Ice on Mars: Good for the Jews?

I have always been only slightly embarrassed by my avidity for reports of UFOs, ETs, new planetary systems, semantic transmissions across the galaxies and every other kind of disruptive wow.

My embarrassment stems not from a reflexive belief in reports of bright lights flying low and fast over Stephenville, Texas or Chilliwack, British Columbia; I am as skeptical of tabloid headlines, and as cautious about the madness of crowds, as any other child of Voltaire or Mad Magazine.

No, what makes me sheepish about this stuff isn't my intellectual credulousness; it's my yearning for some indisputable event that will bust up our paradigms, some unruly discovery that will force us to remake from scratch our stories about who we are, where we come from and where we're headed.

Now that the Phoenix Lander has confirmed the existence of ice on Mars, and soil you can grow asparagus in, I'm rooting for them to find amino acids. I want it to be conceivable that Mars is a mere billion years behind Earth on the path to evolution, or maybe, sadly, a couple of billion years ahead of us on the road to extinction. And if they don't find organic molecules, I'm rooting for some strange silicon-based information-rich chains in that Martian soup.

I want what's found to make us say, Whoa! I want us to experience the kind of radical amazement that will require sending conventional cosmology to the repair shop. I want data that upend our accepted accounts of origins and evolution. I want scientific cover for the most boldly creative re-imaginings of the nature of life and of our own place in the great chain of being. I want to see the concepts of meaning and purpose up for grabs. I want new discoveries about stardust to make both ancient texts and current textbooks wholly inadequate for understanding the mysterium tremendum of the physical universe.

I want the discovery of extraterrestrial life -- or "life" -- to change everything. I don't mean an eruption of "War of the Worlds"-style paranoia or of "Close Encounters"-style romanticism. I'm thinking instead of that 4-million-year-old black monolith that astronauts find deliberately buried on the moon in the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, an object identical to one in the movie's opening "Dawn of Man" sequence. Forget the middle part of the movie, the voyage to Jupiter to examine a third monolith circling that planet, a trip sabotaged by the mutinous supercomputer HAL; think instead about how the movie ends.

There is an amazing light show, followed by actor Keir Dullea's accelerated aging in a weird Louis XVI-furnished room, followed abruptly by Dullea's transformation into the Star Child, a fetus in a glowing orb looking down from space on the Earth. If you're of boomerish vintage, you know that plenty of stoned debates about the meaning of the movie's strange conclusion followed its initial release (I know, I know: you didn't inhale). The interpretation that worked best for me was that, basically, we humans don't know nothing.

Is evolution the merely pointless, meaningless consequence of having world enough and time, or is our current state of consciousness just too embryonic to grasp the telos of the universe? If cosmologists are right about the Big Bang, what's the difference between the essential preposterousness of that account of ontology, and the "tsimtsum" -- the great contraction -- of kabbalah? If a starry night or a baby's finger can make you marvel at the sheer existence of anything at all, why should God be a less plausible account of materiality than quantum physics' favorite theory: superstrings vibrating in 11 ineffable dimensions of space-time? If scientists believe, as they do, that invisible dark matter and unobservable dark energy make up the vast majority of the universe, then why should mystical accounts of an unseeable cosmos be any more inconceivable?

Jews -- my particular tribe -- don't need monoliths, or Martian ice water, to set them off in these speculative directions. Jacob was renamed Israel because he wrestled with God, and his descendants still spend their days wrestling with the idea of God, no matter what the news might be from the Large Hadron Collider, the SETI Arecibo Observatory or the Phoenix Lander on Mars.

Nor do I underestimate the capacity of fundamentalist literalism -- in my tribe, orthodoxy -- to assimilate even the most alien of singularities that scientists may turn up. Should instruments examining a soil sample from the fourth planet's northern arctic plane reveal a Martian version of Horton's Whoville, there will no doubt be exegetes aplenty who will calmly conform such a disorderly discovery to the literal narrative of Genesis.

But for those who despair about the postmodern dead end that the history of consciousness has led to (and I include myself among them); for those too undisciplined to reliably integrate yoga, meditation, beginner's mind or other spiritual technologies into their daily lives (yes, my hand is up); for those who can sleepwalk past a rose, forget to say a morning thank-you for existence, or succumb to anti-mindful pathologies like boredom or killing time (guilty, guilty and guilty) -- for us garden-variety broken vessels, a thrilling we-interrupt-this-program bulletin from the scientific magisterium is arguably not too childish to ache for.

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A version of this post appears as my weekly column at www.jewishjournal.com.

Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan

Comments

[websmith]

If you were a nucleus and you were 2mm in diameter, about the size of the dash on your keyboard or a copper BB, the electron bubble enclosing you would be just over a half mile away. Between you and your electron shell would be nothing. The electron is energy. It's not a little round ball in orbit. It's more like an amount of energy gas so an electron could be considered to be a measurement of the amount of energy attracted by a nucleus.

If all of the empty space between the nucleus and electron were removed from your body, you would not be visible to the naked eye. Nothing you see would be visible except the the sun if you were really close to it. Nothing would be large enough to reflect enough light so you could sense it. If you could see everything as it really is, you would only see globs of energy.

Everything in the universe is made the same way. As long as you think that you are different from anything else and apart from the universe, you will struggle. You are the same as the next guy except for your learned behavior.

Since our thoughts are comprised of energy, the jury is still out as to whether energy is a thought, and it's our energy in our brains that makes us different, or our individual atomic structure manipulates energy in a way that gives us individual thought.

[OneWoman]

Thank you for your post.

I have long maintained that thoughts are things. To think is to create. As a psychotherapist, this belief informs my practice. I tell my clients 'if you can change your thoughts, you can change your reality'. (This is really the basis for cognitive behavioral therapy.)

As a practicing pagan, I know how powerful concentration and visualization can be (a.k.a. magic).

[BaileyWo]

WHEN THOUGHTS BECAME A THING;
"I think; therefore, I am."

The switch is on.
The switch is off.
The dichotomous thing
Is the thing we scoff.

Are you practicing magic?
Or is magic practicing you?
Be careful how you choose
You may win or you may lose.

Are you imagining
Or are you seeing?
If you stop "creating"
Do you stop being?

If you are not a thing
Before you are heard,
then please, can you tell me
What is the original word?

[Pero]

One million Iraqis have been murdered, nationalized oil "privatized" once again - let's go bomb Iran. Leave gods alone

[Eulipian]

So, 10 rabbis, 11 opinions? BTW, if you're hand was raised, you're fully manifesting beginner's mind.

[BaileyWo]

And what if it was not?

[cognate]

It's not the existence of God, but the nature of God that is at issue. All scientific observation and contemplation suggest that God is not a volitional being. Though, like a child, one can talk to and pray to God, science suggests that expecting a personal answer is foolish.

[arjuna108]

Please list the scientific observations of god that have been undertaken so far. Where was this being observed? How was it determined that this being was "not volitional"?

[Bluebloodsbastardson]

what would science suggest to one receiving a personal answer???????

[Tulka2]

My father died at 75 without ever seeing a comet, which would have made him a happy man. Since his death there have been two, great, hang-in-the-sky, night after night comets. I'm sure you saw them, Mr. Kaplan. Now you want extraterestrials too...?

Sideline....? Doesn't "dark matter" sounds a lot like "yin" to our material "yang". (Tibetan masters say there is a trick to viewing parallel universes through a mirror, btw.)

And....? Israel isn't enough manifistation for you...? Want to trade up for Utah? I have always thought what a better world if Utah's Zion was given to Jews after WWII. Think about it... now there would be a wall around the Mormans. I'm kiding, i'm kidding.

[edtastic]

Jewish Exceptionalism?

I dislike articles in the mainstream that invoke Jewishness without good cause. It seems to be more oriented out of a sense of pride in being Jewish than in bringing meaningful content to the reader. I enjoy reading about Jewish culture, but at the same time do not wish to be lead on a meandering road for the sole purpose of an authors desire to express feelings of Jews as if they were unique to that group only. I would not wish any religion or ethnic group to take a story about Ice on Mars and twist it into some kind of self aggrandizing exceptionalism.

[kantcould]

Oy, gimme a brech.

[robiform]

Couldn't have said it better! BTW, Marty, thanks for referencing "2001: A Space Odyssey"! A great college memory for me was going to the movie theater to see that film and coming to the realization that my friends and I were the only ones there who weren't stoned!! :-) As the movie ended, one of the stoners announced loudly, "The monolith is God!!" Of such stuff, college philosophy courses are made!!

[BaileyWo]

But this is an exceptional post!

[EbonBear]

Why not? Americans do that about virtually everything already.

[argyle]

Amen

[johnqsittinzen]

"Cleave any piece of wood (on Mars) I am there; lift any stone (on Mars) I am there."

- Jesus of Nazareth (on Mars)

[CalvinistHobbesian]

That game's more fun when you say "in bed".

[BaileyWo]

Look on the back and oy! There's your lotto number!

[paixa3]

The one and only scripture that represents my religion. From Thomas, I believe.

[johnqsittinzen]

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth than our dreamt of in your philosophies, Horatio."

- W.S. HAMLET

[davism97]

If scientists believe, as they do, that invisible dark matter and unobservable dark energy make up the vast majority of the universe, then why should mystical accounts of an unseeable cosmos be any more inconceivable?

Scientists don't "believe" in the same way religious people believe in their myths. Scientists base beliefs on observable facts where relgious people base beliefs on revelations or passion. Of course string theory isn't quite science...

[arjuna108]

Yes, this is te fundamental misunderstanding of science. Mr Kaplan says: "If cosmologists are right about the Big Bang, what's the difference between the essential preposterousness of that account of ontology, and the "tsimtsum" -- the great contraction -- of kabbalah?"

And the fundamental difference is the development of these theories. Kabbalah tells a story. Its purpose may be to inspire, to deceive, to comfort but it is not required that it be confirmed or supported in any way by reality.

The big bang is a deduction based in observation of the universe. Further observations can lend credence, force revision or dispel the theory. Tsimtsum predicts a universe that doesn't exist. The biblical universe is smaller than even our galaxy. That our education system can produce people who can't understand the difference between the two is a shame. That those people can be widely read and their senseless premises accepted is why we have "intelligent design" laws being signed.

If you have a story, a belief in a god, that is fine. Respect your god enough to marvel at the ACTUAL universe you believe he/she created and not try to impose some other universe on your god and the rest of us.

[starboymikey]

Scientists don't "believe" in the same way religious people believe in their myths.
______________________________________________________________________

People unfamiliar with scientific method often misunderstand the meaning of "theory." A theory is not simply some random belief.

A theory is a plausible explanation for something based on a set of confirmed, repeatable observations. For a theory to be accepted by the scientific community, it must fit the observations precisely. Any deviation does not necessarily invalidate the theory, but calls it into question. When observations that are plainly contradictary are made, a theory is generally discarded in favor of a better one.

This is never the case with religious precepts, especially as held by fundamentalists. The notion that God literally made the world in 24x7 is easily disputed by observation and common sense, yet some fundamentalists cling to this idea like a dog to its last bone.

On the other hand, the big bang as a "creation theory" is supported by the preponderance of evidence gathered through astronomical observation. If a time ever comes that a preponderance of new observation contradicts the big bang theory, scientists will have to replace it with something else. Science, therefore, is not the same as religion. They both have their place, but they are two different ways of seeing the world.

And, by the way. Ice on Mars is good for the Jews,but only if we want to have a nice glass of iced tea when we're there.

[falgiano]

speaking of which, there is a wonderfully funny song by Momus called "Space Jews". in which he speculates that the apparent brilliance of the Jewish people is b/c they are all space aliens of superior intelligence sent to save mankind.

[edtastic]

I would not find it funny to claim any group was a superior race. A song to that effect I would find truly offensive. As I recall Jewish people had to deal with others who felt they were superior, and that did not go to well did it. We don't need any group declaring supremacy over others, that is the road to madness war murder genocide and all types of evils. Spiritualism exist in many cultures, wisdom exists in many cultures, these people are simply not seen, not heard and often assumed inferior for whatever reason.

It is a dangerous game to say Jews are people of "superior intelligence". I don't see why it is so hard for people to give credit to humanity for what humanity has done instead of attributing this or that to one group as if they exist in a vacuum devoid of input from the wider world. Many groups contributing many perspectives the net gain is for humanity. This has been the lesson humanist have tried to get across for a very long time . In that message is a path to peace and away from senseless conflict between cultural , racial , religious, nationalist, and all sorts of supremacist.

We are all in this together and its about time we start acting like it.

[falgiano]

The song is whimsical. A playful enterprise. You obviously havent heard it. Its best to do that first before having an opinion.

[saxmaniac]

Dear Professior Kaplan. I love you.

[Sebastian11]

Hey, Marty, your article "Ice on Mars..." unleashed enough comments for you to write an opera. With your imagination, why don't you give it a try? I can only say that I enjoyed your post, and enjoyed the comments as much. As for dark matter, dark energy, matter and anti-matter, I am still in the process of trying to understand it. I'll be happy when I do.
Meanwhile, I am busy trying to figure out why are we so interested in the remnants of water and life in a dead planet, when we should be busy taking care of our planet --that is still alive--before it goes the same way Mars did. It will be easier and less expensive to restore our planet to its former health, than to find a viable planet in the cosmos. Its more difficult than findning a needle in a haystack.

[Ratel]

I agree, fantastic article. As a scientifically minded spritual person who probably spends too much time worrying about existence and not being productive its great to hear this perspective. I definetly hope for such an interrupting announcement but I hadn't considered how useful it might be if it gets people thinking beyond the da to day who aren't naturally inclined to it.

As for the needles in the haystack Sebastian111, I agree the Earth should be the number one focus but the exploration is still very worthwhile. Unless we change our nature fundamentally we will eventually overrun this beautiful little planet. And as astronomers have long suspected and are beginning to find out, that haystack really seems to be literally full of needles. And there's no reason to think many of them will contain life.

Back to 2001, the swamp at the end is on the moon Europa which still is the second most likely place to find remnants of life (after mars) and probably the most likely to currently have life.

[JanP]

rSebastian11:

Eventually, the earth will go the way of Mars. As the sun ages, it gets larger and hotter and will evenually boil away all of the water and thete will be no more habitable earth.

The estimates are in terms of hundreds of millions of years. We will be long gone.

I do not understand why you think that researching Mars means neglecting the Earth. The research and inventions to get to Mars and do the research help us on earth. It will help us develop more efficient solar cells and better computers. Many of the things we use everyday were developed because of space research.

[bushlies]

You just don't know how I hope somebody soon finds at least an amoeba or paramecium-like critter someplace else besides earth. I just want to see all the Holy Rollers tie themselves in knots trying to explain HOW this could happen!

[bethinCary]

And why don't scientists and theologians take in to account how from Greek mythology and ancient religions-there was worship of Gods/Goddesses who were named for planets/stars/moons...
Plato and other early scientists and philosophers had a healthy respect/educational background for the cosmos as it related to thier everyday life....without having to have the "why" answered.
Both science and religion have to realize they don't have all the answers yet-and keep an open mind about it-as opposed to dismissing each other..