Monthly Archives: July 2019

July 25, 2019 – Human Life: Reconnecting Our Parts to the Whole

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Today’s Post

Last week we moved from the ‘terrain of synthesis’, the areas potentially common to science and religion as identified by Teilhard and Paul Davies, to the ‘middle ground’ addressed by Jonathan Sacks: that occupied by the human person.

This week we will go a little deeper into exploring the potential of this ground to personal human growth.

The Road to Synthesis

Sacks moves from his review of the history between science and religion to address what he sees has resulted from the “crumbling of the arch between Jerusalem and Athens” and the need for rediscovery of the ‘terrain of synergy’.

“Bad things happen when religion ceases to hold itself answerable to empirical reality, when it creates devastation and cruelty on earth for the sake of salvation in heaven. And bad things happen when science declares itself the last word on the human condition and engages in social or bio-engineering, treating humans as objects rather than as subjects, and substitutes cause and effect for reflection, will and choice.

   Science and religion have their own logic, their own way of asking questions and searching for answers. This is not an argument for compartmentalization, seeing science and religion as did (Stephen Jay) Gould as ‘non overlapping magisteria’, two entirely separate worlds. They do indeed overlap because they are about the same world within which we live, breathe and have our being. It is instead an argument for conversation, hopefully even integration. Religion needs science because we cannot (find God) in the world if we do not understand the world. If we try to, the result will be magic or misplaced supernaturalism.”

   He goes on to echo Davies’ observation that science, as it does not address the phenomenon of rising complexity in the universe, is poorly equipped to include the human person in its deliberation.

“By the same token, science needs religion, or at the very least some philosophical understanding of the human condition and our place within the universe, for each fresh item of knowledge and each new accession of power raises the question of how it should be used, and for that we need another way of thinking.”

   He offers an articulation of the “Terrain of Synergy” that we addressed last week.

“It is precisely the space between the world that is and the world that ought to be that is, or should be, the arena of conversation between science and religion, and each should be open to the perceptions of the other. The question is neither, “Does Darwinism refute religion?” nor, “Does religion refute Darwinism”? Rather: “How does each shed light on the other, and “What new insights does Darwinism offer religion?”, and “What insights does religion offer to Darwinism?”

   Recognizing the “Terrain of Synergy” is much more than a philosophical goal. While it is a worthy objective to better understand where we fit into the ‘scheme of things’, we are still faced with the need to unpack this understanding into a way of personal life in which

“(in general) religion and science, far from being opposed, are on the same side of the table, using their distinctive methods to help us better understand humanity, nature, and our place in the scheme of things.”

   Reflecting Thomas Jefferson’s reinterpretation of Jesus’ teaching (Part 1 of “So Who And What Was Jesus’), he goes on to say

“Outside religion there is no secure alternative base for the unconditional source of worth that in the West has come from the idea that we are each in God’s image. Though many have tried to create a secular substitute, none has ultimately succeeded. This has been demonstrated four times in the modern world when an attempt was made to create a social order on secular lines: The French Revolution, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Communist China. When there is a bonfire of the sanctities, lives are lost.

   Science cannot locate freedom, because the word is one of causal relationships. A scientific law is one that links one physical phenomenon to another without the intervention of will and choice. To the extent that there is a science of human behavior, to that extent there is an implicit denial of the freedom of human behavior. That is precisely what Spinoza, Marx and Freud were arguing, that freedom is an illusion. But if freedom is an illusion, then so is human dignity.”

The Next Post

This week we took a deeper look at the ‘terrain of synergy’ in which the different but complementary methods and insights of science and religion might overlap.   Three weeks ago we looked at how Paul Davies and Teilhard offer two very clear examples of thinking about synergy between science and religion, and this week and the last we saw how Jonathan Sacks looked at it from the perspective of the ‘center’ of this terrain, which is where most of us live our daily lives.

Next week we will build upon Sack’s insights, much closer to home, to look at how this movement toward ‘synergy’ between such things as left-right brain thinking, science-religion coherence and general overcoming of daily ‘dualisms’ can lead to what Richard Rohr refers to as “whatever reconnects (re-religio) our parts to the whole”.

July 18, 2019 – Science, Religion, Synergy and Human Life

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Today’s Post

Last week we looked at, in some detail, how the perspectives and insights of Paul Davies and Teilhard offer the concept of a ‘terrain of synergy’ in which the underlying basis of universal evolution, increasing complexity, can be examined as Teilhard states, by “assailing the real from different angles and on different planes”.

This week we will address this terrain from the insights of Jonathan Sacks, Former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the United Kingdom, who views this from the middle ground.

The Human Person’s Need for Balance

Sacks locate the center point of this ‘terrain of synergy’ in the phenomenon of the human person:

“It is not incidental that Homo sapiens has been gifted with a bicameral brain that allows us to experience the world in two fundamentally different ways, as subject and object, ‘I’ and ‘Me’, capable of standing both within and outside our subjective experience.  In that fact lies our moral and intellectual freedom, our ability to mix emotion and reflection, our capacity for both love and justice, attachment and detachment, in short, our humanity.”

   He notes that the difficulty of attaining such synergy can be seen in the human difficulty to integrate these two modes of understanding, resulting in the dualisms to which we have become accustomed.

“ It is this (potential for synergy) that the reductivist – the scientist who denies the integrity of spirituality, or the religious individual who denies the findings of science- fails to understand.”

   He also notes that most of us do not live our day-to-day lives in such a divided world.  While the empirical facts that guide science must be recognized, our daily lives are lived in a mileu more ‘intuitional’ than ‘empirical’.   He uses the human characteristic of ‘trust’ as an example.  As Yuval Noah Harari explains in great detail in his book, “Sapiens”, the whole human edifice of economics, (so necessary for the welfare detailed by Johan Norberg) is predicated on ‘trust’.   This welfare, unprecedented in human history, requires not only that individuals trust one another, but that they trust the ‘imaginary’ but tangible fabric of society.  The nodes of this fabric, such as states, banks, schools and laws are both results of ‘trust’ and structures upholding welfare.

Such trust isn’t empirically measurable or provable (as the empiricists would require) but it is nonetheless a key strand of the fabric that holds society together.  Those times when it erodes (as in an economic collapse), human welfare suffers greatly.

Sacks goes on to show how trust is more than just part of the glue that holds society together, and is the basis for our own personal outlook:

“Almost none of the things for which people live can be proved.  For example, a person who manages the virtue of trust will experience a different life than one to whom every human relationship is a potential threat.”

   And this is where the ‘center’ of the ‘terrain of synergy’ is located.

How Did We Get Here?

As Sacks sees it, the road to today’s bifurcation between science and religion began in the sixteenth century:

“The rise of science can be seen to have resulted from the impact of the wars of religion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that led figures like Descartes and Newton to seek certainty on the basis of a structure of knowledge that did not rest on dogmatic foundations.  One way or another, first science, then philosophy, declared their independence from theology and the great arch stretching from Jerusalem to Athens began to crumble.  First came the seventeenth century realization that the earth was not the center of the universe.  Then came the development of a mechanistic science that sought explanations in terms of prior causes, not ultimate purposes.  Then came the eighteenth century philosophical assault by Hume and Kant, on the philosophical arguments for the existence of God.  Hume pointed up the weakness of the argument from design.  Kant refuted the ontological argument.  Then came the nineteenth century and Darwin.  This was, on the face of it, the most crushing blow of all, because it seemed to show that the entire emergence of life was the result of a process that was blind.”

In his view, the Christian religion of the West arose with a few foundational cracks that would eventually weaken it.

“Christendom drew its philosophy, science and art from Greece, its religion from Israel.  But from the outset it contained a hairline fracture that would not become a structural weakness until the seventeenth century.  It consisted in this: that though Christians encountered philosophy, science and art in the original Greek, they experienced the religion of their founder in translation.  While Greek is not the language of Jesus, it was the natural language of thought of Paul, the writers of the gospels, the authors of the other books of the NT, the early church Fathers, and the first Christian theologians. This was (brilliant but with) one assumption that would eventually be challenged from the seventeenth century until today: namely that science and philosophy, on the one hand, and religion on the other, belong to the same universe of discourse.  They may, and they may not.  It could be that Greek science and philosophy and the Judiac experience of God are two different languages- that, like the left- and right-brain modes of thinking only imperfectly translate into one another.”

  Sacks not only envisions the possibility that science and religion can ‘intertranslate’, but goes a little further.  He believes that they need each other.  Better yet, he believes that humanity needs both of them to be able to flourish.

The Next Post

This week we addressed Davies’ and Teilhard’s ‘terrain of synthesis’ as the intersect between science and religion, this time from Jonathan Sacks’ ‘middle ground’: the human person.

Next week we will build on this centrist vision to address how the powerful systems of science and religion can benefit from expanding this terrain.

July 11, 2019 – The ‘Terrain of Synergy’- Areas Common to Religion and Science

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Today’s Post

Last week we went a little deeper on the possibility of synergy between science and religion; one which would enhance and enrich both bodies of thought and contribute to the continuation of our evolution.

However, while Davies and Teilhard offer two very clear examples of thinking about synergy between science and religion, the question can be asked, “what areas of focus could be common to science and religion?”  Aren’t they, as claimed by Stephen Jay Gould (and echoed by Richard Dawkins), “two completely different and non-overlapping magisteria?”

Mapping the ‘Terrain of Synergy’

While science’s search for the agency by which the universe becomes more complex will go on for some time, as predicted by Paul Davies, humankind cannot afford the luxury of waiting for an empirical closure on the subject if it’s going to continue its evolution.  Our evolution is not only proceeding ‘under our feet’ whether or not we understand it, the rate rate is increasing.  Each day that passes seems to demand more choices with the mounting of the pressure of our advancement from instinct to volition.

The list of evolutionary threats seems to grow every day, and each individual risk gives rise to the prediction, “if this trend continues… (fill in your favorite evil)”.  Malthus may have been wrong in his prediction, but how do we know that eventually he will be proven right and the curtain of humanity will finally fall?

Therefore it is imperative that we build on those intuitions which have carried us thus far, but with the caveat that they must stay in coherence with the findings of science.  The source of these intuitions is religion, properly divested of Richard Dawkins’ “baggage that the word ‘God’ carries in the minds of most religious believers.”

Jonathan Sacks agrees, and goes a little further by identifying some of the many subjects that when addressed would light the way towards a synthesis suitable for mapping a route to the future.

“There may be, in other words, a new synthesis in the making.  It will be very unlike the Greek thought-world of the medieval scholastics with its emphasis on changelessness and harmony.  Instead it will speak about:

– the emergence of order

– the distribution of intelligence

–  information processing

– the nature of self-organizing complexity

– the way individuals display a collective intelligence that is a property of groups, not just the individuals that comprise them,

– the dynamic of evolving systems and what leads some to equilibrium, others to chaos.

   Out of this will emerge new metaphors of nature and humanity; flourishing and completeness.  Right brain (religious, intuitive) thinking may reappear, even in the world of science, after its eclipse since the seventeenth century.”

   This list is echoed, with much more articulation, by Davies.  Also note that many of these subjects have long been the object of study and debate by religion.  Effectively, Sacks and Davies have begun mapping the territory that, when explored, offer the terrain of ‘synergy’ between science and religion.

Teilhard elaborates on traditional religion as rich ore to be refined into an elixir which enriches human evolution.

   “After allowing itself to be captivated in excess by the charms of analysis to the extent of falling into illusion, modern thought is at last getting used once more to the idea of the creative value of synthesis in evolution.  It is beginning to see that there is definitely more in the molecule than in the atom, more in the cell than in the molecule, more in society than in the individual, and more in mathematical construction than in calculations and theorems.  We are now inclined to admit that at each further degree of combination something which is irreducible to isolated elements emerges in a new order.”

    Davies, from the scientific perspective, echoes the insights of Teilhard and predates those of Sacks toward the need for science to expand its reach to include this underlying principle by which the universe unfolds:

“The general trend towards increasing richness and diversity of form found in evolutionary biology is surely a fact of nature, yet it can only be crudely identified, if at all. There is not the remotest evidence that this trend can be derived from the fundamental laws of mechanics, so it deserves to be called a fundamental law in its own right.

   The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, so it turns out, is not to be understood as a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Rather, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of these new pieces of behavior requires research which is as fundamental as, or perhaps more fundamental than, anything undertaken by the elementary particle physicists.”

   Thus both Davies and Teilhard can be clearly seen to “assail the real from different angles and on different planes”.  Such an approach as Davies is suggesting would act as an agent which can help religion to “..divest the word ‘God’ of all the baggage that it carries in the minds of most religious believers” from one angle while Teilhard offers the translation of science’s universal insight to the lives of human persons from another.

The Next Post 

This week we took a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’, focusing on the different thinking modes of science and religion, as represented by Paul Davies and Teilhard, and how they illustrate the potential to envision them as Teilhard did, as global “meridians as they approach the poles…,(which) are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the pole”.

While Davies and Teilhard offer two very clear examples of thinking about synergy between science and religion, there is another voice that contributes to this dialog, and that is Jonathan Sacks.   Next week we will take a look at his insights to move us along in understanding how ‘thinking with the whole brain’ can be understood.

July 4, 2019 – Science and Religion: An Integrated View of Reality

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a first look at how the seemingly opposing perspectives of science and religion, our two great modes of thinking on this planet, could be seen as simply two facets of a fundamentally integrated movement towards a more comprehensive understanding of ourselves and the universe of which we are a part.  Teilhard likened them to two meridians on the surface of a globe which draw near as they approach the pole:

“Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.  I say, “converge” advisedly, but without merging, and without ceasing, to the very end, to assail the real from different angles and on different planes”.

   Given the traditional enmity between them, many would conclude that more of one inevitably results in less of the other.  This conclusion certainly seems to be borne out by the many polls in western countries which show a decline in religious participation.  ‘Accommodation’ has been automatically translated as ‘surrender’.

This week we will look at both Teilhard’s model of “assailing the real from different angles and on different planes” and how Paul Davies’ recognition of science’s need to ‘accommodate’ the human person offers a starting place for a true ‘accommodation’ in which one is enriched by the other.

Science and Religion: Drawing Nearer to the Poles

As a first step to rethink this classic duality, Paul Davies, a professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, simply puts scientific understanding into an evolutionary perspective:

 “No scientist would claim that the existing formulation of the laws of physics is complete and final.  It is therefore legitimate to consider that extensions or modifications of these laws may be found, that embody at a fundamental level the capacity for matter and energy to organize themselves.”

   One aspect of such ‘extension or modification’ lies in the Inclusion of the phenomenon of increasing complexity into the scope of science.  He notes that not only is such inclusion necessary for a more complete understanding of the universe in which we live, but will open the door to a subject significant but so far poorly treated by science: the human person.

Teilhard de Chardin also understood that the recognition of increasing complexity was key to a comprehensive understanding of reality, and also recognized the missing piece:

“Up to the present, whether from prejudice or fear, science has been reluctant to look man in the face but has constantly circled round the human object without daring to tackle it.  Materially our bodies seem insignificant, accidental, transitory and fragile; why bother about them?  Psychologically, our souls are incredibly subtle and complex: how can one fit them into a world of laws and formulas?”

   Thus, such inclusion as proposed by Davies, requires a new empirical perspective, an extension to traditional science.  Such emphasis on emerging complexity, while perhaps new to science, echoes Teilhard’s insistence that this same emphasis brings more relevancy to religion itself.  After all, he notes, religion has always assumed that there is a facet to the human person which is connected in some way to whatever universal agency by which the universe unfolds.   Again, from Teilhard:

“To outward appearance, the modern world was born of an anti-religious movement: man becoming self-sufficient and reason supplanting belief.  Our generation and the two that preceded it have heard little but talk of the conflict between science and faith; indeed it seemed at one moment a foregone conclusion that the former was destined to take the place of the latter.

    But, as the tension is prolonged, the conflict visibly seems to be resolved in terms of an entirely different form of equilibrium- not in elimination, nor duality, but in synthesis.  After close on to two centuries of passionate struggles, neither science nor faith has succeeded in discrediting its adversary.  On the contrary, it becomes obvious that neither can develop normally without the other.  And the reason is simple: the same life animates both.  Neither in its impetus nor its achievements can science go to its limits without becoming tinged with mysticism and charged with faith.”

   The ‘mysticism’ to which Teilhard refers here is less the classical religious concept of ‘tuning into to the supernatural’ and more the recognizing of the presence of a heretofore unrecognized agency of universal evolution.  ‘Faith’ in this insight refers less to ‘adherence to dogmatic statements so that we will be saved’ and more believing in both the inherent comprehensiveness of reality and our innate capability to understand it.

The Next Post

This week we took a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’, focusing on the different thinking modes of science and religion, as represented by Paul Davies and Teilhard, and how they illustrate the potential to envision them as Teilhard did, as global “meridians as they approach the poles…,  bound to converge as they draw nearer to the pole”.   While Davies and Teilhard offer two very clear examples of envisioning synergy between science and religion, the question can be asked, “what areas of focus could be common to science and religion?”  Aren’t they, as claimed by Stephen Jay Gould (and echoed by Richard Dawkins), independent ‘non overlapping magisteria’

Next week we will take a look at some areas where it would be appropriate to explore the idea of synergy.