Jesus was the son of a carpenter. Would he have been a scientist had he been alive today?

Imagine a time before science existed, before the idea of “natural law” was contemplated. What would a thoughtful man or woman think about the world around them?

They would see a regularity to nature, as if there was a power behind the movement of the Sun through the sky. This and other major natural forces in our lives appear to be directed, appear to have a purpose.

Early spiritual ideas did imbue the natural world with human characteristics. Before religions based on monotheism – one God – there were religions that put human traits on natural things. Trees had personalities, as did rocks and stars.

It may seem silly now, but let’s step back a moment. There is a unity to things. We seem to have a sense of purpose to our lives. Is that so different than the sense of purpose early humans assigned to the Sun’s passage through the sky?

What science teaches us now is that in fact these are quite related. Human purpose comes from the mind, the mind consisting of the brain, which follows natural laws. Science does suggest that our sense of purpose is derived from the same forces that move the Sun through the sky. That is, the forces of nature (gravity for the Sun’s motion, electrical forces for our brains).

That unity is something that might have been sensed by spiritual thinkers before the beginning of scientific thinking. After all, when a body dies, it returns to dust. Perhaps we all come from dust. This is what science teaches us, and perhaps it was understood long ago.

What I write in the book is that the scientific viewpoint that finds a unity to all things can lead to spiritual insights.

Jesus endowed this world with deep insights, well before science was known. Maybe Jesus knew what the future would bring, even without doing a single scientific experiment.