Saturday, June 16, 2018
There are many people who see spiritual
beliefs as a function of failure to deal with reality. This is wrong
– this is completely wrong.
The reason is that there is a lot more
to reality than what these people acknowledge. I for one have had
many experiences with less than a billionth chance of happening whose
only possible explanations are spiritual and religious. The number of
these experiences is such that I would have to be a complete psycho
to deny them. I do not have the luxury of such beliefs.
Some things can be measured. Others
cannot be measured, at least using present technology. They are felt.
They are intuited. They are real even though they are not measurable
with our present machines.
Sometimes they actually can be
measured. I used to see master numbers on the clock – numbers such
as 2:22 and 3:33 – so one day I decided to set up an experiment. I
set four different clocks to four different times around the house
and recorded every time that I looked at the clock. One in ten of the
numbers I got were master numbers, when by chance it would be one in
sixty.
One day I saw in a meditation an
outpouring of sorrow in Argentina. Shortly after that I picked up a
paper and found out that there was an outpouring of sorrow in
Argentina because someone famous had died.
My girlfriend woke up in the middle of
the night, complaining that her ex-husband was speaking to her in
spirit. In the morning she decided to test it, so she said in her
head, “OK Todd, if you have been speaking to me in spirit call me.”
Less than a minute later Todd called her and told her that he had
been talking to her in spirit.
In 1995, I had a beautiful relationship
with a woman named Michelle, who had finished Harvard in three years
and who was a poet. In 2000 I wanted to have it recapitulated, so
what happens but that I start corresponding with a woman named
Michele, who had finished Caltech in three years, who was a poet, and
who in 1995 had had a similarly beautiful relationship with a man
from Bulgaria whose last name was similar to my middle name.
In all of these cases we see results
that are vastly outside of chance, and whose only explanations are
spiritual and religious.
When I started talking about these
experiences, most of what I got was crap. Supposedly I was stupid;
supposedly I was illogical; supposedly I was a kook. I am none of
these things. I am somebody who has had many spiritual experiences,
and who, unlike any number of those involved in skepticism, is too
honest to deny them.
Logic is a method, not a worldview.
When something happens that contradicts the worldview, the logical
thing to do is to correct the worldview and not to deny the
experience. The other path is not logical; it is dishonest.
Just how dishonest? I once knew a young
mathematics teacher who said that he ignored all claims of the
supernatural. This is not logic, it is dishonesty. In fact there are
many genuine scientists who speak openly about their spiritual
experiences, and I am acquainted with a distinguished anthropology
professor who speaks of such things quite a lot. He can do logic at
least as well as any skeptic. He also knows that there is more to
reality than what these people believe.
Another false belief about spiritual
experiences is that they are all positive. That is wrong as well.
Spiritual experiences can be scary. At the very least they are going
to be disruptive to a worldview that denies them. That is not the
fault of spiritual experience. That is the fault of the worldview.
Do we throw away science? Not at all.
However we have the obligation to make sense of such things, whether
or not they are what we want or what accords with what we know of the
world. As Augustine said, “Miracles
are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about
nature.” The main implication
of such things is that we cannot be simply evolving matter. It
strongly points to an intelligent creator; and that means everything
for how we live our lives.
A Christian scientist was talking in
the church about the “survival-of-the-fittest” theory. He said
that the fittest being in the world was Jesus, and Jesus sacrificed
Himself for the rest of us. He did not order us to live by Darwinian
dynamics. He ordered us to live how God wants us to live.
How could Christianity have outlasted
the Roman Empire if it was stupid? How could it have become formative
to the greatest civilization in the history of the world? Paul was
nowhere close to being stupid. He was brilliant. And people have much
to learn from what he said and did.
One thing is for sure. Spirituality is
not for fools, lunatics or conmen. It has adherents with vastly
greater intellect than its critics, most of whom are also better
human beings. Any attempt to pathologize such a thing is supreme
arrogance of thinking that your worldview is better than reality.
Once again, there is vastly more to reality than these people believe
there to be. And the logical thing to do, when faced with this, is to
correct the worldview.
I have shared some of my experiences. I
have a testimony of many others, including people of exceptional
intelligence and character. And they have a much greater
understanding of reality than the engineering types who think that
they are the only sane and rational people in the world.
To simply condemn something that the
bulk of humanity believes in is a far greater hubris than anything
that such people ascribe to the spiritually minded. And it is a
highly destructive form of hubris that beats people down and prevents
valuable things from being done. So it is time that more people call
these bullies on their behavior. Do not discard science; discard
materialistic bigotry. And allow people the benefits of both mind and
spirit, resulting in them leading much better lives.
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