{"id":642383,"date":"2026-05-01T08:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T08:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/642383\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T08:59:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T08:59:14","slug":"im-not-religious-but-the-artemis-ii-space-mission-stirs-something-deep-inside-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/642383\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m not religious, but \u2026\u2019: The Artemis II space mission stirs something deep inside us"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been some weeks since Artemis II splashed back down to earth<\/a>, but the reels are still doing the rounds on social media \u2014 especially one from a post-mission press conference<\/a> where Commander Reid Wiseman said ten days in space had stirred something in his soul. Describing his overwhelm at seeing the sun eclipsed by the moon, Wiseman recounted how, back on earth, he asked to see a chaplain and promptly burst into tears at seeing the cross on his collar.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think humanity has evolved to comprehend what we\u2019re looking at right now\u201d, he said. \u201cIt was otherworldly, it was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not religious, but \u2026\u201d is how Wiseman prefaced his comments. It\u2019s the exact phrase for the moment, in the wash-up of the Artemis mission, for it surfaces the internal wrestle between religious and scientific ways of knowing I suspect we all feel. We\u2019d do well to dwell on this fix we\u2019re in. Think of it as one small step for agnostic man, but a giant leap for spiritually curious humankind.<\/p>\n

\"Reid<\/p>\n

Reid Wiseman, one of the four-member crew of the Artemis II Moon mission\u2019s Orion capsule, during a press conference at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, on 16 April 2026. (REUTERS \/ Lexi Parra)<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say Wiseman\u2019s reaction was unexpected. The \u201coverview effect\u201d<\/a> is well-documented, describing the overwhelming feelings experienced by astronauts at seeing the Earth suspended in the inky blackness of space. Space tourists feel it too, with William Shatner (of Star Trek fame) confessing to feeling grief during his 2021 space flight with Blue Origin. \u201cI discovered that the beauty isn\u2019t out there, it\u2019s down here, with all of us\u201d, he wrote later in his memoir<\/a>. A sense of the Earth\u2019s fragile splendour and its singular status as our only home compounds the remorse people feel at ecological destruction.<\/p>\n

Such reactions aren\u2019t necessarily religious. But the overview effect presses on dormant nerves \u2014 desensitised, say, by a pervasive scientism that claims that the scientific method is the only route to knowledge and truth. Further, people\u2019s often spiritual reactions to seeing the Earth in its entirety are even more extraordinary, given that that extra-planetary perspective is only possible through incredible feats of scientific and technological advancement.<\/p>\n

No wonder the overview effect prompts people to express the \u201cI\u2019m not religious, but \u2026\u201d caveat. In plenty of people\u2019s minds, if science enabled the likes of Artemis II to slingshot around the Moon, then no divine intervention is needed \u2014 in space or anywhere on earth.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A view of Earth taken by NASA astronaut and Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman from one of the Orion spacecraft\u2019s four main windows after completing the translunar injection burn as the crew makes its way towards the Moon, on 2 April 2026. (NASA \/ Handout via REUTERS)<\/p>\n

But another conclusion is possible: even if science offers up capital-t \u201cTruth\u201d, perhaps it\u2019s more withholding when it comes to the whole truth. That is, science may be able to send us into space but, even so, it can only get us so far in our understanding \u2014 a perspective that can leave room for spiritual and transcendent claims.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s greedy to want the best of both worlds \u2014 to merge the two realms, the religious and the scientific. But what if the existential overwhelm of the overview effect betrays something about who and what we are?<\/p>\n

The overview effect often prompts people to reflect on the Earth, and the fundamental connectedness of all life upon it. But if we reverse our gaze, we might find that the \u201cotherworldly\u201d sense Wiseman encountered in space isn\u2019t just found out there. It\u2019s in us as well.<\/p>\n

On this point, the contributions of religion and science orbit, if you like, around each other in curious ways.<\/p>\n

In the Bible\u2019s creation narrative, humanity is fashioned by God from the dust of the ground, making us indigenous to this good earth. \u201cHuman\u201d derives from humus or soil, an understanding only enriched by the findings of the Human Microbiome Project<\/a> \u2014 that hundreds of trillions of bacteria found in any given patch of dirt also reside within each of us.<\/p>\n

\u201cDust\u201d is our origin story, then, according to that poetic biblical account, which is different \u2014 and yet continuous with \u2014 scientific consensus that we are made of stardust. \u201cEvery atom in your body came from a star that exploded and the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand\u201d, atheist physicist Lawrence Krauss writes in A Universe from Nothing<\/a>. (A few lines on, Krauss can\u2019t resist a cheeky dig: \u201cSo, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The religious and scientific accounts suggest, in a sense, that we\u2019re the point at which Heaven and Earth meet. A mix of the earthly and unearthly.<\/p>\n

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The biblical account, however, goes further than the science will allow, by claiming that while every living thing has God\u2019s breath of life in it, humans alone bear his image and thus the special responsibility of representing God to everything else. This is the genesis of Shakespearian odes to humankind being the \u201cparagon of animals\u201d or, alternatively, claims of \u201cspecies arrogance\u201d that reserve for humanity alone unique perks and privileges.<\/p>\n

On this point, science \u2014 as is said of God in biblical idiom \u2014 both giveth and taketh away. The evolutionary account of our origins grants us a peek into our own beginnings but it\u2019s one that winds up demoting human life, if attributed solely to blind, natural forces. In that case, man and woman, made in God\u2019s image, are no longer the pinnacle of creation, as in the biblical account. Instead, we\u2019re unlikely, upright apes left to create our own meaning in a meaningless universe, left to wrestle with the difficulty of reconciling what we know to be true and all that we feel about that truth.<\/p>\n

Which is where Reid Wiseman and many of us are right about now.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A faint view of a crescent Earth above the horizon on the Moon\u2019s far side, photographed by the NASA Artemis II crew from the Orion spacecraft during the lunar flyby mission, on 6 April 2026. (NASA \/ Handout via REUTERS)<\/p>\n

Our current spiritual predicament could use some devotional material. I would opt for Samantha Harvey\u2019s Booker Prize winning Orbital<\/a>, in which the \u201cI\u2019m not religious, but \u2026\u201d moment is given novel-length treatment. In it, six astronauts on board the International Space Station continually orbit the earth and feel their love and reverence for our mother planet grow and grow.<\/p>\n

In one scene, Harvey grapples with the strange way the overview effect casts doubt on doubt. She depicts the astronauts\u2019 reluctant belief in the insignificance of the Earth, seen from above: \u201cSometimes they look at the earth and could be tempted to roll back all they know to be true, and to believe that it sits, this planet, at the centre of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Harvey, the diminished status of the Earth, no longer the centre in a Copernican universe, parallels an increasing sense of our own human insignificance. Yet this heavenly body is still a stunner. \u201cIt\u2019s not peripheral and it\u2019s not the centre; it\u2019s not everything and it\u2019s not nothing\u201d, Harvey writes, \u201cbut it seems much more than something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much more than something. The same might be said of human life too \u2014 that, to invoke the Bard again, there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in scientism\u2019s philosophy.<\/p>\n

How else to explain the desires of Earth-bound creatures, the descendants of long-ago stars, to boldly go where no one has gone before. Our heads are always in the clouds, even as our feet are planted on the ground. It\u2019s no wonder, really. If we\u2019re embodied souls, a mingling of the physical and the metaphysical, why wouldn\u2019t our spirits rise above the earth.<\/p>\n

Justine Toh<\/a> is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity<\/a> and an occasional guest-presenter on ABC Radio National\u2019s God Forbid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Posted\u00a01h ago1 hours agoFri 1 May 2026 at 7:16am, updated\u00a01h ago1 hours agoFri 1 May 2026 at 7:30am<\/p>\n