God's Mechanics E-Book

Guy Consolmagno

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 433

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

In God's Mechanics, Brother Guy tells the stories of thosewho identify with the scientific mindset--so-called"techies"--while practicing religion. A full fledged techiehimself, he relates some classic philosophical reflections, hisinterviews with dozens of fellow techies, and his own personal takeon his Catholic beliefs to provide, like a set of "worked outsample problems," the hard data on the challenges and joys ofembracing a life of faith as a techie. And he also gives a roadmapof the traps that can befall an unwary techie believer. With lively prose and wry humor, Brother Guy shows how he notonly believes in God but gives religion an honored place alongsidescience in his life. This book offers an engaging look athow--and why--scientists and those with technologicalleanings can hold profound, "unprovable" religious beliefs whileworking in highly empirical fields. Through his own experience andinterviews with other scientists and engineers who profess faith,Brother Guy explores how religious beliefs and practices make senseto those who are deeply rooted in the world of technology.

Leseprobe

Contents

Introduction: The Lord of the Techies

Part One: Why Would a Techie Believe in God?

Chapter 1: How Techies Believe

Proof or Belief?

Proof and the Scientist

Faith in Reason

Chapter 2: Where God Is Useful

If God Is the Answer, What Was the Question?

Question One: Why Is There Something Instead of Nothing?

Question Two: What Do I Want, and Why Do I Want It?

Question Three: How Do I Make Sense of My Life?

Chapter 3: Good Science, Bad Philosophy

Complications and Confusions

Defining the Universe, with Two Examples

The Inverse Problem

Part Two: Why Would a Techie Join an Organized Religion?

Chapter 4: Big Science, Big Religion

Why Religion?

Why Organized?

Comparing Religions

Chapter 5: The Functions of Religion

The Repository of Religious Data

Judging the Data

Religion as Community

Chapter 6: The Dangers of Organized Religion

The Finite Universe

Loving the Torah More Than God

Fun with Your New Head

Superstition

Part Three: What Is the Techie Experience of Religion?

Chapter 7: Talking to Techies

Jesus Was a Techie

The Science of Amateur Ethnography

Chapter 8: Listening to Techies

The Church Shoppers

Many Religions

The Tools of Techiedom

Interviews at a Catholic Engineering School

Chapter 9: The Rule of Rules

The Generation Cusp

Zen and the Art of Xerox Copier Maintenance

Where Do We Go from Here?

Part Four: Why Would a Techie Be a Christian?

Chapter 10: What Does the Truth Look Like?

Would I Know It If I Saw It?

A Naïve Introduction to World Religions

Chapter 11: The Root of Christianity

What Is Christianity? The Observational Evidence

The Historical Setting

Christianity on Christ

But Is It True?

Chapter 12: A Techie’s Contemplation on the Trinity

Essential Christianity

God the Father

The New Testament God

iGod

Chapter 13: The Supernatural in Nature

Cleansed and Quickened

Natural Disasters

Heaven or Heat Death?

Part Five: The Confession of a Vatican Techie

Chapter 14: Why Would a Techie Be a Catholic?

Why I Am a Catholic

Why I Am Not an Ex-Catholic

Why I Remain a Catholic

Chapter 15: How I Stay a Catholic

Popular Misconceptions

Infallibility, Rules, and the Cloud of Witnesses

Sinners and Fools

Acknowledgments

The Author

Index

Advertisements

End User License Agreement

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Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

GOD’S MECHANICS

How Scientists and EngineersMAKE SENSE OF RELIGION

Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J.

Copyright © 2008 by Guy Consolmagno. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass

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989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741—www.josseybass.com

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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax [phone].

Anecdote about the Saint Joseph statue in Chapter Six contributed by Bruce F. Emmer

Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Consolmagno, Guy, date.

God’s mechanics : how scientists and engineers make sense of religion / Guy Consolmagno.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-7879-9466-2 (cloth)

1. Religion and science. 2. Consolmagno, Guy, 1952- I. Title.

BL240.3.C68 2007

201'.65—dc22

2007019067

Introduction: The Lord of the Techies

IT WAS AFTER a long, exhausting day at a science-fiction convention that an old friend of mine from my MIT student days and her husband caught me up with a surprising question. “Could you explain,” they asked me, “how this religion stuff in your life actually works?”

Now, I had already written about my life and work in a book called Brother Astronomer. After hearing endlessly about the “eternal war” between science and religion, I figured that merely demonstrating the existence of a lot of people like me, who flourish as scientists while practicing a religion, should be proof enough that science and religion can be perfectly compatible. Indeed, this empirical evidence ought to have been far more convincing than any drawn-out philosophical argument.

But that didn’t go far enough for my friends. They already understood that a person like me could exist. They knew I did exist. But what they wanted to know was how. What were the nuts and bolts of how I actually made it all work together?

They’re interested in religion, now, in a way they never were when they were young punk MIT engineers who knew it all. They’re getting older; they’re raising a family. And they’re asking me, because along with my being a Jesuit brother (and a friend), I am also, like them, a techie.

That’s what makes my answer—this book—different from a typical book of apologetics. This book explains a techie’s religion.

What’s a techie? Someone who makes his or her living as an engineer or a scientist, yes; but it’s broader than that.

To a lot of nontechies, the word techie might imply nothing more than a computer geek, but that’s missing the whole point. For one thing, techies’ interests are broader than computers; there’s a whole world of technology-related activities, from aeronautics to zoology, that techies might be engaged with. But more important than that, techies do more than just make a living off of technology. They actively enjoy the stuff. It’s their source of play. (And while some of us still cringe at the word geek, nearly every techie I know is proud to wear the techie tag.)

Who is a techie? Anyone whose Christmas list includes tools. Anyone who spends more time fiddling with things attached to their TV than actually watching TV. Anyone who still has a bit of the kid inside and still wants to take Dad’s watch apart.

A techie is someone whose orientation toward the world is extremely pragmatic, logical, and—most of all—functional. Where an artist might ask, “Is it beautiful?” or a philosopher would ask, “Is it true?” the question behind a techie’s worldview is “How does it work?” Techies see the world in terms of processes to be understood and jobs to be done—problems to be solved. We want to know where to find the gears and levers and why they are arranged that way. We also ask, “Does this arrangement of gears and levers do the job it was designed to do?”

Think of that famous photograph of Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon. You could be inspired by the symbolism of humankind’s quest for adventure or impressed with the courage (and cleverness) of both the astronauts and the whole raft of people who got them up to the moon. But if, in addition to all those other emotions, you find yourself wondering why that dry lunar soil is sticking to his knees, you’re a techie.

I’m a techie; I know my tribe. I spent seven years at MIT (earning two degrees and spending three years as a postdoc), and I loved every minute of it. I have worked with scientists and engineers all my adult life. My friends are the kinds of people who break codes for fun, go camping with telescopes, build home-brew rockets and homemade robots. For Christmas they give their kids rocks—really cool rocks.

My friends didn’t want me to try to convert them to my religion. Nothing turns us techies off faster than proselytizing; we’d just as soon figure things out for ourselves, thank you very much. But like me, they’re fascinated with the ways people live their lives and how they make things work. Technical people recognize the value of seeing sample problems worked out, and they value having concrete data on which to work. So an unabashedly honest description of how religious techies have figured things out, when it comes to our religions, can be accepted as grist for their data mill. Not “this is how you must live” but rather “this is how we live—here’s how the parts fit together.”

But there’s more to this book than simply a description of how religion works for a scientist or an engineer. Seeing how a techie understands religion can provide some very revealing insights to the rest of the world about how the techie mind works.

The techie worldview is incredibly important to the larger, nontechie society. We depend on technology to provide our light and heat, the food we eat, the ways we move about and stay in touch with each other. But even more, over the past two centuries, technical and scientific advances in understanding the universe have shaped the assumptions, the language, and the dreams of society as a whole. These include our understanding of the great religious questions.

In recent years, a laudable effort has been made to discuss issues of science in a theological context—for instance, the series of conferences cosponsored by the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at Berkeley. This is, in effect, bringing science to the philosophers. One result of these conferences (besides a series of thick and at times impenetrable proceedings) is a realization that the techie worldview can seem utterly alien, and even off-putting, to many nontechies. Yet it is a worldview so deeply ingrained in us techies, so “intuitively obvious to the casual observer,” that most of us techies are equally mystified at people who don’t understand it.

Indeed, to people who don’t understand the scientific or engineering mind-set, the questions a techie would ask and the techie manner of asking them can often sound threatening or dismissive, even though such questions are nothing of the sort. But without understanding the attitudes and assumptions behind the questions, it’s hard to come up with good answers. To the extent that there is still a rift between science and religion among my fellow scientists and engineers, it’s because most religion teachers and writers are woefully inept at explaining religion in terms that make sense to a techie. Certainly, this is true of most of our Sunday school teachers!

The cliché supposes that all techies are hard-nosed materialists. But anyone who’s read a techie Usenet list—or the heated commentaries in Nature—knows better. Religion enters into our conversations all the time. It is an important part of our lives, even for people who never set foot inside a church. It’s part of the society we live in, it’s part of the way we were brought up, and it’s a response to a human hunger as basic as food and sex.

Techies are human; we have the same hungers as anyone else. But especially, we have the hunger to know. We want things to make sense. And this book will show the kinds of answers that some of us have developed that make our religions make sense. And maybe it will reveal to the rest of the world what “making sense” means to us.

Part OneWhy Would a Techie Believe in God?

Chapter 1How Techies Believe

Proof or Belief?

A Baptist preacher, visiting Vermont, approached a Yankee farmer leaning on a fence post by the side of the road.

“Brother,” he asked the farmer, “do you believe in Baptism by immersion?”

The Yankee farmer chewed on a blade of grass and then spit it out.