Science, faith

Nothing is a whole. Nothing is indestructible. Nothing is still.

It is almost as if Nature in her glory wants us to believe in a heaven, something divine and immaterial beyond nature itself. In other words, Nature tempts us to believe in the supernatural. But then again, Nature has also given us big brains, allowing us to build microscopes and telescopes and ultimately, for some of us, to conclude that it’s all

How could it be that the exquisite and indescribable experience of consciousness, of thought and emotion, of the overpowering sense of an “I,” is simply the result of so many electrical and chemical flows between neurons, which are themselves nothing but atoms and molecules?

A dear friend of mine, a distinguished rabbi in Memphis, recently said to me, “I can’t believe that we are just flesh. We have souls. But we’re not bodies with souls. We’re souls with bodies.”

Do I know too much, or too little?

The myriad stars in the sky, once thought to be the final resting place of dead pharaohs, once thought to be the embodiment of constancy and immortality and other dispositions of the Absolutes, will eventually be cold floating embers in space.

Nature may at times appear to be a Painter or a Philosopher or a Celestial Spirit. But deep down she is a Scientist. She is quantitative. She is logical. And nothing better illustrates her ruthless and unyielding adherence to that logic than the law of the conservation of energy.

the modern law of the conservation of energy also provides a kind of psychological comfort.

The idea of a lawful universe is itself an Absolute.