Identity in an infinitely expanding universe

Identity in an infinitely expanding universe

Identity in an infinitely expanding universe
Laurance Doyle and Reed Harris
Adapted from the Christian Science Sentinel, February 3, 2004

Astrophysicist Laurance R. Doyle is a principal investigator at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) in Mountain View, California. SETI?s mission is to explore and explain the nature and prevalence of life in the universe. Dr. Doyle?s peer-reviewed projects track questions such as, How many stars have planets and how many of these planets might support life? The following excerpted comments are from a recent webcast discussion on spirituality.com, moderated by spiritual healer and speaker Reed Harris.

Laurance Doyle: Where science runs into a conflict with the sacred is in not accepting a limited version of the Source?a limited version of the Creator, a limited version of Mind. You can?t convince a scientist who works with googleplexes and galaxies and accelerating universes, much less quantum probabilities, that God is a tribal god that will fight. In the scientific community, a colleague of mine said, ?You?re not trying to mix religion and science, are you?? I said, ?Oh, no, no, no. I?m trying to make religion scientific.? And he goes, ?Okay. That?s okay.? So that?s acceptable?to make things scientific.

The philosophy I have of science is that you?re doing science when you take the evidence of intelligence above the evidence of the senses. The earth used to be thought to be flat. Well, it took evidence of intelligence to say it was round, because the senses say it?s flat. Same thing with the sun going around the earth, or the earth going around the sun. Bertrand Russell, the mathematician/philosopher, once said that physics is based on the assumption that things are as they appear, and then [the physicist] proceeds to prove that things are not as they appear.

So nothing changes when you realize the earth is round, except your perspective. When you rise higher, you see that it was round all the time?During the Renaissance, suddenly the sun didn?t go around the earth; the earth started going around the sun. Nothing changed. We just discovered a deeper reality.


?The universe is huge?I mean really, really big.?


The universe is huge?I mean, really big. I was trying to get a feel for that. I thought, ?Okay, if all humanity held hands and jumped in the ocean, it would rise a tenth of an inch.? Now that?s pitiful. And you could fit a million earths inside the sun if you dropped them in. You could fit a hundred million suns inside Betelgeuse?the giant star in Orion. With ten thousand years? worth of counting, you could count all the stars in [our own] galaxy. And there are trillions of galaxies. So what good am I?

Then I started reading about the spiritual nature of man [in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy], and I thought, ?Okay, what is this saying? Maybe it?s saying my identity isn?t material. Maybe it?s saying I?m an idea. Now what good is that?? Well, suddenly I thought, ?Wait a second, if I?m an idea, I?m unique in the entire universe.? If you had the only diamond in this room, people would probably come over and see it. But if you had the only diamond in Massachusetts, people would come from all around to see it.

Now what if you had the only diamond in creation?[it would be] infinitely valuable. Well, I was thinking, ?Gosh, I?m the diamond.? And so are you?you are one of a kind in the universe. The person sitting next to you is an infinitely valuable one-of-a-kind person?.


?I started reading the universe.?


By looking at my identity as an idea, as spiritual, instead of material, I found it: ?Gosh, I?m infinitely valuable!? And you know what that did? It evaporated competition in graduate school. It gave me confidence because I could always say, ?But I?m myself.? I mean, there?s a guy smarter than I am at physics; there?s a guy who?s a better observer; there?s a guy who?s better at signal detection; this guy can calculate three times faster than I can. But I?m a Laurance, and there has never been another one, and there never will be another me as good as me.

Online question: ?What caused you to first suspect that there?s a connection between science and religion from your work in astrophysics??

Laurance: I grew up with training in metaphysics in the Christian Science Sunday School, so I had a metaphysical view of things already. But the sheer scale of things in the universe made me have to reexamine my identity. If you examine yourself as a material person, the universe is so huge, and so old, that you begin to feel negligible. So I had to look to the teachings that I grew up with in Christian Science, one of which was what Christ Jesus said: that the Creator of the universe was ?my Father.? What an idea!

I began to connect with the universal Cause itself, and that?s when I realized my spiritual nature. That?s when the spiritual nature of things made me connect. I started reading the universe. Instead of saying, ?That?s the color of this nebula? or ?That?s a planet out there,? I began to read it, like you read a book. You don?t look at wood pulp and ink, you read the ideas. The ideas flow from Mind [God]. And you can read stars, and the ideas of their grandeur flow from Mind.

Once I began reading the universe in a spiritual way, that?s when I found my connection.


?Questioning is a gift.?


In other words, it?s important to look at the blackboard and see the numbers, but you have to read them. Pretty soon, it dawns on you that there?s a Principle behind those numbers, and it?s independent of the chalk, and it?s profoundly orderly and harmonious?.

Reed Harris: What?s the difference between people for countless millennia memorizing religious dogma and your study of Christian Science?

Laurance: [Television interviewer] Bill Moyers asked Isaac Asimov, ?What?s your definition of science?? Asimov said, ?Science is when you compare your thoughts with those of the universe to see if they match.? That?s the mitigating factor in science. You can be the world?s expert, but if the data does not back it up, if you cannot demonstrate the truth of it?you have no final authority. The final authority in science is what the universe has to say about the subject.

I think that?s the difference between dogma and belief. A scientist at no point encounters the dogma, or shouldn?t [accept the dogmatic response]??I?m sorry, that?s just the mystery. You?re going to have to accept that on blind belief.? That is anathema to science. The scientific process is, question, question, question, and only truth will survive. That?s the fundamental difference between the practice of science and [religious] dogma of the past. I?m really grateful we?re in a scientific age, because the truth will survive this questioning. Questioning is a gift. It?s a present to us to determine what the truth is. I encourage questioning. Don?t believe what I?m saying, by the way, on this show. Question it, investigate it, and check it out. I wouldn?t expect anything less from a scientist.

Online question: ?What is so scientific about your Christianity??

Laurance: What?s scientific about it is that you have to work it. You have to demonstrate that the harmony that?s at the truth of Christianity is also the truth about the universe, and can affect your life?make it more healthy, more harmonious, can solve problems, international problems, as well as your own personal problems. And you can do it with scientific precision. Communing with the harmony that is the source of the universe?this infinite Mind?and realizing your identity as the creation of this harmonious Mind, restores harmony in your life. It?s experimentally verifiable. And once again, don?t take my word for it. There are experiments you can do to demonstrate this for yourself.


??science is a simple three-letter word, law.?


?I think of Christ Jesus as a scientist. I don?t believe in miracles in the sense of setting aside the laws of the universe momentarily. [Jesus] has to have had a deeper understanding of the real laws of the universe in order to have demonstrated the healing of things that quickly. He must have understood that order at the deepest level. For Christ Jesus to be the founder of Christianity, he had to have been the founder of a scientific method.

Reed: If I take a look at the word Christian or Christianity, and I boil that down?what?s left is a four-letter word, love. And if I take a look at the word science, to me, it?s about looking for something that?s repeatable, replicable, reliable?What I get when I boil down the word science is a simple three-letter word, law. So, to me, Christian Science is not so much about one religion, or one small private point of view, as it is about the Science and the law of love. Mary Baker Eddy has a very interesting [comment] about Jesus in Science and Health: ?Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause.?

Online question: ?Is it hard to relate to the universe in spiritual terms when you?re a scientist??

Laurance: No?Johannes Kepler was the discoverer of celestial mechanics and modern optics. He was one of the ?giants? whose shoulders Newton [said he] stood on when he did his work. So here?s Kepler, around 1602: ?God wanted to have us recognize these laws when He created us in His image, so that we should share in His own thoughts. In doing so, our knowledge is of the same kind as the divine, is unique and eternal, a reflection of the mind of God. That mankind shares in it is because man is an image of God. For these secrets are not of the kind whose research should be forbidden. Rather they are set before our eyes like a mirror so that by examining them we observe to some extent the goodness and wisdom of the Creator.? Well, I would say this guy is in a state of bliss, investigating the order of the universe, and clearly seeing a [spiritual] cause.

But that?s not just a Renaissance trait. That?s also a modern trait. The best scientists have recognized that the order has to have a source?an infinite Mind. Albert Einstein was asked his view of religion??My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior Spirit, who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe forms my idea of God. One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science measured against reality is primitive and childlike. And yet, it is the most precious thing we have.??Now if that?s Einstein?s humility, any scientist [has] to at least be that humble?at least I do.


?[Scientists] are looking for the order and Principle of the universe.?


Online question: ?Does one have to use material means in order to examine scientifically??

Laurance: In order to examine scientifically, one has to use intelligence. Consciousness is what does the examining, what does the experiment - it's intelligence that is the investigative part. The idea of matter being intelligent is not valid. Once again, it's not the investigation of matter that is the scientific process. It's looking beyond that. It's looking through the matter, and resolving it into the ideas that are the substance of what is really going on.

If someone says that scientists are materialists, I would have to strongly disagree. They are not examining matter. They are looking for the order and Principle of the universe. They?re not just believing the appearance [of things]. You?re doing science when you ?plunge beneath the material surface of things, and find the spiritual cause.?

From reading what Mary Baker Eddy had to say about the nature of matter a hundred years ago, I would say that nothing that's been discovered in quantum physics in the modern age contradicts any of that. It's interesting that she talks of all being "infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation" and [of] the substantiality of ideas. I found when I thought of myself as that identity - as an idea rather than a material construct - that something landed with me there. I've been able to hold that concept of myself [in prayer] and be healed of illnesses. There's something right about that.

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