Mystery Sermonette

Sermonette delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tallahassee on 3/25/12.

If there's one thing that we UUs ought to do this morning to fulfill our compulsory stereotypical quota, it's find the commonalities among all religions, right? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? So, to oblige that duty this morning I'll ask, what's fundamental to every religion? Below all the vast differences, where's the bedrock lie?

Well, ask 5 Unitarians and you'll get 50 answers, but I'll add one more to the pile. A religion can't make it, can't function, can't hack it without one thing--mystery. Like some kind of perverse addiction, humans desperately seek out mystery. No where is this fascination with mystery more evident than in four fundamental aspects of the human experience: sex, stories, science and religion.

First off, sex:  Cognitive developmental psychology explains that one of the mechanisms that drives the formation of our sexual attractions is an affinity for difference (I’m told this is true for homosexuals as well). We look for differences and are drawn to them. We seek out mystery in romance. We want a tease. As it's said, if you want sizzle, you've gotta leave something to the imagination. Mystery lights up our brains and our romance.

Stories:  Have you ever thought about how weird our fascination with stories is? Why do we spend billions and billions and billions on movies, books and TV? We, "Just gotta know how it ends!" We despise and yet are addicted to cliffhangers. Good writers know this. They know that it's often what you /don't/ say, don’t show that is more important than what you do say--the monster you never see the face of, the whodunit, the love that may or may not find consummation. We're desperate to solve a mystery.

Science: Some of science is solving practical problems so that we can fix everyday life problems, but a huge portion of science has been and always will be just for the sake of knowing, because we're curious--mysteries of consciousness and how the brain works, the uttermost stretches of outer space, the existence of extraterrestrial life, the inner workings of the quantum realm, the pageantry of our planet's evolutionary history. Each unanswered question draws a deep part of ourselves that doesn't just want to know, but wants to find out; to search and not just to obtain.

Religion's no different: German theologian Rudolph Otto gave us the term 'mysterium tremendum' to describe the sense of 'holy' or 'god', a 'tremendous and terrible mystery' that we desperately seek out in life to worship. Our religious preoccupation with the mysterious abounds in the form or paradoxes and secret knowledge in religion--the nature of the Trinity, the path to Enlightenment, the paradox of free will, the duality of spirit and matter, prophecy, secret incantations, hidden codes, the list continues.

Einstein said it best:

"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this alone, I am a deeply religious man---Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature." --Einstein

Mystery inspires, inflames, enlivens, seduces, captivates, fascinates, terrifies and brings us to tearful awe. Mystery is religion at its deepest core because mystery is the fundamental response of the universe to our most basic questions. As the songwriter Iris Dement put it,

"Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be."

Symbiosis - Sermon by Painting

This painting is a sermon.  It’s the foundation and basis for how I think about morality, how I struggle to live and essentially my worldview.  Captured best by the Bible quote, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” symbiosis, or the living together of two different organisms, provides tangible evidence of sorts that cooperation works.  In fact, put better, that cooperation out competes competition.  Far from nature being a ruthless typification of, “Red in tooth and claw,”  these six panels highlight the generosity and love woven throughout life. Explanation of the six panels provided below (from left to right starting with the top row):  

1. Gaia (the Greek goddess of the Earth) is the idea of thinking of the Earth as one massive self-regulating, cybernetic organism.  This idea is also combined with a concept that life promotes life.  E.g., a tree existing in a field makes it possible for squirrels to live in its branches, eat its nuts, birds to nest in it, wasps to pollinate its flowers, the shade provides a moist microclimate for fungi and other plants, etc.  Life promotes life.  Because the tree exists a multitude of life is possible.  The other classic example from the book Gaia by James Lovelock is our atmosphere.  Because life has come before us our atmosphere now is composed of 21% oxygen (a by-product of photosynthesis), 78% nitrogen (a bacterial byproduct) and .0039% carbon dioxide (removed from the atmosphere by photosynthesis).  Without life having proceeded us to make a hospitable atmosphere we'd have a very, very similar atmosphere to our nearest neighbor Mars--95% carbon dioxide (runaway greenhouse).  Life has made our life possible--Gaia.

2. The second panel is about endosymbiosis, which is the concept that the mitochondria within our bodies, who essentially power our body by the production of ATP, are former bacteria.  This should truly hit you if it hasn’t before--the best science out there says that you aren’t one organism.   You’re the combination of at least two different critters that have become so mutually dependant for the last 2 billion years or so that we’re inseparable now.  Evidence for this can be seen that mitochondria has its own set of DNA (a plasmid just like bacteria, which is very important for phylogenetics), that they divide just like bacteria (which is why it’s important for genetics; it passes uncombined with another sex cell from the mother’s egg cell.  Meaning you only have your mother’s mitochondria, not your father’s.), they have peptidoglycan cell walls like bacteria and so on and so forth--basically they are *just* like a bacteria.  Billions of years ago an anaerobic bacteria (“us”) combined with a aerobic bacteria (our mitchondria) to create a cell that could survive in either condition.  We teamed our forces and made all complex life, including us, possible.  Go cooperation!

3. The next panel highlights how we’re a host for bacteria.  I’ve seen vastly varying numbers, but one source said that humans are generally composed of somewhere around 10 trillion cells.  Guess how many bacteria cells you have on and in your body?  Around 100 trillion!!  So, not only are you the combination of at least two different bacteria, but by cell count you are 10 times more actual bacteria than human!!!  Why?  Because that bacteria, generally speaking, majorly benefits us by breaking down organic matter that our body isn't good at breaking up--you can thank bacteria for helping digest carbs, proteins and fats as well as producing essential vitamins like vitamin K and many B vitamins.  We depend on trillions of other organisms just to eat.

4. Maybe around a billion years ago life had a great idea.  Let’s not just cooperate in energy production (endosymbiosis) and structure/division of labor (multicellularity) but also genetically--thus sex was born.  By combining genes the best of one organisms genes can be put with the  best of another’s.  Contrast that with bacteria that mostly evolve through random mutation--which is more often than not quite deleterious.  We sexually reproducing organisms survive and evolve by teamwork.  We pool the best of what we have and create something even better--synergy.

5. The 5th panel highlights the interconnection of our foods--the substances that make our survival possible.  Plants cooperate with bugs to transport their DNA to reproduce in exchange for a tasty, nutritious treat of pollen/nectar.  That’s why flowers exist.  Their beauty is a physical display and celebration of cooperation.  The same is true for fruit. Fruit exists to give nutrition in exchange for seed dispersal.  

6. The final panel focuses on the love of a mother and child.  From a biological perspective that mother needs the child to pass on her DNA and the child needs the mother for nutrition and socially relevant information for future reproduction and survival.  From an experiential perspective the two experience a level and power of connection and love unrivaled in the universe.

The Bible speaks truth--it is more blessed to give than to receive.  Why?  Because it works.  The winnowing pragmatism of evolution proves it.  If we try and live our lives in defiance of this truth we only hurt ourselves.  Cooperation out competes competition.  We ought to make this the basis of every relationship, government, family, economic system.  It works.  To paraphrase Ben Franklin, we shall hang together or surely we shall hang apart.

Science Meditation

I had a friend recently say that, "Creativity is the combining of ideas in a new way." (Jamie Riley paraphrase)  I think he's on to something there.  Creativity is the game "Apples to Apples"--making new connections between disparate ideas.

What I'd like to do is consider how two ideas--meditation and science literacy--might intersect.   Let me give a greenhorn's understanding of some meditation practices and then discuss how science can fit hand in glove with your own practice of meditation.

First, a story on how meditation saved my butt!!!

I was at a local meditation event listening to a guided meditation and my mind unprompted went where it often goes in these situations--to imagining the invisible electro-magnetic/atomic world around me.  I was imagining the atoms around the room bustle in Brownian motion, interact with photons, change quantum states, vibrate synchronistically through sound, circulate around the room in zyphers of wind and conviction currents, etc...and...suddenly...O SH%#!!!  I forgot to turn off a heating plate at my job at a chemistry lab!!!  Luckily I was able to call over and have it turned off, but I was so scared since I had it on for a few hours!!  Yikes!  Meditation saved my butt!  haha!

Ok, back to an over view of meditation so we can see how science meditation can fit in!

Types of meditations (as I understand it)

• Mind Scape Meditation
• Idea/mantra
• Focusing deeply on a central thought.  Learning about it. Thinking through it.  Applying it. Making it real within your mind. Reveling in it.
• Person
• Meditate on a person you truly admire.  Why do you admire them?  What can you learn from them?  How can you honor their lives with your life?
• Object
• Symbolism
• Essence
• Function
• Feeling
• Become self aware.  Not necessarily judging what you're mind is feeling, just only observing, analyzing.  Becoming mindful of your brain--the vast expanse of neural experiences within.
• Problem solving
• Taking time to work through a problem--reviewing past actions, considering future options.
• Thankfulness
• Counting  one's blessings.
• Bodyscape
• Become aware of your body
• What is your body feeling?  Pain?  Boredom?  Fatigue?  Why?  Analyze, don't judge.
• Motion
• Walk
• Be mindful of the motion, the muscles, the action, the intention.
• Surroundings
• Become aware of your senses.
• What sounds do you hear around you?  See?  Feel?
• For a challenge, see if you can observe more than one occurrence at a time.  Can you do three?  It's supposed to not really be possible to pay attention to three things with any real level of depth.

Now, within these three realms of focus--the mind, the body, the world around us--how can the teachings of science inform and empower our meditation?  My understanding of meditation centers around awareness, mindfulness and science has empowered human awareness to a degree that former generations could not have comprehended--so revel in it!  Become mindful of the universe happening around you right now!

• Mind
• Consider the crackle of electric impulses within your mind--100 billion neurons buzzing, humming, communicating, resting, their amoeboid arms stretching out to form connections totaling 100 trillion
• Consider the micro ocean of neurotransmitters chemically setting into motion the thoughts, sensation and actions of the body--just slight parts per billion that manifest huges changes

• Body
• Go from head to toe considering all the functions that are taking place in your body
• Blood
• Red blood cell oxygenation
• White blood cells capturing invaders and consuming dead or defunct cells
• Heart and its molecular muscle motors reacting to the power of ATP
• Lungs filling, oxygenating, dispursing CO2
• Liver, kidneys, pancreas, gall bladder, intestines, muscles and on and on!!!

• Surroundings
• Consider sound.  Become mindful of the sources of the sounds around you.  Consider the waves emanating from the source--the compression pulses of wave in the form of concentric circles growing larger and then reflecting and bouncing off the other objects in the wall.  Much like a 3-D version of the surface of a pool of water that has been disturbed.  Become aware of how that sound hits the curves and bowl of your ear, traveling down your ear canal to the ear drum, the three ear bones, the inner ear, the cochlea, the fluid and hairs within the cochlea, the impulses traveling from ear to brain, etc.  

• The Electromagnetic world around you
• The process of seeing
• The invisible spectrum

I have benefited greatly from these lectures by Dr. Feynman and really do hope you'll click on this link if for no other reason that to see that they exist.  Feynman has a brilliant way of bringing the invisible reality to life.: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=richard+feynman+fun+to+imagine&aq=f

• Neutrinos
• There are billions of neutrinos flowing through our body every second flowing from the Sun.
• Geographic location
• Consider the forces that created the land around you.  Reverse, in your mind, time to undo the weathering forces, plate tectonics, igneous forces, etc.

• Elemental  history
• Consider the history of the elements around you.  Their age in billions of years.  Their star ancestry.

• Evolution
• If you're walking, consider an animal.  In your mind go through their evolution history, the epochs, bio-geography, the predators and prey its ancestors encountered.

• Solar Power
• Become mindful of how a seething ball of magnetized gas 93 million miles away is heating itself to astronomical degrees--27 million in the core-- by the crush of gravity as new heavier elements are created and releasing prodigious amounts of energy.  Electron motion becomes wavicle photons that travel through a void of space to a spinning ball held in rotation by the gravitational bending of space time.  This energy causes photosynesis, which powers plants, which power the animals we see and ourselves.  Everything is solar powered.
• Space
• See through the Earth and the physical features around you.  See in your minds eye the position of the Sun, the moon, the stars through the atmosphere and through the Earth.   See the core of the Earth, the upside down walking of people on the other side of the Earth, consider the distances of how far they are, imagine birds flying upside down, water being pulled "up", kangaroos hopping upside down in Ausatralia, the thousands of people in the air in planes being ferried from place to place, etc.

So, why bother?  Why spend the time?  Why expend the energy?

To me that's almost like asking, "Why love?"  To connect.  To realize.  To become one.  To stretch.  To unbound yourself.

"The desire to be connected with the cosmos reflects a profound reality--we are connected; not in the trivial ways that Astrology promises, but in the deepest ways." --Carl Sagan

Later note: There are two main kinds of meditation--focused attention and open monitoring.  Focused attention finds holds an object in conscious attention.  Open monitoring allows the mind and senses to wander, allowing thoughts and perceptions to come and go as they will.  Open monitoring with science might include being in nature and simply soaking up the sounds, sights, smells, and sensations.  

How to Love the Truth

• Seek It 
• Be curious 
• Indulge your curiosity 
• Be around curious people 
• Google your questions 
• Read 
• Go the library 
• Ask experts/friends 
• Trust 
• Senses - They are good enough to drive with. 
• Mind - It is good enough to get man to the moon. 
• Experts - They're scared enough of losing their job that they relatively have their shtuff together. 
• Doubt 
• Authority - Beware of hegemony, self promotion and parasitic self replicating memes. 
• Tradition - Question the status quo.  Those that don't learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.
• Self - There are many, many, many things that you are wrong about. Don't add to that list by being wrong about being wrong 
• Defend It 
• Argue with people--civilly. Truth is discovered communally. A community of people exchanging ideas like a super network of neurons firing back and forth to each other. The world community is one big brain (and the internet is the synapses:)). We're smarter together. 
• Proclaim It 
• Start conversations: Bring up important subjects. Go beyond small talk. Talk big. 
• Preserve truth in writing: Make it so you and others can come back to that thought after it's faded or been forgotten.  Why aren't you blogging?  Srsly.

Science as Myth Part I of II

 Note: these are sketch notes from my presentation at UUCT. They aren't meant to read like my typical blogs. Some of the below was in my presentation and some of it is clippings from the cutting room floor that I thought were great, but not conducive to my presentation 's thrust. Thus, the below may seem a little scattered.

• Intro quotes to the topic of science and religion.
• “I am absolutely convinced hat science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than are the classics, but the products of the stimulus do not normally see the light because scientific men as a class are devoid of any perception of literary form.” JBS Haldane
• “The next great task of science will be to create a religion for humanity.” --Lord Morley
• “New ideas, usually classed as scientific, have permeated a large section of the community and prevented them from belonging to any of the established churches, whose belief in miracles, in revelation, in the inspired authority of the Bible, runs counter to the established truth, as the scientifically trained see it. The problem is to make a religion for these men and women, whose numbers are bound to increase with the spread of education, and who will otherwise be left without a religion, or with one to which they cannot whole-heartedly give their assent. The conflict between religion and science in the last half-century resulted in the complete defeat of religion's claim to impose its view as authoritative on man’s mind, but it did not build up anything for those whom it emancipated. That reconstruction is our problem today.”--Julian Huxley
• “We can keep from a child all knowledge of earlier myths, but we cannot take from him the need for mythology” Carl Jung

• Purpose of myth - What's function? Purpose? Why is every religion largely collections of myths? Why is the Bible a story book and not a theological disertation?
• UNI(one)VERSE(many)
• Identity - Who am I? Identity supersedes activity. We must know who we are.
• Worth - is the universe/humanity/I good? Can I trust the universe/humanity? Can I open myself up to loving and being vulnerable others?
• Awe/Mystery - What is my context? People must have something greater than themselves to worship or we worship ourselves.
• “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.” Albert Einstein
• Sacred/hallowed -
• What is sacred to you?
• ‘reverence for life’
• Morality - How should I relate to others? How should I live? Moral compass to avoid shipwrecking.
• Evil/Devil - “A movement can exist without a god, but never without a devil. There has to be an enemy to be destroyed." --Tony Campolo
• Who is our devil?
• Gratitude - is life worth it? Gratitude is the secret to happiness.

• “The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.” EO Wilson
• Why so ineffective then?
• Why 40% of America not believe?
• What are ways we tell history of universe poorly?
• How not to tell:
• Anti-Gospel - biological history is a history of aggression, dog eat dog, “Struggle for Life” “war of nature, from famine and death” --Darwin , Malthusian, heat death of universe...
• Facts versus story
• All we are? 4 nucleotides, 22 amino acids and one millionn billion cells? If so, of course people don't give a flip.

Star Dust - Children of the Cosmos - Our Atomic हिस्टरी

• For thousands of years we got our mythology, the heavens. Nothing has changed!!
• Before you were a  twinkle in your mother's eye you were a twinkle in a star!!!
• The true alchemists: stars!
• 1% of the static on an old tv set is caused by microwave radiation background noise from big bang
• Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people.' --Dan Wallach
• Smile at the person next to you. Think about the awesome fact that the calcium in their and your bones and teeth is formed by the process of nucleosynthesis deep within the core of a star or in a nova event.
• Press your fingernail and watch the red blood fill your flesh again. Why red? Iron. Same message.
• Supernova overview: Once iron core, no more fusion fuel - core collapses into neutron star whose gravitation force causes an outer layer collapse at 70 km/s that causes it all to undergo nuclear fusion in a matter of seconds causing a bounce back shock wave making heavier elements and the light of 4 billion suns, or all the energy of the sun’s entire life in a matter of moments at 10k miles per second.
• Who wearing gold/jewelry? Those heavier metals only formed in super novas.

• We have right place in galaxy.
• close in for heavy elements
• far out for gamma radiation.
• “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible, but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence.” Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Nature”
• “We are the local embodiment of a cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars!” --Carl Sagan on Cosmos series
• To you ladies, the next time someone asks you how old you are now you have a new response
• I am 13.7 b y old
• Eschatology
• We need to have care in how we speak about death and end times.
• Resurrection
• We have our life through the Death of Stars - Connie Barlow
• Circle of Life
• Legacy

“Middle World” Dawkins

• Large Scale - (Pictures below) Earthrise (230k miles away), Mars Lander Pic (about 50ish million miles), Pale Blue Dot picture from Voyager 1 (3.7 billion miles)

• If the Earth was the size of a basketball:
• Proxima Cetauri - 4400miles. Driving distance from Tallahassee to Anchorage, AK
• The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years in diameter. We would have to make our model 100 million miles wide. This means that to make a model of our galaxy where our sun is the size of a basketball, our model would have to reach from the sun to a point some 10 million miles beyond the earth.
• The edge of the universe, if it's proper to talk about the universe having an edge, is thought to be about 15 billion light years away from us in all directions. Distances this large are incomprehensible. To extend our model to include the entire universe we would need all the space between here and Alpha Centauri

• “Telescopes are time machines.” Carl Sagan
• So old that stars as we seem them must look completely different in reality
• So old in completely different location
• Huble Deep Space
• 3,000 galaxies in shot with 100 bil stars each
• picture size of grain of sand at arm’s length
• 125 billion galaxies

• 70,000 million million million stars. That's the total number of stars in the known universe, according to a study by Australian astronomers. It's also about 10 times as many stars as grains of sand on all the world's beaches and deserts. 7 followed by 22 zeros or, more accurately, 70 sextillion
• When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.” --Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World

• Small
• If you were to blow up an atom to the size of a stadium the nucleus would be the size of a fly.

• If an apple was magnified to the size of the Earth, then the atoms in the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple. --Richard Feynman

• Hardest, densest rock is almost completely empty
• Click on this for the most amazing flash you've ever seen demonstrating the chasm of sizes that humans straddle--we are both unfathomably, ineffably large and at the same time unfathomably, ineffably small.

• Mysteries Universe - How much we don't know
• Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.” JBS Haldane

• 4 Fundamental forces
• We have no a how the four fundamental fources work. I mean, why don't electrons (negative) and protons (positive) collide? We have no idea!
• Matter - what is matter made of? What are quarks? Are they made of smaller subatomic particles?
• Electron spin revolves 6.568*10^15 rev per second at much the speed of light
• Time - Is it an illusion? Why is that as you approach the speed of light that time slows down?  Why is that massive bodies have slower time nearer to them (in comparison.
• Space - quantum entanglement - electrons created at the same time separated by hundreds of kilometers behave and spin connectedly. Is space an illusion? Is all matter entangled?

• Electro-magnetism
• Light - double slit experiment - two slits - interference patterns - what happen if you shoot one photon through slits? - interference patterns - goes thru 1, none, left, right simultaneously - observe it only goes thru one - knows it’s being watched...

• If you thought of the electromagnetic spectrum as a movie real running 2,500 miles from Tallhassee to San Francisco, CA, visible light would be one frame on that reel.

• Close eyes. Every second, about 65 billion (6.5×1010) solar neutrinos pass through every square centimeter on the part of the Earth that faces the Sun. (no charge, no interaction)
• Darks - expanding at an increasing rate? What is 90% of the universe? We have no freakin' clue.

• Sun Worship - Children of the Sun - Our Chemical History
• Pop quiz: What's the closest star to us? THE SUN! Duh!
• Fusion Solar Power is what the Earth runs off of
• Did you guys hear the news? Fusion power on Earth has been perfected over the weekend. (Punchline is that fossil fuels are stored fusion power of the sun)
• Hey, did you guys hear? I just bought a solar powered car that can go 120 miles per hour and accelerates from 0 to 60 in about 6 or 7 seconds. (Punchline is that fossil fuels are stored solar power)
• Think about this. The Olympics are just a masterful symphony of solar energy being expended.
• Drinking soda is drinking solar energy (the sugar is stored solar energy).
• Bite in Steak- stored fusion energy!

• Potosynthesis
• Is bombarding photons and exciting electrons to transfer energy.
• Base of ecology of ecosystem
• Predators eat herbivores which eat plants which eat sunshine. So, indirectly we all eat sunshine!!(being overly simplistic)

 

Solar Powered

Solar Powered

Solar Powered

“For the first time in human existence, we have a cosmic story that is not tied to one cultural tradition, or to a political ideology, but instead gathers every human group into its meanings...We are now creating the common story which will enable Homo sapiens to become a cohesive community. Instead of structuring American society on its own human story, or Soviet society on its own human story and so on, we have the opportunity to tell instead the cosmic story, and the oceanic story and the mammalian story, so that instead of building our lives and our society’s meanings around the various human stories alone, we can build our lives and societies around the Earth story.” 

--Brian Swimme from “The Cosmic Creation Story” in The Reenchantment of Science

Am I Getting Smaller Or the Universe Larger?

I can vividly recall laying on a gurney starring at the ceiling of a hospital with a strange aplomb accepting my simian ancestry. Raised in a conservative Christian environment I had long "fought the good fight" against the liberal scientists that tried to teach people that they were nothing more than monkeys who came from grown up germs. My kind valiantly battled the scientific community who were in our estimation little more than the ideological progeny of the Nazi eugenicists. But, there I was. Starring at the ceiling. Recovering from massive surgery after an appendix explosion gone wrong. As my body was repairing itself I was repairing my thinking. Cooly, calmly I realized that the presence of this vestigial organ that nearly took my life was proof that I am a descendant of the great apes.

Right there I got a little smaller. My dimensions didn't change, nor the room's, but my size in relation to my ancestry, time scale, and universe had vastly changed. It was much akin to the sensation of looking out a plane and seeing, perhaps, not my own house, but the tens of thousands like it and feeling, well, like jack-crap, puny, insignificant and somewhat humiliated that I ever thought otherwise.

It isn't the first time one of these revolutions has happened.

Eratosthenes noticed the differing angles of shadows at high noon in wells and measuring rods. From that he calculated that the world was round. There was a whole other side to it that he knew nothing of! Was there anything there or was it completely void since everything would fall off? Eratosthenes, too, got a little bit smaller.

Galileo, as is familiar to many, noticed the moons of other planets orbiting something other than the earth - Jupiter. Could it be that not everything revolved around the earth? Could it be, in fact, quite the opposite? Perhaps we were the revolving one. The solar system got a little bigger and Galileo got a little bit tinier.

Columbus was headed for the Orient when something got in his way--the "West Indies." There were two whole continents that had previously been unaccounted for. We were quite a bit smaller than had been anticipated.

Darwin, after circumnavigating the entire globe sampling from seemingly every corner of the world, realized that everything living today came from very different living things in the past. Things change. We change. We changed. Like climbing altitude in a plane we can trace the unbroken chain of life all the way back to simple enzymes and RNA trapped in a lipid bubble.

And we get smaller.

Or, does our world just get larger?

Sitting in that hospital room I don't think I got smaller. The universe got bigger. With every discovery, with every unanswered question answered, with each intrepid person that will dare to question, seek and ask our universe gets a little bit more amazing and grandiose. So, the next time you feel puny and insignificant looking out the window of a plane or standing before some personal existential truth remember that crushing insignificance is only one perspective change away from awe, wonder and worship.

Science is Gospel

I don’t watch much news. It isn’t that I don’t care. It’s just depressing. It makes me feel powerless. I have no power to change any of the awful things that are happening in the world and I know it. Furthermore it’s nearly completely one sided - only the awful, the apocalyptic, the disastrous, the crises. They hardly cover any of the beautiful, the inspiring, the moving, the touching. That doesn’t sell. It doesn’t titillate.

Except.

One genre of news - science and technology. I read that quite closely. Why? Because there’s always something exciting, new, innovative, revolutionary. It’s a perpetual dawn! You can read the science/tech section of the news and come away saying, “YES!”

Science is gospel.

As many of you from a Christian background may know, ‘gospel’ means ‘good news’ (In Greek it’s euangelion. We get the word ‘angel’ from the same root as the last part of that word. So, I always see a glorious angel trumpeting good news when I think of that word.).  The fact of the matter is that there is great, glorious, good news happening in the sciences everyday - the Large Hadron Collider, genetic mapping and engineering, clean energy, steps closer to fusion, new species constantly being found, stretches of the universe seen for the first time, new fossils exposing our and our relative's past, medical breakthroughs, computer innovations, technological advancements...The list goes on!!!

Bottom line, read more science and technology news. It’s gospel and it’s good for your soul.

Intelligent Design and Falsifiability

Here's the difference between science and Intelligent Design: one is falsifiable and one isn't.

"I believe gravity causes things to become attracted to each other."
"No, it doesn't."
"Fine, let's put it to the test!"
[Apple is let go and suspends in mid-air]

That's preposterous, but at least it's falsifiable.

Here's how the other conversation would go:

"I believe Poseidon created the seas and all that is in them."
"No, he didn't!"
"O, ya?! Prove that he didn't!!"

Do you see the difference?

That's yet another reason why many scientists cry fowl when religion tries to take a foot hold in science. It doesn't follow the same rules as everything else. Science by its very nature has to be falsifiable. Intelligent Design may be a perfectly reasonable personal explanation of how the universe came to be and life and complexity within it, but religion in sheep's clothes can be a dangerous thing scientifically.

Science is...Childlike Questions

Heather, my wonderful sister and exemplar scientific thinker, has told me a story of discussing with her her grad school advisor about what good science is. He said that good science is good questions.


Good questions are...

• Focused - neither too broad nor too narrow.

Goldilocks

• Valuable- after having answered the question will our lives be any more enriched? If not, scrap it.

• Answerable - will you actually be able to answer the question?

• Insightful - I view getting a bachelors in biology as studying for years to ask one really good graduate school thesis question. All that study for one question. It takes alot of knowledge to ask good questions.

• Narrow in asking, broad in implication - Heather also spoke of her sage of an advisor stating that a good question is one that may be small, but answers a larger question. For example, a researcher doesn't study planaria reproduction because they want to only know more about planaria. They want to use that knowledge to know something about the whole tree of life, like how species evolve. One doesn't study aphids, one studies a branch in the ecological web as a whole. One doesn't study whale digestion, but how animals convert chemical energy into biological energy. Et cetera.

By implication, science is being curious. It's wanting to know how the world around you works, why it works and what we can do with that knowledge.  


It's wide eyed wonder about the truly ineffably amazing state of the universe around us.  It's mystery.  It's intrigue. It's the excitement of discovery. It's adventure.

Science is being unsettled. Unsettled by not knowing 'why', 'how'. It's not being okay with standard myths, theories, explanations.

Science is being hungry for answers. It's insatiability.

Science is argument. It's caring enough about reality to debate, to confront, to challenge.

Science is holding reality in reverence above all else - popular opinion, dogma, authority, tradition.

That's difficult business, though. Easier said than done. Life is distracting.  

How can we keep ourselves curious? Vested in the nature of reality?  


By staying childlike.

How do children think?

• With New Eyes - Everyone remembers their first kiss. There is something impactful about doing something for the first time. Children experience that all the time. You've heard it many times (so much so that its lost its impact, haha, how ironic) that familiarity breeds contempt. The opposite can be just as true, new eyes breed wonder. How can you get new eyes again? One way is to study widely. I've learned the most about English by studying other languages. I've only realized my Americanness by traveling to China. Read fringe thinkers. Learn about other fields of inquiry. You may be surprised at the insights you'll gain.

• Tabla Rasa - kids don't come with baggage. They have no expectations, no preconceptions. They aren't going to look for something a certain way, they just look.

• Relating It Back to Yourself - I've read Richard Dawkins talk about how personally kids can sometimes answer science questions like, why are flowers pretty? "So I can enjoy them!" the child might respond. While that in and of itself isn't the most model scientific thinking, it does show how that kids naturally have a way of making it about themselves. That can be a good thing. It can be a powerful motivator. If we could empower that same young thinker's mind with knowledge she/he might say something more along the lines of, "Flowers are beautiful to attract insects to carry their pollen to reproduce and I can't help but enjoy how incredibly ingenious, creative, beautiful that mutualistic symbiosis is!!!"  Studying biology for me has been an unbelievable journey of self discovery. Every fossil I read about, every biological mechanism and processy I learn about tells me something about myself by teaching me how I work, where I came from or about the processes that made me. It's personal. And, that is powerfully motivating to keep learning.

• They Get Dirty - Kids love gross. Why don't adults? Kids love mud. Why don't adults? Kids want to explore more than they want to be proper, to experience more than stay presentable, to satiate their curiosity over their desire to be accepted, adventure over safety. Bottom line, get dirty! You just might remember how good the cool embrace of mud can feel again!!

• Kids Take Time to Do Absolutely Nothing - You should, too. Remember having summer off? Think about when you have your best thoughts: while driving, while showering, while running, while meditating, while praying, while quiet, while relaxed, while letting your thoughts wander, meander, explore - unguided, unimposed, borderless, unfettered, natural, freeflow thoughts and inquiries. Figure out a way to maximize your time doing those activities. Nothing may be the most important thing you do all day.

• Kids Keep Asking and Asking and Asking... - I recently went to a presentation on butterflies. The local expert blew me away by how much he knew about species identification, diet, range, migration patterns, ecology, population threats, how to start a butterfly garden, etc. His knowledge was truly prodigious. I was taken aback by how easily he was stumped by the simplest of questions, though: why do butterfly wings have scales? I mean, the most obvious part of a butterfly is its wings and the most obvious part of their wings are the colored scales. So, why hadn't he thought of it? Well, I should be so hard on him. His interests were elsewhere. But, I did learn something that day from that question. Sometimes the best camouflage is obviousness. The most obvious place to look is often the last. One of the keys to exposing these cloaked blatants is to keep pushing the questions. Force yourself to question.  Don’t let it stop at the surface.  Keeping on pushing it and asking ‘why’ one more time and then one more time and then one more time...

This is my life's message. One of the major things that I want my life to represent right now is that it’s okay to question, to change your mind, to go a different direction, change your path. No, no, scratch that. It's essential to question. Questioning is a holy, sacred activity, integral to truly living, truly experiencing, truly seeing. We must not tell reality what she is, only listen by questioning.