Tag Archives: Secular search for God

January 31 2019 – The Secular Side of God: How Did We Get Here? Is God a Person?

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Today’s Post

Last week we returned to the question of God, and how God could be understood in a ‘secular’ sense, that is, from a non-religious perspective in keeping with the title of this blog, “The Secular Side of God”.  Understanding God as ‘the ground of being’, the agency by which the universe marches toward increased complexity, offers a starting point for understanding how this complexity can be seen as it appears in ever higher states until it reaches (so far) the human person.

Thus far, while this might establish God as a ‘principle’ by which the universe evolves towards greater complexity, it raises the question of God’s ‘personness’.  How does such a secular approach square with the Western religious concept that ‘He’ is somehow ‘personal’? Without this characteristic, isn’t God the same disinterested creator understood by the Deists?

Is God a Person?

One of the most common characteristics attributed to God by Western religion is that of ‘personness’.  In this perception, God is ‘someone’ with which each person can have a specific and tangible relationship, one through which the person is enriched.

The Jewish tradition understood that while God might be supernatural, there was connection possible between ‘Himself’ and ‘His’ creation. While the Jews were one of the first people to worship a single god, their tradition does not seem to be concerned with how God creates, much less how God is in ‘himself’, apart from ‘His’ relationship with creation.  Their perception of God is always perceived ‘in relationship’.   Whatever, whoever and however ‘He’ is apart from this relationship is of less interest to the writers of scripture than how ‘He’ manifests ‘himself’ to human persons.

Jonathan Sacks contrasts the translation of God’s statement of “His” being in the Old Testament from the Jewish “I will be where and how I will be” to the Western translation in Greek, “I am who am”.  This translation from Hebrew to Greek imposes a subtle but important change to how God is understood differently between the two religions. While the Christian understanding of God is static, immutable and constant, it omits the Jewish perspective of a ‘future tense’ in the Greek translation.  Effectively, the Jewish understanding of God admits to our greater understanding as we evolve, as well as a more immediate connection to ‘Him”.

This ‘future tense’ noted by Sacks is the key to understanding the essential connection between ‘person’ and ‘God’.  Looking at the concept of God as Teilhard does, in the context of ‘evolution’, this ‘principle of becoming’ (without which evolution would not occur) itself can be seen in the ever new ‘states’ which appear as evolution proceeds.   It goes from the nuclear forces by which atoms are forged, through the chemical forces which shape molecules, and on up the evolutionary chain, following the axis of increasing complexity, until (so far) it manifests itself in the energy by which human persons unite in such a way in which they are enriched.

Thus, while the hermeneutic of the value of ‘personness’ can be found in both Judaism and Christianity, it is an emergent characteristic of evolution.

The characteristics of this agent of evolution in the emergence of matter from the ‘primordial soup’ of the Big Bang, while not in themselves personal, are nonetheless the basis for the eventual emergence of ‘personness’.  Just as God is the agency of gravity, electromagnetic forces, chemical reactions and so on, ‘He’ is therefore the ‘agent’ of the ontological energy by which evolution continues in the human person.

The Personal Universe

Teilhard takes this insight a little further.  He recognizes that a universal characteristic of reality can be seen in the passage from energy to matter to thought on our infinitesimal speck of the immense universe.  The characteristic of increasing complexity as seen on our planet is evidence of the same ‘axis of increased complexity’ that functions everywhere in the cosmos.

In keeping with the ‘Standard Model’ of Physics, Teilhard notes that every product of universal evolution is composed of basic elements, such as quarks, which evolve into more complex entities, such as atoms and molecules.  Where conditions permit, these components will find ways to assemble themselves into centered, mobile and therefore increasingly complex entities such as cells.  In their continued ‘complexification’ these entities will continue their evolution, as they did on Earth, towards more complexity.  At each step, as happened here, entities can, conditions permitting, evolve more complex ways to unite, produce more complex and differentiated entities, and so on to a level which eventually becomes aware of its awareness.  Our common term for such a level is ‘personness’.

How will such entities elsewhere be different from human persons?  It’s impossible to tell, but other molecules might be capable of the complexification of our carbon and its fruitful alliance with oxygen.   Certainly at the biological level on our planet, without the K-T extinction (which stopped evolution of the dinosaurs), the foremost thinking entity on our planet might have evolved to be reptilian rather than mammalian.  The basic principle of evolution seems to be ‘end state agnostic’, and open to the emergence of any one (or all) creatures which possess ‘reflective’ powers similar to ours.

As Stephen Jay Gould famously said:

“If the evolutionary tape were played again, human life would not be expected.  In fact, even if it were replayed a million times or more, man would not be expected.”

  (Of course, Gould’s statement, meant to diminish what he saw as  ”human arrogance supporting the belief in God” did not take into account the probability that each of these ‘replays’, conditions permitting, would eventually lead to some sort of reflective consciousness.)

In Teilhard’s insight, all matter is capable of such evolution, and, where conditions exist to allow it, eventually consciousness aware of its existence will emerge.   Since such ‘consciousness aware of itself’ is a fruit of such increase of complexity, seemingly inevitable in all evolving systems (conditions permitting), Teilhard uses the term ‘Personal’ to describe the universe.

The Next Post

Last week we returned to the question of God, in keeping with the title of this blog: “The Secular Side of God”.   We took a relook at how God can be understood as the basic agent of evolution which over time adds a quantum of complexity to each new product.

This week we expanded this rehash to see how God can be considered as personal, engaged by evolution’s products as they become aware of not only their evolution but of the unique consciousness by which they become persons.  This unique level of consciousness, and the awareness that by possessing it we are not only all part of the same ‘tree of evolution’, but that increased awareness of it, and more importantly, cooperation with it is the only way that we can insure the continued evolution of both ourselves and our species.

Next week we will take a look at how such an awakening to this ‘spark of becoming’, effectively the ‘Divine Spark’ that we all possess, is a cornerstone to our continued march towards the future.

June 7 – Summing Up: “Articulating the Noosphere” and Living the “Theological Virtues”- Part 1

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Today’s Post

Last week we concluded our secular look at the three so-called “Theological Virtues”- Faith, Hope and Love- by seeing how Cynthia Bourgeault’s reinterpretation of Paul encapsulated the workings of these virtues in our most intimate relationships.

This week we will conclude this segment of the blog in which we have looked at Values, Morals and Sacraments as ‘articulations of the noosphere’ and saw how the ‘Theological Virtues’ of Faith, Hope and Love serve as attitudes, stances that we can take, in living them out.

The Articulation of the Spheres

Two things that nearly everyone can agree are the comprehensiveness of reality and the human’s ability to comprehend it.  Science depends on it and Religion offers a long history of human inquiry into the nature of existence and our response to it.

The current state of religion is a many faceted, often contradictory, but fervently felt set of beliefs about the world and our place in it.   The ten posts on the ‘History of Religion ‘ (http://www.lloydmattlandry.com/?m=201509) offers a brief and somewhat superficial overview of religion and its quest for insight into the human condition.

Science, coming into play much later, also offers an approach to understanding existence, although coming at the enterprise from an entirely different perspective.  While religion relies on the intuitions developed, passed down and modified in many ways into metaphors, practices and expectations, science, at least nominally, constrains itself to a collegially empirical approach, with heavy dependence on objective data, which is itself a product of independently verifiable observations.

Both of these powerful modes of thinking have developed significant ‘articulations’ of their respective spheres of thought.  Physics, the mainstay of the science of matter, has laboriously effected its ‘Standard Model’, which underpins many of the modern discoveries and applications by which we are surrounded.  Biology, the investigation of living things, through development of the theory of Natural Selection, has brought a profoundly deep understanding of living things, and more importantly, how we and they interact.

The Duality of the Spheres

As is commonly known, while these two profound modes of thought both address the single reality in which we all live, they are frequently seen to be in conflict.  Like nearly every human enterprise, they fall into different sides of an underlying ‘duality’, a dichotomy divided by a deeply conflicting understanding of the human person.

Physics, with its ‘Standard Model’ can be seen to have developed an ‘articulation of the lithosphere’, and Biology with its theory of Natural Selection an ‘articulation of the biosphere’.  Psychology steps in as the first attempt at a secular ‘articulation of the noosphere’.   But, as I have discussed in the four posts addressing psychology beginning with “November 24 – Relating to God: Part 5- Psychology as Secular Meditation- Part 2: The Transition”, (http://www.lloydmattlandry.com/?p=302), psychiatry seems no more united in addressing the human than are science and religion.  All three would seem, sharing as they do an adherence to the concept of evolution,   to be in competition with Religion, and its basis of intuition and scripture, for a comprehensive ‘articulation of the noosphere’.

The Next Post

This week we took a first look at summarizing the last fifteen posts in which we have addressed Teilhard’s ‘Articulation of the Noosphere’,  in values, morals and sacraments,  and finally in the attitudes captured in Paul’s so called “Theological Virtues’.

Next week we will conclude this summary by seeing how Teilhard understood uniting the Noosphere to the spheres of matter and life, and how his ‘articulations’ can lead to their successful inhabiting..

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

From The Materialistic Viewpoint

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

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

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

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

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

From the Traditional Theistic Viewpoint

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

The Next Post

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

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

November 23 – Reinterpreting Sacraments – Part 2 – The Reinterpreted Sacraments

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Today’s Post

Last week we began to look at the potential of the idea of ‘sacrament’ as an ‘articulation of the noosphere’.  This week we will take a look at how the seven sacraments, understood by the church in terms of ‘occasions of grace’, can be understood by our secular perspective as ‘signposts to the action of evolutionary energy’ in our lives.

The Seven Sacraments

Baptism

The traditional church teaching sees baptism as the conferring of the grace that will enable our eventual entry into heaven by taking away the stain of ‘original sin’.  In our secular perspective, this ‘first’ sacrament, baptism, is that which understands human birth to be an extension of the evolution of the universe.  Each life is another small limb on the branch of evolution, in which the energy of evolution manifests itself yet again as an element of consciousness to be valued, cared for, fostered, and understood for what it truly is.

Like all sacraments, the ritual of baptism involves both the ‘cultural tissue of the DNA of evolution’ (the church and society): the parents, the family and the community.  The ritual not only calls attention to the unique potential of human life, but does it in a way that recognizes the essential nature of the community in bringing this life to maturity.  It is a stepping stone to Teilhard’s mapping of the energy of love as the play of ‘centration’ and ‘excentration’ by which we come to be what we can be.

Confirmation

In church tradition, the sacrament of confirmation confers the grace of human spiritual growth.  In our secular perspective, the sacrament of confirmation goes on to ‘confirm’ the actuation of potential which occurs as we mature, recognizing that our potential for growth is assured by our cooperation with grace, ‘the energy of human evolution’.  Just as this grace is ‘gratuitous’, unearned, so our potential for maturity is assured and can be trusted if we but trust in its presence in our lives.  Confirmation asks us to become aware of this rise of evolutive energy in our lives, so that we can better cooperate with it.

Eucharist

In the traditions of the church, the sacrament of the eucharist, known as ‘communion’, is the central sacrament of church unity.  From our secular perspective, the sacrament of the eucharist is perhaps the sacrament most germane to human evolution.  In it, we participate in a symbolic communal meal, in which we recognize that we are all part of a wider community.  As we saw in our posts on May 11- July 20 (http://www.lloydmattlandry.com/?p=352), Seeing Jesus as the ‘Christ’ recognizes the human person as an eventual product of universal evolution, and as such each of us consists of a ‘branch’ of the axis along which this process of evolution proceeds.  From this perspective, all persons are not only ‘children of God’ (products of evolution) they are ultimately united by their share of the cosmic spark by which they come to be.  By participation in this ritual, we are reminded of this essential ground of unity, and of the necessity for cooperating with the energies of love by which we can be brought into a ‘greater possession of ourselves’ as we overcome our instinctual sense of separation from others.  In Teilhard’s words, the eucharist is the most important of the sacraments because:

“..through it passes directly the axis of the incarnation, that is to say the axis of creation.”

“(The eucharist) ..is but the expression and manifestation of the divine unifying energy applying itself little by little to every spiritual atom of the universe.”

Matrimony

The church teaches that the sacrament of matrimony is necessary for the natural joining of human persons in the process of procreation and child rearing.  In our secular perspective, it reminds us that the road to the more complete possession of ourselves that we refer to as ‘maturity’ must be undertaken in the context of relationship.  In the joining of two persons, the play of ‘centration’ and ‘excentration’ is essential to our continued growth.  It is a reminder that we can only become who we can be by engaging in relationship: our growth is assured as much by our ability to give love as it is by our ability to receive it.  In Teilhard’s vision, love is much more a structural energy which unites us in such a way as to expand our ‘person-ness’ than an emotion which draws us to each other.

Penance

The church teaches that the sacrament of reconciliation (referred to as ‘confession’ or ‘penance’) is necessary to return our soul to a state of grace and erase the stain placed on it by our sin.  Our secular perspective recognizes that we can build many impediments to our cooperation with grace, and hence to our relationships, thus impeding our personal growth.  And, as in all the sacraments, it offers the church as a media for the reconciliation that is necessary to overcome these impediments.

Last Rites

The church teaches that the sacrament of the sick (also referred to as the “last Rites’, or ‘Extreme Unction’) is sort of a ‘last chance’ for cleansing the soul before death, but also recognizes material benefits, such as bearing up under pain and even improving how we feel.  Our secular perspective calls attention to the fact that even death is an ‘occasion of grace’.  As one theologian expressed it, “The sacrament of the sick means we do not have to die alone.”

Again, the church provides the presence of the community and recalls our common connection.

Holy Orders

The sacrament of “Holy Orders” is often referred to as the ‘sacrament of service’.  It recognizes the church’s basic role of providing the ‘tissue of the DNA of human evolution’.

The Next Post

This week we moved from recognizing that the milieu of grace in which we live, the energy of evolution, can be articulated to locate those sparks of energy that are most relevant to our human growth, to some specific articulations expressed in the concept of ‘sacraments.  As we have seen elsewhere, this milieu of grace can be articulated in many other ways as well, such as in our political practices which highlight the necessity to trust the basic goodness of the human person as reflected in our belief in ‘inalienable rights’ and ‘the will of the people’.

Next week we will look into the idea of ‘secular sacraments’ in more detail.

November 24 – Relating to God: Part 5- Psychology as Secular Meditation- Part 2: The Transition

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Today’s Post

Last week we opened the subject of psychology as offering a secular approach to meditation: finding god by finding ourselves

–          Recognizing God as the agent of the upwelling of complexity in Cosmic evolution

–          Becoming aware of this upwelling in our own personal evolution

–          Finding God by finding our fundamental selves.

We saw how Freud was the first to address this undertaking in an objective, secular and empirical manner (as opposed to that of the intuitive and  scriptural).  We also saw how, while offering a magnificent array of new concepts, and working empirically, Freud’s psychology nontheless leads to a very negative understanding of our basic selves.  Meditation, even via psychology, can be very dangerous indeed, since it shows our basic selves as highly unreliable, even untrustworthy.

This week we will address an opposite approach to psychology which emerged in America in the last century.  This different approach, while also based on the empirical perspectives and methods of science, found a core of the human person completely orthogonal to Freud.

From Freud to Existentialism

(This topic is covered in much more detail in the Post of Feb 13, 2014, “Love from the Existential Perspective”, which is included in the Blog “The Phenomenon of Love”.)

As we saw in the previous post, Freud was successful in developing an integrated system of thought which objectively addressed the whole of human activity.  He pioneered the understanding of the human in terms of inner energies, motivations, stimuli and even “economies” that determine his development from birth to death, and did this in a way which mirrored the objective approach of science.  His treatment of human irrationality is unmatched. However, with his underlying materialism, misogyny and overall pessimism he was definitely pessimistic on the human person’s potential for satisfying relationships and personal maturity.

But we can find agreement between Freud and Teilhard on several things, such as the existence of a personal core of energy which underlies human growth and relationships, and understanding love as manifested in the reciprocal exchange of this energy between individual persons.  They sharply disagree on the nature and source of this energy, and the role that this reciprocal exchange could have in positive growth, maturity, and even creation of the person involved in its exchange.  The difference between these two schools of thought sharpens further when they are applied to human relationships at the social level.

As psychiatry and psychology continued to develop in Western science, many of the negative aspects of Freud’s thinking began to be reevaluated and modified as the increasing participation of Westerners in psychoanalysis created a large body of empirical data which could be analyzed to support or disprove the propositions which originally formed the basis for Freud’s thinking.  The relation between the analyst and the analyzed evolved as well, with the increasing educational level of the middle class, the acceptability of psychology by religion, and the emergence of expectations on the part of those undergoing analysis.

The Pioneers of Existentialism

In the nineteen forties and fifties, several psychologists emerged with a distinctively different and positive understanding of the human person and the dynamics of his growth and relationships with others.  This approach generally became known as “existential”.  Their general methods became known as ‘counselling’, and adopted by religion, as “pastoral counselling”.

Rollo May understood the basic tenet of existential psychotherapy as “that which stands with scientific analysis as expressed in the genius of Freud”.  However, the empirical data that science also brings into the picture unfolds the understanding of the human person on a deeper and broader level.  This deeper understanding assumes that it is possible to have a ‘science of man’ which does not ‘fragmentize’ him (by breaking him down into Freud’s compartments) and thus destroy his humanity in the process of studying him.  Unlike therapeutic interpretation as practiced in Freudian psychoanalysis (which consists of referring a person’s experience to a pre-established theoretical framework) ‘existential’ interpretation seeks to understand how the person himself subjectively experiences reality, then works with him toward actualizing his potential.  Psychology was moving from analysis and diagnosis to guided inner search.

Psychology was emerging as assisted secular meditation.

Instead of focusing on psychopathology and what goes wrong with people, Abraham Maslow formulated a more positive account of human behavior which focused on what goes right. He was interested in human potential, and how it could be actualized.  He believed that each person has a desire for self-fulfillment; namely, the tendency for him to “become actualized in what he is potentially”.  As we have seen, this requires us to first find ourselves, and then cooperate with this primal force which rises within us.

Ashley Mongatu believed that as a consequence of humanity’s unique evolutionary history, which requires us to be  highly cooperative, human drives are oriented in the direction of growth and development in love and cooperation.  He believed that what we are born for is “to live as if to life and love were one”.  Like Teilhard, he subscribed to the belief that evolution rises along an axis, and that we are located, both as individuals and society, on that axis.

These pioneers believed that the core of human personality is positive, and not irrational and capable of destruction as Freud believed.  Their clinical experience led them to recognize that the innermost core of man’s nature, in the deepest layers of his personality, the base of his “animal nature” is actually positive, basically socialized, forward-moving, rational and realistic.  They saw the goal of psychology as to help us find this inner self, then help us learn to cooperate with it.

In scientific circles, however, this was a difficult concept to accept.  In psychology, Freud and his followers presented convincing arguments that the id, man’s basic and unconscious nature, is primarily made up of instincts which would, if permitted expression, result in incest, murder and other crimes.

In religion as well, especially in the Protestant Christian tradition, our culture has been permeated with the concept that man is basically sinful, and only by something approaching a miracle can his sinful nature be negated.  The whole problem of therapy, as seen by this group, is how to hold these untamed forces in check in a wholesome and constructive manner, rather than in the costly fashion of the neurotic.

In contrast, the existentialists believed that the reason for this negative belief by many psychologists lay in the fact that since therapy uncovers hostile and anti-social feelings, it is easy to assume that this proves the deeper and therefore basic nature of man as unrelentingly negative.  Only slowly has it become evident that these untamed and unsocial feelings are neither the deepest nor the strongest, and that the inner core of a man’s personality is the organism itself, which is, in addition to self-preserving, also social and capable of perfection.

The Next Post

This week we saw how the basic tenets of psychology began to evolve from seeing the personal core as ‘dangerous’ to seeing it as a positive and trustworthy basis for human personal growth.  Next week we will look in more detail at how one of the most pivotal Existentialists applied this approach and the results he recorded.