The Big Bang marked the beginning of the existence. Somewhere, sometime, someone must have flicked the light switch on. The origin of the universe, the beginning of physics and astronomy and chemistry, lie with some creator. The physicist Stephen Hawking himself remarked that it's difficult to explain the beginnings of the Big Bang without a God. A spiritual being provides the catalyst for the impossible formation of our universe, and to understand this, one should accept a point a view which lends equal esteem to science and spirituality.
There are parts of us and the universe that we can never understand in a purely scientific manner. Prove the existence of your soul with the scientific method: try to confirm Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" with a microscope or a test tube. Your soul, whose existence cannot be scientifically or numerically demonstrated, is what separates the living, thinking human from the inanimate object or dead corpse.
Life cannot be explained away as a random grouping of biological and neurological processes. These words I write are more, much more, than the electric firings of synapses in my brain. So is all of reckoning and philosophy. Yes, we are a conglomeration of cells and proteins, but, in the words of Aristotle, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We are more than chains of amino acids and electric jolts. The soul constitutes the difference.
That's not to say there is no place for analytical science and experiment. Far from it! But a balance is required, a balance between our science and our spirit, reminiscent of old Chinese yin and yang. In fact, our souls, our survival, our sweet lives are the single, solitary, and only thing that makes science possible or even necessary. There is no need for scientific discovery and exploration if no intelligent life stands by to reap its benefits.
The realm of the psychologist, sociologist, and theologian is on the same plane of necessity and significance as the realm of the physicist, chemist, and geneticist.
What's more, we live in an anthropocentric universe. The cosmos most certainly doesn't revolve around the Earth, but its purpose is for life. The universe was built for life, by some faceless, formless, Architect - some Great Light Switch Flicker. Take, for example, the 109 degree angle in the water molecule that makes life possible. Or take the precise value of the gravitational constant; any variation would render life impossible. Delve into science some, and it's easy to see how much life depends on the precisely tuned laws of nature.
The ultra-scientific may say that anthropocentrism is an accident, a lucky coincidence. But that claim fails the last, and most essential, step of their own scientific method: Repeat. The odds are nearly impossible for this universe to be replicated, created a second, third, or fourth time, exactly suited for life. Simply due to mathematical probability, a life-sustaining cosmos cannot be reconstructed. This must be accounted for in science, and so we should accept the spiritual dimensions of the cosmos. One could also argue that the universe did not form around life, but life adapted to the already existing laws of the universe. If this was so, life could form anywhere in the universe- on Jupiter, on Pluto, on the Sun...
We don't even understand our own brains, and there are parts of psychology which mystify us. What is a dream, really? Why, when in deep prayer or meditation, does activity flare up in deep parts of the brain not utilized at any other time? Maybe the soul does hint at itself, and discreetly manifest its existence scientifically to our limited senses and measurements.
One may accuse me of arguing impossibilities, unprovable ideas, but it is that person's strict and narrow point of view from an exclusively scientific standpoint which limits them. The same goes for the overly religious, who argue from an exclusively spiritual point of view and reject the advances of science.
A balance is essential, a marriage of science and spirituality, if one ever hopes to partake in the wonder of the universe or catch a fleeting glimpse of God. It's perfectly acceptable if someone cannot accept an idea like this. Anyone who rejects these arguments possesses a fundamental, irreconcilable dichotomy with the notion of the intertwined natures of science and the spirit.
Albert Einstein represents a great scientific mind who embraced both science and spirituality, and lived with intellectual balance: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Both are necessary to sort out the tangled web of confusion that is life.
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