Science not only increases our knowledge, it deepens our intimacy with reality. Nowhere is this more evident than in how an evidential worldview helps us honor -- indeed, celebrate -- the role of death at all scales of the cosmos.
My wife, Connie Barlow (a science writer and evolutionary educator), and I have a passion for sharing the "soul-nourishing" side of our new science-based understanding of death with people of all ages, backgrounds and beliefs.
Thanks to the sciences of astronomy, astrophysics, chemistry, geology, paleontology, evolutionary biology, cell biology, embryology, ecology, geograph, and math, we can now not only accept but celebrate that:
The following two litanies (responsive readings) express the science of what we know (not believe) about the material fact of death at all scales of reality.
The Gifts of Death
1. Without the death of stars, there would be no planets and no life.
2. Without the death of creatures, there would be no evolution.
1. Without the death of elders, there would be no room for children.
2. Without the death of fetal cells, we would all be spheres.
1. Without the death of neurons, wisdom and creativity would not blossom.
2. Without the death of cells in woody plants, there would be no trees.
1. Without the death of forests by Ice Age advance, there would be no northern lakes.
2. Without the death of mountains, there would be no sand or soil.
1. Without the death of plants and animals, there would be no food.
2. Without the death of old ways of thinking, there would be no room for the new.
1. Without death, there would be no ancestors.
2. Without death, time would not be precious.
ALL: What, then, are the gifts of death?
1. The gifts of death are Mars and Mercury, Saturn and Earth.
2. The gifts of death are the atoms of stardust within our bodies.
1. The gifts of death are the splendors of shape and form and color.
2. The gifts of death are diversity, the immense journey of life.
1. The gifts of death are woodlands and soils, ponds and lakes.
2. The gifts of death are food: the sustenance of life.
1. The gifts of death are seeing, hearing, feeling -- deeply feeling.
2. The gifts of death are wisdom, creativity and the flow of cultural change.
1. The gifts of death are the urgency to act, the desire to fully be and become.
2. The gifts of death are joy and sorrow, laughter and tears.
ALL: The gifts of death are lives that are fully and exuberantly lived, and then graciously and gratefully given up, for now and forevermore. Amen
Yes to the Universe
Stars are born, and stars die. Along the way these stars fashion the very atoms of our bodies.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Mountains are born, and mountains die. Along the way these mountains create the particles of sand and clay that blend with dead plants to become soil.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Glaciers come and glaciers go. Along the way they grind rocks into new soil and sculpt ponds and lakes.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Species come and species go. Along this odyssey of evolution, marvels emerge: eyes, limbs, feathers, song, terror, love.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Cells are born, and cells die. Along the way, the winnowing yields fingers and toes, fins and wings, and the miracle of healing from injury.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Forests of cells are born and die, but not let go. Along the way, these ancestor cells stiffen into wood of uncommon strength and endurance, allowing the living green cells to reach for the sky.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Baby animals are born in abundance, and myriad plant seeds are cast to the wind. Along the way most of these children become food, supporting the vast ecological web of life.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Humans are born, and humans die. Along the way each may blossom with love, and accrue wisdom as elders, and then by their passing make room for generations of children now and forevermore.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Ideas are born, and ideas die. Along the way they nourish the human journey, onward, inward and outward, in an arc of wonder that now embraces a hundred billion galaxies.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Love comes, and love fades, dies or endures. Along the way we experience the richness of existence, sanctified by laughter and tears.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Each of us is born, and each of us will die. Along the way our awareness of death urges us to live fully, to give fully and to take not one moment for granted.
-- Is this a universe we say Yes to?
Also see...
Follow Rev. Michael Dowd on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MBDowd
Philip Clayton, Ph.D.: Does the Higgs Boson Discovery Resolve the Religion-Science Debate?
Krista Tippett: The Real Environmental Crisis: Lessons From the Green Patriarch
Stephen R. Friberg: Science, Religion, and the Bahá'í Faith
Big Integrity Resources: Growing in Right Relationship to Reality
http://evolutionarychristianity.com/blog/big-integrity-resources-growing-in-right-relationship-to-reality/
Isn't this simply intellectual feel-good verbiage? Is the primary challenge to "liv[ing] in accord with reality" really intellectual? Does taking the undoing stream-of-me-consciousness crapola (supplemented with high tech distractions) and adding "evolution", "black holes", etc. change anything fundamental ("blah-blah-me-blah-blah-evolution-blah-blah-me…")?
You might read the article "Dalai Lama Pushes Tibetan Monks to Tackle Science in the Indian Hill" at this site. Note the paragraphs that follow "No one yawns." Traditional ways of life were far less intellectual and far more likely to focus on simply paying attention. This offers the opportunity to directly learn about oneself and improve well being. Science is heading in the opposite direction. On a related point the practical aspects of science - which tend to be marginalized academically (again see physics) - can certainly be objectively helpful.
Presumably the Dalai Lama is motivated to push science to try to get at some objective/modern bearings for the transcendental view they have (and share with many premodern people). If they wade in enough they should notice the missing heritability problem, the transgender phenomenon (complete with knowing you were born in the wrong gender), and observations of children's innate religious sense ("Born Believers"). That traction for a deeper view of life (and death and religion) is of course rejected by science and thus labeled "magic".
You are, no doubt, correct. It's just that Connie and I focus almost entirely on the practical, life- and relationship-improving aspects of what science is revealing about our inner and outer nature. That's really our niche, our brand. That's what my book, "Thank God for Evolution," focused on as well as most of what we've created or produced in the last five years. See, for example, my recent TEDx talk: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-michael-dowd/tedx-talk-why-we-struggle_b_1605802.html and our Evolutionize Your Life course: http://evolutionizeyourlife.com/online-course.php and, most recently, the "Men Evolving Men: Fitness for Life" vision that I'm currently jazzed about: http://thegreatsory.org/men.pdf
First, a basic - but not unique attribute - of science is an encouragement to dig in and make sense of things. From this writing I see no evidence of wading in and being critical. Do you think this material would in any way be helpful for a grieving person?
The big picture is that science has been indirectly instrumental in helping humanity ratchet up its ability to overwhelm the biosphere (and our future). Further, science has not responded well to this rising crisis (see for example the agenda of modern physics).
The notion that science "deepens our intimacy with reality" only makes intellectual sense. If this claim made real sense then scientists and perhaps their followers (including atheists) would have some clear intimacy edge on their counterparts. I have never had the sense - both interpersonally or in observing others - that there is intellectually-beget edge to intimacy. It tends to go the other way.
Science has rejected all other understandings of life and in fact nuked the concept of a soul. Science will not consider the shortcomings of their material-only, bio-robotic vision of life. This despite getting pummeled on assumptions about the DNA origins of individual innateness (i.e., the missing heritability problem) and many behavioral conundrums facing their vision (for example transgender individuals).
For non-followers of science there are legitimate mysteries concerning death.
Woody Allen
His answer quoted in the Hindu epic, Mahabharata, was, 'Day after day countless people die. Yet the living wish to live forever. O Lord, what can be a greater wonder?'
His death and sequence resurrection was the cause of a source of life that was not already available to us mere mortals.
As Christians, in our baptism we co-die (death to self) and are co-resurrected to the new life he achieved for us. Death where is your victory ? ...mortality has been swallowed up by immortality.
Shalom
- Michel Foucault
To go on however, because if any religion is to have validity, it must explain or help to alleviate suffering.
All of which you speak is the embracing of change; that nothing is permanent. Suffering comes to those who try to stop the flow of existence out of the illusion of permanence. All there is is the ever changing ebb and flow of infinity. As the Buddhists assert: clinging causes suffering. To stop suffering stop trying to hold onto that which is impermanent. Cease your desires and be one with what is.
The idea of death as a gateway or simply a flow back to the primordial is a beautiful concept. Suffering and fear comes from the ego thinking that we cease to exist at that point. The ego holds on "for dear life", when life is an infinite set of experiences.
You are one of the only people I've read here that actually understands what "religion" means. We are spiritually malnourished because of what we call religion in this country. Dogma and dictatorial texts have no place in the quest for peace. No one reads the instruction manuals of anything anyway.
Good job.
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Some live full and exuberant lives, and then graciously give them up.
Others (including many of my own family) get shoveled into the ovens, or put down in the killing fields, and so on.
Here's a quick story for you, to share on your next preaching tour: The Dalai Lama (I'm not a follower) was taken on a tour of Auschwitz, some years back. Afterwards, he literally couldn't speak a word for many hours.
Your "science" here is both trivial and glib. We all know that dead things make good fertilizer.
But most of us also know that when dealing with a person who is mourning a loss, and particularly an unplanned or unexpected or untimely loss, the last thing you should do is share goofy uplifting thoughts - whether of your sort, or of the sort that Jesus needed another angel in heaven.
We honor death, not by trivializing it as merely a "natural" process - but by respecting its mystery, particularly its mystery and its difficulty for us, who struggle with it when it comes to our door.
Let's get real - or let's not play.
It's not either/or, however. Of course we honor death by respecting its mystery and pain!
But it's absurd to claim that it's merely "trivial and glib" science to honor the fact that A) death is not a cosmic mistake, nor a divine punishment, B) humans are not responsible for the existence of death in the universe, and C) death plays a creative role in the cosmos.
Evidence suggests that knowing these things ahead of time does, in fact, make a difference in people's emotions and responses later.
A lot of them are Christians of some sort (simply because that's the dominant meme in our country). Some are Buddhists, or agnostics, or atheists, or whatever. What really matters is that I can jettison my own personal world views and prejudices, and skillfully and compassionately enter their world, rather than trying to superimpose MY views on them, because that's what MY ego needs or wants.
That's what I mean by honoring the difficulty of dealing with death, rather than spouting platitudes - whether of the scientific sort, or any other sort. When you figure that out, maybe you'll have more of a right to call yourself a "reverend"...though personally, I think all such titles are silly.
We're either all "reverend", or we're all not, or we're all both. Using it as a form of demarcation to legitimize one's opinions seems a bit of a sham.
Once again, let's get real (particularly when dealing with the difficulty of death) - or let's not play.
Woody Allen