The Overview Effect and the Ultraview Effect: How Extreme Experiences in/of Outer Space Influence Religious Beliefs in Astronauts

Deana L. Weibel

doi:10.3390/rel11080418

Abstract

This paper, based mainly on astronauts’ first-person writings, historical documents, and my own ethnographic interviews with nine astronauts conducted between 2004 and 2020, explores how encountering the earth and other celestial objects in ways never before experienced by human beings has influenced some astronauts’ cosmological understandings. Following the work of Timothy Morton, the earth and other heavenly bodies can be understood as “hyperobjects”, entities that are distributed across time and space in ways that make them difficult for human beings to accurately understand, but whose existence is becoming increasingly detectable to us. Astronauts in outer space are able to perceive celestial objects from vantages literally unavailable on earth, which has often (but not always) had a profound influence on their understandings of humanity, life, and the universe itself. Frank Wright’s term, the “overview effect”, describes a cognitive shift resulting from seeing the Earth from space that increases some astronauts’ sense of connection to humanity, God, or other powerful forces. Following NASA convention (NASA Style Guide, 2012), I will capitalize both Earth and Moon, but will leave all quotations in their original style. The “ultraview effect” is a term I introduce here to describe the parallel experience of viewing the Milky Way galaxy from the Moon’s orbit (a view described reverently by one respondent as a “something I was not ready for”) that can result in strong convictions about the prevalence of life in the universe or even unorthodox beliefs about the origins of humanity. I will compare Morton’s ideas about humanity’s increased awareness of hyperobjects with Joye and Verpooten’s work on awe in response to “bigness”, tying both to astronauts’ lived experiences in order to demonstrate the usefulness of ethnographic data in this context, discuss how human experiences in outer space might influence religious practices and beliefs, and suggest that encounters with hyperobjects hold the potential to be socially beneficial.

Highlights

Due to a longstanding association between celestial bodies and the supernatural, there are clear, cross-cultural connections between religious concepts and the sky
I examine a contemporary phenomenon that expands this apparent overlap between ideas of outer space and religious concepts, experiences described by American astronauts during which their religious understandings were influenced or shaped by physically seeing sights that cannot be seen in the same way from
Noting the alien essence of outer space, Olson explained that the term “nature” is not typically a term applied to the cosmos, and that this un-naturalness is plainly dangerous for humans who seek to venture into this extreme environment

Summary

Introduction

Due to a longstanding association between celestial bodies and the supernatural, there are clear, cross-cultural connections between religious concepts ( of lofty places associated with helpful or threatening deities) and the sky (including cosmic objects like planets and stars that are visible within it). Postulated supernatural places and outer space seem to occupy a similar metaphoric category in that they are not of the Earth, stretch beyond and above the world, and surpass the mundane. I examine a contemporary phenomenon that expands this apparent overlap between ideas of outer space and religious concepts, experiences described by American astronauts during which their religious understandings were influenced or shaped by physically seeing sights (the Earth from space and vistas of stars from lunar orbit) that cannot be seen in the same way from. I analyze the way astronauts’ viewings of the Earth and stars may contribute to religious feelings by evoking a sense of wonder, drawing on ideas of awe and human transformation from psychology and philosophy, and suggest such experiences could have a role to play in shaping the way human societies of the future react to overwhelming situations and phenomena

Background

Methodology

Ethnographic Data

Analysis and Conclusions