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Finding God through science

Reinterpreting God- Part 1, A Starting Place

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Today’s Post

Last week we concluded the identification of eighteen ‘principles of reinterpretation’ that we will use to address the traditional teachings of Western religion.  Since all religions in some way address and attempt a definition of the underlying ‘ground of being’, that of God, we will begin here.

Where to Start?

The concept of God as found in the many often contradicting expressions of Western religion can be very confusing.  Given the duality which occurs in both the Old and New Testament (such as punishment-forgiveness), layered with the many further dualities introduced by Greek influences in the early Christian church (such as body-soul) (”The Evolution of Religion, Parts 1-10,  Sept 3, 2015 to Jan 7, 2016), and topped by many contemporary messages that distort the original texts (such as the “Prosperity Gospel”) this is not surprising.  Finding a thread which meets our principles of interpretation without violating the basic findings of science but staying consistent with the basic Western teachings can be difficult.

A perhaps surprising starting place might come from the writings of one of the more well-known atheists, Richard Dawkins.   Professor Dawkins strongly dislikes organized religion, but in his book, “The God Delusion”, he casually remarks

“There must have been a first cause of everything, and we might as well give it the name God.  Yes, I said, but it must have been simple and therefore whatever else we call it, 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 simple basis for a ‘self-bootstrapping crane’ which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence.”

Here we find an excellent outline of the nature of the ‘fundamental principle of existence’:

–           It must be the first cause of everything

–          It must work within natural processes

–          It must be an active agent (“a ‘self-bootstrapping crane’ ”) in all phases of evolution from the Big Bang to the appearance of humans

–          It must be an agent for increasing complexity (“the raising of the world as we know it into its present complex existence”)

–          It must be divested of “all the baggage” (such as magic and superstition) of many traditional religions)

–          Once so divested, “God” is an appropriate name for this first cause

Dawkins goes on to claim that such a God cannot possibly be reconciled with traditional religion.  Paradoxically, he fails to grasp how acknowledging the existence of a “first cause” which raises everything to its current state is indeed at the core of all religion and offers an excellent place to begin this reconciliation.  Our process for this ‘reconciliation’ is of course that of ‘reinterpretation’.

For an example of such reinterpretation, in our preliminary outline above we find a reflection of Pope John Paul II’s statement on science’s relation to religion:

“Science can purify religion from error and superstition.”

So here in this starting place we can begin to see a view of God that is antithetical to neither science nor religion, but one in which John Paul II echoes Teilhard when he sees it as one in which:

“Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.”

But What About the Baggage?

Both John Paul II and Richard Dawkins recognize that Christianity has developed a complex set of statements about God.  How is it possible to put these statements into a context which is consistent with the simple outline offered above: to ‘divest them of their baggage’?  This is the objective of this last section of the blog.

The way to go about it?  We will use those ‘principles of reinterpretation’ which we identified in the last two posts to ‘divest the baggage’ in which the traditional statements about God are frequently wrapped.

A Preliminary Definition of God

To start this process, I offer a simple working definition of God:

“God is the sum total of all the forces by which the universe unfolds in such a way that all the entities that emerge in its evolution (from quarks to the human person) each have the potential to become more complex when unified with other entities.”

The question could be asked, “But isn’t this just Deism?’  We addressed this question in the posts, “But Isn’t This Just Deism?”-  6-20 August, 2015”, and noted the differences between our definition and that of Deism.  In summary, the Deists, most notably represented by Thomas Jefferson, conceived of a ‘ground of being’ which was responsible for everything which could be seen at that time.  In their minds, in order to strip “the baggage” from the religious expressions of their time, God had to be understood as a designer and builder of the world, but once having built it, retired from the project.  Theirs was a static world and in no need of continued divine involvement.  As they saw it, Man, given his intelligence by God, was capable of operating the world independently from its creator.

The Deists were off to a good start, but without the grasp of the cosmos and its underlying process of evolution that we have today, they were unable to conceive of a continuing agent of an evolution which continually manifests itself in increasing complexity.  Their static world postulated either an uninvolved God or (as they saw traditional religion’s belief) a God continually tinkering with his creation.

The Next Post

Next week we will begin to examine conventional conceptions of God, starting with that of ‘person’.

Reinterpretation, Part 3 – Reinterpretation Principles, Part 1

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Today’s Post

Last week we addressed the need to reinterpret our traditional beliefs and identified the need for guidelines, ‘principles’ which can be applied as we begin this journey.

The Teilhardian Approach

The insights of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin have provided a basis for our search for “The Secular Side of God”.  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 are at work in the continuation of evolution through the human person.  His insights compromise neither the theories of Physics in the play of elemental matter following the ‘Big Bang” nor the essential theory of Natural Selection in the increasing complexity of living things, but rather brings them together in a single, coherent process.

While expanding and integrating these two powerful explanations of nature into a single vision, his was one of the first to include the undeniable phenomenon of ‘reflective thought’, the ‘knowledge of consciousness’ which makes the human person both unique in the biological kingdom and yet rooted in the cosmic scope of evolution.  This uniqueness, unfortunately, has been often addressed by science as an ‘epi-phenomenon’ or just as a pure accident.  Teilhard instead places it firmly on the ‘axis of evolution’, that of increasing complexity, thus affording us a lens for seeing ourselves as a natural and essential product of evolution.  Understanding evolution, therefore, is an essential step toward understanding the human person, how we fit into the universe, and how we should react to it if we would maximize our human potential.

Principles of Reinterpretation

Teilhard’s unique approach to evolution is addressed in more detail in the eight posts, “Looking at Evolution” January-April 2015”.  His approach offers a basis for principles which will be valuable in our search for reinterpretation and relevance of traditional religious thought:

–          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

–          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 added to 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 that we become more human.

The Principle:  Just as atoms unite to become molecules, and cells to become neural system, so do our personal connections enhance our personal growth

–       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:

  • Reptilian: Basic instinctual life sustaining functions: breathing, vascular management, flight/fright reaction
  • Limbic: Appearance of instinctive emotional functions necessary for the longer gestation and maturation of mammals
  • Neo-Cortex: Appearance of the potential for mental processes independent of the stimuli of the ‘lower’ brains.

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 this skill.

–          “We must first understand, and then we must act”.  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 Teilhard puts it,

“Those who spread their sails in the right way to the winds of the earth will always find themselves born by a current towards the open seas.”

Or, 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

Richard Rohr sees our growth as human persons as taking place in a series of Order > Disorder > Reorder. As he sees it, “Most conservatives get trapped in the first step and most liberals get stuck in the second”. His insight is that healthy religion is all about helping us get to the third, ‘Reorder’.  In this third stage we begin to demand that teachings must be both relevant and capable of helping us find the basic human threads of growth, the

 “ tides in the affairs of men, which, when taken, lead us to new life, but when omitted, all our voyage is bound in shallows and miseries” (apologies to Shakespeare)..

The Next Post

This week we looked at principles of reinterpretation that were derived from Teilhard’s insights.  Next week we will consider other principles that we will employ as we examine religious teachings for their relevance to human life.

Reinterpretation, Part 1 – Relevancy

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Today’s Post

Last week we concluded the third segment of the blog with a summary of the first three segments.  We also identified the observations, assertions and perspectives that we have gathered to form a basis for the fourth segment: Reinterpretation.  In this fourth and final segment we will address many of the statements of Western belief and explore the opportunities for reinterpretation that these new perspectives offer.

This week we will begin this segment with a look at the idea of ‘reinterpretation’ itself.

Why Do We Need Reinterpretation?

In his book, Man Becoming, Gregory Baum describes the work of Maurice Blondel in reinterpreting the traditional teachings of Christianity.  He summarizes a basic problem with Christian doctrine:

“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.”

In Blondel’s view, the key to relevance was reinterpretation.  In order to increase relevance, to increase our inner grasp of reality and understand the most fruitful engagement with it, we must constantly reinterpret it.

Baum notes that Blondel saw an impediment to the relevance of Christian theology in the tendency to focus on ‘God as he is in himself’ vs ‘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 Christianity is reflected in a theology of what and who God is apart from man.  This results, as Sacks notes, in 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 (Nov 26, The Evolution of Religion, Part 7 : The Rise of Christianity: The Issue of Concepts).  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.”

Note that this simple QA reflects several aspects of such dichotomy.

First that ‘this life’ is simply a preparation for ‘the next’.    This life is something we have to endure to prove our worthiness for a fully meaningful and happy existence in the next.  Our goal here is simply to make sure that we live a life worthy of the reward of heavenly existence when we die.  Like the line from a child’s book, “First comes the work, and then the fun”.

Second, as follows from the first, the finding of meaning and the experience of happiness can’t be expected in human life.

o   Ultimate meaning is understood as ‘a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved’.  All things will not be made clear until the next life.

o   Happiness is a condition incompatible with the evil and corruption that we find not only all around us, but that we find within ourselves

o   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 understanding in Christian history slowly moves God into the role that Blondel called the “over/against” of man.  It is not surprising that one of the evolutionary branches of Western belief, Deism, would result in the understanding of God as a powerful being who winds up the universe, as in a clock, setting it into motion but no longer interacting with it.

Dichotomy and Reinterpretation

So, where does this leave us?  The majority of western believers seem to be comfortable living with these dichotomies (not to mention the contradictions) present in their belief systems in order to accept the secular benefits of religion as outlined in the last segment:

–          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 that (as the atheists claim) 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 the ills of western society require some connection to the spiritual realm claimed by religion?  Put another way: is it possible to re-look at these claims to uncover their evolutionary values?  How can the claims of religion be re-understood (‘re-religio’) in terms of their secular values: to look at them, as Karen Armstrong asserts, as “plans for Action” necessary to advance human evolution?  Certainly, in doing so, belief has the potential to recover the relevancy that is necessary for finding meaning.

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

The Next Post

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

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

Where Have We Got To? : A Summary of The Blog So Far – Religion

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Today’s Post

Last week’s post summarized the first two segments of the blog, Evolution and Science.  Today’s post will summarize the third segment, Religion.

Religion (September, 2015 to April: 2016, What is Religion?)

We have seen that the general rise of complexity as observed by science requires a ‘principle’, just as do the play of the forces identified by Physics, Chemistry and Biology.  However, extrapolating from this general observation to a God as reflected in the many conflicting religious creeds is quite something else.  The spectrum of ‘belief’ is very broad indeed, and each creed reflects a different perspective on ourselves as well as the reality that we inhabit.

In this third segment, we looked at Religion from a secular perspective, as the human attempt to make sense of our environment and the part that we play in it.   From this perspective religion can be seen to evolve, not in the physical sense of slow changes to our physiology, but through the cultural structures by which acquired knowledge and wisdom are passed from generation to generation.

These posts (Sept 3 – Jan 7, The Evolution of Religion) went on to examine religion as an evolving, living thing, tracing its emergence from ancient myths and rules for society, through the influence of early historical modes of thought, and on through the confluence of the great Greek and Hebrew civilizations to their impact on Western society.

With this historical perspective in mind, we went on to offer a multifaceted definition of religion.

We noted that in general, evolution in the human can be seen in the increasing skill of applying the neocortex brain to the stimuli of the lower limbic (emotions) and reptilian (fear, antagonism) brains. (February 4– What is Religion? Part 2: The Evolution of Understanding)

With this perspective in mind, we explored other areas of human existence in which religion contributes to our understanding,

–          a basis for human action (February 18– What is Religion? Part 3: Enabling Us to Act)

–          contributing to our sense of place in the scheme of things, (March 3– What is Religion?  Part 4: Belonging)

–          understanding of our potential and the basis for it, (March 17 – What is Religion?  Part 5: Transcendence)

–          as both a contributor to the stability of society (March 31 – What is Religion?  Part 6:  Stability, Part 1), and its flip side, as often an inhibitor to this stability (April 14 – What is Religion?  Part 6:  Stability, Part 2).

From these posts, religion can be seen as a plethora of assertions about ourselves and our place in the universe.  Many of these assertions are clearly in contradiction:

The Eastern emphasis on the diminishment of the uniqueness of the human person as it approaches the ‘all’, versus the Western emphasis of the enhancement this uniqueness as it approaches the ‘all’

In the Western (Judeo-Christian) tradition:

The ‘monotheistic’ assertion, in which a single God is the root of all reality, versus the ‘duality’ necessity for a second such ‘root’ to explain the existence of evil

And, closer to home:

The ‘left’ Western understanding of scripture as metaphorical truth, versus the ‘right’ Western understanding of scripture as literal truth

Nonetheless, all these systems of belief have a core which embraces a transcendent aspect of reality, the open-endedness of human person and the need to overcome the restrictions of ego to be able to be able to capitalize on human potential.

On To the Final Segment

In preparation for the final segment, in which we will re-look at many of the basic precepts of Western religion, we will employ the observations, assertions and perspectives that we have gathered in the first three segments.  In summary:

–          The universe unfolds from principles identified by Physics, but advances in the direction of increased complexity

–          Understanding that each new product of evolution contains the potential for this increased complexity is to perceive an ‘axis’ along which evolution proceeds

–          To acknowledge this principle of increasing complexity as an addition to those principles recognized by science is to recognize the existence of a principle by which we come to be as evolutionary products aware of their consciousness

–          All human thought addresses this principle by attempting to

o   articulate this principle: to describe, measure, and in general, understand how it is manifested in our lives

o   understand how our lives can be lived in order to see it more clearly

o   learn how to take full advantage of it: to maximize our potential, and therefore live our lives more fully.

–          Of all human thought, Religion comes closest to addressing this principle most explicitly.  In Teilhard’s words, religion consists of an attempt to ‘articulate the noosphere’.

So given that reality does indeed contain a thread which, if recognized and followed, will lead on to an enhancement of our lives, can the many manifestations of understanding presented by our Western religions indeed be leveraged for such ‘articulation’?  If so, how?

The fourth and final segment of this blog will explore such leverage.  While the bewildering array of dogmas, theological statements, rituals and historical twists and turns found in Western religion are often contradictory and indeed often antagonistic, there are many basic concepts which are potentially compatible and even integrated at their historical base.   As quoted previously, from Karen Armstrong:

“Instead of jettisoning religious doctrines, we should look for their spiritual kernel.  A religious teaching is never simply a statement of objective fact: it is a program for action.”

Further, and this is the goal of the final segment, the perspectives developed in the first three segments of this blog offer a basis of reinterpretation of the traditional teachings of Christianity.  Such reinterpretation offers the prospect of clarifying their relevance to human life.  By seeing the ‘spiritual kernel’ which shines through the often clumsy statements of belief offered by our Christian expressions, it is possible to understand the potential that they offer to our human existence.

Borrowing from Maurice Blondel, the perspectives of the first three segments of the blog offer ‘principles of reinterpretation’ that seek to understand ‘statements about the divine’ (as expressed by traditional Christianity) in terms of ‘statements about the human person’.

The Next Post

In the past two weeks, we have summarized the first three segments of the blog.  Next week we will move on to the fourth and final segment of the blog in which we will address the many statements of Western belief and explore the means of reinterpreting them in the light of the perspectives offered in the first three segments.

In this way, we will explore how religion can be seen to take on the secular task which powers the continuing evolution of the human person and his society.

What is Religion? Part 5: Transcendence

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Today’s Post

We’ve looked at religion so far as a way of making sense of things, as a locus for our evolved understanding, as a basis for our acting, and as a context for our sense of belonging.  Today we will look at religion as a ‘signpost to transcendence’.

Transcendence: More Than We Can See

Human history is filled with intuitions of a reality which exists outside, beyond, above or beneath the tangible world that we all experience.  Ancient cultures, through their myths and rituals, routinely attributed supernatural causes to things they did not understand, and the gods and religions that they invented gave structure to an otherwise dangerous world.

As we saw in the post of September 17, “The Evolution of Religion, Part 2- The ‘Axial Age’, about 500 BCE the object of ‘understanding’ began to shift from our environment to ourselves.   As Karen Armstrong puts it

“This was one of the clearest expressions of a fundamental principle of the Axial Age:  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.”

This evolving awareness of our environment from ‘the unknown’ to ‘the yet to be known’ involves a new understanding of the future as ‘promising’, filled with ‘potential’, and is the basis of the human sense of transcendence.

In this sense, we stand before a future which is unknown (and hence risky) but nonetheless has the potential to yield to our yearnings.  While we may feel finite and limited (and hence weak) when we sense the risk, we may also be able to sense the potential for both understanding and dealing with the unknowns that we will encounter as we step forward.

None of this can be objectively proven, but to the extent that we doubt we are unable to take this step into the unknown.

A Brief History of Transcendence

As humanity has gone forward, slowly replacing our sense of transcendence as simple ‘intuition of the unknown’ with an increasingly clear understanding of ourselves and our environment, it might be expected that this milieu of transcendent reality would be eventually replaced by empirical facts.  This, in fact, is the belief expressed by the atheist community.

However, even the famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, recognizes that something is at play in human evolution that moves us forward.  He refers to this something as “the phenomenon of Zeitgeist progression” which he explains:

“..as a matter of observed fact, it (human evolution) does move…  (the Zeitgiest) is probably not a single force like gravity, but a complex interplay of disparate forces like the one that propels Moore’s law.“

While it is certainly true that the history of religion and society as a whole can be superficially seen as the continual replacing of supernatural rationale for phenomena by empirical explanations, as Dawkins asserts, it continues to be enriched by a ‘Zeitgeist’ which pulls it forward in the direction of increasing complexity.

Science, in particular, is enriched by such a phenomenon.  The basic principle which underlies every scientific theory is that there is something not yet known which causes something that is observed.  It may well be true that this process of discovery may result in an empirical explanation for this ‘something’.  However, faith that the nature of reality is such that it will yield to human inquiry is itself an acknowledgement of its transcendent nature.

The other aspect of this faith is that the human activity of ‘reason’ is capable of both managing the process of discovery and of understanding reality sufficiently to describe it.

From this perspective, ‘transcendence’ can be understood as the ‘open-ended’ nature of both ourselves and our environment.

Teilhard addresses this movement toward transcendence at both the personal and universal level:

“Evolution consists of the elaboration of ever more perfect eyes in a world in which there is always more to see.”

Religion and Transcendence

Religion, in its role of ‘making sense of things’ has a long history of informing human society.  In this long history, however, it has accumulated an immense amount of supernatural, mythical and otherwise other-worldly explanations for entities and phenomena.  The Western bible, for example, contains many such depictions and explanations.  In its roots of thousands of years of multiple oral traditions, fragmentation of Jewish society and scribal redactions it also contains many contradictions.

These aspects of the bible have given rise to much ado in Western religions as well as encouragement to the recent rise of Western atheism.   The Western expressions of Christianity fight among themselves over the meaning to be derived from scripture, while the atheists crow over the many inaccuracies and contradictions of literal interpretations.

But all religions insist on ‘meaning’ beyond their literal expressions.  As Karen Armstrong asserts above, religion offers “the means of rising above the world”, of rising above the obvious, the tangible, the material and the limiting aspects of reality.  This “means of rising” can be recognized as the ‘Zeitgeist’ of Dawkins, active in human evolution as it moves us forward.

Religion reminds us that there is more to life than that which appears.  As we have seen in the thinking of Teilhard:

  • in his understanding of evolution as it rises through our life through the activation of our potential for growth and relationships
  • as his perspective rounds out the findings of science as it accommodates the human in scientific thinking
  • as religion can be understood as the human attempt to reflect these aspects of life

From this perspective, religion is a signpost to transcendence.  It reminds us that the thread of evolution continues its billions of years of upwelling to flow in our lives, and in our society, continually offering us

  • an increase in our ‘complexity’: our growth and maturity
  • and a more robust energy of relationship: our ability to love.

The Next Post

The next two posts will provide a sixth and final approach to defining religion, that of “Stability”.

What is Religion? Part 3: Enabling Us to Act

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Today’s Post

In the last two posts, we have looked at religion as a social attempt and an evolved perspective which helps us to make sense of our surroundings and understand our place in them.  Today we will look at religion in the context of how to conduct our lives in such a way that we (as quoted above by Richard Rohr):

“.. move beyond our early motivations of personal security, reproduction and survival (the fear-based preoccupations of the ‘reptilian brain’), … to proceed beyond the lower stages of human development.”

In other words, to maximize our human potential in our growing, maturing and thriving as persons.

Religion as a Basis for Human Action

From this perspective, religion is whatever concept of reality we work from when we make the decision to act. Before we make a decision, we have to make a little mental trip into the future to look at its probable consequences.  Acting on the decision requires that we have some measure of confidence that the decision will achieve the objective we established for it; essentially faith that the decision will pay off.

Unfortunately, as Robert Goddard remarks, life requires us to make decisions the consequences of which are unknown at the time.  These unknown consequences require even more confidence. So, essentially, one aspect of religion is whatever we believe about reality that gives us the confidence to act, even when, especially when, we’re stepping into the unknown.  Even when, especially when, the unknown appears to be threatening.   To have confidence, and to be able to act on it, we must believe two things:

We are capable of performing the intended action

Reality is such that the success of our action is possible

If we fail to believe either of both of these, it is unlikely that we will try.  This dyad of belief in ourselves and trust in our environment underlies every action we take.

The terms religion and faith from this perspective can be just as secular as religious; neither point of view has a sole claim on our ability to act.  The famous atheist, Richard Dawkins suggests that if we strip conventional religion’s concept of god of its supernatural, magical, and mythological trappings, we can theoretically work towards a secular approach to religion that is equally valid in both worlds.

Religion, Evolution and Human Action

Given this simplistic definition, where does religion fit in to a secular approach to reality?  We have seen in this blog how, as Teilhard sees it:

– Reality unfolds in the direction of increasing complexity

– This complexity manifests itself in different ways in the three (pre-life, biological life, conscious life) phases of evolution but continues as a single thread connecting the past, the present and the future

–   God can be encountered in this phenomenon of increasing complexity as it rises in evolution at both the cosmic and personal level.

If God is to be seen in the upwelling of complexity in evolution, and therefore encountered in the human as our ever-increasing potential (our ‘person’) and measured in our ever-increasing capacity for relationship (the ‘energy of love’), the question must then be asked, “how can this potential and capacity best be realized?”

Key to undertaking this task is the recognition that the full potential for the human person and our relationships is unknown.  Teilhard points out that, while this is surely true, the path toward it can be envisioned by understanding the process by which we have come to be what we are.  From the ‘Big Bang’ to the present day, he understands this process as a spiral which sees:

A rise of complexity of the entity (atoms, cells, persons)

Which is manifested by an increasing capacity for union (physics, biology, love)

By which it is joined to other entities (other atoms, other cells, other persons)

Which in turn leads towards greater complexity and capacity for union (continued evolution)

He sees this dynamic process occurring in each step of evolution, from the ‘Big Bang’ to the human, and continuing in our evolution as individual persons.

From the December 10 Post “The Evolution of Religion, Part 8 : A Relook at Human Evolution”:

“If we see the evolutionary unfolding of entities and energy through Teilhard’s eyes, as leading from more simple things to more complex things which have more capacity for interconnection, then we can extrapolate this continuation of evolution to result in ever more complex human persons and more conscious and skillful cooperation with the energies of human connection.”

This ‘skillful cooperation’ is the cornerstone of basic religion. It is one among the many skills that humans develop to actualize their human potential: the skill of using the human brain to make sense of things and the acquiring of the wisdom to do so.

In other words, valid religion is a basis of both being and acting.

From this perspective, Karen Armstrong notes:

“Instead of jettisoning religious doctrines, we should look for their spiritual kernel.  A religious teaching is never simply a statement of objective fact: it is a program for action.”

The “search for the spiritual kernel” opens the door for the fourth and final segment of this blog in which we will take a look at traditional statements of Western religious belief for those important insights about the way we human beings work.

The Next Post

Before we move on to this last segment, however, I’d like to address another aspect of Religion- that of ‘belonging’.

 

What is Religion? Part 2: The Evolution of Understanding

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Today’s Post

Last week we looked at this question from the viewpoint of religion as a way to look at reality and our place in it, but hampered by the diverse and often contradictory manifestations of belief.  This week’s post will continue to address this question by looking at religion from the perspective of Teilhard: by situating it in the context of evolution.

Religion in the Context of Human Evolution

The key characteristic of evolution as it continues in the human, the skill of using the neocortex brain to deal with the primal urgings of the lower limbic and reptilian brains, offers a starting place to look at religion.

As Teilhard has observed, anything totally new (atoms, cells, persons) in the universe initially emerges in the appearance of its predecessor.   The earliest cell, for example, emerges ‘dripping in molecularity’, and operates at the level of the sophisticated, complex molecules from which it evolved.  The trappings of ‘life’ do not appear until much later.  So it seems in the case of the human.  Emerging from the forest of pre-humans, the first human may be distinguished anatomically from his predecessors by the presence of the large neocortex, but otherwise barely so.  It is many thousands of years before humans become aware of their uniqueness, and still many more before this uniqueness begins to be understood objectively.

The history of this evolution of understanding can be found in the human management of the primal urges of the lower brains.  This skill is learned over time and is part of acquired philosophical and cultural behavior.  As Richard Rohr states, this skill is as necessary for our personal evolution as it is for our evolution as a species:

“(It is necessary for us to) move beyond our early motivations of personal security, reproduction and survival (the fear-based preoccupations of the ‘reptilian brain’) … to proceed beyond the lower stages of human development.”

From Society to Self

Initially, religions emerged as a collection of evolved rules necessary for orderly society, and these rules are backed up by belief in supernatural sources.  It is not until the Axial Age (900-200 BCE) (September 17, “The Evolution of Religion, Part 2- The ‘Axial Age’ “) that these beliefs begin to address the human person himself, and philosophical systems begin to emerge to provide explanations.   As Karen Armstrong sees it:

“For the first time, human beings were systematically making themselves aware of the deeper layers of human consciousness.  By disciplined introspection, the sages of the Axial Age were awakening to the vast reaches of selfhood that lay beneath the surface of their minds.  They were becoming fully “Self-conscious””

As she observes, in spite of the many streams of thinking which developed during this brief period of time:

“The fact that they all came up with such profoundly similar solutions by so many different routes suggests that they had indeed discovered something important about the way human beings worked”.

Some religions, particularly those in the East, are less focused on god or gods, and more on behavior by which individuals can achieve their potential.

Other religions, particularly those in the West, focus more on positing the rules in a personal godhead, and basing religious beliefs on faithfulness to the rules.  Again, from Karen Armstrong, commenting on Western expressions:

 “It is frequently assumed, for example, that faith is a matter of believing certain creedal propositions.  Indeed it is common to call religious people “believers” as though assenting to the articles of faith were their chief activity.”

However, she goes on to say of the Axial sages:

“…they all concluded that if people made a disciplined effort to reeducate themselves, they would experience an enhancement of their humanity.  In one way or the other, their programs were designed to eradicate the egotism that is largely responsible for our violence, and promoted the empathic spirituality of the Golden Rule.  The consistency with which the Axial sages-quite independently-returned to the Golden Rule may tell us something important about the structure of our nature.”

As we noted last week: Teilhard understood the need for an understanding of both ‘the self’ as well as this ‘structure of our nature’ from both the scientific and religious perspectives:

“To explain the workings of the universe we must understand the forces and process by which it comes to be, and this understanding must include the human person.”

This simply stated approach to such an understanding is also the basis for beginning to approach God from the perspective of science (“understanding the forces and processes”) and extending this perspective to religion (“including the human person”)

Karen Armstrong also notes that most religions are based on the intuitive belief that the ‘forces’ by which the universe comes to be include a ‘personal’ aspect.  In support of such a synthesis, she cites the earliest (700 BCE) Eastern belief that:

“There is an immortal spark at the core of the human person, which participated in – was of the same nature as – the immortal brahman that sustained and gave life to the entire cosmos.  This was a discovery of immense importance and it would become a central insight in every major religious tradition.  The ultimate reality was an immanent presence in every single human being.”

The Next Post

Today’s post addressed the definition of religion in the context of evolution.  Next week’s post will address how belief underlies our ability to act as part of our becoming more what we have the potential to become.

What is Religion? Part 1: Making Sense of Things

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Today’s Post

Having taken a brief look at the evolution of religion over the last several weeks, today we will begin a final look at religion by addressing the question, “what is religion”?

The Many Manifestations of Belief

In previous weeks, we have looked at religion from a secular point of view: as simply the ongoing human attempt to make sense of our surroundings and develop strategies to help us cope with it.  Both history and even the most casual look at the world today, however, shows these attempts to result in a bewildering array of beliefs, practices and social structures which fall into the general category of ‘religion’.

Ian Barbour proposes a general definition of the term ‘religion’:

“A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”

This sort of definition rolls up an understanding of our environment into beliefs about the causes of this environment and the practices to be observed for us to appropriately deal with it.

East vs West

The content, modes and expressions of such beliefs, however, vary significantly among the many manifestations to be found among the many cultures in the world.  The differences between East and West beliefs and practices, for example, are significant enough to suggest that conventional definitions of the term ‘religion’ will not stretch sufficiently to encompass them all.

For example, there are significant differences between understandings of the human person and his place in society between the West and East.  In the East, ultimate fulfillment of the person consists in ‘dissolution’ into the ‘whole’, while in the West, it consists of articulation of the person in the form of a ‘soul’, which is gathered into the ‘whole’ intact.

Even the basic understanding of time is different between East and West.  The Western understanding of time as an ‘arrow’ preceding from a beginning and eventually coming to an end.  This is contrary to the Eastern understanding of time as cyclical, with its vision of the unending repetition of birth, death and rebirth on both the personal as well as the cosmic level.

Karen Armstrong comments on such differences:

“The idea of religion as an essentially personal and systematic pursuit was entirely absent from classical Greece, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, China and India.  Nor does the Hebrew Bible have any abstract concept of religion; and the Talmudic rabbis would have found it impossible to express what they meant by ‘faith’ in a single word or even in a formula.”

All expressions of belief, however, having occurred over such a great span of time and including the thoughts of so many thinkers, have accumulated diverse and often bewildering explanations and claims to truth.  The evolution of religion as the human attempt to make sense of his surroundings has gone on for such a long time that every possible belief (attempt to make sense) has evolved along with it.

Understanding Ourselves

The history of religious thinking, therefore, can certainly be seen as an often clumsy, un-integrated and contradictory attempt to articulate the personal aspect of the forces by which we, and the rest of the universe, have come into existence.

Teilhard noted the need for an understanding of both these forces and the persons which emerge from them:

“To explain the workings of the universe we must understand the forces and process by which it comes to be, and this understanding must include the human person.”

This simply stated approach to such an understanding is also the basis for our approach to God from the perspective of science (“understanding the forces and processes”) and extending this perspective to religion (“including the human person”).

So, In keeping with the insights of Teilhard de Chardin, one way of understanding religion is to place it into the context of human evolution.

The Next Post

Next week we will address the question ‘what is religion’ from this point of view.