God as DJ: Sending Out the Music

Picking up where I left off in the last post, I want to expand a bit on a metaphor I came across a while back in reading Barbara Hagerty’s Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality. She talked to a lot of brain scientists, including many who believe that God and things of the spirit are entirely a creation of the human brain. She found a number of other scientists who didn’t think agree with this conclusion, however, and the metaphor she presented was of the brain as radio and God as a transmitter. (I prefer to think of God as the ultimate DJ, a sort of Barry White in the Sky Sending Out the Love. Okay, maybe not.) I don’t remember exactly how Hagerty developed the metaphor, but here’s my shot at it. (I speak, of course, as someone who wants an excuse to keep believing in a God who infuses but is also separate from the creation. Even as one who doesn’t revel in mechanistic metaphors for things human (organic), I find this one useful nonetheless.)

Apparently, as I indicated last post, when people engage in certain spiritual activities—meditative prayer, speaking in tongues, and the like—certain parts of the brain light up. That looks like a fact, but it can be interpreted a number of different ways, to fit widely divergent views of the world. The secularist can say, “See, all this God-stuff is just brain structure and chemistry.” The person of faith can say, “Interesting, God designed our brain in such a way that he can communicate with us through it.” Using the radio metaphor, the secularist thinks the radio itself is creating the music that comes out of it. The believer thinks the radio is just a receiver for something coming from somewhere else. (I know, I’m using a metaphor that suits my view. Why not?)

By the faith view, the universe is filled with divine presence, just as the air is constantly filled with radio waves. People are like radios, able but not required to tune into divine waves in the air. I would go further and suggest that some people have a greater “talent” for tuning in to those waves than others. They have a greater frequency range, getting music and programming that others don’t hear. Or perhaps choose not to listen to. The Dawkinses of the world say, “I don’t hear any music. Therefore it doesn’t exist.” Some people say, “I used to hear that music, but I don’t listen to those stations anymore.” The person of faith says, “I love that music and you can find it right here on the radio dial.”

Personally, the music doesn’t come in as clearly or as frequently for me as it does for others I know. But I’ve heard it clearly enough to want to stay tuned.