Dangerous idea

General Academics Religion and Philosophy
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CAROLYN PORCO
Planetary Scientist; Cassini Imaging Science Team Leader; Director CICLOPS, Boulder CO; Adjunct Professor, University of Colorado, University of Arizona

The Greatest Story Ever Told

The confrontation between science and formal religion will come to an end when the role played by science in the lives of all people is the same played by religion today.

And just what is that?

At the heart of every scientific inquiry is a deep spiritual quest — to grasp, to know, to feel connected through an understanding of the secrets of the natural world, to have a sense of one’s part in the greater whole. It is this inchoate desire for connection to something greater and immortal, the need for elucidation of the meaning of the ‘self’, that motivates the religious to belief in a higher ‘intelligence’. It is the allure of a bigger agency — outside the self but also involving, protecting, and celebrating the purpose of the self — that is the great attractor. Every culture has religion. It undoubtedly satisfies a manifest human need.

But the same spiritual fulfillment and connection can be found in the revelations of science. From energy to matter, from fundamental particles to DNA, from microbes to Homo sapiens, from the singularity of the Big Bang to the immensity of the universe … ours is the greatest story ever told. We scientists have the drama, the plot, the icons, the spectacles, the ‘miracles’, the magnificence, and even the special effects. We inspire awe. We evoke wonder.

And we don’t have one god, we have many of them. We find gods in the nucleus of every atom, in the structure of space/time, in the counter-intuitive mechanisms of electromagneticsm. What richness! What consummate beauty!

We even exalt the self'. Our script requires a broadening of the usual definition, but we too offer hope for everlasting existence. The self’ that is the particular, networked set of connections of the matter comprising our mortal bodies will one day die, of course. But the `self’ that is the sum of each separate individual condensate in us of energy-turned-matter is already ancient and will live forever. Each fundamental particle may one day return to energy, or from there revert back to matter. But in one form or another, it will not cease. In this sense, we and all around us are eternal, immortal, and profoundly connected. We don’t have one soul; we have trillions upon trillions of them.

These are reasons enough for jubilation … for riotous, unrestrained, exuberant merry-making.

So what are we missing?

Ceremony.

We lack ceremony. We lack ritual. We lack the initiation of baptism, the brotherhood of communal worship.

We have no loving ministers, guiding and teaching the flocks in the ways of the ‘gods’. We have no fervent missionaries, no loyal apostles. And we lack the all-inclusive ecumenical embrace, the extended invitation to the unwashed masses. Alienation does not warm the heart; communion does.

But what if? What if we appropriated the craft, the artistry, the methods of formal religion to get the message across? Imagine ‘Einstein’s Witnesses’ going door to door or TV evangelists passionately espousing the beauty of evolution.

Imagine a Church of Latter Day Scientists where believers could gather. Imagine congregations raising their voices in tribute to gravity, the force that binds us all to the Earth, and the Earth to the Sun, and the Sun to the Milky Way. Or others rejoicing in the nuclear force that makes possible the sunlight of our star and the starlight of distant suns. And can’t you just hear the hymns sung to the antiquity of the universe, its abiding laws, and the heaven above that ‘we’ will all one day inhabit, together, commingled, spread out like a nebula against a diamond sky?

One day, the sites we hold most sacred just might be the astronomical observatories, the particle accelerators, the university research installations, and other laboratories where the high priests of science — the biologists, the physicists, the astronomers, the chemists — engage in the noble pursuit of uncovering the workings of nature herself. And today’s museums, expositional halls, and planetaria may then become tomorrow’s houses of worship, where these revealed truths, and the wonder of our interconnectedness with the cosmos, are glorified in song by the devout and the soulful.

“Hallelujah!”, they will sing. “May the force be with you!”

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As Sam Goldwyn said - include me out.

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Oh s#1+! This’ll just reinforce people’s stupid idea that science is a religion.

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Perhaps I am a bit more of a moderate - but I like it - the idea that we can have a similar experience of awe and wonder at science - I can relate to that.

I think that religious people who have based their sense of wonder on a system of ideas that are progressively refuted by science, have no where to go and whilst their experience is meaningful to them - with a scientific basis for our sense of wonder at the universe, and with progressive levels of evidentiary confirmation of the ideas and principles informing the scientific conception of the universe, we can only grow in wonder and appreciation. I believe the religious position to be a crippling, reductionist process where any new amazing thing is attributed to god, thereby detracting from the complexity and closely associated intrinsic beauty imparted by a scientific understanding of the world, without the need to deify that experience.

I think there is nothing wrong with celebrating the emotional reaction we have to rational inquiry of our experience. What is the problem with experiencing science (especially Astronomy, my hobby) as sacred and divine? I understand that these words, sacred and divine are “dirty” in the sense that they are usually associated with a religious context, but I am inclined to posit that they are descriptors of a fundamental component of the human experience - hijacked by religion, but once free of that, only enhanced and deepened by knowledge.

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Hello and welcome to the forum, RitualAccessor.

I don’t think you’ll find too many people disagreeing with you over the profound sense of wonder one feels at the universe and its intricate workings, revealed to us by science. However, the article in the OP raises the ugly spectre of a possible ritualisation of science, at least insofar as the ordinary, non-expert person is concerned. This must be avoided at all costs because respect for science must come from understanding, not from some ill-advised social convention or tradition. The latter approach is religionistic, has led humanity into trouble countless times, and runs completely counter to the very things that make science successful in the first place: open inquiry, open critique and the cardinal reliance on objective evidence.

'Luthon64

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I take your point Luthon64.

There is a clear danger in ritualising this thing called science - I am still working on a good definition of what science is exactly - perhaps by referring to the scientific method (nice link here http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Science - and please slow your row on flaming me for a reference to a Wikipedia article - I know that it is a less than perfect source, but expediency calls for the hack :-).

I understand that part of your objection is to the idea that if there were a science church (yeah, not THAT one; f*cking lunatics - but as proposed in the text), then common folk might be sitting there lauding the wonder of it all, but not actually grasp the principles and that open minded paradigmatic starting point for interfacing with the world. Clearly that would not be good, so i agree with you there.

I think Carolyn Porco is referring to the fact however, that we are social apes - and there is a clear human need for what she refers to as “the brotherhood of communal worship” - OK, even as I type this I see myself on shaky ground - “worship” just does not sit well! ::slight_smile:

What I mean is that, whilst she may be misguided in suggesting that we borrow the approach of religion to “proselytize” for science, primarily because such methods are intellectually dishonest, but I think she is also talking about a legitimate human need to connect and find a pattern of meaning - religion does (on the surface, and if you dont / choose not to see the contradictions and inherent falsehood of it all) seem to offer people the process or ritual to do that. I would not go so far as to support door to door recruitment - that just seems to be hijacking the trick of another group of unwelcome callers, and may bring much disrepute to the name of science - but I would support some form of collective identity and communal appreciation of like minded scientists in a social setting - or even something like this forum.

The difference between the social meetings of science however would, I believe be vastly different from the meetings of the religious - different and divergent points of view for example, would be tolerated (no, no, truly tolerated, not just the appearance of acceptance, and then much fearmongering and dogmatic insistence to bend to the religious party line as it were) in the former setting, but the opposite happening in the latter scenario.

Perhaps as “the fallen” (their term, not ours), those of us who do not find any semblance of truth in religion, or non-naturalistic paradigms, must sacrifice the apparent benefits afforded to the faithful (community, a sense of belonging, ritual for the psychological comfort and processing of things like death, marriage, etc) - perhaps we must give up those things in favour of the higher and more meaningful comfort afforded by the belief that we have a closer relationship to truth in the universe through more rigorous intellectual honesty - to see through the hollow lie that is a religious explanation for things (including our ultimate meaning as humans), and to be baptised in the fountain of endless knowledge, flowing towards a nexus of ultimate truth!

By Darwin’s beard - this is a dangerous idea - she’s got me doing now too - spouting off about ultimate truth!
I digress to humour, and also, am always wary of taking anything I say too seriously - what the hell do I know.

In closing, I would posit that science already has a degree of ritual to it - relatively way less than religion sure, but we celebrate scientific achievement with a Nobel ceremony - it’s hardly a ceremony of worship, but still seems to fulfil the requirement of being a social form of communion under the banner of science. And I support such things - scientific achievement and successful scientists should be celebrated as an encouragement, small but loud, in the face of seemingly overwhelming media time given to the opiate of the people.

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Not too sure if I like this idea, but at least a religion of science would WORK.

Anyone read Asimov’s Foundation?

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If it’s any comfort, you’re not alone in this. Check out the so-called “Demarcation Problem.” (I really don’t know why Wikipedia articles should be considered problematic or untrustworthy. Sure, there are contentious entries and sections, but these are usually identified accordingly. Moreover, even the most prestigious scientific journals present competing views and some that turn out to be downright wrong later on.)

For a while maybe, until some elite priesthood emerges, declaring itself the protector of the faith, and closes the ranks as it were to anyone with dissenting views purely on the basis of their having dissent, rather than its actual merits. I’ll say it again:

'Luthon64

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The elite priesthood would have to know how science worked, otherwise the miracles would cease. Look, I agree with you in principal, but I think a religion of science might actually be more effective than, well, what we have now.

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They’d only need to know just a little more than the ordinary person, though. It is in the very nature of priesthoods to be stodgily conservative and protective about their canon of beliefs. While a little such conservatism in science is desirable and even necessary (otherwise we’d allow any old thing in, irrespective how ill-founded), a scientific priesthood poses the very real threat that it would simply disallow new science that challenges the old. I’d sooner have ignorant people who are at least reasonably autonomous than a herd of dupes entirely beholden to the declarations of an elite, however benevolent it may initially be because that way inevitably and ultimately lies abuse.

Perhaps, but I disagree that the insidious dangers and antithetical nature thereof which I have outlined are worth the risk. Just look at scientology for an instructive example. Its practitioners adamantly insist that it is primarily scientific, and what’s to prevent a scientific priesthood, especially an essentially self-appointed one from following a similar path?

'Luthon64

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Yeah, you’re right. It’s probably not worth the risk.

It makes for cool science fiction though! ;D