Outlandish Spirituality or Fantastic Science? Or Neither?

Is spirituality outlandish?

Imagine that you are a materialist—that you believe only those “things” that you can see, touch, hear, taste, and feel. Your world and its workings are all explained by things. You view spiritual teachings that include spirit, soul, afterlife, and life-giving energy as myth and outlandish. You believe that science has deciphered our universe with the discovery of atoms, molecules, DNA, and electronic chips.

You understand that much of our modern life is influenced by electronic devices but you are stumped as to how they work. No need, the scientists understand all that. You feel that those who are spiritual should learn enough science to realize that there are no unseen, immaterial, spirits or other apparitions out there. What is this science which needs to be learned? What does 21st-century science teach?

Missing “spirits” of science

Since the early 20th-century, physicists have been pondering seemingly fantastic theories that explain our world. Some of these still puzzle physicists. Our universe is believed to have come from a dot or so-called singularity. Mysteries shroud the basic components of atoms and molecules. They are energy but their description and their apparent ability to be in many places at the same instant of time still confound scientists.

Science in the 21st-century has added an array of bizarre theories to explain our world. Although Einstein dispelled the notion that there is something in “empty” space or a vacuum, recently a Nobel Laureate described the vacuum as “full of stuff” having enormous amounts of energy. Furthermore, 96% of our universe is missing “dark matter” and “dark energy” which have not been found, identified, or characterized—like spirits lost in the abyss.

Is science fantastic?

In 1543 Copernicus’ book was published describing the universe not revolving about the Earth but instead we rotated about the Sun. What followed was upheaval, a succession of scientific discoveries, and a new world-view.

Modern science’s foundation is its theories. The “fantastic” findings have resulted in perturbations akin to those of the 16th-century. Scientists have discarded previous theories and dogma. In order to rationalize our world physicists are now embracing the concepts of parallel universes and seven other dimensions (in addition to the four we know).

So what is our universe?

Universal information

We live in the information age with IT (information technology) and company CIOs (chief information officers). Scientists’ have proclaimed that the universe is merely information. Seth Lloyd of MIT and Jack Ng of the University of North Carolina, leading scientists in quantum-information theory and quantum-gravity theory, stated in 2004 that the universe is the ultimate computer, having performed 10123 operations so far. They said that “…the universe is computing itself.”

In a quest to achieve the ultimate computer to process information, scientists envision quantum computers utilizing a weird phenomenon of quantum particles, entanglement, in which information can travel instantly—faster than light! So we have an information universe, but like the information in a computer, energy is required to access the information.

Is the universe spiritual?

Today, science and spirituality agree our universe is energy. All the “things” of our world are made up of minuscule bits of energy a billion trillion times smaller than so-called “fundamental particles.”

In another article I describe how our brains’ misperceive the world by simplifying the energy waves of the universe as things. The ancients didn’t coin terms like String Theory, zero point energy, black holes, mutliverses, quantum entanglement, or Big Bang, but spiritual teachings at different times, in different places, guiding different cultures professed that our world is energy and that spirit, God, life, and afterlife were energy.

In the 20th- and 21st-centuries numerous physicists have declared our universe is information, mental, and spiritual. I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide if spirituality is outlandish, if science is fantastic, or if both appear to reveal the same spiritual message using different words.