OPINION: Waiting to shake hands with a ghost

In the back of my mind, I always knew I was not going to live forever, but I didn’t want to dwell upon thoughts of my death.

Now that I’m into my 70s and see family members and friends dying, it’s hard not to entertain notions of my own mortality.

Many people I know find strength and consolation in the certainty they will be moving on to a better place, where they will live forever with their loved ones and God. They warn me that unless I bring God into my life, I am doomed to that other not-so-better place where I will spend eternity hanging out with my friends from high school.

I would love to believe that there is a hereafter with a benevolent deity who will deliver my soul to its eternal reward, but that’s too big of a leap for me. I’m a man of science, not a man of faith. And history is replete with graphic examples of men of faith and devout religious convictions decimating entire cultures through occupation, exploitation, bloodshed, cruelty and disease.

I’m truly happy for people who have found meaning, purpose and peace in religion and a personal God — and throughout history there have been men of science who believed in God.

Gregor Mendel, a Roman Catholic abbot, founded the science of genetics; Isaac Newton, a nonconforming Protestant, invented calculus (thanks for that one, pal), articulated the law of universal gravitation and motion, and made the first reflecting telescope; Arthur Eddington, a Quaker, saw the hand of God in the creation of humankind and was the first modern scientist to propose that the energy of a star comes from nuclear fusion.

I’m personally drawn to Albert Einstein, who believed that God is the universe itself and that physical laws — not an anthropomorphic deity — guide the unfolding of all of existence.

Echoing Einstein was Barry Taylor, the former road manager for rock band AC/DC, who later became an Episcopal minister and observed, “God is the name of the blanket we throw over the mystery to give it a shape.” And for many, that shape provides comfort and relief from the fear of nothingness as our fate.

As science unveils more of that shape, my personal world keeps getting smaller, and that’s perfectly fine. A better understanding of how insignificant I am in the overall scheme of the universe has awakened within me a sense of spirituality, even if that spirituality is devoid of a personal God.

When humankind first began contemplating the heavens and sought to unravel why the sun and moon rose and set, the meaning of the stars and why we are here, the idea of an invisible and powerful creator made sense and gave structure and context to their world.

But modern astronomy and scientific research points to the cosmos as something far more intricate and infinite than our little corner of the solar system.

Consider that nothing (except the expansion of the universe itself) travels faster than the speed of light, which hurtles through the vacuum of space at more than 186,000 miles per second. According to NASA, traveling at that speed to our nearest galaxy, Andromeda, would take 2.5 million light years (a light year being the distance light travels in one year).

Scientists calculate that the universe came into existence 13.8 billion years ago. The edge of the universe is now 46.5 billion light years away and continues to expand, making it completely unreachable.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says the Milky Way galaxy alone may have as many as 400 billion stars with 20 billion potential earth-like planets. In the observable universe, there are an estimated two trillion galaxies containing 300 sextillion planets, and 100-200 billion-trillion stars, Tyson says.

This is the crux of my struggle between faith and science. It’s those unfathomable distances in space-time, and the sheer numbers and diversity of celestial bodies that has me questioning the existence of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, immutable, ineluctable, all-loving deity who not only created the entirety of the universe, but also gets involved in the minutiae of my daily life.

It just doesn’t seem plausible. I need to shake hands with the ghost in the machine before I believe in him, or her.

Religions have a way of reconciling that very dilemma.

“God is the essence of everything,” says Rabbi Chaim Schmukler of the orthodox Jewish Chabad of New Mexico. “Everything emanates from God. We are all expressions of God. Everything we see, everything we know is an expression of godliness.”

In our everyday life, people exercise faith, he says. Faith that the buildings in which we walk won’t collapse, faith that when we lay down on a table for surgery the doctors have skill, faith that the airplanes in which we fly will get us to our destination safely. “Faith that God exists should be based on the same faith we exercise in our everyday lives,” Schmukler says.

Further, with something as infinite, complex and ordered as the universe, he doesn’t question why it’s there, he simply accepts that it is. “I know right away that there’s someone in charge, that someone did it. … It didn’t happen on its own,” he says.

That’s not dissimilar from the perspective of Muslims, said Abbas Akhil, a founding member and former president of the Islamic Center of New Mexico.

“Of course, science and faith in God are compatible. In fact, we regard the scientific process as part of our faith, and there are several scientific injunctions in the Quran that reaffirm our faith in God, the supreme being, the creator, if you will.”

Muslims, he says, acknowledge the science of the Big Bang theory and the laws of physics that guide the evolution of the universe. But it is God who set those things in motion — “the same God who is aware of the smallest details of our personal lives or the breeze that moves the leaves on a tree,” he says.

“God is the force, the energy, that drives everything and is ever-present — it’s in you, it’s around you, it’s everywhere in the universe,” Akhil says.

Over the years, I’ve had discussions with friends who are firm in their Christian faith and enjoy proving the existence of God using the science of anatomy and citing the ever-popular human eye exemplar. The intricate structure of the human eye, they say, with its self-adjusting aperture that allows just the right amount of light to enter and form an image on the retina, is nothing short of intelligent design by a creator. How else could this happen except by God’s grace? They ask.

I counter that intelligent design is little more than creationism in a lab coat, and the utility of the eye is the product of millions of generations of human evolution.

“Pascal’s Wager” might be the avenue to eventual redemption for people like me. Seventeenth century French philosopher Blaise Pascal suggested that because the existence of God is unprovable, we should choose to believe in God because it’s a good wager. If it turns out that God does not exist, we’ve lost nothing, but if it turns out that God does exist, we are rewarded with eternal salvation.

I’m not ready to take that wager. For now, I aim to act morally simply because it’s the right thing to do, and not because of the promise of an eternal reward or punishment.

Still, I wouldn’t mind shaking hands with the ghost.

Rick Nathanson is a retired Albuquerque Journal reporter who worked at the paper for 44 years.