Venus as a Beauty Spot

We gathered at the Montgomery Hill Observatory in the northern hills of the Evergreen Valley College (EVC) around 3 in the afternoon, all agog about the celestial drama unfolding in front of the sun. Venus was moving across the solar disk, something that would repeat 105 years from now, in 2117, making viewing it literally the chance of a lifetime.

Parents brought their infants (one of whom promptly let out a wail to the amusement of all), toddlers and teenagers. Several grandmothers in saris and flowing dresses lined up like kids to peer through the telescopes.

Inside the dome was the 7-inch refractor telescope that Dr. Celso Batalha, professor of astronomy at EVC, fitted with an H-alpha filter to let in only the red light (wavelength of about 656 nanometer) emitting from the sun. Outside the dome, he had also set up four 8-inch portable, parabolic Dobsonians with clear filters. He was wise to do so because the space around the dome was soon milling with eager and curious visitors.

My first view of the transit was through the refractor telescope. The dark, perfect circle of Venus making its shy entrance at the lower left edge of a crimson sun was wondrous, simply wondrous. I looked for as long as I could before the next person in line gently nudged me to remind that there were others waiting for a chance to glimpse the wondrous sight as well.

Last night I read a piece in the New York Times by a professor of astronomy named Jay M. Pasachoff who wrote that “people on Earth can see with their own eyes the beauty spot — as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe’s — bestowed by Venus on the Sun.”

The imagery seemed perfect as I was viewing the transit: Venus was indeed a beauty spot on the sun, and its changing location only enhanced the fierce beauty of the duo. I also reminded myself to look up a picture of Marilyn Monroe. The sun as MM? I bet no poet ever thought of that. Kudos to Dr. Pasachoff.

If there was a hush of awe inside the observatory, outside was noisy celebration. Kids and grandmothers gave running commentaries on the minute-by-minute progress of Venus’s journey from left to right as they squinted through the Dobsonians. Of course, the experience had to be preserved for posterity, and so everyone (and I mean everyone) brought out their iPhones, Androids and SLRs and tried to capture the celestial scene. It was no simple point-and click, though. Only at certain frustrating angles could the view be captured and that required endless trial-and-error.

A teenage girl grew impatient with her father who kept fiddling with his camera for the perfect shot. Finally she could stand it no longer. “He will be doing this until Venus has completed her journey in six hours,” she said to everyone around. “He will still not be done.”

The girl’s mother, also getting angry at her husband, corrected the daughter. “No, Casalco will still be looking for the perfect picture when Venus returns again in one hundred years.”

As laughter erupted, the otherwise-imperturbable Mr. Casalco sheepishly withdrew.

Through the Dobsonians, we viewed the bright-yellow sun and the backlit Venus in the clear California sky. There were clouds but they were near the horizon. I helped Dr. Celso adjust the eyepieces as excited kids kept moving them.

The atmosphere was festive and yet there was an undertone of sadness. This was it for us. No more view like this in our lifetime. I felt the chill of mortality.

Scientists have correctly predicted the transits of Venus that come in pairs of 8 years: 1761 and 1769, 1874 and 1882, 2004 and 2012. What will the earth be like in 2117 and 2125? Will we still be fighting wars? Will there still be 1-percenters and 99-percenters, tyrants who indulge in unimaginable luxury while the rest survive on crumbs? Or will our succeeding generations conclude that our ways were unimaginative and untenable, and after much sacrifice and soul-searching, design a peaceful world where everyone led a reasonably good life?

Who can say? The thought  that I came away with from the celestial drama was that we were a part of what we had witnessed, no more and no less, and that the fate of our earth was entwined with the fate of the big, beautiful star and the planet moving across it, not only in a scientific but also in a transcendental sense.

Faith, Reason and the Templeton Prize

The 2007 Templeton Prize “For Progress toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities” was recently awarded to the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor for his insights into the nature of the secular and the sacred and how one without the other can be perilous for mankind. “The divorce of natural science and religion has been damaging to both,” he said, “but it is equally true that the culture of the humanities and social sciences has often been surprisingly blind and deaf to the spiritual.” The 75-year old McGill University emeritus professor has called for new insights into the human propensity for violence, one that also takes “full account of the human striving for meaning and spiritual direction, of which the appeals to violence are a perversion.”

The American philanthropist John Templeton created the annual prize in 1973 to recognize research in spirituality and its possible confluence with science. He made it the most lucrative prize in the world – at more than $1.5 million, it is larger than the Nobel Prize – to emphasize that we are shaped more by our spiritual longings than by any other factor, and therefore advances in the understanding of spirituality should also begat more attention and recognition. (Given the 72 years headstart the Nobel had over the Templeton, this may take a while!)

Of late, religion, spirituality and God have been under assault by militant secularists whose ranks include prominent scientists. Leading the charge is Richard Dawkins, professor of public understanding of science at Oxford University. His book, The God Delusion, has been on the best-seller list for several months now. Dawkins suffers from no shades of gray. God is unnecessary, he says, because science - evolution, randomness, physical laws and such - can explain everything. If anything does lie beyond the scope of science, it has no meaning and is therefore irrelevant. His fellow-travelers include the neuroscientist Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason) and Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon) among others.

For every atheist or agnostic scientist or philosopher, however, there are at least a hundred who are passionate about their faith or at least open to the possibility of a Supreme Being. One such is the geneticist Francis Collins who led the successful effort to complete the Human Genome Project, a multidisciplinary enterprise to map and sequence the human DNA. Collins refutes Dawkins by asserting that God lies beyond the reach of science, beyond space and time, and so cannot be explained by science. God used His creative power to bring all creation into being. If we keep an open mind, we can detect God’s handiwork in the signs He has strewn about us, from the large-scale drama of the universe to the intricate world of sub-atomic particles. Author of The Language of God, he bemoans the fact that many of the current battles between atheists and fundamentalists have really been started by the scientific community, which he feels is an enormous tragedy.

Collins summarizes the beliefs of many scientists such as that of the astronomer Owen Gingerich who makes the point in God’s Universe of the existence of a Creator. The Muslim astrophysicist Bruno Guiderdoni draws inspiration from his faith in his research on galaxy formation. The fundamental mystery that animates physics and cosmology, he believes, is that the world is intelligible. The Nobel physicist Abdus Salam (1979) found in his faith the inspiration to delve into the mysteries and symmetries of fundamental particles. A list of recent Templeton Prize winners also illustrates the point: physicist Freeman Dyson (2000), chemist Arthur Peacocke (2001), mathematical physicist John Polkinghorne (2002), applied mathematician George Ellis (2004), Nobel physicist Charles Townes (2005) and mathematician John Barrow (2006). They were cited not for their scientific or mathematical discoveries but for their efforts to show in their distinctive ways that science and religion are two windows looking out on the same universe.

If scientists can be inspired by their faiths, can theologians and religious leaders be inspired by science? Certainly, and one example will suffice. In his book The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, the Dalai Lama writes eloquently about his fascination with science from an early age “It was not very long before the colossal significance of science for humanity dawned on me - especially after I came into exile in 1959. There is almost no area of human life today that is not touched by the effects of science and technology.” Yet he warns of the danger of trying to find within a purely scientific context answers to questions such as the meaning of life or good and evil. “The problem is not with the empirical data of science but with the contention that these data alone constitute the legitimate ground for developing a comprehensive worldview or an adequate means for responding to the world’s problems … By the same token, spirituality must be tempered by the insights and discoveries of science. If as spiritual practitioners we ignore the discoveries of science, our practice is also impoverished, as this mindset can lead to fundamentalism.”

The Templeton prize celebrates those who seek to reconcile the ancient adversaries of science and religion by confronting difficult questions head-on, such as those raised by Darwinian atheists and religious fundamentalists. It celebrates the middle ground between the dispassionate observer and the devout believer, suggesting that the two can be fused into one for a full and creative life.

Oct. 7, '05

Religion and Science: Coexistence or Convergence?

Forget Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” theory: “Clash of Religion and Science” has moved to center stage as evolutionists and intelligent design proponents (IDers) bitterly contend the origin of life, spawning legal fights over high school biology curricula in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Ohio and other states. Focus, instead, on the evolving relationship between religion and science and how theologians and scientists from around the world are striving toward common ground. It promises to be not only more rewarding but also more entertaining.

True, religion and science have been ancient adversaries. The Church imprisoned Galileo in the seventeenth century for daring to suggest that the earth was a mere player in the cosmic drama, and not its prima donna as theologians had thought. Two centuries later, Darwin published The Origin of Species (1859) in which he proposed that evolution and natural selection could account for the biological diversity of the living world, including us, precipitating a fierce clash between faith and reason.

Muslims too experienced their share of this conflict. In the 9th century, advocates of reason led by the Mutazalites clashed with the dogmatic Kharajites and, as Muslims historians often darkly summarize, this effectively closed the doors of ijtihad. The “debate” between al-Ghazali representing tradition and mysticism and ibn Rushd representing science and reason in the 12th century was also a turning point in which it was mostly Ghazali’s views that held sway for years to come.

Although there have been more ambushes and skirmishes, there have also been advances in our thinking. Many of us now view religion and science as being complementary rather than contradictory. Science deals with factual aspects of the natural world and religion with the transcendent questions of meaning and purpose. One deals with the “how,” the other with the “why.” The empirical nature of science contrasts with “belief in the unseen” nature of religion and yet most people, including many scientists and theologians, agree that both can work in concert to enrich our material and spiritual lives.

But we must be wary of pitfalls. There will always be scientists who view religion as an albatross around civilization’s neck, and theologians who rail at science as the new God that has driven meaning from life. There will be reductionists who claim that life and its mysteries can all be explained by the laws of physics, and scriptural literalists who insist that the earth is a few thousand years old. Some biologists assert that an atheistic view of life is our only choice because of their belief in the all-encompassing reality of Darwin’s theory, while certain religious leaders are so enamored of their certitude that they do not shy away from pronouncing who will go to heaven and who are destined for hell.

Fortunately, they are a minority. There are many more theologians representing different faiths, for example, who find in evolution evidence of God’s glorious self-disclosure, and many scientists whose research leads them to ask the deeper questions of life – why are we here and what makes life meaningful - that lie outside the realm of science.

It is against this "cross-disciplinary" context that the religion-science dialogue should be framed. Many organizations are doing precisely that, and a popular annual conference called "Science and the Spiritual Quest" that attracts the world's leading scientists and theologians underscores this growing trend.

Intelligent design proponents say that life on earth is “irreducibly complex” to have been created by random genetic mutation and, therefore, Darwin’s theory must be balanced by the recognition of an “intelligence” beyond its scope.

But people of faith do not need “gaps” in Darwin’s theory to experience the Divine; their longing for the Divine is intrinsic and is what gives meaning to their lives. By the same token, the IDers should realize that theirs is not a scientifically-testable theory since it does not meet the criteria of observation, measurement, experimentation and testing. It has no place in a biology classroom, although it can be part of a religious or philosophy curriculum. Pleading acceptance by the scientific community on the basis of ignorance and “gaps” in knowledge benefits neither science nor religion.

A provocative question to consider is this: Is coexistence the last word in the relationship between religion and science, or can the two interact in more mysterious and unexpected ways?
If the past is prologue, then lessons from Islamic history may help frame an answer. From the eighth through the fifteenth centuries, Muslim scientists made discoveries based on challenges posed by religious observances. Determining the proper time of day to offer the five daily prayers, calculating the precise direction toward the kiblah, and predicting the visibility of the crescent moon to mark the beginning and end of lunar months led to the discovery of spherical trigonometry and algebra and significant advances in astronomy. Muslim scientists constructed astrolabes and observatories, emphasizing observations and experiments by which to test theories and their predictive powers. Science became a spiritual quest for them, a way of seeing traces of God’s handiwork in the universe. (A telling example is that of the astronomer, mathematician and poet Ulugh Beg (1349-1449). Considered a genius, he established an observatory at Samarkand and with astounding accuracy charted the course of more than 1000 stars over a period 18 years. Unfortunately, he was murdered by his son who felt that his “secular” interest in science betrayed the spirit of Islam!)

In our times, this scientific-spiritual quest animates many Muslim scientists but one who stands out is the cosmologist Abd-al-Haqq Bruno Guiderdoni, a director of research at the Paris institute of astrophysics and the director of the Islamic Institute for Advanced Studies. Guiderdoni’s main interest is galaxy formation and evolution. Exploring the universe is, in his words, “an act of worship.” (It is remarkable how so many of the leading cosmologists of the world of different faiths are also amateur theologians!) A passionate advocate of the global dialogue between science and religion, Guiderdoni finds inspiration for his quest for truth in the Quran: In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are signs for people of understanding (3:190).

An article written almost four decades ago in the IBM journal “Think” by physicist Charles Townes also provides insights into the evolving nature of religion-science relationship. After building the case that the two shared fundamental similarities - revelation in one is epiphany in another, for instance - Townes concluded that the two will eventually converge. “I believe,” he wrote in 1966 in The Convergence of Science and Religion, “this confluence is inevitable. For they both represent man’s efforts to understand his universe and must ultimately be dealing with the same substance.”

But Townes tempered his speculation: “Perhaps by the time this convergence occurs, science will have been through a number of revolutions as striking as those which have occurred in the last century, and taken on a character not readily recognizable by scientists of today. Perhaps our religious understanding will also have seen progress and change. But converge they must, and through this should come new strength for both.”

Townes’s idea caused a renewed stir after he won the Templeton Prize for “Progress toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities” in March this year. A devout Christian, he is also one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth-century, winning the Nobel Prize in physics in 1964 for inventing the maser and the laser.

Convergence does not mean a magical fusion of faith and reason; it means, as Townes implied, a symbiosis that can enrich our practical, intellectual and ethical lives. Such a confluence may, for instance, inspire fresh views on issues like stem-cell research and deepen our understanding of how love, justice, suffering and forgiveness shape human affairs. It may force us to rethink our ideas of “predictable” and “random” events, revealing if there was indeed something to Einstein’s intuitive objections to the probabilistic foundation of quantum mechanics when he said, “God does not play dice with the universe” and “God is subtle but He is not malicious.”
We can ignore the media's predictions about a return to the Dark Ages because of the supposedly high percentage of mindshares IDers have captured, or religion becoming obsolete because of the successes of scientists in genetics and other fields.

Rather, we should be thinking more creatively about how religion and science relate to, and reinforce, each other and actively promote the compelling forces bringing scientists and theologians of all persuasions toward a more holistic view of life in these troubled times. In the unexplored, overlapping region between religion and science, is it not possible that wildflowers of insight will bloom if nurtured with humility and humor?