Energy is matter times a constant! That was a revelation from the great Albert
Einstein, the culmination of a century of incredible progress in scientific
knowledge that set the Newtonian world on its head and ushered in a new age of
uncertainty in science where there had previously been unbridled confidence. For even as this discovery and others that
created the fields of quantum mechanics, particle physics and relativity
allowed us to harness the energy of the atom and create nuclear weapons and
power, we also found ourselves opening new doors faster than we could
understand the rooms we were entering.
Now the once unchallenged belief that science would
ultimately clearly define everything in our universe and provide clear guidance
for our lives and experiences has been more or less abandoned, and scientists
have declared themselves satisfied to explore the mystery and the beauty of the
universe without a clear path to total comprehension! (This is of course my interpretation and may
not represent the views of actual scientists J)
But what indeed are matter and energy? As our concepts of matter have evolved we
have found ourselves chasing an ever more elusive final tally of matter’s
constituent parts – compounds, molecules, ions, atoms, protons, electrons,
neutrons, fermions, bosons, leptons, quarks, neutrinos and so on.
And even as the names of these particles have become
familiar to us, their nature has been stubbornly resistant to any “sensible”
description. Are these pieces of matter
‘particles’ or ‘waves’? They are
both! Do electrons really orbit around
nuclei like small solar systems? No,
they appear to be a probability cloud of charge and energy! They are everywhere and nowhere, phantoms
that can only really be conceptualized through quantum physics equations and
mathematics.
Energy is even less comprehensible than matter, if indeed we
can even regard energy as a different phenomenon. We have deluded ourselves about energy for a
couple hundred years, pretending to understand electricity and magnetism, different
types of heat transfer, kinetic and potential energy, and even nuclear
energy. We have become comfortable with
its use and speak glibly of its properties, but energy remains just as
mysterious and unseen to us in the 21st century as it did to the
ancients.
In the end, the conceptual models we were comfortable with
had to be abandoned and new ones attempted that are much more abstract and
difficult to grasp. But the models are
not the essence of what we are experiencing.
The ‘essence’ is the way that these physical phenomena impact our lives –
their enduring truths!
Perhaps the abstract natures of matter and energy, and their
complex but intimate relationship, have something to teach us about flesh and
spirit. Just as our material selves have
been exposed as something quite different from what we historically conceived,
so perhaps are our spiritual selves in need of a ‘quantum’ leap in
understanding. Our concepts of
spirituality and its relationship to the material world have not evolved
significantly over the past two millennia.
Of course many will argue that our understanding of the
spiritual world has indeed evolved – that a great number of people have totally
rejected religion and any idea of a divine or spiritual realm. This is certainly true, and a great many of
those that reject these ideas are scientists.
The ancient models of religion that incorporate a distinct and separate
God on high with a heaven and hell seem nonsensical at a time when we have
extensive scientific knowledge that appears to refute many of the underpinnings
of this type of theology. Our literal interpretations
of scripture have painted us into a corner, but we are reluctant to abandon the
models we have relied on for centuries for fear of finding ourselves with an
amorphous spirituality that has no real doctrine or ritual.
But an amorphous, untethered spirituality would be loosely analogous
to the mysterious nature of the physical world that we explore through
science. A world where certain truths
shine through the haze, but where our imaginations struggle to grasp or
categorize the phenomena in any comfortable way.
In the end, spirituality and theology are tasked with
identifying basic truths about our existence - its meaning and purpose. Does it really matter what types of models
and frameworks we use to discern these truths?
Is God a human-like deity or rather some form of energy? Is heaven a place of eternal bliss or rather a
probability cloud of energy and charge that our own inscrutable ‘matter’
inhabits for eternity in various forms?
These are fascinating questions and worthy of deep
contemplation by those whose passion lies in this domain, but it is more
crucial that we confront the spiritual truths that every human attempt at
spiritual identification seems to impart – that compassion and love are
paramount and profoundly motivating despite the human inclinations toward
greed, power, lust and violence; that humility and generosity are more deeply
satisfying than selfishness and vanity; that our needs for community and social
interaction and harmony trump the disparate forces that alienate and estrange
us.
Our pursuit of spirituality in the form of world religions has long been a self-contradictory force in the world, providing solace to
many, inspiring incredible acts of love and compassion, but also inspiring
hideous forms of prejudice, self-righteousness, exclusion and even
violence. If we could take joy and comfort
in the spiritual models that are our cultural heritage yet not regard them as
absolute and rigidly literal perhaps we could come closer to living out their
spiritual truths. Like the modern
physicist, let us embrace mystery and revel in its beauty and complexity,
trusting that the beautiful universe that we inhabit will not let us down.
