Contrary to the prevalent notion that science stands at odds with religion, younger scientists are more open to the concept of a higher spiritual reality, according to a new book.
In “Science at the Doorstep To God: Science and Reason in Support of God, the Soul, and Life After Death,” Father Robert Spitzer, president and co-founder of the Napa Institute, investigates the “scientific evidence substantiating the existence of a transcendent God and explores the influence of modern science on our comprehension of creation—both within the physical universe and the human spirit”.
His research includes the claim that the belief in God or a higher spiritual reality is held by 51 per cent of scientists, which increases to 66 per cent among young scientists.
It’s even higher among physicians specifically, with 76 per cent affirming a belief in God or a higher spiritual reality, and 74 per cent acknowledging the occurrence of miracles in the past and 73 per cent “confirming their belief in ongoing miracles in modern times,” notes the Napa Institute.
While the Institute does not explain precisely from where Fr Spitzer cites these findings, nor does it lay out the methods behind them, there is good reason not to be surprised by his claims.
That scientists consider the origins of the created order and the power that maintains it beyond “the science” and empirical evidence is nothing new.
“People think that science or mathematics are completely based on reason, but this is just wrong,” says Sergiu Klainerman, Professor of Mathematics at Princeton. “A mathematical theorem is indeed presented as a long sequence of logical arguments but that is not the way mathematicians arrive at their truth. Every new, deep theorem starts with a leap of faith, followed by reasoned arguments and not the other way around.”
He notes how for the likes of Copernicus, Galileo, Leibnitz and Newton, God “talked” to them “through numbers and equations”, and how “Einstein was all his life driven by a vision of a unified theory that combined all known forces”.
He goes on to explain that “faith in this vision continues to be the driving force in theoretical physics. It is faith that gives purpose and direction, and reason that keeps faith in check. It is telling to note in this sense that the philosophical conceit of modern rationalist thinkers, starting with Descartes, that truth ought to be discoverable by reason alone, has led instead to the opposite conclusion embodied in the radical relativism of postmodern thinkers such as Foucault and Derrida.”
One example of a young scientist erring from the modern rationalist agenda is 41-year-old Karin Öberg, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard, who converted to Catholicism from her functionally agnostic, culturally-Lutheran Swedish background while undergoing her studies after coming into contact with GK Chesterton’s writings.
Öberg not only serves on the board of the Center for Catholic Scientists, but is also a leader at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Recently, Öberg has involved herself with the Thomistic Institute, a Dominican-led academic faculty in Washington, D.C.
Speaking for the Thomistic Institute, she has said that the general public should “resist this temptation” to think that science and [particularly the Catholic] religion could even in principle be in conflict “because it completely misunderstands what the scientific method can and cannot do”.
She highlights that “many of the early-modern scientists explicitly cite their Christian Faith as inspiration for their scientific pursuit”, and reminds audiences that the scientific method is presupposed by faith – faith in the correspondence of reason to truth, faith in our senses, and faith in an intelligible universe.
The two cannot be extricated, she argues, and scientific inquiry would be impossible without them. Öberg warns that the scientific method thus should never be understood as the only source of knowledge.
Science, and particularly physics – hence that 76 per cent figure from Fr Spitzer, perhaps – asks the inquirer to think about cause and effect. About dynamics at a profound and abstract level. This is in many ways quite the same as what philosophy and theology does – though within a different remit.
What was in early-modern Europe predominantly a Christian spirituality behind the thought of the leading scientists is today comparably certainly more heterodox and esoteric – but spiritual all the same.
In a 2009 interview, best-selling New York-based physicist Michiu Kaku was asked by Dr Kiki Sanford:
“I’ve heard that the majority of theoretical physicists are incredibly spiritual, and have a great appreciation for the concept of consciousness, and the soul, and the universe and where it came from –what is your view?”
Kaku acknowledged the point, though followed it with a rather elusive, somewhat affirmative response by saying, “We have to define what you mean by God”. Elsewhere, though, Kaku, along with a plethora of other scientists, has suggested that the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah has been influential upon his theories and understanding, acknowledging a particular curiosity about and familiarity with it:
“It’s rather amazing – this uncanny reflection of some of the most advanced cosmology coming from our satellites, coming from our atom-smashers, coming from our blackboards that are mirrored in the Zohar and ancient Kabbalistic texts,” he said.
Recent experimental and theoretical developments can be understood as behind this late steering away of the scientific community from pure materialism towards spiritualism.
Most notably, scientists were surprised and confused to find results which appeared to suggest that reality is directly influenced (and potentially even actualised or codified) by a conscious observer, following the so-called “double-slit experiment” into the position of photons. Investigators discovered that whether light behaves like a particle or a wave appears to be dependent upon a conscious observer making a measurement.
Schrödinger’s cat famously deals with such considerations. Could it be that whether a cat trapped in a box is alive or dead depend on an observer? Could it possibly be simultaneously alive and dead until the observation is made? This latter state is what some think quantum mechanics appears to imply. The consequences for us could be great: Why do we appear to be alive when no known consciousness is observing us? Is something conscious observing us?
Along with the increasingly supported “no-hiding” theorem in quantum mechanics that information is never lost – it remains subsumed “out there” in the “subspace of the environment” – as well as groundbreaking (although disputed) suggestions by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi that consciousness is far broader than the human mind while also calculable, this has led to an explosion of theories and belief among scientists about the consciousness which may well be behind, or synonymous with, the universe.
Erwin Schrödinger himself once said: “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”
For Catholics this mystery is rather simple: a conscious and intelligent being (God) has been observing our universe from the beginning (and even potentially observing Himself if we conceive God as Trinitarian). Sceptics such as Schrödinger are more hesitant – but still left conceding that there are primary things beyond the mere material, leaving a door wide open which beckons strongly to spiritualism.
The popularity of Richard Dawkins was at its height at the end of the 20th and into the beginning of the 21st century. He famously described faith in virulently contested terms as “blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence”.
But Fr Spitzer’s book suggests that Dawkins’ position is beginning to be repudiated as the 21st century marches on into greater explorations of the likes of consciousness and our universe.
“Faith is not blind trust,” says Father Andrew Pinsent, a traditional Catholic priest who serves on multiple scientific and humanities faculties at the University of Oxford, and was one of the original scientists chosen to work on the Hadron Collider at CERN. “It’s consent to what has been revealed.”
Photo: This mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, shows the six-light-year-wide expanding remnants of a star’s supernova explosion. (Photo credit: NASA via Getty Images.)
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