Stars and Cherubim

Occasionally, I get invited to give a talk about the relationship(s) between science and religion, usually by a university student group or members of a local church. I try to keep my monologue talk short, and spend most of the time in dialogue responding to questions and comments. Unlike my tip-of-the-fingers knowledge of chemistry (in particular) and science (in general), I don’t always remember some of the finer points in theology, philosophy, literature and history. While I have a reasonable grasp of the overall issues from reading and discussion over the years, I need to read up to refresh myself on details.

In the U.S., the most familiar touchpoint between science and religion is the ‘conflict’ between creation and evolution. The conflict model isn’t the only one out there, but it is the most prominently known, fueled by mass media. The ‘conflict’ that you hear most about is creation versus evolution. I think it’s a false dichotomy from a purely scientific point of view. The two views aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive but it requires some wading into metaphysics. The conflict comes from different metaphysical presuppositions, and most folks who engage in arguing don’t notice when physics slides into metaphysics.

In the creation versus evolution story, the point-of-conflict often centers around how to interpret the book of Genesis in the Bible. There are historical and sociological reasons for why this came about, particularly in the U.S. However, part of the problem today is that the modern reader implicitly assumes a modern ‘scientific’ framework on to the text, and reads origin stories primarily as material origins in space and time, rather than about functional origins. I’ve discussed this briefly in a previous blog post about ontology, referring to John Walton’s book The Lost World of Genesis One. I recommend his book if you’re interested in comparative origins literature from the ancient Near East.

I re-read Walton’s book this past week in preparation for a talk I just gave at a local church. But I also re-read sections from other books, and the one I will discuss in today’s post is The Biblical Cosmos by Robin Parry. The book is subtitled A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Weird and Wonderful World of the Bible, and the front cover is just superb. The sea and a dragon-like chaos creature are prominent in the foreground, with sky and stars in the background. All very appropriate! I highly recommend reading the book in full. It gives you an overview of how ancient cultures conceived the cosmos. Similar to Walton, Parry draws from a range of ancient Near East sources, comparing and contrasting different ideas of creation and the observable cosmos.

Two things jumped out at me this past week reading The Biblical Cosmos. (Subconsciously, I was likely influenced by having recently seen the preview to the Fantastic Beasts movie sequel.) The first has to do with the nature of cherubim. These strange creatures are described as four-in-one chimeras. Their heads have four faces: lion, human, ox, and eagle. These four creatures correspond to “the four Babylonian seasonal constellations: Leo (the lion), Scorpio (who had a human face), Taurus (the bull), and Pegasus (the thunderbird/eagle). In Babylonian astrology these four constellations depict the four directions of the sky, being about 90 degrees from each other.” I discussed chimeras in conjunction with fantastic beasts in a previous blog post. They aren’t just imaginary unicorns or Potterverse hippogriffs. We are chimeras of a sort. Thank you, multitudes of bacteria.

In the Bible book of Ezekiel, when these four strange-looking chimera are mentioned, they are also described as being full of eyes. That sounds really creepy, and I have trouble imagining exactly what this looks like. Why “full of eyes”? That’s where Parry comes to the rescue. In the ancient Near East, stars were thought to be celestial beings and thus associated with eyes. (The subsection is Parry’s book is amusingly titled “The Eyes in their Stars”!) If the four creatures represent constellations, the allusion to eyes now makes sense. The cherubim then, like stars, represent the celestial host. The famous Assyrian guardian statues (Lamassu) are human-faced, bull-legged, winged creatures. The lion may be represented somewhere too, possibly the body and/or head, although I’m not sure. I suppose they are cherubim-like or cherubim-lite.

Parry makes the case that just because scientists can describe a star materially, this does not necessarily discount interpretations of what stars represent. He quotes three excellent contemporary examples. The first is from The Lion King. Simba, Pumba and Timon, looking at the night sky, are speculating on the nature of “the sparkly dots up there”. Timon speculates they are “fireflies that got stuck on that big bluish-black thing.” Pumba says “I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away.” Timon and Pumba then needle Simba, who tries to hedge his answer, then finally admits: “Somebody once told me that the great kings of the past are up there watching over us.”

The second example comes from Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. A gap in the wall separates the realm of Stormborn from magical Faerie. The main protagonist Tristan travels between realms, and meets a star in the form of a beautiful maiden, Yvaine. In one of their meetings, Tristan apologizes for not bringing Yvaine back into the village in Stormborn. She replies that Tristan was right not to bring her because “I live as long as I am in Faerie. Were I to travel to your world, I would be nothing but a cold iron stone fallen from the heavens, pitted and pocked.” (I have not read Stardust. Maybe I should.)

The third example come from C.S. Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader when “the travelers encounter an old man with long silvery hair and a long silver beard.”

“I am Ramandu. But I see that you stare at one another and have not heard this name. And no wonder, for the days when I was a star had ceased long before any of you knew this world, and all the constellations have changed.”

“Golly,” said Edmund under this breath. “He’s a retired star.”

“Aren’t you a star any longer?” asked Lucy.

“I am a star at rest, my daughter,” answered Ramandu.

“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”

“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.”

As a chemist, I’m immersed in the paradigm that (material) structure determines function. Our curriculum reinforces this paradigm. We first teach the students about molecular structure, and then discuss the properties that arise from structure. Function comes from structure. This reductionist approach has borne much fruit in science, although it is limiting when it comes to complex systems. Reductionism needs to be coupled to Emergence. In chemistry, the myriad relationships between molecules may give rise to new ‘functions’ that would have been nigh impossible to predict or imagine by just knowing molecular structure.

Perhaps that is why Life is difficult to define clearly in scientific terms. Our material structure-function language may be limiting. To our fancy models and theories in origin-of-life research, Ramandu might say: “Even in your world, my child, that is not what Life is but only what it is made of.” What about cosmic life? Life writ large? Centaurs of the Potterverse claim that the cosmic narrative is written in the stars. Are the stars cosmic beings? A celestial host? Are they god-like-beings that determine how things will proceed in large brushstrokes? If such a being came through the gap-in-the-wall into a realm that only conceives within a materialistic metaphysical framework, would it look like iron pitted and pocked? It may speak, but we do not listen.

I didn’t get asked any of these strange and interesting questions in my recent talk at the church. Then again, I did not talk about cherubim and stars. I was quite prepared to go into interpretative details of the Genesis text, biological evolution, the scientific age of the earth, and the Intelligence Design movement. These are topics I normally get asked about, but oddly enough I wasn’t asked about them. (I touched on the Genesis text in my talk.) I guess every group is different. I did get asked about bioethics, the Big Bang, consciousness, black holes, and the nature of energy, among other things. One person asked me about the details of my research so I had the pleasure of explaining some details albeit in simpler terms. Folks were interested to know about books or articles written by scientists who discuss issues of faith, so I provided some references. Quite a number of people thanked me after the discussion, which was very nice. I suspect science and religion is a topic they don't hear discussed very often in church, and apparently I made a good impression.

It’s refreshing to think about bigger and broader questions, and how science intersects with other disciplines – in this case, theology, philosophy, history and some sociology. As a teacher in a liberal arts institution, I hope my students do think about these broader connections in their classes. I try to sprinkle bits and pieces across the semester. Some students pick up on this, but many are focused on learning the chemistry content for the upcoming exams, and think of these connections as extraneous. So, without confusing students further, I need to do a better job weaving in the connections while ensuring the core chemical concepts remain clear.