Tag Archives: Reinterpretation of Religion

April 12 – Virtues: Faith and Hope- From Past to Future

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Today’s Post

Last week we continued our look at the ‘Theological Virtues’ by addressing that of Hope, which we saw as one of the attitudes that we take when we set about mapping the dimensions of human life, ‘articulating the noosphere’ in terms of sacraments, values and morals.
We noted that “Faith and Hope intersect in a present which we all too frequently experience as ‘dangerous.’”  At this intersection, drawing on the energies of life which are ‘gifted’ in the flow of evolution, we become able, as Blondel puts it,  “..to leave the paralyzing past behind and enter creatively into our destiny”.

This week we will look at this powerful intersection in a little more detail.

Faith and Hope: From Interpolation to Extrapolation

Faith can be seen as an interpolation of the past.  From our experience, we begin to better understand what we are capable of, and in doing so we begin to increase our confidence in our capability to act.

Hope can be seen as an extrapolation from this experience to an anticipation of what can be accomplished in the future if we but trust our experience.   Hence Faith and Hope can be seen in the two ever-repeating stages of our lives: our pasts becoming our futures in the evanescent moment of the present.

We can find examples of this intersection of our “currents of life” from the three great thinkers that we have explored in this blog:  Maurice Blondel, Carl Rogers and of course, Teilhard.
Blondel was one of the first theologians to recognize that science’s discovery of the immensity of the past and the dynamic nature of the universe provided both an opportunity as well as a methodology for reinterpreting legacy Christian teachings into a form not only commensurate with the findings of science but offering a greater relevance to human life.  From science’s discovery of a universal unfolding, he recognized that the human species was better understood when seen in the same dynamic light as that of Science, and whose ‘becoming’ is fueled by the same energy which underpins the entire universe.  In effect, he remapped the empirical insights of science into new spiritual insights, interpolating from science’s view of the past to extrapolating to an optimistic view of the future.  Of course, from Blondel’s viewpoint, this was a religious reinterpretation, from science to religion, from science’s impersonal grasp of the distant past to religion’s deeply personal grasp of human life, and hence from past to future.

   Rogers, as we saw in the post, “Relating to God: Part 5- Psychology as Secular Meditation- Part 3: Finding Self” (http://www.lloydmattlandry.com/?m=201612) also used empirical information to come to his conclusion that the human person was, at his most basic, good, positive and trustworthy.  This was quite orthogonal to the then common Freudian perspective which saw the basis of personal existence, the id, as a dangerous and decidedly untrustworthy force in the human psyche (see the post prior to the one cited above).  Once again, we see an interpolation from past, empirical data (in this case Rogers’ extensive case notes) to an extrapolation to an optimistic, hopeful human future.  We saw last week a list of the characteristics that Rogers observed in his patients as they underwent a process toward healing.   This time, however, Rogers offers a scientific, empirical reinterpretation.
Then of course, we come to Teilhard.  Going well beyond either Blondel or Rogers, Teilhard draws on the same scientific empirical findings, and expands them to the entirety of the life of the universe.  His first step in doing so was to unbind science’s understanding of evolution from the narrow perspective of the theory of Natural Selection and open it up to the immensity of universal evolution.  This unprecedented vision understood the metric of ‘complexification’ as the basic measure to plumb both the universal depths of time as well as the long, slow accretion of ‘fuller being’ which emerged with it.  Once he articulates the many stages now understood to have emerged during the ten or so billion years preceding biological terrestrial life to be connected by a rise in the complexity of its products, he postulates a single, steady, reliable force which precipitates this rise and acts in all the stages leading to the cell.  Having established this basis of universal ontological continuity, he goes on to show how it continues through the biosphere, and eventually emerges in the present noosphere .  In doing so, Teilhard offers an extrapolation from scientific findings to an interpolation, an insight as valuable to the clarification of science as it is to the reinterpretation of religion.

Teilhard and The Continuity of Past to Future: “Spirituality”

This insight into the basis of universal ontological continuity, providing as it does an integrated perspective inclusive of both spirit and matter, science and religion, and ultimately the human person and evolution, is Teilhard’s great contribution to a comprehensive perspective of the universe.  In doing so, he departed substantially from Science’s materialistic menagerie of pre-life stages disconnected from life stages, and its current schizophrenic approach which inhibits the placing of the human person into a cohesive view of the universe.   To Teilhard, these eras can now be seen in a single, connected context, one in which the human person is no less a product of evolution than the stars that glow in the sky.   He also offered a reorientation of Religion’s accumulated closet of dualisms. In a single, cohesive, integrated approach to the universe as ‘becoming’, he showed how the action of God can be seen as the basic life blood of evolution, and hence each individual life partakes of this universal bounty of universal life.

This grand vision deconstructs religion’s great and seemingly indissoluble dualisms.  One example of such deconstruction (healing?) is his explanation of ‘spirit’ vs ‘matter’, found in ‘Human Energy’.  First, he lays out the dualism itself:

“For some, heirs to almost all the spiritualist philosophies of former times, the spirit is something so special and so high that it could not possibly be confused with the earthly and material forces which it animates.  Spirit is a ‘meta-phenomenon’.

For others, on the contrary, …, spirit seems something so small and frail that it becomes accidental and secondary.  In the face of the vast material energies to which it adds absolutely nothing that can be weighed or measured, the ‘fact of consciousness’ can be regarded as negligible.  It is an ‘epi-phenomenon’.”

Then he dissolves the dualism by identifying spirituality as the underlying phenomenon which is essential to universal evolution:

“…spirit is neither super-imposed nor accessory to the cosmos, but it quite simply represents the higher state assumed in and around us by the primal and indefinable thing that we call, for want of a better name, the ‘stuff of the universe’.  Nothing more; and also nothing less.  Spirit is neither a meta- nor an epi- phenomenon, it is the phenomenon.”

He then restates his conclusion, this time answering the assertions outlined in his mapping of the dualism:

“Spirituality is not a recent accident, arbitrarily or fortuitously imposed on the edifice of the world around us; it is a deeply rooted phenomenon, the traces of which we can follow with certainty backwards as far as the eye can reach, in the wake of the movement that is drawing us forward.”

It is worth noting that in this brief exposition, Teilhard not only deconstructs the traditional religious dualism of spirit/matter by moving them from ‘either/or’ to ‘both/and’, placing them in a dynamic, ‘becoming’ context in which they are simply different facets of a single phenomenon as it moves from past to future.   He also heals science’s schizophrenic treatment of the human person by recognizing that the state of evolution characterized by ‘consciousness aware of itself’ is simply the latest manifestation of a complexity which has been increasing in the universe since the ‘big bang’.  He addresses this process in the last part of the quote from “Human Energy”:

“The phenomenon of spirit is not therefore a sort of brief flash in the night; it reveals a gradual and systematic passage from the unconscious to the conscious, and from the conscious to the self-conscious.  It is a cosmic change of state.”

So, in this example we can see how Teilhard goes about his ’interpolation/extrapolation’ process, drawing on Science’s study of deep time and evolution to understand the thread of universal life to which our essence is connected, then to extrapolate to a future which we can trust to offer a continuation of such ‘increased complexity’.

He offers an approach to Faith not based on (but also not, as it turns out, orthogonal to) belief in scripture or the church’s ‘Magesterium’, but on a recognition that the fourteen billion year rise of complexity which (so far) has resulted in our own individual person can be expected to continue if we can but trust and cooperate with it.

And this is where Faith and Hope can be seen to intersect in our lives.

The Next Post

This week saw how the intersection of Faith and Hope can be seen to intersect in our lives, from the insights of Blondel, Rogers and Teilhard.

Next week we will move on to a look at the last of the Theological Virtues, that of Love.

March 29 – Virtues: Hope – Expectation of the Outcome of Evolution

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Today’s Post

Last week we began our look at the attitudes (the ‘Theological Virtues’) that we can take if we are to live out Teilhard’s ‘articulations of the noosphere’.  We looked at ‘Faith’, and saw how it acquires new relevance if we reorient it from ‘belief in the unbelievable as a condition for being eligible for the afterlife’ to the recognition and trust that the energy of evolution flows through each of us and carries us on to a future state of wholeness.

This week we will continue our look at the Theological Virtues by addressing ‘Hope’.

The Traditional Approach to Hope

As seen by the traditional church, Hope, like Faith, is an attitude based upon the concept of a salvation earned by living a moral (as defined by the church) life.  It is deeply intertwined with Faith, in that it is the result of believing that pleasing God is necessary for eternal salvation.  It focusses more on the ‘payoff’, than the ‘process’.  As the Catechism says, “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness”.  As such, it is given to us as a guard against despair, to help us keep our eyes on the end goal, the ‘next life’ while we endure the pains and disillusions of this one.

Like the traditional approach to Faith, the traditional approach to Hope assumes that ‘truth’ is ‘given to man by scripture and the church’, adhered to by ‘Faith’ and trusted to result in salvation by ‘Hope’.

Reinterpreting Hope

Even though the Church approached hope as rooted in belief in the afterlife, it was Paul himself who identified what can be expected in this life when we take the stance of ‘faith’.  As much of Paul’s writing clearly shows, as the first Christian theologian he took great pains to boil the teachings of Jesus down into specifics, such as we saw in his teaching on the ‘Theological Virtues’.  Another example can be found in his listing of what he referred to as ‘The Fruits of the Spirit’.  These ‘fruits’ are the human attributes which are ‘given’ by the Holy Spirit when we cooperate with the presence of God in our lives.  These ‘fruits’ are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness.

Of course, in our secular approach, as we have seen when we addressed the Trinity (3 August, 2017, “The Trinity”, http://www.lloydmattlandry.com/?m=201708), the Holy Spirit is one manifestation of the tri-faceted energy of evolution which flows in our lives.   ‘Gifts’, in our secular reinterpretation, refer to those human potentialities that can actualize as we become more aware of, and come to cooperate with, the energy of evolution as it rises in us.
Paul’s ‘Fruits’ describes what can happen in our lives as we live out the ‘articulations of the noosphere’ that we have been describing, that are reflected in the sacraments, values and morals of our culture.  One does not have to be religious to recognize the quality of life that would accrue to us were we better able to love, have our lives filled with joy rather than foreboding, feel at peace with ourselves and others, resulting in natural (vs forced) kindness, recognizing our innate goodness and being able to trust.

Paul’s fruits correlate well with Carl Rogers’ observations of a patient undergoing the process toward healing (excuse the fifties misuse of gender):

– The individual becomes more integrated, more effective

– Fewer of the characteristics are shown which are usually termed neurotic or psychotic, and more of the healthy, well-functioning person

– The perception of himself changes, becoming more realistic in views of self

– He becomes more like the person he wishes to be, and values himself more highly

– He is more self-confident and self-directing

– He has a better understanding of himself, becomes open to his experience, denies or represses less of his experience

– He becomes more accepting in his attitudes towards others, seeing others as more similar to himself

Comparing Hope to Faith

If faith involves trusting in the power of belief itself, that it is possible to find within ourselves the power to act in the face of the emotion of fear, then hope provides a ‘pull’, in which we can make the decision and muster the energy to act because we can envision the importance, even the enjoyment, of the consequence of such action.   One of Paul’s ‘fruits’ is ‘joy’, and there are few greater joys than the feeling of satisfaction of completion of a difficult and risky task.  We can envision this potential for joy even before we undertake the risk, and as a result the arduousness of the task is therefore lessened by the anticipation of the result.  While faith can be seen in the ‘decision’, hope can be understood as the ‘anticipation’.

An example is Rogers’ insight that the risky choice to ‘be willing to live with ambiguity’ is counterbalanced by the ‘hope’ that as a result, we will mature into the greater possession of ourselves as articulated in his list above.

Another result of the ability to hope is ‘patience’, another of Paul’s ‘fruits’.  Faith may provide us with the insight that we are growing by a principle of universal evolution working   within us, but hope is a bulwark against the despair that can set in as we frequently experience failure.  None of us gets through life without Shakespeare’s ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, but the burden becomes heavier with impatience.

While faith allows us to reinterpret our past in a positive light, hope allows us to live in a future in which today’s burdens have been overcome.  Faith and hope intersect in a present which we all too frequently experience as ‘dangerous’.  While there are many actions that we can take to manage the danger, none is more important than to believe in our ability to endure and that this endurance allows us, as Blondel puts it, “..to leave the paralyzing past behind and enter creatively into our destiny”.

The Next Post

This week we took a ‘secular’ look at the stance of ‘hope’ in our reinterpretation of the ‘Theological Virtues’ as stances that we take when we ‘articulate the noosphere’ in terms of sacraments, values and morals of our culture.

Next week we will continue by looking at the intersection between Faith and Hope.

January 18 – Values, Morals and Sacraments- Overcoming Orthogonality

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how religious and scientific perspectives on morals are very orthogonal to religion.   Where traditional religion insists on an absolute basis of morals,  science proposes one which is relative to our understanding of science’s key agency of evolution: ‘survival’.  Today we will take a look at how these two perspectives can be brought into coherence.

From Our Secular Viewpoint

There are many ways in which these two perspectives can be seen to align.  As we have seen many times in this blog, both religion and science are rife with ‘dualisms’ which choose a viewpoint from the many shades of belief on any subject.  Our secular approach seeks to bring the opposing sides into confluence by applying the techniques of reinterpretation that we have proposed.  The subject of ‘morals’ is no exception.

One way to effect such confluence is to return to Teilhard’s treatment of the two seemingly contrary positions:

“So as long as our conceptions of the universe remained static, the basis of duty (moral standards) remained extremely obscure.  To account for this mysterious law (the energy of evolution which effects increasing complexity) which weighs fundamentally on our liberty, man had recourse to all sorts of explanations, from that of an explicit command issued from outside to that of an irrational but categorical instinct.” (parenthetical statements and italics mine)

   Teilhard proposes the same principle of reinterpretation that was previously suggested by Blondel: to understand that human persons are products of an evolutionary process, as science teaches, requires the acknowledgment of the existence of a principle which effects our ‘becoming’, as religion teaches.  This suggests common ground between the materialist and theist perspectives:

–          The materialists are correct in asserting that the basis of morals can be found in the principles of evolution.  However, it is necessary to expand the understanding of evolution from terrestrial biological phenomena and understand evolution in its universal perspective.  In doing so evolution can be seen in three distinct phases which are united by a continuing increase of complexity in its products.  In this integrated perspective, there are indeed ‘articulations of the noosphere’ which foster our continued evolution, and these can be expressed in terms such as sacraments, values and morals.

–          The theists are correct in asserting that these morals are indeed, at their basis, absolute.  The absolute nature of these standards of behavior are, as the materialists assert,  intelligible, but require our continued search for a more complete understanding of them.

So the materialistic approach to morals needs to be placed in the full picture of evolution and take into account the presence of the agent of evolution in each personal life.  By the same token, the theist approach needs to be shorn of its premature dogmatism and be open to both the intelligibility of the universe and our part in it as we continue to evolve.

Science, with its grasp of the universe as ‘becoming’ can bring new life to religion.  As Blondel and Teilhard understood, recognizing that the human is a product of a continuously evolving universe permits a deeper understand of God as the universal principle of such evolution.  By the same token, their fresh approach to religion also serves to expand science’s understanding of this process to include the human as not only a product of evolution, but one able to respond to a new mode of evolutive energy which goes beyond the Darwinian principles of ‘chance and necessity’.

The question can then be asked, how can humans employ their new-found capacity of being aware of their consciousness in service to their continued evolution?  How do they effect their own ‘complexification’?

The answer that I have proposed in this blog involves developing the skill of the neocortex brain in modulating the instinctive stimuli of the lower limbic and reptilian brains.  Examples of practices and beliefs that develop and strengthen this skill abound in every religious and philosophical school of thought that has emerged in human history.  The down side, of course, is that they are enmeshed, deeply entangled, in hierarchies, mysticism, sentimentality, and supernaturalism that can undermine their validity as ‘articulations of the noosphere’.

So, in order to be able to (paraphrasing Richard Dawkins) “explicitly divest religious belief of all the baggage that it carries in the minds of most religious believers”, it is necessary to reinterpret these beliefs in terms of human ‘complexification’ (human growth) so that their relevancy to human life and continued evolution can be more fully understood.

In simpler terms: in the human, the mechanism of evolution transforms from ‘evolutionary selection of entities’ to ‘entities which select their evolution’.

The Next Post

This week we have contrasted the ‘materialistic’ (‘athiest’) position with that of the ‘theists’ on ‘how we should be if we would be what we can be’, and saw how a holistic perspective on evolution offers 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.

Assuming that there are indeed ‘articulations of the noosphere’ that when observed, lead on to, as Teilhard put it, “being carried by a current to the open sea”, what do we do with them?  How can we orient ourselves to these ‘currents’?

Next week we will take our explanation of sacraments, values and morality to the next level and explore an approach to evolution which finds common ground between these seemingly orthogonal approaches to understanding human evolution.

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.

December 21 –Values, Morals and Sacraments- The Materialistic Perspective

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how religion is not the only cultural artifact which calls attention to the energy of evolution in our lives, and how our very Western culture itself is infused with such recognition.  Looking at sacraments in the context of human values and morals, this week’s post addresses the materialistic position on morals and their basis.

The Basis of Morals

Humans do not generally agree on the best way to make sense of their existence.  Among the many religious expressions, there is wide divergence on understanding human ontology: do we emerge from a process of evolution or creation in a generally linear way, or are our lives simply repetitions of previous lives?  Are we doomed to complete extinction when we die or in some sense do we continue existence on a separate plane, and if so will we retain our personal uniqueness or be dissolved into an impersonal ‘cosmic all’?  Is there a ‘way’ to live life to the fullest, or is each life sufficiently unique and autonomous to ignore traditional behavioral guidelines?  Is the basis for morals ‘universal’ or unique for each person?  Are morals ‘absolute’ or ‘relative’?

Whichever of the many beliefs about existence we claim, such beliefs come with their own specific standards of behavior.  The last few posts have explored the concept of ‘sacraments’, in which certain beliefs about existence manifest themselves in the form of behaviors which are thought to be ‘normative’ to human existence.  In participating in these behaviors the concept of sacraments suggests that we are acting in a way which is more resonant with the basic flow of energy by which our lives, and hence our society, and ultimately the universe, unfolds.  The idea of the sacraments suggests that there is indeed a ‘way’ to live life to the fullest.

While this perspective is certainly resonant with our secular approach to the reinterpretation of religious beliefs, it is obvious that belief in the basis of morals is quite diverse across the patchwork quilt of Christianity, much less the wide ranges found in other parts of the world.  It seems equally obvious that such a wide diversity of standards for behavior can be traced to the divergence on beliefs of human ontology.  If we disagree on how to make sense of our existence, frequently expressed as a difference in the belief in god, our standards for behavior will be strikingly different.

From the Materialist Viewpoint

A similar divergence can be seen in the increasing disagreement between ‘theists’ and ‘atheists’.  At least in the west there seems to be an increasing number of individuals who, instead of disagreeing on the nature of god, disbelieve in the existence of god itself.  This disbelief frequently manifests itself in disbelief not only of the traditional concepts of love, sin, death, etc, but in the existence of meaning itself.  Such a philosophical trend is often seen as the only logical conclusion which can be drawn from the findings of science.  Science’s theory of evolution is a case in point.

In the phase of evolution that emerges with the onset of living things, the ‘biosphere’, it is a common idea that the living things which emerge within are ‘selected by evolution’.   This idea is based on the theory of Natural Selection which sees the evolutionary process of living things as guided by the principle that they are ‘selected’ by the criteria of ‘survival’.  In this perspective, new entities which emerge in the history of evolution are either successful in surviving their environment and thus go on to continued procreation or they are unsuccessful and fade from the ‘tree of life’ as it continues to develop.

Many scientific thinkers attempt to extend this rationale to humans.  While generally agreeing that ‘morphological’ evolution still continues in humans (physiological changes) they understand that a more meaningful metric of human evolution can be found in the organization of human society, with its laws and culture.  Thus a common approach to articulating this metric is to understand the structures of human edifices in terms of their ‘evolutionary selection’.  In other words, the value of a given philosophical, legal or cultural idea can be judged by its contribution to continuing the survival of the human species.  Even in the human, evolution is still ‘selecting’ us.

In the scientific approach to making sense of things, therefore, concepts such as meaning, values and their associated standards of behavior, carry much less weight.  Although science does not directly address such things some modes of science, such as evolutionary psychology, touch upon the ‘correct way’ to live.  Evolutionary psychology reduces the basis of human action to the precepts of Darwin’s theory of ‘natural selection’, in which each of our personal choices either act in support of the ‘principles’ of evolution or act against them.  Since the key principle of evolution is understood as ‘survival’, human actions are considered to be ‘correct’ when they increase both our personal survival (so that we can contribute our genes to the ‘gene pool’) and that of our species (so that the species does not become extinct).  Since this mode of science proposes behavioral correctness, it is effectively proposing values and morals consistent with this standard.

Further, since those morals and standards of behavior are relative to our unfolding understanding of evolution, they themselves unfold over time.  Therefore since such understanding is quite diverse, personal morals can then be different for different persons.  Morals are therefore ‘relative’.

The Next Post

This week we continued to expand our view of sacraments, morals and values to the basis of ‘correct behavior’, and seen how the materialistic perspective is based on science’s proposition that the basis of biological evolution is ‘survival’.   Next week we will contrast this materialistic approach to the traditional religious view of this basis, and explore how our secular reinterpretation approach can bring these two seemingly contradictory viewpoints into synergy.

November 9 – Reinterpreting Sacraments- Part 1- What Are Sacraments?

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how human evolution proceeds through the trial-and-error process seen in our attempts to ‘articulate the noosphere’, and how successful attempts are captured in the ‘cultural DNA’ through the ‘tissue of culture’ as found in religion, philosophy and laws.  This week we will continue this exploration by looking how sacraments can be seen as examples of human activity in which the work of grace, the energy of our personal evolution, can be seen to occur.

Sacraments as ‘Signs of Grace’

One treatment of the sacraments suggests that they are rooted in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ values.  In this interpretation, the sacraments were instantiations of seven times in Jesus’ life that he highlighted the action of grace in human life, times in which humans participate most deeply in their lives.

In the posts on Jesus (beginning with http://www.lloydmattlandry.com/?p=352) we looked at Jesus as a signpost to God, and discussed how he can be seen as evolution becoming aware of itself.  As western religious tradition has seen it, there are seven activities of human life that Jesus recognized as critical to our personal evolution.  Just as Jesus was a ‘signpost to God’, these events were ‘signposts to grace’, events to which we should pay special attention as they are examples of times in human life in which this ‘evolutionary energy’ is most active.

The idea of seeing some human activity as more significant to human life is found in other religions as well.   In his book, ‘The Souls of China’, Ian Johnson addresses the trend in which many Chinese are beginning to identify themselves as Daoist, Buddhist, Christian or Muslim after decades of having religious expression outlawed.  He explains how traditional rituals help people overcome urban anomie and answer the “pragmatic but profound issue of how to behave at critical life junctures”, such as weddings, funerals, pilgrimages, social work and meditation.

So, as we proceeded in the other objects of our search for the “Secular Side of God”, the key step in this search is the reinterpretation of those traditional teachings from the secular perspective that we have developed.  The sacraments are no exception.

What Are ‘Sacraments?’

    Christianity identifies seven events in human life that are ‘occasions of grace’: events in which our lives are infused by the energy of grace.  Although the church places great emphasis on the action of the church hierarchy in ‘conferring’ the grace that flows in these events, a secular approach simply sees them as events in our lives in which we are cooperating with this flow of grace in such a way that our personal evolution, our ‘spiritual growth’ is enhanced.  Paraphrasing Teilhard, when we participate in these events we are ‘trimming our sails to the winds of life’, aligning our lives to the axis of evolution.

Traditional church teaching identifies seven such rituals, all of which require church hierarchy for the ‘conferring’, and all of which recognize the action of grace which takes place.  These teachings place great emphasis on the both the need for the church to perform the ritual and to effect the outcome of the giving of grace, and the need for our participation in them as a condition for church membership.

From our secular perspective, however, we can reinterpret the church’s concept of the sacraments in terms of our understanding of grace as the energy of both our personal evolution and the resulting evolution of our species.

The Next Post

This week we began to look into how the Christian concept of the ‘Sacrament’ can be seen from our secular perspective, as the continuation of the thread of evolution as it rises through the human.

Next week we will look at each of the sacraments themselves to see how they can be reinterpreted in the light of this secular perspective.

October 26 – Grace and the DNA of Human Evolution

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how the energy of evolution is manifest in the milieu in which we live our human lives, ‘grace’, and how the concept of ‘sacrament’, in our secular context, is simply identification of some of the ways that this energy can be encountered.  In Teilhard’s vernacular, they are examples of ‘articulation of the noosphere.’

This week I’d like to look a little more at the way that Teilhard viewed the ‘noosphere’, and how such articulation is necessary to light the path to the advance of evolution through our lives.

The Noosphere

As Teilhard sees it, the evolution of our planet can be seen as the appearance of ‘spheres’, layers of evolutionary products which have appeared in succession on our planet.   He sees these spheres as:

–          The ‘lithosphere’, the conglomeration of molecules which pack together under the influence of gravity, the same force by which our planetary disk precipitated out into distinct planets surrounding the Sun.

–          The ‘atmosphere’ which forms as the gas molecules separate from the solids

–          The ‘hydrosphere’ which forms as the atmosphere evolves into water and air

–          The ‘biosphere’ which emerges as some molecules become complex enough to form cells

These ‘spheres’ are well recognized by science, and their appearance in evolutionary history is well established.

To these fundamental spheres, Teilhard adds the ‘noosphere’, literally the ‘sphere of thought’.  He sees that with the appearance of the human, our planet acquires a new layer.  As humans emerge and begin to cover the planet, he sees it as obvious that the planet takes on a new form.  Today’s controversies over such subjects as ecology and global warning are evidence of the emerging awareness of just how significant the noosphere has become.

The Articulation of the Noosphere

As we have seen, Teilhard sees evolution proceeding through the human as a continuation of the increase of complexity that can be observed over the preceding fourteen or so billion years.  He also notes that in each phase of evolution, from the ‘physics’ phase, through the ‘biological’ phase, this increase of complexity ‘changes state’.  In his view, the energy which drives complexification itself becomes more complex.  The Standard Model of Physics is still evolving (note the emerging theories of Quantum Physics and ‘dark’ matter) and thus offers new paradigms by which complexification in this phase can be articulated.  The theory of Natural Selection is also still evolving as it addresses the increasing complexity of living things.  However, when it comes to understanding, much less measuring, the process of how the continuation of the rise of complexity can be seen in the human person and his culture is much less clear.

Teilhard notes that all religions attempt to identify ‘how we should be if we would be what we can be’.  With the strong infusion of myths, superstitions, dualities and cohesive value to the state that are inevitable over such longs periods of development (arising in the prescientific world of thousands of years ago), we are left today with inconsistent and even contradictory guidelines for our continued development.  Science does not offer much help in this area.  Those expressions of belief that claim scientific foundations are simply attempts to derive meaning from empirical data, and offer little support for the faith needed to deal with the daily effort of human life.

But as Teilhard sees effective human life as requiring us to ‘set our sails to the winds of life’, the skills of reading the wind and tending the tiller are first necessary to be learned.   As he sees it:

“And, conventional and impermanent as they may seem on the surface, what are the intricacies of our social forms, if not an effort to isolate little by little what are one day to become the structural laws of the noosphere.

“In their essence, and provided they keep their vital connection with the current that wells up from the depths of the past, are not the artificial, the moral and the juridical simply the hominized versions of the natural, the physical and the organic?”

   It seems obvious that moving the human enterprise forward comes down to ‘trial and error’.  At the base, this is simply ‘survival of the fittest’: those things that we learn which enhance our life are collected, refined through the development of our culture, and encoded in morals and laws.  Those which don’t atrophy over time as they become seen as less valuable.

These skills that we accumulate in our culture are ‘articulations of the noosphere”.  They can be understood as the ‘genetic material’ of human evolution, weaving their way into the thread of universal evolution as it rises through the human person.  By this criterion, sacraments can be understood as examples of behavior that are passed from generation to generation via the cultural ‘tissue’ of religion.

Religion is not the only place that such noospheric articulations can be found.  As we saw in the post of September 14 on the secular basis of spirituality,  a secular example of spirituality can be found in a fundamental axiom of our government.  It is at the basis of the idea of a ‘representative government’, and often described as the ‘will of the people’ so essential to democratic governments.  While not finding articulation per se in the new American constitution and bill of rights, Thomas Jefferson was very clear in his concept of the validity of this ‘consensus in government’ as an ‘articulation of the noosphere’:

“I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be other that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.  I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves.”

This exercise of ‘trust of the people to govern themselves’ is a secular example of an ‘articulation of the noosphere’.  When we engage in such activity as the process of voting, we are implicitly connecting with one of the threads of evolution as it runs through human evolution.  This activity is effectively a ‘secular sacrament’.

The Next Post

This week looked a little deeper into Teilhard’s insights; the evolving understanding of ‘how we should be if we would be what we can be’, which he refers to as ‘articulation of the noosphere’, and saw how such insights contribute to the continuation of the thread of evolution as it rises through the human.  We saw that such articulations are essentially the ‘cultural DNA’ of our evolution, and that the sacraments can be seen as examples.

Next week we will move onto reinterpreting sacraments in the light of this secular perspective.

September 28 – Spirituality, Part 2- Spirituality and Evolution

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Today’s Post

Last week we introduced the concept of spirituality from a secular perspective, and saw how spirituality can be understood as underpinning the continuation of human evolution as seen in the development of human ideals.  This week we will broaden out look to see the essential part played by spirituality in universal evolution.

The Spiritual Basis of Evolution

We have seen in our secular perspective of God how the principle metric of evolution is the increasing of complexity over time, and how this increasing complexity has yet to be quantified by science but yet is critical to science’s understanding of how the universe unfolds.  We have also seen how this increase in complexity underpins the principle by which entities of a given order of complexity can unite in such a way that the ensuing entities are of a higher order.  Teilhard sees an energy at work by which this happens at every rung of evolution.  At the rung of fundamental particles, it can be seen in the effecting of electrons from bosons, the effecting of atoms from electrons, and the effecting of molecules from atoms.  At the rung of the human person, it is the energy which unites us in such a way that we become more complete.  At the human level this energy manifests itself as ‘love’. 

It is at work, therefore, to an increasingly lesser extent as we look backward in time at all previous steps of evolution.  While science does not yet have a term for this energy, the religious term is ‘spirit’.

As Teilhard points out, in the collection of his thoughts, “Human Energy”, therefore, the roots of this essential ‘complexifying’ energy of evolution are deeply embedded in the ‘axis of evolution’.

“Spirituality is not a recent accident, arbitrarily or fortuitously imposed on the edifice of the world around us; it is a deeply rooted phenomenon, the traces of which we can follow with certainty backwards as far as the eye can reach, in the wake of the movement that is drawing us forward.  ..it is neither super-imposed nor accessory to the cosmos, but that it quite simply represents the higher state assumed in and around us by the primal and indefinable thing that we call, for want of a better name, the ‘stuff of the universe’.  Nothing more; and also nothing less.  Spirit is neither a meta- nor an epi- phenomenon, it is the phenomenon.”

   As Teilhard sees it, this ‘secular’ approach to spirituality overcomes yet another dualism that is common to religion: spirit vs matter.

“Spirit and matter are (only) contradictory if isolated and symbolized in the form of abstract, fixed notions of pure plurality and pure simplicity, which can in any case never be realized.  (In reality) one is inseparable from the other; one is never without the other; and this for the good reason that one appears essentially as a sequel to the synthesis of the other.  The phenomenon of spirit is not therefore a sort of brief flash in the night; it reveals (itself in) a gradual and systematic passage from the unconscious to the conscious, and from the conscious to the self-conscious.”

   Teilhard is making an essential point about spirit and matter here.  He sees matter evolving to higher levels of complexity (‘synthesizing’) under the influence of the energy of complexification (‘spirit’), and the increased complexity which results from such synthesis is therefore capable of more complex interaction.  This increased material level of complexity is a manifestation of an increased level of spirit.  To Teilhard, spirit is “Nothing more; and also nothing less” than the energy of evolution.

Universal Spirituality and Dualism

He goes on to elaborate how the ‘spirit/matter’ dualism so endemic to religion is overcome by the realization that instead of spirit and matter in opposition to each other, they are simply co-operative aspects of reality as it emerges and continues to evolve to levels of greater complexity:

“The problem of the world, for our minds, is the association it presents of two opposed elements (spirit and matter) in a series of linked combinations covering the expanse between thought and unconsciousness.  Now if consciousness is taken to be a meta-phenomenon, this dualism in motion is simply and verbally noted, without any attempt or even any possibility of interpretation.  If this dualism is pushed aside as an epi-phenomenon, it is conjured out of sight.  But it is simply and harmoniously resolved, on the other hand, in a world in which consciousness and its appearance are regarded as the phenomenon.  Everything then takes its natural place in a universe in process of changing its spiritual state…And hominization (the appearance of the human) merely marks a decisive and critical point in the gradual development of this change.”

   In Teilhard’s perspective, therefore, the basic process of evolution can now be seen as a process of matter “changing its spiritual state’.  ‘Spirit’ can now be seen as that which underlies the very axis of evolution, finally becoming fully tangible in the human person and his society.

The Next Post

This week we took a look at the concept of spirituality from our secular perspective, and saw how spirituality is a phenomenon essential to the process of evolution as it lifts the universe to ‘its current level of complexity’.

Next week we will continue our exploration of Christian concepts by applying this perspective to the Christian concept of ‘grace’.

September 14 – Spirituality, Part 1- Concept and Example

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Today’s Post

Last week we completed the segment of the blog that established the “Secular Side of God’, looking at western concepts of God, Jesus and the Trinity from our secular viewpoint.  Starting this week we will begin to apply this same secular approach to the many beliefs and practices which make up the complex tapestry of Western religion as found in Christianity, beginning with the concept of ‘spirituality’.

What is Spirituality?

Along with many of the premises of religion, spirituality is difficult to grasp with the empirical tools of science.  At the same time the reality of spirituality can be seen to underlie human life in a universal way.

One of the many artificial dualities found in traditional religion divides reality into ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’.  From this perspective, spirituality exists at the level of the ‘supernatural’, above nature and while this layer of reality can impinge upon the ‘natural’ world in which we live, it is nonetheless separate and unobtainable ‘in this life’ (another duality).

In following  Teilhard in our secular approach, all of reality is understood as a single, unified thing.  While there are layers, such as Teilhard’s ‘spheres’ of complexity which unfold over time, at its basis the universe is united in basic principles, such as articulated in the Standard Model of physics.  These principles apply everywhere in the universe, in all phases of its evolution.  With Teilhard’s addition of the principle of increasing complexity over time (assumed by science but yet to be quantified), these principles account for everything that we can see.

Instead of these principles being understood as ‘super natural’ (above nature), in Teilhard’s perspective they become ‘supremely natural’ (at the basis of nature).

If we define ‘spirituality’ as simply ‘non-material’, we can begin to see spirituality in this light as a mileu which surrounds us.  We live our lives enmeshed in intangible but very real fields of spirituality which are reflected in our laws, the principles of behavior that shape our cultures, and the everyday facets of relationships that inform our lives.  As we discussed last week, the many historical attempts to ‘articulate the noosphere’ are nothing more than attempts to articulate these principles so that we can understand and cooperate with them to make the most of our lives.

A secular example of spirituality can be found in a fundamental axiom of our government.  It is at the basis of the idea of a ‘representative government’, and often described as the ‘will of the people’ so essential to democratic governments.  While not finding articulation per se in the new American constitution and bill of rights, Thomas Jefferson was very clear in his concept of the validity of this ‘consensus in government’:

“I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be other that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.  I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves.”

   Jefferson expresses a very revolutionary concept of the human person and his society with these views.  At the time, the precedent for government was clearly to trust only in the provenance of royalty in the belief that if government were left to ‘the masses’, so the prevailing opinion said, chaos would result.  The belief that a consensus resulting from ‘the masses’ could result in setting the course of the ship of state in a positive direction was very revolutionary, indeed .

This ‘will of the people’ is essential to our democratic form of government, but intangible and difficult to quantify.   Believing it to the extent that it is established as the basis for government has nonetheless resulted in a form of government that can be clearly seen to be more successful than previous forms.

The Evolution of Spirituality

Seeing how spirituality can be understood as underpinning our very concept of government, we can apply this perspective backward to see the evolution of an idea without material substance:

–  the intuition that “we were made in the image of God” expressed around campfires over three thousand years ago

–  which evolved into ‘prophets’ with their intuition of ‘rights’ and  ‘justice’ against the wrongdoing of the establishment

– to one that recognized love as the energy of unity and the uniqueness of the person

– to the adoption of this principle as a way of insuring the cohesiveness of a highly diverse empire

– rising through the many ‘charters’ (contracts between rulers and ruled) of western medieval and renaissance society

– to an expression that “all men are created with inalienable rights”, ones not granted by birth, wealth, IQ, or good fortune, and established as a cornerstone of the constitution of the most powerful nation on earth.

The Next Post

This week we took a first look at the concept of spirituality from our secular perspective, and saw how spirituality can be seen to play a part in the evolution of human ideals.

Next week we will take a look at the part that spirituality plays in evolution itself.

August 31 – If There is a Secular Side of God, What About Religion?

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Today’s Post

Over the last year we have explored the idea of God from a secular viewpoint.  We have taken a look at the traditional Western concepts of God: the definitions, metaphysics, dogmas and scriptural references and explored them for their secular aspects.  In a nutshell, we have seen that all of these concepts of traditional religion contain core threads of belief that can be understood from a secular context.

We have also seen how ‘reinterpreting’ these concepts in the light of a secular perspective can also serve to achieve a more integrated understanding of God; one which is cleansed of the corrosive duality so endemic to traditional Western religion.  In addition we have also seen how this approach can serve to mitigate the irrelevance that has crept into Christianity since its beginnings.  Richard Rohr puts the need for such a reduction of irrelevance (and a call to reinterpretation) in plain terms:

“For centuries, Christianity has been presented as a system of beliefs. That system of beliefs has supported a wide range of unintended consequences, from colonialism to environmental destruction, subordination of women to stigmatization of LGBT people, anti-Semitism to Islamophobia, clergy pedophilia to white privilege. What would it mean for Christians to rediscover their faith not as a problematic system of beliefs, but as a just and generous way of life, rooted in contemplation and expressed in compassion, that makes amends for its mistakes and is dedicated to beloved community for all? Could Christians migrate from defining their faith as a system of beliefs to expressing it as a loving way of life?”  (Italics mine)

How Did We Get Here?

So, our approach to reinterpretation of Christian teaching in order to restore it to a “system of beliefs… expressed as loving way of life” is the goal of this blog.  The first step of such an effort has been to offer a reinterpretation of the traditional Western concepts of God in the light of a secular point of view.

Such a point of view, as we have seen, is not based on the intuitive traditional approach of scripture, the evolved Greek-influenced dogmas or the metaphysics of Aquinas, but is rooted in the empirical findings of Science.  This point of view emanates from an integrated understanding of such scientific theories as can be found in the Standard Model of Physics and the Natural Selection theory of biological evolution.  I stress the term integrated because, as Teilhard notes, it permits the universe to be perceived as a single, unified thing which is unfolding in the direction of increasing complexity.  Once this underlying metric is acknowledged, the rest is a matter of understanding the many modes of complexity which the universe undergoes before it reaches, as Richard Dawkins notes, “..its present complex existence”.

God, as Dawkins acknowledges, can then be seen as “the basis for this process”.

So all we have done in this blog is to explore the consequences of these two prepositions.  Seeing God in the process and understanding how we can continue this continuing of complexity as it rises through our persons and our species.

As part of this exploration we will see how we can plumb the many teachings of religion for their significance to this process.  Or, as Dawkins sees it, how we can begin to “divest the word ‘God’ of all the baggage that it carries in the minds of most religious believers” in order to get back to the profound intimacy as found in John.  As we have seen, John believes it is possible to be intimate with Dawkins’ “basis for this process” when he declares that “God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him”.

So, given all this, how do we find this ‘thread of evolution’ arising in us, and more importantly, how do we cooperate with it to become more fully human?

Or, putting it more prosaically, how do we advance human evolution through development of the skill to use our neo-cortex brains to modulate the instinctual stimuli of our limbic and reptilian brains?

Articulating the Noosphere

Answering these questions involves what Teilhard refers to as “Articulation of the Noosphere”.  To Teilhard, there are spheres of our planet, such as the ‘lithosphere’ (the rocky core), the atmosphere, the hydrosphere (the oceans), and the biosphere (living things).  To this he adds the additional sphere which occurs as a result of the human ability to be aware of its awareness: the noosphere (human thought).  Just as the other spheres are addressed by Science, and yield understandings which permit humans to deal with them, in the same way the noosphere must be parsed and understood if we are to continue the process of evolution as it rises through the human person.

As Aldous Huxley claims in his ‘Perennial Philosophy’, all religions attempt to understand reality in terms that help us deal with it: they all propose ‘articulations of the noosphere’.  All religious teachings, to some extent, propose beliefs about reality and establish practices (rituals) consistent with the beliefs that are intended to bring us closer to becoming what we can become.  But as we have seen, most religions, due to their integrative ability to bring cohesion to cultures and nations, eventually wander into dualism, hierarchy and irrelevance.

This is not to suggest that their articulations are without merit.  On the contrary, this blog takes as a ‘given’ that they contain nuggets of value to us as we collectively continue to develop the ‘skill of using our neo-cortex brains to modulate the instinctual stimuli of our lower brains’.  In other words, to advance human evolution

Where Do We Go From Here

So, given this goal, and considering the secular understanding of God that we have developed, what’s the next step?  As a final segment of the blog I would like to address many of the concepts and beliefs of Western religion and offer reinterpretations consistent with our secular approach.  I also hope to show how the principles which emerge from such reinterpretations can be seen as relevant to human existence as we have addressed it:

–          Since we are products of evolution, we contain at our core a spark, a small branch, of the universal axis of evolution by which the world is raised to Dawkins’ “present complex existence”

–          We continue the process of evolution (towards both personal and cultural maturity) by recognizing and cooperating with this spark

–          We must develop a collective understanding, an ‘articulation’ of both the structure of the universe and our place in it as well as an understanding of how to engage it in such recognition and cooperation

This last segment of the blog will address traditional Western religious concepts such as spirituality, grace, sacrament, faith, salvation, the afterlife,  prayer, and scripture in terms of how they can be reinterpreted as such articulation.

The Next Post

This week we reviewed how we got to this secular perspective of God, and opened the subject of how the reinterpreted principles of Western religion can be seen as tools which we can use to effect not only our own personal growth but to contribute to the continuation of human evolution as a whole.

Next week we will begin to address these principles, starting with the concept of ‘spirituality’.