Today’s Post

For the past five years I have been publishing this blog, “The Secular Side of God”. I embarked on this undertaking as an exploration of a non-religious approach to the ‘ground of being’ (AKA God) and hence human life. This approach appealed to me as a ‘cradle Catholic’ as I found myself finally giving myself the freedom to explore the many aspects of Catholicism which I had greeted with skepticism even as a child.

This, of course, didn’t happen overnight. My education as a physicist and my lifelong experience as an aerospace engineer only deepened the sense that, as stated, many of the teachings of Catholicism became harder to accept.

By the same token, however, many didn’t. I was fortunate to have insightful spiritual mentors who pointed out many expressions of Catholicism which articulated its many beliefs differently than those to which I had been exposed. The most influential of these were those of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest and paleontologist who sought to reinterpret the classical foundations of Christianity in terms of the recent and revolutionary scientific awareness of the depth, span, richness and age of the universe.
To him, such awareness could be applied to traditional Christian teachings not only to show how they fundamentally resonate with scientific insight, but as ‘principles of reinterpretation’ that would restore the urgency, immediacy and intimacy of the original gospels.  By such reinterpretation, he felt that a more relevant Christianity could be brought to contemporary life as an antidote to the apathy and anxiety which often accompany us on our ‘road to the future’.

For the next few weeks I would like to recap this long string of posts which mark my own search for such antidotes.

Overviewing the Blog

By way of an overview, I’d like to summarize the key points from the twenty-two part blog.These are, in order of their appearance:

Understanding Evolution This first segment presented the concept of universal evolution as seen from Teilhard’s unique and revolutionary view of evolution, which extends the biological concept of ‘Natural Selection’ to evolution in the eras before life and after the appearance of the human species. Not only is this groundbreaking perspective inclusive of the entire universe, from its history from the ‘big bang’ to the present day, it opens the door to a ‘worldview’ in which the insights of science and religion can be seen as collaborative rather than conflicting.

Biological Evolution  This section applies Teilhard’s expanded view of evolution to integrating Darwin’s ‘Natural Selection’ into the context of ‘universal evolution’. This expanded view also opens the door to placing the human person into the scope of science at the same time that it opens the restricted religious concept of the human person to the insights of science.

Human Evolution   Being able to understand the human person in the context of both universal evolution and an expanded understanding of biological evolution permits human evolution to be understood in terms of what is new with the human: “conscious become aware of itself”.

Universal Evolution With these new insights into how the process of evolution proceeds through its pre-life, life, and human life phases, we returned to another look at the ‘structure of the universe’ and how the understanding of science is expanded by recognizing the process of ‘complexification’

The Evolution of Religion  Since religion is part of reality, it is therefore a product of evolution. Applying the insights of Teilhard and Jonathan Sacks, former chief Rabbi of London, we looked at religion as an evolving ‘universal story’.

Understanding Religion From the Perspective of Evolution We continued our look at religion from the insights of Teilhard to understand how its concepts have unfolded and the part it has played in Western History.

Reinterpreting Religion From Teilhard’s insights we looked at how the traditional teachings of Western Christianity can be ‘reinterpreted’, and how such reinterpretation offers new meaning, relevancy and immediacy to them.

Relating to the ‘Ground of Being’    Having applied Teilhard’s ‘principles of reinterpretation’ to religion we looked at how the resulting concept of ‘God’ is echoed in secular science as well as how our relationship to ‘Him’ can be better understood.

Who or What is God?  With Teilhard’s understanding of God, how it possible to comprehend ‘Him”?

Who or What was Jesus?  How does Teilhard’s ‘reinterpreted’ understanding of God, map into the central Christian person of Jesus? How is Jesus different from ‘the Christ?’

Who or What is Spirituality? Considering Teilhard’s unique grasp of evolution at a universal level, his understanding of how we fit into it, and more importantly, how his ‘Axis of Evolution’ is present in each of us, how does this play out in the concept of ‘spirituality’?

Reinterpreting Christian Teachings   Having offered a ‘reinterpretation’ of the fundamentals of Western religion in the light of Teilhard’s ‘universal evolution’, how can its traditional teachings be understood in a way not tied to traditional religious statements? This segment looks at Sacraments, Morals and Virtues in this light.

Understanding Evolution in the Human Species With Teilhard’s revolutionary understanding of evolution and how religion has attempted to map the terrain of human existence, this section takes a second look at how evolution can be seen to proceed in the human species today, offering several distinct and empirical examples.

Understanding and Managing the Risks of Human Evolution With the clearer understanding of universal evolution and our part in it, this section looks at the ‘downside’: If our evolution, in contrast to the evolution of our nonhuman predecessors, is now dependent on our choices, what are the risks and how can we manage them?

Science and Religion  Long seen as mutually hostile, this section takes a first look at their need for each other as well as the possibility of a productive synergy.

The Cosmic Spark   With Teilhard’s clearer understanding of cosmic evolution and the action of the ‘ground of being’, this section offers a second look at how Teilhard’s ‘axis of evolution’ is present in all products of evolution, and how understanding its presence in the human person can lead to fuller being.

Pessimism In a second look at what can hold us back from such ‘fuller being’, this section takes a look at how the negativity of pessimism can impede both our personal evolution as well as the evolution of society.

Universal Evolution This second look at Teilhard’s universal concept of evolution shows how his clearer understanding of our place in the universe offers the possibility of not only understanding science and religion as compatible, but discovering the ‘terrain of synergy’ which results when we begin to see ourselves and our universe more holistically.

Happiness With all of the positive aspects of human evolution outlined by Teilhard, human evolution, departing so drastically from the dynamic enjoyed by our evolutionary predecessors, comes with difficulty. This section looks at the idea of human happiness from several perspectives and outlines how science and religion, working from the ‘terrain of synergy’ can offer a path to happiness.

The Next Post

This week we began finalizing the blog, “The Secular Side of God” with an outline of the twenty-two part series in which we looked at universal evolution, and humanity’s part in it, through the eyes of Teilhard de Chardin.

Next week we will begin a summary of each of these topics, beginning with “Understanding Evolution”