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Chet Raymo - Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Spirituality

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Chet Raymo Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Spirituality
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"Raymo is not ambivalent about where he stands. As a skeptic, he champions a brutal honesty with respect to beliefs, allowing them only something approaching hypothetical status. He is indebted to the rigor of scientific method. He also finds in skepticism a resilient and expansive outlook, and he combines this with an openness to the awe and wonder of the scientifically disclosed universe and life within it." Science

"Responding in part to the rise of millennial-driven New Age spirituality, Raymo writes along the tender edges of mystery that bind off objective science from religious faith. Using a light journalistic style, Raymo seeks to find some common ground upon which to construct mutual appreciation between science and religion. Sources diverse as John Donne, Charles Darwin, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Albert Einstein enliven the discussion.... A scientist through and through, Raymo yet maintains an appreciation for the ineffable in life." Publishers Weekly

"A provocative and important book on a tough range of subjects.... [Ravmo's| bravery in tackling such an elusive subject is in line with the best scientific minds and their unquenchable desire to know and understand more.... He also has a fantastic ability to describe the miracles and mysteries that science has shown us in nature.... As you read [Skeptics and True Believers], you'll be forced to think and rethink through comfortable assumptions concerning science, religion, and the nature of the relationship between the two." Astronomy

"What sets this book apart is the fact that Raymo respects both the scientific need to understand and the religious need to celebrate creation." Choice

' The hard truth Raymo so judiciously presents is that we must get over our fear and loathing of science so that we can create a new set of beliefs that unites the revelations of both the tangible world and the soul." Booklist

"Raymo argues that religion should embrace the reliable knowledge of the world that science provides, while at the same time science should respect and nourish humankind's need for spiritual sustenance." Reference & Research Book News

""Contemporary science has provided us with a new and fascinating creation story. But how does it square with the Book of Genesis and traditional religious faith? This is one question that Raymo takes up in this dazzling book on the current debate between science and religion. Raymo is a witty and clearheaded guide through the thickets of current sciencefrom evolutionary biology to the miracles of DNA codes and theories of the Big Bang. At the same time he is a sensitive interpreter of authentic religious faith and its compatibility with the scientific search." DAVID TOOLAN, S.J.

Skeptics

and

True

Believers

THE EXHILARATING

CONNECTION BETWEEN

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Chet Raymo

Copyright 1998 by Chet Raymo All rights reserved No part of this book may be - photo 1

Copyright 1998 by Chet Raymo

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

First published in the United States of America in 1998 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc.; first paperback edition published in 1999.

Excerpt from "When Death Comes" from New andSelected Poems, 1992 by Mary Oliver, reprinted by permission of Beacon Press. Excerpts from No Ordinary Genius are reprinted with permission of W. W. Norton. Jacob Bronowski's sonnet is reprinted with the permission of Simon &Schuster from Science and Human Values. Revised Edition by J. Bronowski. Copyright, 1956, 1965 by Jacob Bronowski; copyrights renewed 1984,' 1993 by Rita Bronowski. Excerpts from "Some Questions You Might Ask" and "The Ponds" from House of Light by Mary Oliver, 1990 by Mary Oliver, reprinted by permission of Beacon Press. Excerpt from "In Blackwater Woods," from American Primitive by Mary Oliver. Copyright 1983 by Mary Oliver; first appeared in Yankee magazine. By permission of Little, Brown and Company. Excerpt from "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" by W. B. Yeats, reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, from The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume 1:The Poems, revised and edited by Richard J. Finneran (New York: Scribner, 1997).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Raymo, Chet.

Skeptics and true believers: the exhilarating connection between science and religion/Chet Ravmo.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN: 978-0-802-71904-1

1. Religion and science. I. Title.

BL240.2.R36 1998

215dc21 98-14647

CIP

Book design by Mauna Eichner

Printed in the United States of America

8 10 9

To MAUREEN

Contents

To invoke God as a blanket explanation of
the unexplained is to make God the friend of

ignorance. If God is to be found, it must surely
be through what we discover about the world, not
what we fail to discover.

Paul Davies, physicist

When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

Mary Oliver, poet

THERE'S A "God-shaped hole in many people's lives," says physicist and Anglican priest John Polk-inghorne. He's right, at least about there being a hole in our lives. To call the hole "God-shaped" begs the question, for the affliction of our times is that we have no satisfactory image of God that rests comfortably with what scientists have learned about creation. As we approach the end of the twentieth century, many educated people in the Western world long wistfully for something akin to traditional religious faith, but they know there can be no turning back to a world of divine fiats and penny miracles. As Polkinghorne says, they can neither accept the idea of God nor quite leave it alone.

I am one of those people, trained in science, who cannot quite accept the idea of God nor quite leave it alone. I am less pessimistic than most, however, that science and religion must remain in conflict. It seems to me that science is part of the traditional religious quest for the God of creation.

A vital religious faith has three components: a shared cosmology (a story of the universe and our place in it), spirituality (personal response to the mystery of the world), and liturgy (public expressions of awe and gratitude, including rites of passage). The apparent antagonism of science and religion centers mostly on cosmological questions: What is the universe? Where did it come from? Where is it going? What is the human self? Where do we fit in? What is our fate?

Humans have always had answers to these questions. The answers have been embodied in stories: tribal myths, scriptures, church traditions. All of these stories have been derived from a primordial experience of the creation. All of them contain enduring wisdom. But for many of us, these stories have been superseded as public knowledge by the scientific story of the universe.

In this book, I identify two intellectual postures we can adopt to questions of knowledge and faith. These two postures represent a fault line in our culture, an attitudinal chasm more profound than differences of politics or religious affiliation.

We are Skeptics or True Believers.

Skeptics are children of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. They are always a little lost in the vastness of the cosmos, but they trust the ability of the human mind to make sense of the world. They accept the evolving nature of truth and are willing to live with a measure of uncertainty. Their world is colored in shades of gray. They tend to be socially optimistic, creative, and confident of progress. Since they hold their truths tentatively, Skeptics are tolerant of cultural and religious diversity. They are more interested in refining their own views than in proselytizing others. If they are theists, they wrestle with their God in a continuing struggle of faith. They are often plagued by personal doubts and prone to depression.

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