Monthly Archives: December 2018

December 27 – The Confluence of Religion and Science- Part 2

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Today’s Post

   Last week we took a first look at Teilhard’s insights into how we can begin to see Christianity as less a competitor to science and more as a step toward an integrated understanding of the human person and his place in Teilhard’s ‘noosphere’.

Last week’s three insights were taken from Teilhard’s collection of papers entitled “Human Energy”.  This week we will continue looking at Teilhard’s conviction of the value of Science and Religion to each other, taking four more insights from his cornerstone book, “The Phenomenon of Man”.

Science and Religion: Getting From Here To There

In the fourth insight, Teilhard cites his belief that to live the noosphere we must understand it:

“Man is, if I have not gone astray in these pages, an object of unique value to science for two reasons.

(i) (The human person) represents, individually and socially, the most synthesized state of order which the stuff of the universe is available to us.

(ii) Collectively, he is at present the most mobile (in the process of changing) point of the stuff in course of transformation.

   For these two reasons, to decipher man is essentially to try to find out how the world was made and how it ought to go on making itself.  The science of man is the practical and theoretical science of hominisation.  It means profound study of the past and of origins.  But still more, it means constructive experimentation pursued on a continually renewed object.  The program is immense and its only aim is that of the future.”

   In the fifth insight, he recognizes, however, that the emergence of science was not without its seeming competition with religion.  As Steven Pinker outlines in his book, “Enlightenment Now”, the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, while offering great clarification of human affairs appropriate to the ‘articulation of the noosphere’, still placed most of the ills of the noosphere at the feet of religion:

“To outward appearance, the modern world was born of an anti-religious movement: man becoming self-sufficient and reason supplanting belief.  Our generation and the two that preceded it have heard little but talk of the conflict between science and faith; indeed it seemed at one moment a foregone conclusion that the former was destined to take the place of the latter.”

This sentiment was strongly evident in the earliest claims of the superiority of empiricism over that of intuition, such as that which appeared in the Enlightenment.  As much as I value the insights of Steven Pinker in his book, “Enlightenment Now”, this biased viewpoint can still be found tucked into the back chapters.

Further, as Pinker undertakes the difficult subject of personal happiness in this book, he is forced to recognize the significant correlation between meaning and life satisfaction.  He does not seem to understand that science does not incorporate meaning at the personal level into its wonderful insights.  As Jonathan Sacks points out:

“Science takes things apart to see how they work.  Religion puts things together to see what they mean.  The difference between them is fundamental and irreducible.  They represent two distinct activities of the mind.  Neither is dispensable.  Both, together, constitute a full expression of our humanity.  They are as different and as necessary as the twin hemispheres of the brain.  It is in fact from the hemispherical asymmetry of the brain that the entire drama of the mutual misunderstanding and conjoint creativity of religion and science derive.”

   In his sixth insight, Teilhard, goes on to envision a future relationship between science and religion in which their viewpoints capitalize on Sack’s potential synergies, and they begin to come into a synthesis in which the manifest structures of human evolution are seen as facets of a single thing:

  “But, as the tension is prolonged, the conflict visibly seems to be resolved in terms of an entirely different form of equilibrium- not in elimination, nor duality, but in synthesis.  After close on to two centuries of passionate struggles, neither science nor faith has succeeded in discrediting its adversary.  On the contrary, it becomes obvious that neither can develop normally without the other.  And the reason is simple: the same life animates both.  Neither in its impetus nor its achievements can science go to its limits without becoming tinged with mysticism and charged with faith.“

   And, so, Teihard summarizes his understanding of how the empiricism of science and the intuition of religion, the traditionally understood ‘left’ and ‘right’ brain perspectives that Sacks highlights, can now be seen as potentially two integrated and synthesized human enterprises.  Long envisioned as the opposite sides of a deep-seated duality, Teilhard sees them as destined to bring us to a more complete understanding of ourselves and the noosphere which we inhabit.

In his seventh insight, Teilhard summarizes his belief that such synthesis is necessary for the continuation of human evolution:

“Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge– the only one that can embrace the past and future of evolution so as to contemplate, measure and fulfil them.”

   As we have seen, Johan Norberg, in his book, “Progress”, implicitly agrees when he cites the three factors of freedom, innovation and relationships as essential for the continuation of the human progress (which we have seen is essentially quantification of human evolution).  In showing how these three factors are critical to secular progress, he is in implicit agreement with Teilhard that “neither (science nor religion) can develop normally without the other” and Sacks that “Both, together, constitute a full expression of our humanity”.

These three factors of course are seldom cited as aspects of intuitional thinking, but are addressed in some form in every expression of religious belief.

The Next Post

This week we have completed looking at Teilhard’s seven insights that underlay his assertion that the continuation of human evolution requires a synergy between science and religion if it is to continue.

While this week we cited the belief of Jonathan Sacks on the two ‘domains of thought’ of these two enterprises, next week we will look a little more deeply into his insights of how they can better team to assure this continuation.

December 20 – The Confluence of Religion and Science – Part 1

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Today’s Post

Last week we noted once again that even with the evolutionary progress that can be seen in the secular world, undriven by a singular impetus for advancing evolution per se, but nonetheless effecting a startling increase in human welfare over the past two hundred years, continuation of this trend is not inevitable. It is possible for ‘noospheric risks’ to undermine the continuation of human evolution, but as Teilhard asserts, the potential of science and religion, properly focused, conjoined and applied, are tools which will help us make our way.
This week we will look at the first three of his assertions to understand the potential for religion’s confluence with science to effect a tool for doing so.

The Evolutionary Potential of Religion

In “Human Energy”, Teilhard notes that Christianity, of all the world’s religions, in its fundamental teachings, is well placed for such a partnership with science in overcoming ‘noospheric risks’ and insuring the continuation of the rise of complexity in the human species.

In the first of these assertions, he cites the distinguishing feature which differentiates Christianity from the predominant Eastern beliefs: that of the primacy of the person:
“Like every other form of adherence to a cosmic hope, the doctrine of the personal universe has exactly those characteristics of universality and faith which are, in the broad sense of the term, distinctive of religion. But the religion it introduces has in addition two associated characteristics which seemed, to their mutual detriment, destined to be perpetual opposites in religious systems: personalism and pantheism. (This position) is already virtually realized and lived within Christianity.”
Like Teilhard, Jefferson recognized the personalistic focus of Christianity, but Jefferson saw it as necessary for the success of a democratic governmental progress, and hence as a necessary impetus to continued human evolution. Unlike Jefferson, who lived in a static universe, Teilhard recognized the value of attaching primacy to the concept of the person not only in human affairs, but as necessary for understanding the entire evolution of the universe. Teilhard first identifies complexity as the key metric of universal evolution, then observes how this complexity eventually manifests itself as person-ness in evolution’s most recent stages.

Second, he notes how this primacy of person can be seen in the Christian concept of ‘incarnation’, which can be seen through Teilhard’s insights as an impetus for the personal development that is the cornerstone to continued human evolution:
” The degree to which Christianity teaches and offers a prospect of universal transformation can never be sufficiently stressed. By the Incarnation God descended into nature to ‘super-animate’ it and lead it back to Him: this is the substance of the Christian dogma.”
Here the concept of God as the fundamental agent of the rise of complexity that powers universal evolution overlaps with the core Christian teaching of John that “God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him”. The Christian claim that the universal agent of life is somehow present in each of its manifestations is remarkable among all the world’s religions, and clearly shows the unique Christian belief that whatever is happening in our lives as we grow is powered by a universal agency for such growth.

Third, Teilhard also takes note of how the major elements of Christian theology are not only compatible with Science’s understanding of the ‘natural’ world, they can be enhanced by it. Teilhard, like Blondel before him, understood how the concept of evolution offered religion a more complete understanding of their ancient teachings:
“In itself, (Christian) dogma can be reconciled with many representations of the empirical world. So long, for example, as the human mind saw the universe only as a fixed arrangement of ready-made elements, the Christian had no serious difficulty in introducing the mysterious process of his sanctification into this static assemblage. But was not this, to some extent, a second best? Was a fundamental immobility of the cosmos the best imaginable framework for the spiritual metamorphosis represented by the coming of the kingdom of God? Now that the dust of early battles is dying down, we are apparently beginning to perceive that a universe of evolutionary structure- provided that the direction of its movement is truly located- might well be, after all, the most favorable setting in which to develop a noble and homogenous representation of the Incarnation.”
“Christianity would have been stifled by a materialist doctrine of evolution. But does it not find its most appropriate climate in the broad and mounting prospect of a universe drawn towards the spirit? What could serve as a better background and base for the descending illuminations of a Christogenisis than an ascending anthropogenesis?”
“Drawn towards the spirit” of course invokes Teilhard’s reinterpretation of ‘spirit’ as ‘increased complexity’, with Christogenisis as the personal aspect of this increased complexity. With this observation, Teilhard ‘closes the loop’ between a science which struggles to understand the fundamental force of evolution by which the intensity of its complexity is increased (“drawn towards the spirit’) and a religion loosed from its moorings of superstition, hierarchy and a spirituality which has become detached from the noosphere.

The Next Post

This week we have taken a first look at the possibility of bringing science and religion into a coherence which strengthens both of them and thus permits a clearer understanding of the noosphere; one which provides us with more effective tools for mitigating its risks and insuring the continuation of human evolution.
Next week we will continue this inquiry by seeing how Teilhard addressed this subject in his cornerstone book, “The Phenomenon of Man”.

December 13 – Religion and Science: Noospheric Tools?

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Today’s Post

In the last several weeks, we have been looking at religion’s concept of morality, ending in a look at how Teilhard’s five insights into morality offer a rethinking of traditional religion’s concept from proscription to prescription as we begin to recognize religion’s potential as a tool for insuring our continued evolution.  We saw how religion must recognize its role as a tool for understanding the noosphere to be able to assist us in living it in such a way that we maximize our potential for being fully and authentically human.

This week we turn our focus to the other great human enterprise, science, to begin exploring how a revitalized religion, better focused on an evolving noosphere, might better work with an obviously effective science in effecting such ‘maximization’ of potential. 

Evolution Everywhere

In this series, we have frequently noted that, as asserted and quantified by Johan Norberg (‘Progress’), it is possible for us, with properly focused eyes, to recognize threads of this evolution happening all around us.  Norberg offers, as the Economist identifies, “A tornado of facts” which quantify the many ways that human welfare proceeds by the correct application of human freedom, innovation and relationship throughout the world.  These examples of increased human welfare are without a doubt evidence of the ways the human species can be seen to continue its evolution.

We have also seen that Norberg considered human freedom, innovation, and relationships to be essential for such progress to proceed, which is why the earliest examples of this progress appeared in the West, with its unique emphasis on the three.

By the same token, we have noted that these three characteristics are treated poorly by science, and its companion secular ‘disciplines’ such as economics and politics.   Norberg’s three cornerstones of progress initially only occur in the West, as a slowly building consequence of society influenced by its Christian roots in the uniqueness of the person (more on this subject next week).

Jefferson’s claim that

 “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves”

was a claim to such uniqueness, and not derived from any empirical source.  His inspiration for such an unprovable concept was none other than the ‘teachings of Jesus’:

 “We all agree in the obligation of the moral precepts of Jesus, and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in his discourses.”

   Thus our claim that in religion, for all its creaky hierarchy, superstitions and contradictions, and even the many instances of hostility to Norberg’s three building blocks of freedom, innovation and relationships, we can still find threads of the current which must be maintained if it is to  carry us forward.

We have Jefferson to thank for both a clearer understanding of the noosphere, and how its structure in human affairs has evolved from Enlightenment principles intermixed with Christian values, initially “dripping” with the accouterments of medieval worldview.

As Norberg quantifies at length, this clearer understanding has given rise to the success of the West in providing a mileu which has effected a degree of stability not only unprecedented in Western history, but which has slowly permeated into the rest of the world.

Steven Pinker (“Enlightenment Now”) recognizes how this mileu is unfolding in the West in the form of a “tide of morality” which is pushing against “the historical erosion of racism, sexism and homophobia”.  It is not coincidental that these three negative aspects of society have all, at one time (and even continue today) been paramount in all religions.  Pinker sees in this tide the effect of ‘empiricism’s superiority over intuition’, a sentiment underpinning the beliefs found in the Enlightenment.  As do many thinkers influenced by the Enlightenment, he fails to recognize that in the essential beliefs of Jefferson, and thus of Jesus, the key kernel of belief which makes such a tide possible is the recognition of the essential goodness of the human person.  Without this belief, essentially unprovable and thus ‘intuitive’ rather than ‘empirical’, the tide would not surge, it would ebb.

Enter Religion

And this, of course, is where religion comes in.  We have taken a long look at ‘risks’ to the noosphere, and saw that even with the unconscious ‘tide’ that Pinker cites, there’s no guarantee that it will ultimately prevail over the ‘risks’ to the noosphere that we identified back in September.

At the basis of these ‘risks’ is the necessity for us to choose to continue to power this tide.  We saw that it is possible for humans to simply allow fear, pessimism and disbelief to weaken their will to continue.

Pinker notes, for example, that although the rate of suicide is declining everywhere across the world, it is increasing in the United States.  Increased welfare, it would seem, is no bulwark against despair.  This, of course, is the ultimate duality:  Faith in human progress seems to be declining in the first society to provide an instantiation of the progress itself.

We have looked at examples of how evolution is proceeding through contemporary secular events, as prolifically documented by Norberg and Pinker, but as many of their critics observe, they spend little time addressing the downside, the ‘evolutionary risks’ of these examples.  While this does not diminish the reality of the progress that they describe, neither does it address the risks.

Teilhard believed that religion, properly unfettered from its medieval philosophical shackles, its overdependence on hierarchy, and its antipathy towards science, is well suited to address these ‘downsides’.

We noted last week that Teilhard saw the need for religion, if it is to indeed rise to its potential as a tool for dealing with these ‘noospheric risks’, to enter a new phase of contribution to this process:

“At the first stage, Christianity may well have seemed to exclude the humanitarian aspirations of the modern world.  At the second stage its duty was to correct, assimilate and preserve them.”

We have taken a look at a key facet of religion,  that of ‘morality,’ to understand how this concept can be reinterpreted in terms of building blocks for continued human evolution.  How can religion itself be seen in this same way?  Teilhard’s answer to this question was to see that there is a way for religion and science to overcome the traditional religion-science duality:

“Religion and science are the two conjugated faces of phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge- the only one that can embrace the past and future of evolution so as to contemplate, measure and fulfil them.”

The Next Post

This week we took a first look at science and religion as ‘tools’ for managing the noosphere, particularly in managing the human-initiated risks to it, but recognizing that traditionally, they have been understood as opposites in a long-standing duality.

Next week will look a little deeper at how Teilhard understood the potential confluence between these two powerful modes of thinking, and how they could be brought into a fully and integrated human response to the challenges of evolution.

December 6 – Religion’s Seeds of ‘Articulating the Noosphere’ and How to Build Upon Them, Part 2

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Expanding On Teilhard’s View of Morality – Part 2

Today’s Post

Last week took a second look at Teilhard’s five insights into the religious concept of morality, focusing on the first two.  As we saw, putting the idea of morality into the context of evolution brought new depths of meaning into religion’s traditional understanding of morality as proscriptions for stabilizing society and qualifying us for ‘the next life’.

This week we will continue further on this subject, reviewing the last three of his insights for their potential to ‘construct the noosphere’ even as in turn we are ‘constructed’ by it.

Teilhard’s Last Three Insights on Morality

As we saw last week, the first two of these insights from his book, “Human Energy” addressed morality from the perspective of its role in human evolution and showed how the basis of morality is a building block for the noosphere, as well as an articulation which

“guide(s) (us) so effectively in the direction of (our) anticipated fulfillments that the ‘quantity of personality’ still diffuse in humanity may be released in fullness and security.”

   To Teilhard, the essential function of religion is as a tool for unlocking our potential as entities of evolution to continue the evolutionary ‘complexification’ of the universe as we ourselves become more complete.

His last three insights extend the first two into an understanding of how morals can help us ‘release’ our “quantity of personality…in fullness and security”.

The Morality of Balance (appropriate to a static universe) vs the Morality of Movement (appropriate to an evolving universe)

 “The morality of balance is replaced by the morality of movement.

–  (As an example) The morality of money based on exchange and fairness vs the goodness of riches only if they work for the benefit of the spirit.”

   A secular example of such a shift in perspective can be seen in the examples of human evolution in human affairs today, as enumerated by Norberg.  One of the facets that he identifies is a distinct correlation between the rise of human welfare in developing countries and their increase of GNP.  This is a concrete example of Teilhard’s insight into the potential of secular wealth to improve human welfare as a metric of human evolution.  Norberg echoes Teilhard’s belief that ‘the morality of money’ can evolve from seeing donated money as a measure of morality (charity) to understanding the application of personal freedom and improved relationships as necessary for a society to increase its wealth (GNP) and as a result, increase the welfare of its citizens.

– “Individual morality to prevent him from doing harm vs working with the forces of growth to free his autonomy and personality (person-ness) to the uttermost.”

   This is a direct corollary of the above insight, and reinforces his claim that morality must evolve from proscription to prescription if it is to fulfill its potential in fostering our personal evolution towards more completeness (autonomy and person-ness).  In Teilhard’s new insight, morality must now be recognized as a tool for increasing personal freedom and enhancing relationships, not as a hedge against evil.

Religion, Morality and Complexification

“By definition, his religion, if true, can have no other effect than to perfect the humanity in him.”

   Here Teilhard is delving into the most fundamental role of religion.  As technology certainly can be seen to improve human welfare, it has no expertise at improving the human unique characteristics of personal freedom and personal relationships which are necessary to insure the innovation and invention at the basis of its expertise.  He goes on to say,

“At the first stage, Christianity may well have seemed to exclude the humanitarian aspirations of the modern world.  At the second stage its duty was to correct, assimilate and preserve them.”

   The most appropriate role for religion Is as a tool for management of the noosphere.  The deepest claim to authenticity for a religion is to be recognized as a tool for the evolutionary advancement of the human person, and through him the advancement of humanity.

Morality As A Basis For Dealing With The Noosphere

“So as long as our conceptions of the universe remained static, the basis of duty remained extremely obscure.  To account for this mysterious law (love) 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.”

   Here Teilhard is succinctly stating one of his basic tenets of understanding human evolution:  Once put in an evolutionary context, all concepts which are pertinent to human existence begin to present themselves as aspects of the single, unified and coherent thing that they truly are.   

The Tool Set

In the same way that government must establish and safeguard the building blocks of society, such as Jefferson seeing the person as the basis for society…

In the same way that medicine must understand physiology to diagnose illness to be able to prescribe treatment…

In the same way that technology must understand metal structure to build a bridge…

Religion must recognize its role as a tool for understanding the noosphere to be able to assist us in living it in such a way that we maximize our potential for being fully and authentically human.

The Next Post

This week we took a second look at the last three of Teilhard’s insights into the concept of morality, seeing how he extended his understanding in the first two (the evolutionary context) to the last three (how it is a tool for continuing our evolution as humans).

Next week we will begin to look at what has to happen to religion if it is to begin to realize its potential as ‘co-creator’ of the future with science.