Science is Spiritual, and Spirituality is Scientific
“That sensation of light.”
In a 2017 interview with Stephen Colbert, Jim Parsons, best known for his role as physicist Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory, described his recent marriage: “There’s this sense of divinity. . . . To be in love, to find love in that way is as close as anything else I can imagine doing in life that gives me the feeling of being close to God. . . . There’s a sensation. . . . When we first got together, I remember lying in bed and closing my eyes but not being asleep, and that sensation of light. Light! Light! And I was, ‘Oh! I don’t know what’s going on exactly, but it feels like close to something important — eternal.’ . . . I still feel that now. . . . Sometimes that sensation, of closing the eyes, and going, ‘This is so close to God.’ I don’t know what other word to use for it.”
“Love,” answered Colbert.
Parsons’ character — living on in the prequel Young Sheldon — is an atheist, but clearly the actor who played him (and who is currently the narrator reminiscing on each episode of the prequel) is not.
It strikes me that Sheldon Cooper, a lover of science who doesn’t believe in God, grows up with a mother who very much does believe (Mary Cooper is an East Texas Southern Baptist). The boy and the mother — brilliantly played by both…
