There's only one thing wrong with religious cosmologies: they aren't true. And that's a pretty damn serious thing. Which is why we shouldn't take erroneous views of the universe seriously.
Yet we humans are meaning-creatures. Bare facts aren't enough for us.
Our highly evolved minds love to construct stories about what life is all about, what's most important for us to do, and other value-laden layerings that provide a increased depth to our existence.
The choice each of us faces is how realistic our "myths" are.
Now, that word, myth, doesn't need to refer to something untrue. There's another way of regarding that term, as described by physicist Joel Primack and philosopher of science Nancy Abrams in their book, "The View From the Center of the Universe: Discovering our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos."
Myth is a way human beings relate to their universe. What exactly is a myth? In his last book, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, mythologist Joseph Campbell made the passionate argument that what our society most desperately needs is a new story of reality for all of us -- not just some chosen group. The story must demonstrate humanity's connection to all there is, yet be consistent with what we know scientifically.
...Unlike Campbell, many people use the word myth to mean "the opposite of reality" -- that is, a notion held by other people who are delusional or at best quaint, but this is a very unfortunate understanding of myth that limits our ability to draw on its power and its importance to the human mind. Myths don't just represent a reality people already know about: myths present reality. They define it.
In this book, when we use the word "myth," we mean what Campbell meant: the highest-order explanations, the stories that people of any culture, at any time including today, communally believe and use to explain the larger reality, including their own place in it.
Here's the exciting thing about living in the 21st century: for the first time in human history, we have the ability to construct myths about our place in the universe that are actually true.
Primack and Abrams demolish an erroneous myth: that science keeps overturning ways of understanding the cosmos, so seemingly valid current scientific theories are just as flimsy as the pre-Copernican concept that the Earth was the center of the universe.
Actually, they correctly point out, what has been happening since the time of Newton is that new theories encompass old theories.
There have been several revolutions in physics since Newton, but none of these has overthrown the previous theory. Revolutionary scientific theories do not have to overthrow their predecessors except at the earliest stage of a science when a scientific theory is replacing earlier ideas that were not well supported by evidence.
Once a field of science undergoes the revolution that creates for it a solid intellectual foundation -- like the one Newtonian mechanics gave physics, or Darwinian evolution gave biology -- that foundational theory can stand forever. Science then progresses by encompassing the foundational theory in a new and larger theory that explains things beyond the ken of the older theory.
So we can have a lot of confidence in what is currently known about the cosmos.
That knowledge is incomplete. It has lots of holes and contradictions (such as the differing perspectives of relativity theory and quantum mechanics). But basically it is almost certainly true.
Which is why both our personal and collective meaning-myths need to be founded on scientific facts. This still leaves a lot of room for creativity, imagination, and hypothesizing about what lies out there beyond the horizon of our current Knowledge Ocean.
For example, this morning I read the "What is the Universe Made Of?" chapter in The View From the Center of the Universe. Here's a marvelous visual summary that appeared in the chapter of a whole lot of scientific research, and was thankfully shared on the book's web site.
This is a marvelous factual "myth," an easy to understand -- but not easy to genuinely comprehend -- visualization of what reality is composed of.
Visible matter is only 0.5% of the total. The black part of the pyramid represents the invisible: that is, what we do not see but know is there. The top and smallest layer of invisibility is simply non-shining and unlit atomic matter -- matter that is invisible in fact, but not in principle. It is about 4 percent of the total.
Below it lies the far more massive layer of dark matter, which is invisible in principle. It represents about 25 percent of the total. And below that lies the energy that is accelerating the expansion of the universe, dark energy. It is 70 percent of the total density of the universe now.
Wow.
Religious people often talk about the mystery of God, which attracts them. Yet there is so much mystery to be found within the bounds of science. Who needs God? Mysterious reality is much more appealing than mysterious fantasy.
True believers in some faith also enjoy the feeling of being special that their religion offers them. Here again, though, facts of science trump the illusions of dogma.
Primack and Abrams speak of how rare is that .01% of all matter and energy in the universe comprised of heavier elements than hydrogen and helium. That's us! We conscious beings are literally made of "stardust," since those elements are the result of exploding stars.
Here's a modern myth shared in the early part of the book, which the authors elaborate on in succeeding chapters:
Imagine you have suddenly lost your memory. You see yourself in a mirror, but there is only this moment. You are unaware of any past, even the very moment before this one. You are solid, your cells are real, your heart is pumping, but how you got to the spot on which you stand, you have no idea.
Who are you? There is no answer.
You are not your family background, your personal history, the work you've done, your hopes for the future. These don't exist. You have no family, no associations. You're like a computer with hormones. You have lost your soul. You are listening to the latest music, buying the latest improved products, and believing the latest media interpretations of the world outside your room. This is all you know.
Now instead imagine yourself as a branching history and send your consciousness backward through the branches at lightning speed. Down past your parents and grandparents, down the countless generations before them, through your ancestors roaming from continent to continent, your primate ancestors, down through all the animals that preceded them, back through the earliest life, into a single cell, down into the complex chemicals that made it possible, down into the molten planet and the forming solar system, the birth of your carbon and oxygen and iron in exploding stars far across the galaxy, back through the universal expansion to the creation of your elementary particles in the Big Bang.
This is not fantasy. This is science: you are all this. Who you are is the sum total of your history. How far back you take that history -- how much of your own identity you claim -- is up to you.
Does Gravity Really Exist?
Is gravity a fundamental force?
One expert physicist and string theorist, Dr Erik Verlinde, says the answer is very likely to be "no". check it out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html?no_interstitial
Posted by: tAo | July 13, 2010 at 08:54 PM
TAo: Thanks for posting the link.
"You might wonder why a string theorist is interested in Newton’s equations. After all Newton was overturned a century ago by Einstein, who explained gravity as warps in the geometry of space-time, and who some theorists think could be overturned in turn by string theorists."
I guess whether a theory encompasses or overturns an other theory is more of question of opinion or belief. It is not because it is written in a book that it is a fact :) (just kiding)
As far as we can tell (based on facts) your claim of a almost truth (sic) is a belief at this point. Moreover, it rests on an ill-defined ideas of what a theory and truth might be. Let just say that a few hundred years is a pretty short period of time to evaluate if we 'finally (almost) got it'. Every period had its fools thinking we 'finally got it'. No reason to belief it is any different this time. Let just wait a few more hundred years to see if your 'encompassing' interpretation/conjecture pend out.
Posted by: the elephant | July 14, 2010 at 05:03 AM
"We conscious beings are literally made of 'stardust'"
reminds me of Dr Darryl Reanney (molecular biologist), Australasian scientist, whom I met on one of his last lectures in 1993 : he died in 1994 (leukaemia). I still have the video recording of this lecture. He stated:
"There are millions of hydrogen atoms in our bodies. Thus the texture of our bodies and brains - the substance of our very being - is still continuous with an event that took place 15 billion years ago. We are still part of that 'great silent fire at the beinning of time.' Each of us.
Hydrogen is the start of the evolutionary journey. In a typical star like the sun, hydrogen is burned to helium, the next higher element. This is the pattern. As the fires inside stars get hotter, as the furnaces of creation glow more brightly, so ever more complex elements can be created: carbon, oxygen, iron and so on. Our bodies are made of star-ash. We are children of the stars. This is factually accurate. What we are 'now' is speaking to what we were 'then', each phase of our growth recognising the other in some dim way, below words.
These bones, this hand
star-ash
brain molten with genesis heat.
This quiet thought, that raging fire ..."
The above quoted from Reanney's book "Music of the Mind".
Posted by: Elizabeth W | July 15, 2010 at 12:31 AM
So what Primack and Abrams are saying is that 99.49% percent of what actually "exists" as the content of the universe is totally inaccessible to human beings, but nevertheless figures in significantly when it comes to the mathematical equations that allow us to manipulate the 0.51% of the universe that can be demonstrated to exist.
I'll sleep better now.
Posted by: Willie R. | July 15, 2010 at 05:05 AM
elizabeth w: "In a typical star like the sun, hydrogen is burned to helium, the next higher element. This is the pattern. As the fires inside stars get hotter, as the furnaces of creation glow more brightly, so ever more complex elements can be created: carbon, oxygen, iron and so on."
-- there is now some serious debate about that. there is another very plausible theory put forth by legitmate scientists that the sun is really not a nuclear furnace of hydrogen coverting to helium etc... but rather the stars are actually intense concentrations of electrical plasma formed by the intersection of huge interstellar elecrical fields. that the star globes are actually huge nexus points where vast electrical fields intersect and produce radiation.
you can easily find a lot more on this by doing a search for "the electrical universe" theory. i don't have the time right now to find and post the links. maybe later.
Posted by: tAo | July 15, 2010 at 12:59 PM
Yes, tAo, I have become conversant with the new theory stating the sun is not a hydrogen furnace converting to helium, this published fairly recently though I do not believe this negates Reanney's understanding as science, as you yourself with your erudite mind would know well, is a progression. 1993 is but a "minute" away (and the next "minute" and the next). I can only think how excited Reanney would be (he died relatively young) with this leap forward. Semantics also has its important place within this field so scientists tread warily.
It's all so interesting. Thanks your response.
Posted by: Elizabeth W | July 15, 2010 at 08:25 PM