How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [131]
to cause justice to prevail in the land,
to destroy the wicked and the evil,
that the strong might not oppress the weak
to rise like the sun over the black-headed [people]
and to light up the land.
The normal ups and downs of life may be more tolerable if you believe that Someone Up There is keeping score and that the tally will be presented to all participants when the game is over (with appropriate rewards and punishments doled out).
More than making things right with the world, millennial visions also help us make sense of the world. Recall that the literal meaning of apocalypse is “unveiling,” or “revelation.” For some people, a millennial apocalyptic vision, like that of St. John the Divine in the book of Revelation, unveils the secret pattern of life that must lie behind the confusing array of history’s events. These visions reveal to us the secret pattern set up by God or destiny. Texts like Revelation reveal the hidden scheme of life, thoughtfully and purposefully set up by a God who cares about us and who, perhaps more importantly, is in control. There is a beginning and an end to history, and the events in between fit a larger cosmic design. How much easier it is to suffer the slings and arrows of fate when you know that it is all really part of a deeper, unfolding plan. We may feel like flotsam and jetsam on the vast rivers of history, but the currents are directed toward a final destination in which we play a meaningful role.
Here we see a striking difference between 1000 and 2000. A thousand years ago the world was a relatively simple place where the church was the dominant social structure that provided an inchoate but comprehensive model of the world. Today we face a confusing panoply of competing power structures and explanations virtually impossible to wrap our minds around. If we do not experience an apocalyptic terror, there will at least be some millennial angst, from both religious and secular conceptions of the end. We need restitution and restoration. We want to feel that no matter how chaotic, oppressive, or evil the world is, all will be made right in the end. The millennium as history’s end is only acceptable with the proviso that there will be a new beginning. The people in 1000 were given it, and with it they created the Middle Ages. What will we do?
Will the fire cleanse? Will Yeats’s anarchy be loosed upon the world and innocence drowned, or will we see ourselves through this historical fissure and arise to create the next epoch, whatever it may be? Perhaps this time the falcon will hear the falconer, the centre will hold back the blood-dimmed tide, the best, and even sometimes the worst will retain conviction. And may we all be full of passionate intensity in anticipation of our future, whatever it holds.
Chapter 10
GLORIOUS CONTINGENCY
Gould’s Dangerous Idea and the Search for Meaning in an Age of Science
Through no fault of our own, and by dint of no cosmic plan or conscious purpose, we have become, by the grace of a glorious revolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life’s continuity on earth. We, have not asked for that role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.
—Stephen Jay Gould, A Glorious Accident, 1997
In one of his final public addresses before his death, recorded live at the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the astronomer Carl Sagan waxed poetic about our place in the universe and its profound implication for the relationship of science and religion:
One of science’s alleged crimes is revealing that our favorite, most reassuring stories about our place in the universe and how we came to be are delusional. Instead,