I don’t know if you noticed, but in response to my last post (“Could science investigate God?”), Phil wrote the following:

Funnily enough, the same day you posted this I was saying something similar on another website. The question posed there was: ‘Do you have any empirical proof that there is no God.’ My response was:

“No, but I think it’s easier to find empirical proof for the existence, if not of God, of something more than Western material science has so far been either willing or able to recognise. I’m thinking of the work being done by serious scientists like Robert Jahn, Dean Radin, Stuart Hameroff and Bruce Greyson (to name but four). Guys who are all exploring the non-local nature of mind and consciousness. Something which, I predict, will before too long blow conventional Western scientific thinking completely out of the water.”

This struck me immediately as a possible CMPE, so I wrote Phil about it and we have been writing back and forth all week. Here is what happened:

I posted my piece last Saturday, the 10th. While writing it, Bruce Greyson was heavily on my mind, since he happened to be associated with all four of the disciplines I wrote about: He’s one of the fathers of Near-Death Studies, is involved in our CMPE pilot project, reports on a kundalini study he did in the kundalini book my CMPE was about, and has an endorsement on the back of the psychedelics book that that CMPE was about.

An hour after my post was up (and well before Phil saw it), Phil posted his comments. Even though they were quite brief, just a paragraph, the question and his response had a number of parallels with what I wrote. In both cases,

1. There is a blog that Phil participates in.
2. On this blog someone poses the question about scientific evidence relating to God’s existence: Is there/can there be evidence that either supports or disproves the existence of God? (“Could science investigate God?” “Do we have empirical proof there is no God?”)
3. A response is posted that says science really can find evidence for God (my post) or at least something in the direction of God (Phil’s).
4. The response mentions four examples of this emerging science, either four scientists (Phil’s) or four disciplines (mine), explicitly naming them as “four.”
5. Bruce Greyson is one of the four scientists or is associated with the four disciplines.
6. The response says that in the future this kind of science will cause a massive change (Phil: “blow conventional Western scientific thinking completely out of the water”; me: “powerfully contribute to a new world”).

This is not a bad set of parallels. They are six in number, which is a bit below average, but still sufficient. There are some impressively specific ones, especially the fourth and fifth. And they come together to create a whole picture.

That whole picture is what particularly interests me. If we try to capture the general sweep of the parallels, we get something like this: The answer to the question “Is there scientific evidence for or against God’s existence?” is yes, science can find evidence for God. In fact, the science for doing so is emerging now, as we speak. There are several examples of it we can point to. Although this science is only in its infancy, the time will come when it brings about massive change in the world.

That seems to me to be the message of this latest sign, and it’s one I’ve been pondering a great deal in the last week. I know it simply echoes what I wrote in my last post, but what I wrote is a very new view for me, prompted by recent signs. And it’s one I haven’t fully moved into.

For decades now, I’ve been thinking of science as the bad guy when it comes to spirituality. Science investigates the physical, and by shining its spotlight always on the physical, it conveys the message, on a vast cultural scale, that the physical is all there is. That’s what science has done, and that’s what it will always do. And our world is groaning under the weight of that.

I’ve slowly, over many years, been growing out of that view, at least as representing the limits of science. But it’s been happening by degrees, just one step at a time: 1) Science can investigate psychic abilities, 2) can investigate the independent reality of consciousness, 3) can investigate spirit.

Only very recently is my mind taking the final step in this progression: science can investigate God. God is all the way on the other end of the spectrum from how we normally think of science. God is the domain of faith, scripture, tradition, sentiment, subjectivity. God can’t be touched by science, and science dare not try. God should remain hidden in a kind of holy cloud of reverence and mystery. Why would science even try to penetrate that cloud? That is not its domain. That is the profane trespassing on sacred ground, and leaving its heavy and invasive footprints all over that ground, marring it forever. It could only end badly. At least some believers’ most cherished convictions would be overturned—by science. At least some religions’ most hallowed articles of faith would be disproved. And to be replaced by what new and alien scientific construct? God only knows.

This recent CMPE is challenging me to go all the way with the progression my mind has been traveling along. Could I actually unite these two poles: science and God? And could I unite them so fully as to believe their union will someday become a basic part of human society? In the last four hundred years, science has become foundational for society. Is it really possible that this has been leading us toward a day in which the union of science and God will become just as foundational for the society of the future?