The Science of God or Why I, as a scientist, acknowledge Something Divine

Al Boudreau (MVUUF Member) - 2005-06-26

I view myself as a pilgrim, coming out of a Catholic Christian background. I’m on a quest to discover spiritual truth and that spiritual entity some call “God.” I am not here to “evangelize anyone.” I don’t want to suggest that any of you adopt my personal view of God. I am here, as most of you are, because this community is open to a free exchange of ideas. In that spirit I come to share my views as a scientist. Yes, I am a scientist... an aerospace engineer to be exact. Some might call me a “rocket scientist,” but I take issue with that: you see, rocket science is too simple... I deal with hypersonic air-breathing propulsion which, in my humble (but correct) opinion, is much, much more complex.

Now some people would tell you that most scientific types, like me, don’t believe in anything except the material world. That idea is completely false... largely a fabrication of Hollywood. In my long scientific career, I’ve associated with thousands of engineers and scientists. The vast majority possess strong religious convictions. I would even say that, on the average, they are stronger in their convictions than other groups. Why? Precisely because they are thinkers, trained to study and to analyze the nature of this physical world. They can easily translate those skills into another dimension.

Look at Einstein as an example. He was perhaps the greatest scientific mind of the modern era, yet he saw a clear link between the supernatural and the material world. For him there was no dichotomy: the material realm and the supernatural realm were simply manifestations of the same organizing, creative, intelligence…The God-Entity. So as a rational, scientific person, I can and do acknowledge a God.

But the God I believe in today differs markedly from the mythological image of a white-haired man sitting on a heavenly thrown surrounded by angels singing his praises. That was the God of my youth: a heavenly King who would bless some and punish others. Much like a Santa Claus, He recorded every deed, checking it twice. That Childhood God would have me (as a sinner) burn eternally if I didn’t obey his rules; so in fear, I would try to placate his wrath by lighting candles and confessing my sins. Luckily, I thought, I belonged to the one religion and the one denomination he favored.

This was a concept I could grasp as a child, but it never matured as I entered adulthood and began my scientific career. Eventually it failed to make sense. I believe the Church developed that model (of a King sitting on a heavenly throne) because it fit the society of early days, being simple enough for unsophisticated peasants and despotic kings. The Church would have found it impossible to explain my concept of a multi-dimensional, genderless Divine Force to simple minds that related only to these three physical dimensions we see about us.

Now that I’m free of that simplistic model, I can stop worrying about “being perfect” and just seek being myself... my enlightened self. I can be motivated by a higher calling rather than mere rewards or punishments dictated by how well I follow a list of regulations. I believe this idea clearly follows the root teachings of Buddha and Jesus.

My image of The God-Entity has vastly matured such that today I can contemplate That Which Is, but cannot be defined. I have come to acknowledge a compassionate, organizing Intelligence that encompasses “more than personhood.” As Gandhi said, “God is not a person; God is a force.” I believe that no human words (or concepts) can capture the totality of this Divine Force. While I live in one dimension, this Ultimate Creative Force encompasses all dimensions. That means that any definition I produce falls short. The ancient wisdom of the Tao Te Ching confirms this by telling me:

The Tao that can be talked about
is not the true Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal name.
--Tao Te Ching, Chapter 1, vs 1

So if I attempt to define “God,” this definition tells me my words will fail. Therefore I don’t worry about defining it. I just appreciate what it does. Composed of “eternal intelligent energy,” I see The Force producing all dimensions that exist, and all creative forces within those dimensions. Part of its creative energy produced the human mind, the first intelligence on our planet able to contemplate both itself and that Ultimate Creator. Using my intelligence, I sense something grander, far grander, than my old “personhood concepts.” I leave pettiness behind and marvel at this Ultimate Creative Force.

But, in defining God as a “Force,” I must insist that, in my mind, The Force is much more than a mere principle of kindness, compassion, and good will. This Creative Intelligence lives; it fine-tunes the universe, from sub-atomic particles to clusters of galaxies. It causes human intelligence to flare out and contemplate the mystery of the space-time continuum. As a scientist, it gives me great satisfaction, for as Goethe said:

The highest happiness of man… is to have probed what is knowable, and quietly to revere what is unknowable.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832

So, I acknowledge a Divine Life-Force which has given me reason and intellect, and bids me use those faculties to probe both that which is “knowable,” and that which is “unknowable.”

I am not alone in this “scientific religious conviction”... I have good company. For example: Albert Einstein said:

“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.”

This was a common theme with Einstein. His brilliant mind, able to comprehend scientific complexities beyond almost everybody else on this planet, was always awed by that which lay beyond his elevated capacity. Einstein saw order where only chaos ought to be.

Add to Einstein, Max Planck, the famous German physicist and father of modern quantum mechanics. He too saw precise order where one would expect disorder and ascribed it to a higher intelligence.

Alan Sandage, winner of the Crawford Prize in astronomy, said:

I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery, but is [also] the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is “something” instead of “nothing.”

We scientific types deal in numbers... not emotion. And it’s these numbers that tell us something inescapable about the reality surrounding us. Whether we look at sub-atomic particles or galaxy clusters, we find a precision that speaks of organizing intelligence. Famed British astronomer, Sir Fredrick Hoyle, wrote:

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from these facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.

So, we scientists acknowledge a “mystery” which is impossible to fully comprehend. Why is it incomprehensible? Simply because we are stuck in, and limited by, this single three-dimensional reality. Yet we know that this must be simply “one reality” among “multiple realities.”

One way we learn about multiple realities from “String Theory,” a complex scientific treatment which unites the four fundamental forces of nature: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity. Uniting these four under one theory was something Einstein failed to accomplish, and it bugged him until he died. String theory, while complex, does tell us that there must be at least “11” dimensions of existence. That’s a mystery we can only talk about... not experience. So I live with this mystery... and even enjoy it. Again quoting Albert Einstein:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the “mysterious.” It is the source of all true art and science... The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books...a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.

Yes, science tells me that there is an organizing, intelligent God-Force in the universe. The Universe, it seems, is “fine tuned for life.” There are in science a couple-dozen very fundamental quantities that must be exactly the value they are…or nothing we know would exist. For example, the values of those four fundamental forces I spoke about must be precisely what they are or everything we see about us would collapse.

Yet beyond science, I’ve had a personal “encounter” with that mysterious force. I have, in my life, “experienced” something I cannot easily define, yet I know that that encounter was real. I have no words to adequately describe it, and anyone here who has had such an experience will tell you that it cannot be explained...only known. The famous scientist and writer, Carl Sagan once wrote:

I had an experience I can’t prove, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was part of something wonderful, something that changed me forever; a vision of the Universe that tells us undeniably how tiny, and insignificant, and [yet] how rare and precious we all are. A vision that tells us we belong to something that is greater than ourselves. That we are not, that none of us, are alone.

So this “personal witness,” along with science, tells me that the God-Force exists: a compassionate, organizing intelligence… that cares.

Now having thrown a few barbs at “rocket scientists at the beginning of this talk, perhaps I ought to acknowledge a few. Apollo astronauts, the only humans to leave the confines of this planet, often spoke of the spiritual aspect of those voyages. In fact, astronaut James Irwin wrote an entire book about it. Another Apollo astronaut, Edgar Mitchell wrote:

On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious.

Our own state hero, John Glenn, on his second flight into space, broadcast from the Space Shuttle Discovery:

I don’t think you can be up here and look out the window as I did the first day, and see the Earth from this vantage point, to look out at this kind of creation, and not believe in God. To me, it’s impossible...

And the father of modern rocket science, Wernher von Braun, said:

I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe, as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science. And there is certainly no scientific reason why God cannot retain the same relevance in our modern world that He held before we began probing His creation with telescope, cyclotron, and space vehicles.

So today I allow my intellect to flare out, to sense the Ultimate Source of this dimension. This Creative Force is the source of my imperishable soul, the source if my intellect, the source of my compassion. It gives me meaning and purpose; curiosity and satisfaction; hope and joy. I believe it’s the source of all compassion… and certainly the compassion we sense so strongly in this church community.

So in the end, I have to admit, “There is more that I don’t understand about the God-Entity than I do understand.” There will always be this “element of mystery.” There will always be things beyond my understanding, and I like it that way. This is my view of the mystery we call “God.”

May that Force be with you.