Nuggets from Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny—Science Turns to Mysticism

Like so many other leading scientists, among them some Nobelists, George Wald thought he had rescued atheism when he opted for a mystical view of the universe, turning it into a sort of substitute “god.” He wrote, “A physicist is the atom’s way of knowing about atoms.” This vision of a universe that is not only alive but that thinks and plans has dispensed with the law of biogenesis and common sense altogether. Wald said, “What we recognize as the material universe . . . of space and time and elementary particles and energies is . . . the materialization of primal mind . . . there is no waiting for consciousness to arise. It is [and was and will be] there always.”