#6 Can science prove the existence of God?

Two mystics, the Sufi mystic Rumi, and Dr. David Hawkins offer a couple thoughts to frame our discussion.

Rumi said, “love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries.” I think Rumi was suggesting if you want to know the secrets of the heavens—and beyond—love is the tool you should use to investigate. Every bit as serious and real a tool as the astrolabe of his day.

Dr. David Hawkins (author of Power vs. Force and Eye of the I) echoes this thought with his quote, “Love opens the door to truth. Always in that order.”

No love. No truth. The deeper your love, the deeper the truth you will know.

This is not philosophical bumper-sticker material. In my own spiritual journey I have found over and over once I showed love (which might simply take the form of respecting another’s beliefs long enough to listen and take them seriously), doors to truth and understanding would pop open. Respect, as ad guru Kevin Roberts says in his book Lovemarks, is an essential first-ingredient to love. No respect, no love.

I would add, no love, no truth. Not just spiritual truth, but metaphysical stuff about the universe, too—hence Rumi’s comment about the astrolabe.

External verifiability: tough to muster if you’re an infinite being

Science deals with the realm of the measurable; the world of physical form. Numbers, quantification, statistics, data. Its belief system includes the idea that an experiment needs to be externally replicable by someone else—meaning an experimenter who’s not you before it is accepted as valid by the broad community of science. 

Externally replicability/verifiability means another investigator who is not you, using the exact same experimental design you used—your investigation techniques, controlled variables, equipment, etc.—will get exactly the same results you did. And by exactly, physical science means numerically identical. If not, your results flunk the requirments of externally verifiable science.

So we can see two criteria here which might bump up against our God idea; external and numeric verifiability. Especially if the universe God inhabits is an absolute, infinite universe as we’ve discussed in earlier posts.

Einstein: The parades didn’t come until the numbers verified his theory

I deal in this blog with the intersection of modern physics and spirituality, with some psychology tossed in here and there. Physics is a discipline conducted in the language of math—formulas, equations, and theories that produce precise numeric results in the lab. 

Physics is based on theories that, no matter how far out there, must eventually come down to roost in the physical universe with real, numeric, lab-tested, peer-reviewed results. Theory is nice, but it’s not until it produces a measurable result that the physics community holds it up as valid science.

Einstein discovered and published his theory of relativity in 1905. But it wasn’t hailed as a breakthrough until it was experimentally confirmed by Sir Arthur Eddington in 1919. Einstein’s theory of relativity had made a specific numeric prediction about how far the sun would bend light approaching from a distant star as that light zipped by the sun. Eddington’s measurements, taken during a solar eclipse, confirmed Einstein’s theory. Only then did newspapers around the world trumpet Einstein’s theory of relativity as breakthrough science, causing him to become an international hero.

Here in the United States parades were thrown in his honor.

Let’s keep that in mind when other scientists dismiss Einstein’s work so casually as “old school.” Ask them where and when you can attend a parade in their honor. 

Dr. Ellie Arroway and Palmer Joss: love beyond proof

But astronomer Carl Sagan tosses a wrench into the externally verifiable argument of physical science. He notes in his book/movie Contact that the one thing humans want most from life—love—cannot be externally proven, that is, externally verified.

His Palmer Joss character, a spiritual investigator and writer in the movie, asks the agnostic astronomer Dr. Eleanor Arroway (Ellie), if she loved her father, who died when Ellie was young. She says, “Yes, very much.”

Joss responds, “Prove it.”

What could Ellie do to prove her love for her father? Maybe she could produce pictures of her with her arm around her father, or perhaps giving him a kiss. Or maybe she could dig up old, homemade birthday cards she made that said, “I love you, daddy.”

But Joss could shoot back: “How do I know he wasn’t being abusive to you during that period in your life, and you didn’t love him, but were merely afraid of him? We have all kinds of tested, proven, scientific evidence of severely traumatized children telling their parents how much they love them, making them gushy birthday cards and the likes. In fact, we have evidence that a traumatized child might say, “I love you daddy” even during the abuse. Especially if the abuser is extremely good at what they do and includes the words, “I do this because I love you. Now tell me you love me.” 

No matter how much external evidence Ellie produced for the subjective inner experience of loving her father, Joss could shoot it down as manufactured hype; a product of an obviously abusive, non-loving relationship. And that’s just one way he could shoot it down. 

She knows this is simply not true. She really did love her dad, which the movie makes very clear. But their powerful, galaxy-spanning love remains an internal experience to them, beyond external, numeric, scientific quantification. What number could she produce that would ever satisfy physical science? Could she say, “I loved my dad exactly 27.65?” or maybe, “I loved my day 3.14159?” Assigning a number to love is meaningless. Would you ever say you are 25.4 in love with your signficant other?

As Rabbi Yehuda Berg observes in The Power of Kabbalah, what humans truly desire from life—love, peace, joy, security, etc.—are all beyond numeric quantification. Further, they are all non-geographic; you can’t locate them anywhere on a map. Hard to measure something you can’t pin down to a specific geography.

So if these subjective inner experiences we desire most from life reflect God in some way—which they do—this means God too could be beyond numeric quantification. So how can phyiscal science, which requires numbers as evidence, prove God exists? It can’t.

But an even more critical takeaway from Berg’s research, for science to say only what can be numerically quantifiable—i.e. measurable—is real is to deny that what humans want most from life is real. That is the bizarre outcome of taking numeric reality—a universe of thought projected over actual reality—to an extreme. We can avoid this issue by properly using the definition of real—meaning “obeying the laws of.” Love is real to humans, but it is not real relative to the laws of physical science—which call for numeric quantification in order to be “real.”

Einstein’s response to the idea that only stuff that can be assigned a real number (“observable magnitudes”) should go into a physical theory was that “a good joke should not be repeated too often,” according to Walter Isaacson’s biography Einstein. At the end of his life, Einstein’s earlier belief that only numerically measurable ideas should be explored by physical science had changed drastically. He had come full circle.

Love: Impossible to verify externally

Think about your own feelings for a particular loved one. How do we know, for certain, you aren’t angling for something else with all your phsyical, externally verifiable expressions of that love? Might not be love at all. Some examples:

• You’re kissing them lightly on the cheek? Obviously you’re a manipulator trying to gain some favor from them.

• You’re giving them a gift? Obviously so you can get one back, hopefully more expensive than the one you gave them.

• You’re taking care of them when they’re sick? Obviously out of some repressed childhood guilt, or a desire to avoid medical costs, you cheapskate. 

• You’re putting your life on the line for them? Obviously so you can be remembered as a risk-taking, glory-hound. It’s all about your legacy, isn’t it, Captain Vanity?

In a relative universe, any external action can be interpreted any number of ways relative to the intention, purpose and motivation of the observer. “The world is what you make of it,” Ellie said to her manipulative boss in the movie version of Contact. Only her inner, subjective experience of love for her father was beyond this random interpretation. That’s what makes our love for others so real to us; it’s beyond relativistic effects. Ellie knew she loved her father, despite what anyone, anywhere would ever say.

A true absolute is beyond externally verifiable evidence

One-by-one, any external evidence you could offer about how or why or how deeply you love someone can be refuted by those who try hard enough. That’s relativity; anyone can mentally project anything on what you know to be true internally and subjectively. So, what Sagan, through his character Joss, is getting at, IMHO, is that love, unlike science, is beyond externally verifiable proof. It’s absolute. And a true absolute is always beyond externally verifiable proof. If God is love, which the mystics are in agreement on, then He, too, is beyond the realm of physical science entirely.

Thomas Jefferson and self-evident truths: put away your measuring tape

A true absolute is a self-evident idea, Thomas Jefferson would say. The evidence of its existence can only be verified by the one experiencing it. For example, the existence of Ellie’s love for her father can only be verified by her, because she is the one who experienced it. The value of a self-evident idea can only be testified to by the one experiencing it. What is Ellie’s love for her father worth? Only she can answer that question. And the experience of a self-evident idea can only be known internally to that self-evident idea. Ellie can only really know what the love for her father is by being in love with him. What does “in” or “inside” love mean? No one can really explain it until you have been in love.

Love isn’t a physical place; it’s a non-geographic experience you can only know by voluntarily agreeing to identify with it. That’s another characteristic of a self-evident idea or truth and a true absolute. We know we are voluntarily agreeing to identify with something when we use “I am” statements. I am in love. I am at peace. I am secure. I am a musician. I am a scientist. I am a Harley-Davidson rider. But we don’t say, “I am a creamed-corn eater” because we don’t voluntarily identify ourselves as such—at least most people don’t.

A self-evident, absolute idea can only be experientially known—a subjective “inner” experience—that literally defines what “inner” means to you! Are you “in” love or “out” of love? Only you can answer that.

Can’t give a self-evident idea as a birthday present

Also, you cannot give a self-evident experience to anyone else because they must voluntarily agree to identify with it. You can only extend the invitation. You can create the conditions for them to experience it, but you can’t give it to them; they must join you in that experience. Similarly, you can’t give respect. You can do your best to earn someone else’s respect, and you can hope they join you in the experience of respecting you, but you can’t give them that respect. They have to voluntarily identify with it; meaning they have to co-create it in themselves and share it with you. You extend the invitation, they have to accept it.

Think about throwing a party. We hope our guests would say, “I had fun at your party, thanks for having me over.” But you can’t force that person to have the experience of a good time. You can only extend the invitation, create the right conditions and hope they voluntarily experience fun, and identify with that experience by saying “I had fun.” Note that Jesus says God’s kingdom is like a banquet; many are invited but most have excuses.

This is how God’s law works. It is always and forever an invitation to enter into an experience of peace, joy and love voluntarily. It is never forced, as Dr. David Hawkins illuminated in Power vs. Force. Similarly, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and all the other founding fathers created a a system of laws that invited citizens of the United States to experience freedom, but they couldn’t give them that experience, nor force it on them. That experience could only be voluntarily identified with as liberating by the citizens. That’s the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship; the former invites citizens to experience the fruits of a particular point of view, and the latter tries to force an experience on them.

A man could be sitting next to stacks of millions of his dollars at the foot of the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July while reading the Declaration of Independence and still feel like a prisoner. Any truly absolute, self-evident idea is an invitation to experience something. It is never forced and can only be known through voluntarily identification with the subjective inner experience it creates. “Yes, I am free, the man would have to say. Or, “Yes, I am in love with you,” someone would have to say to us. The self-evident experience creates the bond, or connection or “network” that defines “inside.” As in, “I’m in love with you.” We’ll explore this more in a later post. Thus to be “in” Heaven, you must voluntarily agree you are in Heaven.

It’s that simple.

To summarize:

The evidence for the existence of, value of, experience of, and inner presence of a self-evident idea remains internal to that self-evident idea and is experienced only through voluntary identification with the subjective, inner experience it creates.

Science can’t touch it. Can’t verify it. Can’t prove it. Can’t disprove it. If God is an absolute, self-evident Being who voluntarily invites us into union with Him to experience the joy, peace and absolute security of coming home to the truth of ourselves, science can look forever and not find Him. Just as the man looking for the real ocean in question #1 by digging through the imaginary sand of his fantasy island could dig forever and not find it. That’s what the Dalai Lama would call endless reductionism: digging through the contents of a projected, relative universe (spacetime) in order to either find God, or disprove God exists.

A couple quotes from Isaac Newton might be fitting here:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

And…

Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.

In order to find the truth of God you have to fire up Rumi’s astrolabe of love. You must voluntarily come to the conclusion some day that, “I am in love with God.” And that, “I am one with God, meaning “inside” of God, like you are “inside” love. Not one meaning in geometric union with, or inside a geometric location—but in non-dualistic unity as I have referred to here in this discussion as “self-evident ideas.”

Interestingly, the founders chose “E pluribus Unum” for our original national slogan: Latin for “out of many, one.”

Similarly to be free, you must voluntarily—without a single shred or coercion—say, “I am free.” 

Perfectly free spirit. Which, as philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti says, is not a reaction to a single other thing. Including external “evidence.” Nothing outside of you coercing you to be anything but what you are. Only you can say “I am this. This is my Self,”  the Buddha would note.

So, can science prove the existence of God? Absolutely not. God is an absolutely loving, absolutely infinite self-evident Being. A self-evident truth that will make you free when you become one with Him voluntarily and then identify that experience as your true Self. The mystics liken it to the ultimate experience of coming home. Not a shred of external evidence will testify to your union—because your whole universe will be in love and nothing will be beyond it.

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last!

Amen, brother Martin.