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Science, History, and Spirituality

The scientific journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, issued in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, published an important study carried out by the Research Center in Spirituality and Health of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (NUPES-...

The Vine and the Skepticism

Humanity has lived under the dictatorship of its own castrating creations in the wide fields in which it progresses. The result is not the best, it is quite enough to see the scabrous social differences maintained in a “civilized” world. A clear...

The Reality of Life in Other Dimensions

We are carrying out a fundamental task in the world of promoting Social and Sustainable Development, Education, Culture, Art, and Sports with Ecumenical Spirituality, so there may be Socio-environmental Awareness, Food, Security, Health, and Work...

Science

God, Equation and Love

The contradiction between divinity and science never really existed.

The greatest obstacle that comes in the way of a major embrace between Religion and Science, these two sisters, is the continuous view of an anthropomorphic god in the realm of knowledge that impairs not only the laboratory but the altar as well.

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Guerra Junqueiro

Guerra Junqueiro (1850-1923), combative Portuguese poet who to this day is cause for much controversy or a fearful silence, celebrates the Divine God in opposition to a human, vengeful and bloodthirsty god in these touching verses written for The Blackbird (originally called, O Melro), when an old Abbot, moved by the death of the bird, with whom he contended daily, and its offspring, exclaimed:

"(...) All that exists is immaculate and sacred!/ In all misery there is the same weeping/ And in every heart there is the same outcry./ God populated the entire universe with souls./ In it, everything that lives also laughs, sings and cries.../ Everything came up from the same mud,/ Purified by the same dawn./ Oh, sacred mystery of existence, / Only today do I perceive you,/ When I see that the soul has the same essence,/ Through pain, love and through innocence,/ Whether it protects a cradle or a nest!/ Only today have I realized that in every creature,/ From the most beautiful to the most impure,/ In a dove or in a wild beast,/ God lives, God dreams, God whispers!... (…)/Oh, God is even greater than I imagined...”

Right was the Abbot introduced by the author of A Musa em Férias [The Muse on Vacation]: "Oh, God is even greater than I imagined…”

He has no human form. So this is not about the very restrictive way in which some still think of Him. The Human Being cannot see Him yet, but can feel Him every time he truly loves and likewise moves away from Him every time he hates. God would be, poetizing, a Sublime Equation where the result is Love.

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Victor Hugo

Since the Universe represents a poem of vast proportions celebrating action and beauty, this apology of Eternity written by the great French thinker Victor Hugo (1802-1885) fits well into this account:

"Everything is in motion, struggling and gravitating;/ Everything evaporates and elevates and lives and revives;/ Nothing can remain in mute obscurity./ For the exiled soul, the path is all eternity,/ that seeks the heavens that beckon to us all./ For the amenable, the burning flame of the ordeal is lessened./ Shadows turn to dawn,/ men and beasts into angels refine themselves;/ and through atonement, the leveling ladder,/ of which one part is darkness and another is light,/ unceasingly, under a serene and beautiful blue sky,/ pain and pleasure rise up into the universe”.

The forefront of a Science that will elevate the Human Being to higher forms of reasoning, inconceivable today for the majority, turns its eyes towards Spirituality.

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Alziro Zarur

Alziro Zarur (1914-1979) made a selection of quotations from several enlightened minds of science in his Proclamation of the Religion of God, among them:

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Einstein

Einstein (1879-1955) — "He who considers his own existence and that of his fellow men without meaning isn’t just unhappy: he is almost unfit for life itself”.

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George Davis Snell

George Davis Snell (1903-1996) — "If a Universe could create itself, it would embody the powers of a Creator and we would be forced to conclude that the Universe is God”.

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Edwin Conklin

Edwin Conklin (1863-1952) — "The probability of life springing up by chance is comparable to the probability of an unabridged dictionary resulting in an explosion of typography”.

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Compton

Compton (1892-1962) — "There cannot be any conflict between Religion and Science: the latter is just a qualified method of verifying the Truth”.

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Arnaldo Antunes and Gilberto Gil

Former Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, with his notorious sensitiveness, produced the following verses in partnership with singer/songwriter Arnaldo Antunes: "Science doesn’t advance/ Science reaches/ Science itself”.

How much grandeur the God-Science offers to our investigative common sense!

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Jean Cocteau

The restless film director Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), with a great deal of spirit, invites us all to be bolder: "For not knowing it was impossible, he just went out and did it”.

Knowledge knows no boundaries. What would be of us without Science?!

José de Paiva Netto is a writer, journalist, radio broadcaster, composer, and poet. He is the President of the Legion of Good Will (LGW), effective member of the Brazilian Press Association (ABI) and of the Brazilian International Press Association (ABI-Inter). Affiliated to the National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the Union of Professional Journalists of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the Union of Writers of Rio de Janeiro, the Union of Radio Broadcasters of Rio de Janeiro, and the Brazilian Union of Composers (UBC). He is also a member of the Academy of Letters of Central Brazil. He is an author of international reference in the concept and defense of the cause of Ecumenical Citizenship and Spirituality which, according to him, constitute “the cradle of the most generous values that are born of the Soul, the dwelling of the emotions and of the reasoning enlightened by intuition, the atmosphere that embraces everything that transcends the ordinary field of matter and comes from the elevated human sensitivity, such as Truth, Justice, Mercy, Ethics, Honesty, Generosity, and Fraternal Love.”