Religion

Wherever human beings travel, we bring our religions with us. "Godspeed, John Glenn," the farewell words spoken to the first American astronaut into orbit, exemplifies the characteristic human drive to carry faith into space.

Many astronauts who are religious have spoken of finding their faith strengthened by the experience of traveling in space. The ability to look back on Earth as a small blue planet, and to see the fragility of life and human existence, is an experience that brings many space travelers closer to the creator. The astronauts of the Apollo 8 mission, orbiting the Moon for the very first time in 1968, broadcast back to Earth a reading from the book of Genesis on Christmas day, in the belief that the passage discussing the creation of the world expressed their feelings of the awe and majesty of creation.

While some astronauts are agnostic or atheist, others have been highly religious. Astronauts from most of the major religions on Earth have been represented in space, including representatives of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism. Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, one of the two astronauts who were the first men to land on the Moon, brought with him a small vial of consecrated wine and a tiny piece of communion wafer, in order to celebrate the holy sacrament on the surface of the Moon.

For other astronauts, the spiritual experience of space is not expressed in the terms of formal religion. After landing on the Moon with Apollo 14, Astronaut Edgar Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences to reconcile the spiritual and humanistic values of religious traditions with scientific insights. The spiritual insight granted from spaceflight, and seeing Earth from orbit without political boundaries or petty human conflict, is profound. This insight has been tagged "the overview effect" by author Frank White.

Historically, religion and science have had a difficult relationship: in 1600, for example, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Inquisition for writing that the universe is infinite and includes an indefinite number of worlds. In 1630 the scientist Galileo Galilei was tried by the church on a charge of "suspicion of heresy" for writing that Earth circled around the Sun. He was forced to recant his position, and was subjected to imprisonment. It would take over four centuries for the Roman Catholic Church to review the results of the trial and rescind the sentence.

It is now widely conceded by theologians that there is no inherent conflict between science and religion, and modern scientists have included followersof all religions, as well as agnostics and atheists. Some philosophers and scientists such as Frank Tipler have looked even further, and foreseen the development of human potential into God in a future "Omega point" at the final collapse of the universe, elaborating on theological concepts developed by the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Religion—and religious persecution—has always been a significant force to move outward. In American history, the Pilgrims were driven to settle Plymouth, Massachusetts, as a religious colony; and the settlement of Utah was incited by intolerance toward the Mormon Church in the eastern United States. Some theorists expect that the same forces may also drive space colonization, as religious intolerance has not been eliminated in the centuries since these events.

The scriptures are silent on the subject of life on other worlds. If we explore other worlds, and find other forms of intelligent life, this will bring out many questions to be addressed by religion. Do beings of other planets have souls? Are they eligible for salvation? Do they have religion, and if so, what god or gods do they worship? Questions such as these have been addressed in science fiction. Science fiction writers who have addressed the question of the religious implications of spaceflight include, among others, Arthur C. Clarke, Mary Doria Russell, James Blish, and Philip José Farmer.

In the words of one of its founders, noetic science is concerned with subjective experience as opposed to materialistic science (which is essentially interested in objective experience). Noetic scientists describe the discipline as "a science of consciousness and the world of inner experience."

Clarke, Arthur C. (Volume 1);; Galilei, Galileo (Volume 2).

Clarke, Arthur C. "The Star." In Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. New York: Tor Books, 2001.

Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason. Paris, 1794.

Reissued in Thomas Paine: Collected Writings. New York: Library of America, 1995.

Russell, Mary Doria. The Sparrow. New York: Villard Books, 1996.

White, Frank. The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution. Washington, DC: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1987, revised 1998.

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