We Cannot Rise to a More Spiritual World If We Only Teach Our Children Materialism

"[O]ne may well wonder how materialism, the doctrine that "life could be explained by sophisticated combinations of physical and chemical laws," could so long be accepted by the majority of scientists. The reason is probably that it is an emotional necessity to exalt the problem to which one wants to devote a lifetime."

- Eugene Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question (1961)

Human consciousness is rising. It is rising to the realization that there is more to this world than brute, faceless matter and impersonal scientific laws. We know we are more than particles in motion, more than leftover stardust. Underlying the world is a force, a power so strong that it cannot be measured by the instruments of science. It is the power that created the world; a unifying force; one Spirit. God?

The worldview of materialism - of a machine programmed by mysterious scientific forces and operating on its own power -- is showing signs of decay, as the rising spirit of humankind demands more. Spirit is finding a foothold in logic; the curtain of darkness is being swept away. Modern science is beginning the retreat from a purely mechanistic account of the human experience. Consciousness is no longer being ignored as an integral part to the make-up of the world.

Quantum theory shows consciousness creating the particles that make up the world. Bruce Rosenblum & Fred Kuttner, Quantum Enigma. The deeper scientists look into the laws of nature, the more they seem finely tuned to allow life to exist, Bernard Haisch, The God Theory; attempting to escape the conclusion that God or Mind must be the cause of this fine tuning, scientists now speculate that an infinity of universes actually exist, at least one of which was bound to contain the right conditions to allow life to exist. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design. Undeniable experiences of the paranormal point to a Conscious Universe (Dean Radin), a united mind sharing information between discrete forms. Books of the new spirituality, such as Neale Donald Walsh's Tomorrow's God, Eckhart Tolle's, The New Earth, and Duane Elgin's, The Living Universe, speak of a hidden power at the base of being, something we cannot describe in words but is ever present and therefore undeniable. Ken Wilber writes authoritatively of the levels of consciousness yet to come, where humankind realizes Being is the world itself, and lives immersed in that fact. See, e.g., The One Two Three of God (Audio). Approaching the world as a great dream explains more than approaching it as a mindless machine. At some point this fact will be impossible to ignore.

If we were to try and list the fundamental elements of this new world outlook, they would include:

· The world of people rise from a common source: at the root of Being we are one

· The world is boundless and our potential is without end

· The physical world does not imprison us - it expresses what we are

· God is man united

· At its most fundamental level, the world is spirit, not mindless particles

This new worldview of spiritualism needs a logical basis, and we can reach it from any one of several directions:

· Modern science has proven that the world is not made of tiny particles operating independently from human consciousness. Rather, quantum theory shows the world is a product of consciousness; matter is really wisps of nothing; a creation of mind.

· Daydreams and night-dreams show the mind conjuring up a three-dimensional world from nothing, with no help from the Big Bang.

· Psychic phenomena demonstrate the hidden power of the mind to interact with the world through a dimension undetectable by the instruments of science.

· No one has refuted the great idealist philosophers who concluded that since the mind can only know itself, we will never be able to prove a world of matter existed, even if one did.

· The great religious traditions are founded on the intuitive notion that a vast spiritual power underlies nature.

This worldview is logical, uses the full range of human experience as its proof, and provides a basis for a new morality.

But it is not taught in our schools.

Big Bang materialism and Darwinism dominate the textbooks that tell our children about the “real” world. A real, objective, Newtonian world that scientists and the textbook writers want to exist, but know does not exist. Schools teach our children only about materialism —a world of wonder emerging from mindless particles and impersonal laws. We know that spiritualism is real, but we pretend it is an outlier for new-age bookstores and aging hippies.

And this is not another argument about how intelligent design should be taught alongside Darwinism in biology classes. There is a middle ground between the extremes of scientific materialism and creationism. A place between the machine and the angels. This place is the worldview of the one consciousness; a world that is the united dream of God.

So what should we teach our children? We should teach them more philosophy. About how the great thinkers in history have struggled to define "ultimate reality" and humankind's place in the cosmos. How science, beginning with Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, set up a mechanistic model of the universe in order to conduct experiments and to understand the "music of the spheres," while never relinquishing their belief in a greater power behind nature's scenery.

We should teach them that modern science has managed to separate the model from this greater power —and the human mind — as it seeks to explain the cosmos with no help from an intelligence. How science, at the end of its rainbow-quest, is finding that the outer world reflects the inner world. That the peculiar, human-tuned laws of nature have compelled modern scientists to go to the extreme of inventing an infinity of additional universes to explain the coincidences in this one.

They should know how leading quantum theorists now concede that there is no way to explain the world without giving consciousness a central role. How Darwin's mindless process of natural selection cannot account for the diversity and wonder of nature, and how the evidence for psychic phenomena is now so overwhelming that scientists are forced to ignore it rather than deal with it.

They should be taught how an increasing number of science writers are finding a place for mind or consciousness in scientific theory, and how most people know there is more to this world than the brute matter and impersonal laws of modern science.

We should tell our children how science teaches that God is dead, when we know he is not.

If these thoughts seem radical it is because they differ from what we have been taught. But is what we have been taught correct? There is one way to find out. Teach both worldviews side-by-side and see which one makes more sense.

We cannot rise to a more spiritual world if we only teach our children about materialism.

Philip Comella is a lawyer, visionary futurist, and host of the popular radio show Conversations Beyond Science and Religion, podcast at www.webtalkradio.net. His book, The Collapse of Materialism: Visions of Science, Dreams of God, is a culmination of decades of work committed to developing a new and credible scientific paradigm to unify the physical world of science with the metaphysics of religion. He lives with his wife and daughter in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

The Collapse of Materialism: Visions of Science, Dreams of God, Published by Rainbow Ridge Books, ISBN 978-1937907211, and is available on Amazon.com, BN.com, and bookstores everywhere.