TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Brandon Keim
September 28, 2008

You'll need to access the full article by clicking on the "external link" at the bottom of this post, so you can hear the "sound of the Big Bang."

When artist Jonathan Keats needed a liturgy for his temple to science, he didn't need to go far: the sound of the Big Bang is all around us, echoed in a stream of photons emitted by the universe's creation and still spreading.

Known as Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, these were officially identified in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson. Using software that extrapolates the nature of the sound from oscillations in the radiation, University of Virginia astronomer Mark Whittle has recorded this echo.

The full explanation can be found on Whittle's page. It's pretty technical, but the basic question — isn't sound non-existent in space? — can be quickly answered: There's no sound in space because it's empty, but this wasn't always the case. Shortly after the Big Bang, space was full of gas through which sound waves could move, producing a symphony that Whittle describes thusly:

... a descending scream, building into a deep rasping roar, and ending in a deafening hiss. As if this were not impressive enough, the entire acoustic show is itself the prelude to a wonderful transformation: the highest pitch sounds ultimately spawn the ?rst generation of stars, while the deep bass notes slowly dissolve to become the tapestry of galaxies which now ?lls all of space.

The Big Bang did not, it turns out, bang. It screamed.

To listen to the first million years of the universe, compressed into five seconds, click here. And to listen to more of the Big Bang, as recorded by Whittle and arranged by Keats, visit the Atheon, which opens tomorrow at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California.

You'll also be able to hear the hypothesized sounds of a universe in which time does not exist, and a universe without structure. (And if you play it backwards, you can hear the words, "I buried Paul." Kidding!)

Labels: Big Bang, Brandon Keim, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, Mark Whittle, sound waves

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Saturday, June 14, 2008

Christian Theologians Prepare for Extraterrestrial Life

By Brandon Keim 06.13.08

Little green men might shock the secular public. But the Catholic Church would welcome them as brothers.

That's what Vatican chief astronomer and papal science adviser Gabriel Funes explained in a recent article in L'Osservatore Romano, the newsletter of the Vatican Observatory (translated here). His conclusion might surprise nonbelievers. After all, isn't this the same church that imprisoned Galileo for saying that the Earth revolves around the sun? Doesn't the Bible say that God created man -- not little green men -- in his image?

From within, theologians have debated the implications of alien contact for centuries. And if one already believes in angels, no great leap of faith is required to accept the possibility of other extraterrestrial intelligences.

Since God created the universe, theologians say, he would have created aliens, too. And far from being weakened by contact, Christianity would adapt. Its doctrines would be interpreted anew, the aliens greeted with open -- and not necessarily Bible-bearing -- arms.

"The main question is, 'Would religion survive this contact?'" said NASA chief historian Steven J. Dick, author of The Biological Universe. "Religion hasn't gone away after Copernican theory, after Darwin. They've found ways to adapt, and they'll find a way if this happens, too," Dick says.

The central conundrum posed to Christianity by alien contact would involve the Incarnation -- the arrival of Jesus Christ as God's representative on Earth, his crucifixion and the absolution of humanity's sins through his forgiveness.

Some propose that the Earthly incarnation of Jesus some 2,000 years ago redeemed all intelligent creatures, in all places and -- since a space-faring race is likely older than us -- in all times. Others have suggested that Jesus could take multiple forms.

"Just as Jesus is human like you and I, you would find an alien-specific Jesus," said Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary professor Ted Peters.

But Peters and others also say that aliens may not have fallen into sin, instead existing in a state of grace, neither having nor needing Jesus. In that case, missionaries would have no call to convert them.

All this, however, assumes that humanity not only encounters new forms of life but also understands them. Other intelligences may be incomprehensible to us, thus intensifying another doctrinal question: What does it mean to be made, as the Bible proclaims, in God's image?

Many astrotheologians argue that God's image refers to our spiritual nature, with our physical forms being irrelevant. Not everyone, however, agrees.

"If there are aliens, the Bible specifically does not say that they were created in his image," said Mark Conn, pastor of the Noble Hill Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri. "God created many other intelligent beings on this planet, and they were not created in His image."

Conn's church recently met to discuss the issues posed by extraterrestrial contact, ultimately deciding that "if they're there, they're there. It doesn't change a whole lot."

Unlike Peters, Conn suggested that missionary work may be required, something the aliens may not welcome -- especially if, as many postulate, they are technologically superior to humanity and do not have religions of their own.

"Maybe they'll say that they used to need religion but have outgrown it. Some people say that would be a great blow to religion, because if an advanced civilization doesn't need it, why do we?" said Douglas Vakoch, director of interstellar message composition at SETI.

"I don't buy it, though. I think religion meets very human needs, and unless extraterrestrials can provide a replacement for it, I don't think religion is going to go away," he continued. "And if there are incredibly advanced civilizations with a belief in God, I don't think Richard Dawkins will start believing."

Labels: Brandon Keim, Christianity, extraterrestrials, God, religion

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The Surprising Spirituality of SETI

By Brandon Keim June 09, 2008 |

There's a surprising amount of overlap between seekers of extraterrestrial life and seekers of God.

Not that the folks at SETI are actually hoping to detect the deep-space transmissions of a bearded deity from SGR 1900+14, handing them off to Vatican astronomers for inscription on silicon tablets. Far from it. But in my reporting for an article on the religious implications of finding extraterrestrial intelligence, I noticed that much research was produced in collaboration between scientists and theologians.

Why this partnership between parties whose relationship typically amounts to a truce, and an uneasy one at that?

In part it's practical: Christianity boasts a small but rich history of so-called astrotheology, particularly within the Catholic Church. It makes sense that they'd run in some of the same circles as the SETI crowd. And since discovering aliens would prompt religious self-examination -- if God is universal, maybe the image of God isn't a hairless biped called homo sapiens -- and perhaps devotion, it's probably good that they're already talking.

But after speaking this morning to Lutheran theology professor Ted Peters and then to Douglas Vakoch, the generally secular (he's Unitarian) director of interstellar message composition at SETI, I couldn't shake the feeling that something else was going on -- some union of the like-minded, nominally separated by their titles and duties.

Towards the end of the interview, after Vakoch had explained the incredible unlikelihood of both receiving and comprehending interstellar signals, I asked him what it's like to dedicate a career to something that would almost certainly not be realized in his own life, and perhaps not ever.

"One of the greatest misconceptions about SETI is that we know in our hearts that there is life out there, and the question is whether we're going to be the generation that finds it. That's false," he said. "SETI requires an acceptance of ambiguity. If there's a virtue to SETI, it's that it's making ambiguity acceptable at a time when people are focused on the concrete and short-term. It is very often uncomfortable not having the answers, but we need to accept that. We try to recognize that, in this domain, with what we now know, the best we can do, the most honest thing we can do, is live with a sense of ambiguity."

"That sounds deeply spiritual," I told Vakoch. He asked what I meant. "The act of coming to peace with the unknowable," I said.

"It's not necessarily a matter of being at peace with it," he replied. "There's a passage in the Bible -- 'Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.' In a sense, I think science and religion are not ultimately in opposition to one another. They are both attempting to understand things as they are. They understand different aspects of what is."

Now, before those of us conditioned by ugly fights against anti-evolution classroom sabotage paint Vakoch as a young earth creationist who stole a SETI lab coat, he's certainly not insisting that religious principle trump testable hypothesis. He's talking humbly about the Big Questions, and acknowledging the difficulty of answering them -- something that truly religious people tend to do, too.

Labels: astrotheology, Brandon Keim, extraterrestrials, God, religion, science, SETI

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Friday, July 13, 2007

The Early Science of Altruism

By Brandon Keim
July 12, 2007

Treat others as you'd like to be treated: that's the Golden Rule, present in some variation in just about every major culture and religion -- and, perhaps, coded into the structure of our brains.

The biological aspects of altruism are a new and exciting field of scientific research. Perhaps the insights gained in these early days will someday help us understand our own virtues and vices, and illuminate some way of nourishing a healthier, happier society -- or, from another perspective, a healthier, happier superorganism.

That, at least, is the hope -- and Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, was kind enough to talk with me about research into human altruism and what it all might mean for our future....

Traditionally, with language, object, and face recognition, we know a fair amount about those. But it’s more challenging and difficult to investigate altruism or attitudes or moral cognition.... But scientists have pressed forwards, and it’s a burgeoning literature now.

On animal studies into altruism, Grafman cautions that they involve behaviors more limited than our own: when animals help each other out -- when, for example, one bird combs another for parasites -- the reward, such as a reciprocated grooming, is almost immediate. Altruism in humans is more far-sighted, and may not involve any reward at all.

Studies have shown that altruistic behavior activates the pleasure centers that reward our most basic, immediate urges for food and sex -- something that has helped to preserve these tendencies, said Grafman, but not enough to explain the complexities of our selflessness.

It feels good, for lack of a better way to say it, so you’re more likely to do that again. But that isn’t selective *for* altruistic behavior. It gets fired off in response to lots of activities.... It's not unique to altruism. There must be other brain areas that the system partners with, leading to human behaviors in particular.

That’s likely to be an area in the prefrontal cortex. Certainly in the frontal lobes we seem to have structures activated when people feel more bonding to another person or entity. That area is also activated during altruistic behavior.... That area is very important for altruistic behavior, particularly when you have to overcome constraint -- for example, you want to give, but it’s going to cost you something. The anteriopolar prefrontal cortex is one of the most evolved areas of the brain, and it’s just a very very important part for overcoming primitive responses -- [i.e.,] I’m going to do something for that person and get something immediately back....

No animal gives to an institution, whereas we’re willing to donate to United Way, which will distribute money in the future, in a way you’re not aware, to other entities, and you won’t get anything directly back.... So that, in some sense, is an internalized agreement. You give, and you'll be rewarded because you have a belief system that says it’s good. That’s human. That is human.

There’s another approach that has forced this into the open: neuroeconomic research. It's an area that’s taken classic economic experiments and put people in a brain scanner while doing these kinds of tasks. It's pushing this whole literature about higher-level human behavior. Much of economics is concerned with human economic behaviors in societies -- that's a social behavior.... Another component to this is evolutionary psychology, biology. It’s a good thing, but challenging and frightening -- the more we make this mundane, it takes the magical aspects out of that, in terms of why people give.... It’s big for day to day life.

A lot of our mores -- from religions, for example, ethics, principles -- were first put into the bibles of different religions: the Koran, New Testament, a variety of other documents serve as foundations for religious, general cultural practices. Many ethical principles, people believe to some degree, were handed down by higher authority; if that’s the case, we’re making an argument, that the brain developing in such a way that it enacts these behaviors partly because of the way that the biology of the brain is designed. It forces people to think about the issue in a more experimental way -- a testable way, rather than a more mystical one. And a lot of people live lives based on mystical ideas.

This will cause people to debate and think, and that’s good. We’ve always done that, without biology, as new ideas come. Now biology is going to put in its two cents. That alone makes it provocative. Then there are other issues that come up. In a sense, also provocative: the more we know, the more we can record information related to these kinds of behaviors, the better we can assess or predict them in others, without people telling us what they're going to do.

Labels: altruism, biology, brain, Brandon Keim, Golden Rule, Jordan Grafman, neuroeconomic research, principles, reward