I had the chance to revisit the movie "Contact" last night. Based on the Carl Sagan book, it's Jodie Foster as a scientist who is on the receiving end of a message from outer space and ends up on the single coolest wormhole-roller-coaster-ride ever. In between those two events is a seriously intriguing tug-of-war between religious faith and scientific empiricism. This movie blew my mind when I first saw it 11 years ago; 20 years old, and unclear as to how to give voice to my increasing skepticism about the universe as most people knew it. Humans can't be the end all and be all of intelligent life. How sad that would be, right?
As "Contact" makes clear, us, alone in the universe, is an "awful waste of space." Simplistic yet plainly true, considering the probabilities involved. Infinite large rocks in infinite universes, something's got to live on one of them. The question of God is not nearly so susceptible to statistical analysis. What everyone (fundamentalists, zealots, and atheists alike) needs to realize is that we all have a similar purpose--to make sense of that which is beyond us.
That which is beyond the human experience and realm of knowledge. Scientists are constantly looking for answers to tough questions; faith attempts to do the same thing. Whether you believe that God is the creator of the universe, or that praying to Demeter will help your crops, or that Kali wears a necklace of bones; if you believe that carbon is the reason we're here, or that we're here to prepare for the afterlife (which, by the way, seems like a way of wussing-out on actual living); and even if you believe that nature bats last, like I do, and that there is divinity in each person and flower and day of sunshine.
We, as humans, are designed to look beyond ourselves and we constantly strive to understand that which is unknowable. Or, as yet, unknown. That's what makes us a fascinating tribe.
Originally written 2.08
