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that looks upon life as essentially materialistic, has set us on a path that leads to a dead end. Literally.
The Scientific Perspective LEONARD
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genu- ine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through the striv- ing after rational knowledge. —Albert Einstein
Children come into the world believing it all revolves around them, and so did humanity. People have always been anxious to understand their universe, but for most of human history we hadn’t yet developed the means. Since we are proactive and imaginative animals, we didn’t let the lack of tools stop us. We simply applied our imagination to form compelling pictures. These pictures were not based on reality, but were created to serve our needs. We would all like to be immortal. We’d like to believe that good triumphs over evil, that a greater power watches over us, that we are part of something bigger, that we have been put here for a rea- son. We’d like to believe that our lives have an intrinsic meaning. Ancient concepts of the universe comforted us by affirming these desires. Where did the universe come from? Where did life come from? Where did people come from? The legends and theologies of the past assured us that we were created by God, and that our Earth was the center of everything.
Today science can answer many of the most funda- mental questions of existence. Science’s answers spring from observation and experiment rather than from human bias or desire. Science offers answers in har- mony with nature as it is, rather than nature as we’d like it to be.
The universe is an awe-inspiring place, especially for those who know something about it. The more we learn, the more astonishing it seems. Newton said that if he saw further it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. Today we can all stand on the shoulders of scientists and see deep and amazing truths about the universe and our place in it. We can understand how we and our Earth are natural phenomena that arise from the laws of physics. Our ancestors viewed the night sky with a sense of wonder, but to see stars that explode in seconds and shine with more light than entire gal- axies brings a new dimension to the awe. In our day a scientist can turn her telescope to observe an Earthlike planet trillions of miles away, or study a spectacular internal universe in which a million million atoms con- spire to create a tiny freckle. We know now that our Earth is one world among many and that our species arose from other species (whose members we may not wish to invite into our living rooms but who are our ancestors nonetheless). Science has revealed a universe that is vast, ancient, violent, strange, and beautiful, a universe of almost infinite variety and possibility, one in which time can end in a black hole, and conscious beings can evolve from a soup of minerals. In such a uni- verse it can seem that people are insignificant, but
Oracle 20/20 November 2011
what is significant and profound is that we, ensembles of almost uncountable numbers of unthinking atoms, can become aware, and understand our origins and the nature of the cosmos in which we live.
Deepak feels that scientific explanations are sterile and reductive, diminishing humankind to a mere collection of atoms, no different in kind from any other object in the universe. But scientific knowledge does not dimin- ish our humanity any more than the knowledge that our country is one among many diminishes our appreciation of our native culture. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. Emotion, intuition, adherence to authority—traits that drive the belief in religious and mystical explana- tion—are traits that can be found in other primates, and even in lower animals. But orangutans cannot reason about the angles in triangles, and macaque monkeys do not look to the heavens and wonder why the planets follow elliptical paths. It is only humans who can engage in the wondrous processes of reason and thought called science, only humans who can understand themselves and how their planet got here, and only humans who could discover the atoms that form us.
The triumph of humanity is our capacity to understand. It is our comprehension of the cosmos, our insight into where we came from, our vision of the place we occupy in the universe, that sets us apart. A by-product of this scientific understanding is the power to harness nature for our benefit, or, it is true, to employ it to our detri- ment. The particular ethical and moral choices people make depend on human nature, and human culture. People dropped boulders on their enemies long before they understood the law of gravity. And they spewed filth into the skies long before they understood the thermodynamics of burning coal.
Promoting good and avoiding evil is the charge of orga- nized religion and spirituality. It is those enterprises— not science—that have often failed to deliver on their promise. Eastern religions did not prevent a history of brutal warfare in Asia, nor did Western religions pacify Europe. In fact, more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than by all the atomic weapons made possible by modern physics. From the Crusades to the Holocaust, in addition to being a tool of good- ness and love, religion has been employed as a tool of hatred. Deepak’s universalist and peaceful approach to spirituality is therefore a welcome alternative. But Deepak’s metaphysics goes beyond spiritual guidance to offer views on the nature of the universe. Deepak’s belief that the universe is purposeful and imbued with love may be attractive, but is it correct?
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