We host Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow at Live Talks Los Angeles on Oct 11 at All Saints Church in Pasadena. Click here for event details and tickets.  From a column in the October 3 San Francisco Chronicle.  Here are some excerpts:

“Cosmos” used to mean God, or the gods, sitting in Heaven looking down on Earth; now it means billions of galaxies expanding into a unknown void. As explanations go, there seems to be no contest. Because science dominates our lives and religion is a waning force, most people see a future that will have much more technology and a lot less God. The scientific worldview is triumphant, no doubt. The campaign of some noisy atheists like Richard Dawkins, who know a great deal about science but much less about spirituality, has reinforced the illusion that a single worldview is our only choice.

It’s not. In fact, if science was the only choice that faced us in the 21st century, the outcome would be terrifyingly bleak. On all the great questions that face us, including the survival of a healthy planet, the future depends on another worldview, spirituality, to expand upon science and give us alternatives that are often better.

He adds that there is a coming struggle for the future, and how that struggle turns out will depend on answering some tough issues:

• Do we live in a universe with purpose and meaning or a universe that is random and without meaning?
• What lies beyond the horizon of the stars and galaxies we can see and measure?
• If the cosmos emerged from a void before time and space emerged, is that invisible source also our own?
• Could the cosmos be a living entity?
• Are we conscious beings because the entire universe is conscious?