What Scientists Say

Scientists say this and that. I don’t know what they say. They say a lot of things. For example, your physicists. Your quantum physicists and your astrophysicists work more in the area of metaphysics than the traditional metaphysicians. The traditional metaphysicians are so spooked by all that’s been written in the field and by all the science that impinges on the metaphysical questions and so nervous about appearing to be theological in any way that they avoid the whole business. But the scientists. Certain physicists in particular. Well. They feel quite free to say just about anything that’s on their minds. After all, this isn’t really my field, they are thinking. So I’m free to speculate. And they do. They speculate quiet freely. Is the impression one gets in one’s cursory reading.

Then. Oh. Occasionally. One reads on Yahoo or somewhere like this that. Or one hears on NPR in the morning while one is shaving. While one is minding one’s own business, shaving away. That prayer is effective. There’s been a study, for example. On bacteria. On bacteria in test tubes. And one pictures a kind of murky substance. A kind of semantically cloudy and perhaps viscous and maybe a little gross type of substance in these test tubes, see. And around these test tubes, one pictures a lab with little people in lab coats. White lab coats, with pencils and pens in their breast pocket and in their one hand, a clipboard in the other. People recording what’s going on on the clipboards in little tables. They’re tabulating the data, you see. They begin with a tabula rasa, but soon the tabula begins to fill with data. Which is as it should be. The rasa is erased, as it were, by the data. By the experience. Or the record of the experience. The memory. In a sense. Of the experience. The experience codified, as it were. The experience coded so that every bit of the experience is captured for analysis later. But I go on and on.

These little people in their white lab coats stand around recording what happens when a gaggle of folks with crosses around their necks. Some of them hidden under shirts. Some of them flapping out here in the breeze. Some of the crosses wood and some of them metal. Some of them cheap and some of them expensive. As I say, these cross-bearers are in the lab here. They’re standing around a rack of test tubes with this milky stuff in them. They’re standing in a semi-circle, with their hands extended. You know. Palms open. Facing the test tubes that are in a rack on the lab bench with a sink in the end in case you need to flush your eyes or hands or something because you have been contaminated.

These Christians, one guesses. But maybe a couple of them don’t have crosses. Maybe a couple of them are Muslims and Jews. All the Abrahamic faiths represented, maybe. In any event, they all believe in the effectiveness of prayer. And so they pray. It’s an experiment, you see. It’s experimental prayer. God under the microscope, in a manner of speaking. And so they pray, because they’ve agreed to pray. Because they want to help put God under a microscope. They want to see, also. See whether God actually performs. Performs for us. You know. A little like going to the circus. A little like going to the God circus in which God puts on his little show. A little like a science fair circus in which God shows us one of his tricks.

And so they pray. They pray that the bacteria in the vials do well. That the bacteria prosper so to say. That the bacteria increase.

Outrageous, you’re thinking. There are way too many bacteria, as it is. In the world. And now we’re praying for more. We’re praying for more of the leetle beasts! But what I’m saying is the truth. This really happened, and not too long ago. It was in the news.

And the way it came out was this. The bacteria, which were provided with abundant food and abundant warmth and abundant laboratory light and attention by the little people in the white coats. They increased! They multiplied like rabbits in the spring of the year! They prospered. They thickened. They quickened. They swelled their test tubes. Grew up the test tube walls and overflowed the walls. They threatened to take over the laboratory. To cover the little people in the white coats and the people with their crosses and the absence of crosses, with their hands outstretched or clasped tastefully and piously in front of them. In front of their genitals.

But wait, you say. But wait. Where is the control. Where is the control group, you want to know. Calm. Calm. These scientists who ran this experiment are good scientists. They know how to do science, as we all do. Of course they had their control. Of course there was a rack of test tubes identical to the first, kept under the same temperature. Fed the same disgusting food, whatever it was. Hovered over by the same little people in white coats, looking like so many rabbits. The only difference being. The only recorded difference being that no one prayed over this group of bacteria. This group of bacteria in the other room.

The poor babies. The poor lonely bacteria, you’re thinking. And you’d be right. Even bacteria have feelings. It’s much more enjoyable to be prayed over than not. Is what I always say. So much more lonely and forsaken and forlorn. And forgone. This is what the control group experienced, because. Well. They didn’t increase. They didn’t quicken. They didn’t prosper. As much, in any event. Significantly less is the finding.

And so. The moral of the story. Yes, the moral of the story.

I don’t know what that is, but I do know this. Scientists are taking the supernatural seriously again! Isn’t that wonderful. Isn’t that precious. Isn’t that encouraging. To have the wonderful world of science taking mystery and supernaturalism and mysticism seriously. We’ve arrived, is what I’m thinking. We’ve definitely arrived. Again. We and our God are making headlines again in this regard.

I don’t know. Next thing I expect is a degree in mysticism. Next thing I expect is some university somewhere will begin churning out Ph.D.s in the Physics of Mysticism, or the Physics of the Deeply Mysterious, or the Inexplicable Chemistry of God. They’ll get hired by seminaries and by the schools that churn them out like Chiclets. They’ll get hired by news organizations to analyze and comment on Mystical Science. On all the Mystical Science that’s going on. To sort out the good Mystical Science from the bogus Mystical Science. The sound Theoscience from the unsound.

A whole industry will develop. Whole libraries will be filled with books on the subject. Great debates will rage about, oh. For example. How many quarks can dance on the head of a pin. How many nanograms a person’s Honored Guest weighs. Or which of the 10 or 11 total dimensions of the universe actually contains or contain heaven. Or Something like that. Is what I’m guessing. Is where this all may be going. If you extrapolate the data. If you project it out on a reasonable slope into the future. Into the empty space on the graph paper. The space that contains no data. That is purely imaginary space. Purely abstract space. In which. Really. Anything might happen.