In Israel- Christianity, Judaism, and Islam Join for a Thanksgiving Feast!

“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”
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-Stephen Hawking

​From Egypt, I travel to Israel where I had the opportunity to visit several research labs, eat tons of hummus, and experience the Holy Land of every single major Abrahamic religion in a single weekend. Because of the depth and breadth of experiences within Israel, I have decided to break my experience down into three separate blogs. This one will focus exclusively on the religious and historical aspect of the city from Jerusalem in Israel to Bethlehem in the Palestinian West Bank.

Bethlehem, Palestine

​I think it is very important, in a blog about science, to talk about religion. As I have stated in previous blogs, humans are all searching for similar fundamental truths. People want a purpose, a reason, a motivation behind their actions. For many people the answers to these questions come through their religion and their connection to that religion. Surely, with religion people find community, tradition, understanding- people find friends with common experiences, desires, hopes, and dreams. With religion, we are told, we can find reason- we can live a Purpose Driven Life.

Church of the Nativity and the Birthplace of Jesus 

(The Church of the Nativity celebrates Christmas on many days. This is for several reasons, but the most prevalent is that people are not actually sure of the specific date on which Jesus was born. For Catholics and Protestants, Christmas is December 25. For Orthodox Christians, it's January 7. For Armenian Orthodox Christians, it's January 18.)

And our populace seems to be complacent reserving ideas like purpose and reason for the religious; excluding them entirely from science. As Hamel and Green so eloquently professed in their book The Future of Management:
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“Religious faith is not chiefly concerned with the what, how, and when of natural phenomena. Rather, it is concerned with the why of existence. And while a few scientists may argue that the question of “why” is unanswerable and therefore not worth pursuing, they haven’t yet convinced the rest of humanity to suspend its search for significance.”

A song played on the organ at the Catholic Church of St Catherine at the Nativity.

​And for this reason, scientists, researchers, and professionals often have difficulty seeing the purpose or the connection that their research has with their community. This is why people thank me for talking about these topics when I give presentation- why they tell me they feel refreshed. For many outside science, the perception of a scientist is often somewhere along the lines of “Wow! It must feel great to be working on something that actually impacts humanity!” But the scientists don’t feel that way. I could not even count the number of scientists I have met on my journey that feel completely lost in terms of finding passion, purpose, or reason. These things, they say, are reserved for religion and philosophy. I know researchers and scientists that have literally had mental breakdowns because they feel so isolated, so disconnected while working long hours, alone in a dark basement. And when people tell them how great their job must be due to its impact, they feel even worse. The fact that they do not see the impact, that they do not find the purpose, makes them feel guilty- makes them feel like they are taking the opportunity for granted.

Jerusalem

​And can we blame them? Often their bosses, so caught up in their own work, are incapable of spending the time required to be empathetic with them. How is an employee or student going to feel connected to the outside world if they cannot even connect to researchers in their lab? Academic science is missing an essential quality- it is missing humanity. In a research lab- our purpose is to publish, but for what reason we are not really sure.

​Dormition Abbey on Mt Zion- Location of Last Supper and Final Resting Place of the Virgin Mary

​Thus, in the sciences, we have a lack of place, a lack of community, a lack of purpose. And this is unsustainable. These same scientists then often wonder how it is that people can become religious and then how it is that some of those people can become religious fanatics. The feelings of isolation that occur as the result of being a reclusive secular scientist are the same feelings of isolation that occur as an individual without purpose in an increasingly mechanized and impersonal world. How is it that people become religious fanatics? Probably the same way that secular individuals and scientists do.

A song is sung for the Virgin Mary.

​Fanaticism is not secular or non-secular. People that have no connection are going to lash out and commit destructive acts regardless of their religious affiliation or lack thereof. The unfortunate scenario we have in our current popular culture is that everyone is attempting to find community or connection by pointing out the faults of other communities rather than focusing on the common issues that lead to the ridiculousness we see in people motivated by science, politics, and religion. We focus too much on the symptoms of our isolation and lack or purpose rather than the underlying cause.

​We can no longer continue to pretend that purpose and reason are reserved for those who are religious and we can no longer pretend that merely practicing religious acts gives us purpose or reason. The religious must take the time to think about who it is they are and what purpose it is that they give their actions and their lives. Religious indoctrination is not the same as religious or personal spirituality and this is the great misconception of our generation. We currently live in a new scientific revolution. Every time we ‘debate’ religion, we debate within a completely materialistic framework. When Bill Nye ‘debated’ Ken Ham, did the audience really get an intelligent discussion about purpose or meaning or spirituality? No- the audience got two people talking at one another about their perceived materialistic reality of the world. What on Earth does that have anything to do with purpose or meaning or spirituality? That was not a debate about religion or purpose- that was two people who were essentially ignoring one another professing their viewpoint on the material world. 

Church of St Peter in Gallicantu (Potential Location of the Dungeon of Jesus the Night Before His Crusifixion)

​This is too often the ‘debate’ when it comes to discussions about science and religion. Scientists like to focus on criticizing a very specific and scientifically invalid materialistic worldview which is held by a very small portion of fundamental Christians and then pretend the conversation ends there. “Well, they believe the world is 10,000 years old; they worship the tooth fairy, etc...” Sure, some do, but that is not what religion is about. “Scientists are not concerned with why; scientists believe existence is all an accident; scientists adhere to a nihilistic world view.” Sure, some do, but that is not what science is all about. Honestly, do we really accept that at least 10,000 years of human philosophy (or up to 350,000 if we consider the speciation of Homo sapiens) can all be summed up into either worshipping a flying spaghetti monster or not worshipping anything at all? Surely, there must be something to our desire as a species to find purpose and meaning- something beyond splitting hairs about the reality of the material world that I can observe in a lab.

​We have this tendency to turn each other into scarecrows and attack surrogates rather than humanizing one another and engaging in real conversations. Whether it’s Lawrence Krauss subtly implying that Christians are charlatans (as he assumed before actually talking to one) or Richard Dawkins telling anyone who disagrees to go fuck off- we are all too eager to attack one another and distance ourselves rather than actually listen.  This is why an anti-science religious right has developed in the United States. Even with the morally unjustifiable comments made by Donald Trump, even when his statements make the Pope doubt his Christianity- you still see a large outpouring of Christian support. Why? Because intellectual democrats are not believed to be interested in talking or empathizing with them- the assumption is that intellectuals believe they are charlatans and should go fuck themselves. Thus people like Ben Stein start making statements claiming that there is a conspiracy in academia to keep the religious out of science. And in this context, it is not very surprising to see an anti-intellectual right that disagrees with climate change, evolution, or conserving environmental lands. 

Stations of the Cross

​Our current trajectory is not sustainable. We cannot afford to continue perpetrating the myth that purpose and meaning are reserved for the religious while the sciences must remain completely blind to purpose and meaning. And if you have yet to find purpose and meaning- that is completely acceptable. Purpose and meaning were not created with the cosmos- it is not preordained or a priori. Purpose and meaning are things which we must find for ourselves empirically and dictate onto the Earth a posteriori. This is our ultimate act of empirical discovery! 

The Crusifixion of Jesus Christ at ​Church of the Holy Sepulchre

​(For those of you who do not know, Jesus was crucified along with two other unamed gentlement. Since the cross of Jesus was not discovered until over 300 years after his crucifixion, people at the time were uncertain if the cross was his. To add further complication, the searchers did not find one cross, they found all three. But they had to determine which one was actually his. The story, according to Socrates Scholasticus is that a deathly ill woman was asked to tough each cross. After touching the third cross, the cross of Jesus, she miraculously recovered. And thus, the 'true-cross' of Jesus was determined.) 

​This is a journey that takes time. This is a journey that requires and immense amount of struggle. And this is a journey that can be catalyzed by bringing together religious and secular philosophies to have conversations with one another that are empathetic to humanity’s common desire to find community and purpose through its actions. We must be cognizant of the intellectual and political divides that we create, often subconsciously, and actively work to remove those divides. We must break down our walls and allow ourselves to be vulnerable- to be challenged by other world views. 

​A positive example for starting this kind of dialogue is the work of Yale ProfessorMary Evelyn Tucker in the field of Religious Ecology. Mary understands that people that are interested in environmental engineering and environmentalism are fueled by the same fundamental desire to preserve the Earth as are many religious theologians. And this simple realization has enabled her to begin a dialogue about how the scientific facts we gain about the impact of humans on the planet can help guide religious populations to make morally intelligent choices about how they interact with the world. It is this kind of dialogue which enabled Pope Frances to write an Encyclical about climate change and present the Roman Catholic faith with a moral justification an impetus for acting in ways which limit climate change and encourage the development of a healthy Earth.

The Mount of Olives- where Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven.

The Western Wall- Remnants of ​the Second Jewish Temple by Herod the Great

​As scientists and intellectuals, we can choose to remain in our palaces of knowledge and look down upon the ‘ignorant’ masses. Or, we can leave that pretentiousness behind us and embrace the knowledge and qualities that our neighbors have to offer us. Rather than radicalizing an increasingly anti-scientific right, we can communicate with members of our community not only to help them understand us, but more importantly to make an honest effort to understand them. And through this, we can start to think about the impact of not only reaching the roughly 16 million academics worldwide, but also of the impact of reaching the 2.2 billion Christians, the 1.6 billion Muslims, or the 16 million Jews that make up that major Abrahamic religions of the Earth.

The Dome of the Rock

​Where Abraham attempted sacrifice of his son to God or Allah (Isaac in Genesis or Ishmael in Islam). Also, where the prophet Muhammad -peace be upon him- is said to have  ascended to Heaven.

Listen to part of the Jumu'ah at the Dome of the Rock.

I would like to end with a line of questioning that has prevailed in my mind for the better part of the last two years. I encourage you to ponder them, and then to come back on a different day and ponder them again.
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If we are all to have a unique and personal experience with God, and if those experiences are different from individual to individual and personally meaningful to us, then when we sit down to meditate or pray, are we finding God or are we finding ourselves? And how on Earth are we to know the difference?