Today’s Post

As a second step towards reinterpreting religion, we will briefly overview the history of religion from the vantage point of evolution.  As Teilhard noted, nothing can be well understood unless it is placed in an evolutionary context, therefore in keeping with the blog’s secular approach to God and religion that is what we will do in the next several posts.  This segment of the blog will look at the evolution of religion from three perspectives:

• As history
• As the evolution of thought processes influenced by language
• As the evolution of thought processes influenced by neurology

While the first perspective will look at religion in the wider sense, the second two will concentrate on the great confluence of Jewish, Greek and Christian thinking that happened in the birth of Western theology.

The Roots of Religion

Religion over many thousands of years can be seen to have accumulated insights and intuitions that are inextricably entwined with ancient beliefs and myths.  Matthew Kneale, in his book “An Atheist’s History of Belief” sees evidence of religious belief in the very first stirrings of human thought.  He notes three objectives present in the earliest religions:

• healing the sick
• controlling the movements of hunted animals
• improvement of weather

He saw religion as, “A way of lessening life’s frightening uncertainties”.  Further, he saw in it the appearance of attitudes which were unique to the human, such as:

• the ability to deal with the viewpoints of others
• recognizing and fending off danger from other humans
• supporting the making of alliance and friendships
• supporting collaborative activities in such things as protecting and feeding themselves and their children

Kneale saw one manifestation of evolution proceeding through the human as ‘improved quality of life’.  Life improves first for the elite as they begin to speculate about life after death. Their view of it changes from something to fear to something as positive, even if only reserved for the elite.  With the new tier of elite in society, the afterlife begins to be understood as also open to those who merit it.  Kneale sees this as a key thread of evolution: that of ‘morality’.  “Worrying more about the afterlife becomes possible as one worries less about life in this world.”  To him, the invention of the concept of an afterlife is evidence that life is improving.

The Evolution of Laws

Emerging civilizations evolved the need to regulate human relationships as a prerequisite for social order.  As human society began to evolve from small nomadic “hunter-gatherer” clans to larger groups settling near centralized crops with the beginnings of ruling hierarchies, the need for “codes” began to take shape to provide rules for coexistence.  These codes or laws were mostly enacted by the recognized ruler, who also took on the person of the ruling God to insure supernatural authority.

The earliest such set of laws seems to have emerged in the 24^th century BCE, and is known as “The Code of Urukagina”. Urukagina was a Mesopotamian ruler, but knowledge of his laws is second-hand, and is derived from later references to it.  Other rulers of the “fertile crescent” also promulgated their laws, such as The Code of Ur-Nammu (Sumerian- 1900-1700 BCE) and The Code of Hammurabi (Babylonian, approximately 1740 BCE).  By the tenth century BCE, rulers were expected to document their rules for societies through such promulgations, leading to the many examples preceding the Mosaic Law as addressed in the Old Testament.

The “Law of Moses” in Ancient Israel is distinguished from other legal codes in the ancient near East by its reference to offense against a deity rather than against society.  This contrasts with the other codes, most of which concern laws dealing with society, regulating the transactions among the citizens, and defining their obligations to the state.  The books of Deuteronomy, Exodus and Kings all offer a version the story of Moses receiving the “laws” (or “commandments” or “words” or “judgments” or “tables of testimony”).  While the details of the stories differ in the four different treatments in Deuteronomy and Exodus, they all include prescriptions for ritual, behavior and worship.

As societies continued to evolve, and distinct classes began to appear, the rules of society evolved with them.  One of the first of this new type of code was “The Law of the Twelve Tables” (Roman, 450-449 BCE), which was written as a result of the long social struggle between the Roman classes of ‘patricians’ (the elite class) and ‘plebeians’ (the working class).  While the patricians ruled society, they were dependent on the plebeians to run the machines of state, who were increasingly unhappy with their treatment.  This code became the foundation of Roman law, and was one of the first appearances of a “constitution”.

These codes, however, while addressing human interchanges at the level of society, as laws of behavior, addressed to a much lesser degree the underlying nature of the human person and the basis of personal relationships.   This was to change in the “Axial Age” (900-200 BCE) in which thinking about the nature of the human person and his relationships began to emerge.

The Next Post

The next post will address the ‘Axial Age’ and its profound impact on the history of religion.

Today’s Post

Last week we introduced the belief system of Deism as one which Richard Dawkins would have identified as a natural consequence of “stripping the conventional ’baggage’ of God from the concept of a ‘ground of being’ “.  He agreed with Thomas Jefferson that while the basic moral principles of Jesus have value, the rest of the New Testament contained only “so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture”.   Today we will look more closely at Deism but factor in scientific findings that were unavailable to the venerable founders of our country, and thus permitting a deeper development of Deism than that available for their consideration

So, What Happened to Deism?

Deism, while recognizing that there could be a rational basis for belief in God, had one significant weakness.  Deists believed that the Cosmic Designer, who started the world-machine and left it to run on its own, was impersonal and remote.  This was not a God who cares for individuals and actively relates to human life or a being to whom prayer would be appropriate, and with whom relationship was possible.  This was unlike the potential of traditional Western religion (despite all its shortcomings) to inform human life and offer hope for personal fulfillment, and therefore was rich in meaning to the average person.

Also, in their disdain for institutionalized religion, Deists attacked the institutional church: traditional Christianity was pictured as the enemy of the religion of reason.  In effect, the baby was thrown out with the bath.  With no means of connecting to the human psyche, Deism eventually became extinct as a movement.

So Why Isn’t This Blog Deism?

The thinkers of the Enlightenment, unfortunately, did not live to see the rise of one of the most important ideas in science: that of evolution.  In addition to providing a valuable frame of reference to biologists, the theory of evolution also gave rise to the concept of the universe, and everything within it, as “becoming”.

The thinkers of the Enlightenment saw the universe, and our world, as static, essentially unchanged since its creation.  It was a world capable of being built once, then abandoned by its builder who saw no need for continued connection.  Seeing the universe in the dynamic light of the twentieth century introduced an entirely new way of understanding the basic ground of being.

The idea of a basic principle of the universal framing force as one which would eventually evolve to beings conscious of their awareness would have seemed incomprehensible to them.  With it, as we have seen, the basic intuition of the Deists takes on new potential.

So, it seems, the Deists were on the right track.  Their idea of a universe fabricated by a creative force in which all parts mesh together in a unified reality was a good starting place.  Their view is quantified by Science’s understanding of the Six Cosmological Constants (June 11 – The Framing of the Universe, Part 1: Science’s Basic Perspective) which go much further in articulating how the universe holds together.  The missing piece of both Deism and the Six Cosmological Constants, as we have seen, comes into play when the dynamic, evolutive nature of the universe is recognized.  Seeing the universe as dynamic naturally leads to seeing it as increasing in complexity, else it would stall, becoming static.

Acknowledging this phenomenon of emerging complexity not only explains the upward momentum of evolution, it adds the missing piece to Deism.  Yes, the ground of being, first principle, or whatever name we give to the creator, can certainly be reasoned into the basic fabrication of the universe.  With the addition of the phenomenon of complexity, however, this creative force now can be seen to expand from the maker of the building blocks to the ongoing dynamic force which unites them in such a way as to power the expansion of the universe.  The addition of complexity extends Deism’s domain of creation to Theism.   

Deism, and the idea of Rational or Natural religion can therefore be seen as a first step to approaching the underlying truth of the human person and the universe surrounding him.  Even with all the perceived evils of religion, Jefferson’s belief that basic human “moral precepts” are contained in “great purity” in the teachings of Jesus suggests a way forward to the eventual “divestment of baggage” suggested by Dawkins.

Seeing these moral precepts as values which provide meaning to life and contribute to human growth and continued evolution through improved relationships therefore gives rise to the possibility of informing religion and improving its relevance to human life.  Our approach in this blog as we proceed with the reinterpretation of religion is therefore to “Throw out neither the baby nor the bath, rather restore to them their basic functions.”

As Karen Armstrong remarks in her book, ”The Great Transformation”:

“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 Next Post

This week we have seen how Deism can be understood as a first cut at the “Secular Side of God”, and how the understanding of the universe as ‘becoming’ can offer new life to this venerable concept.   In the next post, we will turn our inquiry to rethinking many of the aspects of religion to explore the possibility of its potential for “relevance to human life”.

Today’s Post

As we saw last week, Richard Dawkins himself, arguably one of the most eloquent apologists for atheism, points the way for this third phase of the blog, reinterpreting religion. Undoubtedly he believed that stripping the conventional ’baggage’ of God from the concept of a ‘ground of being’, or a ‘first cause’, would strip any religious meaning from the concept of God as well. The thought that the opposite might occur, that such reinterpretation might actually add relevance to the concept of God and the meaning of “person”, evidently did not cross his mind. The remainder of this blog will address such reinterpretation in the light of Teilhard’s secular, scientific approach to evolution and the framing of the universe taken in the first two phases. This third phase of the blog will consist of six parts:

• Distinguishing the approach of this blog from Deism (this post and the next)
• A brief history of religion
• What’s unique about Christianity?
• Some thoughts on a definition of religion
• Approaches to ‘reinterpreting’ religion
• Reinterpretations of common Western religious beliefs in the light of Teilhard’s insight into a more cohesive view of science

So far, this blog has identified a personal aspect of the “first cause’, as manifested in the integrated and unified ‘framing’ forces of the universe. This would not seem to lend itself to anything which possesses the traditional attributes of God found particularly in Western theology. Understanding God as “a manifestation of force” would not seem to equate very well with the God of the bible, or the God to which one prays, or the God with whom one could have a relationship. To this statement, Professor Dawkins would certainly agree. He would suggest that this particular perspective is just another type of Deism.

Deism

As a system of belief, the rise of Deism reflected the distinctive new eighteenth century viewpoint of the intellectual leaders of the Enlightenment: that religion should be based on reason. Deism, then, was the approach that “adapted Christianity to reason”, as Dawson puts it, by “divest(ing) it of all the baggage that the word ‘God’ carries in the minds of most religious believers.” Such ‘divesting’ resulted in a Natural Theology in which reason replaced revelation as a basis for belief. Effectively, the thinkers of the Enlightenment considered reason alone as sufficient to understand reality.

Deism therefore didn’t fall into the categories of ‘a-theism’ (non-belief in God); ‘anti-theism’ (against religion); or ‘agnosticism’ (neither belief nor denial of God). Instead, Deists believed that there is indeed a God, that he created the universe as we see it, but since then has left it alone. In the world of Deism, God created but is no longer involved.

Many, if not most, of the founders of the American nation were Deists. They were very aware of the horrors and aftershocks of religious wars in Europe, extending back several hundred years, and had a healthy respect for the potential dangers of institutionalized religion to society. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, while granting freedom of religion, by its wording,

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”

also guaranteed ‘freedom from religion’. In addition to an aversion to the miraculous, supernatural and generally non-rational content of Western Christianity, the framers of the constitution had a healthy fear of the ills of religion when it becomes iestablished as a political entity.

Jefferson, Deism and Christianity

Thomas Jefferson is undoubtedly the best known of the framers of the constitution, and like most of them, a Deist. His views on religion in general and its influence on society are succinctly summarized by Wikipedia:

“On one hand Jefferson affirmed, “We all agree in the obligation of the moral precepts of Jesus, and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in his discourses”, that he was “sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others” and that “the doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man”. However, Jefferson considered much of the New Testament of the Bible to be false (containing “so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture”). In a letter to William Short in 1820, he expressed that his intent was to “place the character of Jesus in its true and high light, as no imposter himself”, but that he was not with Jesus “in all his doctrines”. “

From his study of the Bible, Jefferson concluded that Jesus never claimed to be God.

While living in the White House, Jefferson began to piece together his own version of the Gospels…from which he omitted the virgin birth of Jesus, miracles attributed to Jesus, divinity, and the resurrection of Jesus – among many other teachings and events. He retained primarily Jesus’ moral philosophy, of which he approved. This compilation was completed about 1820, but was not published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible.

Deism also had an anti-religion content. Many of the constitutional founders beside Jefferson, such as Franklin, Adams, Madison and Paine harshly criticized the Christian establishment of their day, as “perverted” (Jefferson), “useless” (Franklin), “frightful” (Adams) and “of prideful and arrogant clergy” (Madison).

The Next Post

So this week we have seen how the approach to God as reflected in all the framing forces of the universe has historically led to a naturalistic but impersonal belief system which is further somewhat hostile to traditional organized religions. Is Dawkins correct when he predicts that this is the inevitable outcome of “stripping the conventional ’baggage’ of God from the concept of a ‘ground of being’ “? Next week we will take a closer look at Deism to see what was missing from the viewpoint of the intellectual leaders of the Enlightenment, and situate Deism more clearly in the spectrum between atheism and theism.

Today’s Post

In the last few posts, we looked at the basic structure of the universe from the insights of Teilhard. He not only saw the process of evolution as a basic aspect of the unfolding of the universe, his concept of cosmic evolution extended it both in time, in that he included both pre-life and conscious life, and in depth. With this extension, as we saw, the integrated forces of the universe now is seen to expand science’s intuition of the universe’s intelligibility and unity to include personality.

Such extension is not universally embraced by the world of science. Today’s post will overview some contrary positions of adherents to materialism.

Many Theories of Many Things?

While materialists are generally in agreement with the Standard Model of Physics and the theory of Natural selection, they strongly resist a synthesis such as proposed by Teilhard. Some examples:

• Denial: “The human person does not exist as such. We are all just giant molecules, and ultimately human activity will be explained by a better understanding of the interaction among complex molecules.” This approach also denies such things as free will (we can’t choose, molecules simply react), objectivity (thought is simply the electromagnetic activity of neurons) and even the aspect of ‘person’ (we’re not unique, we’re all just different combinations of molecules)

• Accidents: “Science relies on matter being repeatable and predictable, which higher mammals and humans clearly aren’t. Therefore the appearance of complex neurological systems must be accidental, and in any replay of evolution, has an extremely low probability of recurring.” Since science cannot address such things as random accidents and highly improbable events, then consciousness, and particularly human consciousness, are clearly outside of the domain of science.
• ‘Divine Foot in the Door’: As geneticist Richard Lewontin states:

“The problem is to get them (the public) to reject irrational and supernatural explanation of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the lonely begetter of truth. We take the side of Science…because we have a prior commitment…to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

So it would seem that all of science is not ‘on board’ the belief that the universe is intelligible as an integrated, cohesive thing.

• Evolution is a series of accidents, perhaps unique to our planet
• It is impossible to be replicated elsewhere
• Even if it could be replicated, it wouldn’t have necessarily resulted in a rise in complexity resulting in reflective consciousness
• Even if it did, it must be denied because it leads to the poisonous concept of God.

Or Perhaps Not

Then there’s the contradictory argument by the famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, who responsds to the insistence of theists that God can be found in the concept of ‘the first cause’:

“(The theists claim that) There must have been a first cause of everything, and we might as well give it the name God. Yes, 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 (eg a universe which makes itself) which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence.”

This argument very much supports the idea of a ‘first cause’ as the basis for all of reality (eg present at the big bang), but only if it is:

“..divested of all the baggage..(that exists) in the minds of most religious believers” and “must have been the simple basis for (the process which) eventually raised the world as we know it into its present existence”

Instead of an argument against the existence of God (which is his point in “The God Delusion”) it instead states the very insightful positions that:

• The universe as understood by science and agreed upon by materialists certainly rises in complexity as evolution proceeds
• The personal aspect of the ground of being can be seen in the evolution of the universe from the big bang to the person once we allow ourselves to rethink the conventional statements of current religions (eg to “divest it of all the baggage”)
• But beware: such ‘rethinking’ of religion, while it might divest the concept of God of all its ‘baggage’ will also divest religion of its relevant content.

Professor Dawkins is effectively issuing a challenge here:

Can it be shown that such divestment of ‘baggage’ can identify a “first cause of all things” without stripping religion of its relevance to human life?

I can think of no better way to summarize the concept of “The Secular Side of God”.

The possibility of an understanding of the universe which is inclusive of all its products is thusly possible, even by the mechanistic perspective of atheists, when we rethink both science and religion.

The possibility of a personal ‘ground of being’, seen as one of many facets of the integrated forces which frame the universe, falls naturally not only from the findings of science, but also from such an integrated understanding as expressed by Professor Dawkins.

The Next Post

We have spent considerable time in this blog rethinking the tenets of science, as expressed in the theories of physics and that of Natural Selection, through the insights of Teilhard. In the next post, we will turn our inquiry to rethinking the many aspects of religion to explore the possibility of its potential for “relevance to human life”.

Today’s Post

In the last post, we saw that the addition of complexity into the basic framing forces of the universe rendered the universe both coherent in itself and, through the action of evolution, inclusive of all its products. With this addition the basic scientific intuition that the universe is both intelligible and integrated comes nearer to being realized.

Such coherence of both process and products provides a vantage point for addressing the basic forces at work in the universe.  Today’s post will begin to look at the Universe from this perspective.

The Evolutionary Context

In keeping with the basic theories expressed in the Standard Model (June 11 – The Framing of the Universe, Part 1: Science’s Basic Perspective), and in that of Natural Selection, science would agree that for every antecedent there is a precedent. It would also agree that everything that appears assumes a potential for its appearance in its precedent.  Examples:

• The unification of quarks results in electrons, so something in the quark had a potential for becoming an electron once it was subjected to the proper force.
• The same is true with atoms, molecules, cells, multicellular animals, consciousness and finally, with the human, awareness of consciousness.

Every rung on the ladder of evolution assumes a ‘parent’ rung influenced by some force to produce an ‘offspring’ rung.  While we might not be able to understand how evolution crossed the critical points of cellular organization and reflective consciousness, they are nonetheless continuations of the preceding activity, not discontinuities, or accidents.

That said, the original effluvia from the big bang must have had the potential for everything that followed, otherwise what followed wouldn’t have followed.

‘What followed’ can be generally categorized into two things: entities and energy. Every step of evolution can be seen as the unification of entities at one level of complexity resulting in a new entity of a higher level of complexity under the influence of some field of energy.  This can be seen in the evolution of atoms into molecules:

• Gravity pulls simple atoms (Helium and Hydrogen) into clouds which eventually form stars
• In the stars, gravitational force overcomes the atomic forces, stripping the nuclei of their electrons and fusing them into more complex atoms
• These more complex atoms, such as Oxygen and Carbon, are strewn into space as the star explodes
• They are drawn together again by gravity, in which they unite to become components of molecules and so on.

In this process, two types of atoms of lower complexity (He and H) are drawn into stars via the force of gravity and become hundreds of types of atoms of higher complexity (the atomic table) via atomic forces, then into millions of types of molecules via chemical forces, and so on.

As Teilhard put it, looking backwards in time:

“In a coherent perspective of the world: life inevitably assumes a ‘pre-life’ for as far back as the eye can see.”

This process can be followed forward to the level of the human, with the entity of the human person and his potential for unity under the integrating forces of relationship that we refer to as ‘love’.

None of this can be explained without referring to the plethora of forces by which the unfolding of the universe begins and continues.   Science believes that although we experience these forces discretely, they are all ultimately facets of a single ‘super-force’ which will one day be described by a ‘Theory of Everything’ (ToE, addressed in the last two posts).

This manifold but highly integrated manifestation of force can be referred to by many terms, but once it is acknowledged that the process of evolution can be seen to rise through the human person, the personal aspect of this integrated force becomes clear. If the universe has the potential of producing such a highly complex entity as the human person, then one of its facets must be recognized as ‘personal’.

The Personal Aspect of the Universe

So, taking a look at the data that science has accumulated on the history of the universe, it is possible to see every major rung of evolution from the first precipitation of energy into the form of matter to the mega molecules which are the raw materials of the cell.  During the three-some billion years of ‘pre –life’, the universe rises in complexity. The more science measures the more it ‘intuits’ two things:

• the same thing happens everywhere
• it is evidence of a rise in complexity

More scientific findings are shoring up the first ‘intuition’, and the second one is self-evident.

That gets us to the ‘biosphere’, the venue of biological life. Given that science does not yet have an explanation for how the cell appeared, we do know that it is made up of the stuff which evolved in the previous stage.   Even the materialists continue to study how this new product of evolution could have emerged from its molecular precedent, and how it quickly ramified into what we call ‘the tree of life’, in which each branch evidences various manifestations of diversity under the ‘engine’ of Natural Selection.

Where it gets less objective is following the thread of complexity past the era of pre-life: where in the tree does complexity manifest the most increase?

That’s obvious, at least.  The increase of complexity is most paramount in the evolution of sensory functions found in the development of neurological systems in the mammalian fork of the animal branch.  This becomes most clearly seen in the mammalian brain with its unparalleled high densities of complex components (neurons) in small areas. Continuing along this path, of course, we come to the human with his unequalled density and population of neurons in the neocortex, and the potential for billions of synapses and a self-awareness that gives him the ability to inhabit a limitless population of habitats and continue the process of evolution through non-morphological means.

Yes, but, it did happen, and as such meaning-seeking entities, we try to make sense of it.

Science posits the big bang with the potential to make the universe make itself. For example, it has no problem granting gravity the power to effect stellar systems which produce complex atoms, which then combine with the laws of chemistry to produce molecules.  When we assume that the universe had the capability of atom-production through gravity and chemistry, we effectively understand these forces as facets of the integrated force of the universe.

By the same token, the universe must also have the potential for the production of humans (or some entity of high complexity) as well.  Taking this a bit further, noting that humans have evolved the characteristic of “person-ness”, the universe must have not only gravity, the strong and weak forces, and the osmotic principles of cellular energy transformation, but also the characterization of ‘person’.

The idea of the six cosmological constants (June 11 – The Framing of the Universe, Part 1: Science’s Basic Perspective) doesn’t really require an understanding of the specific forces which make up the constants, just that they’re what science uses to understand how the universe holds together.  Teilhard’s point is that when we add the undeniable phenomenon of complexity to the mix, the whole idea of a personal ‘ground of being’ becomes scientifically tenable.  Further, this ‘insertion’ isn’t accomplished supernaturally from the ‘outside’, it emerges naturally as required to round out science’s understanding of the universe.  Without it science cannot explain the unfolding of the universe in a manner which includes the human.

Just as inclusion of the law of complexity-consciousness rounds out the scientific concept of the ToE to account for the axis of evolution and the appearance of the human, recognizing this inclusion also incorporates ‘the person’ into the fundamental principles of the universe.  Acknowledgement that the ‘energy of love’ produces the ‘entity of the person’ is the next step to understanding how the universal framing forces play themselves out in the present stage of evolution.

To understand the Universe as an integrated, cohesive whole is to recognize it as ultimately, personal.

Summing Up

So now we have come to see that a true understanding of the forces of the universe which effect its evolution from the pure energy of the ‘big bang’ to the manifold expressions of complexity found in the tree of life requires the action of ‘complexity’ to be truly comprehensive and explanative of all the products of evolution.  We have come to this conclusion by following the scientific mode of thinking: observation and postulation.  It has not been necessary to invoke any more ‘supernatural’ agents to include this characteristic of universal force than were necessary for the inclusion of gravity, the atomic forces, or any of the other forces which science recognizes as framing our universe.  With the simple addition of the observable effect of complexity, the scientific perspective on the framing of the universe becomes truly comprehensive.  The universe can now be understood as capable of producing ‘persons’ as a natural consequence of its basic workings.

The Next Post

Now that the forces of the universe can be seen to include that of ‘the personal’ we can go to the next step of fitting God into the picture.

Today’s Post

The last post briefly described how science understands the basic structure of the universe.  However, the important phenomenon of ‘consciousness’ was not included in this basic ‘frame’.  Today we will explore adding the phenomenon of complexity to this structure of science, and expanding science’s “Theory of Everything” (the ToE, as addressed in the last two posts) to include consciousness.

Science’s Fragmented Universe

Even the famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, recognizes the potential for living things in the basic framing of the universe:

“It follows from the fact of our existence that the laws of physics must be friendly enough to allow life to arise.”

Most materialists, including Dawkins, however are unable to explain phenomena like consciousness as other than the result of neuron firings among the specialized cells of the brain, themselves made up of highly complex molecules.  Essentially, this point of view sees the human as just a large group of molecules with random activity in its neurological system that accidentally allows it to think.  Indeed, the specialized cells that make up these systems are themselves the result of the accidental, random emergence of the cell which is the basis for all life.  Even though the theory of Natural Selection may be able to explain the explosion of cells into the ‘tree of life’, the two most amazing steps in the evolution of living things, the cell and reflective consciousness, are seen as ‘accidental’.  As a result, the intuition of science that the universe is basically intelligible and unified degrades to one which sees it as accidental and incurably piecemeal.

From this fragmented point of view,

• the Standard Model of physics treats the era of pre-life;
• Natural Selection addresses biology up until the human;
• psychology seemingly addresses the human.

Three great but non-overlapping thinking systems are thus required for the three great eras of evolution and their unique entities.

Complexity- the Remaining Key Framing Component of an Evolving Universe

You might think that enough has been said about the phenomenon of complexity, but it suddenly becomes the thread which links these three phases of evolution, with their three types of entities and potentially their three schools of thought, adding both the characteristics of ‘intelligibility’ and ‘unity’ into human understanding of the universe.

The fact that each step of evolution in the pre-life era produces a new ‘species’ of matter from those elements that existed prior to it seems unremarkably obvious, and is an axiom of the scientific understanding of evolution. In the last post we saw that science posits a small loss of energy with each activation of force (entropy).  Now we can see that what seems to be implicitly acknowledged but not explicitly addressed by science is that each of the steps, with their small quantum of entropy, is also accompanied by a small but essential and unquantifiable increase in complexity.

Each of these new species of matter is marked by two distinct differences from its parent.

• First, it is more structurally complex: it incorporates more elements into its structure than before, as the Oxygen atom includes more electrons, protons and neutrons than does the Hydrogen atom.
• Second, this structural enrichment endows the element with an increased capacity for union with other elements on the same rung of evolution. This increased capacity makes a few basic forces and entities capable of effecting hundreds of types of atoms capable of effecting millions of types of molecules.  To the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ axes of structure, therefore, complexity adds a ‘Z’ axis which points its development in the direction of further increase in structure and connectivity. This dual manifestation of complexity (upward and forward), which can be seen in the evolution of the most elemental granules of matter, continues to manifest itself over the entire course of the evolution of the universe. It can still be observed, as we have seen, in the human person.

Without this essential characteristic of growth, the universe that we know would never have happened.  No matter which elemental rung of evolution is chosen as a starting point; quarks, electrons, protons, atoms, molecules or cells; without ascent to the next rung of evolution the universe would have grown cold and stale very quickly.  Science accounts for the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ dimensions of structure very well in the Standard Model, but the axis of ‘Z’, the increased structure and capacity for union, the axis of ascent to higher degrees of complexity, is missing from the model.  Addition of it provides the missing piece that makes the phenomenon of evolution possible and unites the three stages of evolution.  The universe moves from accidental to continuous, from inexplicable to intelligible, from piecemeal to unified.  More importantly, it provides a place for the human person in the constructs of science.

The addition of a quantum of complexity to the framing of the universe is therefore both necessary to the understanding of the phenomenon of evolution and essential for establishing a context in which an entity with the complexity of the human person can be seen as a natural, expected outcome (thus far) of the evolution of the universe.

Complexity is the characteristic that extends the Standard Model to the whole fabric of the universe.

Teilhard’s view of evolution, therefore, is that it is

“..anti-entropic, running counter to the second law of thermodynamics with its degradation of energy and its tendency to uniformity.  With the aid of the sun’s energy, biological evolution marches uphill, producing increased variety and higher degrees of organization”.

Once complexity is understood as a phenomenon which is just as necessary to the march of evolution as the rest of the forces addressed by the ToE, the incorporation of ‘Everything’ into the theory is assured.

• It accounts for the ‘advancement’ of the products of evolution to ever more organized states
• It applies equally to the three major stages of evolution
• It incorporates all the products of evolution, not just those of ‘pre-life’. For the first time the vision of science now contains a bridge to the human person, and psychology can be understood in the true perspective of universal evolution: complexity emerging in the form of the human person

In the words of Teilhard:

“The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world”

 The Coherent Universe

Thus, once the missing action of increased complexity is added to science’s ToE, the universe, now understood as encompassing everything within it, including living things, including the human person, can be conceived as totally coherent.  Teilhard sees the characteristic of ‘coherency’ as the essential characteristic of ‘truth’:

 “The truth is nothing but the total coherence of the universe in relation to each part of itself.  To explain scientifically is to include the facts in a general coherent interpretation.”

 “So, in the scientific manner, a hypothesis derives its whole value and power from the harmony and coherence it supplies as soon as it is accepted.”

 From this perspective, to understand the universe in a way that everything in it can be seen in a single context, as coherent, is indeed a substantial move towards a true “Theory of Everything”.

Life, and more importantly to us, reflectively conscious life, is therefore not a by-product, an accidental epi-phenomenon of the universe, but can now be seen as the fundamental phenomenon that it truly is: the most logical and natural outcome of the process of evolution through its three stages.

The ultimate framing of the universe, with this critical aspect of structure now added, can now truly be understood as an architecture in which it becomes itself.

Or, as Teilhard expresses it,

 “God does not make things: He makes things make themselves.”

 The Next Post

Now that the universe can be seen to be ‘framed’ in such a way as to include life, and particularly conscious life, we can begin to explore the principles of such a universe.  The next post will overview the basic ‘framing forces’ of this universe, seeing them as just as cohesive as the universe which they effect.

Today’s Post

The posts up until now have summarized Teilhard’s unique perspective on the transformative concept of evolution, leading up to the next phase in this blog: approaching the subject of God through the insights of science.  As a starting place for this phase, this post briefly addresses the ‘framing of the universe’ as understood by science.

Understanding Everything

Science proclaims its intuition that the universe is ultimately not only intelligible but unified, through its concept of the “Theory of Everything”, known as the ‘ToE’.

• Its intelligibility can be seen in the success of theoretical frameworks, models, that explain how it works
• Its unification can be seen in the increasing integration among the various models over the past two hundred years

The ToE essentially, when developed, will consist of a coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all the physical ‘framing’ of the universe.  At present, while science believes that it has identified all the forces through which the universe has evolved, and by which it is held together, its theoretical models still fall into two, un-integrated, representations:

• The Quantum Field Theory, which describes those forces, as addressed by the ‘Standard Model’: the atomic weak, strong, and electromagnetic forces; the actions of the very small
• The General Relativity Theory, which focuses on the force of gravity to understand the universe in regions of both large-scale and high-mass: stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, etc.; the actions of the very large

For many years science has worked toward the goal of integrating these two models.  Such a meta-understanding of all universal forces would see the cosmos as framed by facets of a single, integrated and unified force.

The Cosmological Constants – Relating the Two Theories

In the April 2 Post, Human Evolution, Part 6: The Problem with Complexity, I referred to the Cosmological Constants as aspects of the universe that, had they different values, would have resulted in a universe vastly different from our own.  Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and President of the Royal Society, theorizes that there are six mathematical constants that determine the ‘framing’ of the universe.  Had any one of them been even slightly different, scientific consensus holds that the universe would not have proceeded from the ‘big bang’ at all: it would have been still born.

These six constants are all expressed as ratios between the elemental and formative forces, the ‘framing’ of the universe, as understood by the two theories introduced above.  While these ratios do not require that the two theories agree, they do give examples of how the forces addressed by the theories are in balance.  For example:

ε, the measure of nuclear binding force, has a value of 0.007. If it had a value of 0.006 there would be no other elements: hydrogen could not fuse into helium and the stars could not have cooked up carbon, iron, complex chemistry and, ultimately, us. Had it been a smidgen higher, at 0.008, protons would have fused in the big bang, leaving no hydrogen to fuel future stars, and the formation of the heavier atoms through the force of gravity would not have occurred.

Q, the ratio between the ‘rest mass’ energy of matter and the force of gravity, has the size of one part in 100,000. Were it only a bit smaller, star formation would be slow and the raw material for future planets would not survive to form planetary systems. Were it bigger, stars would collapse swiftly into black holes and the surviving gas would blister the universe with gamma rays.

A similar type of relationship occurs in each of the other four constants, but all identify relationships necessary for the universe to exist as it does, and for evolution to proceed as science has described it.

Entropy

The six constants are an expression of the critical and delicate balance that exists among the elemental forces which frame our universe.  Science also postulates another characteristic of the matter-energy combinations that come into play.  It postulates that each time energy is ‘put to work’, not all of the energy is transferred from the inflictor to the receptor, as from the hammer to the nail.  Each such ‘activation of energy’ comes with a small, infinitesimal, unquantifiable and unrecoverable loss.  In the equations of physics, this small loss is indicated by inclusion of a triangle above the equals sign.  The term that physics uses for this small, permanent loss is ‘entropy’.  The ultimate perspective that emerges from this small loss is that over a very long period of time we can expect the candle of the universe to burn itself out.

So, the combination of the six cosmological constants plus the postulation of ‘entropy’ can be seen to be critical to the framing that underlies our universe, even if it does not carry into an understanding of living things.

Not quite, as we shall see.

A ‘Theory of Matter’?

Even the most aggressive concept of the ToE, even by the best forecast of science, even if the two theories can be brought together in a single integrated model, it will still fall well short of the “Everything” hoped to be encompassed by it.

The ToE, while claiming to address ‘everything’ actually only focusses on the realm of physics.  Effectively, from the perspective of evolution, from the viewpoint that the universe is in the process of evolving from one thing to another, it only addresses the phase of ‘pre-life’.

It is left to the theory of Natural Selection, so goes the mantra of science, to explain how the building blocks of matter produced by the first phase go on to produce new products in the second.  This mantra also goes on to attempt to apply Natural Selection as the underlying process of the third phase, that of conscious life.

However, as we have seen in previous posts, understanding how evolution succeeds in producing consciousness requires an understanding of the phenomenon of ‘complexity’.  Including this phenomenon in the universal framing will extend the ToE from a ‘Theory of Matter’ to a true ‘Theory of Everything’.

The Next Post

Having seen how science “frames” the universe (although omitting conscious life from its structure), the next post will address the coherence that the universal ‘frame’ takes on when the phenomenon of complexity is added.

The first post of this new blog is planned for mid-October, 2014.  In the meantime, visit the existing blog, “The Phenomenon of Love” at

phenomenonoflove.wordpress.com

This blog is in its final days, with the last post planned for October 2.

To read more about the new blog, visit the Home page, “About this Blog”