Rabbi Janet Marder
Delivered May 4, 2001

Under the Stars: Science and Religion

Exactly 40 years ago this week astronaut Alan Shepherd became the first American in space. On May 5, 1961 he blasted off from Cape Canaveral and rocketed 117 miles up, landing 15 minutes later, 300 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. It was just a month after Major Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union had orbited the earth in the world's first manned space flight.

Some saw the human conquest of outer space as a profound challenge to religious faith. It was one of the early Russian cosmonauts, I think, who commented that he had proven once and for all that religion was a lie, for during his voyage deep into space he found no evidence of heaven nor any sign of God. For the Soviet Union, their victory in space symbolized the supremacy of Russian science and the triumph of atheism.

Forty years later we continue to live in the reverberating echoes of that rocket blast. "The heavens belong to God," says Psalm 115, "but the earth God gave over to man." After Alan Shepherd and Yuri Gagarin how can we assert that the heavens belong to God? As technology brings us into realms previously beyond our reach, as the human mind unravels questions we once found impenetrable, we ask ourselves if the cosmonaut's claim is true: Does science make religion obsolete? Does technological advancement ultimately erode the foundations of faith? Can we be intellectually honest, open to reason, receptive to the fruits of scientific research, and still find a reason to believe?

Back when I was in college and majoring in the social sciences, I was taught to see religion as a childish precursor of science. Religious myths were designed to explain to primitive man some of the seemingly unfathomable mysteries of the cosmos: how did the universe begin? Why did rain fall from the sky? What made the crops grow and held the stars in their fixed courses in the heavens? In the absence of better instruments for answering these questions, religion was a useful tool. It provided a sense of coherence, comfort and security, the illusion of purpose and meaning. But religion was, in essence, just a story human beings made up a long time ago to keep themselves from feeling alone and frightened in the dark.

Seen in this way, it's obvious why religion was superceded by science. During the Renaissance, religion began to lose ground as more compelling answers were provided to the questions it had once addressed. Science, casting light into the dark corners of the universe, gradually came to occupy the territory once held by faith; simply because science better explained the workings of nature. The classic example of the tension between science and religion was the struggle between Galileo and the Catholic Church, pitting the progressive force of reason against the backward forces of superstition, ignorance and prejudice. We saw it played out again in the Scopes "Monkey Trial," when Clarence Darrow took on narrow-minded fundamentalists. Even today, according to this model, the struggle goes on. Scientific inquiry, the uncompromising pursuit of truth, does battle with stubborn, hidebound, close-minded religious faith. Every advance on the scientific frontier means another defeat for religion. And the more people's eyes are opened to the discoveries of science, the more they embrace the lessons of reason, the less they need to take refuge in the shelter of blind faith. Says Rochester University astrophysicist Adam Frank, "Science and religion are two different world systems bashing heads together."

This way of seeing the world once made a lot of sense to me. Religion was for the timid and the fuzzy-minded; science stood for courage and clear thinking. I brought a sense of smug superiority to the Biblical Creation story, seeing it as primitive cosmology created by a culture that had no Hubble Space telescope to scan the heavens, no means of measuring the age of the earth, no knowledge of dinosaur fossils or the workings of evolution. I could read the Book of Genesis as the relic of a simpler time, an earlier stage in the progression of human wisdom; I could feel infinitely more sophisticated than my forebears who believed that God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh.

Science has progressed dramatically in the 25 years since I left college - and the Bible is the same as ever. But my perspective has changed. I no longer see science and religion as two systems in conflict, one destined to supplant the other in the battle for truth. And I no longer come to the Book of Genesis convinced that it has little to teach me about the workings of the universe.

Certainly, science and religion operate according to different rules. Science is based on empirical testing and experimentation, a continual skepticism towards evidence, an ongoing effort to verify knowledge. Religion is based, ultimately, on ideas which can neither be proved nor disproved -- powerful, compelling ideas which are true in the way that great poetry is true. Yet, for me, science and religion are not mutually exclusive realms. They are two complementary systems, intended for different purposes, designed to answer different kinds of questions about the world.

In the 17th century, a cleric who defended Galileo in his battle with the church, said, "the purpose of Scripture is to teach how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes." He argued, that is, that the Bible isn't meant to compete with scientific study of the laws of nature. The Bible's concern, religion's concern, is with the laws of ethics and morality. Science explains how the world operates; religion offers guidance for how to live in the world.

Thus, the Creation story in Genesis brings a message that the design of the cosmos is beautiful and elegant, deserving of wonder; it tells us that all life is sacred; that human beings are made each with a spark of divinity within, possessing infinite value and worth; that the earth is in our keeping, to tend and to cherish; that the seventh day is given to us as a gift, to rest and renew the spirit. It seems to me that no matter how far our scientific knowledge advances, we need never outgrow the message of that story. Quite the contrary, in fact. The more sophisticated our technology becomes, the more we stand in need of the Bible's teachings about justice and compassion and love.

The Judaism I embrace is not afraid of science or threatened by the exercise of the human mind. The Judaism I embrace is open and inquisitive; it values the intellect as God's precious gift to us, to be used in the sincere pursuit of truth. I am afraid only of science detached from the moral truths of religion - the science that gives us technical manuals for the efficient operation of gas chambers. So it is that a traditional Jew prays each day for knowledge, wisdom and understanding - the ability to learn what the world has to teach, and to use our knowledge with thoughtfulness and care.

Does the universe have a purpose, as the Bible suggests, and does our life have meaning? Or did we evolve haphazardly, the result of blind, impersonal processes of nature? Either one may be objectively true. Judaism tells me to give my life a meaning, to take hold of a sacred purpose, to impose an ethical structure on my existence in this world. It tells me I am called to feed the hungry and heal the sick; it summons me to bring light to those who dwell in darkness and freedom to the oppressed. Religion gives me what scientific knowledge alone cannot provide: the commandment to act.

"As far as we can tell," says astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, "there is no need to invoke a spiritual hand of God...Every one of the miraculous aspects of the universe appears to have a rational basis." It is possible, I suppose, that the more we learn about the universe the less astounding it will all seem, the more blase and matter-of-fact we'll become. But religion tells me that science is a doorway to the holy, bringing us ever closer to the beauty and majesty of the cosmos. And religion tells me that reason should never rob us of the sense of the miraculous, that we should never become deadened to the wonder of being alive. Wrote the Hebrew religious poet Hillel Zeitlin, who died a martyr on the way to Treblinka: "If you look at the stars and yawn, says God, then I created you in vain."

Some of us in this room are believers in God and some of us are not. But most of us know what it is to stand under the splendor of the night sky, overwhelmed at the vastness of a galaxy 600 quadrillion miles wide, awestruck by the sense of our smallness, overcome by our place in the infinite.

Tonight, as we begin to experience the power of the Walk Through Time; tonight, on the 40th anniversary of Alan Shepherd's journey into space, we give thanks for the twin blessings of science and religion, whose teachings remind us never to yawn at the stars.