Joseph Selbie - The Physics of God: How the Deepest Theories of Science Explain Religion and How the Deepest Truths of Religion Explain Science

Advanced Praise for The Physics of God:

So, if the philosophy of scientific materialism is wrong, can we conclude that God does exist? Does it mean that God is scientifically verifiable? That there is, in fact, a physics of God? Selbie makes a concise and convincing case that there is. He draws from the transcendent testimony of mystics the world over as well as from the findings of string theory, David Bohm's version of quantum physics, quantum biology, neuroscience, and quantum physics itself to demonstrate that a physics of God is at hand!

Amit Goswami, author of The Self-Aware Universe and presenter
in the award-winning movie, What the Bleep Do We Know!?

Selbie takes complex scientific subjects, and not only makes them easy to understand, but shows us how we can apply them to live a better, fuller, richer life today. He unifies the teachings of the saints, provides a clear context for NDEs, and reveals the spiritual foundation that is hidden in today's sciences. Selbie paints a beautiful, uplifting and compelling picture of that which is felt by all but strangely unknown to many. This age of great science, made mute by material skepticism, is finally given a voice and a form in The Physics of God. It couldn't be more timely or timeless.

Walter Cruttenden, author of Lost Star of Myth and Time

This treasure of a book can radically change the way you see life. The Physics of God masterfully unites science and religion, while revealing the underlying principles of the universe and of our existence.

Joseph Bharat Cornell, author of Sharing Nature and
The Sky and Earth Touched Me

It is essentially an article of faith among scientists that consciousness somehow arises in the brain and as such must be a product of evolution. This stubborn insistence that physical brain processes must be the source of consciousness will sooner or later prove to be a deadend. What will take its place, Selbie predicts, is recognition that consciousness is the only thing that is real, is the source of the apparent physical world, and is by its nature spiritual. Once we understand that all is consciousness manifesting in different ways, a whole new worldview will open up for mankind.

Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist, author of The God Theory
and The Purpose-Guided Universe

Selbie does an excellent job of dispelling the myth that religion and science are incompatible. His unbiased comparison of the findings of science with the testimony of those who have had profound spiritual experience reveal a clear underlying unity. The Physics of God is clear, simple, and engaging!

Susan Shumsky, award-winning author of Divine Revelation
and Awaken Your Third Eye

The Physics of God is the best book on the subject that I have ever read. It is a clear and lucid explanation of the interface between science and spirituality, as well as consciousness and matter. Anyonescientist or laymanwill benefit from this marvelous book.

Jyotish Novak, author of How to Meditate and Touch of Light

This edition first published in 2021 by New Page Books, an imprint of
Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
With offices at:
65 Parker Street, Suite 7
Newburyport, MA 01950
www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2021, 2018 by Joseph Selbie

Foreword copyright 2021, 2018 by Amit Goswami

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.
Previously published in 2018 as The Physics of God: Unifying Quantum Physics,
Consciousness, M-Theory, Heaven, Neuroscience, and Transcendence by New
Page Books, ISBN: 978-1-63265-110-5. This updated edition includes a new
appendix and a new chapter.

ISBN: 978-1-63265-198-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover design by Kathryn Sky-Peck

Printed in the United States of America

IBI

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This book is dedicated to all the scientists who have courageously explored outside the unofficial boundaries of scientific materialism, and to the saints, mystics, and near-death experiencers who have engagingly shared their transcendent experiences of realities beyond the material.

I would like to thank my many friends and well-wishers who encouraged me by saying, I can't wait to read it! It helped keep me going through the occasional fourth rewrite of an entire chapter. Special thanks to Amit Goswami for generously helping me join the club. Heart-felt thanks go to two editors: Prakash van Cleave, who, through his edits, is always patiently teaching me the art of clarity, and Sharron Dorr, former editor for Quest Books, whose astute questions made the book even clearer. To M.C., Y.S., A.S., and C.S.you didn't know it but you helped a lotI had mental conversations with all of you to see if you would find my arguments convincing. (As far as I could tell, you did.) And last, I want to give my loving thanks to my wife, Lakshmi, my first reader and insightful critic. I always looked forward to her saying, Well, I read the chapter.... I knew the ensuing conversation would be lively.

Joseph Selbie's The Physics of God is a unique and welcome addition to the growing literature for the scientific evidence for God. Why is this important? To begin with, it runs counter to a misconceived bias that has dominated scientific thought now for several centuries.

In the 17th century, Isaac Newton gave us a mathematical science that all but eliminated the idea of God intervening in the material world of physics and chemistry. In the same century another scientist, Ren Descartes, laid the foundation for championing the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. Ever since then (and following the prevalent notion of Christianity, actually), Western scientists have generally held the notion that animals are machines. This intellectual attitude stands true even todaythat is, almost.

In the 19th century, Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution suggested that living beings have a hereditary component (which we now recognize as genes) that undergoes changes called mutation. Through the process of natural selection, nature selects among these variations those that help the species to adapt to the ever-changing environment; in time, this process leads to speciation. Since Western science maintained that animals are machines, and Darwin was saying that we are descendants of monkeys, doesn't it follow that humans are machines, too?

When later genes were experimentally discovered and even the structure of the DNA molecule of which genes are part was figured out, the view grew that biology is nothing but an extension of chemistry. Biologists and most other scientists with them assumed that everything about life will sooner or later be unraveled by the science of biologyleaving nothing for God to do! God's intervention even in the affairs of the living seemed to have been ruled out.

In the 20th century, a few scientists (Einstein, for example) held on to the idea of a benign God in what is called the philosophy of Deism. But the notion that God is dead took hold in the scientific mainstream that soon promulgated the idea of a new philosophy by which to do science scientific materialism. This philosophy says that every phenomenon is a material phenomenon in space and time caused by material interaction. There is nothing but matter!