A Profound Source: Science and the Maturing of Spirituality
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” —Carl Sagan I. The Impulse Is Real Something in human beings will not leave mystery alone. It has never left mystery alone. At Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey, hunter-gatherers constructed massive stone temples as early as 9500 BCE — before cities, before agriculture, before writing. These people were struggling for daily survival, and yet they invested enormous collective energy in building sacred spaces. The archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, who spent decades excavating the site, suggested that “first came the temple, then came the city.” The spiritual impulse may have been among the first forces that organized human civilization, not its by-product. Across every culture and every era, we find the same phenomenon: human beings reaching toward something larger than themselves. They seek meaning: Why are we here? Do we matter? They seek to make some peace in the face of suffering and death. And they seek connection, a sense of belonging to something beyond the narrow circle of their immediate lives. These are …
