But there is also a deeper reason. The universe discovered by physicists and the sub-discipline of cosmology is grant, wonderful and astonishing but also very cold and lonely. It makes of humanity a trivial accident. We don't mean shit to anybody but ourselves. That we can make meaning in our own right, that we matter to each other, is the essence of humanism, but that isn't good enough for lots of people. They need the consolation of a caring universe. Alongside this is the fear of death and inability to accept it.
Then there's the third reason. Almost nobody actually understands the cosmologists' universe, how they figured it out and why they are so certain of their conclusions. I have a somewhat better idea than most because I've had a subscription to Scientific American since I was 13 but I actually have never taken a physics course, let alone studied cosmology. Basically it all started when Edwin Hubble discovered that the nebulae are actually entire galaxies in their own right, that the ones that aren't so close as to be bound to ours gravitationally are all receding, and that the farther away they are, the faster they are running away. No, that doesn't put us at the center. It would look the same no matter where you were, no matter what galaxy you were in, because the universe is expanding. So they imagined running the movie backwards and realized that at some point it must have been extremely compact. Maybe infinitely dense and infinitesimal. That would have been about 13.8 billion years ago. (Estimates have varied a bit over time but that's where we are now.)
There is plenty of evidence that this really happened, that for some reason -- of which we have not the slightest idea -- at that time it started expanding and eventually evolved into what we see now. I won't go into more detail but you can read books about it. Hawking's Brief History of Time still stands up pretty well but problems have arisen since then, some of the most difficult of his own making. Cosmologists thought they were getting everything figured out, then they discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, for completely unknown reasons; that most of the mass in the universe consists of something that does not interact with matter in any way except by gravity; and when Hawking figured out that Black Holes evaporate, he created a whole new paradox which you can read about at the link but which you won't really understand very well.
Physicists have a complicated understanding of the universe, based on mathematical structures that predict the outcome of experiments or correspond to observations. I won't even discuss quantum theory but the black hole paradox is enough to get the idea across. It's true in a way that doesn't correspond to our everyday understanding of truth. It's about entities that nobody can see, distances that are incredibly small or incredibly large, time intervals equally infinitesimal and vast. For example, physicists believe that this is the smallest possible distance:
It's called the Planck length. It's about 1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000 the diameter of a proton. If you've been reading the Bible with me you know it's ridiculous, but unfortunately I think the average person, if presented with basic ideas of physics and cosmology, would find them more ridiculous than Noah's Ark. It takes a lot of effort to understand all, or really any of this. Faith is just easier.
5 comments:
I think Galileo and Irvin Yalom and a whole host of other wise people would agree. But it's more than intellectual laziness and fear of existentialism. It's emotional immaturity in a country where property and money are valued over humanity. As JFK is quoted on one exterior wall of the JFK Center in Washinton, DC: "This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor." We are now not only materially poor but spiritually really poor; capitalism is crumbling, our government and our citizens owe so much more than we can pay ... and so many people's spiritual lives are dissolving into religious nonsense, negativity, and addiction because they were not themselves raised by emotionally mature adults. Because of capitalism and greed, there is not emphasis on love, communication, caring, compassion, and empathy. The world needs a giant NVC class.
Existentialism is not nihilism. It emphasizes choice and agency, not meaninglessness. Those who eschew science because they see it as incompatible with religion give their wills to an invented god or to invented gods, paying a price in the process, as do those who decide that nothing at all matters.
What's the answer? Humanism. And let's not forget animals, plants, and the planet that we all share.
I've never seen religion and science as mutually exclusive.
The more science reveals how really weird the physical world is, the more it shows how some of the biblical stories are possible. For instance, the non-linear characteristic of time might explain prophesy, second sight,etc. The scientific exposure of the nature of matter would also coincide with some of the Eastern religions' assertions that all of the physical world is all an illusion.
When discussing science and religion, we don't know what we don't know.
For me, science answers the question "How". Religion answers the question "Why".
I held off responding to Woody because I was hoping somebody else would, but that didn't happen.
I don't know what you mean exactly by the non-linear characteristic of time. According to the theory of relatively, time appears to flow at different rates depending on your frame of reference. However, it always moves in one direction, and because information cannot travel at more than the speed of light, it is impossible to send information into the past. These ideas are a bit complicated, but nevertheless relativity cannot explain prophecy. We can certainly predict the future, however, in systems in which casual relationships are well understood and we have adequate information; for example, the position of the heavenly bodies this time next year. However there is nothing mystical about this.
It is true that our immediate perception of reality consists of highly filtered and processed information which is useful for navigating the world but, as we have learned, does not reveal the underlying nature of reality. Whether that corresponds to an assertion that all of the physical world is an illusion depends what you mean by that, but I don't think it's what the Upanishads or Lao Tzu are asserting. Anyway, metaphysics is necessarily speculation.
It is true that religion attempts to answer "why" type questions but it's all made up. It doesn't really answer them, it just makes assertions.
I would like to see more readers responding to the blog, in general.
Science is the best we have to explain the physical world. I would also remind you that science is always correcting itself as discoveries are made, old models are discarded and new models are adopted.
I like science, but I don't worship it as absolute truth.
The ever-changing nature of science proves that you don't know what you don't know.
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