. . . . . . #### . tonight on "nightline," faith and doubt. does god have a future? in this modern age, have we reached a point where science can either explain or reject the existence of the almighty? faceoff. deepak chopra and michael shermer, long-time rivals in the same room for the first time, as science and faith do battle. eternal questions, heated exchanges, and one lively audience. a special edition of "nightline" starts right now.

>> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with terry moran, martin bashir and cynthia mcfadden in new york city, this is "nightline," march 23rd, 2010. good evening. it was a german philosopher that announced "god is dead." and yet more than a chentury later, one survey found that 82% claim a religious affiliation. of course, that hasn't stopped agnostics and atheists from arguing against a supreme being, particularly with today's remarkable sentific advancements. the two sides remain firmly entrenched. dan harris is the adjudicator in tonight's faceoff, does god have a future? >> reporter: god is pretty much everywhere in our culture. on "american idol."

>> in god there's no failure. >> reporter: at football games. on the stump. >> god bless you. god bless america! >> reporter: and, of course, on oprah. >> god isn't out there, but god is out there, and in here, and all around. >> that is all. >> reporter: but increasingly, believers see god coming under siege. >> i deny. >> definitely deny. >> the existence. >> of the holy spirit. >> reporter: which brings us to tonight's debate. given all we know now about the universe and life on earth, is science killing god? or, is it, in fact, bringing us closer to god? in other words, does god have a future? our face off has its roots in a very personal feud between two men. on one side, the guy who

inspired the movie "the love guru." >> maurice -- >> deepak chopra! >> i will bury him. >> reporter: deepak chopra, who has taught thousands to meditate. >> if i get there, then i will bury my opponents with joy, love and compassion. >> reporter: chopra believes there is a creative intelligence at the heart of the universe, and he tells tons of dvds and books where he says there is scientific evidence to prove it. >> if you believe in a rock, you automatically believe in god. >> the god question is easily our biggest. >> reporter: that is the kind of talk that drives this man crazy. his opponent in this debate -- >> we have science on our side and deepak doesn't. i have to call him out on his fuzzy language. >> reporter: michael shermer, a former fundamentalist christian turned anti-religious step tick. >> reduces guilt by .9% or more.

>> reporter: he's become a professional debunker of what he calls pseudoscience. >> and even a skeptic's mind can start to play tricks on him. a feel a presence rush by me. >> reporter: he is on a show that stick laments the sort of out of body experiences that people click chopra call proof of the divine. >> i'm doing the wrestler thing, right? >> reporter: while these two guys have never met, they've been feuding for years. >> we put deepak on the cover. >> reporter: shermer put chopra on the cover of his magazine, calling him dr. woo-woo. >> what does it really mean to say there's quantum consciousness. >> who is the i that's skeptical? is it you? >> reporter: but it was this live via satellite oral on cnn that was the last straw. >> i'd like to have a one-week debate with the skeptic in front of a live audience.

>> not tonight. >> you're on! >> reporter: the debate was set, and it would be the first time they'd ever met in person. and they invited us to film it. how are you doing? >> i'm good. >> reporter: shermer chose this man as his partner. >> does god have a future? yes, as a charter in fiction. >> sam harris, one of the most outspoken and controversial american atheists. author of a best seller called "the end of faith," and a neuroroe scientist. >> the future of god is in the greater understanding of the evolution of the consciousness of consciousness. >> reporter: chopra chose this woman -- >> does god have a future? absotely. >> reporter: jean houston. she has used lsd to conduct research on altered states of consciousness. >> what has happened is that our notion of goddedness. >> that's a classic example of pseudoscience. >> rorter: t morning of the debate, michael shermer is watching videos of chopra and houston.

>> the post-modern goddedness. what in the world is that? >> reporter: meanwhile, chopra and houston meet up for strategy. the location of the debate, one of america's preeminent science schools, cal tech. >> if they can make deepak cry, that would be nice. >> i'm here to see dr. chopra today. i'm a big avid reader of his books. >> reporter: as the crowd of 1,000-plus takes their seats, chopra and shermer meet for the first time in person. >> good to see you. how are you? >> good to see you. >> reporter: they may be chummy backstage, but when they get on stage, years of public backstage, but when they get on stage, years of public antagonism boil over. emememememememememememememememem emememememememememememememememem ememememem emememememememememememememememem sir? finding everything okay? i work for a differen. my auto policy's just getting

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thanks for your help. [ male announcer ] talk to your doctor to find out while some would argue that god and science are in conflict, there's no shortage of scientists who believe in the almighty. dr. francis collins, is just one example. but is it possible to use science to prove or disprove god's existence? the stage is set for our faceoff debate, chaired by dan harris. >> reporter: deepak chopra may be the guy that inspired "the love guru," but in the debate yourself about to see unfold, he becomes anything but mellow. let me start with you, deepak. what scientific proof can you muster to support your assertion

that there is, for lack of a better term, god, or some sort of intelligence at the heart of the universe? >> today science tells us that the essential nature of reality nonlocal correlation, everything is connected to everything else. every time he tries to make the case that science proves god exists, it is met with eye rolling and smashing. >> science doesn't call it god. what is god if not the immeasurable potential of all that was, all that is and all that will be. >> reporter: chopra sums up with this rousing appeal to the scientists in the audience to open their minds to his idea of god. >> one of the things we have to do today, my friends at cal tech, you have to stop being the jihadists, and the vatican of conservative and orthodox science, which is not relevant anymore. >> reporter: did you hear anything in there that convinces

you, michael? >> um -- you asked what i meant by woo woo, that is the embodiment of woo woo. he said -- [ applause ] he said stringing together at a rapid patter of, a bunch of scientific sounding words with spiritual new age worlds doesn't mean anything. >> i hope that our scientists here in this audience who will -- >> not jihadists here, this is cal tech. that was really unspiritual of you. very undeepak of you to say that. >> well, you bring out the worst in me. >> maybe you need to meditate a little bit there. >> i would never be tempted to lecture a room full of 1,000 people at cal tech about physics. i'm not a physicist. you're not a physicist, and basically every sentence ghon

statements that, that you speak on the unjekt. >> i totally disagree with you. >> what you do and many people who try to invoke spooky physics do in the service of propping up their religious and new age intuitions is that they think because quantum mechanics is spooky and difficult to understand, and because what you're saying is spooky and difficult to understand, they must somehow be related. and you have just merged them together in a very unprincipled way, and you're getting away with it. >> i take resentment at your questioning my scientific credentials. in fact, if anyone on this stage is more scientifically credentialed, it's me. i i'm and m.d. and i want to object. >> we've both taken that. 90% of people watching this have never heard of nonlocality. d they're not going to care about it.

they are worried about jesus. they are worried about the collision with the muslim world. the reason why we're talking about god is for the last 4,000 years, people have been handing books to their children saying, all these other books were written by people, but this book is a magic book. it could not possibly have been written by a human being. >> reporter: chopra truly provokes shermer and harris when he invoked entine and hawking. >> i want to quote entine. religious without science is blind. from stephen hawking, it would be difficult to explain why the universe would have begun in just this way, except as the act of a god who intended to create beings like us. >> but hawking is an atheist. >> this is a direct quote. >> so what? he has stated -- hawking has stated on this stage he does not believe in god. >> well, he doesn't believe in the dead white male that you're talking about, the strawman that

you have put up or the mythical god that sam harris is talking about. >> the god is meaningless -- >> no, i just said, the god that givens us inspiration, insight, creativity, free will, conscious choice-making, imagination. >> deepak -- >> are you doing that or are new rons doing that? >> my neurorons. >> well, then you are a zombie. >> dial it down just a little bit. >> reporter: and already heated debate gets even more so, when we come back. called it "one of the best family cars of 2009." the insurance institute for highway safety calls it a 2010 top safety pick. with automatic crash response from onstar that can call for help, even when you can't. we call it peace of mind. a consumers digest best buy two years in a row, chevy malibu. may the best car win. chevy malibu.

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our face our faceoff has already contained some heated exchanges, but as the debate entered its final phase, the question became less about the existence of god, and much more about how one explains religious or spiritual experience. is it the work of the holy spirit or simply the functioning of chemicals within the brain? once more, here's dan harris. >> reporter: as our debate over the future of god continues, the personal rivalry between deepak chopra and michael shermer is on stark display, as chopra accuses shermer of being narrow-minded.

>> but for people like michael, to take all of inner experience, all of the rich inner experience and try to quantify it in a graph with data is absurd. >> as opposed to what? >> that's such an out, michael. that's such an out. >> at one -- >> use the word fuzzy, use the words woo woo and you're out of the argument. >> reporter: you may have already picked this up, but chopra is not a believer in the traditional christian god. he has a very different vision of the future of god, and so does jean houston. >> we are living in the time in which we flirt with buddhism in its many, many different ideologies. this people finding in the great repast of spiritual knowings, the wisdom traditions of many places, finding their own place, slowly but surely, in their own spiritual life? >> and the future of god is to

understand how a new understanding of science, a new understanding of the perennial wisdom traditions, otherwise called w woo, actually can lead to more compassion, to more love, to more kindness. to more tolerance. to more peace. to more insight. to more inspiration, to more creativity. so, we become the conscious beings through which the universe will take its next leap in evolution. that's the future of god. >> reporter: what sounds so bad about that future? >> but -- all of that is good. you should be doing those things anyway. whether or not there's a god or a great spirit or a nonlocality. >> reporter: science does not explain why we're here. >> it doesn't answer a lot of the big questions. >> okay. but that doesn't mean it -- >> or -- >> it doesn't mean we can't at least try to understand. the point of science is try to drill in and figure out what's

going on. so, we can use words it would be better if we were all loving to one another -- of course. who would disagree? >> reporter: shermer says thee things are not evidence of god or the soul. science, he says, can explain things like love and compassion, in terms of brain chemistry. for example, he points to a hormone called oxytocin. > . >> it's an attachment hormone. any time you touch someone else, there's a little bit there. so, anything we can do to increase oxytocin is a good thing. so, there, i'm not taking anything away from the beauty of love, the emotional appreciation, but we now have an understanding of the mechanics of it and therefore you can structure a social system in which there's more of that, not spraying it in the air, but -- >> oxytocin is not love. oxytocin is the measurement of love in a laboratory. >> reporter: is your rock solid certitude about there not being a god a form of orthodoxy?

>> well, i'm not rock solid that there is no god. if it was anything like ya way, i'd be shocked. i have a little thing that i would be say if it turned out to be the case. >> reporter: what is it? >> oh, well, i mean, first of all, it would be -- you know, you gave me this brain, in your own image, that it reasons and doubts and so on so i aplayed it it to you, and in in case, why does belief matter? shouldn't it matter more how you comport yourself in life and how you treat other people? >> reporter: and here is where the already very engaged audience gets involved. >> i have a question that concerns near death experience. is that really real that could one day be measured by science, but also point to the validity of the intuitive truth of certain wisdom traditions or

religio religions? >> there's three lines that tell us that it is inside the brain, not outside of it. near death -- they're not dead. they're near dead. big difference there. and you can replicate these in the lab. you can put on the god helmet that bomb barlds the temperal lobes and people have out of body near death experiences right there in his room. you can do it through oxygen deprivation and you can do you this there sleep deprivation, through extreme environments. those three lines tell us it's in the brain, not outside of it. >> reporter: how can you, michael, and you, deepak, have a conversation that isn't yelling at each other that actually finds commonality and comes up for something useful for the rest of us? michael? >> to the extent that anything you guys do to make the world a better place, by expanding the circle of sentiments, all that, i'm all for it. >> if i was very a conversation with michael, i would say, help me.

help me, dear scientists, to understand why we have this deep yearning, why do we have this deep longing to understand the nature of the beginnings of the universe. why do we have this deep yearning a longing to understand ourselves? >> reporter: sam, what do you say to that? >> we don't all have this deep yearning. >> reporter: what are people doing on sunday mornings at 11:00? they're thinking about that issue. >> people want to be happy. they know the dufrnls between happiness and suffering. they want to feel the best they've ever felt and better than they've ever felt and they constantly notice that life makes that difficult. and our beliefs, the beliefs that csole us about what happens after death are obviously response to that circumstance. >> reporter: and so leonard, you are a quantum physicist. >> would you like to have a short course sometimes so we can

straighten out your slightly misuse of quantum notation? >> i would be honored, sir, and i accept your offer with great gratitude and i would like to be educated so i can be clearer in my -- in my dialogue. >> reporter: what is it about deepak's use of quantum physics that bothers you? >> the term nonlocal, the use was not correct. >> well, i happen to disagree, by the way. >> i assume you did since you said that -- >> i happen to disagree. >> that's why i would love to talk about it. >> think consciousness is nonlocal. >> yeah, you know, i've never really run across a definition of consciousness that i understood. >> the field -- a super position of possibilities. >> okay, well. all right, i -- i know what each of those words means. i still don't think i know --

[ applause ] >> reporter: leonard, you've been aood sport. as the debate ends, all sides declare victory. >> it was a total demolishment. >> we made more sense, yeah. >> reporter: while no minds appear to have been changed among the participants, we can tell you they've continued debating on e-mail and now planning a so-called vodka summ to hash our their differences. >> complex and ongoing debate. our thanks to alour players and to dan harris. and you can find the entire faceoff debate and join the ongoing conversation on the "nightline" page at abcnews.com. and when we come back, a legacy moment for the obama administration, for better or worse? but first, here's jimmy kimmel with what's coming up next on abc. tonight, scott wolf, clark duke, music from neon trees, and me, jim. let's enjoy us together.