Seeing God in the Heavens

Many of us westerners are familiar with the stories of the first Apollo missions and the “space race” with Russia. What we are less familiar with is the experience from the other side, from the Russian “cosmonauts” who also were committed to reaching the moon and the outer limits of the universe. Gherman Titov, who was one of those cosmonauts and an avowed atheist, became famous as the second person in history to orbit the earth.

During a lecture he described to the crowd his experience, “I have been up to heaven. I’ve been up to the skies. And I looked around and I didn’t see God.…