Where Are My Keys?

Rev. Kathleen Ellis

Live Oak UU Church   August 28, 2005

I have too many keys; do you?  My strategy has been to divide them into separate key fobs depending on the situation—home and car; church keys; miscellaneous; etc; and so forth—just so I don’t have to carry all of them with me all the time.  Keeping track of them is another matter, but so far I have not had to resort to a key fob that will chirp when I clap my hands.  Once upon a time, keys were pretty much unnecessary.  Doors would be unlocked; car keys would just live in the ignition. But the term “key” has metaphorical meaning as well.  For example, we speak of keys to unlock the very mysteries of existence—life, the universe, and everything. 

Richard Feynman was a famous and highly respected physicist who lived from 1918 to 1988.  He entered the world of physics with its theory of relativity and quantum mechanics and helped build the ground floor of the New Physics.  Bill Dower and John Berry studied with him at Cal Tech; John wrote a poem about him.  Feynman taught physics, but he also reflected on the world of religion and meaning, through which we can explore the intersection of science and religion. 

I also found useful information from Stephen Jay Gould, Larry Dossey, Albert Einstein, and people like you.  At least a dozen of you emailed or spoke to me in person with your ideas and resources, enough material for many sermons!  Thanks so much!  You are in the company of many great minds who have pondered the mystery of life.

Forrester Church, a UU minister in New York, defines religion as the human response to having been born and having to die.  As pregnancy advances, parents hope for a healthy outcome, yet they can imagine any number of things that can go wrong.  Science often lets us know early in the pregnancy whether all is well, but there is never a guarantee that life will continue for any length of time.  Then at the end of life, death can come suddenly or slowly, but seldom easily to the loved ones.  Cindy Sheehan is but one contemporary example of the meaning of death.  She said this about her son Casey:

When he was born, he had a flat face from passing through the birth canal and we called him "Edward G", short for Edward G Robinson. How many of you have seen your child in his/her premature coffin? It is a shocking and very painful sight. The most heartbreaking aspect of seeing Casey lying in his casket for me was that his face was flat again because he had no muscle tone. He looked like he did when he was a baby laying in his bassinet.

(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GH16Aa01.html

Asia Times online, Aug. 16, 2005)

One of our Live Oak moms shared this experience when her son was born and again when he died.  She wrote to me that, “The only place I've read of similar feelings is in the Bhagavad Gita.  Arjuna asks Krishna to show himself.  The vision he has is wonderful, but it leaves Arjuna shaking with awe and fear.  Oppenheimer alluded to this vision when the first atomic bomb exploded when he said, ‘It was as if 1,000 suns rose and stood in the noon day sun.’”

At the crucial moments of birth and death, of people and of universes, science and religion come most closely together and sometimes seem miles apart.  Let’s start with some definitions:

According to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia,

Science is knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through the scientific method. Scientific knowledge relies heavily upon logic.

Michael Ruse, professor of history and philosophy, writes that science is guided by natural law and can be explained by reference to natural law.  Its ideas can be tested, it is always open to doubt and debate, and it is falsifiable.

Back to Wikipedia,

"Falsifiable" does not mean "false". For a proposition to be falsifiable, it must be possible in principle to make an observation that would show the proposition to be false, even if that observation has not been made. For example, the proposition “All crows are black" would be falsified by observing one white crow.

Feynman defines science in three ways, because he prefers not to be too precise.  Sometimes science refers to a special method of finding things out, meaning observation and experimentation.  Sometimes it means the body of knowledge that has come from these findings.  Or science can refer to new things you can do when you have made a discovery, including technology.  Just about everything we enjoy in modern society depends on the application of science to make things more convenient or faster or productive.

The power to do things does not come with advice on how to use that power nor whether to use it for good or evil applications.  There have been endless uses of science that make us shudder today, such as germ warfare, instruments of torture, or drugs with deadly side effects.  Science has given us mixed blessings of radiation, asbestos, nuclear energy, and the remarkable understanding of DNA.

Feynman went to a Buddhist temple in Hawaii where he was told, “To everyone is given the key to the gates of heaven.  The same key opens the gates of hell.”

Which brings us to the brink of religion.  Religion refers to that which binds us together in community.  In most cases there is also a relationship to a god or goddess, but certainly not always.  Turning again to Wikipedia, we read

Religion is commonly defined as belief concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the moral codes, practices, values, and institutions associated with such belief. . . . It has taken a huge number of forms in various cultures and individuals.

Religion is often said to be outside the realm of science, but they have collided in recent years in public education.  Stephen Jay Gould was an outspoken and often controversial paleontologist who brought an expanded world of science to thousands of readers.

Gould, along with a colleague [Niles Eldredge, a paleontologist at New York's Museum of Natural History], developed a theory of evolution called "punctuated equilibrium," where long periods of evolutionary stability are broken by shorter periods of evolutionary change, perhaps caused by external events such as climate change or the impact of a comet. If he’s right, the so-called "missing links" in evolutionary development described since the time of Charles Darwin are unlikely to be found.  His theory contrasts with more traditional evolutionists, who believe evolution is a slow, steady process occurring at a nearly constant rate. 

Gould strongly objected whenever he saw descriptions of evolution with a simplistic view of humankind on top of some pyramid of natural selection.  We are simply one branch of the natural world, he pointed out, a twig, really.

The current concept of Intelligent Design is not about building better cars or a computer that won’t crash.  It’s actually a thinly veiled effort to force religious ideas into a scientific frame.  However, science is based on testing and there is no way to recreate the origins of the universe.  Whether we believe in the Big Bang or God’s Creation or the idea that God created the Big Bang, we can’t know the answer. 

But we can all agree on the exquisite design of the universe, from the cosmic to the infinitesimal.  Take something relatively large, like atoms.

Your chairs, the floor, this pulpit are made of atoms—mostly space held together by an elegant pattern of molecules with neutrons, protons, and electrons.  How is it that we can sit or stand or pound on them, knowing that we too are mostly space?

The water in this vase of flowers, the air we breathe, the stars hidden in bright sunlight are all made of atoms in a wild and crazy dance.  But we don’t know where they came from.

One aspect of science is its method of finding things out.  A scientist tries to discover what happens in controlled circumstances.  Scientific observations result in tentative rules about conditions that produce a particular effect.  It is both frustrating and exciting when a repeat experiment produces different results.  So the scientist tries to find more and more exceptions in a stimulating challenge to establish more accurate predictions.

Linus Pauling, chemist, was delighted when he saw the double helix as modeled by Francis Crick and James Watson.  “Of course!” he said.  “Why didn’t I think of that?”  When the answer falls into place, the satisfaction must be immense.

Never again will someone have the extraordinary experience of understanding at last the standard genetic code that has given rise to unimagined frontiers.  Gould points out that in his field of geology, plate tectonics swept through less than one hundred years ago.  Someone else first understood that time comes in billions rather than millions of years.  Charles Darwin revolutionized biology with his explanation of natural selection.  Still, there is so much yet to discover that we need not worry about reaching enlightenment, either scientific or any other kind.

One truth so far is that not everything is easily explained through scientific methods.  That doesn’t mean they are unimportant or wrong or dumb or bad—just some things fall outside the realm of science.  Different people view scientific discoveries and natural wonders as proof there is a god; others view the same evidence as proof that there is no god.

Dr. Larry Dossey “used to believe that we must choose between science and reason on one hand, and spirituality on the other, in how we lead our lives. Now [he] consider[s] this a false choice. We can recover the sense of sacredness, not just in science, but in perhaps every area of life."  (from Reinventing Medicine).  Dossey is convinced that prayer is good medicine.  Though the results of scientifically controlled studies of prayer have not proven its efficacy, for millions of people it’s a lot better than a placebo.  Why is this so?

The bottom line is that none of us will ever stop asking questions and wondering about the nature of this incredible world.

Karen Mustard sent me a reading by Don Lago, called “A Hymn to Life in the Universe.”

"Man sought to catch the rain of cosmic energy for what it revealed of the universe, to feed his hunger for understanding.

“This hunger was born out of the same primeval dance occurring in every cell of the plant, and though the human mind had vastly transcended the simple weaving together of molecules, it still carried on life's work of making order out of the chaos around it. Man emerged into a world swarming with bewildering events and tried to find patterns in them. He watched the rising moon and noticed how it matched the rising tides; he watched the changing seasons and noticed how they matched the changing sky. He held a fossil in his hand and glimpsed the history of his planet. He watched the animals around him and saw that they shared many of the same emotions he felt within himself. He studied a falling object and guessed the nature of the force guiding the planets in their flight. He saw a seed become a tree and a baby become an adult, marveled at the force at work within wood and flesh, and looked into the blackness of the universe and wondered if this force was also at work among the stars."

Here we have basically the same story:  water plus earth yielded life; neither religion nor science tells the whole tale.  Some religious people will never accept science and its methodical, logical approach to understanding.  But we share elements of doubt and faith, fear and awe.  What do you want science to do for you?

Cure disease

Feed the world

End racism and war

Find my keys