>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
[ Silence ]
>> Carolyn Brown: Good afternoon everyone.
Thank you for braving the heat to get yourselves here.
I am Carolyn Brown.
I direct the Office of Scholarly programs at John W Kluge Center here
at the Library of Congress.
And, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you this afternoon for,
what I think, is going to be a very stimulating
and probably a little unusual for Washington kind of conversation.
The program comes from joint collaboration between NASA
and the Library of Congress.
And, we'll be talking about astrobiology and theology
with our special guest here on the podium, Steven Dick,
who's the Baruch S Blumberg NASA LC chair in astrobiology.
You don't have to memorize that.
I think it's on your handout.
And, speaking with him, Robin Lovin who is known to us
at the Kluge Center for having been the Maguire Chair here in 2013,
and our wonderful moderator in the middle Derek Malone France
from George Washington University who's a professor in the departments
of religion and philosophy.
Before we begin and I get into the full introduction,
if you would have a cell phone or any other electrical device
that can go off and interfere with the program, please turn it off
or at least put it on mute.
Now, astrobiology is a new field of science.
It usually, we usually think of it in terms of the search
for life beyond earth, but, includes such studies as thinking
about the conditions under which life starts, therefore,
looking at the origins of life on earth as well as life
in extreme conditions on earth.
So, that's the general purview.
I don't think I need to talk about the purview of theology
which is well known to everybody.
The interesting thing about this program in astrobiology though is
that we're trying to look at the humanistic
and sociological implications of astrobiology.
Those of you who think about these issues think about science
and humanities and their differences,
know that science can talk about what exists, how it came into being,
the physical processes that were involved in that.
But, it's not very good at addressing or can't address issues
of meaning and value and, you know, why we're here, so that,
trying to bring together those two different perspectives in one set
of conversations is what this program
in astrobiology really is about and trying to do.
And, I should say something about the Kluge Center here
at the Library of Congress.
It was established in the year 2000 with a very generous donation
by John W Kluge with the intention of bringing together,
here on Capitol Hill, the thinkers and the doers, we like to say,
the world of affairs and the world of scholarship to make it possible
for those people who are struggling with policy and politics
and those sorts of issues to have access to some of the best
of the world's thinkers who are not focused on political agenda but just
on the pursuit of knowledge in a pure sense.
So, the Center brings together some of the most senior scholars
in the world as well as very vibrant community of rising junior scholars.
And, we look forward to the day when some
of our junior fellows will have become senior scholars
and will be back at the Center in new capacities.
The Center also manages the process for selecting the Kluge prize winner
which is a prize, its a million dollar prize
for lifetime achievement in studies that advance humanity.
So, that is the Kluge Center.
I want to say more than today about our presenters.
Steven Dick, I mentioned is the chair in astrobiology.
He's the second chair.
In background, he's an astronomer, a very widely published author,
historian of science, and he served as the chief scientist
at NASA from 2003 to 2009.
His academic background is in the philosophy and history of science.
Here at the Library, as the chair, he's been drawing on a variety
of disciplines to try to assess the philosophical theological
and societal implications of astrobiology.
And, I would ask you to please mark your calendars for September 18th
and 19th when Steven has organized a conference.
And, let me give you the title, Preparing for Discovery,
a Rational Approach to the Impact of Finding Microbial, Complex,
or Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.
So, that'll be a two day conference right here in September.
Robin Lovin, I noted, was I forget what I said.
His field is theology.
He's an emeritus professor from Southern Methodist University
and had been at the Library as the Maguire chair in 2013.
He's written widely on 20th century Christian ethics, Christian Realism,
the Works of [inaudible] as well as, let me make sure I get this right,
work in religion and law and comparative religious ethics.
He's been Candler's School of Theology at Emery,
the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.
He's also an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church.
Our moderator, Derek Malone France, in addition to his work in addition
to his work in the departments of philosophy and religion
at George Washington University, is also executive director
of the university writing program and an award winning teacher.
His focus, his research focus is on philosophy, religion,
political legal philosophy, political rhetoric,
political descent human right theory and practice.
And, I'm happy to say that, over the last several years,
we've managed to engage Derek in thinking about astrobiology
and its philosophical and other implications and, I think,
have sort of engaged his intellectual interest
in that direction.
He's been well fortified for his task today as moderator
of this panel in, you never know what you're going to dig
up when you go on the internet, 2011 he moderator a discussion
between Newt Gingrich, who was then running for president,
and Howard Dean who had been a candidate for president.
So, this should be a piece of cake Derek.
So, please, welcome our panelists and let us proceed.
[ Applause ]
>> Derek Malone France: Thank you Carolyn and welcome everyone.
Thank you for being here.
It's a great pleasure and honor for me to be in the company
of our two main speakers.
And, I'm going to start by giving them an opportunity
to make a brief opening statements and we'll start with Steven Dick.
>> Steven Dick: Thank you very much.
And, thank you all for coming on this hottest day of the year.
And, I also want to start by thanking Carolyn and the staff
at the Kluge Center for having us in this fabulous place here
in the Library of Congress.
What I wanted to do was start
by asking why are we discussing this subject at all?
And, I think, it's a reflection of the state of astrobiology
in particular the number of planets that are now being found outside
of our solar systems, thousands of planets being found,
especially by the Kepler Spacecraft.
And, that Kepler Spacecraft is looking only at a very small area
of the sky, about the size of two of the dippers in the Big Dipper.
And, it's found thousands of planets.
And, they project, that, if you look over the entire sky, that,
almost every star would have a planet.
And, probably, in our own galaxy, 40 billion stars that have planets
that are earth sized,
not necessarily earth like but earth sized.
So, that's a very large landscape on which
to draw this astrobiological concern.
And, we want to ask then, what are the implications if that's true?
And, it's not just the extra planets out there,
it's also in our own solar system,
the idea of an inhabitable zone increased from the area
around the earth, Mars and Venus, to up in the satellites around Jupiter,
the moons of Jupiter and Saturn now have areas which could hold life.
So, the idea of life out there is very much in the forefront.
And, the question is what are the implications?
I'll say at the start, in my view,
extraterrestrial life is quite likely.
It's just the question of how rare it is.
I think intelligence is probably more rare than microbial life.
But, I think, the underlying principle is that the laws
of physics and biology are universal.
And so, what has happened here is very likely to have happened
out there, if conditions are similar.
Well, what does astrobiology have to do with theology?
Its relevance is very clear.
If you look at history, especially since the time of Copernicus
who made the earth a planet and the planets potential earth
and potentially habitable.
And so, this has been a sporadic tradition over the last 500 years
of asking what are the theological implications.
But, you do find the question being asked already 500 years ago,
and especially in the Christian tradition and especially
with the doctrines of redemption and incarnations.
And, we may get some more into that.
In the last 20 years, there's been a lot of discussion
about what's now called exotheology
or astral theology or cosmo theology.
There's actually a sort of nascent field developing in this area
where people are asking all kind of questions.
Even the Pope, you heard a few weeks ago,
was asking would you baptize an extraterrestrial.
I always think, I always think
that the real question is would an extraterrestrial want
to be baptized?
But, in the symposium that Carolyn talked about, we have a Jesuit
from the Vatican coming to talk about just that subject.
So, I invite you all to hear that.
Polls have been taken over the years on this subject,
what the impact might be.
And, particularly, recently,
Ted Peter's polled what he calls a religious crisis survey.
1,300 respondents indicated, for many religions,
indicated that they thought that their religion would be able
to handle such a discovery.
People outside of religion, on the other hand,
tend to think that religions would be immediately destroyed.
I think religions are, prepare themselves,
are actually pretty adaptable.
Although, there are some really tough questions
that would have to be addressed.
Cosmo theology, we might call cosmo theology, I think,
could enrich theology in new directions.
We already have an increasing cosmic consciousness.
And, what we know about the universe, I think,
is starting to filter into theology.
And, I think, that's what cosmo theology should be about,
bringing our knowledge of the universe into theology.
So, some questions in cosmo theology might be that we have to take
into account that we are not central in the universe,
certainly not in any physical way and, perhaps,
not in any biological way.
We might find that, in light of the 13.8 billion years
of cosmic evolution, that, we may not be at the top of the great chain
of being, but more near the bottom.
I'm almost finished.
And, I think, cosmo theology would also have to have a moral dimension
which would extend to include all species in the universe a reverence
and a respect for life that we find
to be a challenge even here on the earth.
So, those are just some of the issues that might be raised.
>> Robin Lovin: Thank you.
So, thank you.
And, thanks to Carolyn and the Kluge Center.
It's always great to be back here and to be a part of
or to be speaking to the great audience
that shows up for these events.
Carolyn suggested that theology is a field where everybody has an idea
of what the purview of theology is.
The word, itself, suggests, you know, reasoning or word about God
in the way that biology would be a word about life,
geology a word about the earth.
And, I should probably say, at the outset, that,
for our purposes today, this means theology is a word about God
and not a word from God or the Word of God, at least,
as I'm going to represent it for our discussion.
Theology is an interpretive and integrated discipline in contrast
of the experiment disciplines of science, so that, it's an effort
to make sense of our world as a whole,
our world of individual experience and then the world of facts
that are presented to us
by experimental sciences and other disciplines.
And, as you were suggesting, Steven was suggesting
that that world's been growing exponentially
over the last 500 years.
But then, also, theology, in its interpretive task,
integrates that scientific knowledge and that knowledge
from our own experience with the traditions
through which people have made sense
of their lives throughout human history.
So, these traditions that connect us to our past as well as the sciences
that connect us to the world around us get integrated in theology.
And, that's why theologians have been interested for a long time
in the question on whether there's life on other worlds
and whether there's intelligent life in other worlds
because that's a clarifying question.
How you answer it says something
about how you do understand your life
and our experience of the world as a whole.
Different answers offered by different theologians in the past,
some said no can't possibly be life on other worlds
because the uniqueness of God's covenant with humanity means
that there can't be anything out there like us.
Others said God's infinite creative goodness would surely have produced
something better than us somewhere in the universe.
So, different answers.
But, the interesting thing is, in the past, theologians have tended
to answer these questions, if you will, out of metaphysics,
out of basic assumptions about reality.
What's happened in the modern world is, perhaps,
we're all a little less confident in our metaphysics than we once were.
And, also, I think, we've learned from modern science and especially
from biology that, even when we understand the unity of reality,
the diversity of forms that life can take make it very difficult
to generalize about what's going on out there or speculate
about what's going on out there apart from the search
for real experimental evidence.
And so, theologians join the astrobiologists at that point
in being interested in what the results
of the empirical study of reality are.
I have a friend who's an experimental physicist
who says you have to make a distinction between the questions
of physics and the kind of questions that physicists get
into fights in bars about.
And, probably, if you've ever heard one of these discussions
about the incarnation and extraterrestrial life,
you'd have to say the same thing for theology.
There are some questions that our disciplines are set up to answer
and other questions that we get into fights in bars about.
That's why we need to push the boundaries of both the sciences
and theology in order to face these clarifying questions
about the nature of our own life and our own human community
in relationship to the possibilities of life in other worlds.
And, perhaps then, with that suggestion, that these questions,
whether we know the answers, whether we even know how
to find the answers are clarifying questions about who we are
and what our future looks like.
With that, I think, we ought to begin our conversation.
>> Derek Malone France: For my part, I find it deeply comforting
that both physicists and theologians spend time in bars.
It suggests a method forward, right, we come from the same bars.
There's so much rich content to pull
out of what each of you have said so far.
I want to start with, Robin, your lovely cutting comments
about the word about God being not the same
as Word from God or Word by God.
And, this relates to the point that Steve made about the resilience
of religious traditions in the face of what might,
to earlier generations, have seen direct counter evidence
of their most foundational beliefs.
And, of course, that's true.
And, one doesn't want to over trust polls, but,
I suspect that what the polls find that most believers do feel
that they could accommodate this, that that's true.
But, there is also the split within particular religious traditions
between those who we might call fundamentalists in a very generic
and broad sense, those for whom the discovery of a second origin
of life, primitive, intellectual, whatever,
would be a traumatic theological event
and those who don't feel that way.
And, it seems to me that, there is the possibility
that that very dichotomy
and religious consciousness itself could magnify the impact
of such a discovery as an internal pressure on a religious tradition.
And so, I'd like to hear what your thoughts are
about how you think these two different kinds of religious groups,
each found within each of the traditions, will respond and whether
that is likely to change the religion or is it likely
to spawn the development of new religions?
>> Robin Lovin: Well, I think, it is interesting as Steven pointed out,
that in this polling, the religious people seem
to think they were more flexible
than outsiders believed that religion would be.
And, I think, that's because of what I was saying about the nature
of theology, that, it's not, you know, a set of beliefs written
in stone that people subscribe to, but it's a way
that people make sense of their experience.
You know, in one sense dealing with the discovery
of extraterrestrial life for a believer is the same thing
as dealing with say the tragic experience
of a death of a loved one.
You have to incorporate scientific fact,
you have to incorporate the experiences of your own life
into the broader understanding of reality that you have.
And, I think that, what theology has learned in, say,
the time since Copernicus is, it's really a good idea to wait
for that empirical evidence before you leap to conclusions
about the relationship between God and certain kinds of physical
or biological possibilities.
>> Derek Malone France: Well, first a word about polls.
We all remember what happened a week ago with Eric Cantor right.
So, you know, they were off by 45 percent or something like that.
I think the Peter's poll
on religious crisis is very interesting.
But, it, really, very much depends on how the questions asked also.
The question was asked, as it was stated, was would the discovery
of extraterrestrial life have provoke a religious crisis
in your particular case?
And everybody, almost everybody, said, no they would find a way.
If the question had been do you believe in a planet hopping Savior,
which is really what it comes down to for incarnation redemption,
the answers might have been quite different.
I think, to answer your question,
that both traditions would find some way to accommodate
because the alternative is extinction.
And, I don't think either one, either tradition would do that.
I also wanted to say that, you know, some people think
that microbial life might not have much of an effect
if we just found microbial life.
But, you can look back through history, look 20 years ago when,
you remember, the Mars rock the ALH84001 Mars rock was found,
there was tremendous discussion including theological discussion.
I remember I was on the beach at the time.
And, the papers on the beach were recording theologians.
So, you can imagine if an actual microbe,
much less intelligence, was found.
But, I think, the different religious traditions would find a
way although it would take a considerable amount of discussion.
And, this is what's exciting about it, I think, is,
enriching the theological tradition expanding the
theological boundaries.
>> Steven Dick: One of the things, as Carolyn Mentioned,
I'm a United Methodist Minister in addition to my academic work.
And, one of the things that I'd like to say is if any kind
of extraterrestrial life is discovered on Thursday,
I know 30,000 people who are going to need a new sermon by Sunday.
And, so, there's no doubt that, when we ask the question of adaptability
in the religious traditions, this would be one
of those world reshaping kinds of experiences
that we would all begin immediately to rethink our understanding
of creation, our understanding of human purpose,
our understanding of final judgment.
>> Well, it's interesting, though, because if we think,
mostly about the overwhelmingly more likely possibility
that we find microbial life rather than intelligent life,
at least in the near time horizon, the,
there will be the possibility of denial, right.
We look at climate change and the denial of the evidence there.
And, it seems to me that,
at the level of microbial life samples even being returned,
there's the strong position for refusal of the evidence
by certain kinds of religious believers.
So, on the one hand, I do think you're right that,
as a kind of global event, it would be axial.
But, on the other hand,
that transformation might include a significant portion of people
who are refusing to go along.
And, the consequences of that could be significant.
>> Yeah, I absolutely agree with you.
In fact, I've just done a book on discovery,
the concept of discovery in astronomy.
And, the thing that comes through very clearly is that discovery is,
to spite Archimedes, it's not a eureka moment.
Discovery is an extended process in astronomy and in other sciences
which consists of detection and interpretation and understanding.
Each of those stages can last weeks, months, years, or decades.
And, in the case of finding microbial or intelligent life,
certainly that's going to be the case.
So, it'll be all kinds of interpretations as you saw
with the Mars rock when they actually had the Mars rock
in their hand.
It took them 20 years to figure out well it probably is not life.
So, there's no doubt that there will be some people,
I think, who will deny it.
But, it'll be an extended process to try and figure
out whether it's actually true or not
and whether they do have to grapple with it.
>> Derek Malone France: One thing you gestured towards, Robin,
is the particularity of religious traditions.
And, I wonder if you could say a bit about that in relation
to this specific topic, the different religious traditions.
Unfortunately, we don't have a panel that includes a Hindu,
a Muslim, a Confusion, etcetera.
But, they may well react differently.
Probably, many of you saw, a month or so ago, a couple of months ago,
I guess, the Islamic authority
in the UAE issued a thought law prohibiting Muslims from traveling
to Mars because it would, essentially, be a form of suicide.
We don't have the technology to bring them back yet.
So, you know, it's not just the Jesuits, right, who are thinking
about this very consciously.
>> Steven Dick: Yeah, and that raises another whole set
of questions about the ethics of this kind of exploration.
But, to speak to your specific question
about then the diversity of religious traditions.
You know, we're not doing a very good job
of bringing those traditions together
around terrestrial problems.
You know, all you have to do is look at the Middle East to see that.
On the other hand, it seems to me that, just as the initial stages
of lunar explorations, for example, brought a kind of sense
of human unity to a variety of traditions and cultures, that,
there's a real possibility that understanding, in the strong sense,
the unity of life on earth, precisely by having to think
about it in relationship to a different kind of life
with a different kind of origin, that, that might be one
of those points which the interpretive power
of these traditions could go to work and incorporate this kind
of discovery in ways that would have ethical implications for how we deal
with each other as well as how we deal with this life that might be
at a considerable distance with direct contact with us.
>> I do think, in the literature, if you look at the literature on this,
there is a distinction drawn between the
so called Adamist traditions Islam, Judaism, and Christianity,
versus those that seek more individual enlightenment
like Buddhism and Hinduism.
The consensus being that the Adamist religions, those first ones,
might have more of a difficulty
because they see us in the image of God.
And so, they would have to work that out.
And, in fact, not to minimize the problem, certain people,
like George Coyne, who was the formal director
of the Vatican Observatory, has explicitly said that he thinks that,
okay, we can work it out somehow, is a cop out
and that it would be an extremely difficult problem to work out.
So, we shouldn't minimize that for those religions.
>> Robin Lovin: Let me speak up for the monotheist for a moment because,
the other side of that is the Abrahamic traditions,
as they're sometimes called, have a strong sense of God as creator.
Now, we know how that can get in the way
of understanding scientific explanations
of evolution and so forth.
But, the fundamental theological conviction there has to do
with the unity and the goodness of reality.
And, it seems to me that, you can't affirm God's creation
and deny the goodness and the relatedness of anything
that we find, and not just on earth but in the broader universe.
>> Derek Malone France: So, this sort of brings me back
to something you said earlier, Robin, which was about the need
for caution in thinking through these issues theologically
and the need to await some empirical evidence.
That makes a lot of sense.
On the other hand, when Steven talks about cosmo theology,
there's a much more imaginative ambitious agenda, I think,
that's associated with that.
And, of course, that's what a lot of science fiction writers are doing
in some sense, right, the world building they do often includes
theology building.
And, I wonder, is there a danger to traditional theological communities
and traditions that their thinking about these issues will be overrun
by the more imaginative ambitious agendas.
And this gets us back to something I do want to push on a little bit
which is the possibility of new religions emerging
around the idea much less the reality of extraterrestrial life.
>> Robin Lovin: Yeah.
Yeah. I think that, one of the problems that, if you will,
established religious traditions have is
that they can adopt a scientific perspective rather quickly,
but then, they tend to turn it into a theology.
And, the classic example of that is Newtonian physics which overthrew
so much of older platonic metaphysics, you know.
But, it's arguable that the reason why western religious traditions
have such a hard time dealing with Darwin is
because they'd committed themselves to a Newtonian mechanical universe.
You know, and the scientists moved
on because they weren't theologically committed
to a Newtonian universe.
So, I think, part of the answer to your question,
and it is this question about imagination.
It's how do we incorporate this scientific knowledge with a level
of tentativeness and susceptibility to revision that's appropriate
to science and not, as I say, turn the science into theology that,
as soon as we understand it, that becomes our model
for how God created the universe.
>> Steven Dick: Well, I would point out that there are a few religions
that have already incorporated this, Mormonism, for example.
You know, Mormonism was developed in the mid 19th century
when all this talk about plurality of worlds, life in other worlds was,
you know, very much under discussion.
So, it was incorporated already into the basis of Mormon theology.
And, there are other religions, I would call more like cults,
Raelianism and, you know, even Heaven's Gate, you know,
back when the Hale Bopp came and they committed suicide to,
hoping to join the spacecraft that was on, in the tail of Hale Bopp.
So, I'm sure you will get some cult formations like that.
Whether or not you would get a religion, substantive religion
and long term religion, I think, is hard to predict.
>> Derek Malone France: Robin, switching gears a little bit,
you talked about the ethics of this enterprise of astrobiology.
Expanding that out in a, kind of, fundamental way to think
about the resource expenditure associated with all of this.
We're here, we think, in some sense, obviously,
that it's a worthwhile undertaking.
And yet, there's an easy prima facie argument to make
that says the problems on earth deserve our attention,
our money, our energy.
We should be trying to fix poverty here rather
than find life somewhere else.
Do we have the beginnings of a response to that
yet in this community of thinkers who are dealing with these issues?
>> Robin Lovin: Yeah.
It seems to me that this is related to that question of imagination
and curiosity that people will be concerned
about these possibilities just as they're always concerned
about understanding their own place in the world.
I'm inclined to think, and this is an optimistic reading of things,
that we become more generous and more concerned about other people
and their needs when we feel secure in our own place in the world.
And, you know, much of what we're discussing here is a question
of whether we can talk about our place in this vast
and rather intimidate cosmos in a way that leaves people
with a confidence in the unity and goodness of that cosmos rather
than seeing it as a threat.
Jonathan Edwards, as long back as the early 18th century,
talked about the vastness of the universe.
And, this was that Newtonian world
that we were just beginning to explore.
But, his notion was that the vastness
of the universe impresses us with the Glory of God and therefore
with the goodness of God, not with our own insignificance.
>> Which is a natural theology kind of thing.
>> Robin Lovin: Exactly, yeah.
And it's, you know, so it's that, the interpretive task of theology is
about that fundamental choice.
Does this, does this vast universe make me feel contingent
and desperate or make me feel that I'm part of something
that is ordered and good and I'm a part of that whole?
>> Steven Dick: Well look,
the poverty argument can be made for almost anything.
You can say why are we doing pure science we should be giving it
to poverty?
Why should we have a space program at all?
Who needs it?
But, and, of course, astrobiology's a tiny,
tiny part of the federal budget and study.
Extraterrestrial intelligence has not been funded
by the federal government for 20 years,
so no that's not public funding.
But, I think, the point is that we ought to be able to do both.
You never know what's going to come out of pure science.
You never know what's going to come
out of discovering extraterrestrials.
Some people think all the knowledge and wisdom of the universe will pour
down and it'll be the solution to our problems.
I wouldn't go that far.
But, I do think it's something that we have to do.
In part, because it's in our nature as an exploring species that we have
to not only take care of people in the social justice kind
of sense here on earth, but, we also have to look outward
at exploration of the universe.
>> Derek Malone France: Okay.
Maybe one final thing before we turn to the Q
and A to mention is the ways in which conversations
about astrobiology so quickly often become entangled with conversations
about post human or trans human life that is the idea
that humans will alter ourselves first, perhaps,
in order to make long term space travel possible, but, perhaps,
after that, simply as a kind of designer customization of ourselves.
This is a distinct issue for religious traditions but one that,
likely, will be a conversation that travels in parallel.
And, I wonder if you have initial thoughts
about how religious traditions are likely to,
the very quick possibility, very quickly emerging possibility
of this kind of transformation of the human.
>> Robin Lovin: I suppose my initial theological response
on that is a word of caution.
That is to say theology, especially these monotheistic Abrahamic
traditions always look at human beings as creatures which is to say
that whatever technological capacities we have,
we don't set the fundamental terms of our own existence.
And, that, then it becomes an experimental question, you know,
how much flexibility there is around the margins of that.
But, for our own health as individuals and as a society,
I think, those possibilities need to be explored from a perspective
of understanding that, as I say, the fundamental conditions
of our human existence, even if we don't know what they are,
are defined for us rather than set by us.
>> Derek Malone France:
To the extent that theologies are successful in making the move
that you suggested earlier, that, this expansiveness becomes a comfort
and the idea of humanity
as the central creation is not wiped away, but, it is complicated.
Does that make it easier, perhaps, for religious traditions
to accept the transformation of the human form?
The human form itself, per say, becomes less sacred, perhaps.
>> Robin Lovin: You clearly, you know,
go way back to the Middle Ages, theologians have argued
about what does it mean to be in the image of God because, you know,
happily I don't think God looks a whole lot
like any one or all three of us.
So, you know, then it's the idea of reason and it's the idea
of intelligence, and it is, as you say, the ability to conceive
of different ways that that intelligence might take form.
That's, again, where the astrobiological possibilities
come in.
>> Steven Dick: Yeah, we're talking about what the implications might be
if we find extraterrestrial life.
I've actually written an article called the Post Biological Universe
where I argue, and I think it's a good argument,
that it's likely that, if we find intelligent life out there
that it will be post biological.
You know, if we look at cultural evolution here on earth,
people like Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec think that, you know,
in a generation we may be post biological, I doubt that.
But, if you have a thousand or a million years, you might be.
And, out there, there's billions of years, so.
>> Derek Malone France: And,
maybe just clarify what you mean by post biological.
>> Steven Dick: Post biological meaning not flesh and blood
but machine intelligence, artificial intelligence, which, of course,
some people, like John Sorrell, who has been here before,
think is not possible in principle, that a strong AI is not possible.
But, if you've got a million or a billion years
to figure it out, maybe, it is.
And so, they may be post biological out there.
So, we may be talking about the theological impact
of discovering post biological intelligence.
It's just something to think about.
>> Derek Malone France: That's a good, oh this is a good moment
to start with the Q and A from the audience, yeah.
And there is a microphone that'll travel anywhere.
>> Dr. Lovin: Tomorrow's Thursday, if contact is made tomorrow,
what's your sermon on Sunday?
[ Laughter ]
>> Robin Lovin: This is when I'm actually glad
that I'm a scholar rather than a pastor.
But, if I then had to preach that sermon on Sunday,
I would talk about understanding the world as God's creation.
I think, that's where Christian and Jewish and Muslim thought starts.
And, the way in which what we've had to learn, as Christians and Jews
and Muslims, during the 500 years of modern science,
the way in which we've had to learn that God's creation does not center
on us and that the reality of God is not simply our interests
and values and goals larger.
And so, this discovery that was made last Thursday of slime mold
on a moon of Jupiter, this discovery is a reminder
of what we all should've known all along anyway
which is God is doing things in places
that our minds have not yet able to go.
>> Steven Dick: And, I would give, not a sermon but a lecture
about the 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution and how we're
about to find out with these discoveries of life,
where we fit in that cosmic evolution.
>> I guess in the last few years they've been able to find
that it's not that hard to create the basic building block
of life in the laboratory.
And, if things have been going on for an infinity in time
and an infinity of space, you'd expect, somewhere,
there would be a highly intelligent being
that would find their way to us.
And, I think now that, the idea is that there's a certain limit
to intelligent human beings in terms of adapting, that bacteria are much,
bacteria and cockroaches can adapt much better and that humans,
in some ways, sort of, eventually wind up making the wrong choices
and making it much more difficult to travel into space
or to do anything just because of some of the things
that we've been seeing in our advanced state
of intelligence making the wrong decisions.
So, I don't know where that leaves you.
But, it's not an optimistic outlook.
The reason why they haven't gotten to us is because the general laws
of physics and development apply to them just as it applies to us.
>> Robin Lovin: And, what you raise is the basic question
of whether there are laws that shape cultural evolution as well as laws
that shape biological evolution.
And, one of the reasons why we want
to conduct these explorations is we don't know the answer to that even
at the level of biology until we find some other life
where we can compare their evolution to ours.
The theological understanding of the human project has always been,
as you suggest that we're a risky bit of business,
that good outcomes are not guaranteed.
But, I think, what I want to say in response to your question,
which as I turn it over in my mind I keep seeing new things in it,
I think the answer is we don't know the answer to that.
And, until we actually have some evidence in what happens
to civilizations in other context.
>> Well, for me, it brings to mind the famous, Fermi paradox so,
if there's so many intelligent beings out there where are they?
Why aren't they here?
Why don't we see them?
One answer to that is cultural evolution doesn't produce beings
intelligent enough to have the interest of travel.
So, that's, or they're not interested, they're not interested
in finding us, all kinds of, all kinds of answers.
So, that's one answer to the Fermi paradox.
>> Derek Malone France: I'd just add, actually, too that, I think,
you're getting at one of the reasons why this kind of conversation
and more thought about these issues is so important.
Whether or not we ever make contact, and I think we will, but, whether
or not we ever do, we are blessed with the presence
of the first Blumberg chair David Grinspoon who devoted a lot
of his time to think about the sustainability
of the anthropocene of human civilization.
And asking questions like this forces us to think
about ourselves in new ways.
The persistence of human or post human civilization is put
into a different kind of context.
And, that's a really important, the extension of the idea
of human ecology on the earth and the thinking
about how we will proceed.
I'm very troubled by the extent to which it seems that much
of this is going to be seeded to private enterprise.
It's going to be commercialized.
And I'm also, as a political philosopher, very interested
in the implications of the vastness of space as creating the kind
of state of nature and archaic plenitude that Loch envisioned
and which motivated manifest destiny.
Right? So, if we travel out there and we see it as our place
to conquer, that's a very different, it's a very different situation even
if we don't find other forms of life that we're abusing
than if we are proceeding with the right kinds of values and ethics
in relation to whatever it is that we find.
>> Steven Dick: Yeah, I think it's one
of the great things about astrobiology.
Even if we don't find life out there in any form,
it forces you to ask these foundational questions
on every level, theology or whatever.
And so, it's worth it just for that.
Of course, we hope we find life, and I think we will.
>> Derek Malone France: There's a question over here, I think.
[ Silence ]
>> Kind of piggybacking on that, the vastness of space
and if we are moving out to other planets before other things are
coming to us.
Do you see theologians or anybody
in the faith based community participating
in planetary public policy
or galactic public policy or what have you?
>> Robin Lovin: This is an interesting commentary
on where religious life is, at this point, institutionally especially.
I think, in the world of mainline Protestantism,
we're a lot more worried about whether anybody's going to show
up next Sunday morning than.
But, this is related to the question we were raising earlier.
I think it's very important
that religious communities proactively address these questions
and show themselves concerned about these issues
because people are raising these questions and, I think,
want to see them as moral and spiritual queries, you know,
that it isn't just the question about biology
but it's a question about themselves.
And, for that reason, you know, I keep picking on my own denomination,
but, you've probably noticed we've got a building over there next
to the Supreme Court, and I really wish more people, in that office,
were thinking about these questions.
They're thinking a lot about poverty.
They're thinking a lot about peace.
And, that's terribly important.
I wouldn't want them to substitute astrobiology for what they're doing
in the Middle East at this point.
But, if we're concerned about the wholeness of human life, then,
these religious communities, not just mine, but all of them need
to be addressing those issues.
>> Steven Dick: Now, I absolutely agree with that.
I think we need to be proactive.
We can't wait until the even happens.
And, you know, there have been congressional hearings
on astrobiology, two of them in the last six or seven months.
And, in both of the hearings, the question came
up what do we do if we find life?
There's not a good answer to that.
There's not a public policy set in place of what we do.
And, I think, one of the things we would do was, or we should do,
probably, ahead of time, is convene a panel of people
which would include anthropologists and theologians and others
who should address this before it actually happens.
>> Robin Lovin: And, an important piece of that is,
just given the distances that we're talking about unless there are folks
out there who have mastered time travel.
You know, we're really talking about relating to another world
in the same way we would relate to ancient history, you know,
which means that the philosophers, the theologians,
the anthropologists may have more to tell us than the scientists
about the implications of what we've found.
>> Steven Dick: But, you wouldn't necessarily,
have to have communication before you have an impact.
If you have a signal that you've been,
that you can definitely prove is artificial, I think,
you might have an impact immediately.
>> Derek Malone France: Over here.
[ Silence ]
>> If it turns out there's no life on Mars or elsewhere
in the solar system, I mean, of course,
it's hard to prove a negative.
But, if we explore these places really thoroughly
and there's just no sign and we conclude they're lifeless, then,
do you think there might be a moral imperative to spread life
to these places from the standpoint of expanding the creation
and even insuring the long term survival of life in the face
of possible future existential risk to earth?
>> Steven Dick: Well, it's a complicated question.
The question's usually asked in reverse.
What happens if there is life there, what's the moral,
what's the moral thing that we do then?
If it's definitely proven that there is no life there,
people have written about this, Chris McKay and others, that,
you know, maybe there is a moral imperative to spread life.
I think, a case could also be made that there's a moral imperative,
and I thinks this is one of the reasons to have a space program
to get, at least, a few people off of the planet
in case an asteroid comes as it did destroy the dinosaurs 63 million
years ago, that we would save some of the species and not have to go
through 4 million years of evolution again.
So, that's also kind of a moral imperative I think.
>> Robin Lovin: Yeah.
I think, I would broadly agree with that, that, if there's value
to what human beings have done, then,
it's important to preserve that.
It might also be important, however, to think about, this is really
to the trans humanism question, when do we let it go?
At what point is human life on Mars Martian life that we must relate
to in some very different way?
That's, surely, the kind of question that we've never faced before
and it's one of those clarifying questions that would help us think
through what it means to be human.
>> Steven Dick: Yeah I can just see the Martian independence.
>> Derek Malone France: Okay over here in the back, yeah.
>> Okay. So, I have two questions so you can pick and choose.
One of them is related to a previous question over here.
But, you know, these questions are often couched as do we think
that religious communities are prepared for, you know,
if we discover even simple life elsewhere.
Are people prepared to embrace that into their theology?
But, there's also, I think, a popular sentiment that there is life
out there, we just have to find it.
So, do you think, as we find these thousands upon thousands
of exoplanets and study them more and more and more, if it looks less
and less likely that any of them are habitable by our standards,
and of course, you can never completely, you know,
prove that there's no life elsewhere.
But, if it looks less and less likely
that there's any sustainable habitat out there
for what we would call advanced life, do you think society
and these different communities are prepare for that?
So, that's one question.
And then, the other one is that it seems to me that,
at least in the Abrahamic traditions, the,
what separates humans from other life forms is that humans are seen
to be morally perceptive of right and wrong with the ability
and in fact even the history of choosing wrong as well
as choosing right and knowingly doing so
and causing great harm in that sense.
So, wouldn't, sort of, from a theological perspective,
the finding of life elsewhere not really take
on a big theological import unless and until we find other species
that also seem to have that same moral choice and capabilities?
So, those are two different questions.
Choose either, both, or neither.
[ Laughter ]
>> Steven Dick: Well, I think, there's a difference
between the idea versus the reality of life out there.
Lots of people, you're right, lots of people, most people think
that there is life out there.
But, on the other hand, it's not really been incorporated
into the religious traditions, certainly not Christianity except
for a few like Mormonism.
So, the no life, would they be prepared for no life?
That's, kind of, the fault of what we have now, I think because,
as I say, I think the idea is not the same as the reality.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Derek Malone France: What choice do they have.
One thing that I think is interesting about that question is
that it's going to take quite a long time for that to happen, right.
As you said, we never fully proven the negative.
But, even if we get to the point where it looks less likely
than we would've thought is quite a ways off.
So, we're kind of, you know, operating in a default there is
or probably is state for some time.
Right? But, I also think that what you're saying popular culture's
tremendously important, you know, the movies have seeded the ground
for us, right, in this conversation.
But, they've also inflected people's understanding of these issues.
And, I think, that's where Steven's point that the ideas different
than the reality has to be born in mind and it relates
to the modesty issue that Robin was pressing on earlier
that we think we know how we will react.
Like, one of the dreams is that it unites us all, right.
But, we don't know that.
We have no idea what will actually happen.
And, there are different levels
of traumatic intervention that we can imagine.
So, but, that takes us back to why these conversations are so important
to have happen before hand.
>> Robin Lovin: I mean, it does suggest
that it's really important how we help people frame the question
because what would be devastating, globally and culturally, I think,
is the idea that humanity invested a great deal in this project
and the results were nothing.
You know, so, along with making the case for the resources,
we need to be careful, now, at the beginning, how we get people
to think about this exploration.
And again, it's why I think that reflecting back
on what the questions tell us
about ourselves even before we know the answers is one of the ways
that we give this exploration a significance
that is not dependent on, you know,
what is really a question of contingent fact.
What are we going to find out there in what time frame?
>> Steven Dick: And, I would push back a little bit on your statement
that we have no idea what's going to happen.
I think, you could make good use of analogy.
Analogy's a hot topic in cognitive science philosophy science
these days.
And, if you consider, what I call the biological universe, as,
kind of, a biological world view,
we know how other world views have played out such as the Copernicans
and Darwinian natural selection
and all the evolution and that sort of thing.
So, you can use those as kind of guidelines.
Of course, you can't predict what's going to happen.
But, I think, there are some historical and analogical things,
arguments that you can use to say how things might play out.
[ Silence ]
>> I'd like to ask for your take on process theology.
So, process theology turned theology on its heads.
It pauses that instead of there being a God prior
to an outside universe creating it, that,
rather the evolutionary processes inherent
in the universe will [inaudible] in what you might call a god.
So, this strikes me as an [inaudible] effort
to reconcile religion with science, spirituality with rationality.
So, the question is, is this theology, is this the basis
of any conceivable present or future religion?
>> Derek Malone France: Well, I'm the process theologian
on the stage at the moment.
I don't know if you knew that.
So, let's clarify terms a little bit.
Process theology in the United States,
particularly can be understood as a movement that came
out of the philosophy of a man name Alfred North Whitehead,
primarily although not exclusively, an English mathematician
and philosopher who moved in the direction of cosmology
and metaphysics later in his career
and developed an alternative understanding of God
as a non-Omnipotent or organic component of the universe.
The universe is in God and God is throughout the universe,
not quite Pantheism because God has a consciousness
of some sort separate from the universe.
Now, the idea of the kind of mega point evolution,
the universe is going towards God, one could read into Whitehead,
although, I associate that more with someone like de Chardin,
Teilhard de Chardin, the great Roman Catholic physicists and theologian.
But, certainly, from my point of view, the conception of God not
as a unilateral Lord over creation, a creator who is omnipotent,
therefore, at best, voluntarily allows us freewill, etcetera.
That's repudiated by process theology and,
as a process theologian, of course,
I'm hopeful that that perspective plays an important
and prominent role in these kinds of conversations.
There are some interesting developments that are occurring now,
in science, both in the points
where physics meets theoretical mathematics and in biology
and evolutionary biology that are troubling
if not disproving the mechanistic model that has persisted among many
of the thinkers, particularly in neo Darwinian biological circles
and push things more in the direction that Whitehead had in mind
which is that all things are made out of the same stuff but instead
of it being matter it's mind or experience or,
he put it more generically, creativity.
That seems to be a lovely basis for a cosmo theology.
Something I might work on.
>> Robin Lovin: I think that the monotheistic traditions, again,
are going, this, as I understand, some versions of Hinduism
and Buddhism, for example, this can be incorporated into their thinking.
But, the monotheistic traditions are going
to have considerable difficulty with a God who is exhaustively present
in the physical or intellectual world, that is to say the idea
of creation, the idea of a creator
who transcends then the reality that's available to us,
that seems to be a very important part of that tradition.
And, it also strikes me that, again, this is a question
that is not susceptible
to the experimental verification one way or the other.
What is perhaps, I mean, to I've been a dean of a theological faculty
that included both of these perspectives.
So, I'm familiar with the efforts to reconcile them as well.
And, it seems to me that what is,
what we want to say there is what both the traditional theistic
perspective and the process theology have in common is a rejection
of the idea that the universe of meaning
of what we are a part is a pure accident.
In the broadest meaning of theology, the idea that we're all the result
of an accident is also a theology.
It's a way of integrating the evidence with the traditions.
But, it seems to me, to leave out a great deal
of what human history has given us in the effort to understand
who we are and the world that we live in.
And so, I'm much more interested in, you know, continuing this wrestling
with those two broadly different kinds of theology.
>> What about somebody line Einstein who found meaning and value
and beauty in the universe itself?
>> Robin Lovin: Yeah.
You, don't want to reject that, right.
I mean, that seems to be the basic point,
the meaning beauty and order of things.
The interpretive task is to figure out how it got
that way and where it's going.
And also, and this is the question the process theology really raises,
whether anyone, including God, really knows the end.
>> Steven Dick: This actually, also, I think,
sharpens the reason why the involvement of theologians,
and this has been in several of the questions, is so important here.
We see, from time to time, great thinkers.
This is not a comment about Einstein but about someone like Hawking
or E O Wilson forget the limits of science and try
to become what I find to be quite bad theologians often grappling
with issues of meaning that are beyond the purview
of empirical investigation.
>> Robin Lovin: The kind of questions that scientists get
into fights in bars about.
>> Derek Malone France: Exactly right.
And, I would actually relate this to another dynamic that, I think,
is important to bear in mind in terms
of promoting these kinds of conversations.
The hiring, the chief of hiring at Google recently made a comment
about the desirability of computer science student over students coming
out of the humanities because computer science students,
contrarily to humanity students, are taught to think rigorously.
Now, of course, as a humanist, I immediately got my back
up about that, right, good teaching
in the humanities is extraordinarily rigorous
and intellectually rigorous.
But, it also deals in issues of value
that are non-instrumental, right.
Computer science is an instrumentalist discipline
by its very nature.
He wanted somebody who could look at a problem and look for a solution.
But then, he loses out on the person who will ask
if it's the right problem, right,
or who will ask what the motivation behind solving this problem
really is.
And, I'm quite terrified, honestly, I do go pessimistic sometimes
in thinking about these issues, precisely, because I fear
that the people who are taking on the most power with regard
to our human future, right now, are people who are ill prepared to tend
to the garden of humanity, existentially speaking.
And, we have to have people who have very strong value systems,
right or wrong, but very strong contrary value systems involved
in these conversations precisely in order to push back
against the instrumentalist mentality as the sort
of the only one that's in the game.
Maybe one last question and then we'll wrap up.
Yeah, over here.
>> Discovery's always a process to signal the noise.
And, I have the feeling we're assuming
that the signal will one day show up signaling noise of a hundred.
What happens if it shows up as a half and it's a century long slot
to get it up to the point where we really think there's
something there?
Will it make a difference in terms of how, well, society then will have
to make decisions then as to whether it's worth trying
to improve the signal noise, how to look harder and stuff like that.
Will it make much of a, I have a feeling
that it'll be somewhat different trajectory
than the one you're talking about if, in fact,
it's say a long slot to get the signal up.
>> Steven Dick: Sure, I think that's the likely scenario,
that you won't know right away.
It's hard to say how long will it be whether it's a decade
or a hundred years.
And, in terms of communication, I'm not at all saying
that you would be able to have any communication
at all with another alien mind.
I think that's setting people way too sanguine about that.
But, yeah, you really do have to lay out the scenarios.
There are lots of different scenarios here
and the impacts might differ depending on what the scenarios are.
So, if you, by some miracle, had immediate communication
with extraterrestrials, that would, certainly, have a different impact
than if it took a hundred years.
And, if, you know, a UFO landed out here on the lawn,
that would have a different impact.
Right? So, you do have to lay these scenarios out and it is a very rich
and complex process once you start to get into it.
>> Derek Malone France: All right, well, thank you all very much.
And, it looks like there are some refreshments at the back.
So, we can continue this conversation informally.
Thank you to our speakers.
[ Applause ]