Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [5]
Every generation claims a few scientists at the fringes wrestling with these questions. Sometimes they are called parapsychologists, a demeaning title that makes them sound illegitimate if not a little bit unhinged. But today’s iconoclasts have an advantage their predecessors lacked. They have technology. They can peer inside a brain as it meditates in prayer or trips on psilocybin. They can look for markers in the brain, and, like forensic detectives, they are studying the evidence left behind by “spiritual” events that occurred out of their eyesight. They are trying to discern the fingerprints of the one—or the One—who passed through a person’s psyche and rearranged his life. They are analyzing these “spiritual” moments, in the form of epileptic seizures or psychedelic experiences, meditations in a brain scanner or out-of-body experiences. In the process, they find themselves in a world of mystery.
I have been privileged to spend time with some of these scientists, as well as the people whose stories they are studying. Along the way, my own spiritual journey has taken a surprising turn. I have shed some beliefs as untenable. And I have reclaimed some beliefs I had long ago discarded—because science may be proving them true, or at least plausible.
I wrestled with the approach to this book. As a journalist, I naturally gravitate toward the safe, clinical, third-person approach to the science of spirituality, setting aside my personal predilections and laying out the evidence for the reader to evaluate. And yet, the questions in this book about the nature of God and reality—these are my questions, this is a personal quest, and therefore I have woven my own story into the larger quest.
Like anyone else who has lived nearly five decades, I am hardly a blank canvas. My life experiences have nudged me into my particular perspective. But I have tried to draw on two experiences to help steer this book. The first is my quarter-century as a print, television, and radio journalist. I habitually shelve my preconceived ideas to try to glean the truth. I have learned to ask questions and really listen to the answers. If the science surprises me, or if it simply does not fit into my worldview, I must take that into account if I am to be an honest guide. Even if the science contradicts what I feel in my gut to be true, I will relay it to the best of my ability.
The second influence is my particular faith journey. Even though I now consider myself a mainstream Christian, I have never entirely shed the perspective of Christian Science. Christian Scientists do not evangelize or impose their truth on anyone else, and they are graciously tolerant of all other faiths. I am not going to foist my findings on you, and I will certainly not advocate a particular religious view. I wrote this book because some questions plagued me. I set about answering them—not by gazing at my navel, for there is only so much information that any one navel can provide. Rather, I am examining the science and the scientists, the “neurotheology,” that might explain those numinous moments that most everyone has enjoyed.
THIS BOOK TACKLES the existence of God, “the reality of the unseen,” as psychologist William James had it. After talking to countless scientists far more knowledgeable and insightful than I, I have concluded that science cannot prove God—but science is entirely consistent with God. It all depends on how you define “God.” If you are trying to locate