Ever since science and religion have coexisted they have been at each other's throats, sometimes literally. We are all aware of the horror stories going back centuries of religious authorities executing scientists who have disagreed with religious beliefs of the time. You've no doubt heard of the steadfast academic rule of publish or perish. A twist on that theme is the monk who was promptly done away with by the Church upon publishing a dissertation challenging certain religious dogma. He became the first academic to publish AND perished.
On a more realistic note, the 17^th^ century astronomer Galileo was smart enough not to publish his evidence supporting Copernicus (16^th^ century) notion that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around as the Catholic authority held. When, as an old man, he (Galileo) did finally publish his findings on celestial orbits, including the earth going around the sun, the Catholics threw him in prison for the remaining few years of his life. You could say that he too published AND perished, albeit the latter wasn't immediate. During the same time period as Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton created quite a brouhaha among the English clergy with his discovery that white light, thought to represent purity, wasn't pure at all but rather an admixture of the colors we see -- red, orange, green, blue and violet. As far as we know, the Church of England didn't do anything drastic to Newton about this, but they definitely weren't happy campers about it.
Fortunately, now days violent interactions between science and religion are quite rare, at least in the Western world. But there remains considerable distrust between the two camps with one side often taking the other to court over one thing or another.
Most recently, religious folks have fostered the fear that science is gradually replacing religion. This notion has even found its way into modern-day novels. In Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons" (2000), the Camerlengo says to a group of Cardinals: "The wheels have been in motion for a long time. Science is the new God." He goes on to say: "Science may have alleviated the miseries of disease and drudgery and provided an array of gadgetry for our entertainment and convenience, but it has left us in a world without wonder. Our sunsets have been reduced to wavelengths and frequencies."
In contrast to the fictional Camerlengo's notion that science is striving to replace God, what science has done, and continues to do, is to reveal the details of how the universe works and in so doing give us a deeper understanding of what the Divine (i.e., God) might be and, along with it, a deeper appreciation of creation. On this note, seeing a sunset as wavelengths and frequencies (of light) does not diminish its beauty or any other aspect of the sun. To the contrary, I would argue that seeing a sunset from a scientific perspective enhances its nature and fosters a deeper reverence and wonder of the universe in which it resides.
Furthermore, science has none of the attributes typically assigned to a divinity, such as an omnipotent entity, a supreme ultimate reality, a being perfect in wisdom and the creator of the universe and all within it. Science is none of these, and no decent scientist, myself included, would consider, even for a split second, promoting our profession as a religion.
In its basic form, science is a set of procedures carried out by ordinary men and women with the goal of discovering and collecting reliable information about everything from sub-atomic particles to the Universe as a whole. In so doing, science has provided the tools and information necessary for the alleviation of disease and the manufacture of an array of gadgetry. These too have been carried out by ordinary men and women, some with little, if any, formal education. No divine entity of any sort involved here.
Rather than proposing science as God (new or otherwise), there is merit in suggesting that a common goal of both science and religion is to discover the essential nature of creation. Relevant to this point, sixth century BC Greek society was one in which science, philosophy and religion were not separated but rather existed as an integrated and seamless process aimed at understanding nature. The term 'physics' is derived from the Greek word 'physis' which roughly translates to seeing the essential nature of all things.
Seeing the essential nature of all things is what the Eastern Mystic religions have been up to for the past several millennia. As the physicist Fritjof Capra points out in his book "The Tao of Physics"(Shambhala Publication, 1975) there is considerable parallelism between the findings of modern-day science, in particular quantum physics, and the beliefs of ancient mysticism (e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen) as to how the universe operates. Basically, mystic religions and modern science see all things from sub-atomic particles to galaxies as interdependent and inseparable parts of a cosmic whole.
The interdependency and inseparability of all things is thought to have come about from the way the universe unfolded and subsequently developed following the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago. It is thought that the Big Bang immediately gave rise to a plasma like massless sea of energy which may well have been the "formless void" mentioned in Genesis 1:2 of the Christian Bible. Without going into complex details, the subatomic particles that formed from this sea of energy seemingly did so in what can best be described as a self-directed purposeful manner in which the particles remained connected in some sort of universal web of interdependence. The connections remained as particles developed into atoms and atoms into molecules and molecules into everything, including all living organisms of which we are but one of many types.
The self-directed interdependent development of subatomic particles is thought to have given the developing universe an intelligence. Then as the universe grew, so did its intelligence. With this as a background, some in both science and religion have expressed the notion that what we consider to be the Divine (God) is simply the collective intelligence of the universe.
Regardless, the notion that the intelligent universe is God and that this universe is composed of a multitude of interconnected sub-atomic particles which make up everything, including us, means that we are a part of the Divine. On this note, us becoming a part of the Divine may have been in the subconscious mind of Moses, the presumed author of Genesis, when he wrote in Genesis 26: "And God said, 'Let us make human kind in our image'." (i.e., a part of the intelligent universe which is God).
If we are indeed a part of the intelligent universe (i.e., God), then God is a part of us. As recorded in the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic gospel, Christ himself said as much when he stated that: "The Kingdom (of God) is inside you and it is outside you (i.e., in all things). In a similar manner, recorded in the Gnostic Gospel of Mary, Christ said: "All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with one another."
However, for living entities to be integral parts of an interconnected universal web there must be a viable biological mechanism mediating interconnections between living beings and the web. On this note, the term "web", in interconnected web, is a bit misleading in that it implies some sort of physical connections, as in a spider's web. In contrast, the discipline of physics has provided considerable evidence that interconnections of this nature would be mediated by electromagnetic signals, not by physical interactions.
That interconnections mediated by electromagnetic signals may be possible for humans has been shown anecdotally for centuries by the many accounts of auras of light seen surrounding certain individuals dating from Biblical times up to and including present day folks ranging from meditation gurus to ordinary soccer mom types. It is well known that visible light is a mid-range component of the electromagnet spectrum which extends from radio waves which have wave lengths the size of a football field to gamma rays who's wave lengths are less than the nucleus of an atom. Thus, being able to emit light seems to satisfy the requirement that living beings would be able to interact with the universal web via electromagnetic signaling. The question now becomes: From where in the body do these light waves come from?
In 1923 the Russian biologist Alexander Gurwitich became the first to present scientific evidence that living organisms emit photons, the energy unit of light, by measuring UV light coming from plant cells. However, the most prominent investigator of the light emitting properties of organisms has been the German physicist Fritz-Albert Popp. Since 1970 Popp and his associates have measured photons being emitted from everything from plants to humans. Popp coined the term "biophotons" to describe the light emitted by living things.
For purposes of this essay, a couple of the more important findings of the Popp group came from their analysis of photons being emitted from humans. One of these discoveries was that humans emitted photons in the violet to ultraviolet light range. This is consistent with the many reports, dating back to Biblical times, of people seeing purplish auras surrounding the bodies of some individuals. Further evidence along this line indicates that all people emit purple auras, and the relatively few folks who can see them are those who have violet photoreceptors in their eyes.
The other relevant bit of information coming from Popp's studies is that biophotons emitted simultaneously from a given individual do so in a coherent manner. Recall that photons, including biophotons, are waves of energy. Coherent waves are ones in which things like their frequencies and intensities vary in a synchronized manner -- what one does, they all do. Given that the energy of a single photon is exceedingly small (like trying to see a single candle flame at a distance of 12 miles), it would, or rather does, take multiple photons acting in a coherent synchronized manner to produce an effective signal. Evidently living entities, including humans, satisfy this criterion.
The fact that all living organisms emit biophotons presents an intriguing question. Namely, how are these photons obtained? Plants, algae and certain types of bacteria incorporate photons through the process of photosynthesis. Animal life, as far as we know, has no similar capability and must, therefore, obtain photons by other means. For humans, photon acquisition occurs from two sources; sunshine on our eyes and skin and from the plants we eat (algae and bacteria aren't, or shouldn't be, a normal part of anyone's diet, although, no doubt, there are folks who take exception to that).
Once in the body, where are these photons stored and how are they emitted? Over several years of addressing these questions, Popp and his team discovered that photons are stored within the structure of DNA and that they are released for emission into the environment when a particular gene section of DNA unwinds to elicit the synthesis of a protein, a process known as genetic expression. Virtually, anytime a cell of any kind does something the process of genetic expression, hence the release of photons, occurs. This includes brain cells thereby providing a mechanism, namely the release of photons, whereby our thoughts and actions can be projected into the environment where, as electromagnetic signals, they can interact with the universal web.
In addition to the release of biophotons from the DNA within cells, there is a second possible cellular mechanism capable of sending out signals that can interact with the web. This being the ability of specific proteins on the membrane surrounding cells, called a plasma membrane, to broadcast electromagnetic signals.
The person most noted for investigating these signals is Bruce Lipton, a cell biologist who performed pioneering work on the signaling characteristics of cells while at Penn State and Stanford Universities in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A comprehensive description of Lipton's studies on the functions of plasma membrane proteins can be found in his book "The Biology of Belief", (Hay House Publishers, 2008). For our purposes the salient findings of Lipton's work are that these signals: 1) Are both emitted and received by each of the body's cells. 2) Serve to coordinate all body functions in a manner that assures the internal stability of an organism, a phenomenon known as homeostasis. 3) Are broadcast beyond the body where they can be picked up by members of a society of organisms, such as a flock of birds or a herd of buffalo, in a manner that enables coordination and stability (i.e., homeostasis) of the society, and in addition serves to mediate extrasensory perceptions, such as telepathy. 4) And most likely interact with the interdependent web in a manner that enables an individual to be interconnected with the universe as a whole.
Given that visible light is a series of specific electromagnetic waves, the biophotons described by Popp and his group could, and probably do, also serve the above salient findings of Lipton's investigations of plasma membrane signals. The difference between the two is that whereas plasma membrane signals are emitted continually, biophotons are emitted only during genetic expression, albeit at any given time genetic expression is probably going on somewhere in the body.
Notwithstanding this difference, we see that science has discovered two plausible mechanisms, biophotons and plasma membrane signals, whereby individual organisms can communicate with and be a part of the interdependent web of universal existence which many consider to collectively be the Divine, of which we are, therefore, a part. One of the many things that this means is that while living we are continually being interconnected with the universal web, and once we pass on part, if not all, of our interconnected self remains via the web. So, when you're talking about a past relative or friend, be careful what you say because they may be listening.
In further considering humans as part of the Divine, we've all heard the story about a man sitting on his rooftop as flood waters were rising. A military truck comes by and the soldier driving it asks the man to come off the roof and hop in the truck. "No thanks", the man says. "I've prayed to God, and He will rescue me". Our rooftop dweller says somewhat the same thing to a guy in a motorboat rescuing folks as well as the pilot of a helicopter plucking people off their roofs. By and by the flood totally submerges the house and our man on the roof drowns. When he gets to Heaven, he asks God: "Why didn't you answer my prayer to be rescued?" Upon which God replies: "What do you mean? I sent you a truck, a boat and a helicopter. What more could you want?"
The point/moral/whatever of this story is that God works through people. However, the scientific ideas described in this essay raise the possibility that it isn't that God works through people. Rather people are themselves a part of the Divine by way of us being interconnected with the universal web, and, accordingly, part of the collective intelligence of the universe.
The Divine being the collective intelligence of the universe and us being a part of it raises the possibility that certain acts heretofore ascribed to a single omnipotent God may instead be mediated by the single or collective action of ordinary folks. Prayer is a good example of this. The prevailing notion for the past several thousand years is that people pray to a divine God who then determines if and how the prayer is to be answered. A different notion is that prayer is a form of extrasensory emission/perception mediated through the universal web in the same manner as telepathy or clairvoyance. For example, a group of folks praying for a hospitalized friend to get better sends signals into the universal web. The patient, being in tune to the web, receives the signals which enhance his/her inborn healing properties. The common prayer "God give me strength" works the same only it's a two-way communication between the person and the web.
A second example of people doing acts heretofore attributed to God, is the phenomenon of hands-on healing; a.k.a., the laying-on of hands. There are numerous examples of this form of healing in both biblical and modern times, all of which can be explained by the emission of energy waves (e.g., biophotons) from a healer's hands into a recipient's body. This notion is consistent with Popp's studies which demonstrated that human hands are a major source of biophoton emission. However, it may not be just biophotons, and/or other energies, from the hands that mediates the healing, but additional energy waves from the healer's mind (i.e., good vibes) may be necessary to bring about the healing process. Regardless, the relevant point here is that hands-on healing may simply involve the individual healer operating as part of the Divine, and not the intervention of a single omnipotent God. I'm sure that we could find more examples of us mere mortal humans doing tasks heretofore attributed to an omnipotent immortal God, but the above examples will do.
Thus far, this essay has discussed the notion, backed by science, that what we call the Divine (i.e. God) is the collective intelligence of the universe which operates via an interactive web of which we are a part, thereby making us a part of the Divine. As was pointed out, the universe came about via the sudden explosion, termed the Big Bang, of a small compact mass of energy. This compact mass somehow housed all of the ingredients necessary to build our present universe and all within it, including us.
That's all fine and dandy, but that leaves us with the obvious question: Where did the condensed mass that became our universe come from? In other words, what came before the Big Bang? The short answer is that we don't know because the Big Bang is an example of what science calls a "space-time singularity", a point where space and time, and all physical laws accompanying them, become indistinguishable. And, at present science does not have the tools to separate something like space and time from a homogeneous blend of the two. But that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have such tools sometime in the future. Afterall, at one time science didn't have the means necessary to investigate the sub-atomic components of an atom. Now we have a whole field of science, called particle physics, that does nothing but examine the nature and interactions of sub-atomic particles. On that note, an article titled "The Unseen Universe", which appeared in the October 2021 edition of Scientific American, reveals that particle physicists have yet to discover all of the particles unleashed by the Big Bang. Until we have that information in hand it would be difficult to investigate the origin of the Big Bang itself.
Not presently having the wherewithal to study the Big Bang, all we can do for now is speculate on what, if anything, came before this event. Some scientists hold that singularities don't have origins. According to this viewpoint, asking what came before the Big Bang (a singularity) is like asking what is south of the South Pole. I, and lots of other folks, including scientists, don't agree with this notion, and instead conclude that something created the condensed mass the explosion of which (the Big Bang) gave birth to our universe. I speculate that that something is a higher ordered deity who created the universe that we presently exist in where everything is tied together in an interactive and interdependent web that allows our universe to be self-operational and self-sustaining. In other words, our universe functions without the intervention of the Deity who created it.
I would like to further speculate that this Deity (God) created several universes which operate autonomously and independent of one another. On the one hand, this possibility raises a slew of religious questions, such as: when Jesus Christ spoke of the "Father", who or what was he referring to?
But on the other hand, it answers several scientific questions, particularly those in the field of mathematics and theoretical physics. For example, during the first half of the 20^th^ century the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger (he of the Schrodinger's cat fame) developed a set of equations which have multiple outcomes, termed histories, which all happen simultaneously. According to Schrodinger, the only conceivable way this could occur would be if each outcome happened in a different universe. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow discuss the multi-universe (shortened to multiverse) concept in some detail in their book "The Grand Design" (Bantam Books, 2010). However, they contend that you don't need to postulate a creative god to account for a multiverse existence. That may be so, but neither does it rule out the possibility. Accordingly, I prefer to stick with at least a speculation that we are but one of many universes each created by a Deity, perhaps the same Deity.
That's all well and good, but it doesn't answer the question of where did these universes, ours included, come from. Once again, what came before the Big Bang? Science doesn't even have a speculative answer for this question, but religion might. Daniel Friedmann and Dania Sheldon, discuss this in length in their book "Mysteries of the First Instant" (Inspired Books, 2021). In fact, they devote a whole chapter (Ch, 14) to what came before the Big Bang. Not being of the Hebrew faith I found it difficult to comprehend. But as near as I could tell, they spoke of a spiritual dimension that existed before time and from where all creation came. In my opinion, this is not much of an answer, but at least it's more than science has given us on the subject.
The observation that religion has a subjective answer to an unanswered scientific question (what preceded the Big Bang) will hopefully serve to prompt science to increase its efforts to dig for objective answers, even if they are theoretical. If so, this would not be the first time that religion has preceded science in understanding the nature of the universe in which we live. As was pointed out earlier in this essay, the Eastern mystic religions saw all things as interdependent and inseparable parts of a cosmic whole thousands of years before science provided evidence that this is indeed the case for everything from sub-atomic particles to galaxies.
To wrap this up, this essay described a few scientific findings and notions that collectively expand, rather than diminish, religious beliefs, particularly those of the Christian and Judeo faiths. Accordingly, religion and science would be better served by mutual cooperation, rather than hostility toward one another. After all, they have the common goal of understanding the essential nature of our universe along with our place in it. On this note, science is not the new God, as the Camerlengo feared, but rather science is becoming an integral part of religion through its discoveries that augment rather than challenge religious believes. The trick now is to get both the clergy and hard-core scientists to recognize their mutuality. Hopefully this will foster a new era in which, like sixth century BC Greek society, science and religion will become an integrated and seamless process aimed at understanding nature and our place in it, both physical and spiritual.