Cosmology and Humility
I watched the U.S. Navy launch a rocket, carrying a satellite, into space via Facebook Live on my iPhone while laying in bed this morning. The whole trip from-rocket-pad-to-outer-space took only a couple of minutes. Minutes later, I'd completely forgotten about it. I'm reading A Charismatic Approach to Social Action by Larry Christensen this week. The book was written in the 70s, and Christensen was a Lutheran pastor writing a strange follow-up to his more popular book called The Christian Family. While I don't agree with most of his arguments, he is pushing me to think critically about modern cosmology. Christensen reminds the reader that the perspective of what "the world" was in the mind of the people in the Bible is more simplistic than the worldview of a person who can easily forget the wonder of watching a satellite being launched into outer space. They couldn't rationalize away their experiences with science the way that I can. Yet, I think that something is lost in the scientific process. Can all of life be quantified in by science and spreadsheets? Is the modern cosmology that I share any better than the cosmology found in the Bible? It is certainly different. Can my view still be informed -- no -- enriched by reminding myself daily of a premodern view of the cosmos? Can I least have the humility to admit that my cosmology will soon, and quickly, become outdated?
Pale Blue Dot as a Reminder
The humility of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot image and quote is certainly a fitting reminder:
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” ― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
God's Words to Job
However, I think that the writer of Job, quoting God's response to Job, does it even more justice:
Job 38:4-7 (NRSV)
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. 5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? 6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone 7 when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
When I start to think that I've gotten everything figured out, I need to be humbled by the "bigness" of the Universe, and to be put into my rightful place by my Creator.