More Than One Way to the Moon

Many of you will remember seeing the first photographs of the earth taken from the moon. The initial pictures were stunning and had a long-lasting impact on those who saw them. Having seen ourselves as the centre of the universe and had our perspectives shaped by the intimate dramas of our particular habitat, it came as a shock to see the beautiful, tiny, fragile orb spinning almost insignificantly in the vast ocean of star-studded blackness. Are we really that small?

The sense of mystery that these photographs evoked was not unique. Nearly three millennia ago the psalmist looked up at a Middle Eastern sky and wrote: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” The poet was not looking back on earth, but from earth looking up – and this had the effect of causing them to wonder what life is all about and why we matter anyway.

Science explores the shape and mechanics of the universe, sparking the imagination based on observable facts. What science cannot do, however, is attribute any inherent meaning to what is seen, however inspiring the observation itself might be. What is seen has to be interpreted, but it cannot of itself impute particular meaning other than to say that it is what it is. This is where science and faith can be seen to play on the same field. The old so-called ‘conflict metaphor' between science and faith needs to be consigned to the intellectual bin, with science and faith not being seen as enemies in the search for truth. George Lemaitre was a Belgian priest and professor of physics in the last century. It was he who proposed the theory of the expansion of the universe in what became known as Hubble's Law. Praised by Albert Einstein in 1933, Lemaitre went on to say “there are two paths to truth; and I decided to follow both of them.”

Or, as Shakespeare put it in Hamlet “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”


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Author Info: Andrew Moore

Chaplain Andrew is the Associate Chaplain here at the Campus. Before relocating to Arizona in 2014, Andrew lived and studied in the United Kingdom. Andrew was ordained in the Anglican Church and has worked in a variety of parishes.