I find it hard as an ENFP to look at this amazing universe we live in and NOT draw some type of grand pattern from it. I think some of the most fascinating things being studied right now in Quantum Physics and Consciousness point to some extremely eye-opening religious implications.
Henry Stapp, quantum physicist:
"Scientists other than quantum physicists often fail to comprehend the
enormity of the conceptual change wrought by quantum theory in our basic
conception of the nature of matter...The shift is from a local, reductionistic,
deterministic conception of nature in which consciousness has no logical
place, and can do nothing but passively watch a preprogrammed course of
events, to a nonlocal, nonreductionistic, nondeterministic, concept of nature in
which there is a perfectly natural place for consciousness, a place that allows
each conscious event, conditioned, but not bound, by any known law of
nature, to grasp a possible large-scale metastable pattern of neuronal activity
in the brain, and convert its status from 'possible' to 'actual'."
Paul Davies and John Gribbon, physicists :
"Quantum physics undermines materialism because it reveals that matter has far less
'substance' than we might believe."
"Thus the rigid determinism of Newton's clockwork Universe evaporates, to be
replaced by a world in which the future is open..."
"Today, on the brink of the twenty-first century, we can see that Ryle was right to
dismiss the notion of the ghost in the machine--not because there is no ghost, but
because there is no machine."
Jonathan Shear, philosopher:
"Thus the modern scientific worldview, regarding the universe as material in
nature and unfolding like a machine according to precise, mathematically
articulatable laws gained ascendancy and became the context of much of our
Western intellectual discourse. Nevertheless, the largely forgotten early puzzle
about the role of the mathematics in the physical sciences remained and has
continued to draw the attention of influential physicists. For mathematics
appears to be paradigmatically non-physical. Its objects are characteristically
universal in nature, in sharp contrast to the complete particularity of all
physical entities and empirical observations; it is discovered within the realm
of thought, not in the physical world; and the truth of its theorems are almost
always evaluated completely mentally, rather than by objective scientific
investigation. Thus as physics becomes progressively more mathematized, its
objects often seem puzzlingly to become more mental than physical."
John Gribbon, physicist:
"Take the Copenhagen Interpretation literally, and it tells you that an electron wave
collapses to make a point on a detector screen because the entire Universe is looking
at it. This is strange enough; but some cosmologists (among them Stephen Hawking)
worry that it implies that there must actually be something 'outside the Universe' to
look at the Universe as a whole and collapse its overall wave function"
Colin McGinn, philosopher:
"If consciousness is not constitutionally spatial, then how could it have had its
origin in the spatial world? ...The only ingredients in the pot when
consciousness was cooking were particles and fields laid out in space, yet
something radically non-spatial got produced...We seem compelled to
conclude that something essentially non-spatial emerged from something
purely spatial--that the non-spatial is somehow a construction out of the
spatial. And this looks more like magic than a predictable unfolding of natural
law."
To me, it is clear that consciousness is a fundamental property in this universe and points to an intelligent being/mind outside of the mix responsible for it all. I also believe that there will always be more than enough reason to doubt for those that want/chose to.
Ironically, that strengthens my faith all the more, the fact that there is no single evidential set of proof of God's existence even after ALL THESE YEARS of thought/actions of truly brilliant people to prove one way or the other. In the end, it continues to come down to the open-heart and faith that distinguishes one from the other.
Is it so surprising? After all, Jesus spoke in parables, not just to reveal, but to conceal. I find it totally fitting that Nature does the same.
Faith, to me, is something all together supra-rational.
Raspo
) There probably are correlations but there are reasons for believing or not believing in gods that have nothing to do with MB type, as well.
