The main library building at UBC opened in 1925, within weeks of the notorious Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee. The two events would seem unrelated had someone not permanently correlated them in stone.
Above the main entrance to the library, if you squint, you can see two figures where you might otherwise expect gargoyles or other elaboration. On one side, there is a monkey with the word “evol,” short for evolution, and, on the other, an old man holding a tablet with “funda,” short for fundamentalism. UBC students in 1925, and thereafter, have been cheekily confronted with what the library’s builder clearly viewed as a defining intellectual and spiritual conflict of our era: creationism versus Darwinism.
That was the topic of the Tennessee trial, an international spectacle that was a turning point in how North Americans viewed and talked about the intersection of science and religion.
Legally, the trial resulted in a nominal fine for John Scopes, the teacher who challenged the law by teaching evolution. But for all intents, the impact of the trial was, as the writer H.L. Mencken put it, to depict believers in creationism as “rustic ignoramuses ... deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things.”
In parts of the United States, that debate rages today with some Christians demanding that public school curricula present both evolution and so-called “intelligent design” as equally legitimate theories — and their opponents offering rebuttals not dissimilar to Mencken’s.
This dichotomy between science and received theology is not nearly as intense here as it is in parts of the United States. And with recent statements by Pope Francis that evolution is not inconsistent with Christian belief (and that God is not a magician), the dichotomy between science and faith is increasingly depicted as a false one.
That is certainly Poul Rasmussen’s view. And he has a unique vantage point. Rasmussen is a church organist at Spirit of Life Lutheran Church, near city hall. Rasmussen, who moved to Canada from Denmark in 2001, is also a graphic designer who just won a competition to design a logo for the first Danish astronaut to join the International Space Station.
Like Canada’s Marc Garneau, Andreas Mogensen will be the first from his country to launch into space. It is apparently a complete coincidence that his logo was designed by a Danish-Canadian.
Rasmussen’s winning design, which Mogensen will wear as a uniform patch during his 10-day mission next year, is filled with ancient religious symbolism. That the logo also represents the pinnacle of modern science not does seem at all contradictory to Rasmussen.
The name of the mission — selected in an earlier European competition — is Iriss, named after the Greek goddess Iris, messenger of the gods and personification of the rainbow.
The extra “s” was added to create the acronym for the International Space Station (even though the “i” and the “r” are not part of an acronym at all. Never mind.) In fashioning wings representing the goddess, Rasmussen almost unintentionally found they resembled a Viking ship, that symbol of Old Norse exploration (and pillage).
“So it became even more Danish than I had thought,” he said.
Above the Danish flag, which resembles the crest of a globe, he added six stars, or planets. While the number was arbitrary, he found out at the unveiling of the logo in Copenhagen recently that there are six astronauts on the mission and each is serving six years in the space program.
The relative simplicity of the design, Rasmussen says, may be a sign of his Danish design sensibility.
Despite the Greek and Norse symbolism, Rasmussen says his work is infused with theology only in oblique ways.
He recounts a story in which a baker asks Martin Luther how best he can serve God. Luther is said to have replied, “You can do that by baking good bread.”
“And I thought, well, you know, if I can be a good designer, if I can be a good organist, then I have done my bit,” Rasmussen laughs.
About a perceived conflict between faith and science, Rasmussen dismisses the idea.
“For me, the conflict is not huge,” he says. All religions have a creational aspect to them, he says, but he has a hard time with fundamentalists who call themselves creationists.
“You can mix religion and science and [say] there were dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark and all that,” he says. “But a visit to any museum will tell you the exact opposite thing.”
Rasmussen, and probably a vast majority of Christians, skirt the contradictions that outsiders might perceive between “belief” and knowledge in much the same way that 90 years of UBC students have done when entering the main library: by walking between the set-in-stone principles on each side and seeking out the wisdom between them.
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