Life after death: is proof possible?

Until about 200 years ago, most human beings believed that some kind of life continued after death.  In fact, most people usually lived with a lively sense of the presence of the dead in their own lives.

Then a change took place in the thinking of many scientists.  Until then, scientists took the position that we could prove something scientifically only through empirical observations – in other words, in terms of what we can observe or analyze as a result of what we perceive through our senses.  

What they didn’t say was that everything that was true, everything that existed, everything that happened, could be understood through the scientific method.  But now, many scientists argue that what is not subject to scientific understanding is not real.  Or at least, cannot be known, and since we can’t know it, it is, at best, irrelevant if not actually dangerously false.

Not all scientists today take this position, but many do.

Attitudes toward near-death experiences illustrate this difference.  Near death experiences (NDE’s) are those experiences reported by people who get close to dying, perhaps through a heart attack, an accident, or some proximate danger, but who survive.  

The reports of NDE’s are often quite amazing and life-changing.  They are often out-of-body experiences, and people feel that they have been in contact with another world.  They may “float” around the room or building, and have sometimes learned things that they could not have known if they had remained trapped in their body.

So is this evidence that there is life after death?  that we can continue to be alive even when we are no longer inhabiting our bodies?

We don’t know.  But can we ever know?  For now, most NDE’s are anecdotal, and have not been subject to rigorous analysis.  Sceptics says NDE’s are simply the hallucinations of a dying brain.

But other scientists are not so fast to dismiss NDE’s.  Science, they say, has brought us face to face with mysteries, conundrums, and unsolved problems of the most profound kind.  In fact, some would say that science has made the world far more mysterious than before.

The findings of quantum physics is a prime example.  On the quantum level where things are almost infinitesimally small, particles do not obey the same laws as they do at the level in which we exist.  Particles can affect each other even when they are millions of miles apart, they move in and out of existence, and before and after, or inside and outside, or up and down, don’t operate in the quantum world as we expect them to.

Nobody can explain this at this point, although no scientists deny the evidence that this is so.

So if you think science has created a neat pat world full of facts and indisputably right answers, think again.   Actually, religion just as often argues that it is in possession of indisputably right answers, not science.

Science, true science, reveals a universe as mysterious as you can get.  My own suspicion is that is why it frightens some people.

For what it’s worth, my own guess is that science is never going to produce “evidence” that convinces most people that there is life after death.  But I am positive that it will never produce evidence that there isn’t either.

What is the mind?

Every once in a while, when I am overwhelmed with just how gob-smackingly beautiful humans can be and wonder at our amazing capacity to think, I remember why I’m a scientist but not a reductionist. 

Some of the brightest minds have been brought to bear on what is called “the mind-body problem.”  And some truly noteworthy discoveries have been made about just what influences our thinking.  But nobody has yet succeeded in explaining how it is that thought – an apparently immaterial thing – is created by the brain, a set of complex bio-chemical and electrical connections that are wholly material.

Most of the scientific attempts have tried to show how the mind is really only a sophisticated physical reality.  So brain research has discovered some amazing things about which parts of the brain are connected to various capacities – what parts of the brain are used principally for short-term memory, for recognition of pain of for faces, for speech, or for spatial analysis, for instance.  This research has been outstanding and immensely helpful in medical treatment.   It has demonstrated that consciousness is dependent on a functioning brain.   But it doesn’t, ultimately, explain how the mind – thought and consciousness – can be reduced to be the same thing as the brain.

Richard Dawkins has tried to reduce mind to what he calls “memes,” cultural units that are passed from generation to generation in the same way that Darwin has shown that genes are past from parents to children.  This is why, he says, we learn our particular ways of dressing and talking, how we learn what is considered to be polite in our particular culture, how we learn to count and read and drive a car.  It’s a kind of mechanical process by which information is supposedly passed down through the ages. 

Of course it is true that we learn far more than we usually realize from the generations before us.  As Newton said “We stand on the shoulders of giants.”  Even the giants do.  But meme theory doesn’t explain how matter becomes mind – it simply ignores the question of consciousness and of human effort and will.

Trying to reduce consciousness to a set of physical and/or mechanical processes is the pursuit of a certain kind of scientific thinking.  It’s officially called “reductionism,” for reasons that are probably obvious.  Reductionist scientists tend, also for probably obvious reasons, most often to reject the idea of God.

There is undoubtedly something to learn from cultural studies and brain research.  But it doesn’t explain everything.  I think it doesn’t even explain the best, most astonishing thing about our existence.

What is the God Particle?

Scientists who recently switched on the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are looking for what has been called “the God Particle.”  But what is the God Particle, and how did it earned its exalted name?

Right now scientists (let alone the rest of us) don’t understand how the Big Bang can possibly have happened or, for that matter, how the universe continues to hold itself together, although it clearly does.  With Newton, scientists originally thought the explanation was gravity, but it turns out that gravity isn’t nearly strong enough to be holding the whole universe together on its own.  There must be something else.  What could that something else be?

The theory is that there is a huge field in the universe of something resembling sticky syrup that slows some particles down.  Being slowed down is what “mass” really is.  The professor who first proposed that this field exists is Peter Higgs (he’s retired now but still living in Edinburgh, Scotland).  That’s why the field is called “the Higgs Field.”  The particle that he proposes gets slowed down by the sticky syrup – err, by the Higgs Field – is called “the Higgs Boson,”  If I understand correctly, the Higgs Boson controls other particles, slowing them down and giving them mass.  And mass is what makes it possible for us to experience them.  Mass, for that matter, is what we and everything we touch and feel and smell and see around us has.  It feels like everything has mass, but that’s only because we cannot experience anything that doesn’t have mass, so things without mass feel like they don’t exist.

The Higgs Boson was nick-named the “God Particle,” because if scientists can find it, they can explain why the universe has mass instead of racing around in wild unconnected bits and explain how the universe – not to mention a leisurely cup of morning coffee – can possibly exist as it does. 

So, depending on your theological stance, discovering the God Particle whirling around for a split second or two in the LHC could explain how God created the universe with a Big Bang.

Is there God?

People who believe in God and those who don’t often find each other incomprehensible.  Even worse, they tend to think the worst of each other.  The believers fear for the salvation of the unbelievers, while the non-believers often secretly – or not so secretly – suspect believers of superstition, insecurity, and fear.

There is no possible final irrefutable proof either that there is, or isn’t, a God.   How, then, do we reach the conclusions which so many of us hold with such convictions?  This post is an attempt to look at a rational justification for either conclusion.

A Believer’s Argument

Many people who believe in God do so because we are here.  However far back one pushes the chain of events, there is always the question:  What or who caused that first event to happen?  How did the universe come into existence in the first place?  Even if you say “the big bang caused it,” one still is faced with the question “what caused the big bang?”  or “where did that infintessimal dot of energy that exploded into our universe come from?”

David Hume argued that events have causes.  Carried to its logical end point, this position leads many people to the conclusion that there must be a First Cause.  For believers, that First Cause is God. 

This doesn’t seem to me to be a wildly fanatic or illogical, neurotic, fear-induced conclusion.  In fact, it seems quite rational.  If it is, why then are there so many equally rational people who do not believe in God?

A Non-believer’s Argument

Many non-believers think that answering questions to which we don’t yet have an answer with “it must be God” does not have an historically very good record.  All sort of events and phenomenon which have been inexplicable in the past and so held up as proof of God’s existence are well understood now as natural occurences that do not require the direct intervention by God.  Volcanoes and tsunamis, the rising and setting sun, the  complexity of the human eye, a win on the lottery, or a lucky escape from an accident or illness have for centuries been alternately blamed on God or been a reason to offer prayers of gratitude.  But for many these events seem perfectly natural, often based on coincidence or chance, but not on God.  

What, though, about that First Cause?  What started it all in the first place?  Non-believers don’t answer this question with a being they call God.  God, for the believer, is eternal, infinite, beyond complete human understanding.  Why not, asks the non-believer, simply say it is the universe which is eternal, potentially infinite, beyond complete human understanding?

As far as the rational arguments go, it seems to me we can’t sling the epithet of irrational at either position.  Certainty, for those who possess it, seems to come from a different source.

Talking about talks

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the problem between Evangelicals and liberals (for want of a better description, though “liberal” is a poor description).  Generally speaking, it seems to me that Evangelicals believe they have found the true faith, while liberals, who may or may not be believers, are not as convinced that their personal beliefs are necessarily the absolute truth in the same way Evangelicals are. These are fundamental differences for many are both personal and global. They are differences that can  divide families, and have destroyed friendships and marriages. They are a constant source of discussions on the internet, are threatening the unity of the Anglican church worldwide, and underlie some of the worst political conflicts in the world.

And yet almost everybody runs up against this terrible problem that we can barely talk to each other with respect and kindness if we stray on to this topic of religion.  I began to understand for the first time how it is that sometimes opposing groups spend years “talking about talks,” in an attempt just to reach sufficient common ground even to begin to talk directly.

I am personally committed to never dismissing another person’s views until I can understand it well enough express their view in terms that they themselves acknowledge are an accurate and fair description of their true feelings. I do not pretend this is always easy. On the topics around science and religion, I have spent years trying to understand views that sometimes have seemed bigoted, ignorant, rigid, illogical, or uninformed. At this point I can claim to have been only partially successful.

But in the process, I have often learned to respect an opposing view even when I continue to disagree with it.  And so I am going to begin a short series of posts in which I try to look objectively at both sides of some of the most contentious issues that divide the human community in the world today.

The next post will begin the series with a look at the question of the existence of a God. 

Looking into the dragon’s mouth

Science cannot tell us whether or not there is a God because the question of God’s existence of God is beyond the scientific method.  Why that is so is worth more than one post.  But for now, let us walk bravely into the dragon’s mouth and look at one world view which some scientists believe is the inevitable conclusion of the world science reveals.

“Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven-descended heir of all the ages.  His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets…

“After a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude.  Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish.  The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest.  Matter will know itself no longer.  ‘Imperishable monument’ and ‘immortal deeds’, death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been.”

Arthur Balfour 

Or as Albert Camus put it in fewer words:  “Be prepared to discover that the meaning of life is limited.”

Not all great scientists – including Albert Einstein – espouse this bleak view.  They make rational arguments for why, without even the possibility of ever finding scientific proof, they think there is a transcendent being we call God.

One group looks at the astonishing universe revealed by science and sees an impersonal, meaningless destiny.  Another group sees this amazing, fantastic, universe into which science gives us a glimpse as a manifestation of God’s incredible power and majesty.  The first group thinks science is important because it is all we have.  They believe God is a chimera we use as a crutch when we are unable or afraid to depend on ourselves.

The second group values science and its extraordinary, unexpected, and often challenging revelations just as much as the first.  But for them it is a light that beckons us to go beyond our personal fears and limitations.  They do not believe we need to reduce science to accept God, but rather that science, which gives us a glimpse of His glory, challenges us to deepen and enrich our incomplete idea of God. 

Because it is “by His fruits you will know Him.” 

That is why for some people, science is a religious, even transcendent, experience.

Are truth and fact the same thing?

Most of the time, truth and fact seem like the same thing.  Truthful answers and factual answers are identical to questions like “What time did you go to bed last night?”, “How much are 2 + 2 or 99 + 1?”, “Did you steal that money?” 

And most of the time, truth and fact also seem to be permanent and non-negotiable.  But that is not always 100% absolutely the case. 

When you fly to another country, for instance, “what time did you go to bed last night?” might be answered in terms of the time in the zone one started from, in the zone one landed, or possibly in one of the zones in between.  Even if you stay at home, the answer might be the point at which you turned off the television and started your nightly routine.  It might be the point at which you got into bed with a book, when you actually turned the light out, or when you estimate you went to sleep.

How much are two and two won’t always be four if one is adding two glasses of water into a single pitcher, and 99 + 1 might still equal 1 if one is talking about pennies and dollars.

The answer to whether you stole that money might very much depend on what you mean by “steal.”  If someone owed you five dollars and you took it out of their wallet when they weren’t home to pay for a pizza together that evening, the answer might be rather different than if you lifted the same wallet from the pocket of a shopper in the local mall.

Things really get complicated when what the world accepts as “fact” actually changes.  This happens in science far more often than most people realize.  But why and when facts are not absolute, permanent, and fixed in science is a topic for another post.

The objective truth may not be obvious

One Sunday morning some time ago, I was walking along the River Cam in Cambridge along with families, students, bikers, and other Cambridge residents both young and old.  On the river were the usual array of houseboats and punts with rowers enjoying or practicing for the classic boat race on the River Thames that takes place with Oxford University in the spring each year.

Then I saw a young man standing alone on the side of the river jumping up and down, shouting, raising his arms, and even scrunching down on his haunches.  It’s unusual to see someone, particularly on a Sunday morning, in a state of extreme intoxication, but it seemed obvious to me that this man was either inebriated, drugged, or psychotic.  On my return half an hour later, he was still at it, running alongside the river, gesticulating and shouting.

Then I saw the boat in the water.  The man whom I’d diagnosed as drunk, drugged or psychotic was a rowing coach, and he was giving instructions to a university student maneuvering the punt on the river.  My interpretation of his behaviour changed completely.

The above story is an illustration of why, even when I have seen something with my own eyes, I am never absolutely certain that I am right.  It wasn’t what I saw that was wrong, but how I interpreted it.  It’s another version of the blind men and the elephant story in a way.  I didn’t know I didn’t see the whole picture and so drew the wrong conclusion completely.  I didn’t even have any serious doubts about it.

I wasn’t wrong in what I saw.  But I’m glad I didn’t stand up in court and testify I saw a man drunk that morning by the River Cam.  I would have been sincere in saying I did.  But I would have been wrong about what I actually saw.  Not because there is anything wrong with my eyesight, but because what I didn’t see changed the whole meaning of what I did see.

The truth, in my opinion, is very hard to be certain about.  At least my version of it.

The elephant and the truth

A great number of people in the world believe they know the truth.  Many believe it with such passion and conviction that they are willing not only to dedicate their own lives to the service of this truth, but to kill and to die for it.  They know they are right and anyone who disagrees with them are wrong.

When I was a fairly young child, I asked my father if a story I’d heard was “really true.”   “What makes something true is a very complicated question,” he said, ”that takes great wisdom to answer.”  Then he told me the story of the blind men standing around the elephant.

Six blind men stood  around an elephant trying to discover what it looked like. The first one felt the elephant’s leg and reported that it was like a tree trunk.  Another grabbed its ear and said it was like a big fan.  The third got hold of the tusk and said it was like a large curved spear.  The one feeling the elephant’s side concluded that it resembled a large wrinkled wall.  The man who grabbed the elephant’s tail said it was a kind of snake, while the man at the other end who had hold of the elephant’s trunk said that it was some kind of water shower.

The men then started to argue, at first amiably, but as each insisted that he was right and had first hand experience to prove it, the arguments became more heated.  Each insisted that the others who disagreed with him were wrong, and gradually each began to insist that the others were not only wrong but also stupid, and even blinded by sinfulness.

This story is thousands of years old and originated somewhere in the Far East.  Some scholars think it was Buddha who first told the story to illustrate his insight that none of us ever have the complete truth.  Truth exists, he believed, but most of us spend most of our lives like a blind man in front of the elephant – thinking that what we see is the whole truth, while we only see a small part of it.  

My father used to tell me stories like this when I was young, many of which I couldn’t really understand at the time.  The elephant story has remained with me all my life.  It has convinced me that whether it is science or my religion that is the source of what I believe, I have not yet reached that level of wisdom where I see the whole elephant – that is the whole truth.

So even when people disagree with me, and I can’t see how both of us can be right, it might just be that each of us is examining a different part of the elephant. 

It is an amazing world we live in, and all sorts of apparently opposite things can be true at the same time. 

Another reflection on the blind men and the elephant can be found at http://www.baus.org/baus/library/a_glimpse.html

Terrorizing the human population

One reader recently added a comment to the post “How much time do we have?” saying that I have it all wrong.  She suggested that maybe I needed to “figure out what the truth is before writing a book and terrorizing the human population into thinking the world is going to end.”

I have been thinking about the serious issues this comment raises and have decided to devote a series of posts to my thoughts about terror, about religion, about truth, and science.  These are my current thoughts, and they come with no claim to being right.  They are merely the way things look to me at present.  In addition, my ideas have changed very much as I have moved from childhood to adulthood and I have no doubt that they will continue to change – and I hope mature -for as long as breath is given to me.

First of all, I have no desire to terrorize anyone with stories about the end of the world.  For myself, I find my own death, which is certainly more imminent than the end of the world, is quite enough to absorb my capacity for worry.  The end of the world, whether we are talking about our planet Earth or even of our entire universe is of great interest to me.  But the belief that this will eventually happen does not fill me with terror.  Neither I, and I doubt anyone reading this, will be around for the end of the world. 

The end of the world, however, I think is described in sufficient terror in chapter six of the Book of Revelation of the Christian Bible.  St. John the Evangelist describes the four horsemen of conquest, war, famine, and death.  I myself think his evocations of persecution, war, plague, corruption, economic breakdown and death are far more terrifying than the few words of optimism with which my own small book, The Big Bang to Now, concludes.  It is, at least to me, as terrifying as any description of the end of the world proposed by science.

Ultimately, though, I don’t think it is religion or science that create terror.  Life is scary, whatever beliefs we hold.  Illness, pain, fear, broken relationships, death, confusion, loss, humiliations, failures, and disappointments are intrinsic to being alive.

For some people religious beliefs give them strength to live a life of greater love and fulfillment and hope.  I, as a matter of fact, am one of those people.  But I have great respect for people whose religious values are different from mine, or who hold no values whatsoever that they themselves label as “religious.”