Nature's Hidden Force: Joining Spirituality and Science

Nature’s Hidden Force

Joining Spirituality with Science

George Land and Beth Jarman

Copyright © 2014 by George Land and Beth Jarman

Humanist Press

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Printed book ISBN: 978-0-931779-49-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-0-931779-50-3

Editors: Kim Kressaty and Luis Granados

Cover design: Lisa Zangerl

Cover Photo © Joerg Habermeier | Dreamstime.com

Contents

CHAPTER ONE: SEARCHING FOR GOD

CHAPTER TWO: NORTHERN IRELAND

CHAPTER THREE: GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF THINGS

CHAPTER FOUR: THE INVISIBLE BOX

CHAPTER FIVE: NEW POSSIBILITIES

CHAPTER SIX: DISCOVERY AND REVOLUTION

CHAPTER SEVEN: FUTURE PULL

CHAPTER EIGHT: TODAY’S AND YESTERDAY’S BREAKPOINT WORLDS

CHAPTER NINE: WHY, WHY, WHY?

CHAPTER TEN: UNITING SPIRIT AND SCIENCE

APPENDIX ONE: PERSONAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

APPENDIX TWO: CURRENT ENTROPY DEFINITIONS

APPENDIX THREE: CREATIVITY AND PROBABILITY

APPENDIX FOUR: ABOUT THE AUTHORS

APPENDIX FIVE: CLIENT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

YOUR TURN

From the Publisher

Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis. Humanists find that science is the best method for determining this knowledge as well as for solving problems and developing beneficial technologies. We also recognize the value of new departures in thought, the arts, and inner experience—each subject to analysis by critical intelligence.

— Humanist Manifesto III

At Humanist Press, we strive to present a diverse range of viewpoints within the humanist tradition, to expand our readers’ horizons.

What this book is not is the official humanist version of physics, or anything akin to that.

Instead, this book should be thought of as a new departure in thought … subject to analysis by critical intelligence. It challenges some conventional ideas of physics, and suggests an interesting fusion of science and the set of feelings that many refer to as spirituality.

If the ideas presented here make you re-think what you thought you already knew, if they spark debate or even outright disagreement, then we are fulfilling our mission. We encourage readers to exercise their critical intelligence and practice what the authors would call Creative Connecting by posting their comments (see last page) for all to see.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many years, decades, ago we joined the search party. What a mixed bag the party was. Millennia ago, sandaled Persian philosophers trod the sands of the Silk Road; Athenian scholars argued in the Parthenon; alchemists in Germany played with colored fires; and others, sailors from Babylon or Carthaginian scribes, made their way to Africa to listen to ancient drums of wisdom. They searched the skies in Rome, looking and listening. For what? What could the sky tell them? What were they all wondering?

They all searched for some elusive knowledge.

What’s it all about?

What can the universe tell us?

Why are we here?

Like those other searchers, we were waiting for the universe to speak to us – through the clues all those other searchers had found.

The concepts in this book came to us from them.

They came from all those other searchers, from the Tao, from Confucius, from Rumi, from Kant, from Descartes, from Mach and Spencer, from all those who have been whispering in our ears for so long. We have tried hard to listen and put the best words we could to their ideas. Whatever we have found, it is because over the millennia the great search party has been out probing and penetrating every corner they could find. All we could do is put their findings together in a new way, a way that could bind together the science of today with the ancient mythos of creation and love.

Two people in particular have been living with us over the years, looking over our shoulders and, we feel, urging us on: Albert Einstein and Ilya Prigogine. Einstein is, of course, well known; Ilya Prigogine, a more recent Nobel Laureate is, to us, at least his equal. Prigogine’s ability to see the whole of nature and how that vast myriad of parts fits together is phenomenal — beyond anyone we have ever encountered. Their books, correspondence, notes, lectures and thinking have kept us going many times when we thought we had stepped over the edge. They have deeply touched our hearts and minds. We hope to meet them some day – though not too soon.

Please see Appendix One for the names of the people who have helped make this work possible.

"‘Tis to detect the inmost force

Which binds the world and guides its course."

(Faust, I lines 382-3)

"Everything existing in the Universe is the fruit

of chance and necessity."

Democritus (460-370 B. C)

All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. That is why I am convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.

Dalai Lama in his book Beyond Religion:

Ethics for a Whole World

CHAPTER ONE: SEARCHING FOR GOD

One hundred and forty-eight years ago the scientific search for God came to an abrupt halt.

This development, following the publishing of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation in 1687, gave enormous impetus to the new idea of science as a way of gaining understanding about our universe and its laws. Science dramatically shifted the search for knowledge that could be based on verifiable facts.

A flood of scientific discoveries followed: planetary motion, cells, oxygen, fossils, chemistry, electricity, germs, enzymes, and many others. With the broad concept of gaining knowledge through science, suddenly real promise for answering the big questions was at hand. Belief in science grew.

There might even be a way of finding out more about the deity. The search for the nature of the deity after thousands of years of religious and philosophic speculation took on a new direction. Where did we come from? How was the universe designed? How does nature work? Could we discover nature’s secrets and learn to apply them? What is the future of humanity? Some even believed that humans could answer all of these questions through science and there would be no need for revealed truth or what some called blind faith. Many people expected the acquisition of scientific knowledge would confirm the details of their religious view, others thought that religion and science could exist side by side as one dealt with the spirit and the other with physical nature and they are altogether different domains.

In 1865, a new scientific law was discovered: a law as universal as gravity!

It is called the Law of Entropy. It is part of a law called The Second Law of Thermodynamics. It served as the crucial stop sign on the road on the way to finding God.

Jeremy Rifkin, in his book Entropy said, All the foremost scientists agree that the law of entropy will remain the principal paradigm for the foreseeable future. Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of our age, described it as the ‘premier law of all of science.’ The famous astrophysicist known for his work on relativity, Sir Arthur Eddington also referred to entropy as the ‘supreme law of the entire universe.’¹

This law of entropy was thought to be so fundamental and important that the legendary scientist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, in his 1927 book The Nature of the Physical World, warned the scientific community about tinkering with it: But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

Even Albert Einstein supported the idea that entropy is not to be meddled with: It is the only physical theory of universal content, which I am convinced, that within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts will never be overthrown.²

It is certainly no wonder that scientists have steered clear of devoting their time and resources to questioning what was such a fundamental and paramount law. Arguing with leading authorities is no way to get ahead in science. There are easier challenges.

We want you to know why we have dedicated the last few decades of our lives to the study of this entropy section of the second law. In deepest humility, we are prepared to face humiliation as our findings do overthrow the basic concepts of entropy and actually form a powerful and now scientifically verifiable bridge between science and spirituality.

What does this fundamental supreme universal law say? Why would we want to overthrow this law? And what does that have to do with finding God?

The Entropy Section of the Second Law of Thermodynamics:

All processes in the universe manifest a tendency toward decay and disintegration, with a net increase in what is called the entropy, or state of randomness or disorder, of the system.

This is called the entropy part of the second law of thermodynamics. Ultimately the universe will descend into cold chaos—what is called a heat death. The universe is defined as a great machine running down and wearing out and in no case going in the other direction.

For 150 years this has been accepted as the basic design of the universe. If you are looking for God as a scientist you just need to look for who made this basic law because that’s what was laid down as the basic rule for how everything works.

In other words, the whole lot of the universe is designed to break down and fall apart. The law does not state how fast this will happen. But it will happen, as Murphy’s Law puts it: If anything can go wrong, it will.

As science accepts the current law, internationally honored scientist Richard Dawkins put it, The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.³

The famous physicist Steven Weinberg commented, The more the universe seems comprehensible the more it also seems pointless. I regard the existence of this extraordinary universe as having a wonderful, awesome grandeur. It hangs there in all its glory, wholly and completely useless. To project onto it our human-inspired notion of purpose would, to my mind, sully and diminish it.⁴

If you point out to a scientist that if you look around you will see things getting better he or she will point out that the universe keeps books on this, and if it is getting better someplace, it is making up for it by getting worse somewhere else, and the force of entropy will surely make up for it by getting worse here later.

Edgar Morin, widely recognized as one of the most important European thinkers to emerge in the twentieth century, had this to say about entropy: Isn’t the growing complexity only a detour in the generalized disaster of a universe that is intrinsically and definitively tragic?⁵

So, simply put, as science dug down as deeply as possible to find what Sir Arthur Eddington called the supreme, the premier law,⁶ it found entropy, the most fundamental force that was continuously and universally creating disarray, turmoil and disorder.

The law exists. Look it up anywhere. Google it and you will get more than fifteen million references.

If we go by scientific findings, many people have been impelled to ask, What kind of a god would create such a malevolent and pessimistic force driving the universe? With such a supreme and basic law of nature, it is no wonder that science gave up the search for God. Ludwig Boltzmann, the physicist and mathematician who codified this depressing law in 1877, committed suicide in 1906.

We simply could not accept this law, notwithstanding Einstein and Eddington and the great body of scientists who accepted it. We could not believe that this law could be true, or that a deity would design such a force. We admit that we were thinking with our hearts, not our heads, but we could not deny the power of the message we were getting. God would not be malicious. There must be a better answer; possibly an even deeper force! If we could not find it, so be it, but surely the search was worth it. Against all advice, odds and resources available, we plowed ahead.

We found that people – and even scientists – do not like to talk about entropy. Understandably. When is the last time you heard it brought up in conversation or even on a science program on television? It required a serious commitment and quite a bit of digging for us to get at the answer, from following the latest discoveries in scientific research to searching notebooks hundreds of years old.

A few decades later … our hearts were vindicated.

As the jigsaw puzzle of facts came together we ultimately found that the basic law of entropy was and is wrong.

Not only is the law wrong, but the law of entropy actually hides the creative force driving the universe—and our lives!

So that’s why we wrote this book!

The way it is wrong about nature’s most fundamental law and force is truly exciting—it has the power to change our lives in extremely positive ways!

As we said, the original law stated that this entropy force is continually creating more and more disorder. With the discoveries made in science since this law was found, and examined over several decades of our research, we parted the curtains hiding the actual force behind everything and found that the opposite is actually happening.

Not disordering is happening, but an extraordinarily special kind of ordering is occurring instead.

A great mistake was made in the formulation of the original law. That mistake has never been corrected – until now. When Eddington and Einstein warned scientists to stay away from tinkering with the second