Monthly Archives: January 2018

January 18 – Values, Morals and Sacraments- Overcoming Orthogonality

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how religious and scientific perspectives on morals are very orthogonal to religion.   Where traditional religion insists on an absolute basis of morals,  science proposes one which is relative to our understanding of science’s key agency of evolution: ‘survival’.  Today we will take a look at how these two perspectives can be brought into coherence.

From Our Secular Viewpoint

There are many ways in which these two perspectives can be seen to align.  As we have seen many times in this blog, both religion and science are rife with ‘dualisms’ which choose a viewpoint from the many shades of belief on any subject.  Our secular approach seeks to bring the opposing sides into confluence by applying the techniques of reinterpretation that we have proposed.  The subject of ‘morals’ is no exception.

One way to effect such confluence is to return to Teilhard’s treatment of the two seemingly contrary positions:

“So as long as our conceptions of the universe remained static, the basis of duty (moral standards) remained extremely obscure.  To account for this mysterious law (the energy of evolution which effects increasing complexity) which weighs fundamentally on our liberty, man had recourse to all sorts of explanations, from that of an explicit command issued from outside to that of an irrational but categorical instinct.” (parenthetical statements and italics mine)

   Teilhard proposes the same principle of reinterpretation that was previously suggested by Blondel: to understand that human persons are products of an evolutionary process, as science teaches, requires the acknowledgment of the existence of a principle which effects our ‘becoming’, as religion teaches.  This suggests common ground between the materialist and theist perspectives:

–          The materialists are correct in asserting that the basis of morals can be found in the principles of evolution.  However, it is necessary to expand the understanding of evolution from terrestrial biological phenomena and understand evolution in its universal perspective.  In doing so evolution can be seen in three distinct phases which are united by a continuing increase of complexity in its products.  In this integrated perspective, there are indeed ‘articulations of the noosphere’ which foster our continued evolution, and these can be expressed in terms such as sacraments, values and morals.

–          The theists are correct in asserting that these morals are indeed, at their basis, absolute.  The absolute nature of these standards of behavior are, as the materialists assert,  intelligible, but require our continued search for a more complete understanding of them.

So the materialistic approach to morals needs to be placed in the full picture of evolution and take into account the presence of the agent of evolution in each personal life.  By the same token, the theist approach needs to be shorn of its premature dogmatism and be open to both the intelligibility of the universe and our part in it as we continue to evolve.

Science, with its grasp of the universe as ‘becoming’ can bring new life to religion.  As Blondel and Teilhard understood, recognizing that the human is a product of a continuously evolving universe permits a deeper understand of God as the universal principle of such evolution.  By the same token, their fresh approach to religion also serves to expand science’s understanding of this process to include the human as not only a product of evolution, but one able to respond to a new mode of evolutive energy which goes beyond the Darwinian principles of ‘chance and necessity’.

The question can then be asked, how can humans employ their new-found capacity of being aware of their consciousness in service to their continued evolution?  How do they effect their own ‘complexification’?

The answer that I have proposed in this blog involves developing the skill of the neocortex brain in modulating the instinctive stimuli of the lower limbic and reptilian brains.  Examples of practices and beliefs that develop and strengthen this skill abound in every religious and philosophical school of thought that has emerged in human history.  The down side, of course, is that they are enmeshed, deeply entangled, in hierarchies, mysticism, sentimentality, and supernaturalism that can undermine their validity as ‘articulations of the noosphere’.

So, in order to be able to (paraphrasing Richard Dawkins) “explicitly divest religious belief of all the baggage that it carries in the minds of most religious believers”, it is necessary to reinterpret these beliefs in terms of human ‘complexification’ (human growth) so that their relevancy to human life and continued evolution can be more fully understood.

In simpler terms: in the human, the mechanism of evolution transforms from ‘evolutionary selection of entities’ to ‘entities which select their evolution’.

The Next Post

This week we have contrasted the ‘materialistic’ (‘athiest’) position with that of the ‘theists’ on ‘how we should be if we would be what we can be’, and saw how a holistic perspective on evolution offers a common ground of belief that seems more consistent with both our general religious and scientific understanding not only of the universe but in our part in it.

Assuming that there are indeed ‘articulations of the noosphere’ that when observed, lead on to, as Teilhard put it, “being carried by a current to the open sea”, what do we do with them?  How can we orient ourselves to these ‘currents’?

Next week we will take our explanation of sacraments, values and morality to the next level and explore an approach to evolution which finds common ground between these seemingly orthogonal approaches to understanding human evolution.

January 4, 2018 – Values, Morals and Sacraments- Two Orthogonal Perspectives

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Last week we expanded our look at sacraments into the realm of values and morals, and saw how scientific materialism understands the basis of ‘correct behavior’ to be derived from the interpretations of ‘evolutionary psychology’.  In this view, behavior is ‘correct’ if it fosters our continued participation in the flow of evolution, understood as the continuation of ‘survival’.  The materialistic basis for morality is, then, ‘relative’.

The differences in behavioral standards between religions are seemingly compounded by the differences between religion and science, and further vary with different interpretations of the evolutionary process.

Is it possible to have a coherent interpretation of values, morals and sacraments?

This week we will explore the two ends of the belief spectrum- materialism and traditional Christianity- in our search for the basis of morals.

From The Materialistic Viewpoint

I use the word ‘seemingly’ above because the materialistic ‘evolutionary psychological’ viewpoint is based on an incomplete grasp of evolution.  This understanding restricts the historical timeline of evolution to the most recent phase of ‘biological evolution’.  This narrow approach falls significantly short of the universal perspective proposed by Teilhard.  As we saw in the posts on ‘The Teilhardian Shift’ (http://www.lloydmattlandry.com/?m=201411), Teilhard situates evolution in the context of the ontology of the universe.

Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection only addresses the few billion years which constitute the phase of biological evolution leading to the human person.  Teilhard identifies the nine or so billion years preceding the first cell as the ‘first phase’ of evolution, and the hundred thousand years (or so) of human existence as the ‘third’.  As we have seen, he goes on to point out how the energy of evolution takes different forms as it proceeds through the three phases in its continuous increase of the complexity of its products.

A first step towards our holistic perspective of morality is to recognize that materialists are correct when they assert that the basis of morality should lie in the continuation of human evolution.  When placed into Teilhard’s more inclusive perspective, however, Natural Selection becomes an ‘epi-phenomenon’ which rides on top of the more fundamental ‘rise of complexity’ that underpins all three phases.  The agency of the first phase by which matter precipitates from pure energy following the big bang, and goes on to evolve into more complex arrangements leading to the mega-molecules which form the raw material for the first cells is not yet addressed by science.  The agency of the third phase by which individual persons and their societies become more complex is poorly addressed by science, and then in the form of highly controversial theories.  Applying the well-understood process of Natural Selection as an explanation of poorly understood human evolution is like losing one’s car keys in the middle of a dark city block and looking for them at the street corner because the light is better.

So the conclusion which should be drawn from science’s discovery that we are products of evolution is less that we are to continue the urge to procreate and survive (essentially to continue to respond to the instinctual stimuli of our reptilian and mammalian ancestors) but that, in the human person, the energy of evolution is much more manifest in the activity of our neocortex brain, which must be employed to modulate the instinctual stimuli of our lower brains if evolution is to continue through us.

Therefore once evolution is seen in its complete context, from the Big Bang to the present, the evolutionary basis for morality can be expanded to include those principles by which our continued evolution can be assured.

From the Traditional Theistic Viewpoint

While the materialistic approach to the basis of morals can be seen to reduce standards of behavior to the instincts of our animal evolutionary predecessors, addressing the basis of morals from the traditional perspective of religion also comes with problems.  In many western expressions, morals are understood as laws given explicitly from god in the distant past and recorded in scripture.  As we have seen in many posts in this blog, they also are seen more as justifying a post-life reward (or as one theologian puts it, ”As an escape route from this life”).  The basis of morals as understood by the more conservative western expressions is then ‘absolute’, even if we humans in our sinful state find it difficult to follow.

The Next Post

This week we have contrasted the ‘materialistic’ (‘atheistic’) position with that of the ‘theists’ on ‘how we should be if we would be what we can be’,  The materialist, in a limited view of evolution, sees morals as ‘relative’ to ‘survival’, while the theists sees them as dictated by an all-powerful God eons ago and therefore ‘absolute’ and necessary for salvation.

Next week we will explore how a holistic perspective on evolution can be seen to offer a common ground of belief that seems more consistent with both our general religious and scientific understanding not only of the universe but in our part in it.