Today’s Post

Last week, in moving on with summarizing the blog, “The Secular Side of God” we made a first cut at applying our ‘principles of reinterpretation’ to the basic idea of ‘God’ as the ‘Ground of Being’, which belief underpins all religions.   But we noted that by taking Teilhard’s approach to understanding God in the context of universal evolution, we see the objection raised by Carl Sagan, reinforced by Richard Dawkins:

“If by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying…it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.”

While setting aside, for a moment, that all of the ‘laws’ which ‘govern the universe’ would in fact include the human person, the question is nonetheless valid. This week we will summarize the segments of the Blog from 15 September2016 to 2 February 2017, which address relating to the ‘Ground of Being’.

Why Should It Be Difficult?

If, as Teilhard asserts, the human is simply the latest branch of the ‘axis of Evolution’, itself alive and well throughout the whole of the universe for some fourteen billion years so far, then becoming aware of the existence and the agency of this upwelling of complexity in each of us, and establishing enough of a relationship with it to assure our further evolution would not seem difficult. Powered by the accumulation of evolved instincts, our pre-human ancestors were able to reliably get us to the most recent four or so hundred thousand years .

But, alas, as our human history shows too clearly, it’s not that easy. History is filled with examples of, for example, the conflict among the reptilian brain’s stimuli of ‘fight or flight’, the limbic brain’s need for relationship and our neo cortex brain’s desire to ‘sort things out’ before acting.
Christianity is frequently cited as a ‘leveling’ agent which addresses this age-old tension, and indeed many examples of this agency can be seen (such as Jefferson’s adoption of Jesus’ belief in human equality into successful Western governments), but even it is rife with ‘dualisms’ that pull us in one way or another. Its idea of God, on the surface a unifying concept, becomes rife with such dualisms.

Jonathan Sacks notes that much more so than Judaism, Christianity divides: body/soul, physical/spiritual, heaven/earth, this life/next life, evil/good, with the emphasis on the second of each. He sees the entire set of contrasts as massively Greek, with much debt to Plato. He sees in these either/or dichotomies a departure from the typically Jewish perspective of either/and.

This increasing dualism is contrasted with what Blondel insisted as fundamental to an understanding of the intimacy of God. Rephrased:

“It is impossible to think of ourselves as ‘over here’, and then of God, as ‘over against us’. This is impossible because we have come to be who we are through a process in which God is involved.”

   This is, of course, a logical conclusion from the essential message of John:

“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him”

   Blondel, Teilhard, Sacks and the contemporary theologian Richard Rohr all decry how this message of John, itself a logical conclusion from the teachings of Jesus, is frequently minimized in the subsequent evolution of the Greek-influenced Church. Thus, it’s not difficult to understand the difficulty of returning to the sense of belonging that our ‘pre anxiety’ animal ancestors enjoyed. While Teilhard’s ‘axis of evolution’ might have a single trunk, we, lost among the branches, have to work to find it.

Finding the Way

A first step to such a search is to recognize that there is indeed a way. Teilhard’s postulation that the basic element of universal evolution, in which all things, including ourselves, are enmeshed, requires belief that the energy of this evolution having existed in all things for the fourteen or so billion years of universal ‘becoming’, is still active in its most recent product.

This is not a religious assertion. As we saw last week, even an atheist of such renown as Richard Dawkins can acknowledge it. While he fails to recognize its importance to human life, once understood the logical consequences of it lead unerringly to a positive and ‘future affirming’ grasp of human life.

Thus a starting place for ‘relating’ to a ‘ground of being’ (or, in Dawkins-speak, ‘the fundamental principle of existence’) is to begin to recognize how this universal agency of complexification manifests itself in the human person. Again, taking a cue from Teilhard,

“It is through that which is most incommunicably personal in us that we make contact with the universal“,

we can see that our search for God, therefore, begins with a search for ourselves.

This is, of course, an idea that first rises during the Axial Age (900-200 BCE). As Karen Armstrong, in her book on this period sees it:

”Enlightened persons would discover within themselves the means of rising above the world; they would experience transcendence by plumbing the mysteries of their own nature, not simply by taking part in magical rituals.”

   Given the tangle of practices that emerge from this simple recognition, however, points to its difficulty.   One of these, however, resonates across nearly expression of religion.

Meditation

This term can evoke many negative reactions, especially in the minds of nonbelievers or those who highly value empirical thought over intuitional insight. While its basis is simply concentrating on finding and experiencing this ‘cosmic spark’, this ‘sap of the tree of evolution’ which lies in every human, the practices most commonly associated with it evoke pictures of self-abasement, withdrawal from relationships, other-worldliness and a general distancing from and disdaining of life as lived.   Teilhard himself, comfortable in both empirical and intuitional worlds, summarized an approach for this search for the ‘cosmic spark’ in a completely secular way. From his book, ‘The Divine Milieu’, he writes:

“And so, for the first time in my life, perhaps, I took the lamp and, leaving the zones of everyday occupations and relationships, where my identity, my perception of myself is so dependent on my profession, my roles- where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates.

   But as I descended further and further from that level of conventional certainties by which social life is so superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent, with the removal of layers of my identity defined from without, a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me.

   And when I had to stop my descent because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and from it flowed, arising I know not from where, the current which I dare to call my life.

   What science will ever be able to reveal to man the origin, nature and character of that conscious power to will and to love which constitutes his life? It is certainly not our effort, nor the effort of anyone around us, which set that current in motion. And it is certainly not our anxious care, nor that of any friend of ours, which prevents its ebb or controls its turbulence.

We can, of course, trace back through generations some of the antecedents of the torrent which bears us along; and we can, by means of certain moral and physical disciplines and stimulations, regularize or enlarge the aperture through which the torrent is released into us.

   But neither that geography nor those artifices help us in theory or in practice to harness the sources of life.

   My self is given to me far more than it is formed by me.

   Man, scripture says, cannot add a cubit to his nature. Still less can he add a unit to the potential of his love, or accelerate by another unit the fundamental rhythm which regulates the ripening of his mind and heart. In the last resort, the profound life, the fontal life, the new-born life, escapes our life entirely.

   Stirred by my discovery, I then wanted to return to the light of day and forget the disturbing enigma in the comfortable surroundings of familiar things, to begin living again at the surface without imprudently plumbing the depths of the abyss. But then, beneath this very spectacle of the turmoil of life, there re-appeared before my newly-opened eyes, the unknown that I wanted to escape.

This time it was not hiding at the bottom of an abyss; it disguised itself, its presence, in the innumerable strands which form the web of chance, the very stuff of which the universe and my own small individuality are woven. Yet it was the same mystery without a doubt: I recognized it.

   Our mind is disturbed when we try to plumb the depth of the world beneath us. But it reels still more when we try to number the favorable chances which must coincide at every moment if the least of living things is to survive and succeed in its enterprises.

   After the consciousness of being something other and something greater than myself- a second thing made me dizzy: Namely the supreme improbability, the tremendous unlikelyhood of finding myself existing in the heart of a world that has survived and succeeded in being a world.

At that moment, I felt the distress characteristic to a particle adrift in the universe, the distress which makes human wills founder daily under the crushing number of living things and of stars. And if something saved me, it was hearing the voice of the Gospel, guaranteed by divine success, speaking to me from the depth of the night:

                                                     “It is I, be not afraid.”

The Next Post

This week we moved from applying our ‘principles of reinterpretation’ to the basic idea of ‘God’ to addressing a path to relationship with ‘the ground of being’. Agreeing with Blondel that “Every statement about God is effectively a statement about man”, we can see that every step toward God is a step towards ourselves.

Having seen this, the next question that can be asked is, what’s involved in ‘finding ourselves’?

Next week we will move on to looking at this activity through secular lens. What is there at our core, and how do we move towards it?

Today’s Post

   Continuing our look at the role of religion in human evolution, last week we saw six examples of the parts that religion plays. In keeping with the perspective of secularity that we have taken in this blog, while they are not based on the traditional teachings of any religion, they are agencies common to all.

This week we go one step further into such a secular perspective, and that is the idea of God. Is it possible to approach the many and diverse ideas of the ‘ground of being’ for some level of commonality? Further, is there any way that a concept such as ’the ground of being’ can be compatible with the deliberations of science?

This subject is discussed in the five posts from May 25, (Reinterpretation) to July 7 2016 (Reinterpretation Principles).

Reinterpretation

Maurice Blondel was one of the first theologians to suggest that in order to survive in an age which saw the increasing influence of science, religion must become more meaningful, immediate and relevant. He saw it as necessary for religion to emerge from the hierarchical, supernatural and autocratic form that it had taken by the late eighteen hundreds. He suggested that to make this happen, religion must be ‘reinterpreted’.

While Blondel may have opened the door to rethinking the traditional understanding of God and the universe, others, such as Teilhard de Chardin expanded this concept by reinterpreting the tenets of science as well. Today, thinkers such as Jonathan Sacks, Karen Armstrong, John Haight and Richard Rohr continue this expansion.

As Michael Dowd observes, such ‘reinterpretation’ isn’t new to Western thinking::

“Just as Augustine reinterpreted Christianity in light of Plato in the 4th century, and Aquinas integrated Aristotle in the 13th, today there are dozens of theologians across the spectrum re-envisioning the Christian faith. Whose ideas are they integrating now? Darwin, Einstein, Hubble, Wilson and all those who have corrected, and continually contribute to, an evidence-based understanding of biological, cosmic, and cultural evolution.”

Principles of Reinterpretation

To many, however, the precepts of religion are too deeply rooted in the idea of God as completely supernatural to allow for such interpretation. God is understood as above nature but so powerful as to break through to the level of nature. To others, the traditional view of God, with its elements of magic and superstition, simply are not worthy of consideration.

Somewhere closer to the center of these two poles is the observation from Richard Dawkins, prominent atheist, in his book, “The God Delusion”:

“There must have been a first cause of everything, and we might as well give it the name God, but God is not an appropriate name unless we very explicitly divest it of all the baggage that the word ‘God’ carries in the minds of most religious believers. The first cause that we seek must have been the basis for a process which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence.”

   The opening of atheism to concepts such as a ‘first cause’ which ‘raises the world’ in a process of ‘increasing complexity’ is simply another way of understanding God as ‘secular’.

And, coming at it from the opposite pole, we can see how the thinkers listed above, Blondel, Teilhard, Sacks, Armstrong, Haight and Rohr offer discrete principles for mining the ore of traditional religious lore for the gold that lies within.

Blondel, writing late in the nineteenth century, suggested several ‘principles’ which could offer clarity in understanding the ‘ground of being’ from a secular perspectives. His principles are outlined in Gregory Baum’s book, “Man Becoming”.

• ‘There is no human standpoint from which God is simply man’s ‘over-against’ “.  It is impossible to think of ourselves over here, and then of God, as over against us. This is impossible because we have come to be who we are through a process in which God is involved.
• “Every sentence about God can be translated into a declaration about human life”. An example of this principle: To say that “God Exists” means that “We are alive by a principle that transcends us, over which we have no power, which summons us to surpass ourselves and frees us to be creative”.
• “That God is person means that man’s relationship to the deepest dimension of his life is personal”, not that God is a person (which based on the definition above would limit God).
• “That God is Father means that human life is oriented towards a future freely given”. God is ‘on our side’.

Teilhard and others expanded upon Blondel’s early insights into the recognition of religion (properly reinterpreted) as a valid hermeneutic for understanding the human person embedded in the universal process of evolution. From these expansions, seven ‘principles’ can be seen:

–          Evolution occurs because of a fundamental characteristic of matter and energy which over time organizes the ‘stuff of the universe’ from very simple entities into ever more complex forms.  This principle continues to be active in the appearance and continued evolution of the human person.

The Principle: We grow as persons because of our potential for growth, which comes to us as a particular instantiation of the general potential of the universe to evolve in the direction of greater complexity

–          All things evolve, and the fundamental thread of evolution is that of increasing complexity

The Principle: The increasing complexity of the universe is reflected in our individual increase in complexity, which in the human manifests itself as personal growth

–          The basic process of physics by which evolution occurs consists of elements of matter pulled into ever more complex arrangements through elemental forces.  When recognized as part of the elements and forces described in the Standard Model of Physics, the phenomenon of increasing complexity completes the Standard Model by adding the characteristic which makes evolution possible. This process continues to manifest itself today in the evolutionary products of human persons and the unitive forces of love which connect us in such a way in which we become more human.

The Principle:  Just as atoms unite to become molecules, and cells to become neural systems, so do our personal connections enhance our personal growth which enhances our societies and assures our evolution.

Adding the effect of increasing complexity to the basic theories of Physics also unites the three eras of evolution (pre-life, life, conscious life) as it provides a thread leading from the elemental mechanics of matter through the development of neural systems in Natural Selection to the ‘awareness of awareness’ as seen in humans.

The Principle: This ‘thread’ therefore continues to be active in every human person in the potential of our personal ‘increase in complexity’, which of course is our personal growth.

–          This addition points the way to understanding how evolution continues to proceed through the human person and his society.  The neurological advancement in living things evolves the central neural system (the brain) in three stages: the reptilian brain, with its instinctive fight/flight reactions; the limbic brain, which incorporates emotional care of the young; and the neo-cortex brain, which is capable dealing with these instinctual stimuli.

The Principle: Human evolution can be understood as the increasing skill of employing the ‘higher’ neocortex brain to modulate the instinctual stimuli of the ‘lower’ brains.

–          This ‘skill’ is the subject of nearly every religious and philosophical thought system in human history.  Understanding the nature of the reality which surrounds us is a critical step, which must be followed by decisions of how to react to it if we are to fulfill our true human potential.

The Principle:  Finding the core of a religious teaching involves understanding how the teaching can lead to increasing the skill of using the neo cortex brain to modulate the instinctive stimuli of the ‘lower’ brains’.

–          “We must first understand, and then we must act.” (Teilhard).  If our understanding is correct, then an action appropriate to the understanding can be chosen.  If we act in accordance with what is real, our actions will contribute to both our personal evolution (our process of becoming more whole, more mature) as well as the evolution of our society.  As Richard Rohr puts it, “Our lives must be grounded in awareness of the patterns of the universe.”

The Principle:  Authentic religion helps us to be aware of and cooperate with the creative energies which effect the universal phenomenon of evolution.

The Next Post

This week we continued an overview of the eleven posts on the evolution of religion, looking at specific principles that help to see the underlying value of religious teachings among the many teachings that Richard Dawkins sees as ‘baggage’.

Having seen this, next week we will move on applying these principles to the core concept of all religions: that of the ‘Ground of Being’, better known as “God”. What does understanding God from the secular viewpoint do to the idea of relating to ‘Him”?