Weekend of August 12-14, 2005

Science, Spirituality, and the Search for Meaning

The quest to understand the universe and our place in it is at the core of both religion and science. At the beginning of the 20th century social scientists predicted that belief in God would decrease by the end of the century because of the secularization of society. In fact, never in history have so many, and such a high percentage of the population, believed in God and expressed spirituality. To find out why, Dr. Michael Shermer has undertaken a monumental study of science, spirituality, and the search for meaning.

Since humans are storytelling animals, this study involves the origins and purposes of myth and religion in human history and culture. Why is there is an eternal return of certain mythic themes in religion—messiah myths, creation myths, redemption myths, end-of-the-world myths? What do these recurring themes tell us about the workings of the human mind and culture?

We are also pattern-seeking animals. For countless millennia we have constructed stories about how our cosmos was designed specifically for us. For the past few centuries, however, science has presented us with an alternative in which we are but one among tens of millions of species, housed on but one planet among many orbiting an ordinary solar system, itself one among possibly billions of solar systems in an ordinary galaxy, located in a cluster of galaxies not so different than billions of other galaxy clusters, and so on, ad infinitum. Is it really possible that this entire cosmological multiverse exists for one tiny subgroup of a single species on one planet in a lone galaxy? This workshop explores the deepest question of all: what if the universe were not created for us by an intelligent designer, and instead just happened? Can we discover meaning in this apparently meaningless universe? The answer is YES!

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