Steven Dick(b. 1949)

Steven J. Dick (born 1949) is an American astronomer, author, and former NASA Chief Historian. He has written extensively on astrobiology, cosmology, and the philosophical implications of extraterrestrial life.

Dick served as NASA’s Chief Historian from 2003 to 2009 and has held positions at the U.S. Naval Observatory and various universities. His books include The Biological Universe and Life on Other Worlds.

His work on “cosmotheology” explores how the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence might affect religious thought. He has argued that such a discovery would have profound theological implications, potentially transforming human understanding of our place in the cosmos and our relationship to the divine.

Quotations by Steven Dick

[Future religious thinkers] must be open to radically new conceptions of God, not necessarily the God of the ancients, nor the God of human imagination, but a God grounded in cosmic evolution, the biological universe, and the three principles: Why would a Messiah only come to us? Humans are likely not the center of anything. Nor the ultimate creation of God (likely not the head of the class when it comes to brainpower and intelligence) . . . A major effect of the concept of a natural God is that it has the capacity to reconcile science and religion. For those with a vested interest in the supernatural God of most standard religions, this may be too great a sacrifice for reconciliation. But consider the benefits. A natural God is an intelligence in and of the world, a God amenable to scientific methods, or at least approachable by them. A supernatural God incorporates a concept all scientists reject in connection with their science. For some, this may be precisely the point: that God cannot be, and should not be, approachable by science. But for Einstein and many other scientists (perhaps expressed in a different way for the latter) “the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.”