Our Campus asked three professors from different areas of the University to discuss their beliefs about the existence of a superior being. The topic for this edition struck a nerve, which is what discussions ought to do. Of the three original participants, only one is comfortable having his views published. One backed out early in the process and the department could not find a replacement. The third participated in the discussion but had a change of heart at the last minute. If that doesn’t pique your curiosity, what will?

As told to Elena Watts

Illustration by Callie Parrish

I’m Professor Karl Gebhardt and I’m in astronomy. I’ve been here since 2000.  I was raised in Rochester, N.Y., where I lived through college. I don’t really have much of a religious background from my immediate family. However, I attended Catholic grammar school and high school for 10 years, so I know a lot about the Bible. While all of my friends and cousins were religious, I was not. I attended church masses but never took communion. My high school was the Catholic Basilian Order, and they are pretty liberal. So I would often talk to the priests, who were the teachers too, about the belief in God. They were very welcoming to have someone not believe, so that was a very positive view of religion. They were very open in that regard. A particular priest always asked me if I wanted to become a priest. For four years, he kept pushing me, and I kept saying, “I don’t believe in God.”

In terms of religion, I don’t believe in a higher being. In terms of spirituality, I consider myself spiritual. I believe in Jungian philosophy—the collective unconscious and even the conscious. That plays well with me. You know, if everyone on the plane thinks the plane is going to crash, then there’s a higher likelihood that the plane is going to crash. I believe that the collective can be stronger than the sum of the parts.

I’ve always been afraid of organized religion. I don’t know why. It’s just the way it happened. In my mind, it’s a personal thing, so keep it to your person.  I was up at Baylor a few weeks ago where I gave a colloquium, and they took me out to lunch. Before lunch, they asked if I minded if they said a prayer. It was nice of them to ask if I minded. I said it was fine, and that’s the kind of interaction I would encourage. I have no problem with that. It’s just that once you open it up to the community, sometimes it gets imposed. As long as people are open-minded about it, it should be fine. It should be accepted.

Ironically, my favorite university course was one about religion taught by Professor Grace Harris, who was a famous anthropologist at the University of Rochester. I remember all the details: We focused on a Catholic group, an African religion, a Native American religion and Judaism—it was just phenomenal.

At UT, I teach an introduction to astronomy course for non-science majors every other semester. In research papers, I sometimes get discussions about God and Jesus, as I certainly have some religious people in the course. I always tell students that they can’t use God as an explanation for a scientific topic that I’m trying to explain: “This is a science course, and the way we define scientific principles is that it has to be able to be proven, and if it can’t be proven, then there’s no role for it.” That’s always an issue that I deal with, which is fine. And I welcome it. We talk a lot about the formation of the universe. That’s what I ended the last few weeks of class on—how the universe came into existence. I started my lecture with, “And then there was light.” We have to start with that because we really don’t have a much better explanation. There are ideas out there that we invoke, but every idea leads to, “Where did that idea come from?” So it never ends. There are certain things we just cannot explain. We don’t have the mathematical basis yet. I assume we will get there. But we don’t discuss God or religion in terms of a concept in class. If it pops up in the news, then I’ll bring it up.

Something that happened recently related to this. About a month ago, Stephen Hawking, the famous theoretical physicist, made a big announcement. He said that he is now confident that he doesn’t need to invoke a god to explain the universe. In one of his previous books, he could not explain the existence of the Big Bang, leaving some to invoke a creator. Now, he says he doesn’t need to do that anymore — that he has come up with a model of how the universe came into existence based on physics. The problem is that just as religious beliefs should not be used to explain science, scientific facts should not be used to deny or confirm the existence of a higher being.  Science is about facts; religion is about personal beliefs. One should not use one against the other.

Absence of religion does not affect a person’s ability to make a good moral judgment —not in any possible way. That comes from parents and local environment. When people hold to that idea [that religion is necessary for morality], they cross a line. It’s wrong to say one needs religion to be moral. Sure, religion might be a good idea for society. But as a scientist, I can’t help but ask about the other experiment that hasn’t been done. Say there’s no Buddha or Jesus, do you think our society would be a hedonistic, killing machine? I would say no. But the experiment has not been done. So, who knows?  There is certainly good that has come from religion, but I don’t think you can make the argument that the world would be a worse place if there were no religion. It’s not even an option to argue because we don’t know.  We need to start visiting other societies in our universe. It’s the only way to do the experiment.