"Knowledge is a Key to Spiritual Searching"

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The composer and guitarist Frank Zappa once said, “A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.” Ben Franklin commented, “Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.” And Mark Twain noted, “What you know for sure that just ain't so.” I could go on but you get the point. A willingness to continue to learn throughout a person’s entire life is really important because to do otherwise is to become mired in not only a limited world view but to deny oneself new knowledge and new truths. Unfortunately, this does describe a lot of people.

It is quite true that some people in the world live on the edge of survival. Their daily tasks focus on getting through the day and finding food and security for themselves and their loved ones. People in this situation do not have the luxury of continuing to learn. But a good percentage, if not a majority of humanity, does have the time and resources to continue to learn throughout life. And – continuous learning does enable a person to keep an open mind, learn new truths and challenge what they believe to be true and, importantly, what they believe is not true.

In certain professions, continuous learning is essential. Consider medical professionals. Doctors are required to complete continuing education courses annually or biannually. This is because new knowledge, new medical practices and new technologies are continuously changing and improving. Would you really want to go to a doctor who graduated from medical school twenty years earlier and has learned nothing since then? Of course not. (Sometimes we take for granted that doctors are continually learning.) The same is true of most other professions such as lawyers, engineers, teachers and anyone in a technology field.

Despite this, there are a lot of people who refuse to make continuous learning part of their life. Lack of continuing to learn will lead to a closed mind. Those who refuse to learn new things become set in their ways which includes their ideas and their knowledge of what is true and what is not true. Lacking continuous learning narrows a person’s perspective and it reinforces beliefs a person may have learned as a child or as a young adult.

This certainly leads to intellectual rigidity and can strengthen biases learned and accepted as a younger person. A person who refuses to continue to learn throughout their life is ill-equipped to discuss new ways of thinking in a rapidly changing world. New ideas can not only be challenging to such a person, but they can also be threatening and cause the person to become even more close-minded, more self-righteous and even arrogant. Simply put, the less a person continuously learns the more they are likely to believe they already know everything about a particular subject.

In the 1840s a Hungarian doctor discovered and reported that doctors who washed their hands before medical procedures had less infections among their patients. This was highly ridiculed by the greater medical community. When the Big Bang theory was proposed in the early 20^th century, numerous astronomers confidently denigrated the theory, insisting instead that the universe had no beginning. It had always existed. It was a “steady state” with new matter coming into existence all the time. Even Albert Einstein believed this. However, this theory is completely wrong. The universe did have a beginning. The Big Bang theory offers the best explanation today of how the universe was created. Of course, the possibility exists for new theories to supplant the Big Bang theory but this will take more learning, more open minds and a lot more proof to be accepted.

Refusing to learn new ways of thinking and new ideas is typical of many people in different professions. Although Henry Ford was a brilliant inventor, he was also close-minded. For quite some time he refused to consider new models of cars beyond his very successful Model T. Actually, his refusal spurred the development of many competitors such as General Motors which offered greater flexibility, newer models and more options for consumers.

In my classes in leadership at Nichols College, we discuss companies that remained close-minded and refused to learn new ways of thinking and to challenge what they believed to be true and what is not true. The list of such companies is endless. All you have to do is think back a bit on all the big companies such as Sears, Kodak, Pan American, Compaq Computer and Nokia. There are dozens more companies that no longer exist because of close-minded corporate leadership and a unwillingness to learn, consider and accept new ideas.

So how does this apply in religious and spiritual ways of thinking - for it surely does.

Keep in mind, I suggest there is a big difference between religion and spirituality. Religion is a belief system in the way things are and how people should live their lives. Religion includes dos and don’ts. It includes rituals. Typically, religion has oral or written scriptures, stories and myths that describe the world including creation and human’s place in the universe. Typically, religion includes dogmas and creeds and often times beliefs in what happens after death.

Spirituality is a connection with other – with the sacred forces that create and uphold life. Spirituality includes a sense of wonder and awe and feelings of oneness with all creation. Spirituality is, most often, a very personal thing. To be sure, religious people can also be spiritual but most often, people are not. They may cling to the religion of their youth but have no sense of spirituality.

I have found that many, if not most supposedly religious people actually know very little about their religion. Few people have actually studied their religion or thoroughly read their scriptures. Instead, they rely on people like priests or ministers, rabbis or gurus or imams or other supposedly holy people to tell them the truth of what their religion is all about. Many religious leaders tell their followers to have “faith” in their religion and not ask questions. Reading scriptures and being inquisitive or doubtful about what is taught or proclaimed is considered dangerous and may lead to disastrous consequences it is often said.

The opposite of this are people who just brush away religion, considering it all nonsense; believing it is all an attempt to brainwash people in order to command obedience or to obtain financial gain. These people too often know little or nothing about religion. They are often critical of anyone who tries to study religion and unpack its meanings and mysteries. And these types of people can be just as dogmatic as the religious person who accepts everything they are told about their religion without question. Both are close-minded and both refuse to further educate themselves on religion much less seek spiritual connections with the world around them.

Although I suppose it is possible for such people to be spiritual, I have yet to meet anyone who fits this description who is spiritual. And I find that people like this are rarely open-minded. Sometime in their life they developed a way of thinking and explaining the world and they refuse to budge from this perspective.

Close-minded people who have no interest in religion or spirituality and refuse to consider that spiritual truths might lie within are just like people who blindly accept everything their religious leaders tell them.

Religion is a really complex thing. All religions evolve over time. Those people who do study and think about their religions often have an impact on changing their religion to keep it more in harmony with changing societal norms, practices and beliefs. This is why, today, there are over 40,000 different sects of Christianity among the 2.4 billion Christians in the world. Those within a particular sect believe they are right and every other Christian is wrong. The same can be said of all the world’s religions. They all have sects and they all evolve and change over time.

Rigid beliefs are accepted because people holding these views refuse to really study their religion – its history, all of its scriptures and its development over time. They refuse to question anything they are told. Why they do this is often because of fear. Knowledge may lead to questioning and questioning can cause a person to challenge their faith. “Unpacking” a religion is like a house of cards. Thoroughly studying any religion can lead to that house of cards where the whole belief system may fall apart if it is realized the religion is truly human made and has developed because of human influences.

The same is true of a person who refuses to challenge their ideas of disbelief in acknowledging there are indeed realities about the universe and our lives that we simply cannot explain and which lie beyond the explanations of human science.

I have certainly met many people in both camps. People who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible – the idea that the Bible is, word for word, accurate because it is the “word of God” certainly fit this description. The hundreds, if not thousands of contradictions in the Bible and the obvious errors and lack of scientific facts are simply glossed over and explained in ways such as, “God had it written this way to test your faith.” Another explanation is that the reader simply is not interpreting scripture the right way. No matter what is said, a Biblical literalist will not budge from their position. And they refuse to truly educate themselves on how, why and when the Bible was written.

Similarly, those who fail to truly educate themselves on religion and spirituality often say things such as, “all of this is nonsense. It is just a way to control people. The only reason people believe in religion is because they are afraid to die.”

The fact is most religions developed – not because of a fear of death but because people wanted to explain the world around them and their place in the universe. There are religions that do not include an afterlife. Ancient and some modern Jews, for example, believe that when you die nothing lies beyond. There is no afterlife. Jewish scripture (the Torah and the Tanakh), what Christians call the Old Testament has no heaven and no hell. When a person dies, they may enter into a state of “Sheol” which is a kind of deep sleep, a kind of non-existence but certainly not heaven and not hell.

An atheist is someone who denies the existence of a creator god. Some atheists are just as rabidly confident in their position as a Biblical literalist. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris are examples of this extreme position. Yet neither the adamant Biblical literalist nor the extreme atheist is willing to invest the time and energy to educate themselves on other possibilities that surely exist. This is why a study of science can be so important in developing knowledge that can, indeed, help a person to develop a new type of spirituality.

Astrophysicists have defined what are called “universal constants” that are the same everywhere in the entire universe. Today, according to particle physicists, that number includes 26 constants. These include the speed of light, the mass of protons and neutrons and the electrical charge of an electron. Using supercomputers, physicists have found that changing just one of the 26 constants by a tiny fraction, would mean the universe would not exist. It would have been impossible for all the galaxies, all the stars and life itself to come into being. In other words, the universe is really “fine-tuned” for us to exist. (And consider the evolution of the earth and how it became ideal for humans to exist.)

Some skeptics who acknowledge the reality of the 26 constants, such as Stephen Hawkings have proposed the idea that we live in a “multiverse.” In other words, there is an infinite number of universes and therefore, if there are an infinite number of universes then eventually one would be created that had the exact universal constants that made our universe possible.

Perhaps, but this theory is no more plausible than the proposal that the Biblical explanation of creation in Genesis is the way it really happened. Both are pure speculation without a basis in fact or empirical evidence. Those who see and understand that the universe is fine-tuned may point to a creator god but they can also point to something much more complex and elusive.

One of the most wonderful things about studying science is it can lead to deep spirituality as one discovers and witnesses an awe in the natural world. A feeling of awe is a direct link to spiritual awareness. There are many scientists who were once confirmed atheists but through their work became religious and spiritual people.

Francis Collins, for example, is a physician-geneticist who directed the Human Genome Project. As a young man, Collins was a confirmed atheist. But as he studied genetics, the knowledge he gained had a powerful influence on his spirituality. He became a Christian and he has written many books on his journey to spirituality. “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” is but one of his books.

Michael Guillen is a Harvard trained physicist who now teaches at Harvard. He was once an ardent atheist. Through his work in physics, he developed a deep spirituality. He describes himself as a “nondenominational, Bible-based, Spirit-filled, intellectual Christian.” He arrived at his position, he claims, through intense study and an open mind. He is also the author is several best-selling books.

Sy Garte is a biochemist who was raised in what he describes as “a militant atheist family.” As he studied the immense complexity of DNA, he ultimately became a deeply spiritual person. In his words, “he developed a scientific love for evidence that led him to a spiritual conclusion he never expected.”

There are hundreds of examples of other scientists who have said the same type of things. This includes scientists from other cultures around the world. Dr. Yufeng Zhao (Jhao), for example is a physics professor who grew up in atheist China. His study of the natural world led him to a deep spirituality. In his words, “physics is a highly spiritual science that can lead one to a spiritual understanding of reality.”

In my view, studying history and science can lead any person to a profound and deep spirituality. History gives us a look at the human experience and it puts the existence of our earth and humanity in perspective. We often think humanity has been around for a long time but what we call civilization is only about 10,000 to perhaps 12,000 years old. New research estimates the universe is more than 26 billion years old. And our earth is located in a non-descript corner of our galaxy about 2/3’s the distance from the center of the galaxy. We know there are vastly more stars in all the known galaxies than grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. The story of humanity – our history – and the study of science puts this all in perspective.

When humans look at the world around them, we think we see reality. We think we see how the universe really is. But this is simply not true. We only see our perspective. What we see is only an illusion. The universe is infinitely more complex than the three dimensions in time and space that we see and sense.

A lot of scientists and philosophers believe in materialism which is the theory that everything in the universe is the result of material interactions and physical processes we see at work in the universe. This includes human consciousness which, according to this viewpoint, is merely an interaction of processes in the human brain.

However, recent scientific studies challenge this perspective and suggest there is more to reality than what is observable. To be sure, considering alternative views to a materialist view can, like other scientific studies, lead to awe, wonder and a sense that there is a mysterious unity and even consciousness throughout the entire universe. This can open possibilities for spiritual exploration.

Studying the creation and complexity of the universe reveals an awe-inspiring inter- connectedness of all things and it puts humanity in perspective.

The point of all of this is, what humans really know about the universe, creation, and humanity’s place is really limited. A close mind will put limits on considering new truths and new possibilities for developing a deeper spirituality.

We live in a time when the ability to learn new things about the world around us is truly incredible. Even during the past few centuries, the ability to continually learn new things had its challenges. The only sources of continuous learning were libraries and perhaps some newspapers. Today, the options are really limitless. Not only are there more libraries, but we also have the internet, a wealth of scientific and historical programs on streaming services in our home, lectures at community and senior centers, continuing education courses at community colleges and much more. There is more new knowledge available in the last 25 years then all the knowledge accumulated throughout all of human history.

We can all continually learn new things about our universe and the place of humanity in it but we each must make the effort. The resources are out there and in easy reach. Not only can this be a fun and fascinating experience, but it can also put our lives in perspective and it can really deepen our spiritual understanding of our world and our own life.

As the author Alvin Toffler said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” 

Make a commitment to spend an hour at least three times a week to learn new things about our world and our universe. It will change your life and your perspective on everything.

Reverend Christopher McMahon

UUMH Chatham

October 5th, 2025