Is Science Compatible with Religion Yes says LDS Scholar, Dr Eugene Seaich
Unearthed Truths Validating Latter-day Saints Origins Is Science Compatible with Religion Yes says LDS Scholar, Philosopher Composer only a glimpse of. Dr. Eugene Seaich.
For many years I had also attempted to compare
these insights with the discoveries of modern
physics, since many physicists were beginning
to sense that science and religion are basically compatible.
Just as religion speaks of a single godhood which is the
Source of all things, quantum cosmologists like Frank
Tipler, John Barrow, J. Hartle and Stephen Hawking were
speaking of a Universal Wave Function, or a "cosmic field"
that governs all of nature's processes, and which Tipler
sees as equivalent to the biblical "Holy Spirit." Quantum
relativity was also speaking of a single space-time
continuum, woven out of coherently vibrating "strings of
energy," and which is believed to account for the elusive
force of gravity, as well as for the force of electro-
magnetism and the "strong" and "weak" nuclear forces.
Yet each "string" is interlinked with every other "string,"
like the Buddhist pratitya samutpada ("Interdependent Co-
Origination"), resulting in the same Cosmic Harmony that
is the object of religious worship. Quantum mathematics
thus demands that "we should have to consider all the photons
in the universe when discussing the state of but a single photon"
if we hope to obtain an accurate picture of reality (Roger
Penrose). Indeed, nature's photons frequently interact as
fields, and under certain conditions communicate instanta-
neously at a distance, a mystery which is referred to as
“quantum entanglement.”
Biologically, we see the same Interlocking Harmony
in the symbiotic fabric of nature, whose species have
evolved through mutual interaction, and which require
each other's presence in order to survive.
Even more
remarkable is the human body, with its three billion pieces
of genetic information encoded in every cell, united by the
interplay of its constituent strings, each part of a single
consciousness. This suggests that the Reality of both the
biologist and the physicist is more spiritual than material,
and more holistic than random. Indeed, since conscious-
ness and matter are derived from the same primal stuff, the
potential for sentience must reside in the stuff itself.
Sentience, in short, is a primal fact, and has no cause
beyond itself, though its forms may differ greatly
according to the way in which they are organized.
include geometry and mathematics-Platonic laws that
simply are, such as two plus two equals four, or the area of a
circle is πr². Since these are primal laws which even the gods
must obey, it follows that the gods are custodians of law,
rather than its originators, uncreated law that appears in
nature as "vast veins of spontaneous order" (Stuart Kauff-
man). This is similar to the self-existent law which the
Hindus call rta, and which the Zoroastrians say is the
"chief deity of the Heavenly Council." It is also similar to
what Christianity calls "priesthood," eternal law with a life
of its own, since it passes from one god to another, and
precedes those on whom it is bestowed (D&C 84:17).
Yet this sentient and self-existent order does not
eliminate the God of theism, for there was never a time
when law was not embodied, since law is coeternal with
the structures which its energies demand. Thus from all
eternity the Divine has had tangible form, and did not
coalesce from intelligent particles at some "Grand
Beginning," as Orson Pratt suggested. The theism of the
West can therefore be reconciled with the monism of the
East, for God is both cause and effect, that which creates, yet
obeys; that which is the mathematical logic of the universe,
yet is incarnate in a free and autonomous personality.
This is what Mormons call “Eternalism," or the self-
existence of Intelligence and the forms that embody it. Thus I
have come to view God as an integral part of the cosmos,
whose Spirit is the sentience of the universe, and whose
fulness is the totality of her "vast veins of spontaneous order."
Yet his form is anthropic, a personal fulness which
manifests itself in the shape of "flesh and bone," and
which is the "image" that gave rise to Man. Yet neither
came first-the "fulness" or the "flesh and bone"-for
both are phases of a beginningless process. The biblical
Elohim is the anthropic form at the center of this process, the
"God of all other gods," and the one whose power is an
integration of all other powers (Abr. 3:19).
Others who enter into harmony with this integrated
power may also become its centers and embodiments-
"sharers (koinonoi) of the Divine Nature" (2 Pet. 1:4)-or
that which we earlier referred to as "participatory mono-
theism." Thus both science and religion envision a monism
which creates and directs the destinies of the many. Man
and deity are progressive stages in the evolution of this
monistic Divine Nature, for that which directs the life of
the universe also directs the lives of its individuals and its
forms. Henri Bergson therefore declared that "the cosmos is
a machine for making gods," and Teilhard de Chardin added
that man is a way-station leading to the deification of all
things, a state which he called the "Omega Point," or theChrist-like consummation which is prophesied in the first
chapters of Ephesians and Colossians.
I might therefore summarize my personal view of
the Perennial Philosophy-or the philosophy that stands
behind all other philosophies-as belief in a Universe of
Light, a living and conscious Light, of which mind and
matter are complementary manifestations. Yet, like the
Vedantist's Brahman, it contains its own maya, or principle
of individuation (2 Nephi 2:11). Thus the Light is not
featureless, but is a matrix of phenomenal energies, a flux of
appearances in which the transient has no fixed existence of
its own, since it depends on its interaction with other
appearances (like the words in a cross-word puzzle). Yet
because each transient life is derived from the interaction
of appearances, it exists eternally as a thread in the tapestry
of the Whole. This is the metaphysical basis of love and
morality, which are not merely noble sentiments, but are
the psychic structures which make possible the "Body of
Christ" and the immortality of the cosmos, and which are
our immortality.
The resulting tapestry of holistic consciousness is the
Divine Will that directs the evolution of the cosmos.
Hence God is much more than an "exalted man," being
the fulness that exalts men, a fulness whose laws are the
uncreated mathematics which are inherent in nature's
forms. Thus anyone who beholds nature beholds a divine
teleology which is innate in every particle: "All these are
kingdoms, and any man who hath seen any or the least of these
hath seen God moving in his majesty and power" (D&C 88:47).
Yet this innate teleology is also embodied in those
Beings who are personal incarnations of the divine fulness,
and whose freedom is a willing acceptance of its eternal
laws. Thus, by sharing the fulness with his creatures, God
deifies them, making them conduits for his own deity and
for the continuous expansion of the universe, for there is
no heat-death or entropy, only a Sentient Harmony that is
more spiritual than material, hence is not subject to loss of
There is in fact but One Godhood, which
energy.
continuously begets new "gods, even the sons of God,"
exalted men who embody the One God's fulness, and who
"continue the seeds for ever" as links in a Divine Continuity
(D&C 76, 132).
Thus I believe that the Divine is best sought in
every-day experience, not in conspicuous spirituality, for
as the sages of India discovered, the Eternal and the
Ephemeral are facets of a single Reality, one that can be
touched by the body as well as the mind. Thus one's
senses can be trained to perceive the magnificent Harmony
that governs even ordinary lives, but which also connects
them to the sacred depths from which they sprang. Eugene Seaich
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