A recent article in The Economist caught my attention. The European particle-physics laboratory (CERN) at Geneva is spending 2 million euro on research to find out the biological reasons people believe in God and religion. The project is known as "Explaining Religion" and CERN's new machine, the large hadron collider (familiar to readers of Dan Brown), will search for the God particle.

This research is intriguing because science and religion are normally two things that can never sit comfortably at the same dinner table, as the former's question of "Why?" will invariably get the answer "Just because" from the latter, thus ending any potentially fruitful and enlightening discussion with frustration and bad air.

Moreover, the mutual distrust and suspicions from either camp have always ensured a "stay out of my turf" attitude that could only reinforce each camp's blinkered outlook that hampers our, as humans, holistic understanding of life. Hence the constant pull between the need to understand the human being as both a physical vehicle (the scientific, the empirical, the laws of nature) and the spiritual (the need for moral guidance, prescribed values whether secular or religious, the belief in God/gods).

The article stated the research experiments were "designed to look at the mental mechanisms needed to represent an omniscient deity, whether (and how) belief in such a 'surveillance-camera' God might improve reproductive success to an individual's Darwinian advantage, and whether religion enhances a person's reputation -- for instance, do people think that those who believe in God are more trustworthy than those who do not?"

Additionally, the research would "also seek to establish whether different religions foster different levels of cooperation, for what reasons, and whether such cooperation brings collective benefits, both to the religious community and to those outside it".

No doubt the impulse to conduct this kind of research is triggered by the global interest in religions and increased tension caused by the promotions of different religions as they elbow each other in their attempt at theological, ideological, moral supremacy and political much in the same way communism and capitalism did in their efforts to master global power and influence. It would be interesting indeed to see what conclusion these types of experiments come up with.

However, as someone with a propensity to be suspicious of any approach that is enamored with its own method (whether the scientific, logical and experiment-based explanation or the religious, word-of-God, "things exist hence there is a creator" explanation) my opinion is that this type of experimentation is a bit like taking apart a television to find the source of the contents of the TV programs.

Knowing that religiosity originates in the brain's temporal lobe is like knowing which wire of the TV set projects a certain light or sound while no nearer understanding of why there are so many bad soap operas being aired or why people enjoy watching them to begin with.

Religious groups might object to scientists poking their noses in areas that are normally beyond their business (maybe a response caused by faulty wiring*); however, any attempt to answer the Why question is laudable even though at the end of the day the response ultimately gets lost in the chasm separating the "how" of science and the "just because" of word-of-God religions.

That's why metaphysics much more convincing than conventional science or conventional religions as a basis for understanding existence and the meaning of life. It does not separate the question from the answer but transforms knowledge into understanding and intellect into intelligence.

In other words it raises our thinking to another level that enables us to see a better perspective of the reality. Much like standing on top of the pyramid looking down as opposed to being on the ground looking up. The one below sees the pyramid as a flat wall with a pointed tip. The one above sees a solid construction with four sides.

Only when we are willing to get out of the limitation of our thinking and go up a dimension will we be able to see that a lot of the issues that drag us down in a frustrating and complicated mess are nothing more than the result of our own messy way of thinking -- the clashing of conflicting ideas, incompatible views and opposing values that are expressions of our inability to understand the universe for what it really is. The pattern will be clearer when we raise our perception and the issues (is there God? Why do we believe in God? My God is better than yours) will no longer be relevant.

The fact is the universe is simply energy moving at different frequencies whether humans, animals, trees, other planets, sounds, lights even our thoughts, our dreams, our emotions, our intellect, our creativity and our beliefs. Only when we accept this fact can we move on to the next question of how to channel these energies to our universal benefit. And there will no longer be the need to search for God.

The writer is a TV host and journalist based in Jakarta. She can be contacted at quotidian.desianwar.net and desianwar.net.

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