Will the Mysteries of the Universe Fuel a New Religion?

[Liffrea]

In his classic on the place of planet earth in the universe, Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan asked how is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and said "This is better than we thought. The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. Instead they say, 'No. no. no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way."

Carl Sagan dreamed of a world where a new religion that stressed the wonder and awe and magnificence of the Universe as revealed by science "might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."

In a similar vein, Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins debates physicist Lawrence Krauss ("The Physics of Star Trek") asks and answers some of the big questions about religion and our existence on Earth.

A key focus is the impact of Darwin and "The Origin of the Species" on modern thought. Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme into the lexicon. In 1982, he made a widely cited contribution to the science of evolution with the theory, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that phenotypic effects are not limited to an organism's body but can stretch far into the environment, including into the bodies of other organisms. He has since written several best-selling popular books, and appeared in a number of television and radio programes, concerning evolutionary biology, creationism, and religion including The Selfish Gene, River Out of Eden, and most recently, Unweaving the Rainbow and The God Delusion, a New York Times bestseller.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/06/carl-sagan-will-the-mysteries-of-the-universe-fuel-a-new-religion-.html

[Psychonaut]

I guess you could count Cosmotheism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Luther_Pierce#Cosmotheism) as something like this...

Personally, I'm more in favor of formulating cosmicist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism) hermeneutics of exant religions. There's no need to ditch tradition for the sake of cosmic numinosity—the two can exist at once.

[Óttar]

Scientists often don't take into consideration the inner esoteric aspect of religion. In Sufism for example, the name of God is written upon the heart, and that is where all the mysteries of the Universe may be found. There is also an emphasis upon the nafs, "the Soul" or "the Breath." These two elements are curiously similar to ancient Egyptian religion, which believed the heart was the seat of the soul, and personified the breath (ka) as one's spirit.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_n70fn6hxdzg/R_bVOkj8UQI/AAAAAAAAAR8/BmP9lMdTaeg/s400/Heart%2Bof%2BAllah.jpg

[Lulletje Rozewater]

I guess you could count Cosmotheism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Luther_Pierce#Cosmotheism) as something like this...

Personally, I'm more in favor of formulating cosmicist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism) hermeneutics of exant religions. There's no need to ditch tradition for the sake of cosmic numinosity—the two can exist at once.

Surely there must already one in vogue

[Tabiti]

Mysteries of the Universe have always been religion, just with different imagery.

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by Óttar
Scientists often don't take into consideration the inner esoteric aspect of religion.

Well they wouldn’t, modern scientists aren’t philosophers (not professionally at least, though Einstein was probably naturalistically pantheist) anymore (one could argue, though, that positivists and analytical philosophy as a whole is closely subordinate to scientific empiricism).

I think many scientists are coming to the realisation that man will always be spiritual and that it isn’t something that can be removed. But of course this doesn’t mean spiritualism has to be linked to any sort of transcendent or metaphysical basis it can be entirely naturalistic, as that article suggests, I would be more inclined to naturalism myself (I have a soft spot for naturalistic pantheism) if it wasn’t for the question of mind, which I don’t believe can be explained entirely in terms of current science, but Roger Penrose may be right and the question of mind will be answered by the unification of quantum mechanics and classical physics, then again perhaps not.

[SilverKnight]

There's a religion called Universalism and it shares this same views. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalism

there's a similar branch called Unitarian universalism is much broader , where people of all kinds of religious and non-religious as well gather together. a link in case you never heard about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism

[Psychonaut]

Well they wouldn’t, modern scientists aren’t philosophers (not professionally at least, though Einstein was probably naturalistically pantheist) anymore (one could argue, though, that positivists and analytical philosophy as a whole is closely subordinate to scientific empiricism).

ORLY? ;)

Have you, perchance, come by this book?

Quantum Questions (http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Questions-Ken-Wilber/dp/0394723384)

It contains philosophical and esoteric writings from most of the big names in 20th century theoretical physics:

Werner Heisenberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg)
Erwin Schrödinger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger)
Albert Einstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_einstein)
Louis De Broglie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_broglie)
Sir James Jeans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jeans)
Max Planck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck)
Wolfgang Pauli (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_pauli)
Sir Arthur Eddington (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington)

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by Psychonaut
It contains philosophical and esoteric writings from most of the big names in 20th century theoretical physics

Interesting I’ll have to take a look.:thumb001:

But are these within the context of science as a profession (which is what I meant) or as personal comments on the philosophical implications of science in the mode of some of Einstein’s and Hawking’s comments?

[Psychonaut]

Interesting I’ll have to take a look.:thumb001:

But are these within the context of science as a profession (which is what I meant) or as personal comments on the philosophical implications of science in the mode of some of Einstein’s and Hawking’s comments?

The latter. It's a non-technical book—very readable.

[Liffrea]

Interesting site:

http://einsteinandreligion.com/

[Belenus]

There's quantum mysticism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism).

It's not a religion or theology, but the book The Tao of Physics (http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Physics-Exploration-Parallels-Mysticism/dp/1590308352/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301866898&sr=8-1) attempts to show parallels between Oriental mystical traditions and modern physics.

[Magister Eckhart]

The reason scientism is rejected by real theologians and philosophers is because of its focus on the physical universe. It doesn't matter if the cosmos is the size of a pebble or infinitely large: it's still physical, mutable, and therefore completely temporal and insignificant.