Can you be spiritual without being religious? Can you be spiritual and also scientific? Of course. It depends on what is meant by spirit.
A Google search produced this definition:
1. The nonphysical part of a person that is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.
2. Those qualities regarded as forming the definitive or typical elements in the character of a person, nation, or group or in the thought and attitudes of a particular period.
Obviously the first definition — the non-physical part of a person, soul — implies a religious sensibility. Or at least, a supernatural one.
But the second definition — the definitive elements of something — allows for a broad range of interpretations about what spirit signifies.
When I read Albert Einstein's letter to a girl who asked him if scientists pray, and if so, what they pray for, I sense that Einstein was thinking of spirit along the lines of "definitive elements." Read the letters, and see what you think.
(Source: Dear Professor Einstein; Image: Albert Einstein in 1947, via Life.)
The Riverside Church
January 19, 1936
My dear Dr. Einstein,
We have brought up the question: Do scientists pray? in our Sunday school class. It began by asking whether we could believe in both science and religion. We are writing to scientists and other important men, to try and have our own question answered.
We will feel greatly honored if you will answer our question: Do scientists pray, and what do they pray for?
We are in the sixth grade, Miss Ellis's class.
Respectfully yours,
Phyllis
———————-
January 24, 1936
Dear Phyllis,
I will attempt to reply to your question as simply as I can. Here is my answer:
Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.
However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect, so that in the end the belief in the existence of a final, ultimate spirit rests on a kind of faith. Such belief remains widespread even with the current achievements in science.
But also, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.
With cordial greetings,
your A. Einstein
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Einstein said God does not play dice with the universe.
Niels Bohr told Einstein, “who are you to tell God
what to do ?”
Einstein did not win a nobel prize for E+MC 2. A French woman
during the French revolution came up with most of this
equation.
Einstein argued with Max Planck and Bohr over their quantum
mechanics theory and was wrong.
M Theory has been proven now to be the Universal Field, Einstein
was looking for. It incorporated string theory and found the
11th dimension.
It turns out all of the universe is penetrated by a field
one trillionth of a millimeter. The field of all possibilities.
So, we might say this is our soul. But, our soul is not unique
to us.
M theory also opened the mathematics of the multi verse.
Einstein actually got in the way of progress, the same way Edison got in the way of Tesla.
Is the universal field conscious ? Is it aware of itself ?
I would like to point interested blog readers to a YouTube video of Dr. Stuart Hameroff. I would post a link but I cannot figure out how to cut and past the url with my current version of Firefox – but, it is the most current of several Hameroff videos – the one where he is wearing surgical scrubs and a hair net.
[Note from Blogger Brian: must be this video…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpUVot-4GPM ]
If you would like a review of how modern science views consciousness, what it could be and what it could possibly mean, this video interview with Dr. Hameroff will get your own neurons cooking, to be sure. Stuart Hameroff, by the way, is an anesthesiologist who has been removing and restoring consciousness to human brains for the past 40 years. He and Roger Penrose (a British physicist and mathematician) have developed a theory of consciousness known as Orch OR, or, Orchestrated Objective Reduction.
Seriously – it’s an hour well spent.
Hi Willie R. I watched the video you mention and found that what Stuart Hamerhoff had to say intriguing but difficult to digest with his talk with quantum physics and microtubules.
I found a piece from Noetic Now Journal (Issue 13, August 2011) “What is Consciousness? A conversation with Stuart Hameroff” Below is the summation of his thinking:-
“I think consciousness is actually fundamental and intrinsic to the universe, that it’s built into the universe. We need our brain to build this complex picture of consciousness—conscious images, conscious thought, and so forth—but the raw precursors of consciousness, the components of consciousness, are what philosophers call qualia. I think they are inherent in the universe, much like mass, spin, and charge are fundamental, irreducible components. Quantum processes in the brain connect our brain to these fundamental processes intrinsic to the universe.”
If ever proved true his ideas would throw my assumptions re the brain and consciousness out of the window. He has his critics, but even so I’ll watch how his ideas develop.
Hello Turan – Dr. Hameroff does not have many supporters among those who are most qualified to expound upon consciousness from a scientific standpoint. This was made explicit during the interview. Hameroff himself explicitly stated that within approximately 5 years, the Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR theory of consciousness will either be disproved or will become the dominant scientific theory of consciousness.
But – there is also the chance that Orch OR will simply be dismissed as irrelevant, and no method of testable hypothesis will be devised to prove or disprove it.
It does not matter whether we discover what consciousness is or isn’t. We are still stuck with Reality – which can be both delightful or appalling. Or neither.
Einstein believed that there are mathematical laws of nature that are absolute. He believed that we could think of these laws and that all of nature had to obey them. What he really did was make a simulation of nature in his mind and leave out everything that did not fit so that the rest could be calculated with a simplified perfect model of time and space. Now this simulation became the new nature so man would not have to fear himself anymore. People have build on it and build on it. Huge accelerators where the result and they all contributed to the puzzle. Mankind for the first time in history had a model of the universe and the atom, they where all explosive bombs and there was no place for creative forces in it except at the beginning.
Nature smiled and was patient with mankind’s efforts for a while ….:)
I believe it is not possible with our human logical mind to find a law that rules nature. But we can build things unheard of on simple principles and approximations. As soon as we stop blinding ourselves with our models of nature.
By example. How does this thing work? It is sold and does work. But how?
http://www.globalbemvoices.com/videos/lectures/wilhelm-mohorn-aquapol/
Regards
Hi Willie R, jsut skimming by the comment shere & noticed you mention Hamerhoff & Penrose Orch-OR theory. As you mention, their theory is not well liked, and was criticised on several grounds, most of which is based on ideological concerns.
I didn’t notice whether or not you had heard the latest on this theory?:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm
Can you be spiritual without being religious? Can you be spiritual and also scientific?
YES
Everybody of compassion ( VG ) has the resounding
super lovely tiny at first attention sweet fabulous Sound above the eyes.
While knowing that it is your very own Soul, so long neglected/suppressed , – resonating, interferencing and after
united with/in it, being absorbed in it after some time
enjoying mega cool experiences with it, . .
all that time :
You can easily at the same time do everything else
where the mind is good at , . . like, eating,
math, sex, tv, trowing a stone on the moon, driving but not drinking hihi,
religious habits, go in the army – like Jaimal, Sawan, . . . anything
Just try the above
with or without a guru
although myself :
I had a lot of help from a Friend
777
Thanks manjit. More food for thought – the plot thickens!
Tnank You Manjit It rings a Bell !
Alot of ppl have tried to prove Einstein wrong but he’s often more accurate than those 50 years in the future with a whole raft of evidence to hand which he never. Albert was brilliant. Bohr though it was random, Einstein did not – bohrs Copenhagen interpretation is far from the complete story and we know that – if ever there was a scientist who looked buying the detail to try see the bigger picture it was uncle Albert. Bohr was a formula plugger.
E-mc2 is a similpoification of a far more portent theory of special relativity.
If Einstein thought there was a spirit begind shit – who the fk are we too argue?
Simple philo :
Denying an origin
so, . . . why pay taxes
777
but for the millions hearing stanta pede at each moment
the sweet sweet Sound,
this discussion is unbelievable,
like doubting about water
E=mc2 was not brought up by Einstein. J.J. Thomson was one of the researchers that came on that result he explained relativistic mass by observing that a charged sphere when accelerated gets a stronger magnetic field. You know this when you turn up the current in a coil the magnetic field gets stronger. So Thomson reasoned the acceleration energy has to go into the magnetic field so that explained the relativistic mass that was observed. He went on to say all mass must be electromagnetic. This led to a great dispute among scientist but Albert said e=mc2 for every kind of energy not just electromagnetic thereby obscuring the mechanism that Thomson found. In the Atom bom we don’t understand how the mass goes to energy but Thomson explained the mechanism, the electromagnetic binding energy goes from mass to acceleration. Einstein mystified and introduced undefined concepts like potential energy in the field where Thomson talked about kinetic energy of the aether particles that Tesla proved experimentally with his radiant matter tubes. A whole range of knowledge that was practical and applicable was confused and mystified to bring us a concept of the universe as a big bang. I think the atom is a vortex maintained in continuous creation through the living aether that listens to commands making our technology controllable by the will.
Just my 2 cents and I’m not Einstein 🙂 Consensus is overrated 🙂
Einstein’s SR theory looked at things completely differently.
For a start he introduced the completely bizarrely perspective of introducing the concept of space-time, dimensions previously thought to be independent, now somehow were interrelated. This lay the foundation for his GR theory that brought gravity in and explained this in terms of the ability to warp space-time,
SR also introduced an apparent speed limit to the universe, or at least that was one of the repercussions – again something yet to be disproved
Reducing SR to e=mc2 is like reducing forest gump to life is like a box of chocolates, or Shakespeare to ‘to be or not to be, that is the question’ – these are pithy statements which powerfully try to sum up, but they don’t vaguely tell the whole story.
I think uncle Alberts work was far more influenced by the emerging ill-defined area of thermodynamics than any of the more classical and nearly defined EM theories.