 |
Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 |
|
| 
|
Measuring Spirituality!
"The connection between matter and spirit has been debated for millennia. The central mystery is that certain material objects (human beings) contrive to be conscious and to possess a spiritual dimension. This implies that matter itself has some rudimentary spiritual character."
From this opening paragraph, D. Jones advances his thesis by assuming that the spiritual world occupies the same space as the material world. The two "worlds," though are usually only very weakly coupled. However, during the 12-billionyear history of the universe they have had ample time to come into thermodynamic equilibrium. In other words the average temperatures of the material and spiritual worlds are equal; i.e., 3�K, the same as the microwave background.
It is, of course, this low average temperature of the spiritual world that accounts for the chill felt when a spiritual entity (ghost) enters a room and is coupled to the material world.
Continuing on this tack, Jones now plans to measure whether holy relics and other material objects with high spiritual value cool faster than non-spiritual objects. He also hopes to work with biological materials, specifically the human brain, which is the seat of consciousness and spiritual thought. Human brains, particularly those of holy men, should be tightly coupled to the cold spiritual world. These human brains should cool much faster than, say, a sirloin steak.
Speculating even further, Jones proposes to test semiconductors to determine whether they cool faster than ordinary minerals. If they do and since semiconductors form the brains of computers, it is reasonable to suppose that computers could eventually become conscious entities and perhaps even acquire a spiritual dimension!
(Jones, David; "Spiritual Matters," Nature, 398:669, 1999.)
Comment. It logically follows that the brains of atheists and those who scoff at things spiritual would cool more slowly than sirloin steak.