Are you a megaloidophobe? A megaloidophobe is one who is fraid of big ideas. Megaloidophobia is a dangerous condition for anyone entering this house of worship, especially today.
Since the recent death of astronomer Carl Sagan, best known for his Cosmos series on public television, I have been playing with some very big ideas. I'm like the preacher who, when asked why he preached an annual sermon on astronomy, said, "To keep my mind from getting claustrophobic." And so this imaginary conversation with Carl Sagan. After all, if Hillary Clinton can talk with Eleanor Roosevelt, why can't I have a few words with Carl Sagan?
RSG: Carl, you have played with some very big ideas about the universe. When I read about the vastness of the cosmos,
SAGAN: Let's be clear, Dick. When I say "Cosmos" I mean everything that is or ever was or ever will be; when I say "Universe" I'm discussing the only one we can know about. SAGAN: The Universe - or at least its latest incarnation - began about 15 billion years ago with a Big Bang. Then it was simple - only oxygen and hydrogen. Now it is much more complex. But the fact remains, we are made of starstuff.
RSG: That's all very poetic, but haven't I heard that the actual worth of the elements that make up the human body is only a few dollars, and could be purchased at any drugstore?
SAGAN: Let's put it this way. I am a collection of water, calcium and organized molecules called Carl Sagan. You are a collection of almost identical molecules called Dick Gilbert. But is that all? Is there nothing in here but molecules? Some people find this idea somehow demeaning to human dignity. I find it elevating that our universe permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we.
RSG: But in our bottom-line society, what are we worth - in dollars?
SAGAN: It would probably take $10 million to put together correct molecular constituents that make up a human being by buying them at a chemical supply house. But even then we could not mix those chemicals together and have a human being emerge from the jar. That is far beyond our capability and will probably be so for a very long time. Fortunately, there are other less expensive, but still highly reliable methods of making human beings. Organisms are selected to engage in sex - the ones that find it uninteresting quickly become extinct.
RSG: We're not into extinction here, Carl, you can bet on it. But despite our apparent financial value, there is a problem. But when I read that the Milky Way is only one of - how many billion galaxies?
SAGAN: Oh, it's about one in a hundred billion galaxies - each with about a hundred billion stars.
RSG: I thought the Hubble Telescope upped its estimate from 10 to 50 billion galaxies.
SAGAN: Who's counting? Who can count? But, look at it this way - if you were randomly inserted into the Universe, your chances to be on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion, 1 and 33 zeroes. The Cosmos is mostly empty.
RSG: Empty?! But, Carl, what I started to say was that with all these stupefying figures, it seems that we mere mortals are nothing - that we have no significance. You write of the Great Demotion of human significance. What is our role?
SAGAN: But, Dick, can't you see that what I am trying to do is to undermine some of the human arrogance that all this is created for us - we are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever. I'm trying to correct all those religious fundamentalists who think they are the apple of God's eye - when we really live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum star in the remotest corner of an obscure galaxy.
RSG: Well, I understand the need for humility before the cosmos, but for those of us who already feel pretty humble before the awesomeness of it all, isn't there something you can say to give us a little pride in being part of the Universe?
SAGAN: In a moment, but can you imagine that with what we know about the Cosmos there are religious folk who think it's all for them? This kind of human conceit is like playing my first hand of bridge and winning, while all the time knowing there are 54 billion billion billion possible other hands that I was equally likely to have been dealt...and then foolishly concluded that a god of bridge exists and favors me, a god who arranged the cards and the shuffle with my victory foreordained from The Beginning.
RSG: I never did like bridge! No wonder I never got it!
SAGAN: Would you believe that the tabloid Weekly World News reported that a secret NASA satellite picked up voices emanating from a black hole at the center of galaxy M51 all singing, "Glory, glory, glory to the Lord on high" over and over again? In English. They reported another space probe that photographed God, or at least his eyes and the bridge of his nose, in Orion Nebula.
RSG: His eyes? His nose? That's an extreme case of anthropomorphizing God - making God nothing but a projection of ourselves on a cosmic screen.
SAGAN: Right! Then there is physics Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman who described a hypothetical block of matter as "the God particle," and wrote a book about it. If that hypothesis doesn't hold up, is the God hypothesis disproved? In my opinion they're all God particles.
RSG: O.K. Carl, slow down. You said they're all God particles. Whatever do you mean? I thought you were an agnostic, or even an atheist. What is this God talk?
SAGAN: As a scientist I can't believe in some Designer God. You see, each plant and animal is exquisitely made; shouldn't a supremely competent Designer have been able to make the intended variety from the start? But the fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament).
RSG: You're evading the question.
SAGAN: If you must have a label for me, I suppose I'm an agnostic. Many years ago...a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a noted astronomer: "Wire collect immediately five hundred words on whether there is life on Mars." The astronomer dutifully replied: "Nobody knows, nobody knows, nobody knows...250 times. That's about where I am. There is a religious feeling at the core of our exploration of the universe. We have evolved to wonder.
RSG: Agreed, but there is a difference between religion and science. I've heard science described as the dynamic self-correcting discipline of the human mind and religion described as the dynamic self-correcting discipline of the human spirit.
SAGAN: Don't go any further! That's pretty good. The key word here is self-correcting. Science is self-correcting. The methods of science are really more important than its findings.
SAGAN: Look at all those ancient views of the universe propounded by sincere people, now nothing but myth. Even Einstein is being corrected now. Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.
RSG: You're comparing scientific findings - which change constantly - with scientific method - which is more or less constant.
SAGAN: Yes. For example, in theological discussions with religious leaders, I often ask what their response would be if a central tenet of their faith were disproved by science. When I put this question to the Dalai Lama, he unhesitatingly replied as no conservative or fundamentalist religious leaders do: In such a case, he said, Tibetan Buddhism would have to change. Even, I asked, if it's a really central tenet, like (I searched for an example) reincarnation? Even then, he answered. However, he added with a twinkle - it's going to be hard to disprove reincarnation.
RSG: I'm with the Dalai Lama. Unitarian Universalism is science friendly.
RSG: We take seriously the discoveries of science. And you couldn't walk out of this sanctuary without stumbling over dozens of scientists. But I suppose many of us who aren't scientists become blasé in a world where knowledge is expanding so fast our circuits are overloaded with facts. We don't comprehend the big picture or our place in it. That's religion - not just to know about the Cosmos, but to feel that we are part of it - it is our home.
SAGAN: O.K., as long as you realize you are part of it - not the whole show. We have not been given the lead in the cosmic drama. This whole notion that we are made in the image of God - no - we are making God in our image and that's hubris - the sin of pride preachers talk so much about. 2500 years ago the Greek philosopher Xenophanes knew the danger: "The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair... Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen."
RSG: O.K., O.K., already, I read you. But Unitarian Universalists are different. The God of Genesis, the God of the Bible, we don't take as literal truth. We're a rational people, but we want to know something of our place in the vastness of things and feel good about it - that we're at home here, that we belong.
SAGAN: We are important in the great scheme of things. Consider this: the blueprints, the detailed instructions, the job orders for building you from scratch would fill about 1,000 encyclopedia volumes if written out in English. Yet every cell in your body has a set of these encyclopedias.
RSG: Impressive! Inspiring! I often get more religious feeling from science than theology. I once took a Universalist church school course on How Miracles Abound, which had nothing to do with the parting of the Red Sea, Joshua commanding the sun to stand still or the resurrection of Jesus. It was a hands-on look at everyday miracles - photosynthesis, the uniqueness of snowflakes, the beauty of the night sky, the wonders of the human hand. That has always been miracle enough for me.
SAGAN: And enough for me, but not enough for those who want creationism taught alongside evolution in the public school. If the creationists were consistent, they would argue not only that creationism and biblical accounts should be taught in the schools, but also that Darwin should be preached from the pulpits. Why isn't evolutionary biology declaimed on all those Sunday-morning religious television programs? Our survival is not guaranteed, the future is in our hands, external intervention is unlikely.
RSG: I'm sure not counting on any. Besides the Cosmos is quite shot through with the divine right now. And amazingly, we can begin to comprehend how wondrous it really is. I remember someone saying to a noted astronomer, "Astronomically speaker, we are negligible," to which the astronomer replied, "Astronomically speaking, we are the astronomers."
SAGAN: Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. I think of the picture of earth from the Voyager spacecraft - a pale blue dot. But that's here, that's us.
SAGAN: On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic drama.
RSG: Carl, you're a poet as well as a scientist. Despite your disdain for mysticism, you are a mystic. I'd like to end our conversation with a Walt Whitman poem that catches up the essence of our conversation - at least for me. I don't mean it as a put-down of science, but I do mean to suggest that with all the information, we must not forget the experience.
"When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide and measure
them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with
much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars."
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