Never Apart From Science

All in all, I would have to say that in spite of my overactive imagination and my OCD and my occasional bouts of paranoia, I am a pretty rational guy. In fact, I base a part of my reputation on it. I don’t go in for the superstitious or the supernatural. I don’t believe in ghosts or goblins or gods. My understanding of the world is based on logic and science and what can be seen or touched or proven, and I tend to take a dim view of anything else. Call that what you will.

Now here we get into an interesting paradox: I was not raised in this way. I was taught to mistrust science and academics and intellectuals, and really anyone else who might have been considered a heretic back in the days of Galileo Galilei. I have not surrounded myself, by and large, with people who share my exact beliefs. For every atheist in my address book, there are at least three or four Christians or Muslims or Jews or Wiccans. I have more friends who could give a lecture on astrology than astronomy. I’m the one in the minority, not them, and I have the numbers to prove it.

And yet I am always astounded-- continually, constantly-- when I learn that people actually believe this stuff. I sympathize, truly, with the underlying idea. I believe strongly in the need to a spiritual component in every life, and in the necessity of having faith in something beyond one’s self. What I don’t understand is why, in this wondrous age of orbiting telescopes and electron microscopes and super-computers and more information than any one person could ever absorb in a thousand lifetimes, anybody would ever feel like they needed to go beyond science to experience the numinous.

In my younger days, as a teenager, after I had realized the sickness of my parents’ beliefs but before I had really developed beliefs of my own, I told anyone who asked that I was an agnostic. That I had not made up my mind on the notion of the supernatural. Looking back, it was an uncharacteristically mature position for me at that time. But one day I was rereading a passage in a favorite book, and it all became so clear to me:

She asked Eda if he had ever had a transforming religious experience. "Yes," he said.

"When?"

"When I first picked up Euclid. Also when I first understood Newtonian gravitation. And Maxwell's equations, and general relativity. And during my work on superunification. I have been fortunate enough to have had many religious experiences."

"No," she returned. "You know what I mean. Apart from science."

"Never," he replied instantly. "Never apart from science."

And even though I’d read those words before, for some reason they took a very long time to sink in. But there it was, as if someone had flipped a switch. I realized that when I told people I was undecided on God, what I really meant was, I hadn’t yet learned how to reconcile the rational with the spiritual. I didn’t know how to live in the real world and still hold onto that component of the... well, of the holy, that component that we all need to be truly whole.

I didn’t have to look in some ancient book, or in the drug-addled fantasies of a dead prophet. All the wonder that I would ever need was there in a painting, or a schematic, or in a photo from the Hubble Telescope. The world of angels and demons suddenly paled, once I really saw the world in a simple science textbook. God simply became obsolete. He had served his purpose, but I had a better explanation and a better sense of the holy, and I didn’t have to cross my fingers for either. Looking back, I can’t understand why it didn’t become clear to me sooner.

And that’s really my dilemma. I don’t understand why anyone still believes these things. Why anyone still believes in an angry, or loving, or even a distant and unknowable God (or gods). Why anyone still believes in astrology, or fate, or luck. Why would you need to? It was different a hundred years ago, or a thousand. But we’ve learned so much since then, and even more importantly, we’ve learned how much we can learn. It seems like such a cop-out; yes, a world without the supernatural is harder sometimes, but it’s more rewarding, too. It’s more meaningful, more precious.

I know that I am not special, not really. I look at my friends, and I wonder at them. They’re so remarkable, each and every one, so talented and wise and deeply, deeply intelligent. I can barely stand with the least of them. How then can they still hold onto these ideas? Is it a matter of faith alone? Did theirs hold fast while mine faded away? It seems impossible that I could have stumbled onto some truth that passed them by. I have nothing to give compared to them. And yet here we are. I still cannot credit what they believe, and in their heart of hearts, they will always pity me for it. That’s just how it is. And wonder if either side can ever truly understand the other.