WWSD? What Would (Carl) Sagan Do?

The Case for Unifying Science and Religion (Part One)

I’m starting a new series today for paid subscribers: “The Case for Unifying Science and Religion”. In last week’s Week in Review I tipped my hand that for some time now I’ve been exploring science as a permittable pathway for deep spiritual meaning.

The discovery of Hegel’s dialectic, a philosophical concept attributed to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, which describes a framework for resolving seemingly opposing and irreconcilable ideas by creating a synergistic alternative. It’s often explained as: Thesis → Antithesis → Synthesis. I have used this concept recently in exploring the synergistic significance of joining Christianity and Atheism, which appear on the surface to be incompatible opposites. In my view, Hegel’s dialectic may be capable of reconciling the age-old schism between religion and science.

The prevailing view of science is “scientific naturalism”, which asserts that nothing exists beyond the natural world and that scientific forms of investigation are the only way to gain knowledge of the cosmos. This view eliminates any possibility of a supernatural world - no gods, no spirits, no transcendent meanings in the fundamental architecture of the world.

On the other hand, the below explanation of the universe doesn’t exactly inspire a life of beauty, transcendence and meaning:

I’m not saying that religion and spirituality are legitimate on the basis of being inserted into our understanding of the universe as a coping mechanism for the cold hard facts of existence. In other words, that the use of religion and spirituality are merely to help the medicine go down. No, what I’m arguing in this series is that religion and spirituality (when understood a certain way) has something invaluable to offer alongside science in constructing the narrative of existence.

In my view, Hegel’s dialectic is useful for reconciling the schism between science and religion. In this respect, one could apply the Hegel dialectic as follows:

Thesis: The proper understanding of life can only be attained through science.

Antithesis: Life cannot be truly understood without the belief in God.

Synthesis: Science and spirituality offer different but compatible and accordant understanding of the nature of reality.

Carl Sagan to the Rescue

During my religious deconstruction process many moons ago, it was Carl Sagan who helped expel my evangelical fear of science. His book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark impacted me deeply. Sagan wrote, “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”

Carl Sagan often stated that when we understand our place in the cosmos, the intricate details of life, and the immense scale of time and space, it can lead to feelings of profound wonder and humility, which he considered a spiritual experience. Though not religious in the traditional sense, Sagan did not see science as inherently opposed to spirituality, suggesting that a “cosmic religion” based on scientific understanding could be a powerful source of meaning. Sagan emphasized the need for skepticism and critical thinking in both science and spirituality, cautioning against accepting beliefs without evidence. 

For the past 25 years the sciences have been instrumental in my post-religion formation. I cut my teeth on Steven Hawkins, Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Carlo Rovelli, Richard Feynman and John von Neumann. By the time I got around to reading Darwin’s The Origin of Species I was sufficiently convinced that religion made a grave error by making an enemy out of science.

I am also aware that one can make science a religion, complete with its own secular clergy, claims of infallible truth, and demands for devotion and allegiance. Sometimes the word “scientism” is used when accusing science of being its own kind of fundamentalism, insisting that science is the only way to know the truth and that it should be applied to all areas of study, including the humanities and social sciences. This is based on the belief that science alone can provide truth about reality and that other areas of study should conform to scientific models to be considered rational.

In my view, Carl Sagan embodied Hegel’s dialectic when it comes to science and religion. On the one hand Sagan wrote:

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

On the other hand, Sagan said:

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

Although Sagan has been identified as an atheist according to some definitions, he rejected the label, stating, “An atheist has to know a lot more than I know.” He was an agnostic who, while maintaining that the idea of a creator of the universe was difficult to disprove, nevertheless disbelieved in God’s existence. And yet, Sagan viewed the universe as a transcendent marvel, and came to his high view of our species through his work as a planetary scientist.

It often feels like the relationship between religion and science is fraught by misunderstandings and straw man stereotypes and two are talking past each other.

Mistakes To Avoid When Discussing Science and Religion

Language is the social technology our species created to keep the project of survival going. It’s an extraordinary advancement, but language has severe limitations, which I discuss in detail in this previous article. For the purpose of this piece, a definition of both “science” and “religion” are in order. Toward that end, I will define these terms simply as follows:

Science is the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world.

Religion is our relation to what we regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence.

In my view and based on these definitions, there are three mistakes to avoid when taking both science and religion under consideration together:

1. The Stay-In-Your-Lane Mistake

Though science and religion are obviously different in several ways, it’s a mistake to assume they are mutually exclusive and unrelated. This was Carl Sagan’s point when he said that science can be a profound source of spirituality. Likewise, not all religious people believe that scientific discoveries are incompatible with the existence of God. Lastly, it would be foolish to believe that scientific and religious understandings of the universe are untainted by any philosophical bias or prejudice for or against God, the supernatural, or transcendent significance. Writing off teleology is an oversight by science, and writing off Darwinism is a blunder of religion. Science and religion are not binary opposites and should not be cast into the either/or mold. The solution here is to acknowledge that the focus of science and religion are different, and to realize there are places of meaningful overlap worth exploring, which is true across all fields of knowledge and inquiry.

2. The Pseudo Mistake

When people who are not scientists start theologizing or spiritualizing science, you run the risk of propagating pseudoscience. For example, Deepak Chopra often speaks authoritatively about quantum reality, though he has no credentials in physics or quantum mechanics. It’s fine for Chopra to be a proponent of Ayurveda theory, but equating this with expertise in physics in problematic.

Similarly, if someone has already written off all religion and spirituality as illegitimate, indefensible, poisonous and mental illness, they are not in a position to represent the insights of fields such as the psychology of religion, philosophy of religion and anthropology of religion. Richard Dawkins has a PhD in Zoology, not in Philosophy of Religion.

Atheist scientists are sometimes fond of fighting what I call pseudoreligion, which seems to equate all “religion” with its most fundamentalist, extreme, and psychotic versions. In my view, these are easy strawman targets, and pass over progressive, nuanced, unitive and compelling religious thinking.

The answer is not for religious people to masquerade as scientists or for scientists to pretend they have the last word on the value or significance of religion. The solution is mutual respect. Not all scientists claim that religion is psychotic. Not all people who refer to God are religious extremists and not all those who refer to spirituality are “New Age”.

3. Out-of-Touch Mistake

There are two growing phenomena, which should not be taken lightly: the rise of non-religious spirituality and teleological science.

Non-religious spirituality approaches matters of personal spirituality, existential health, and ultimate reality outside the framework of traditional religious frameworks.

The religiously unaffiliated, called “nones,” are growing exponentially. In fact, they are now the single the largest identifiable group in the United States. Generation Z (born between 1999 and 2015) is the nation’s least religious generation. It’s not only a lack of religious affiliation that distinguishes Generation Z. They are far more likely to identify as atheist or agnostic. The percentage of Gen Z that identifies as atheist is double that of the general U.S. population. There is also the Exvangelical movement (2.5 million people), which is becoming more prominent on the American religious landscape.

The last several weeks I have been writing about the resurgence of “Christian Atheism” and “death of God theology”, which understands the significance of Jesus and the Christian narrative as the end of “God” as conceived by religion and classical theism. I recently spoke at ORTCON 24 (Open and Relational Theology Conference), which is a theological movement that connects Whiteheadian process philosophy with a panentheistic view of God. Metamodern spirituality and Metamodern Christianity are other theological frameworks that depart from traditional religious thinking and take into account a scientific understanding of the universe.

If you are interested, last week I sat down with DR.

Cadell Last

to discuss Christian Atheism and death of God theology, which you can watch here.

Equally significant is the growing prominence of teleological science, which refers to a way of explaining natural phenomena by invoking purpose or goal-directedness, essentially suggesting that things in nature exist or behave in a certain way because they are designed to achieve a specific end or purpose. I wrote about this in my most recent Week in Review, particularly my discussion about “poetic meta-naturalism”.

A few scientific books I have recently read (and recommend), related to teleological science are:

• Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett

• I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter

• The Romance of Reality by

  Bobby Azarian

Nobel Prize-winning Belgian cytologist and biochemist, Christian René de Duve wrote:

“If the universe is not meaningless, what is its meaning? For me, this meaning is to be found in the structure of the universe, which happens to be such as to produce thought by way of life and mind. Thought, in turn, is a faculty whereby the universe can reflect upon itself, discover its own structure, and apprehend such immanent entities as truth, beauty, goodness, and love. Such is the meaning of the universe, as I see it.”

Planetary scientist, Carolyn Porco, connects science and spirituality together this way:

“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.’ But the same spiritual fulfillment and connection can be found in the revelations of science. I consider myself a spiritual person, meaning that I’m someone who seeks the extraordinary in the ordinary; someone who wants to know the underlying meaning of everything; someone who looks around them at everyday life and asks, “Is there a purpose to this? Where is this leading? What lies beyond? And how do I fit into this whole picture?”

Particle physicist Jeff Forshaw writes,

“I am struck by the astonishing beauty of the central equations in physics, which seem to reveal something remarkable about our universe. The natural world operates according to some beautiful rules. We are discovering something at the heart of things. It feels like a personal thing – like we are relating to something very special.”

In the non-religious community there are different ways people relate to the word and concept of spirituality. Atheist neuroscientist Sam Harris wrote a NY Time bestselling book on non-religious and science-based spirituality, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. In the world of religious deconstruction, Brittney Hartley published, No Nonsense Spirituality: All the Tools No Belief Required, which aids religion-leavers in reconstructing a secular and scientific spirituality.

All of this to say that both religion/spirituality and science are finding more common ground and places for dialogue. To not recognize this is being out-of-touch with modern theological and scientific scholarship.

Lessons From a Father and Daughter

Everyone has heard of Galileo Galilei. Galileo was born on February 15, 1564, in Pisa, Italy. He was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. A mathematics professor, he made observations with implications for the future study of physics.

Galileo used a microscope to magnify small objects and observe details that were not visible to the naked eye, similar to how he used a telescope to study the night sky. While he is most famous for his astronomical discoveries with the telescope, Galileo also experimented with microscopes, contributing to the early development of the field by exploring the microscopic world with lenses and publishing some of the first observations made with a microscope through the Academy of the Lynx.

Galileo is credited with inventing the telescope in 1609. However, the first person to apply for a patent on a telescope was Hans Lippershey, a lensmaker in the Netherlands, in 1608. But it was the telescope that got Galileo into trouble. After making significant improvements to the telescope, he made a startling and heretical discovery - we live in a sun-centered solar system.

Nicolaus Copernicus is credited with discovering the sun-centered solar system, also known as the heliocentric model, while Galileo Galilei provided significant observational evidence that supported this theory using his telescope, effectively proving it to be correct.

Today virtually every child grows up learning that the earth orbits the sun. But four centuries ago, the idea of a heliocentric solar system was so controversial that the Catholic Church classified it as a heresy, and warned the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei to abandon it. In the Catholic world prior to Galileo’s conflict with the Church, the majority of educated people subscribed to the Aristotelian geocentric view that the Earth was the center of the universe. The Catholic Church insisted that the Bible taught this view.

In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing the observations that he had made with his new, much stronger telescope, amongst them, the Galilean moons of Jupiter. With these and other observations, such as the phases of Venus, he promoted the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus published in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Galileo’s opinions were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be “formally heretical”.

The Inquisition was a judicial procedure and a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, apostasy, blasphemy, witchcraft, and customs considered deviant. During the 1933 Inquisition proceedings against Galileo, the following decree against Galileo were proclaimed:

“We hereby find Galileo guilty of heresy on the grounds for having held and believed a doctrine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture; that the sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west, and the earth moves and is not the center of the world, and that one may hold and defend as probable an opinion after it has been declared defined contrary to the Holy Scripture.”

As the story goes, Galileo protested with these words:

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use.”

Galileo was sentenced to house arrest for life, and died in 1642 at age 77.

What I find interesting is that Galileo never claimed to be atheist, but maintained his Catholic faith until his death. Galileo assumed that since God endowed him with the intellect to gain knowledge of the universe through science, that God would not disapprove of him or the results of doing so. He wrote, “It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.”

In 1758 the Catholic Church dropped the general prohibition of books advocating heliocentrism from the Index of Forbidden Books but did not explicitly rescind the decisions issued by the Inquisition in its judgement of 1633 against Galileo.

In 1979, Pope John Paul II expressed the hope that “theologians, scholars and historians, animated by a spirit of sincere collaboration, will study the Galileo case more deeply and in loyal recognition of wrongs, from whatever side they come.” In 1992, it was reported that the Catholic Church had turned towards vindicating Galileo by stating:

‘Thanks to his intuition as a brilliant physicist and by relying on different arguments, Galileo, who practically invented the experimental method, understood why only the sun could function as the center of the world, as it was then known, that is to say, as a planetary system. The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the Earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture.”

And Then There was Virginia

Everyone knows Galileo. Not as well known is his eldest daughter, Virginia.

Galileo had three children, but was closest to his eldest, Virginia. She was born of his illicit affair with Marina Gamba of Venice. Her birth was in the summer of a new century – August 13, 1600, the same year when a Dominican friar, Giordano Bruno, who believed the Earth traveled around the Sun, was burned at the stake.

Of his three children, it is common knowledge that Galileo most identified and connected with Virginia. In a letter to a colleague, he once extolled her as “a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly attached to myself.” He saw in her a counterpart to his own intellect, sensibility, and restless seeker spirit.

Yet one enormous incongruity marked their relationship: on her thirteenth birthday, Virginia entered a convent and remained there for the rest of her short life (dying of dysentery at 33 years of age). She took the name Maria Celeste as a nun. It is surmised that Celeste might have been a celestial nod to her father, an astronomer and lover of the stars. Celeste was religiously devout yet devoted to her father, in constant correspondence with him as he set about upending the most fundamental tenets of religion with his revolutionary scientific discoveries.

From her cloister, Maria Celeste was a source of support not only for her Poor Clares sisters, but also for her father. Maria Celeste served as San Matteo's apothecary (herself being of frail health). She sent her father herbal treatments for his maladies while additionally managing the convent’s finances. There is evidence she prepared the manuscripts for some of Galileo’s books. Maria Celeste was also a mediator between her father and her brother. She frequently asked her father for help for the convent, and kept it afloat through his influence. Galileo helped repair its windows and made sure its clock was in order.

The volatile relationship between spirituality and science through history is uniquely captured in the relationship between Galileo and his daughter, Virginia. This is a subject brilliantly explored in great detail in Dava Sobel’s book, Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love.

The book is based on the surviving letters of Galileo Galilei's daughter, the nun Maria Celeste, and explores their relationship. There are 124 extant letters written by Virginia to her father, composed between 1623-1634. The book was nominated for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Sobel writes in Galileo’s Daughter:

“Virginia adopted the name Maria Celeste when she became a nun, in a gesture that acknowledged her father’s fascination with the stars. Even after she professed a life of prayer and penance, she remained devoted to Galileo as though to a patron saint.”

The big mystery here is how Galileo was able to reconcile his scientific devotion to critical thinking with his daughter’s unquestioning faith, and how Virginia was able to reconcile her religious devotion with her father’s heresy.

Sobel argues that Galileo and Virginia transcended the perplexities of their differences by making loving room for a simultaneity of devotions, both between and within themselves. To the modern mind, so bedeviled by binaries, such a simultaneity of conflicting convictions seems almost incomprehensible. But at rock bottom, father Galileo and daughter Virginia were bound together by a deep love for one another and a love for truth.

Even as I write this, I feel a surge of emotion from the bottom of my gut up through my chest and throat, and into my eyes. When I came across that above sketch of Galileo and his daughter, it seized my heart. I love my daughter Jessica so much. It’s a love that sometimes hurts, which I’m guessing most parents would understand. Nothing could ever diminish my love for Jessica. Like Galileo and Virginia, my daughter and I have our differences of beliefs. She’s the devout believer. I’m the accused heretic. Yet, this has never impacted our unbending love for each other, nor our steely commitment to the liberation of humankind, Jessica with a career in social work.

Galileo’s supreme tool was neither the microscope nor the telescope but curiosity itself — an indiscriminate curiosity that rendered him equally interested in the microscopic and the monumental. Perhaps peering into the cell and witnessing its miraculous marvels, invisible to the naked eye, was what granted him the confidence and faith that the cosmos might hide similar revelations, accessible to the curious, tireless, and determined eye. He wrote, “Who will assert that everything in the universe capable of being perceived is already discovered and known?”

In my mind, the story of Galileo and his daughter establish a few useful considerations for our discussion about unifying science and religion. First, what exactly do I mean by “unifying science and religion”?

In this series I am hoping to make the case for science and religion to collaborate in telling the truest story of existence.

The essential ideas underlying this aim are:

Science - the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world.

Religion - our relation to what we regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of especial reverence.

Collaborate - work jointly on a shared goal.

Truest - that which most accurately and fully corresponds to reality.

Story - understanding expressing knowledge in the form of a narrative.

Existence - the continuance of life in the form of being and becoming

A few Galileo and Virginia - Father-Daughter - considerations would be:

1. Writing off science and religion as binary opposites is missing that they both share the same desire to seek and know the true and full nature of reality. Galileo and Virginia forged their own kind of “namaste” connection: “The spirit that seeks knowledge and truth in me, honors the same spirit that seeks knowledge and truth in you.”

2. Even given the different but worthy endeavors of scientific or spiritual investigation, love is what holds space for mutual respect, regard, fondness and devotion. Let me re-write 1 Corinthians 13:13: “And now these three remain: exploration, knowledge and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Galileo was the convent handyman, Virginia edited books of heresy. How could this be? Love transcends every binary.

3. Religion’s axiom: hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner is problematic. Let’s be honest. This phrase is often a cover for a religious person to judge, condemn, dehumanize, and objectify others, based upon their hypocritical list of “sins” they were told in church are especially abominable to God. Science has its own version of this: hate-the-religion-love-the-religious. Likewise, this is often a cover for trampling a person’s religious beliefs and accusing them of either stupidity or psychosis, and then saying something like “…but I’m sure they are a fine person” to cover their hostility. Galileo and Virginia had different views on many things, but they were family - bound by blood. At the end of the day, we all comprise one species and one human family. One might peer into the universe with a telescope, while another peers through meditation. Either way, we are all bound by blood.

Part Two next week.

In Summary

• Carl Sagan is the patron saint for reconciling science and religion.

• Hegel’s dialectic is a framework for synthesizing the best of science and religion.

• Galileo was the convent handyman, Virginia edited books of heresy. How could this be? Love transcends every binary.

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“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.”
- Galileo