The latest
issue of Astronomy magazine is
labeled “Special Issue: The Immensity of the Cosmos.”
The Greek
word “kosmos” means “order,” “good order.” When applied to people it can mean
“decorated” (think “cosmetics”). When applied to astronomy, it means “the
biggest space we know about.”
In September
2014, the issue says, astronomers defined the “Laniakea Supercluster.” (“Laniakea”
is the Hawaiian word for “immense heaven.”) The Milky Way is our own galaxy,
400 billion stars, among which our sun is one. The Laniakea Supercluster has
100,000 galaxies and is 520 million light years across.
I’m thinking
about this as I pray morning prayer today. I am using words that people have
used for over two thousand years to express their relation to “God.” I am a
religious person.
My religion
tells me that God made the universe, and that this God is triune, three
Persons, whom we call Father, Son, and Spirit, or, feminists would say,
“Creator, the Christ, and Spirit (Sophia).” It tells me that this triune God is
personally involved with me, and that I can speak to this God and be heard.
A close
friend of mine has rejected religion because he says it has done nothing but
cause suffering around the world. Think ISIS. Closer to home, he is thinking of
the Religious Right, which he blames for leading politicians to reject concern
for the poor, in the name of the Invisible Hand.
We have two
world views, science and religion. For the past couple of hundred years,
intellectuals have seen the two in conflict, struggle to the death. They
predict that religion will lose and will die. They point to the increasing
number of people who say they have no religion. I think of the increasing
number of young Catholics who drift away from the Church. Some of them drift
into other denominations, but many of them drift into the “None” category. When
the survey asks “Which of the following options describes your religion?” they
answer “None.”
During my
years of studying philosophy in the seminary, we had a course with the title
“Cosmology.” Therefore I found it striking that astronomers are using that word
these days. How can they take this fine religious word and use it for
scientific purposes?
Stories about the
Cosmos
The Laniakea
Supercluster is a story about the cosmos. The story says that the cosmos came
into being 13.82 billion light years ago, from the Big Bang, an explosion from
an infinitesimally small source.
My faith’s
story about the cosmos does not deny the Big Bang. But it says that a spiritual
source was behind the Big Bang, and continues to guide its evolution. That
source, which we call God, focused on one point of time and space and became
human in the person of Jesus Christ.
Two stories.
Both are collections of words, language used to describe things that no one has
ever actually seen. The astonomer is basing the Big Bang on observing tiny
spots of light or other radiation through a telescope or microscope, trying to
explain why those spots of light behave the way they do. My story is based on a
tradition of words passed on in many languages down through several centuries,
and shaped into writings which we call the Bible.
Both stories
are based in communities, the community of scientists and the community of
Christians or members of other religions. Both communities need faith to tell
their stories to others. They believe that the story they tell is true, that it
reflects reality the way it really is. Neither community can ultimately prove
that its story is true. Scientists know that the story they tell today may not
be the story that they will tell a hundred years from now. Religious people
know that the story they tell today has been shaped by many human factors, and
that parts of the story may have to be revised in the light of what we learn as
we make this journey through history.
But both
communities believe that their stories are important and valuable, valuable enough
for people to devote their lives to studying the stories and passing them on to
others.
But what
about ISIS and the Religious Right? Don’t religious stories cause more harm
than good?
I have to
admit that religion can cause a great deal of harm. Karl Marx claimed that
religion was an opium that deadened people to their oppression so that they
would not do anything to make things better. Sigmund Freud claimed that
religion is a human response to a desire to go back to the womb, a comfortable
place where there is no challenge. ISIS is clearly a bad thing. One can argue
that it is really more of a political movement than a religious one, but it
seems to appeal to young people who have the same hopes and dreams that young
religious people have.
I am not equating
the Religious Right with ISIS in the level of physical evil it causes, but the
Religious Right is destroying our political system by creating an atmosphere of
intolerance and rejection of compromise. The “Founding Fathers” were hoping to
avoid that kind of intolerance in this land, because they had experienced
enough of it in Europe. Intolerance freezes the political process into inaction
and will ultimately bring it down. It could lead to civil war, which is what
happens when two irreconcilable political forces collide. It is certainly
leading to environmental disaster.
But.
Science too
can cause a great deal of harm. Alfred Nobel, who gave us the Nobel prizes,
invented dynamite, thinking that its invention would bring wars to an end. What
dynamite has done is make possible destruction on a scale unimaginable in
earlier times. Atomic science raised that destruction level to such a height
that we face the real danger that we could make our planet uninhabitable. Our
science, allying itself with the Invisible Hand, allows people to pursue their
individual interests to the point of destroying the environment, another way of
making the planet uninhabitable.
Both
religion and science can result in great harm, but on balance I think science
can do the greater harm. Does that mean we should stop doing science?
No.
It means
that science and religion both have to be used in life-giving ways.
There are
plenty of people both in science and in religion that already spend their lives
hoping to give life to others. We need to encourage such people, and quit
rewarding only the ones who make the most money.
All human
activity has to be motivated by passionate, respectful, vulnerable, faithful
involvement of human beings with each other. Of course it won’t be, because we
are not perfect. But we can work to bring about that kind of involvement on the
individual level, where we all live our individual lives, and on the political
level, where we need to write our rules so that such behavior is rewarded.
Pope
Francis’s recent encyclical, Laudato Si,
is one example of the kind of approach that we will need if we are to pass on a
livable world to coming generations. But there are many other people, with many
other writings, who are working toward the same goal.
I believe in
the statement: “I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful.” Optimism predicts good
things. Hope says that God is good for us.
Predictions
of the future of our planet do not look good.
But I
believe that God is good, and that God is good for us.
