SCIENCE, ART AND RELIGION: A JOURNEY FROM THE ONE TO THE MANY
Over the years, as an artist working with “the two cultures” I’ve developed a variety of ways to combine what could be called the objective and subjective realities. I stared with an interest in science and art. And later that became an interest in science and religion. Much of this exploration was done on instinct. I simply did what “worked”. But now, as I pull all this work together some overall patterns are beginning to emerge.
THE OCTAGOD
“If you’re not worshiping something, you’re in trouble. But if you’re not worshiping the
Big Bang, you’re not worshiping all that you could.”
The Octagod is a holy image because it conveys essential information about the largest possible perspective. Any image of this kind has a special power. Like Jesus it’s a doorway to something greater. And if it triggers a sense of the whole universe, as it’s supposed to, the effects can be dramatic. It blends the familiar with the strange, and breaks down the division between science and religion. It’s “life the universe and everything”, and like other religious symbols, it connects you to the universe, and gives you a sense of oneness.
THE ATHEIST TAROT
“If these cards don’t work maybe atheists are right.”
The system I’m proposing is really science education, but it’s done in the spirit of art and religion. But with the Atheist Tarot we come to the crux of the problem. Science and religion have very different views on consciousness and its extent. Traditional religion assumes that God or the universe can consciously influence things. The tarot puts this assumption to the test, a test which frequently fails.
As a means of prediction the Tarot doesn’t do any better than chance. But that doesn’t mean chance isn’t interesting. As complex self-creating systems, drawing order out of chaos is one of our favorite activities. That’s our spirit. That’s our magic. Moreover the cards are so general that you can easily find an appropriate and encouraging reading from almost any deal. So for this system of art, science and religion there’s a place for the Tarot.
The Atheist Tarot also logically extends the idea of the Octagod. The Octagod has eight objects of worship. The Atheists Tarot has thirty six. The Octagod is based on the Big Bang. So is The Atheists Tarot. And most of all the deck continues to explore the idea of science and meanings. But now the simple worship of unity is replaced by a complex interplay of possibilities. The Heaven of the Octagod is being filled with angels. And then with Science Cartooning the angels take on human form.
THE SCIENCE CARTOON
“Imagine what it’s like to be the universe”
The spirit world has a logic all its own. There is the one Great Spirit. There are smaller spirits that control the details, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. And then there are anthropomorphic spirits for the plants, animals and even rocks. This is both a traditional and a natural and way of seeing the world. And if I were a neuroscientist I could better tell you why. But even if I could tell you exactly why what would it matter? Would it make this view point any less natural? No! So I say why fight it. That’s why I’m offering you the spirit world as if it were an expression of the Big Bang.
Science Cartooning is yet another place along this path, yet another way to unite the understandings of science with the imaginative world of the spirit. But Science Cartoons are more than just anthropomorphic fairy tales for the young and scientifically illiterate. Like these other art projects they explore what a “scientific religion” might actually look like.
Science, because it’s based on the senses values images, so logically a religion based on science should give us something to look at. A religion of science would be something like Hinduism or Catholicism. So here with Science Cartooning, as with the bible and the other gods of old, the cosmos again speaks in human terms. Complete with heroes and moral lessons.
The anthropomorphic science cartoon artist of science and religion has to acknowledge two separate truths. He or she sees our subjective bubble as it floats in a sea of objective reality. This is the classic cognitive dissonance of science and religion. But here the artist tries to find, and document, in classic story structure, their natural correspondences, and in so doing creates and explores a new hybrid reality.
Also Science Cartooning creates yet another name for God. In this art form the body is repeatedly transformed. An electron is a body. An atom is a body. The earth and the sun are bodies. Galaxies are bodies. And of course the ultimate body is the whole universe. But here we’ve come full circle. The universe depicted as a science cartoon character is another name for God. The Octagod has met its match!
A GATHERING OF QUESTIONS
"The truth I am trying to grasp is the grasp that is trying to grasp it.
Is the question is the answer?”
From the Octagod, to the Atheist Tarot, to the science cartoons, the spirits have been multiplying and coming home. Now they’re back in our heads where they belong. We’ve reached the level of human beings and now we ask the question. How does an ideology born from science, art and religion express itself in worship? Again as with traditional religions we worship our origins. But instead of worshiping the origins of the physical universe, we worship the origins of the cultural universe. But what are these origins? The answer in part, is that culture emerges from questions.
In science, art and religion the true, the beautiful and the holy all emerged as answers to questions. How does it work? Is it a nice the pattern? What should we remember? Science, art and religion may be the answers. But the answers come from questions.
At these gathering everyone has to wear a profound question of there own choosing. And to increase the interaction everyone knows everybody else’s question ahead of time. The group is convened and the discussions are informal. But when the group meets again everyone has to have a new question. Records are kept and the ultimate question is what will happen next? And what kind of collective patterns are we creating?
So in the end we put our faith in each other and the answers that emerge from the human conversation. We believe that through dense interaction, iteration and feedback, a process of self-organization will be set into motion. And miraculous surprises will inevitably emerge. These “gathering of questions” are an art happening done in the name of science and religion. They are a scientific experiment as well as a statement of faith.
So this is my system. It combines the power of science and religion, with the creativity of art and science, and weds it to the subjectivity of art and religion. It believes in unity, divination, anthropomorphism and the power of human questioning. It progresses from unity to diversity, much like the Big Bang that it seeks to honor. And in the end it also combines certainty with doubt, which perhaps is the best that a blend of science, religion and art can offer.
--Jason W. Homer