Fingerprints of God: The search for science of spirituality (a review)

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, religion correspondent at NPR, set out to do the impossible—no wait—the implausible: to prove the existence of God. What she found out in her pursuit might not have been any clear-cut answer, but instead, a very rich and fertile ground from which many different conversations are sure to erupt. Raised as a Christian Scientist, Ms. Hagerty has switched to a more liberal and mainstream view of Christianity in her latter years, and through her own spiritual journey. Her changes coincided with the researching and writing of the book Fingerprints of God: The Search for Science of Spirituality. Through it, she came to a few startling and enlightening discoveries that she shares with the world.

You see, Ms. Hagerty shied away from her childhood religion when she realized that there were times she could actually benefit from taking an over-the-counter medication for such things as flu-like symptoms and feel better within minutes, as opposed to the Christian Science approach of simply praying (for often extended amounts of time) through it. But this didn’t cause her to renounce religion altogether, it just urged her to make a more concerted effort to define and understand her own belief of God and eternity.

This book opens with her story of that fateful day of taking her first Tylenol.

As a journalist, Ms. Hagerty has lived the ethos that no story should be told without sufficient evidence to back it up. Everyone knows that the converse is true about Christianity: leave all unanswered questions to faith. Her journey and the contents of this book address many questions if the reader has them, and opens many more for the intellectual or seeking reader.

Fingerprints of God leads us on a walkabout through history, through religion, through science and psychology, and into altered states of consciousness, near death experiences and visions of the mystics. It takes us right to edge of what we think we believe in, allows us to peak over the edge, and then shoves us right off. And just when we think we are going to hit hard because some of our own beliefs are challenged, her words are able to swoop down and catch us, leading us to explore yet another possible answer to life’s unerring questions.

Through her research, she dealt with “neurotheologists” who study the brain as it relates to spiritual experiences (both including and excluding religion—comparatively at times). She showed us that although 90% of Americans state they believe in God, only 40% of scientists do, which she tells us is the reason more research is not done on this topic. She spoke to regular people who had experienced the presence of God, and many more who are waiting to experience that same presence. She spoke to people of varied sects of Christianity who hold tight to the tenet of Jesus being the only way to God and to heaven, and just as many more who believe that all religions have their respective places in our society.

One of the things that particularly interested me (as a non-Christian) is the way she described that many people like the idea of Christ meeting them and holding them in some paternal and protective way, even if there was some doubt of God as a human form. (Let me describe my non-Christianity. Jesus was an amazing man: a symbol of hope and a message of love that all people should aspire to follow. Belief in Him is not the only way into a peaceful afterlife, just as not believing in Him is not going to land you a ring-side ticket to the eternal production of the inferno. No brimstone, no punishment, no big scary man sitting there to torture the non-believers. Jesus could not have been the biological offspring of the formless form, born to a virgin. And lastly, the Bible is not the direct word of God but more of a guideline filled with metaphors to apply as needed in life.)

Ms. Hagerty explored the “God Gene” that has recently been a hot topic as well as the title of a recent book, the biology of belief (that the brains of spiritual people might actually be different from the brains of non-spiritual people), that certain mystical and transcendental experiences have the ability to change the neural pathways of the brain, thereby creating more likelihood that those experiences could happen again, and that pushing the limits of mind-altering drugs actually led right up to at-will God moments. She also backed up each and every finding with research and suggestions for further reading for all the inquiring minds out there.

She revealed to us that only a small portion of the universe is explained and understood by scientists and that the younger scientists are quite different from the forerunners in their belief in something beyond this life: To me, this meant that even more than anything else we will see shifts in thinking as these older guys retire and die, making room for the new and improved scientists who will search harder to bring together science and spirituality instead of driving the two farther apart.

Ms. Hagerty’s lay-account of quantum theory and entanglement sidled right along with my own recent research and shifts in thinking: that we truly are connected.

There was never a single time within the reading of this book that she made any claims that could not be supported by evidence, which is a stretch for many books on spirituality. But her hard-facts also did not take away from any of the content; they served to strengthen what many spiritual people already know: we are connected by an ineffable force that cannot be proven or disproven but felt and known within and by the heart.

Thank you Barbary Bradley Hagerty for such a wonderful book! Ms. Hagerty can be reached through NPR and at her personal website www.BarbaryBradleyHagerty.com, which tells all about the book.

Laurie M. Knight, author of Journal to the Center of the Soul, can be reached at www.WritingByKnight.com. She is a freelance writer, a workshop facilitator, and a seeker on the path to just how to spread the word that death is not the end.