Star Stuff: A Sermon by Reverend David Weissbard, March 5, 2017
Preacher: Reverend David Weissbard
“Star Stuff”
A sermon by Dave Weissbard
delivered at
The First Universalist Society
Central Square, NY
03/05/17
READING
from the writings of Carl Sagan
Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science. . . .
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky. . . .
Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate. How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth? Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished.
The choice is with us still, but the civilization now in jeopardy is all humanity. As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we’ve accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage — propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders — all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we’ve also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and desire to learn from history and experience, and a great soaring passionate intelligence — the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perspective awaits us. There are not yet any obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours always rush implacably, headlong, toward self-destruction. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. Travel is broadening.
We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads — but to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature. The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore we’ve learned most of what we know. Recently we’ve waded a little way out, maybe ankle deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
THE SERMON
[religion & science]
Where did we come from? What are we doing here? Where are we going? Why?
These are eternal questions. These are the questions that humans have been asking since early in the development of our species. These are religious questions. It was to answer these questions that religion arose.
Today people talk about a conflict between religion and science. That is not an entirely accurate representation of the problem. The answers to those ancient fundamental questions to which some religious people cling, represent the best science of 3,000 years ago, when those religious myths were being developed. The peasants of Mesopotamia believed they were living on a flat earth around which the sun and the moon revolved, and the stars represented divine lights coming through pinpricks in the roof above their heads. These became the basis of the creation myths of the Hebrews, which were subsequently incorporated by the Christians. Bishop James Ussher of the Anglican Church in Ireland, calculated in 1650 that God had begun creating the earth at nightfall on the day before Sunday, October 23, 4004 years before the beginning of the common era. That would mean the earth is now 6021 years old. (Usher based his calculations on the genealogies in the Hebrew Scriptures.)
There are people today who insist that the first man, Adam, was created by a deity out of the dust of the ground, apparently on the eighth day, since he rested on the seventh. In their eyes, the fossils that indicate that the earth is older, and that humans have been here longer are false evidence planted by Satan to lead us away from the truth.
There was no reason to doubt that story for a very long time. It was satisfactory and satisfying. Many of the beliefs of Christians rested on the literal acceptance of that story, and a lot of them still believe they do. Anything which challenges those accounts of our beginnings are perceived as a threat to their religion.
The problems developed when the science began to change. The suggestion that the earth revolved around the sun rather than vice versa was viewed as a fundamental threat to the authority of the church, as was the later development of the understanding of the evolution of animal life, including the humans on this planet.
That fight continues to this very day, hot and heavy. What many believed was resolved long ago is still very much alive
[evolution evangelists]
Several years ago, I participated in an institute for Unitarian Universalist ministers and religious educators, the subject of which was “Stardust and Sustainability: The Great Story of Science and Religion.” It was led by Connie Barlow, a science writer, and Michael Dowd, who was formerly an evangelical minister. Connie and Michael are now devoting their lives to being full time evangelists for evolution. They believe that it is a fundamental role of religion to answer the ancient questions with the greatest truth it has to offer. In their eyes, the real story, the “Great Story,” as they call it, is every bit as wonderful and awe inspiring as the Biblical one – and Michael devotes a significant part of his time to explaining to Christians how the modern version is just an elaboration upon the ancient story, and not in conflict with it. There are, indeed, many Christians who agree that there is no conflict – whose Christianity has room for modern science, whose God is sufficiently malleable to encompass our increased understanding of the universe. It should be no surprise that he is welcomed by Unitarian Universalists, and that I had Michael and Connie as guests on my television program in Rockford.
It isn’t that I believe there is any of this which is startling news to any of us, but speaking for myself, and possibly for some of you, I fear that the reality of the “Great Story” has not played as central a role in my thinking as it deserves. We lose track of the forest through the trees of our everyday lives, and part of the responsibility of religion is to call us back to the larger view, which is part of what I seek to do today.
[big numbers]
One of the problems in dealing with that larger view is the sheer magnitude of the numbers involved. Eric Chaisson, a cosmologist who was also a guest on my program, points out the difficulty in our comprehending them. He acknowledges that we can grasp one thousand:
[A]t the rate of one number a second, we could count to a thousand in about fifteen minutes. However, to reach a million requires about two weeks, counting at a rate of one number a second, sixteen hours a day (allowing eight hours a day for sleep) and a count from one to a billion, at the same rate . . . would take an entire lifetime. A whole lifetime is required just to count to one billion!
When we look at what most scientists agree is the beginning of our universe, we are talking about something that happened15 billion years ago. That is mind boggling!
To make it easier to comprehend, Carl Sagan scaled 15 billion years down to one year. In his model, every billion years is equal to 24 days. On that scale, earth was not formed until September 14th of that year, oxygen appears on December 1st, and the first humans do not appear on earth until 11:00 pm of December 31st! That’s a little too compact for me to deal with.
Michael Dowd tells his “Great Story” with a scale of 100 years equal to the 15 billion. In his scale:
Each decade equals 1 billion, 500 million years. Each year equals 150 million years. . . Each day is approximately 425,000 years. Each hour is 18,000 years; each minute, 300 years; each second, 5 years.
We’ll use Michael’s version.
[the Great Radiance]
The cataclysmic event with which our universe began – in the Genesis version, the moment at which God said, “Let there be light!;” what many scientists refer to as the “big bang, which Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry refer to as the “Primordial Flaring Forth,” and Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd refer to as “The Great Radiance,” took place at one second after midnight on New Years Day in the year 1.
It is fascinating that the Genesis story begins “Let there be light!” because it is indeed believed that the first instant of the existence of the universe began with an enormous light and heat beyond imagination – the temperature was greater than a trillion degrees Celsius.
Swimme and Berry, in their book, The Universe Story, write:
In each drop of existence a primordial energy blazed with an intensity never to be equaled again. Thick with its power, the universe billowed out in every direction so that the elementary particles could stabilize, enabling the first atomic beings of hydrogen and helium to emerge. After a million turbulent years, the frenzied particles calmed themselves enough for the primeval fireball to dissolve into a great scattering, with all the atoms soaring away from each other into the dark cosmic skies, opening up in the beginning of time.
So we are now about 25 days into year one. The galaxies didn’t form until the Universe was about 7 or 8 years old. Our solar system formed as the result of the explosion of a super nova when the Universe was 70 years old on Michael’s scale, which really means 4.5 billion years ago. The Universe was 72 when the earth’s surface cooled to below the boiling point of water and it started raining. It was the spring of year 73 when this planet first came alive with the appearance of bacteria as the result of a bolt of lightning in the ocean. Swimme and Berry remind us that “Earth’s life is lightning embodied and made flesh.” Remember that all forms of life are dependent upon bacteria, and bacteria do not need us.
[74 years and counting]
It was near the planet’s 74th birthday, (3.9 billion years ago) that photosynthesis began, enabling life to consume the power of the sun. The planet was 88 on this scale when life was threatened by the coming of that deadly gas oxygen into the atmosphere — life at that time could not survive in oxygen. It was a catastrophe for the then current life forms. Fortunately for us, before all life was destroyed, there was a mutation and other forms appeared that could process oxygen.
Plants became multicellular in year 91 (remember, this is 91 out of 100 years – almost yesterday!) In September of 94, some creatures began eating other creatures. Backbones developed in 96, plants came out of the oceans in 97, followed by insects and then the amphibians. Dinosaurs appeared in May of 98 and disappeared a year later when the earth was hit by a huge comet.
It was only 8 months ago, on this time scale, that flowering plants evolved on the earth; the earliest primates emerged just a couple of months ago. The earliest upright walkers could be found only on December 26th, with the first being we could classify as Homo Sapiens developing only 24 hours ago, which is to say just 200,000 years ago – a twinkling in the eye of the Universe. One day, the last day, in a hundred year history. Can you imagine, wrap your brain around, the scale of this?
It is important to understand that all of this emerged from the elements that began on day one. All of the myriad forms of life developed from the first bacteria which emerged from a combination of the chemicals which were the products of the stars that exploded, which were in turn the products of the “Great Radiance,” the “Primordial Flaring Forth,” the “Big Bang.” The atoms in the cells of our bodies are the same atoms that existed at that moment. We are not separate from the Universe, it was not created for us – we emerged from it as the result of a process that took 15 billion years, and that is a process we have every reason to believe is continuing.
[the last few “months”]
It is the last few months of this process, the last mere 2.6 million years that are of most interest to us – although for my wife, the critical event was the emergence of the modern dogs 6 million years ago. It was 2.6 million years ago that Homo habilis came into being, homo erectus 1.5 million years ago. The creation of clothing, fire, shelter and hand axes can be traced back 500,000 years. Homo sapiens goes back 200,000 years; ritual burials, the first religious celebrations, 100,000 years; musical instruments 32,000 years; cave paintings 18,000 years; the taming of dogs 12,000 years; the first communities 10,600 years. Jehrico, the oldest community in the world, probably began 10,000 years ago,.
As I said earlier, religion is significantly about helping us understand our place in the world and we are forced to admit that many have not done a very effective job of it, although its success has varied from place to place. Certainly, the dominant religions of our culture have grossly distorted our view of our place in the world. It’s like our discovery that the maps with which we are most familiar significantly distort the size of the nations with which we are most concerned. Certainly Judaism, Christianity and Islam have put the human at the center of the universe in a way that grossly distorts our place. The dominant religions of our culture have encouraged us to look at the world around us as having been put here by a Creator for our comfort and delight, for us to manipulate as we see fit to meet our desires.
[summary so far]
Swimme and Berry summarize the story of the universe to this point in this way:
Fifteen billion years ago, shape-shifting matter appeared as primeval fire, to transform into galaxies with their stars and gaseous clouds, then to take on the form of molten planets and to shift again and wear the face of the squirrel and the mosquito and the incandescent root hairs of the towering sequoia and all the billion living species of Earth’s adventure over the last 4 billion years. When shape-shifting matter suddenly appeared in human form a great surprise took place. For a new faculty of understanding was making its appearance, a mode of consciousness characterized by its sense of wonder and celebration as well as by its ability to refashion and use parts of its external environment as instruments in achieving its own ends. The story of the human is the story of the emergence and development of this self-awareness and its role within the universe drama.
It is suggested by many that we humans represent the ability of the universe to be conscious of itself, to see itself, to study itself, to celebrate itself, to sing about itself. This is no small responsibility. But the question is whether we are up to the responsibility? Evolution has had many dead ends, many attempts that did not work out on the long haul, and remember we have been here only a short time in the scope of things.
[a parable]
Michael Dowd tells a parable:
Once upon a time, a group of brain cells debated the relative importance of the rest of the body. Some suggested that the body was dispensable, “After all,” said one, “we are the only cells in the body that know that we know things.” “Only we can reflect on our dreams,” said another, “so we must be the only part of the body which is spiritual, right?” “Why, just think of the awesome accomplishments we are capable of!” And they all thought, thinking that they were separate from and superior to the rest of the body. Occasionally a brain cell would realize that it was one with the entire body; but it was usually martyred trying to tell the others about this good news. You see, the brain cells had convinced themselves that the Great Life lived outside their bodies and could be known only through their dreams. They believed that they were destined to leave the body and dwell in a place called heaven. They also assumed that the rest of the body was not really alive at all, that it was an inexhaustible supply of resources for the benefit of the brain. Needless to say, the health of the body worsened by the day and was soon on the verge of dying.
[the human as cancer]
To use another analogy, cancer cells are cells in the body of an animal that get out of whack. Apparently their DNA is damaged in a way that leads them to begin to reproduce without control. They become dominant and destructive of the organism as a whole, unless they can be exterminated.
Most of what we call primitive religions taught the concept of humans as being part of the universe and as responsible for living in harmony with it. Some great advances have been made technologically because of the way in which Western religions weakened the bond with the natural world. Swimme and Berry suggest that:
By the year 1500 C.E. western civilization had already lost much of this earlier experience and was beginning to influence the larger world in the direction of an anthropocentrism or a theocentrism that negates the intimate unity between the natural, the human, and the divine worlds. Earth itself was no longer seen as a communion of subjects. It had become a collection of objects to be adjusted to in an external manner.
They are clear that a lot that was positive came from this – it’s not all bad. We could not have the understanding we have of the nature of the universe, had we not stood back from it and measured it like an object. The question is, is there possibly a point where too much of a good thing becomes destructive? Has the mechanistic view of the universe led us into a trap? Berry & Swimme assert:
With newly acquired power for mechanistic control over the natural world, we have discovered the power to protect ourselves from the elements, to produce food in enormous quantities and transport it anywhere in the world, to communicate instantly throughout the planet, even to delay death by artificial contrivances. With all this knowledge and corresponding skills, we have created a human controlled, less threatening world, a world deprived of the great natural challenges of the past. It goes also with a devastated natural world for in the process of protecting ourselves from the natural conditions of things, we have done away with many of the most delightful and creative aspects of our existence. What we have gained by controlling the world as a collection of objects, we have lost in our capacity for intimacy in the communion of subjects. . .
This new world of automobiles, highways, parking lots, shopping centers, power stations, nuclear-weapons plants, factory farms, chemical plants; this new world of hundred-story buildings, endless traffic, turbulent populations, mega-cities, decaying apartments, has become an affliction perhaps greater than the more natural human condition it seeks to replace. We live in a chemical saturated world. It is not a life-giving situation. If not deadly, it is degraded. Humans now live amid limitless junk beyond any known capacity for creative use. Our vision is impaired by the pollution in the atmosphere. We no longer see the stars with the clarity that once existed.
[religion and the new era]
The eras of the earth are divided into the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic. The question is what comes next? Do we move now into a Technozoic era, in which we foolishly believe we are in control, or do we enter what Berry & Swimme have called the “Ecozoic” in which we use the knowledge we have acquired to try to restore the balance of our planet?
Religion, at this point, is not a luxury, not an accessory. Religion is what our future is about. How do we see ourselves In relationship to the rest of the human community? In relationship to other species? In relationship to the air and water? These are questions of fundamental religious values. I am not talking about labels or creeds. It does not matter whether you do or do not believe there is a deity behind the process of evolution. It does not matter whether or not you believe evolution has a purposive direction. It does not matter whether you call yourself Roman Catholic or Lutheran or Jewish or Muslim or Unitarian Universalist. What does matter, what is critical, is how you see the human role in today’s world because that shapes how we treat this universe.
[the practical dimension]
I know there some who might prefer that I stop here and not articulate the next step, but it is essential – it would be intellectually and spiritually dishonest to stop here looking only at the issues on the cosmic scale and ignoring the immediate implications.
Back in 1995, Carl Sagan in his book, Demon Haunted World worried that:
. . . especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.
Back then, we had begun to take baby steps as a nation to acknowledge our responsibility for the ecology of our planet. We had begun to acknowledge our responsibility for the quality of the air, the water, the very temperature of the planet. As bad as things began to get, who, in their wildest nightmare, could have imagined an election in the United States based in part on turning back the knowledge clock more than a century – the election of a President dedicated to the elimination of modern science, and who appoints a cabinet that shares that view? Who could imagine an administration that does not believe that humans are responsible for the real threat of global warming, in spite of the testimony of 97% of all actively publishing scientists; which believes that clean air and clean water are liberal boondoggles; which opposes renewable energy; which forbids NASA from reporting climate data; most of whose members deny evolution and want the ancient creation myths taught in our schools as science.
The White House’s 2018 budget proposal, which aims to slice the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 25 percent as part of a broader effort to fund increased military spending, would cut deeply into programs like climate protection, environmental justice and enforcement.
The President is talking about withdrawing our nation from the 2015 Paris climate agreement which has been endorsed by 196 nations.
Our policies reflect the administration’s belief that the financial balance sheet is the determiner of good and evil. Our government clings to the rantings of a few discredited scientists to justify its recklessness, just as Creationists point to the handful of people with advanced degrees who deny evolution, to justify their literal interpretation of ancient myths. This is madness. We cannot just sit back. This is truly a war on science and knowledge, with the money taken from science going to expand a military budget that is already greater than the military budgets of the next seven nations combined!
I am heartened by the recent survey that shows 7 of 10 Americans, including a majority in every election district, trust scientists for reliable information about climate change, even though pone out of three do not believe in evolution. However, less than half of Americans are aware of the overwhelming agreement by scientists about global warming. There is now a plan for a March for Science on April 22nd, which is Earth Day. Organizers want the march to be a nonpartisan protest that champion support and funding for science, science-based policy and diversity. They’re worried about the new administration’s stance on climate change, energy policy and other issues. There is also a March for the Environment scheduled by a competing environmental group on April 29th. [I don’t understand why they can’t get together on the same date.]
When I heard the President talk about the need to have the Food and Drug Administration speed up its approval process, I wondered if he remembered the impact of Thalidomide, which the FDA approved too quickly in the bad old days and resulted in the creation of more stringent vetting. The Project on Government Oversight points out:
Approving unproven drugs, or approving drugs on the basis of unscientific evidence, could be tantamount to writing a blank check to drug companies, contributing to unsustainable health-care costs.
It could divert spending from more promising treatments, and it could dilute economic incentives for researchers and pharmaceutical firms to come up with cures that actually work and work safely instead putting patients at greater risk.
[back to the cosmic perspective]
Moving back to the cosmic scale, Looking at the fundamental challenge this war on Science represents, Swimme and Berry have asserted:
While we do not have a comprehensive knowledge of the origin or destiny of the universe, or even of any particular phase of the universe, we do have a capacity for understanding and responding to the story that the universe tells of itself, how it emerged in the beginning, the sequence of transformations leading to the wondrous world spread out before us in the heavens and the vast spectacle presented to us by the Earth in its geological, biological and human manifestations.
As with all other earthly beings, we are expected to enter into this process within those distinctive capacities for human understanding and appreciation that provide our human identity. We are expected to enter into the process, to honor the process, to accept the process as a sacred context for meaning and existence, not to violently seize upon the process or attempt to control it to the detriment of the process itself in its major modes of expression.
[the obligation of star stuff]
Friends, here is what I believe is the bottom line: we are made of star stuff. We are among the products of a cataclysmic event that occurred 15 billion years ago. It is a miraculous and religious story full of awe and wonder. And the story has not ended. We are actors in it. What we do and do not do have impact on the future.
Carl Sagan said it clearly:
We are the local embodiments of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: star stuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to us but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
This understanding of our responsibility to the process which has brought us into being and sustains us, is a religious understanding. It is a response to those fundamental questions about whom we are and where we are going. May we find the courage and commitment to stand up for science and defend it against the challenges it faces today – the challenges of that “Demon Haunted World” that Sagan foresaw three decades ago.
He challenged us:
Our science and our technology [and I would add our religion] have posed us a profound question. Will we learn to use these tools with wisdom and foresight before it’s too late? Will we see our species safely through this difficult passage so that our children and grandchildren will continue the great journey of discovery still deeper into the mysteries of the Cosmos? That same rocket and nuclear and computer technology that sends our ships past the farthest known planet can also be used to destroy our global civilization. Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil. It is as if there were a God who said to us, “I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It’s up to you.
How will we respond?