Astrophysics and Religion

you’d think from a distance that
astrophysics and religion would have
very little to say to each other
astrophysicists care about the
composition of planets they tend to be
fiercely rational very uninterested in
teaching us how to live and not ones to
raise big moral questions religious
types for their part are passionate
about faith very suspicious of reason
and desperate to teach us how to live
now our natural sympathies tend to be
with the astrophysicists but here’s a
strange thing whenever one spends time
with the subject matter of astrophysics
one’s liable to experience some pretty
unusual feelings which are not at all
unlike those you sometimes get when you
spend time around religion
it seems that beneath all the
differences there are some fascinating
points of connection between
astrophysics and the faiths to stand out
in particular at their best and we
stress their best religions are very
good at making us feel a sense of awe at
how small we are next to the big
almighty things out there and they’re
also pretty good at reminding us that we
should be kind think of others and sense
our kinship with strangers however it’s
a problem with religions that their
power to evoke all and their
recommendations about kindness tend to
be bound up with a lot of superstitious
and sometimes rather obscure material
which puts many otherwise well-meaning
people of these topics now strangely
enough when it comes to ore and kindness
astrophysics though it has absolutely no
stated mission in these areas can have
an extraordinarily effective impact
let’s start with all four centuries in
people’s minds God was the most awesome
thing around but you don’t have to spend
long with astrophysicists to start
coming across things more inspiring than
anyone could previously have conceived
of for example the fact that on the very
clearest nights we can see up to two
thousand five hundred stars from Earth
but this is only a 100 millionth of the
stars
our galaxy there are around 300 billion
stars in this galaxy and then there are
roughly an equal number of galaxies in
the observable universe in other words
for every star in the Milky Way there’s
a whole other galaxy out there for every
grain of sand on every Beach on earth
there are 10,000 stars this kind of ore
is strikingly helpful when it comes to
our mental well-being it restores
perspective we’re constantly losing
sight of what’s truly significant and
what doesn’t in the end matter so much
we’re so bad at seeing things in their
proper relationships so we dramatize
lose our tempers make mountains of mole
hills for all this astrophysics can help
us reminding us of our proper place in
the grand scheme of things and thereby
making us a little less likely to lose
our composure and our hold on reality
then there’s kindness nothing is more
natural than to think only of ourselves
to care very little for other people let
alone animals or the planet itself
religions once tried to give us holy
Commandments to develop our ethical
sense but astrophysics gives us
something even more powerful a sense of
how extraordinarily rare and fragile all
life is there are 500 quintillion or 500
billion billion sun-like stars and
probably a hundred billion billion
earth-like planets and yet it seems we
are the only living things in space and
time we are isolated beautifully
freakish phenomena on a tiny blue dot in
a quiet corner of an infinite universe
this recognition can have a wondrous
effect as ethically powerful as any
other suddenly we look at other people
not as our enemies or competitors but as
fellow breathing things who’ve also
evaded momentous odds and are clinging
on to the one very vulnerable temporary
thing we all have in common
life a sight of the Earth from space can
foster a planetary as opposed to a
merely individual consciousness it edges
us towards an intra human compassion the
barriers between people break down it
can also inspire an interest species
compassion we the earthworm the crab the
camel and the hawk and even the oak tree
in the pampas grass all partake of the
same miraculous chemical good fortune
once you think about this
a curious sense of global kinship
develops far more effectively than the
ten commandments or the Gospels but in
an analogous way we break out of our
customary egoistic cocoons and our
narrow
orbits and we refrain ourselves as all
of us co-tenants of are sublime
vulnerable dot astrophysicists don’t
directly care about any of this and yet
their work leads us to these emotions as
effectively as any religious texts they
may not give a damn but we should we
should for example perhaps build up
public planetariums in a slightly
different way admitting that we’re
coming here not necessarily or
principally to learn all about the
universe we’re coming here to acquire a
new more compassionate and more
conscious perspective on our lives on
earth our planetariums are more than fit
take on the ethical and psychological
functions once given to temples and
churches we can value astrophysics not
because we’re all going to become
scientists or a very interested in deep
space in and of itself but for another
nowadays far less mentioned reason
because the galaxies are miraculously
the conduits to helping us develop into
slightly wiser more conscious more
mindful and generous humans on our painfully isolated fragile blue dot