Intersections of Religion and Astronomy

243 Pages·2020·5.276 MB·English

by  Chris Corbally, Aaron Ricker, Darry Dinnell

Intersections of Religion and
Astronomy
This volume examines the ways in which cultural ideas about “the heavens”
shape religious ideas and are shaped by them in return. Astronomy and
cosmology have a profound effect on the ways in which people deal with
religious questions and participate in the imaginative work of public and
private world-building.
With the help of an interdisciplinary team of international scholars,
each chapter shows how religion and astronomy interrelate and matter
for real people. Historical and contemporary case studies provide the
format to demonstrate the lived reality of a variety of faith traditions and
their reflections on the cosmos. This breadth of scope allows readers to
get a unique overview of how religion, science and our view of space have
impacted, and will continue to impact, our worldviews.
As a wide-ranging exploration of religion’s relationships with astronomy
and cosmology, this book will be an important reference for scholars of
Religion and Science, Religion and Culture, Interreligious Dialogue and
Theology, as well as those interested in Science and Culture and Public
Education.
Aaron Ricker received his PhD from McGill University. His publications
include Ancient Letters and the Purpose of Romans (2020). His research
interests include the social-scientific analysis of religion, biblical literature,
and popular culture.
Christopher J. Corbally is Associate Professor of Astrophysics at the
University of Arizona, a research astronomer at the Vatican Observatory,
and president of the National Committee for Astronomy, Vatican City State,
International Astronomical Union. His publications include The Emergence
of Religion in Human Evolution, with Margaret Boone Rappaport (2020).
Darry Dinnell received his PhD in Religious Studies from McGill University.
He has taught at McGill and at St. Thomas More College, University of
Saskatchewan.
Routledge Science and Religion Series
Series editors:
Michael S. Burdett
University of Nottingham, UK
Mark Harris
University of Edinburgh, UK
Science and religion have often been thought to be at loggerheads but much
contemporary work in this flourishing interdisciplinary field suggests this is
far from the case. The Science and Religion Series presents exciting new work
to advance interdisciplinary study, research and debate across key themes in
science and religion. Contemporary issues in philosophy and theology are
debated, as are prevailing cultural assumptions. The series enables leading
international authors from a range of different disciplinary perspectives
to apply the insights of the various sciences, theology, philosophy and
history in order to look at the relations between the different disciplines
and the connections that can be made between them. These accessible,
stimulating new contributions to key topics across science and religion will
appeal particularly to individual academics and researchers, graduates,
postgraduates and upper-undergraduate students.
Against Methodology in Science and Religion
Recent Debates on Rationality and Theology
Josh Reeves
Interreligious Perspectives on Mind, Genes and the Self
Emerging Technologies and Human Identity
Edited by Joseph Tham, Chris Durante and Alberto García Gómez
God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering
Theodicy without a Fall
Bethany N. Sollereder
Ramified Natural Theology in Science and Religion
Moving Forward from Natural Theology
Rodney Holder
Intersections of Religion and Astronomy
Edited by Aaron Ricker, Christopher J. Corbally and Darry Dinnell
For more information and a full list of titles in the series, please visit: https://
www.routledge.com/religion/series/ASCIREL
Intersections of Religion and
Astronomy
Edited by Aaron Ricker, Christopher
J. Corbally and Darry Dinnell
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Aaron Ricker, Christopher J.
Corbally and Darry Dinnell; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Aaron Ricker, Christopher J. Corbally and Darry
Dinnell to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and
of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
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Contents
List of contributors viii
General introduction 1
AARON RICKER
PART 1
Intersections of astronomy and religion: ancient
and post-ancient worlds 5
1 Religion and cosmology 7
JOHN T. FITZGERALD
2 Calling down the spirits in the sky: Blackfoot astronomy
and sense of the sacred 17
ELDON YELLOWHORN
3 To reverently bestow the seasons: calendrical narratives in
early China and Rome 27
REBECCA ROBINSON
4 Celestial deities in the flat-earth Buddhist cosmos and astrology 36
JEFFREY KOTYK
5 Early Islamic encounters with the rain stars of pre-Islamic
Arabian astronomy 44
DANIELLE ADAMS
6 Cosmology and religious culture in Jewish and Byzantine art 55
SHULAMIT LADERMAN
vi Contents
7 In search of the stars of David: situating the Rabbinic
Jewish astronomical tradition in world cultural astronomy
scholarship 72
ANDREA D. LOBEL
PART 2
Intersections of astronomy and religion: enlightenment
and scientific revolution 79
8 The cosmos of a Big God: Brahe, Kepler, Bruno and the
sizes of the stars in a Copernican universe 81
CHRISTOPHER M. GRANEY
9 Apocalyptic themes in Isaac Newton’s astronomical physics 95
STEPHEN D. SNOBELEN
10 Georges Lemaître’s dual life in cosmology and theology 105
SIMON MITTON AND RODNEY D. HOLDER
11 Albert Einstein’s cosmic religion 115
NICHOLAS CAMPION
PART 3
Intersections of astronomy and religion: the modern world 127
12 Market predictions: astrology in modern India 131
PARNA SENGUPTA
13 Faster than the speed of NASA: the tenth planet, prophecy,
and the universalization of a Gujarati village goddess 140
DARRY DINNELL
14 Radiance and darkness: Japanese Buddhist cosmographies 153
MELISSA ANNE-MARIE CURLEY
15 Abductions angelic and alien: the changing cosmologies of
otherworldly journeys 164
JAMES F. McGRATH
16 Astrophysics and religion 176
ARNOLD O. BENZ
Contents vii
17 The epistemology of Flat Earth theory: evidentialism,
suspicion, and the ethics of belief 185
JENNIFER GUYVER
PART 4
Intersections of astronomy and religion: future directions 195
18 Astrobiology, astroethics, and astrotheology in conversation 197
GRACE WOLF-CHASE
19 Religious traditions and religious imagination in
cosmos contexts 206
JOHN HART
20 Wonder brokers: scientific wonder as spiritual authority in
the Cosmos series (1980 and 2014) 217
AARON RICKER
Conclusion 226
DARRY DINNELL
Index 229
Contributors
Danielle Adams is Deputy Director at Lowell Observatory. She earned her
PhD from the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the
University of Arizona.
Arnold O. Benz is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Particle Phys-
ics and Astrophysics of ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His publications on
astrophysics and religion include The Future of the Universe: Chance,
Chaos, God? (2000), Astrophysics and Creation: Perceiving the Uni-
verse through Science and Participation (2016), and Mission to Saturn:
A Debate about Science and God, co-written with Samuel Vollenweider
(2020).
Nicholas Campion is Associate Professor in Cosmology and Culture, and
Principal Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Humanities at the
University of Wales Trinity Saint David. His books include the two-
volume History of Western Astrology (Bloomsbury 2008/9), Astrology
and Cosmology in the World’s Religions (New York University Press,
2012), Astrology and Popular Religion in the Modern West: Prophecy,
Cosmology and the New Age Movement (Routledge, 2012), and The
New Age in the Modern West: Counter-Culture, Utopia and Prophecy
from the late Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (Bloomsbury 2015).
Christopher J. Corbally is Associate Professor of Astrophysics at the Uni-
versity of Arizona, a research astronomer at the Vatican Observatory,
and President of the National Committee for Astronomy, Vatican City
State, International Astronomical Union. His publications include The
Emergence of Religion in Human Evolution, with Margaret Boone Rap-
paport (2020).
Melissa Anne-Marie Curley is an assistant professor in the Department
of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. Her first book, Pure
Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, and the Uto-
pian Imagination, was published by the University of Hawai’i Press in
2017; she is currently working on a new project on the history of Bud-
dhism and self-care.
Contributors ix
Darry Dinnell received his PhD in Religious Studies from McGill University.
He has taught at McGill and at St. Thomas More College, University of
Saskatchewan.
John T. Fitzgerald is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at
the University of Notre Dame.
Christopher M. Graney is an adjunct scholar at the Specola Vaticana, the
Vatican’s astronomical observatory. His most recent book is Mathemati-
cal Disquisitions: The Booklet of Theses Immortalized by Galileo (Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 2017), a complete translation of a scientific
work by an anti-Copernican astronomer, Fr. Christoph Scheiner, S.J., and
his student, Johann Georg Locher.
Jennifer Guyver is a PhD candidate in the School of Religious Studies at
McGill University. Her fields of study are secularism and public policy,
religion and human rights, and the philosophy of Charles Taylor.
John Hart is Emeritus Professor of Christian Ethics at the Boston University
School of Theology. He is the editor of The Wiley Blackwell Compan-
ion to Religion and Ecology and author of eight books, including Third
Displacement in the trilogy “Cosmos Contact: Close Encounters of the
Otherkind.”
Jeffrey Kotyk is a Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow
in Buddhist Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Can-
ada. He is primarily interested in the history of astrology and religions in
medieval Asia.
Shulamit Laderman is an art historian who teaches Jewish and General Art
at Bar Ilan University and in the Schechter Institute’s MA program. Her
research focuses on the mutual influences between Jewish and Christian
art. Her publications include the books Images of Cosmology in Jewish
and Byzantine Art (2013) and Illuminated Bible (2016).
Andrea D. Lobel received her PhD in Religion from Concordia University.
Her research focuses on religion and science, with an emphasis on Juda-
ism, the history of astronomy in religion, and scientific knowledge trans-
mission between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam more broadly.
James F. McGrath is the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament
Language and Literature at Butler University. He is known for his work
on Early Christianity, Mandaean Studies, criticism of the Christ myth
theory, and the analysis of religion in science fiction. He received his PhD
from Durham University.
Simon Mitton (Life Fellow) and Rodney D. Holder (Fellow Commoner) are
senior members of St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, the
successor institution to St Edmund’s House, where Georges Lemaître’s