Galileo
03-07-2008, 08:44 PM
Moses, Galileo and Tests vs. Truth
A couple of weird stories in the news in the past few days got me to thinking. One is the call by Italian researchers to dig up Galileo's remains and have his DNA tested to find the cause of his blindness and also if his sister is buried next to him. The other is the controversial paper published by an Israeli scientist who says Moses was tripping on hallucinogens when he saw the burning bush.
Both fall into the news of the weird. Both stories deal with deified historical figures -- one a Biblical prophet, the other a secular one. Both, it seems, say more about where many people see truth situated and what that truth means these days. What seems intriguing here to me is how these historical figures who've contributed to our largest sense of meaning, meaning that seems to be beyond the pale about the world, are now being held up against a sort of new next wave of truth providers -- DNA tests, paleobotany and the like.
Maybe I'm going too far, but I see both these stories as harbingers of a larger paradigm shift, where these figures who are so loaded with meaning and history are being taken down off the mantle and poked and prodded by our new meaning-givers: scientific tests.
The Moses study has been widely covered mostly, I would guess, because it's so bizarre and sort of controversial. Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem gives evidence that Moses life story seems inspired by psychedelic experience and that he may have partaken in some local hallucinogenic plants.
"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.
Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances. Cool, so the Ten Commandments may have been not just a religious experience but also a psychedelic experience. What does that mean for today's believers to know that that's a possibility when they consider the truth and meaning of their faith?
With Galileo Galilei, it's a different question. The Basilica of the Holy Cross in Florence doesn't want to allow the exhuming of his body, saying it's disrespectful to him. But what with Galilei as the historical embodiment of science over meaning, maybe we should dig him up and inspect his DNA so that we can know every last detail of his existence with scientific certainty. And what will that scientific certainty give secularists who adore him?
As an agnostic--both about religious truth and scientific certainty -- both of these exhumations seem sort of futile. No?
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2008/03/exhuming_meaning.html
A couple of weird stories in the news in the past few days got me to thinking. One is the call by Italian researchers to dig up Galileo's remains and have his DNA tested to find the cause of his blindness and also if his sister is buried next to him. The other is the controversial paper published by an Israeli scientist who says Moses was tripping on hallucinogens when he saw the burning bush.
Both fall into the news of the weird. Both stories deal with deified historical figures -- one a Biblical prophet, the other a secular one. Both, it seems, say more about where many people see truth situated and what that truth means these days. What seems intriguing here to me is how these historical figures who've contributed to our largest sense of meaning, meaning that seems to be beyond the pale about the world, are now being held up against a sort of new next wave of truth providers -- DNA tests, paleobotany and the like.
Maybe I'm going too far, but I see both these stories as harbingers of a larger paradigm shift, where these figures who are so loaded with meaning and history are being taken down off the mantle and poked and prodded by our new meaning-givers: scientific tests.
The Moses study has been widely covered mostly, I would guess, because it's so bizarre and sort of controversial. Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem gives evidence that Moses life story seems inspired by psychedelic experience and that he may have partaken in some local hallucinogenic plants.
"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.
Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances. Cool, so the Ten Commandments may have been not just a religious experience but also a psychedelic experience. What does that mean for today's believers to know that that's a possibility when they consider the truth and meaning of their faith?
With Galileo Galilei, it's a different question. The Basilica of the Holy Cross in Florence doesn't want to allow the exhuming of his body, saying it's disrespectful to him. But what with Galilei as the historical embodiment of science over meaning, maybe we should dig him up and inspect his DNA so that we can know every last detail of his existence with scientific certainty. And what will that scientific certainty give secularists who adore him?
As an agnostic--both about religious truth and scientific certainty -- both of these exhumations seem sort of futile. No?
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2008/03/exhuming_meaning.html