How can we use Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ to recognize religion’s potential as an evolutionary tool?

Today’s Post

Last week we recognized the waning influence of religion in Western societies and addressed the need to rethink traditional beliefs in terms of human life to tap into their wellsprings of insight and recover their relevance.  We identified the concept of ‘reinterpretation’, first proposed by Maurice Blondel, and expanded eloquently by Teilhard de Chardin as the essential step for such relevance.  This week we will take a first step toward this goal by setting the stage for such new insight.

The Process of Reinterpretation

From the earliest days of human thought, humans have attempted to understand the workings of their environment, to make sense of it, and to better relate to it.  The whole of human history, from both science and religious viewpoints, contains a record of such activities.  Human artifacts such as legal and moral codes document our attempts (in Teilhard’s words) to “articulate the noosphere”.

This articulation always involves searching and growing, which in turn requires the readiness to replace previous, outworn concepts with ones more consistent with a constantly expanding grasp of the universe.

With religion, according to Blondel, such ‘replacement’ consists of discarding all the superstitious, anthropomorphic, and otherworldly statements of belief, much like Jefferson did in forging his assertion of human equality based on his reinterpretation of the Gospels.   In the resulting perspective God becomes the ‘core’, the “ground of being”, the ever-present agency which underlies everything as it ‘comes to be’.

In Blondel’s process of interpretation, this leads to new artifacts.  Statements can be made from the new perspective which emerges from our understanding that we are embedded in a process of ‘coming to be’.  To Blondel, it makes a difference that we see ourselves as ‘dynamic’, not static.  We are ‘becoming’.

Teilhard expands and refines this approach by seeing the essential act of ‘becoming’ through his ‘lens of evolution’.  From his perspective, this ‘becoming’ can be quantified by the increasing complexity of the ‘stuff of the universe’ over time which underpins the evolution of the entire universe.   His insight provides the single thread which unites the three eras of universal evolution (pre-life, life, human life), and which is the key to explaining how humans ‘naturally’ emerge.

Teilhard understood that the evolutionary energy by which cosmic particles unite to increase complexity is just as present in the human activity of love as it is in the uniting of electrons and protons to become atoms.

He decomposed our individual and collective evolution into four steps:

– we always begin with a certain plateau of understanding in the first step,

–  we then address those things which don’t work under our previous worldview in the second.,

– then in the third step we strip out those perspectives,

– and finally in the fourth step we go on to find a better vantage point, and eventually build new constructs.

Principles of Reinterpretation

So, if we can agree on the process, what about the guidelines?  What signposts can we follow when we go about ‘stripping our conventional artifacts’?  What principles do we employ when we take on the very difficult job of attempting an objective perspective on our subjective inner prejudices and attitudes?  Many of these perspectives are so fundamental as to be nearly instinctual.  We didn’t consciously develop them; they come with the subconscious acceptance of the beliefs and practices of parents, teachers, and society in general during our formative years.  Overcoming them, therefore, requires us to lose the comfort and security of well-worn beliefs and begin a risky search for replacements.

The first step, therefore, is to follow thinkers like Blondel, Teilhard, Sacks and Rohr along this arduous path.

Blondel notes that all of us are to some extent already on this path.  The simple realization that we must constantly attempt to see others objectively and to transcend our ego and self- centeredness if we are to have deep relationships with them, is a first step along this path.  This need for overcoming ego is a basic tenet for nearly every religion.  It is therefore a basic ‘principle of reinterpretation’.

Therefore, when we set out along the road to reinterpreting our traditional beliefs, we must be armed with such principles.  As we will see, application of these principles to the many, often contradicting statements of Western religion will permit us to recognize the ‘core’ that Teilhard identifies and uncover their relevance to our lives.

Teilhard’s Approach to Interpretation

Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ has guided us thus far in our search for a universal perspective on ourselves.  Teilhard’s unique approach to the nature of reality provides insights into the fundamental energies which are at work in the evolution of the universe and hence, as products of this same evolution, are at work in our own personal evolution as well.  His insights compromise neither the theories of physics in the play of elemental matter found in the ‘Big Bang” nor the essential biological theory of Natural Selection in the ongoing evolution of living things.  Instead, they bring them together into a single, coherent, continuous process which unites the pre-life, life, and human life eras of cosmic evolution.  These insights also show how the ‘knowledge of consciousness’ which makes the human person unique in the biological kingdom is rooted in the cosmic scope of evolution.

This uniqueness, unfortunately, has been often addressed by science as an ‘epi-phenomenon’ or as just a pure accident.  Teilhard instead places it firmly on the ‘axis of evolution’, that of increasing complexity.  Doing so thus affords us a lens for seeing ourselves as a natural and essential product of evolution.

As Teilhard saw it, such a comprehensive understanding of evolution is therefore an essential step toward understanding the human person, how we fit into the universe, and how we should relate to it if we would most completely activate our human potential.

The Next Post

This week we took a first look at Blondel’s suggestion of ‘reinterpretation’ as a method of recovering the relevance of religion to human life.

Next week we will look at some different approaches to how our perspective of the basic things in our lives can change: how we can ‘reinterpret’.

How can we use Teilhard’s lens to rethink religion as an essential tool for evolution?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how Maurice Blondel, early in the last century, addressed the increasing irrelevance of religion in terms of its increasing emphasis on the ‘supernatural’, and how returning its focus to the human person was necessary for our continued evolution.  His recommendation was that religious doctrines be ‘reinterpreted’ in the light of the findings of science to recover their relevance to human life.  Or, as Teilhard would have it, they need to be examined through the ‘lens of evolution’

This week we will see how Blondel’s suggestion can be implemented.

Reinterpreting Religion

Blondel is difficult to read today, but Gregory Baum offers a clear summary of his insights in his book, “Man Becoming”.  He notes that Blondel saw an impediment to the relevance of Christian theology in its tendency to focus on ‘God as he is in himself’ as opposed to ‘God as he is to us’.  Jonathan Sacks echoes this tendency, noting that the main message of Jesus focuses on the latter, while the increasing influence of Plato and Aristotle in the ongoing development of Christian theology shows a focus on the former.  Both writers point out that this historical trend in the development of Christian theology is reflected in a focus on what and who God is apart from man.  This results, as Sacks notes, in the introduction of a new set of dichotomies which were not present in Judaism, such as body vs soul, this life vs the next and corruption vs perfection.  Such dichotomy, they both note, compromises the relevance of the message.

An example of this dichotomy can be seen in the ‘Question and Answer’ flow of the Catholic Baltimore Catechism:

“Why did God make me?

God made me to know, love and serve Him in this life so that I can be happy with Him in the next.”

   This simple QA reflects several aspects of such dichotomy.

• It presents the belief that ‘this life’ is simply a preparation for ‘the next’. This life is something we must endure to prove our worthiness for a fully meaningful and happy existence in the next.  Therefore, our purpose in life is simply to make sure that we live a life worthy of the reward of heavenly existence when we die.  As such, it has no implicit meaning.
• As follows from this perspective, we can’t expect meaning and the experience of happiness in human life.
  • Ultimate meaning is understood as ‘a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved’. Understanding only happens in the next life.
  • Happiness is a condition incompatible with the evil and corruption that we find not only all around us, but that we find within ourselves
  • Life is essentially a ‘cleansing exercise’, in which our sin is expunged and which, if done right, makes us worthy of everlasting life.

As both Blondel and Sacks noted, the increasing Greek content of this perspective in Christian history slowly moves God from the intimacy reflected in Jesus, Paul, and John into the role that Blondel identifies as the “over/against of man”.  It is not surprising that one of the evolutionary branches of Western belief, Deism, would result in seeing God as a powerful being who winds up the universe, as in a clock, setting it into motion but no longer interacting with it.

Dualism and Reinterpretation

So, where does this leave us?  Most Western believers seem to be comfortable living with these dualities (not to mention the contradictions) present in their belief systems in order to accept the secular benefits of religion such as:

• a basis for human action
• a contributor to our sense of place in the scheme of things
• a pointer to our human potential
• a contributor to the stability of society

While these benefits might be real, many surveys of Western societies, especially in Europe, show a correlation between increasing education and decreasing belief.  Is it possible (as the atheists claim) that the price for the evolution of human society is a decrease in belief?  That the increasing irrelevancy of religion is a necessary byproduct of our maturity?

Or is it possible that solutions to the ills of Western society require some connection to the spiritual realm claimed by religion?  Put another way: is it possible to re-examine these claims to uncover their evolutionary values?  How can the claims of religion be re-understood (‘re-ligio’) in terms of their secular values?  Is it possible to look at them, as Karen Armstrong asserts, as “plans for action” necessary to advance human evolution?  If so, religion certainly has the potential to recover the relevancy that is necessary for any tool with the potential of moving evolution forward.

To move toward such re-understanding, we will look at the idea of ‘reinterpretation’ itself, to explore how the perspectives of Teilhard, Blondel, Armstrong, Rohr and Sacks can be applied to the process of reinterpreting our two thousand years of religious doctrine development.

Considering that our lives are built on perspectives and beliefs that are so basic as to be nearly instinctual, how can we come to see them differently?  Our histories, however, contain many stories of such transformations, and the unfolding of our sciences and social structures are dependent upon them.

The Next Post

This week we took a first look at Blondel’s suggestion of ‘reinterpretation’ as a method of recovering the relevance of religion to human life.

Next week we will look at some different approaches to how our perspective of the basic things in our lives can change: how we can implement the process of ‘reinterpretation’.

   How can we use Teilhard’s lens to understand religion as necessary to evolution?

Today’s Post

For the past several weeks we have been tracing John Haught’s recognition that both religion and science need to evolve to effect the synthesis necessary to form a tool for dealing with the ‘risks of religion.  In this series we have noted that both science and religion clearly have developed ‘tools’ for dealing with our evolution, but that these tools, effective as they have been shown to be, are still a work in progress.
Last week we refocused Teilhard’ lens on religion’s ‘articulation of the noosphere’.

This week we will see at how religion’s side of this relationship must evolve if is to hold up its side of such potential synthesis.

Why Should Religion Evolve?

As Jonathan Sacks sees it, the secularization of Europe happened not because people lost faith in God, but because people lost faith in the ability of religious believers to live life peaceably together.  More gradually, but also more extensively, Western Christianity has had to learn what Jews had been forced to discover in the first century: how to survive without power.  From his perspective

– no religion relinquishes power voluntarily

– the combination of religion and power leads to internal factionalism, the splitting of the faith into multiple strands, movements, denominations, and sects

– at some point, the adherents of a faith find themselves murdering their own fellow believers

– it is only this that leads the wise to realize that this cannot be the will of God

What is needed, therefore, is for religion to continue to evolve, to recognize that many of the criticisms of the more well-spoken atheists are on target, and that most of the new findings of science only threaten the least reasonable aspects of religion as seen in such things as superstition, biblical literalism, dualism and focus on the afterlife.  The fundamental belief in a principle of reality that is ‘on our side’, an evolutionary process in which we can realize our potential, and a recognition of the need for love are only found in religion.  They need to be stressed anew for it to recover its relevancy to human life.

How can Religion Evolve?

What inhibits religion’s potential as a tool for ‘making sense of things’?  It was only a few generations ago that religion was at the focus of all societies, but most respected polls today show a trend of decline in religion’s importance to society.

Although still clearly in the minority, the atheist voice has risen strongly in this same time frame.  One consistent thread of this voice sees the religious viewpoint becoming completely replaced by an objective, materialistic and atheistic worldview in the near future.  Popular, learned, and eloquent voices, such as Richard Dawkins, Oxford professor of “Public Understanding of Science”, is one of many who have written copiously of the many contradictions and superstitions that can be found in Western religion as well as a significant lack of grounding in the physical sciences.  Science itself contributes to this trend as modern medicine and technology continue to extend their power to improve human welfare.

So, given these trends, how can religion move back to the center of human enterprise, equal to science in its application to the human need to ‘make sense of things’?  Maurice Blondel, an early twentieth century French philosopher, addressed the problem of relevance in religion:

“A message that comes to man wholly from the outside, without an inner relationship to his life, must appear to him as irrelevant, unworthy of attention and unassimilable by the mind.”

   With this succinct assertion, Blondel not only identifies the heart of the problem, but also opens the door to a path to returning relevance to religion.  His observation suggests that this path requires religion to understand and express its beliefs in terms of human life as opposed to providing information about the ‘supernatural’, that which is “wholly from the outside”.

We have discussed religion as a ‘tool’ for us to continue our evolution at both a personal and societal level.  Blondel proposes a ‘tool’ by which religion can realize its potential to improve its capability of helping us do just that.

The tool is ‘reinterpretation’.

The Next Post

This week we have seen how Jonathan Sacks echoes Teilhard’s call for a fresh approach to the potential synergy between religion and science.  Like Teilhard, he concludes that the success of the West requires a balanced synergy between science and religion if it is to continue.

Next week, we will expand Maurice Blondel’s suggestion of ‘reinterpreting religion’ to recover its relevance to human life.