I recently was engaged in a, shall we say, heated exchange about science and religion with some pretty hardcore religious/anti-science folk. At various points in the argument people accused me of making science my religion...Now, this is something I'd generally disagree with, because science is in no way a dogma, but I admit I do feel what could easily be spiritual feelings toward science. The sheer vastness and complexity of the Universe, and our ability to understand it astounds me. However, what I feel toward science is an deep appreciation that is fundamental to my being, but it is not a need to worship.
Recently, I've been watching Carl Sagan's 1980 science documentary/philosophical journey, Cosmos. If you're old enough, you may have seen this when it was originally broadcast on PBS, or if you're my age you may have seen/slept through it at school. When it comes to forming belief systems, we all have things which influenced us to a considerable extent. Cosmos is certainly among mine. In 13 hour-long hours Sagan walks the viewer through the rational, ordered Universe (thus the title) that has been discovered by science. Furthermore, it presents his vision of a world where the "demons" of hate, fear, and ignorance had been swept away and people truly began to appreciate the world around them and the power of the human mind to understand it. The purpose of the science in Cosmos is to introduce the viewer to what we know already, and the vastness of what we still don't understand.
The point is that what drives scientists forward are the things they don't know. Some religious people are content in believing that everything they need to know is held in some sacred text. Scientists are the polar opposite. They look out into space and crave the mysteries they haven't solved. They look to the future. There is a satisfaction in knowing that their work will take many lifetimes.
Some religious people talk about sacred truths. Scientists will tell you that nothing is sacred, but perhaps some will tell you that there is much wisdom to be infered from science. Here is my version of one of the pieces of wisdom that Sagan presents in Cosmos:
Long, long ago (on the order of perhaps, 10 billion years) a great star began to die. It's supply of hydrogen fuel was nearly spent and it began to collapse...As it collapsed, the pressures in it's center were so intense that the spent fuel (that is, lighter elements like helium and lithium) began another cycle of fusion. Heavier elements such as oxygen and yes, carbon were created. As the pressures became more intense the star grew closer to death. Suddenly, in a bright flash that would be seen by thousands of stars for thousands of years, the star exploded. During the explosion temperatures were high enough to form heavier elements in small amounts, such as gold and even uranium.
The explosion spewed these new heavier elements out into space, where some of them became part of a nebula where new stars were formed. One of those stars was our Sun. As it wandered away from it's birthplace, it took with it a great cloud of gas and dust, ripe with the heavier elements of dead stars. Gravity and angular momentum soon sent this cloud spinning, but rather unevenly. There were some places were chunks of dust grew and formed planets.
On one particular planet, carbon atoms formed very complex organic molecules. Over 4.5 billion years of evolution, those molecules evolved into cells, and eventually into lifeforms that type on Internet message boards.
It doesn't matter what color you are, what country you're from, or what language you speak. The material that composes all of us all came from the same place; a long dead star. We are all bound together by this fact.
Consider this piece of wisdom carefully: We are all made out of starstuff.
