I’m reading a fascinating book, Science at the Doorstep to God, by Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D. Fr. Spitzer is a Jesuit priest and holds doctorate degrees in theology and philosophy. In addition he is highly educated in physics and the sciences generally.
This book reviews the growing evidence in physics, philosophy, psychology, medicine, and other fields pointing to the existence of a creator, a human soul, and the human soul existing outside the physical body.
The book is packed with astonishing facts, deep insights, and strong (and in many cases virtually irrefutable) arguments. I won’t attempt to give an organized overview of the material here; maybe I’ll make my feeble attempt to do that in the future. For now, I’ll just bullet-point some ideas I found particularly intriguing/illuminating/surprising. These ideas are stated very superficially and do no justice to the brilliant and meticulous research and analysis behind them.
- About 65% of young scientists believe in a creator. The rest are split evenly between agnostics and atheists.
- Scientific theories about the origin/nature of our universe(s) are coalescing around the need for a beginning and a creator, as competing theories have been ruled out based on logic and/or physical evidence.
- The odds of the universe randomly coming into existence in a way that supports life of any kind are comparable to the odds of a monkey typing out the complete play of Macbeth perfectly — on the first try.
- Atheism is not rational because it cannot be disproved.
- In sophisticated, peer-reviewed scientific studies, people with near-death experiences reported accurate, detailed out-of-body visions, among them people who from birth were blind. Hellish or heavenly, these near-death experiences consistently point to a human soul that survives bodily death. The soul, separated from mind and body, retains memories, encounters and processes new experiences, moves, and is not restricted by physical laws.
- Many reliably documented accounts and formal studies describe people with advanced dementia and other neurological damage who spontaneously achieve “terminal lucidity” weeks or hours before death.
- Humans alone “experience our experiencing” in a single act. This is physically impossible, and yet it is the way our minds operate.
- Humans have an innate desire to know everything about everything, which is why we keep asking questions. Where did this desire come from? And how is it that we can sense when we do not know everything, and thus continue to ask questions? These issues, thought out by Fr. Spitzer in great detail, point to the existence of a creator who knows everything about everything who put that desire in us, as if with the touch of his finger. A creator created us with the urge to know him. (St. Augustine: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”)
Two things utterly astound me about all of these findings reported and/or developed by Fr. Spitzer.
- First, after thousands of years of intense scientific investigation and the staggering amount and diversity of knowledge it has acquired, we find ourselves now reaching scientific conclusions about creation, the afterlife, and the human soul that are completely consistent with the revelations of Christian faith. These consistencies include subjects that are the biggest of the big: the account of creation, the nature of the soul, the relationship between God and man, and the reality of a life after death. This consistency cannot be mere coincidence or an unbroken string of lucky guesses. The fact it has taken us several thousand years (and counting) for our science to catch up with what God told us — through Christ and from Genesis through Revelation — should really not be so surprising, considering He knows everything about everything and we in comparison can only learn at the pace of a very slow snail dragging a U-Haul full of sin. But not to sell humans to short, God has the advantage of being able to consider all aspects of all sciences at once, whereas we are forced to “stovepipe” our inquiries into distinct disciplines and sub-disciplines in order to keep proper track of everything. For instance we have science broken down into physics, biology, etc., and we have philosophy broken down into metaphysics, epistemology, etc. This kind of organization has efficiencies and drawbacks, and those drawbacks impede understanding. But onward and upward we plod, thanks to that inborn urge to know everything about everything.
- Second, one would think rock-solid scientific evidence of God, an afterlife, and the existence of a soul would be headline news. I mean, when scientists discover something trivial in comparison, such as the medicinal value of mushrooms, it’s the talk of the town. When scientists find evidence of something we already know, such as COVID shutdowns caused depression, it’s shouted from the rooftops. But evidence of God, an afterlife, and the existence of a soul — nary a word. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the secular culture doesn’t want to talk about any of this. But why haven’t our bishops taken to the megaphones? Our pastors? Catholic media? And for that matter why are not the wider Christian, Jewish, and Islamic media loudly proclaiming these incredible findings? You would think anybody with a religious sense — and that’s the vast majority of people in the world — would be dancing in the street upon hearing such news. You would think any media source, ever-hungry for eyeballs and revenue, would share this news if for no other reason than because it’s good business.
The thought occurs to me that perhaps a part of us, even the faithful, cannot easily come to grips with the idea of knowing that God is real with scientific certainty, or at least high scientific probability. I must admit, when I read that 15% of near-death experiences were reported as being hellish, it rattled me. It’s wonderful to have scientific confirmation of Heaven, but not so warm and fuzzy to have scientific confirmation of Hell. Certainly spiritual certainty is above scientific certainty, but in our time, science definitely has the feel of being more “real.”
Reflection
Am I prepared to really, truly, deeply accept the consequences of knowing my faith is true with scientific as well as spiritual certainty?
