject. He shuns the nettle of vain prolixity.

As for the inconsistency attributed to me by RMBS I must stress that the fruits of science are those that help man to understand himself and the world that he lives in. Man’s aesthetic sense exults with awe and wonder in the experience of witnessing the beauty and symmetry inherent in the universe. Just as the motto of art is ‘ars gratia artis’ the implicit motto of science is ‘scientia gratia scientiae’ (knowledge for the sake of knowledge). ‘Ordinary men’ are free to cheer and applaud the achievements of technology as it serves mankind with artificial light, motive power and medical attention or grieve when it stultifies their faculties with noise, nuclear pollution and melamine. As far as I am concerned technology is a by-product of science that can confer benefits on mankind if it is prudently used. No such condition applies to science.

I agree that Pope John Paul II did declare, sometime in 1984 or thereafter, that Galileo, who was subject to the Inquisition in 1633, had been ‘imprudently opposed’ by the church. Mark the words ‘imprudently opposed’. He was tried and convicted by the Inquisition and sentenced to life imprisonment: later commuted to permanent house arrest till he agreed to abjure his discoveries. This apology was senseless when set against the ecclesial obduracy that prevailed for 351 years, from 1633 to 1984, before it succumbed to the need to say ‘mea culpa’. This apology has been nullified by the subsequent statement made by Pope Benedict XVI that the trial and conviction of Galileo by the Inquisition was "rational and just". This discredits what is repeated ad nauseam as the sacred tradition of the Church. RMBS’ attempt to compare the way that Ven. Pelpola Vipassi was treated by the Buddhist clergy when he decided to adopt the Mahayana form of Buddhism is plain frivolity. This shows the extent to which he is off the mark in the matter of logical thinking, because the Church was guilty of violating Galileo’s right on two counts: by arresting and sequestering him and by trying to intervene in a matter that related to the science of astronomy. Ven. Vipassi was censured only on a matter of religious discipline relating to doctrine: Hinayana vs. Mahayana.

I was right in my prediction that RMBS, like others, is habituated to eschew anything that is Sri Lankan. He has chosen to throw a little barbed projectile at Professor K. N. Jayatilleke by referring to his analysis as being a subjective judgment, in spite of the fact that the other author I have quoted confirms the same point of view. He makes it very clear that his intention was not to show that Buddhism teaches science but that the scientific revolution does not have the same adverse effect on Buddhism as it has on other religions. Professor KNJ was a man of sheer intellectual brilliance in areas such as Pali, Sanskrit, Buddhism, Western Philosophy, Mathematical Logic and Linguistic Analysis. A pedestrian mind that strives to reach his level of intellectual attainment will not succeed in doing so, even after burning midnight oil over many years. If one defines the attribute of being subjective as a product of one’s mind that has no relevance to fact, the comment made by RMBS is a classic example. His views are not only subjective but coloured with prejudice. Canonical Buddhism does not deny the objective reality of the external world at the sensuous or scientific level. The quality of impermanence is strictly a personal realization attained at progressively higher levels of meditation. Even physicists like Max Planck admit that the external physical world can be looked at in three different ways: the world as perceived by our senses, the world as described by science and the world that is as yet not discovered. There is no one-to-one correspondence between the world we perceive and the world as described by science.

If one accepts the discriminatory criterion of objectivity applied by RMBS to Buddhists and Hindus, Christians too could be said to be loaded with baggage that disqualifies them from working in laboratories. This, we know is not the case when we consider the achievements of men like the late Professor U.D.R Caspersz and Fr. Peter Pillai and many others. To distort the character of Christianity through ignorance of its core teachings is as great a crime as deriding Buddhism and Hinduism. If Jesus Christ visits the Vatican (The State of the Holy See) today he would wonder what that structural opulence has to do with his salvific mission on earth. He will say to himself, "I trod the hard ground of Nazareth and Galilee but my kingdom is not of this world".