New class examines

science and religion
By Scott Nicholson
nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

Want a better understanding of some of the basic questions of human existence?

A continuing education class at Caldwell Community College & Technical Institute called “Cosmology and Consciousness” lays out a foundation for addressing the questions by discussing the way people have viewed science and religion through different eras of history.

Frankie Kelly, a native of Ireland who came to the United States in 1995 and has been teaching philosophy, religion and mythology since 1997 at CCC & TI, will lead the course.

“It’s a topic that I’ve always been interested in,” he said, mentioning the writings of Tielhard de Chardin and his current mentors, cultural anthropologist Thomas Berry of Greensboro and Brian Swimme, who heads a program in the fields at the California Institute For Integral Studies.

“I’ve actually sat in their classrooms and listened to them talk and read their books,” Kelly said. He said his degrees are in science and religion, so he was able to combine those interests in a way that typical classes don’t.

“Cosmology was a Medieval study,” he said. “It’s the human finding his or her place in the universe. The way I look at is all our courses have become separated out and individualistic. And now people are going back to a more integrated education. I’m trying to reintegrate the human understanding of its (the species) place in the world.”

One of the core questions is the way consciousness arises out of matter. He acknowledges science and religion can make “difficult dialogue, but I don’t see any problem in having them talk to each other.” The course includes the understanding of the cosmos through the expansion of human civilization.

“Our consciousness hasn’t moved very much since the Ptolemic universe,” he said. “We still think we’re the center of the universe even though we know we’re circling the sun. I think it’s okay to live with different cosmologies, because the pictures don’t superimpose over each other. Some part of our intuition knows that Einstein was on to something. There is no fixed time and fixed place in the universe. Time depends on which planet you’re on and which speed you’re going at. As far as the universe’s point of view, time is changeable.”

He would eventually like cosmology study to be part of the field of philosophy, describing it was a way of making philosophy not just “head thinking,” but making it more experiential. “It’s also a way of making connections for students between compartmentalized academic topics,” Kelly said. “For my mind, there are two main topics in Christianity. One is creation and one is redemption, or salvation if you like. This doesn’t separate them out. Some people just focus on the salvation, but this is a great way to integrate the two if you’re just talking religion.”

Kelly is also exploring the idea of a “holographic universe,” in which the mind doesn’t take in photographs like a camera but instead processes them like a series of overlapping or interfering images between the mind and the universe.

“This speaks to the uncommitted person in terms of bringing back that split that occurred between philosophy and science,” he said. “It’s a way to integrate science into a sense of themselves. It goes back to when science was called ‘natural philosophy.’ Another way of putting that would be most scientists say that observers become part of the experiment.”

He said some people might approach the class because of an interest either in religion, science or psychology, or all three. The series opens with a historic viewpoint with ancient Babylonian philosophies through Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Einstein. The class will move into modern science and some of the concepts of relativity and the effect of the observer’s perception of time and space.

John Hollandsworth, astronomy instructor at Appalachian State University, will also lecture on the interactions of objects in the universe.

The cosmology class is a continuing education class, and Kelly hopes to get the program into the community college system catalog as a curriculum course. At CCC&TI, he teaches freshmen and sophomore classes on Philosophy, Religion, Ethics and Mythology.

The class starts Thursday, Jan. 10, and is held every Thursday night from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The cost is $60 and will provide a professional development or continuing education credit. Registration takes place during the initial class meeting and it ends May 8.

The class will be held at the Corporate & Continuing Education Center on Bamboo Road in Boone. For more information, call Frankie Kelly (828) 297-3811.