In the fall of 2006, mind-body and consciousness expert and author Deepak Chopra, M.D. debated the existence of God with atheist author Richard Dawkins on British television. In this six-part series, Chopra takes on Dawkins in even more detail, specifically addressing each major God-related claim by Dawkins, whose books include "The God Delusion," "The Selfish Gene," and "Unweaving the Rainbow." -- Ed.
Science has progressed through experiments that convince people about the truth of what results. If it's true that consciousness is everywhere in nature, there needs to be an experiment to prove it. Dawkins claims that no such experiments exist and therefore no proof of either consciousness or intelligence. Life proceeds by chance, survival, and adaptation. That's the creed of Darwin, and there's no need to alter it.
This can be stated as another major point.
5. Consciousness is a byproduct of matter.
There are many philosophical ways to disprove that statement, but since science believes in experiments, here is one. It's a thought experiment. Einstein came up with his theory of relativity through thought experiments, so it's completely valid as science to do experiments in your head.
Think of a yellow flower. Can you see it? If so, then the experiment has been successfully completed. When you see a flower in your mind, there is no flower inside your brain. That seems simple enough. But where is that flower? There's no picture of it in your brain, because your brain contains no light. How about the color yellow? Is there a patch of yellow inside your brain? Obviously not.
Yet you assume--as do all who fall for the superstition of materialism--that flowers and the color yellow exist 'out there' in the world. In fact, they do not. The entire experience of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell is created in consciousness. Molecules don't assemble in your head to make the sound of a trumpet blaring in a brass band. The brain is silent. So where does the world of sights and sounds come from?
Materialists cannot offer any reasonable explanation. The fact is that an enormous gap exists between any physical, measurable event and our perception. If I talk to you, all I am doing is vibrating air with my vocal cords. Every aspect of that event can be seen and measured. But turning those vibrating air molecules into meaningful words has never been seen or measured. It can't be.
That's why Dawkins can never find God. He's looking in the wrong place. The physical world can't deliver God, not because God doesn't exist, but because the solid, physical world is an illusion--as quantum physics proved long ago--and one must look inside consciousness itself to find what God is about. If God is a universal intelligence, that will turn out to be a fact. It won't be superstition. It won't be the Bible or the Koran.
When you get to the primal state of the universe, what is it? A universal field that encloses all matter and energy. This field is everywhere, but it also localizes itself. A molecule in the brain is one expression of the field, so is a thought. The field turns out to be the common ground of both the inner and outer world. When Einstein said that he wanted to know the mind of God, he was pointing us toward the field, which science continues to explore.
Fortunately, as the two rivers begin to merge, we won't be plagued by either the superstition of religion or the superstition of materialism. We will begin to link brain and mind through new concepts that will explain how the color yellow exists in our brain as the same phenomenon as a yellow flower in the meadow. Both are experiences in consciousness.
That covers the basic and I think most convincing refutation of the anti-God argument. It doesn't prove God by any means, much less does it degrade science. The damage that anti-God rhetoric does is to cloud reality. In reality there is ample room for both God and science. Many forward-looking thinkers realize this; sadly, Richard Dawkins isn't among them.
In the final post I'd like to discuss how evolution fits into this new paradigm.
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