Apart from a rediscovery of awe, there are two other things we can learn from Marcelo's piece, and which I'll deal with in this post and the next one. First, we can use his little cosmological epic to inquire into the actual difference between science and religion. As you'll see, it's not about evolutionary timelines (or at least it shouldn't be), it's about how we think of our universe at the deepest of all levels.
Notice how Gleiser presents his account in a language, not only of awe but of life. His word animate and endow with intention processes that are, strictly speaking, wholly material and non-intentional: "our father/mother the universe"; "the furious pace of hydrogen fusion"; "oxygen that protects life"; "animals struggling to preserve their genes".
These aren't scientific statements. Which is obvious enough in the father/mother metaphor, but language can color our perceptions in even subtler ways. Stars don't feel fury. Oxygen has no intention to protect life, and animals don't know anything about their genes. Marcelo knows all that, of course, and if I asked him why he worded it that way, we would probably end up having a delightful conversation about the limits of language and imagination. We would talk about why humans have to resort to animistic metaphor to convey awe, and about our ultimate inability to escape our own anthropomorphic inclinations. Our paths would touch, or almost touch.
And we would only disagree about things when getting to their most profound. He would likely insist that these limits of our talking and thinking are by-products of our evolution as humans, and that there is nothing more we need to say about them. I would argue that the very fact that we are aware of these limits is a faint reflection of a reality which lies beyond both our scientific and religious concepts, and which I happen to call God.
At which point he might ask me if I'm with the "intelligent design" crowd, and I would reply "of course not". And I would spend the better part of an afternoon explaining why: Because I think intelligent design is an injustice to the adventure and the uncertainty that is life. Because I've become convinced that God is much better thought of as the animating force behind all of evolution: omniscient and omnipotent insofar as He or She is uncreated, but groping and straining and pushing into the dark just as we are as regards Creation: with no guaranteed outcome and no predetermined goal, other than the distant assurance that everything will go back to Oneness eventually.
And, no, I would reassure him (if he were to wonder): I'm not a New-Agey "heretic". Such lines of thought have a venerable history in Judeo-Christianity, from Eriugena to Cusanus, and all the way to Whitehead, Tillich, and Jonas.
At which point Marcelo would probably excuse himself with a nervous glance at his watch. But the point would have been made: just because science and religion are different ways of knowing, they are not exclusive. It is only when we read their respective languages with exclusivist rigidity that they seem incompatible. In reality, they come together in our living, breathing, exploring existence, our constant being on the move in this world of cells and molecules, of awe and values. It is one world.
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