How can Teilhard’s ‘lens of evolution’ help us to develop attitudes which can lead to increased ‘fullness’?

Today’s Post

Last week we saw how Science’s discovery of the immensity of time and the process of evolution offers a new perspective on the statements of meaning that have evolved with both Science itself and Religion.  We also saw how, as John Haught asserts in his book, “The New Cosmic Story” a third, holistic, approach emerges from these discoveries which can bring these two traditional schools of thought into increased coherence.  Seeing this potential coherence through his ‘lens’, Teilhard predicted:

“Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.”

   We have been exploring the topics of sacraments, morals and values over the past several weeks.  This week we will move on to ‘attitudes’, the stances which we take in relation to life, and by which such ‘articulations of the noosphere’ can be lived out.

Attitudes

There are few things more important to the way we live our lives than the attitudes we assume as we go about our daily enterprises.  This has nothing to do with religion: even secularists have attitudes, and our attitudes have immense impact on our actions.   They are also strongly rooted in our underlying beliefs.  The difference between the influence of pessimistic and optimistic attitudes on quality of life, for example, has been well documented in psychological journals, but by what ‘hermeneutical’ principle is one’s attitude determined?  Are attitudes chosen by each of us in an intellectual process by which we reason to them, or are they a result of biological pressures over which we have no control?  Are they a result of our neocortex activity or imposed on us by the stimuli of our reptilian and limbic brains?  Are they empirical or intuitional?

One of the most common underlying principles of all religions is the impetus to believe and act in accordance with some defined principles.  Often the actions are proscribed in spite of beliefs.  Examples of this can be found in the more conservative Christian expressions, in which faith is more important than reason in deciding how to act.  Nearly all contain the teaching that ‘proper’ belief is more necessary for salvation (passing successfully into the afterlife) than ‘proper’ action.  The role of ‘attitude’ in the comportment of life, while not absent in these teachings, does not seem to be paramount.

Christianity addresses attitudes in its concept of ‘virtues’.  While traditional teaching treats virtues as ‘dispositions by which we live good lives’, the traditional implication is that the ‘good life’ is the one which ends in our salvation.

At the other end of the spectrum, in the materialistic scheme of things, attitudes are seen as those dispositions which contribute to the biological process of evolution: ‘survival of the fittest’.  In this scheme, many traditional religious beliefs can be germane in their secular support of continued evolution, but the ultimate principle as discussed last week, is to be found in the interaction among elementary particles as increasingly understood by science.

Also, as discussed last week, both approaches are rooted in the past:  Religion with its doctrines of ‘truth’ firmly rooted in ancient divine pronouncements, and Science with its belief in meaning to be found at the bottom (and hence in the past) of the evolution of matter.

The Dangers of the Past

Why should such perspectives be seen as problematic?  On the one hand, hasn’t religion proven its value to society with the building blocks it has offered to civic stability?  And hasn’t Science’s incessant search for the ultimate understanding of how matter holds together led to advances in human quality of life that would have been the stuff of dreams to our grandparents?  So, why should such traditional principles be called into question?  What’s wrong with either of these perspectives?

To answer these questions, a starting place can be found in the waning influence of religion in the West.  Most surveys, particularly reflected in the Pew polls, seem to show a correlation between declining levels of traditional church participation and increasing levels of education.  The materialists gleefully interpret this as evidence that Religion is becoming less necessary for societal stability as many of its precepts become encoded in legal systems and society becomes more educated.  This attitude is reflected in the scientific community, mostly notably Stephen Hawking, in their claim that scientific discoveries are gradually eliminating a place for God in the universe.   This perspective sees that traditionally, God is now only to be ‘found in the gaps’, and as these gaps are filled by Science, there is a decreasing need for God.

But science also faces a danger in looking for meaning in the composition of simplest matter.  As we have seen, it’s been difficult for Science to include the human person in its understanding of reality.  There is no “Standard Model” for the human person like there is for inorganic matter.  In our exploration of psychology, in which Science turns its lens on the human, we have seen that there is considerable dualism.  Add to this the belief that real meaning is only to be found in the “behind and below”, and a truly bleak picture of the future of human evolution begins to emerge.  As one atheist put it, “life’s a bitch, then you die”.  Instead of seeing human evolution as a process which can increase the level of complexity of its products (which it has so far for billions of years), it is now seen with a future more of decay than enrichment.  As John Haught puts it:

“The typical scientific materialist…takes decay to be finally inevitable because the totality of being is destined by what-has-been to end up in a state of elemental, lifeless disintegration.”

   Further, Haught notes that both traditional Science and Religion, with their sights fixed firmly rearward, seem complicit in their disdain for universal potential.  He notes that:

“The cosmic pessimism of so many modern intellectuals, it turns out, is a cultural by-product of the implicit despair about the physical universe that had been tolerated for so many centuries by otherworldly, religious readings of nature.”

   It is this pessimism that is at the root of the ‘dangers of the past’.  As science opens our eyes to the immensities of time and space, the seemingly impersonal processes of how they relate, and the ultimately material basis of matter, those traditionally spiritual (Haught: ‘otherworldly’) beliefs of Religion which have underpinned a positive stance to life in the past can become increasingly irrelevant.  What can replace our traditional set of principles?

As thinkers such as Blondel, Teilhard, Rohr and Haught suggest, it’s not that the underlying precepts of Science and Religion are wrong, and hence must be replaced, it’s more that their wisdom becomes immediately richer and more relevant when reoriented from the past to the future.  This reorientation occurs with the simple recognition that the universe is unfinished, in which, as Haught sees:

“(Science) professes to be highly empirical and realistic but leaves out of its survey of nature the fact that the cosmos is still in the process of becoming.  …the fullness of being, truth and meaning are still rising on the horizon.”

The Next Post

This week we have explored the phenomenon of ‘attitudes’ and saw how the traditional approach of science and religion can lead to not only the increasing irrelevance of religion but the increased pessimism of science.  Next week we will take another look at how reorienting our Scientific and Religious perspective from past to future offers an additional ‘principle of reinterpretation’.