“How the Science Story Can Speak to People of Fath”
Karen Sloan
Readings - Selected Readings for a few scientists
Albert Einstein
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
Joan Roughgarden, Evolutionary Biologist
“I trust few readers will be troubled that we and other living things are one another’s kin. Many of us have been dismayed to discover previously unknown brothers and sisters. We can’t choose our parents or kin. Starfish, worms and plants, even rose bushes and redwood trees, are our distinct relatives, whether we like it or not. Rather than troubling, for me its appealing to think that all of life is united into one body through membership in a common family tree.”
Brian Swimme, a Cosmologist
“The Universe story shows how profoundly related we are. It shows that we are involved with each other and have been for a long time. So, it is not the case that the earth was assembled and then we were added to the earth, and it was there for our purposes. Rather, we came out of the Earth..”
Selected Biblical texts - Psalm 139 7-12 , Acts 17:22-28, Mark 12:28-34
When I was pondering this sermon, following on from our exploration of the divine impulse last week I realised that this was a sermon, not a science lesson.
So I am not going to go into huge details about how evolution occurs, what is the evidence for it, and how when Darwin released his Origin of the Species in 1859 he totally rocked and changed the world, particularly the religious world. That when he showed how features that are more beneficial to an individual creature and help it survive and adapt, are passed on to future generations, he brought into question where we came from and the time frame. A time frame that has our ancestors come into the picture about 300,000 years ago. From a world much older. Or that today evolution is not just about survival of a species but about the development of co-operation and the art of working together, and about culture and how societies grow and develop.
I’m not going to explore cosmology, gravity waves, and dark matter, about how we know that the universe dates back to about 13.8 billion years, from a single point that exploded and is now expanding. Or how Einstein’s radical and life changing work in physics means we can have phones that guide our way using satellites in space, and bombs that explode and kill thousands of people in a single go.
I will not attempt to teach you the beauty of our genetic material called DNA, found in each and every cell, but which today is not the only thing that affects who we are and how we behave. That there are other things that influence how those genes are expressed, including childhood trauma and experiences. I am not going to detail how our consciousness and the mind, far from being solely found in the brain may actually be part of a cosmic consciousness, or that every little part of us down to the smallest of atoms may actually have some sort of elementary mind which when summed produces us.
I am not going to dwell on the idea of quantum mechanics, the infinitesimally small, that makes up the world we live in and which at some point makes it impossible to work out what is happening and what is going to happen. I am not going to try to explain how time slows down when we are in space or in an aircraft, how 2 sub atomic particles, initially joined but then separated can influence each other seemingly without being connected, which Einstein called, spooky action at a distance. A good description of much of modern physics.
No, I am not going to do any of that, perhaps a First Sunday Forum would be the place for some education.
Instead I want to integrate, as I said last week. I am an integrationist between science and faith and so I want to show you how I and many others do it, and it’s not a magic trick. Rather we do it by acknowledging that both science and faith are full of mysteries.
So where to start? Perhaps by going deeper.
And what we have found, when we take both disciplines seriously, is amazing. It now appears the universe is made up of matter, bits and pieces of matter that are drawn together in relationship. It is not about the things so much but about how things are related, from the very small to the very big. And these related bits of matter seem to come together to make more rather than less. The history of the universe story is about making more.
How, you might ask? Let me describe 3 distinct characteristics which have been discovered.
1. There is increasing complexity, atoms are more complex than particles, cells are more complex than molecules, a person is more complex than a group of cells.
2 There is increasing depth – atoms from particles, cells from molecules, each adding a layer of depth as it unfolds. When atoms bond to atoms you get something new, that didn’t exist in a lower level. This process is called emergence. "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts," meaning the whole has properties its parts do not have. These properties come about because of interactions among the parts. Emergence can be applied to every science area, including evolution where self-organisation plays a significant role. Emergence is internally driven rather than from something external.
When we talk about it in terms of humans, it’s like when you put all the cells together we get a whole person, and an extra layer of life bursts forth, that wasn’t there before. By looking at each one of us, we know that’s true.
3 There is increasing unity –those of similar essence and substance bond together, creating this something new. Everything in the universe wants to bond with substances that will make something bigger and more complex than themselves.
These 3 things are essential to the expansion of the universe and life. It’s like progress is the soul of the universe, something is driving it forward, something hidden. There is a direction if you like to greater complexity, depth and unity.
So while science measures substance and matter, there is this interconnectedness, that is not so easily measurable. For many, scientists and non-scientists, God is revealed as the other, the extra, the energy, or breathe which gives this order, intimately involved in creation at every level since the beginning of the story. In fact, there seems to be a progression forward, from the smallest amount of stardust to us, as conscious beings, which is astounding and ultimately mysterious. And it has not finished.
This is what lies beneath when we go deeper.
As Charles Birch has said “The universe is a happening of happenings. Stop the happenings and the universe collapses. God is necessary for the world but God is not the world and the world is not God. God is not before all creation but with all creation. The world includes God and God perfects the world. There is no world apart from God.”
But all of that is pretty hard to point to or explain. Rob Bell concludes in his book on God, it is a reality that can be known, felt and experienced, but one that cannot be located in any specific physical space in any tangible way. Whether you are a scientist or a theologian language is limited.
One definition that I have often used and love, comes from Barbara Brown Taylor. I think it really encompasses all that I have been talking about. Firstly a picture to reflect on and the words…
Picture of stars
“Where is God in this picture? God is all over the place. God is up there, down here, inside my skin and out. God is the web, the energy, the space, the light—not captured in them, as if any of those concepts were more real than what unites them—but revealed in that singular, vast net of relationship that animates everything that is. At this point in my thinking, it is not enough for me to proclaim that God is responsible for all this unity. Instead, I want to proclaim that God is the unity—the very energy, the very intelligence, the very elegance and passion that makes it all go. “
Rather a beautiful description!
So while this description of God does not sound all that traditional, or biblical, although I do think some of the Hebrew and NT scriptures try to describe God in this way, and we heard a couple today, it does incorporate what we know of the world and of us. Science informing faith in the 21st century.
And there are lots of other people, writers and poets, theologians, even more scientists, and people like you and me, who have also let go of the traditional descriptions of God. Particularly the God outside of the universe intervening now and then, updating it to something found within all of life and the world but greater than the world. Many talk about God being in all things, the ground of being, the essential element of life, and about a mystery and a connection that is at the very depth of it all.
As Val Webb has written -
The sea of divine attention
Laps my soul,
But not only mine.
Others feel its stroking,
On the other side of the ocean,
By sharing these waters,
The world is connected.
So this idea that we are all connected, and brought together in a interconnected web of being is an incredible picture, don’t you think. We are born from the same stars, born from the same divine life force, born with such commonality it is mind blowing.
Maybe it will lead to a new way of being a person of faith.
For if we see God as the divine presence in life that unites all, it should unite and connect all of us. Maybe we are being called to bond together to make something new by the God of the universe. For God is still working in the world.
Maybe we are called to become aware of that divine presence, that urge and do something with it.
Maybe we are already witnessing a change.
Maybe today it is not the death of God that we are seeing but the reawakening of God in the world, in the everyday, in all of life. A God not of religion, but of awareness, of presence, of hope and love, forgiveness and compassion.
Because we know gives life. To people and communities and nations.
Racism doesn’t, loneliness doesn’t, injustice doesn’t, inequality doesn’t, and fundamentalism doesn’t. Love does. So does compassion and justice and non-violence. And peace. That’s what gives life.
In fact maybe what we are doing, when we feel the urge for community, cooperation and order, when we bind together in harmony is recreating the universe. By increasing depth, complexity and unity, and producing something new we join in with the spirit of life found everywhere. We can give life to one another, if we respond to the pull of this mysterious force called God that has always been there.
It’s not to say there won’t be some deviations and pitfalls along the way. There have been many. For there is also death, destruction, dead ends and wrong turns in the story of the universe and of us. But life seems to be what we end up with.
As Charles Birch would say..
‘God is the spirit that breathes life into creatures and calls the higher organisms to the more abundant life of love”
Perhaps that’s what the ancients meant when they said God is love. Even if they didn’t know about the universe and its story. Or when Jesus spoke his two greatest commandments linking love of God and love of others into a final overarching summary of fullness of life. Greater than burnt offerings and sacrifices.
Something to ponder..
For I am no expert on God, just an explorer.
Amen