Science enhances belief for some

When Rick Husband, commander of the shuttle Columbia, looked out the window of his spacecraft, he saw what he called God’s awe-inspiring creation. Crew member Michael Anderson, a physicist, believed heaven, not space, was his final frontier.
   
Their faith may come as a surprise to those who think science and religion are on irreconcilable paths. The spiritual lives of these astronauts and thousands of scientists reveal a journey in which religion enhances and supports scientific discovery.
   
The space program has a long history of astronauts who have boldly taken their faith into orbit. And even as Americans grapple with the thorniest of issues dividing religion and science, including the question of creation and evolution, several national organizations have emerged for those seeking to combine careers in science with their faith in God.
    
“I find my appreciation of science is greatly enriched by religion,” said Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian who heads the National Human Genome Research Institute, in an interview with Beliefnet, a Web site devoted to spiritual topics.
   
“When I discover something about the human genome, I experience a sense of awe at the mystery of life, and say to myself, ‘Wow, only God knew before.’ It is a profoundly beautiful and moving sensation, which helps me appreciate God and makes science even more rewarding for me.”
   
In 1958, NASA’s first seven astronauts were introduced at a news conference, where John Glenn said, “I got on this project because it’ll probably be the nearest thing to heaven I’d ever get and I wanted to make the most of it.”
   
In 1962, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. In 1998, at age 77, Glenn returned to space, on the shuttle Discovery, and said, “To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible.”
   
The Apollo 8 crew celebrated the first flight around the moon by reading from Genesis, the first book of the Bible, which gives the creation account. The first meal on the moon was Holy Communion, taken by Buzz Aldrin.
   
Religion was a presence on board Columbia in its final mission.
   
Although he wasn’t an observant Jew, Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli on a shuttle mission, ate kosher foods in space and carried a palm-size Torah scroll.
   
On Jan. 17, at 11:39 a.m. EST, the Columbia crew bowed their heads in reverent silence to honor the exact moment the space shuttle Challenger had exploded in the skies 17 years earlier.
   
Husband, an engineer whose first flight aboard a shuttle occurred in 1999, had told the Fresno (Calif.) Bee in November: “I am a strong believer and a Christian. I look out that window at what a beautiful creation God has made.”
   
Anderson, who became interested in space exploration while watching the television series “Star Trek,” put faith at the center of who he was, said his father, Bobbie Anderson.
    
“Even now, with what happened, I can feel assured that by his being a Christian man, he’s in a better place,” Bobbie Anderson told reporters outside his home in Spokane, Wash.
   
Only a few scientists become astronauts. But many describe their work with the same awe-struck terms the astronauts use.
   
“The actual study of science and nature is likely to lead a practitioner to a sense of wonder and human smallness in the presence of a very great mind indeed,” said science writer Kitty Ferguson, author of a new book on Johannes Kepler, the 17th century German Lutheran who discovered the laws of planetary motion that now bear his name.” (RNS)