There is something about the clear night sky that always works on me like the charmed talismans of an ancient sorcery. I can spend hours at a time looking up at it. 1Sobosan, however, also shares a troubling incident:
I remember one of these disagreements with a mentor of mine, an old priest who had .... contributed brilliantly to his own specialty in theology, and now at the close of life had given himself over to what he once described as his first love, the study of the stars. I met him in a garden one evening, where he sat by his beloved telescope ... with a look of ineffable sadness in his eyes.... He spoke of the beauty of the universe ... but in striving after this beauty,... his mind had taken a savage turn ... toward the damning conclusion: the universe is void of meaning. 2These contrasting responses — delight as opposed to gloom — raise an important question: Can our sense that life is meaningful encompass our knowledge about the non-human realm of planet Earth and the cosmos?...
It is a critical question because it involves many intersections between religion and science. It is also a vital question because, as the scholar of religion Karen Armstrong reminds us, “We are meaning-seeking creatures.... Humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives.” 3
1. Jeffrey G. Sobosan. Romancing the Universe: Theology, Science, and Cosmology. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999. p. 1.
2. Ibid., p. 97.
3. Karen Armstrong. “Think Again: God.” Foreign Policy, Nov./Dec. 2009. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/15/thinkagaingod/.
