Faith, as it has existed in prior systems, has come to mean, “blind, unreasoning belief in some thing for which no evidence exists”. I suppose that’s because most prior religions were all based on the revelations of some deity, prophet or enlightened person, which you more or less had to accept at face value, unless maybe you got to witness a miracle. And miracles have been in short supply recently. Absent a miracle, as awesome as these revelations might have sounded, you just had to believe.
Then science came along and defined knowledge as something which could be verified by repeatable physical evidence. That more or less consigned all the older religions, regardless of how relevant or useful they might have been, to the trash heap of “primitive beliefs”. If your idea of the highest and most valid reality is something which you can hold in your hand, anything which has to do with spirituality or non-physical knowledge becomes unworthy of “serious” consideration.
In times past, we thirsted for knowledge of all things, physical and non-physical alike, but lacked the discipline and know-how to reliably work with knowledge which transcended the physical. That lack of know-how and discipline led to the adoption of various fanciful and contradictory ideas which eventually led to the corruption of knowledge. It got so we couldn’t really be sure of anything.
Science then arrived on the scene. In order to make sense of the morass of competing ideas, it reduced knowledge to only that which could be verified by physical data. In doing so, it brought us the discipline of how to reliably and reasonably know some things. However, relying exclusively on physical knowledge started to show its limitations in the early 20th century, leaving us with huge gaps in our understanding as we were faced with profound mysteries and paradoxes in the physical sciences which could not be resolved. Looking at those mysteries and paradoxes, it started to dawn on some of us that we were probably never going to be able to truly make sense of the universe so long as we relied exclusively on knowledge of physical reality.
One of the revelations of 20th century math and logic was the recognition that any system has to have principles on which it’s based, and that these principles cannot themselves be part of that system. They have to reside, in some way, beyond or outside it. The descriptions of this universe and how it works could be described as “physics”, while the principles and laws on which it’s based are known as “metaphysics”. Even though the word “metaphysics” has come to mean “airy-fairy speculations about the unknowable”, what it really means, according to Dictionary.com is “the underlying theoretical principles of a subject or field of inquiry”. This universe has laws and principles on which it’s based, but these can’t be dealt with directly by physics proper. Physics itself, once it has discovered and articulated these laws or principles can only deal with their effects – how they are manifest and how things work out. Physics cannot tackle the transcendent reality which lies behind these laws or principles. However, the tools of knowledge and reason, math and logic that we have developed for physics are sufficient to take on the realm which lies beyond with some degree of certainty.
So, it seems that the advances of 20th century science and math have led us full circle, back to once again confronting the issues of spirituality and non-physical knowledge. As Robert Jastrow[1] once said, “Science has had such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Part of the reason the scientist in that quote may have seemed disappointed was that, while science has been active and vital, progressing by leaps and bounds, theology has been pretty much stagnant for centuries. However, what neither the scientists or the theologians seem to have yet realized is that they each have tools with which they can help the other, that their practices can be associated in a way which can bring new strength and vitality to both.
It turns out that anyone who has serious aspirations for knowledge has to be able to work with knowledge of both physical reality and the non-physical, and needs to sort out how to make them work acceptably well, and for the benefit of all. The time has come where we need to come to grips with a new concept of reality as well as a new model of religion.
The new model of religion changes some things. Within the context of a rational religion, faith is no longer just blind, unreasoning belief in something for which there’s no evidence – faith can now be defined as “reliable knowledge of non-physical truth”.
We have recently come to understand that spiritual realities are senior to physical realities and, knowing that, reliable knowledge of the non-physical is going to be senior to our knowledge of physical realities. However, this doesn’t mean we are free to discard or discount all relations with the physical – on the contrary, a grasp of and ability to handle the physical is a prerequisite to being able to successfully address the non-physical. That last, by the way, was the datum were were missing (or ignoring) in all the centuries and eons leading up to today, and that’s where we went wrong whenever we previously attempted to deal with the non-physical. We believed we could just think the right thoughts or intone[2] the right words, and that by doing so we could somehow successfully leap into the realm of metaphysics without first acquiring the knowledge and disciplines needed to conquer physical reality. Almost all philosophy and attempts to address metaphysics before the midpoint of the 20th century suffered from this problem in one way or another.
However, we now have in hand the knowledge, the ability and the disciplines to handle physical reality, and having them, we can begin to reach for, and understand a more fundamental sort of knowledge. In looking there, we find not only the true home of faith, but we find also the true definition of genius.
True genius is not just having complete command of some area (or areas) of physical reality – it’s more than just being really, really, really smart or having tons of data. True genius has deep knowledge of physical reality, sure, but also sees enough of the non-physical to be able to successfully discern some of the fundamental truths which lie behind physical reality – truths that could never be revealed by looking exclusively at physical data.
You could say that true genius lies first in being able to know this universe and know it well and then, from there, being able look at it from slightly beyond or outside. In doing so, true genius can see the patterns and principles which lie behind or beneath the reality of this universe, and in doing that, bring a new order and new vision to the world.
All the great geniuses of the past had this in common – they were not only able to work with the world about them, but were able to see better and more deeply than others, to bring a new vision of truth, a new understanding of the principles beneath the reality and a new and better vision to humanity.
True genius leads us forward.
- American astronomer and planetary physicist. He was a NASA scientist and founding director NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.