The Physics of God: How the Deepest Theories of Science Explain Religion

Book Preface

Joseph Selbie’s The Physics of God is a unique and welcome addition to the growing literature for the scientific evidence for God. Why is this impor-tant? To begin with, it runs counter to a misconceived bias that has domi-nated scientific thought now for several centuries.

In the 17th century, Isaac Newton gave us a mathematical science that all but eliminated the idea of God intervening in the material world of physics and chemistry. In the same century another scientist, René Descartes, laid the foundation for championing the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. Ever since then (and following the prevalent notion of Christianity, actually), Western scientists have generally held the notion that animals are machines. This intellectual attitude stands true even today—that is, almost.

In the 19th century, Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution suggested that living beings have a hereditary component (which we now recognize as genes) that undergoes changes called “mutation.” Through the process of natural selection, nature selects among these variations those that help the species to adapt to the ever-changing environment; in time, this process leads to speciation. Since Western science maintained that animals are machines, and Darwin was saying that we are descen-dants of monkeys, doesn’t it follow that humans are machines, too?

The Physics of God

When later genes were experimentally discovered and even the struc-ture of the DNA molecule of which genes are part was figured out, the view grew that biology is nothing but an extension of chemistry. Biologists and most other scientists with them assumed that everything about life will sooner or later be unraveled by the science of biology—leaving nothing for God to do! God’s intervention even in the affairs of the living seemed to have been ruled out.

In the 20th century, a few scientists (Einstein, for example) held on to the idea of a benign God in what is called the philosophy of “Deism.” But the notion that God is dead took hold in the scientific mainstream that soon promulgated the idea of a new philosophy by which to do science—scientific materialism. This philosophy says that every phenomenon is a material phenomenon in space and time caused by material interaction. There is nothing but matter!

This philosophy is clearly a dogma; Selbie calls it a religion, correctly I think. It has given humanity a polarized perspective, torn between God and materialist science, the world over and specifically with dire con-sequences in America. Selbie addresses this polarization directly and adroitly, showing how science and religion, far from being incompatible, share a deep congruence.
Scientific materialists thought seriously through much of the 20th century that life itself will be produced in the laboratory from nonliving matter, putting the whole question of whether God is needed or not to rest. Unfortunately, despite biology’s many spectacular successes, the questions of “What is life?” and “Can life be produced from nonlife?” have remained unanswered. Meanwhile, Darwin’s theory itself has come under fire with revelations that suggest that it really does not explain the details of avail-able fossil data.

Other compelling data exists against scientific materialism. In sci-entific materialism, all communication is local, via signals. But as this author and many others have discussed, there is much evidence in favor of signal-less—that is, nonlocal—communication both in the micro and the macro domain of matter. Among such signal-less communications are distance viewing and near-death experiences. Especially the lat-ter is spectacular: The evidence proves that there is consciousness even after the brain dies. So consciousness has to occur even before the brain exists, right?

Some of the most compelling evidence against scientific materialism has come from quantum physics, the latest paradigm of physics that has replaced Newtonian physics. In quantum physics, objects are waves of possibility that reside in a domain of reality called “the domain of poten-tiality” where communication is instantaneous, without signal, nonlocal. This domain must be outside the realms of space and time where locality reigns. Nonlocal phenomena are referred to as “paranormal” by the main-stream scientists, but that designation is obviously prejudiced in light of quantum physics.
So, if the philosophy of scientific materialism is wrong, can we con-clude that God does exist? Does it mean that God is scientifically verifi-able? That there is, in fact, a physics of God? Selbie makes a concise and convincing case that there is. He draws from the transcendent testimony of mystics the world over as well as from the findings of string theory, David Bohm’s version of quantum physics, quantum biology, neurosci-ence, and quantum physics itself to demonstrate that a physics of God is at hand!
In my own view as a quantum physicist, quantum physics alone gives us God, but my personal view is beside the point. The point is that any serious thinking person can look at the data and the existing ideas of post-materialist thinking and figure out that God is back in science. Drawing on the work of leading scientists as well as leading mystics, Selbie has pro-vided a wonderfully persuasive and clear argument for coming to that conclusion.

The most important point is that with God back in the picture and backed up by science this time, we can go about founding a human science in which all human experiences are legitimate and scientific, including the spiritual. Others and I are working on that, and I am glad that Selbie has joined the effort! Read this book; it will help you, too, to gain this new per-spective. The only qualification is that you see yourself as more than the soulless machines that many scientific materialists see. The rest, as Selbie describes it, is the beginning of life’s greatest adventure.

—Amit Goswami, quantum physicist