Sometimes I think I’m the only person on the planet who thinks that science and spirituality do not have to be mutually exclusive. For example, why do so many people think that if you believe in the theory of evolution, you cannot also believe in a higher power? I happen to think evolution is brilliant. Not only does it solve a whole host of natural problems, but it also occurs over millennia, thus requiring a patience that we mere mortals could never hope to duplicate.
I also think the big bang is a highly spiritual thing. I love the fact that it took something so cataclysmic to eventually lead to us and the air we breathe. And stem cell research? Phenomenal. That we evolved brains sophisticated enough to even know that stems cells exist is a source of constant fascination for me.
I honestly believe that the mistake we make is in thinking that religion is confined to books that were written back in a time when science wasn’t particularly advanced. I don’t think spirituality can be boxed in like that, and I think it undergoes an evolution of its own. I think that if we think we have it all figured out, and that we have to rigidly adhere to a set of religious rules from centuries ago, that we are according ourselves entirely too much power, and underestimating the ability of a sentient creator to change. Something that can’t change may as well be a rock.
I think spirituality exists in the unknown bits, the space between the things that are smaller than the quantum particles, the things we couldn’t possibly write about because we don’t know and probably never will.
We call the things that we can explain science. But there will always be things which we cannot explain. And I find that oddly comforting, too.
[Image credit: Wellcomecollection.org]
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