After a long respite, I'm continuing my serialization of Chapter 5 on Religion from SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity.
More Readings on God and the Afterlife
Compared to 2003, consumer spending in the U.S. on books increased 3.4% in 2004. However, during this same period, there was a 17.3% increase in religious books, which, accounted for most of the change.
Tippler’s The Physics of Immortality provided partial differential equations to prove the existence of the afterlife. George Hammond in 1997 “accidentally discovered scientific proof of God (SPOG),” and, as a by-product, also “confirmed the entire theology of Christian Science (proof-of-god.freewebsitehosting.com).” A simple equation: GOD = GUV. No advanced calculus. Also provided is a “God Test,” with a warning: there is very little chance that you can comprehend the scientific proof of God if you can’t answer at least half of them. There are all kinds.
Scientology is a particularly today topic. Just ask Tom Cruise, John Travolta and 8 million followers in 154 countries. Founded by the very controversial L. Ron Hubbard in 1950, you can purchase a used copy of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, for as low as $1.48 on Amazon.com. Of course, you can get free Bibles. Sociologist David Bromley of Virginia Commonwealth University says that “Scientology is a ‘quasi-religious therapy’ that resembles Freudian ‘depth psychology’ while also drawing upon Buddhism, Hindus, and the ancient, heretical offshoot of Christianity known as Gnosticism.” One controversy is that the therapy sessions could end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach a kind of Nirvana, called Clear. Belgium and Germany might put the Church of Scientology on trial for extortion and fraud. They could well then be labeled a criminal organization.
God, a Biography by Jack Miles, a Pulitzer Prize national bestseller, cited as “A tour de force….of the character God,” by The New York Times Book Review, is, well, a biography of God. At the end, one can’t help wondering how valuable the experience was. Was there anything particularly reinforcing? Historically relevant, yes. Gracefully written, yes. Am I now convinced? No.
Searching for God in America by Hugh Hewitt reports on his conversations with people like His Holiness the XIV and the Dalai Lama of Tibet, then extracts tidbits from events (Mayflower Compact), dignitaries (Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali) and authors (Mark Twain, Isaac Asimov), and ends with a number of three minute sermons and songs. Quite an achievement, actually, and, maybe, symptomatic of the very high belief rate of Americans. Does it add to the body of evidence that there is a God? No, but that is true with all other publications of this type.
Francis S. Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Center, wrote The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, and is noteworthy because he is one of the very few reputable bioscientists who believes in God. Perhaps his home schooling in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia provided some basis for his views. He uses the term BioLogos instead of Theistic Evolution to explain why scientific discoveries about our universe do not conflict with the existence of God. He does believe in evolution, but is not convincing in his attempt to reconcile science with religion.
The Left Behind series by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye sells because people who believe in God many times adhere to a cataclysmic ending to this all. The Armageddon and the Apocalypse, whether in the book title, or as a theme, this eschatological finality from the Book of Daniel, The Revelations, and their like, serve as symbols leading, ironically, to an afterlife, for this offers an escape from doom. I can almost identify with that. Publishers Weekly calls it “the most successful Christian-fiction series ever.” Maybe a bit of redundancy, though, in adding fiction to Christian. But can science aid the critic and/or reinforce the wishes of the believer?
As the afterlife is so crucial to the logic of this chapter, I must include the works of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (KBR), who claims to have studied 20,000 people who clinically died, but returned to life. She was one of triplets born in Switzerland, the two pound runt of the brood, who early on had to, she says, work extra hard to prove she was worthy of living. When she was a teenager, she voluntarily found her way to concentration camps at the end of World War II and decided that she wanted to work with Mother Theresa in India. She became, though, a psychiatrist in New York City, and went on to practice at the Manhattan State Hospital. Her seminal book was On Death and Dying, but On Life After Death is typical of the type of publication that tries to reach for scientific credibility, and sells well. Three points from this book are memorable, to me. Dr. KBR reported:
o God, 7 million years ago, gave us free will and the ability for our soul to leave our body, certainly at death, but at other times, too. Interesting that this capability was provided at that relatively precise moment in the past when our earliest of ancestors split off from chimpanzees.
o She and her team spend their holidays (Memorial, July 4th, Labor) at hospitals, because this was the best chance to interview children who survived headlong collisions. What a life! Morbid, but dedicated.
o A rather troubling admittance is presented on page 42, when she writes: “We have never published any of our research for many reasons.”
I mention ODAD and OLAD because there is something sincere and almost plausible about her efforts. Yet, I feel she fails that key test of scientific credulity because I, for one, am not convinced.
Another book mentioned again is a fictional tale by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (TDVC), because it fits into the theme of this section. Succinctly, TDVC, which has sold more than 60 million copies since 2003, traces the Holy Grail and indicates that Mary Magdalene bore a child with Jesus, with this line continuing today. For eons, people have been searching for a cup. Well, the chalice that carries the blood of Jesus, it is portrayed, is that human line of descendants. What has Leonardo Da Vinci got to do with the plot? Well, his Vitruvian Man, in combination with the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, give you the clues to the code, where the Knights Templar and Opus Dei serve as watch guards. How accurate is this novel? No less than most of the other publications indicated in this segment.
The fact of the matter, though, is whether scientists should even bother searching for God or the afterlife. Sir John Templeton has been paying to find an answer since 1972, feeling that the Nobel Prize overlooked spirituality. Templeton is an American born businessman and billionaire who was named by Time Magazine to their 100 most influential people in 2007 and passed away in 2008 at the age of 95.
The Templeton Foundation wants to know whether the universe is the product of design or accident. In 2000, Freeman Dyson, a churchgoing agnostic from Princeton who did not pray and did not consider God omnipotent, was awarded the $1 million Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities. This sum always just exceeds the Nobel Prize. Mother Teresa won in 1973 and Billy Graham in 1982.
Dyson’s The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet proposes using the sun for energy, genetic engineering to create more efficient plants and the internet as a way for the poor to raise themselves. There is a lot in common with these simple solutions. He has indicated that, as an agnostic, he does not know (of God and the afterlife) and doesn’t know what is true. Strange that they gave him this prize, but understandable that he accepted. Dyson, one of the biggest thinkers of our generation, is no longer around, but it is symptomatic of the challenge that after more that almost two decades into the Templeton Prize, science has gotten nowhere towards clarifying this mystery. That, perhaps, is the motive of Templeton.
The 2005 Templeton Prize winner was Charles Townes, a Nobel laureate and co-inventor of the laser. He has been reported to say that the insight of such a device came to him as a revelation, a striking example of the interplay between science and religion. Scientists propose hypotheses from ideas without initial proof. Thus, like religion, science builds on a form of faith. Professor Townes played an inspirational role in my Chapter 4, and in his waning years, seems to again be focusing on space. So maybe everything is connected to each other and there are logical links among all the chapters in both books.
MY FINAL POSTING ON THE GOLDEN EVOLUTION FOLLOWS...SOON.
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The Dow Jones Industrials increased 57 to 9743, while European markets jumped more than 2% and the Orient fell. Gold sunk $18/toz to $1194 and crude oil is at $72/barrel.
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That disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be following the same track of former Hurricane Alex. However, a storm just popped up south and east of Hawaii. Those magenta lines are possible future tracks.
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