April 2019 Newsletter
In this Clergy Letter Project update, you’ll find the following seven items:
- The Clergy Letter Project in the News;
- Astrobiology News for April 2019: Is “Raising” Planets a Community Effort?;
- A Possible Naturalistic Explanation for the Events in Joshua 10;
- Project Blitz;
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin;
- When Good Science Goes Bad; and
- Call for Posters at IRAS’s Summer Conference.
1. The Clergy Letter Project in the News
Two interesting pieces focused on the work of The Clergy Letter Project recently appeared that I think you’ll find worth examining.
The first is an article published in TheHumanist.com which explains that “the Clergy Letter Project has spearheaded an important dialog on compatibility of science within communities of faith.” It explores how The Clergy Letter Project is “[b]ringing together members of both faith and science communities to discuss the compatibility between the two, and how to best work together to better the world.” The impetus for the article was our new Humanist Clergy Letter and it includes thoughtful comments by Dr. Jason Wiles, a member of our list of scientific consultants and the primary author of The Humanist Clergy Letter.
The second is a podcast posted by SparkDialogue entitled simply “Science, Religion, and Evolution.” The producer and host of the podcast is Elizabeth Fernandez, a member of The Clergy Letter Project’s list of scientific consultants.
Elizabeth interviews four members of The Clergy Letter Project in addition to me: Rev. Lori Bievenour, pastor at St. Peter's United Church of Christ in Carmel, IN, Rabbi Geoff Mitelman, Executive Director of Sinai and Synapses, Sensei Tony Stultz, director of the Blue Mountain Lotus Society, and Jason Wiles. While I thought the entire discussion was fascinating, I was particularly moved by a statement made by Rev. Bievenour: “The most powerful and inspiring expressions of faith that I have seen are rooted in question and curiosity, and that is the basis of science and it makes it a natural partnership and one from which all of us benefit.”
Please share these two pieces widely within your network of friends and colleagues.
2. Astrobiology News for April 2019: Is “Raising” Planets a Community Effort?
In this month’s Astrobiology News, Clergy Letter Project consultant and Adler Planetarium astronomer Grace Wolf-Chase discusses how biological metaphors for the evolution of the physical Universe might be particularly apt.
There are many words we apply to biological life that work well as metaphors to describe aspects of the physical Universe. For example, we speak of star “birth” and “death,” and “nature vs. nurture” when discussing processes that are important in the formation of clusters of stars. It seems the old proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” might also provide an apt analogy for how crowded young star clusters can influence the development of infant planetary systems.
Mature stars like our Sun are separated by such enormous distances that encounters with other stars are extremely rare, but the situation can be quite different for very young stars. Over the past few decades we’ve learned that most stars form in clusters with many “siblings.” While there are estimated to be a few hundred stars within 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years) of the Sun,(1) there are thousands of stars within a similar volume in the Orion Nebula Cluster, an environment that we have compelling reasons to think is similar to the environment of our Solar System in its infancy.(2)
UC Berkeley and Stanford University astronomers recently published compelling evidence that a close flyby about 3 million years ago by a pair of stars (a binary star system) to a young planet, orbiting a binary known as HD 106906, stabilized the planet’s orbit and prevented it from being “booted out” of its system by its “parent” stars.(3) The astronomers used the Gemini Telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope to image the young planetary system, and data from the remarkable Gaia space observatory,(4) which has collected precise measurements of distance, position, and motion for 1.3 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, to pinpoint the binary system that had a close encounter with HD 106906.(5)
Peculiarities in the orbits of worlds in the outer regions of our Solar System, including the hypothetical Planet Nine, might also be linked to the close approach of another star during the Solar System’s infancy. In any event, the more we learn about stars and planets in their formative years, the clearer it becomes that interactions with neighbors can play an important role in their development!
Until next month,
Grace Wolf-Chase, Ph.D. (gwolfchase@adlerplanetarium.org)
1. http://www.recons.org/census.posted.htm
2. Hester, J.J. et al. 2004, “The Cradle of the Solar System,” Science, 304, 1116
3. De Rosa, R.J. and Kalas, P. 2019, ”A Near-coplanar Stellar Flyby of the Planet Host Star HD 106906,” AJ, 157, 125
4. http://sci.esa.int/gaia/
5. https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/02/28/exiled-planet-linked-to-stellar-flyby-3-million-years-ago/
3. A Possible Naturalistic Explanation for the Events in Joshua 10
Norm Sleep, a professor of geology at Stanford University and a member of The Clergy Letter Project’s list of scientific consultants, discusses an essay written by Euan Nisbet offering a naturalistic explanation for the events outlined in Joshua 10 – including the possibility of finding actual evidence.
The Hebrew Bible records vicissitudes faced by a pre-scientific society. War and earthquakes were ever present. It was inevitable that they would sometimes occur together. Walled cities for war became death traps in the earthquake-prone Middle East. Chroniclers interpreted earthquakes as divine providence and chastisement. Yet, tellers and retellers were at least somewhat familiar with wars and quakes. Stories like the fall of the walls of Jericho, where the Great Shout is a personification of the audible pressure “P” wave that arrived before the shear and the surface waves caused calamity, and the event in Zachariah, where modern seismology also places the Dead Sea Fault location on the Mount of Olives and gives the offset direction of west to the north, are clearly based on observations of real events.
Euan Nisbet examines more puzzling events in Joshua 10. The Sun appears to have shone at night (stood still in some translations) and rocks from the sky pelted Joshua’s enemies. The fall and fragmentation of a large meteorite is an obvious natural candidate, which was recognized in the 1800s. Such events are quite rare; the 2013 fall at Chelyabinsk, Russia is the only modern documented example.
Much was lost in the retelling of Joshua 10. Even 19th century scientists could not envision the actual sequence of events: a large falling bolide is much brighter than sunlight. Here the naturalistic hypothesis is testable. Worthless rocks from the account, rather than valuable iron metal, fell on the victims. Some of these now-weathered projectiles might be located with a diligent search. In addition, a meteorite dust layer associated with the impact might be found in sediment cores from the Dead Sea.
4. Project Blitz
A recent article on the website of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State is entitled “Project Blitz Wants To Bring Bible Class To A Public School Near You.” The piece opens by saying, “If you followed Americans United’s work during state legislative sessions last year, you definitely heard about Project Blitz – a coordinated nationwide effort by Christian nationalists to use our state legislatures to undermine religious freedom and erode the separation of religion and government.”
It goes on to note that “This year, Project Blitz is back and its architects are pushing their next model piece of legislation: bills to require or encourage teaching classes on the Christian Bible in public schools.”
The entire post is well worth reading.
5. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
What follows, a brief reflection on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and on a biography about him, was written by the Rev. William Graham, a member of The Clergy Letter Project and a retired Episcopal priest from Massachusetts.
I first heard of Teilhard when I was in seminary at the Philadelphia Divinity School in the early 1970s. I had worked as a chemical engineer for seven years and I very much liked knowing that one could both be a priest and a scientist. I acquired a used copy of the following biography about then, but it wasn't until retirement that I finally got around to reading it. I think it’s only been in the last ten years or so that Teilhard was added to the Episcopal Church’s prayer calendar. (Continue reading on-line by clicking here.)
6. When Good Science Goes Bad
Our good friends at Sinai and Synapses are sponsoring an exciting event entitled “When Good Science Goes Bad” in New York City on 1 May. The event is billed as a conversation between Dr. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, visiting professor of philosophy at New College of the Humanities in London, and Dr. Adam Pryor, assistant professor of Religion and Director of Core Education at Bethany College in Lindsborg, KS. Some of the intriguing questions they’ll be addressing include: What happens when scientific findings potentially lead us down ethically troubling roads? What’s the difference between science as a way to understand the world, and science as a tool for people to use, both for good and for ill? What happens as science and technology outpace our ethical frameworks — and is there a role for religion or theology in that conversation?
The session is scheduled to begin at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, 1 May, in the Warburg Lounge at the 92nd St. Y in New York City. The discussion will be preceded at 6:15 by hors d’ouevres and a poster session highlighting the work of Sinai and Synapses Fellows.
You can read more about and sign up for this free event by clicking here.
7. Call for Posters at IRAS’s Summer Conference
The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science’s (IRAS) annual summer conference is scheduled for 22-29 June on Star Island, Portsmouth, NH. This year’s topic is “The CRISPR Apple on the Tree of Knowledge: Bioengineering, Gene Editing, and the Human Future.” In addition to encouraging people to register for the conference, IRAS has recently announced a call for proposals for its poster session. Take a look at the flyer but act quickly since the 1 May deadline is fast approaching. Monetary support may be available to help offset cost of attendance!
Concluding Thoughts
You should have noticed that this month’s newsletter has more voices represented than usual. With your help, I’m hoping to make this a common occurrence. Please send me short articles, book reviews, or anything else you think members might be interested in reading. I’ll try to include as many such items as possible.
Finally, as always, I want to thank you for your continued support and as I do every month, I urge you to take one simple action. Please share this month’s Newsletter with a colleague or two (or post a link via any social media platform you use) and ask them to add their voices to those promoting a deep and meaningful understanding between religion and science. They can add their signatures to one of our Clergy Letters simply by dropping me a note at mz@theclergyletterproject.org. Together we are making a difference.
Michael
Michael Zimmerman
Founder and Executive Director
The Clergy Letter Project
www.theclergyletterproject.org
mz@theclergyletterproject.org