Welcome back to Engaging Faith, a weekly series of Street Prophets. Here, we want to have a conversation between the broader progressive community and us religious progressives. This conversation is intended to help us all work together on our shared goals in helping this nation, and this world, become a better place.
This forum is open to respectful questions and concerns on anything within the broader mission of the series. Need details on how to work with the religious left? Want strategies for how to work against the religious right without alienating the religious folks who aren't your enemies? That's what we're here for.
Today I'd like to start the conversation with some words about a very different scientist than the one I discussed last week: Carl Sagan, PhD, astronomer, astrophysicist, author, educator, NASA advisor, husband, father, thrice-arrested antiwar activist, pot smoker, and one of the early voices calling for attention to the global warming crisis. Sagan has been a huge inspiration to me; as a child I cherished my copy of Cosmos, and as I grow, the more I learn about the man, the more I find myself admiring and respecting him, even regarding subjects where I don't entirely agree with him.
Before we begin, let's tweak the orientation blurb a little bit more, please give it a read and let me know what you think:
Engaging Faith is a forum to help the broader progressive community connect politically with religious progressives for our mutual benefit, and to help the progressive community as a whole better address political issues that involve interaction with religion and religious groups. We are offering this forum as a place for respectful engagement, we never fully understand each other, we may not completely agree with each other, but we share many of the same goals. To that end, it's important to be able to ask each other questions (and listen to the answers), share our viewpoints with each other (and observe the points of view around us), and that's where I hope this series comes in.
For this to work, however, I want participants to remember that we're not here to debate, not here to change people's minds, we're here to express our minds, understand others, and learn how to work together to everyone's benefit. When I share my views, I consider it important and helpful to be mindful of the fact that they're my views, not anybody else's, regardless of how much I identify with a group. To remember that my experiences are limited, and I shouldn't make overly broad characterizations. To recall that people have been truly hurt by the actions of people who identify as religious or political, and when someone lashes out from that pain, lashing back only makes things worse.
This forum lies within the Street Prophets community, you are welcome, but please remember that our community rules for respect apply here, and are in place to permit dialog among people with a wide diversity of views, not to suppress anybody's opinion. Don't act like a jerk or a hater.
For more about what I'd like to see here, and what I wouldn't, I go in more detail in the first post of the series.
Introduction and Apology
I was planning on doing a diary about Carl Sagan, my favorite skeptic, early on in this series anyway. I'd just like to point out that, while for a variety of reasons we've had two scientists in a row, both are scientists with a strong political aspect to their work, and this is still supposed a politics/religion series, not a science/religion series. Sagan is the topic for today because some discussion last week made me think it's better to put him up sooner, rather than later.
To that end, I wish to offer the readers an apology, I found myself bogged down in trying to identify and address the factual content of a comment, and found myself missing, until too late to address, the apparent intent of the comment (which I think was primarily to express offense at the existence of Dr. Collins in the Administration and in this series, and secondarily to express the writer's belief that Dr. Collins is using his position as a platform for preaching, a belief that seems at odds with the evidence I've observed). Regardless, if you care, you can read the exchange here. I didn't reply directly to the last comment, since the commenter made it clear that they weren't returning, but I think he raises a subject that deserves a broader response here: the role of skeptics here.
I consider this forum a dialog between religious progressives and the broader progressive community. The broader progressive community unsurprisingly includes people who consider themselves skeptics, and I sincerely hope they are part of the discussion here. I do want to make something clear, though, skepticism offers a worldview, a way of looking at and approaching the world around us (much like most religions offer their own worldviews), and not everyone here shares that worldview (or any worldview).
If someone feels that their important and beneficial skeptical worldview (or Buddhist, or Catholic, or any other worldview that might be held by someone here) gives them the right to go onto a forum for working together, and tear someone down for not sharing their skeptical (et al) worldview, or for having a particular worldview that they feel offends their skeptical (et al) sensibilities, this is not the forum for them. There are plenty of other places out there that might be more accepting of such behavior; for what it's worth, my favorite blog in the realm of skepticism is The Panda's Thumb.
For skeptics who sincerely want to work alongside the whole community of progressives, understanding that this includes working alongside us religious folk, I would like to see you here, and if something done or said here makes you uncomfortable, I'd like you to point that out, so we can discuss it and address it appropriately for all. Just, please, point it out in a respectful fashion (again, same goes for anybody of any religion or non-religious worldview). I'll set up a comment thread below for people who want to discuss this issue, or any lingering issues regarding last week's topic, NIH Director Francis Collins
I do not want to give the misimpression that I think Engaging Faith is going to be an easy series, there will be contentious issues, and sometimes tempers might rise. Now, back to Carl Sagan...
Carl Sagan and Religion
Carl Sagan was born and raised Jewish, son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, his mother kept a Kosher household, and brought her children to Synagogue. Early on, young Carl discovered a joy and love of exploring nature, especially the sky.
He rapidly turned that love into a study of, and career in science. As he was learning science, he applied the principles of scientific reasoning to the faith he was raised in, and decided they didn't match. Not content with merely discarding Judaism, he focused his attention on what religion offered the people he cared about, and developed a coherent personal philosophy that recognizes and fills the needs he saw religion as filling, without recourse to beliefs that he felt offered insufficient evidence. As he got older, he shared more and more of this philosophy, inspiring many others to follow suit, especially in the scientific community.
While to my knowledge he didn't use the label Humanism much (if at all), his speeches and writings on the subject are widely considered Humanist, and have done a great deal to help develop the modern understanding of Secular Humanism. He was honored by Humanist groups several times during his life, and to my knowledge he made no attempt to discourage people from calling him a humanist, so I generally do, myself.
While I'm not I'm not here to discuss his philosophy in detail today, I consider these three books of his worth reading, for skeptics and the religious alike (they are all widely available for purchase, and at many libraries):
Two bits of his take on humanism seem especially worth explicitly repeating here:
- Be wary of anthropocentrism, the idea that human beings are central, the most important beings in the universe. There's plenty of evidence out there that we are just a tiny part of a tiny world in a middling galaxy in a huge universe. We're very important to us, understandably so. Still, it's worth keeping the scale of the universe compared to the scale of humanity when faced with a teaching that might be interpreted as an entity of universal scale caring more about us than about, say, a beetle, or a squid, or some intelligent beings that might be living in what we call the Andromeda Galaxy. A parallel view, common among the religious right, is the idea of exceptionalism, that our culture, or our nation, is most beloved by God.
- "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", if anyone wishes their heartfelt beliefs (religious or otherwise) to be taken seriously as facts by others, this hurdle, called by many the "Sagan Standard", is an important thing to keep in mind. It's also important to keep in mind that 'extraordinary' is in the eye of the observer, it doesn't matter what you think is ordinary or extraordinary (unless you're engaging in skeptical self-evaluation), it matters what the person you seek to convince considers extraordinary.
Sagan and Global Warming
If I were to detail the massive body of his work, his accomplishments this diary would be endless (as opposed to just long) and still incomplete. So I'm going to fast forward to one issue, specifically the issue which brought his work together with not only politicians (many of the things he did intersected with the political realm), but with religious groups as well.
In the 1970's, Carl Sagan himself started to make what many considered an extraordinary claim: that humanity has become sufficiently technologically advanced that we constitute a serious risk to our own continued existence. He then proceeded, along with other scientists, to back this claim up with substantial evidence. There were two main places where he saw and discussed this risk, the first was nuclear weaponry, in 1982 he helped coauthor the TTAPS Study ("Nuclear Winter: Global Atmospheric Consequences of Nuclear War," Science, vol. 222, 1983) predicting a massive "Nuclear Winter" as a risk of widespread detonation of nuclear weaponry. Two of his arrests were because of his participation in a nuclear disarmament protest in Nevada.
The second was Global Warming. Earlier in his career, Sagan spent a great deal of time studying the atmospheric conditions of Venus, a world with an atmosphere comprised mostly of carbon dioxide (CO2), the quintessential "Greenhouse Gas", resulting in a surface temperature of roughly 870°F (460°C).
During the 70's and early 80's, observations of increased temperatures and reduced polar ice coverage inspired many scientists, including Sagan, to turn their view towards earth, and see what was happening in our own climate. By 1985, Sagan was testifying before a Senate committee that the earth was warming up, our CO2 emissions appear to be causing it, this poses a grave threat to our civilization, and we need to work on this problem. In the 1990 re-release of the video version of Cosmos, he appended this message to Episode 4, summarizing his view for a lay audience:
It became very clear to him that half of his solution, steps 3 (reforestation on a grand scale) and 4 (addressing world poverty) was far beyond the power of US Federal Government, they require the cooperation of most national governments on earth, as well as the cooperation of a substantial number of people throughout the globe. So, rather than just limit his message to the politicians he had already talked to, to the PBS crowd, and to the people who look for his books, he felt it was important for this message to go further afield.
One of the groups he, and other scientists, specifically targeted, were religious leaders. In 1990 he traveled to a conference in Moscow to personally deliver an open letter to hundreds of religious leaders from 83 countries, here are some excerpts from the letter:
"Problems of such magnitude, and solutions demanding so broad a perspective, must be recognized from the outset as having a religious as well as a scientific dimension. Mindful of our common responsibility, we scientists, many of us long engaged in combating the environmental crisis, urgently appeal to the world religious community to commit, in word and deed, and as boldly as is required, to preserve the environment of the Earth."
"As with issues of peace, human rights and social justice, religious institutions can be a strong force here, too, in encouraging national and international initiatives in both the private and public sectors, and in the diverse worlds of commerce, education, culture and mass communications."
"As scientists, many of us have had profound experiences of awe and reverence before the universe. We understand that what is regarded as sacred is more likely to be treated with care and respect. Our planetary home should be so regarded. Efforts to safeguard and cherish the environment need to be infused with a vision of the sacred. At the same time, a much wider and deeper understanding of science and technology is needed. If we do not understand the problem, it is unlikely we will be able to fix it. Thus, there is a vital role for both religion and science."
— Open Letter to Religious Leaders, Carl Sagan et al 1990
Sagan understood well the importance of faith, of religion, in shaping the actions of people. He also understood, and often expressed, the importance of feelings of awe, of sacrament, in living a life inspired to make a positive impact on the world. He understood that while he had those feelings independently of any religious belief, others found their religion inseparable from those feelings.
And he certainly understood that, just because he disagreed with the claims made within the various religious faiths of the world was no reason not to work with them, collaborate together for the good of everyone on Earth. My understanding is the majority of attendees at that conference enthusiastically accepted and signed onto his message. Since that meeting, many of the voices being raised to reduce our impact on the environment, to work towards repairing the damage already done, are religious voices. We all, religious or not, have a long way to go...
The floor is open, questions, comments, concerns, on this topic or on other topics within the realm of this forum.