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| The John Muir Trail |
This isn't a post that's about hiking and backpacking (and it's been quite a while since I've even looked at this blog). But I recently did something for which I drew considerable inspiration from my trek on the John Muir Trail in 2014.
A little background first.
When my wife, Lisa, and I move to LA in 1990, we found our church home in St. Alban's Episcopal Church. Located in Westwood, directly across the street from the UCLA campus (where I worked at the time), it was well known for its superb music program. We found it a welcoming place and the spiritual home to a diverse and interesting group of fellow Christians. I got to know our Rector, Rev. Susan Klein during a tour of duty on the Vestry. Knowing about my science background and job at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, she had suggested that St. Alban's have a "Science and Faith" program of some sort. I always agreed and then deftly ignored anything that might have led me to volunteer to make such a thing happen.
But along the way, I did participate in a book club / study group in which we read a number of books, two of which have really stuck with me. The first is Paul Davies The Mind of God, in which he explores a number of the deeper aspects of our scientific understanding of the universe, and how they connect to his faith. The other is a collection of essays, The Luminous Web, by Barbara Brown Taylor. In her essays, Rev. Brown, an Episcopal priest, describes her own inner dialogue between her faith and her enthusiastic amateur pursuit of scientific insight. As both a scientist and Christian, I found their ability to reconcile the truths of their faith with the truths of science to be both comforting and familiar. I myself had never understood the need that so many people have to choose one over the other, or to search for conflict or contradiction between them.
Well, just about three weeks ago, Rev. Susan facebook'ed me (God has apparently not proscribed His servants from using such technologies) and said she wanted to start a yearly "Faith and Science" event of some sort -- and would I kick this first one off by giving a sermon on the last Sunday of the Epiphany (last chance for fun before the season of Lent begins...). Inexplicably, I agreed. Even more inexplicably, I found myself excited at the prospect - enough to go back and re-read some of those books. And do research on the Web (aka "The Internets").
In most Christian churches, the sermon is preceded by reading from the Bible. Below are the three that preceded my sermon (and influenced its content, as is customary). You can skip them if you want, but you may find they add useful context.
Luke 9:28-36
28 About eight days after Jesus said these things, he took Peter, John, and James, and went up on a mountain to pray. 29 As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed and his clothes flashed white like lightning. 30 Two men, Moses and Elijah, were talking with him. 31 They were clothed with heavenly splendor and spoke about Jesus’ departure, which he would achieve in Jerusalem. 32 Peter and those with him were almost overcome by sleep, but they managed to stay awake and saw his glory as well as the two men with him.
33 As the two men were about to leave Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it’s good that we’re here. We should construct three shrines: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—but he didn’t know what he was saying. 34 Peter was still speaking when a cloud overshadowed them. As they entered the cloud, they were overcome with awe.
35 Then a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him!”36 Even as the voice spoke, Jesus was found alone. They were speechless and at the time told no one what they had seen.
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
12 So, since we have such a hope, we act with great confidence. 13 We aren’t like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the Israelites couldn’t watch the end of what was fading away. 14 But their minds were closed. Right up to the present day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. The veil is not removed because it is taken away by Christ. 15 Even today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. 16 But whenever someone turns back to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Lord’s Spirit is, there is freedom. 18 All of us are looking with unveiled faces at the glory of the Lord as if we were looking in a mirror. We are being transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to the next degree of glory. This comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
4 This is why we don’t get discouraged, given that we received this ministry in the same way that we received God’s mercy. 2 Instead, we reject secrecy and shameful actions. We don’t use deception, and we don’t tamper with God’s word. Instead, we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God by the public announcement of the truth.
Exodus 34:29-35
29 Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two covenant tablets in his hand, Moses didn’t realize that the skin of his face shone brightly because he had been talking with God. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw the skin of Moses’ face shining brightly, they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called them closer. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and Moses spoke with them. 32 After that, all the Israelites came near as well, and Moses commanded them everything that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33 When Moses finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. 34 Whenever Moses went into theLord’s presence to speak with him, Moses would take the veil off until he came out again. When Moses came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 the Israelites would see that the skin of Moses’ face was shining brightly. So Moses would put the veil on his face again until the next time he went in to speak with the Lord.
The result of my reading, thinking, and listening (to that small, still voice within) is below, largely in the form that I delivered it. Note that what you read is meant to be spoken and heard. I urge anyone sufficiently interested to read it aloud, particularly the last few paragraphs. Wherever you may be in your journey of faith, I offer these words as nourishment both for the mind and the soul.
A Sermon on Faith and Science
Presented at St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Westwood, CA on February 7th, 2016
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my rock, and my redeemer.Susan asked me a few weeks ago to give a sermon on the topic of Science and Faith and suggested this Sunday because the readings were - as she put it - “quite transcendent.” The revelation of Christ’s divine nature to his disciples and Moses’ return from Mt. Sinai with the tablets containing the Ten Commandments are indeed transcendent events. But how does Science fit into this?
To many of you it may seem obvious. As I scientist myself, the connection seems quite clear. Many of the discoveries of science evoke a sense of awe and otherworldliness.
Consider this — the first confirmed discovery of an extrasolar planet - a planet outside of the eight in our solar system - the first one was identified in 1992. Just 24 years ago. Today there are roughly 2,000 confirmed extrasolar planets and over twice that many “candidates” that are still being analyzed.
Most of these planets are nothing like our earth. But some - about 20 thus far - are approximately earth sized, and are in what we call the Goldilocks zone, neither too close to their parent star (and therefore too hot) nor too far (or too cold). In our own Solar System, Earth, Venus, and Mars are all examples of “earthlike” planets - planets that are potential homes for life. Of those, Earth is the only one we know harbors life, and Venus and Mars almost certainly do not.
So, based on what we knew scientifically, in 1990 there were no extrasolar planets. Even five years ago, none of the 20 earthlike planets out there had been found. Today, our perspective on the universe is different -- there at least 20 possible homes for living organisms out there among the stars.
Well, perhaps this seems more routine than transcendent to us. After all, we are sophisticated beings and users of technology. We routinely talk, email, text, chat, instagram, and Facebook with people who are thousands or tens of thousands of miles away. We know within moments every time one of the Kardashians takes a selfie, or whether the Chinese stock market closed up or down. Another 20 Earths? No big deal.
Well consider this — The measurements we have used to identify these 20 planets are from a cluster of about 150,000 stars within our galaxy. And that sounds like a lot - until you consider that our neighborhood of stars - that we call the Milky Way galaxy - contains about 400 billion stars. That’s a four followed by 11 zeros (400,000,000,000). Simple extrapolation based on our 20 observed earthlike planets tell us that there are likely to be over 10 billion earthlike planets in our galaxy alone. So, tell me, has the universe changed for you a little bit in the last few minutes? The smallest sense of awe has crept in, perhaps?
Let us begin with this - Whatever their differences, both Science and Faith share a connection to the transcendent.
Each can somehow evoke a sense of awe, and can pull back the curtain to show us that the world we thought we lived is no more. But they do so in very different ways. In matters of faith we are guided by intuition, by our feelings, by that still small voice that we perceive as a connection to the divine. The scientific method - that’s a little different.
There are many characterizations of science. We all carry in our heads some version of the prototypical man (yes, still, today) in a white coat wearing glasses and looking slightly disheveled. He may have trouble looking us in the eye and is likely uncomfortable in social situations. But he knows lots of stuff. So how does Science learn all that "stuff?"
While I was studying Physics as an undergraduate, I learned that science is about two things: Mathematics and Observation. Mathematics, which is really tool of logic, also turns out to be an almost unbelievably powerful language for capturing and describing how our universe works. We speak of the Law of Gravity.- which was not drafted by a legislature and written down in a law book in English or Hebrew or Sanskrit - it is instead expressed as a rather simple mathematical equation.
The other fundamental aspect is observation. The majority of the effort spent in the sciences is about trying to observe particular phenomena either for the first time, or (most importantly) in a repeatable fashion. The ability to repeat observations is one of the keys to having confidence in a scientific result or theory.
For scientists an observation means experiments. Experiments can take place in a room with bunsen burners and test tubes, or in the midst of a tornado, in the abyssal deeps of the ocean, or flying through the rings of Saturn.
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| An image taken by the Cassini spacecraft, currently orbiting Saturn. |
Experiments are key to the scientific method. There are a number of parts to it, but the essence is that scientists formulate a hypothesis - which is really a prediction - then they test that prediction against observations - by performing experiments. They try to do so without letting human opinions, beliefs, biases, or other assumptions get in the way. Mathematics helps with that - we use the unemotional logic of mathematics to formulate our predictions wherever we can and to analyze our observations.
So before I go on, I need to draw some distinctions between a couple of the words that I’m using. For our purposes right now, let’s consider the scientific method - as I’ve just described it to you - to be the essential ingredient of the human endeavor we call Science-with-a-capital-S. And that faith is the essential ingredient of the human endeavor that we call Religion with a capital R.
Big R Religion and big S Science are human endeavors. We create organizations around them, which have hierarchies and therefore people with more or less influence or control. Because there are necessarily people involved, conflicts occur - within big S Science and big R Religion - as well as between the two. Some of those conflicts are quite famous and some are even ongoing. Debates about evolution, about the age of the Earth (or the universe), or about whether the Earth is at the center of creation have been largely settled in favor of Science (although by no means completely). Some people talk about the conflict or contradiction between Religion and Science. As if a scientist couldn’t possibly be religious, or a person of faith would have to reject science.
The National Academy of Science actually has a policy to address this issue. If I may summarize it, it essentially says that religion and science address separate spheres, and no controversy or contradiction between them needs to exist.
All well and good, I suppose. I find myself a little uneasy with the certainty with which the Academy separates the two - one as being of the natural world and the other the supernatural. Let me talk a little bit about that.
I certainly agree that there is no inherent conflict between the essence of science and faith. A couple years ago, watching the sun rise at the top of Mt. Whitney, I knew that I was at 14,500 feet above sea level, that the horizon was about 120 miles away, that i had just finished a trek on the John Muir trail of over 200 miles, and gained and lost over 80,000 vertical feet in the process. I knew that I could see mountains and lakes and in the High Sierra and the lights of small towns in the Owens Valley. I also knew a sense of wonder and a deep sense of accomplishment and an almost overwhelming thankfulness for a God who could create such splendor and allow me to experience it. I did not experience these as separate things. I did not flip a switch between the factual observations and how I felt - both were present at the same time within me. So when the academy says that they are separate, my response is to be somewhat skeptical. I just don’t believe that its that simple as “over here is science and over there is religion and as long as we keep the fence in good repair, everyone will be happy."
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| Sunrise from the summit of Mt Whitney |
If we look at history, there is some relevant background to the idea of conflict between Science and Religion.
Toward the end of the Renaissance, and nearly at the end of the Protestant Reformation, Galileo was tried a second time for heresy because he continued to insist that the Earth was not the fixed center of the universe, in contradictions to Church teachings. Before his first trail in 1616, he wrote in an essay:
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
This could well be a motto for the congregation of this church or the Episcopal church in general. So Galileo saw nothing inherently unfaithful in his espousal of scientific ideas.
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| One of a series of astronomical images commissioned in 1711 for Pope Clement XI, by Donato Creti. Galileo's observations of the motion of the moons of Jupiter (shown here) were a key piece of evidence supporting his then-heretical ideas. |
Could Science then replace the need for Faith? Do we truly live inside a clockwork universe, where all we need to do is to complete our understanding the natural laws, and from that point forward be able to control or predict everything?
Before you say no, stop and consider this for a minute. What if one were to magically translate Abraham to our time? Lacking our education and context, might he see us as supernatural beings with powers that he ascribed only to God? Would he still need faith - if all the things he used to pray for could be guaranteed? In other words could science someday supplant the need for faith.
In fact, Science is telling us “no."
In the late 1920’s Werner Heisenberg proposed his famous uncertainty principle. Work by Erwin Schrödinger laid out the fundamental mathematics of quantum physics in the middle of the 20th century. And more recently a branch of physics called “chaos theory” was invented to deal with a set of very difficult - possibly even insoluble problems in classical mechanics. All three of these have one common aspect - they all tell us that there are limits on our ability to predict the behavior of physical systems. Perhaps you are saying “of course” because the weatherman still manages to get the weather predictions wrong. And we all know from our experiences that things almost never turn out exactly as predicted. But stay with me, because this is more fundamental than that.
We can blame the unpredictability of weather on the fact that our forecasting models aren’t good enough - yet. But if we study it some more, in another ten or twenty years… And past experience might back that up - we have dramatically improved our abilities.
No, these three findings all point to the fact that uncertainty is built into the very structure of our universe. There are some things that we simply cannot know ahead of time.
Personally, I find that heartening. An existence that is completely predictable and understandable is one in which the transcendent has become the mundane and we are to be tyrannized by the commonplace. I want to be surprised by the latest picture from Pluto, or the discovery of another earthlike planet out there with an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. And to be able to have faith that behind the latest new discovery will be more questions, and more discoveries to be made.
Recall that the scripture this week is about encounters with the divine - but more than that, they are about a revealing of the divine. We call the event in which the disciples see Elijah and Moses appear and meet with Jesus the “transfiguration.” Transfiguration is “a change in form or appearance” and “an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change.” It’s important to remember this change, this transfiguration wasn’t of Jesus himself - after all, he was already the son of God. No, the Transfiguration was about how the disciples felt while the fabric of the world they knew suddenly buckle, shift, and re-align, as this man, this teacher they were following was revealed to be of the divine.
In much the same way, the Israelites in the desert had to confront Moses’ encounter with the divine - and were frightened enough by what they saw that Moses had to veil his face. Sometimes anything more than a glimpse of the divine may overwhelm us. We turn our heads, avert our eyes. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul is encouraging us to look - to have courage and to be transformed as we stare into the unveiled light of the glory of the Lord.
And this, I believe, is the nature of the connection between science and faith. Both urge us on, to open our eyes and boldly look into the face of that which we have never before seen. In that moment of mingled awe and curiosity, we are somehow as God intended us to be.
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| The author, watching the sunrise from the summit of Mt. Whitney on Sept. 24, 2014. |
