SCI 310 Assignment: Personal Reflection on Science and Faith
When I was twelve years old, I sold my soul to the Devil for Star Wars action figures. It was the summer of 1999: The Phantom Menace had just been released in May, roughly three months prior. At the time, I was enamoured of the movie’s heroes and villains—and striving to collect each character from the Hasbro line of toys was an absolute obsession.
One action figure in particular proved incredibly elusive: Darth Maul, the Sith apprentice. For weeks, I searched through several big-box stores, futilely sifting through shelves and cluttered display hooks. Despite the frustration, I continued my resolve to find the blasted toy, eventually scouring shops in the States during family vacation in Connecticut.
With no success at either Walmart or CVS, I lay in the top bunk of a bunk bed one night, remembering a story of my maternal grandmother: As a little girl, she suffered one evening from a terrible earache. After drugs and prayers to God provided all but no relief, she asked the Devil for help—and the earache instantly went away. Astonished by the apparent supernatural intervention, she divulged the experience to her mother, who blanched, saying, “Joyce, don’t ever do that again.”
As I stared at the ceiling from atop my bunk, I pondered my grandmother’s account. At the age of twelve, I had little appreciation for intangible things: the prospect of eternity was too incomprehensible, and material concerns absorbed most of my mind. Consequently, I dismissed the admonition against young Joyce’s behaviour and proceeded to consider my own request. To ensure the actualisation of a perfect Star Wars collection, I decided to offer something in exchange. Closing my eyes, I said to Satan, “I’ll give you my soul in return for Darth Maul.”
The next day, I visited a Kmart off Boston Post Road. A new shipment of toys had arrived that morning. Scores of Darth Mauls peered back at me, hanging from a ten-foot Star Wars pegboard. I grabbed the figures from their hooks, shoving an armful into a basket. They brimmed against the top of it, shifting about the handles as I trotted towards the front of the store to empty my pockets and purchase the haul.
As juvenile as these anecdotes may sound, the Devil’s ostensible response to my prayer has massively affected my perspectives concerning Hell and redemption. Now that science has become my life’s primary focus, I contemplate much more frequently the ways in which experimentation might explain otherworldly events. I concede that part of my fascination with spiritual warfare stems from a fearful sense of inescapable damnation with respect to my Faustian past. However, the most significant contribution to my enthusiasm likely applies to my family’s involvement in the Church.
Growing up with an organist father and Anglican priest mother, I was exposed in early years to stories of demons and miracles. Over the past two decades, for instance, my mother has recalled, from time to time, a memory from Christ Church Woodburn: While seated in her office, finishing an afternoon of paperwork, she heard an audible voice speak of one of the parishioners.
“Get up,” it said to her, “and go give Len a hug.”
Len was standing in the doorway, conversing with another member of the clergy; nevertheless, because of either skepticism or worry over the appropriateness of embracing a male layperson, my mother disregarded the voice’s command and failed to answer. The next day, old Len was dead: snuffed out by a pulmonary embolism. More hauntingly for me, in a similar demonstration of divine intuition, the evening after my deal with the Devil, my mother tucked me into the top bunk, and she asked, “David, did you sell your soul for those toys?” I remember my eyes feeling stuck—likely frozen in the awe of How in God’s name did you know? While replying, however, I kept my composure. “No,” I said—and we left it at that.
So, as a budding biologist, one of my biggest questions explores the idea of reconciling spiritual- and physical-world perceptions. I am already beyond 500 words for this reflection—eerily enough, the word count was 666 when I checked after typing idea. Unfortunately, then, I cannot go into too much detail about my future projects. I will say, however, that I have become thoroughly intrigued by the prospect of psychedelic drugs facilitating greater appreciation for the unseen world. The interest in compounds such as mescaline and DMT is a very new thing for me. For this course’s main research essay, I will likely compose something dedicated to Terence McKenna and psilocybin. I understand that inappropriate use of such drugs can lead to disastrous effects. Ultimately, however, I believe that they deserve more careful investigation. Thinking back to the Timeline Assignment, I was hesitant to include LSD in my list: arguably, its discovery pales in comparison to achievements such as pasteurisation and penicillin. I quickly realised, however, that LSD was the only bloody thing on my list directly related to mental health (Dos Santos et al., 2016). With global suicides exceeding 700,000 per year (World Health Organization, 2021), the world needs as much help as it can get with respect to depression, loneliness, and neurological disease. LSD, mescaline, DMT—each naturally occurring drug deserves an in depth look before its demonisation continues. If such compounds yield nothing in the way of unveiling a link between physical and spiritual planes, at least better research might uncover the ways in which each drug can contribute to relieving the world’s very palpable pain.
References
Dos Santos, R. G., Osório, F. L., Crippa, J. A., Riba, J., Zuardi, A. W., & Hallak, J. E. (2016). Antidepressive, anxiolytic, and antiaddictive effects of ayahuasca, psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD): A systematic review of clinical trials published in the last 25 years. Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology, 6(3), 193–213. https://doi.org/10.1177/2045125316638008
World Health Organization. (2021, June 17). Suicide. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/suicide
