Rev. Gary Kowalski Rev. Joy Atkinson

3065 Science and the Search for God

Sponsored by the UU Process Theology Network
Rev. Gary Kowalski, Minister, First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, VT, member of UU Process Relational Network

Notes from the Presentation by the Rev. Gary Kowalski

Process Theology is often called process relational theology. The message of process theology is that science can help us in our search for meaning.

Kowalski traced the history of thinking about the cosmos, from Aristotle to Galileo. Prior to the Middle Ages, people had been living in an Aristotelian universe, with an impure land below, subject to chance, but up above, a rarified heavenly sphere that was timeless, eternal, that existed beyond the realm of change.

When Galileo discovered the phases of Venus, this theory came crashing down. The heavens became plain old “outer space” full of gas, dirt, and a whole of empty space. When Galileo's telescope revealed thousands of stars, it was hard to believe all this had been created for the enjoyment of humankind.

What the astronomers started, the biologists finished off. Will Durant said Charles Darwin was the thinker who had the greatest impact on world history because he demolished the theory that the world was created for our own happiness. Did God really create the hummingbird so perfectly?

”Life is the product of a blind watchmaker,” said Richard Dawkins. Newton's clockwork universe came to dominate our thinking but not the rational thinking behind it, so the feeling has grown up that there is no rhyme or reason in this world, that we are estranged from nature. In this kind of universe, belief in God has become problematic.

Statistics: Among those with psychological training only 1 percent say they believe in a higher power. For biologists, the figure is 5 percent, for physicists, it's 7.5 percent, and for practicing mathematicians, it's 15 percent. The overwhelming percentage of people with higher training in sciences are atheists, while half of the U.S. public says we are literally descended from Adam and Eve.

Fifty years ago, the universe was looked on as a machine; but when we look at the science of the atom, the clockwork machine-like ideal breaks down; the universe is closer to a thought than a machine. Inner and outer space are composed of the same filaments. To believe in God means you have to believe that “Something, somewhere is not stupid.”

Einstein's teacher was the first to describe the space-time continuum, that you could not talk about one without talking about the other. An everyday example of a continuum is a line of music; every note has a pitch and an interval; collectively you have a piece of music.

We are not human “beings” but human “becomings;” we are all in a process, we are evolving, we are not robots. Continental drift is an example of this in the real world.

Reality is made up of events, starting with the Big Bang. Inside the nucleus of the atom there an infinite set of possibilities, just as you don't get the essence of a symphony by looking at the individual notes.

The post-Newtonian world is no longer a clockwork universe, with strict sequences of cause and effect. The new physics is composed of happenings; “All mass is interaction,” says Richard Feynman; you can't say “B is made of A or A is made of B.”

You could also say that a new way of thinking of the Divine is not as a supernatural agency located outside the physical universe, but a generative self-organizing principle at work, within the natural universe. People are not at the center of creation, with humans the only creatures with consciousness and self-awareness. Now we know that's not true, there is consciousness everywhere.

Scientists are realizing that the universe is stranger that it was 100 years ago. Scientists can greatly expand our view of the universe and of God.

Albert Einstein wrote in response to a letter he received from a young girl who was grieving the death of her younger sister; “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'universe.' We experience ourselves as something separate from the rest, an optical delusion of consciousness; restricting to a few desires from the people near us. We must expand the circle of our compassion by embracing all living creatures, and the whole of its beauty.” 

Notes from the Response by the Rev. Joy Atkinson:

As a preteen and a young astronomer, I always thought of how science and religion were connected.

Process theologians think of a religion not only that does not conflict with science. They are attempting a new synthesis of these two worlds.

Alfred North Whitehead, British philosopher and mathematician, is considered the father of modern process theology. It is nearly 80 years old; perhaps it is the new synthesis of science and religion that Gary speaks of.

Reported by Allan Stern; Edited by Jone Johnson Lewis; photos by Allan Stern

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