Tag Archives: Teilhard de Chardin

February 14 2019 – What Part does the Divine Spark Play?

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Today’s Post 

Last week we continued our relook at God from the secular perspective, moving from seeing ‘Him’ less as a supernatural, separate, all-powerful person who ‘loves’ us and wants us to be good so we can qualify for a perfect afterlife, to understanding ‘Him’ as the basic agency of the flow of evolution seen in its increase of complexity ‘from age to age’.  Last week we extended this perspective to understanding how, for evolution to proceed, this agency’s participation rises from simple physical laws through biological principles to the appearance of an entity with consciousness which has become aware of itself: the person.  In such a way, God can be seen as ultimately personal.

Last week we also saw how, in a straightforward secular reflection, without the need for religious ritual or adherence to dogma, Teilhard demonstrates how any of us can begin to be aware of how this ‘divine spark’ is active in our ‘persons’.

This week, we will begin to explore how this understanding of the participation of the ‘ground of being’, the ‘divine spark” in each of us, is the cornerstone for the continuation of the evolution of the human species.

The Golden Rule: Recognizing the Spark

Nearly all of the world’s religions include a statement of the Golden Rule, generally considered to have been first acknowledged by Confucius about 500 BCE:

“What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.”

   This is commonly restated to “Treat others as you would wish to be treated”.  As such, all these religions acknowledge that this reciprocal process must itself start with not only some grasp of how we ourselves wish to be treated but the belief that our basic wish to be treated is somehow ‘universal’, shared by others.  This wish is ‘normative’, common to all persons.

Jesus introduces this third, ‘universal’, context to the Golden Rule when he restates it as

“Love God, love your neighbor as yourself.”

 This restatement carries forward the two basic Confucian concepts of self and others, but brings into play the idea that in doing so we are somehow engaged with the ground of being, and such engagement places us in the thread of ongoing human evolution.

Jesus’ statement is traditionally translated as “God requires us to love one as a condition of salvation”, but in our secular approach to God, we have begun to see ‘Him’ as the ground of being from which flows the principle of evolution of which we are the most recent product.  Such ‘reinterpretation’ offers a deeper ‘articulation of the noosphere’ than does tradition, and also ties into the understanding that our life and the energy of evolution are somehow tied together.

Secular Morality… 

We have looked at how the assumptions which emerge when we unpack the Golden Rule, particularly using the hermeneutic of Jesus, point the way to our emergent evolution as persons and as societies.   Thomas Jefferson’s approach ( as seen previously ) is an excellent example of such a process.  From this reference of September 14, 2017, we saw how Jefferson understood the full impact of the Golden Rule:

“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 these same ‘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 highly successful, as Johan Norberg has described in detail.

…And Its Absence

Of course, it is very common even on the Western countries which have benefited most from Jefferson’s insight, to disbelieve that it exists.  Friedrich Nietzsche pulled no punches in his statement of disdain for the principle behind the ‘Golden Rule’, from his “On the genealogy of morals”:

“I abhor man’s vulgarity when he says, “What is right for one man is right for another”, “Do not to others that which you would not that they should do unto you”…   The hypothesis here is ignoble to the last degree: it is taken for granted that there is some sort of equivalence by value between my actions and thine.”

   In stark contrast to Jefferson, Nietzsche’s locus of societal order is not ‘the people’, it is the ubermensch, literally overman but usually translated as ‘superior man’.  As Steven Pinker wryly observes in a criticism of Donald Trump:

“..I fret about humanistic morality could deal with a callous, egotistic, megalomaniacal sociopath.  Nietzsche argued that it’s good to be a callous, egotistic, megalomaniacal sociopath.”

And Nietzsche’s rationale is that it takes such a superman to be the locus of social order.  Once the unworthiness of the underclass is established, it’s not surprising that it would take such a superior human to ride herd over the untrustworthy mobs.  Such disdain is the basis for the fear of ‘the other (Jews, Gypsies, immigrants, etc) that autocrats such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Kim instilled in their countrymen in order to promote themselves as ‘saviors’.

The Next Post

   Last week we took a relook at how God can be understood as the basic agent of evolution which over time adds a quantum of complexity to each new product, and how the current manifestation of this agency is the person, and how the basis of person is the extension of universal becoming as it manifests itself in every human.

This week we began to look at how this ‘divine spark’ can be seen as active in our social constructions, particularly in Jefferson’s assertion that “the people themselves” are the “safe depository …of the ultimate powers of the society”.

But we also saw how denial of this spark has historically led to some of the most heinous forms of government to have arisen in modern times, in the governments of Nazi Germany, Mao’s Red China, Stalin’s Red Russia and Kim’s North Korea.

Next week we will move on to see how cooperating with this ‘divine spark’ is essential to the continuation of the advance of evolution in the human species.

February 7 2019 –Awakening to the ‘Divine Spark’ Within Ourselves

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a look, in our recap of “The Secular Side of God’, at how Teilhard’s secular insights into God leads back to not only understanding God as the ‘universal ground of being’, but one which, as ‘His’ energy of becoming runs through all things in the universal ‘tree of becoming’, is alive in each and every human person.

This week we will begin a look at how awareness of this ‘spark of divinity’ in each of us can lead to the continuation of evolution of the human species.

Searching For The Path

In their eternal quest to determine “the will of God”, all religions represent an attempt to, as Teilhard puts it, “articulate the noosphere”.  It is clear to most religionists that there is a right way and a wrong way to live life in keeping with the ‘intentions of the creator’.

The issue of dogma, however, is also clear.  Human history is rife with examples of systematic and wholesale slaughter of those with different beliefs by those who believe themselves to be more correct.  Less developed countries today still have laws which mandate death to those whose statements of belief are considered ‘heretic’.

With this dismal picture in mind, the West’s insistence of ‘freedom of religion’, and consequently ‘freedom from religion’, are in retrospect a step towards a society in which the person and his personal freedom can thrive more completely.  As we saw in the writings of Johan Norberg, both are essential to continued human evolution.

In this positive path, the values of “The Enlightenment” can be clearly seen (See Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now”).    One other less positive effect, however, is noted by Teilhard:

“Faced with a sort of spiritual revolution, the first result of which was to make man bow down before himself.. Christianity.. initially recoiled in an attitude of disquiet and defense.  Accidentally, owning to its materialistic interpretation of the evolutionary movement it had just discovered in the universe, science took up a hostile attitude to the God of the Gospels.  To this challenge, believers in the Gospels had necessarily to reply by condemnation.  In this way the only too familiar unhappy war between science and religion was born and continued throughout the nineteenth century. “

      As Richard Rohr points out, one factor in the movement away from the Christian dimensions of society as seen in “The Enlightenment” was the increasingly formal and tightly structured Christian beliefs that Jonathan Sacks sees as influenced by Greek thought.  Rohr notes this as an emphasis on ‘adherence to teachings’ as opposed to metanoia, the transformation of human life that is essential to continued human evolution.  The end result is not just the primacy of ‘facts’ over ‘beliefs’, as stressed by the authors of the Enlightenment, but over time a reduction of the relevance of teachings.  In Rohr’s words:

“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.”

   While the Enlightenment certainly gave birth to a new wave of ‘left brained’ thinking, especially in the realm of science, Sacks notes that the many modes of government in which the primacy of the person and his freedom, as well as the fundamental moral and religious principles on which they were based, were diminished, yielding horrendous results, such as seen in the rules of such despots as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kims and others.

Rohr points out that the over-structured, tightly hierarchical Christian edifice in many ways has lost the path initially struck by the early church.

“Unfortunately, in the fourth century, St. Jerome translated the word metanoia, (“to transform life”) into Latin as paenitentia (“repent” or “do penance”), initiating a host of moralistic connotations that have colored Christians’ understanding of the Gospels ever since.”

   Such a focus on the primacy of atonement, leading to such theories as ‘original sin’, the theory of ‘substitutionary atonement’ and, in in many expressions a negative understanding of the human person, was to eventually surface in Martin Luther’s statement that persons are “piles of excrement covered by Christ”, and Freud’s negative assessment of the person as “dangerous”.

Relocating The Path

Rohr, following Teilhard, sees the essential, life-affirming, positive assessment of Jesus as the original theme of the gospels.  When John asserts that “God is love, and he who abides in love and God in him”, he is stating a basic hermeneutic of Jesus:  We are not just ‘children of God’: whatever is at the core of existence by which all things grow in the increase of complexity, it is active in our personal growth, our metanoia, and hence is at the core of our existence as well.

Richard Rohr is adamant that this hermeneutic must be restored to the center of Christian belief if Christianity is to regain the relevance to human life that can balance the empirical and impersonal basis of science.

The existential intimacy understood by Blondel, Teilhard and Rohr, while essential to Christianity (even to those expressions which minimize it) is not necessarily religious.  Teilhard offers a very secular description of encountering it:

  “And so, for the first time in my life, perhaps, I took the lamp and, leaving the zones of everyday occupations and relationships, where my identity, my perception of myself is so dependent on my profession, my roles- where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates.

   But as I descended further and further from that level of conventional certainties by which social life is so superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself.  At each step of the descent, with the removal of layers of my identity defined from without, a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me.

   And when I had to stop my descent because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and from it flowed, arising I know not from where, the current which I dare to call my life.

   What science will ever be able to reveal to man the origin, nature and character of that conscious power to will and to love which constitutes his life?  It is certainly not our effort, nor the effort of anyone around us, which set that current in motion.  And it is certainly not our anxious care, nor that of any friend of ours, which prevents its ebb or controls its turbulence.

  We can, of course, trace back through generations some of the antecedents of the torrent which bears us along; and we can, by means of certain moral and physical disciplines and stimulations, regularize or enlarge the aperture through which the torrent is released into us.

   But neither that geography nor those artifices help us in theory or in practice to harness the sources of life.

   My self is given to me far more than it is formed by me.”

   This perspective is reflected by Blondel when he says (and I paraphrase):

“There is no stance which I can take where I see God there and I here.   Such ability to see, analyze and conclude lies on the crest of a tide which has risen in the universe over billions of years, which I did not summon and over which I have no power.  As a gift, my powers of sight, analysis and action can only be enhanced by more focused cooperation with it, or enfeebled by denial of it.”

The Next Post

Last week we took a relook at how God can be understood as the basic agent of evolution which over time adds a quantum of complexity to each new product, and how the current manifestation of this agency is the person.

This week we moved on to the single thread by which this quantum is added ‘from age to age”, how it manifests itself in all things, including us, and Teilhard’s example of finding it, not through adherence to religious dogma, but by simple recognition of its agency in our life.

Next week we will move on to seeing how recognition of this ‘divine spark’ is a cornerstone to the continuation of the advance of evolution in the human species.

January 31 2019 – The Secular Side of God: How Did We Get Here? Is God a Person?

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Today’s Post

Last week we returned to the question of God, and how God could be understood in a ‘secular’ sense, that is, from a non-religious perspective in keeping with the title of this blog, “The Secular Side of God”.  Understanding God as ‘the ground of being’, the agency by which the universe marches toward increased complexity, offers a starting point for understanding how this complexity can be seen as it appears in ever higher states until it reaches (so far) the human person.

Thus far, while this might establish God as a ‘principle’ by which the universe evolves towards greater complexity, it raises the question of God’s ‘personness’.  How does such a secular approach square with the Western religious concept that ‘He’ is somehow ‘personal’? Without this characteristic, isn’t God the same disinterested creator understood by the Deists?

Is God a Person?

One of the most common characteristics attributed to God by Western religion is that of ‘personness’.  In this perception, God is ‘someone’ with which each person can have a specific and tangible relationship, one through which the person is enriched.

The Jewish tradition understood that while God might be supernatural, there was connection possible between ‘Himself’ and ‘His’ creation. While the Jews were one of the first people to worship a single god, their tradition does not seem to be concerned with how God creates, much less how God is in ‘himself’, apart from ‘His’ relationship with creation.  Their perception of God is always perceived ‘in relationship’.   Whatever, whoever and however ‘He’ is apart from this relationship is of less interest to the writers of scripture than how ‘He’ manifests ‘himself’ to human persons.

Jonathan Sacks contrasts the translation of God’s statement of “His” being in the Old Testament from the Jewish “I will be where and how I will be” to the Western translation in Greek, “I am who am”.  This translation from Hebrew to Greek imposes a subtle but important change to how God is understood differently between the two religions. While the Christian understanding of God is static, immutable and constant, it omits the Jewish perspective of a ‘future tense’ in the Greek translation.  Effectively, the Jewish understanding of God admits to our greater understanding as we evolve, as well as a more immediate connection to ‘Him”.

This ‘future tense’ noted by Sacks is the key to understanding the essential connection between ‘person’ and ‘God’.  Looking at the concept of God as Teilhard does, in the context of ‘evolution’, this ‘principle of becoming’ (without which evolution would not occur) itself can be seen in the ever new ‘states’ which appear as evolution proceeds.   It goes from the nuclear forces by which atoms are forged, through the chemical forces which shape molecules, and on up the evolutionary chain, following the axis of increasing complexity, until (so far) it manifests itself in the energy by which human persons unite in such a way in which they are enriched.

Thus, while the hermeneutic of the value of ‘personness’ can be found in both Judaism and Christianity, it is an emergent characteristic of evolution.

The characteristics of this agent of evolution in the emergence of matter from the ‘primordial soup’ of the Big Bang, while not in themselves personal, are nonetheless the basis for the eventual emergence of ‘personness’.  Just as God is the agency of gravity, electromagnetic forces, chemical reactions and so on, ‘He’ is therefore the ‘agent’ of the ontological energy by which evolution continues in the human person.

The Personal Universe

Teilhard takes this insight a little further.  He recognizes that a universal characteristic of reality can be seen in the passage from energy to matter to thought on our infinitesimal speck of the immense universe.  The characteristic of increasing complexity as seen on our planet is evidence of the same ‘axis of increased complexity’ that functions everywhere in the cosmos.

In keeping with the ‘Standard Model’ of Physics, Teilhard notes that every product of universal evolution is composed of basic elements, such as quarks, which evolve into more complex entities, such as atoms and molecules.  Where conditions permit, these components will find ways to assemble themselves into centered, mobile and therefore increasingly complex entities such as cells.  In their continued ‘complexification’ these entities will continue their evolution, as they did on Earth, towards more complexity.  At each step, as happened here, entities can, conditions permitting, evolve more complex ways to unite, produce more complex and differentiated entities, and so on to a level which eventually becomes aware of its awareness.  Our common term for such a level is ‘personness’.

How will such entities elsewhere be different from human persons?  It’s impossible to tell, but other molecules might be capable of the complexification of our carbon and its fruitful alliance with oxygen.   Certainly at the biological level on our planet, without the K-T extinction (which stopped evolution of the dinosaurs), the foremost thinking entity on our planet might have evolved to be reptilian rather than mammalian.  The basic principle of evolution seems to be ‘end state agnostic’, and open to the emergence of any one (or all) creatures which possess ‘reflective’ powers similar to ours.

As Stephen Jay Gould famously said:

“If the evolutionary tape were played again, human life would not be expected.  In fact, even if it were replayed a million times or more, man would not be expected.”

  (Of course, Gould’s statement, meant to diminish what he saw as  ”human arrogance supporting the belief in God” did not take into account the probability that each of these ‘replays’, conditions permitting, would eventually lead to some sort of reflective consciousness.)

In Teilhard’s insight, all matter is capable of such evolution, and, where conditions exist to allow it, eventually consciousness aware of its existence will emerge.   Since such ‘consciousness aware of itself’ is a fruit of such increase of complexity, seemingly inevitable in all evolving systems (conditions permitting), Teilhard uses the term ‘Personal’ to describe the universe.

The Next Post

Last week we returned to the question of God, in keeping with the title of this blog: “The Secular Side of God”.   We took a relook at how God can be understood as the basic agent of evolution which over time adds a quantum of complexity to each new product.

This week we expanded this rehash to see how God can be considered as personal, engaged by evolution’s products as they become aware of not only their evolution but of the unique consciousness by which they become persons.  This unique level of consciousness, and the awareness that by possessing it we are not only all part of the same ‘tree of evolution’, but that increased awareness of it, and more importantly, cooperation with it is the only way that we can insure the continued evolution of both ourselves and our species.

Next week we will take a look at how such an awakening to this ‘spark of becoming’, effectively the ‘Divine Spark’ that we all possess, is a cornerstone to our continued march towards the future.

January 24 2019 – The Secular Side of God: How Did We Get Here? The Question of God

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Today’s Post

Last week we returned to the focus of this blog, ‘The Secular Side of God’ by beginning a summary of how Teilhard and others have opened the door to an understanding of the basic agent of evolution.   When Richard Dawkins states that God could be considered a’ “basis for a process which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence” (‘The God Delusion”), not only does he offer a way to clarify and refocus the fundamental concepts of religion but a clarification of science as well.

This week we will continue this summary by exploring how this new approach offers religion a new relevancy not only to human life, but in doing so, to its role in the continuation of human evolution.

So What Happens to God in the Teilhardian Shift? 

Many Christian thinkers critical of Teilhard base their case on the idea that a God relegated to the role of ‘energy’ begins to approach theDeistic concept, that of a God who ‘winds the universe up’ and without further interest or involvement, turns it loose.  In this model, God is distant and uninterested in human affairs.  It retains the Christian concept of God as “a person” (albeit very powerful), but denies the essential Judeo-Christian idea of ‘intimacy’ with ‘Him’.

This critique overlooks the basic concept of energy, particularly as it can be seen in the light of evolution’s tendency toward increased complexity.  Acknowledging this energy, as Teilhard did,  not only retains the Christian idea of intimacy with God, but returns it to the level seen in the Gospel stories of Jesus, removing, for example, the medieval concept of saints as ‘intersessionaries’ who ‘negotiate’ with God on our behalf.  In the vision of both Teilhard and John (‘He who abides in love abides in God and God in him”) there is simply no hard distinction to be made between Blondel’s God and our person.  As Blondel puts it,

 “It is impossible to think of myself…over here, and then of God, as over against us.  This is impossible because I…have come to be who I am through a process in which God is involved.”

  In Teilhard’s insight, the energy which moves evolution forward manifests itself differently in the different phases of evolution: Basic entities (atoms, molecules) by atomic, gravitational and chemical forces, biological entities by cellular principles, and humans are united by the energy in which we become more whole as we unite, and by which we become more unique as become more whole.

The play of energy in evolution, as understood by Teilhard, initially emerges as forces described by the “Standard Model” of Physics, but becomes more subtle as it interacts with matter more quickly in the forces described by Biology, and currently manifests itself in the forces by which we grow as persons and thus unite with others to form societies.

The degrees of ‘articulation’ of the evolving entities are better understood at the simpler (and older) stages of evolution, but are still unfolding as we learn more about how the universe is composed.  While biology offers still another layer of ‘articulation’, the process by which the purely ‘physical’ evolves into the partially ‘spiritual’ (eg consciousness and more distinctness), the ‘science of the human person’ is much less clear.

This lack of ‘articulation’ of our ‘noosphere’, however, does not keep us from continuing to evolve along Teilhard’s ‘axis’ toward more complexity.  As we have seen in the statistics of Johan Norberg’s book, “Progress”, a simple metric for measuring our evolution is ‘human welfare’, which he describes in great detail.  Such process is not necessarily due to better objective understanding of evolutionary principles, but is nonetheless the result of finding better ways to embrace the ancient concepts of person, freedom and relationship.

Thus, whatever we posit as Dawkins’ “basis for process..to..complexity”, and whether we understand it or not, it is carrying us along.

So how can such a concept of God be seen as compatible with that of religion?

The God That is Essential to Evolution

Teilhard simply focuses on the essential element of whatever composed the ‘stuff of the universe’ at the very first moment of its existence.  Without an agent of evolution by which the elements of which this ‘stuff of the universe’ were composed, it seems obvious that this initial ‘stuff of the universe’ would be ‘dead on arrival’; the universe would be very simple and very static..

The ‘essential element’ of course is the ability of these elements to unite in such a way as to produce increasingly differentiated and complex products.  In their more complex state, the potential of these products to unite and form more complex offspring is also increased.

Seeing the universe as emerging in such ‘cycles of becoming’ leads to the insight that these cycles evolve along a single axis, one of increasing complexity, by which all things are connected by not only their place in the flow, the upwelling, of this basic energy over time.  The increased potential for their uniting at every stage of evolution also reflects a ‘spark’ of the single quantum of energy which flows through them.  This spark, as we shall explore next week, offers still another basis for connection.

In this upwelling, each product of evolution, active as it is in producing future products of more complexity, is thus cooperating with the agency of evolution, and is thus intimately related to other products.

Thus Teilhard’s understanding of God as the essential agent of the universe’s ever-increasing potential for higher potential moves God from a distant progenitor, now retired, uninterested, and thus uninvolved, to an ever-active principle of being which flourishes in each product of evolution, from the quark to the person.

The Next Post 

This week we returned to the question of God, as suggested in the title of this blog: “The Secular Side of God”.  As on all subjects, we followed Teilhard in his hermeneutic of placing all things in an evolutionary context in order to better understand them.  Understanding God as ‘the ground of being’ which powers the universe’s march toward increased complexity offers a starting point toward understanding the manifestation of this complexity as it appears in ever higher states until it reaches (so far) the human person.  This also provides a basis for understanding how God, who is not a ‘person’, can nonetheless be considered ‘personal’.

Next week we will we will examine this claim in more detail.

January 17, 2019 – The Secular Side of God: How Did We Get Here? The Question of God

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how the insights of Jonathan Sacks have led us back to the theme of this blog: “The Secular Side of God”.  In offering a secular perspective on religion, as a “philosophical understanding of the human condition and our place within the universe”, Sacks stresses the need for more than the innovation and invention of Norberg in human evolution, but the awareness of meaning.  Like Teilhard, whose ‘evolutionary context’ opens the door to reinterpreting religion, Sacks’ perspective reveals a potential link to science and hence offers a powerful tool for continuing to fabricate the future of human evolution.

As we have seen in this blog, the insights of Sacks, Blondel, Teilhard, Jefferson, Rohr and others all reflect the need for a rethinking of the fundamental concept of ‘God’ before the traditional teachings of religion can be sifted from the chaff which has been accumulated over the many thousands of years, and seen for the core insights by which we can continue our evolution.

This week, we begin a summary of how these thinkers came to understand God as the very core of being from which the entire universe has come to be, including the human person, and how this perspective helps us see the value of synthesized religion and science to the continuation of our journey to Teilhard’s “fuller being”.

The Teilhardian Shift

We began this shift in perspective by seeing how Teilhard applied his scientific evolutionary insights to Christianity, specifically Catholicism, to recast its “philosophical understandings” into not only a universal perspective but one in which the human person fits without recourse to religious ‘miracles’ or scientific ‘accidents’.  In this endeavor, Teilhard was able to place the “human condition” naturally into its “place within the universe”, in keeping with Sacks’ above secular definition.

This shift identifies the beginning point for “The Secular Side of God” by seeing God as the underlying agent by which evolution proceeds as an ‘increase in complexity’.  Teilhard’s identification of this increase in complexity as the basic metric of universal evolution not only elevates the concept of God to a universal agent, but offers an insight into evolution as a continuous process which can be understood as proceeding in succeeding stages, from the ‘big bang’ all the way to its current manifestation in the form of human persons.

Key to his concept of increasing complexity, Teilhard saw each step of this process as the result of the ‘entities of evolution’ uniting at each stage in such a way as to increase not only their ‘complexity’, but their capacity for increased unification resulting in further complexity.  In his words:

“Fuller being from closer union”

   He extrapolates from this by noting that such union also ‘differentiates’, in that the evolutionary products aren’t assimilated into each other with such union, but emerge as not only more capable of future union but more distinct as well.  In his words:

“True union differentiates”

   In Teilhard’s insight, these two actions together constitute the key to universal evolution.  Without either, evolution would not proceed, and the universe, if it existed at all, would be stuck in a static sea of quiescent energy.

In his foundational book, “The Phenomenon of Man”, he carries these two basic actions forward through primordial matter and energy (the realm of physics), through the first phase of life (the realm of biology) to the current phase highlighted by the human person’s ‘awareness of his awareness’, which he refers to as ‘The Noosphere’.  In his sweeping and integrated grasp of universal reality, these are simply phases united by the single evolutionary thread (differentiating unity) in which the pure energy of the ‘big bang’ manifests itself in the increase of complexity leading to (so far) the human person.

Seeing the universe as emerging in ‘cycles of becoming’ leads to the insight that these cycles evolve along a single ‘axis of increasing complexity’ by which all things are connected by their place in the flow, the upwelling, of this basic energy over time.

Teilhard’s understanding of an ‘agent of complexity’ by which evolution proceeds is not restricted to those with a religious background.  One of the foremost atheist thinkers, Professor Richard Dawkins, famously declared:

“There must have been a first cause of everything, and we might as well give it the name God, but God is not an appropriate name unless we very explicitly divest it of all the baggage that the word ‘God’ carries in the minds of most religious believers. The first cause that we seek must have been the basis for a process which eventually raised the world as we know it into its present complex existence.”

   While Dawkins evidently could not conceive that such a God could still be compatible with religious concepts, he implicitly agreed with Teilhard that something was indeed active in the history of the universe to effect the complexity that we now see.  His insistence that religion is incompatible with science was of course based on the many years of warfare between the two that followed the beginning of “the age of reason”, and strengthened by his many valid criticisms of it.  In the “all or nothing” position he takes in his battle with religion, however, he cannot imagine any aspect of religion which could be compatible in any way with science.

In the last several posts, however, we have seen how Teilhard and Sacks, in their more holistic hermeneutics, show an entirely different approach.

The Next Post

This week we have returned to the subject of “The Secular Side of God’ by summarizing how Teilhard, Sacks and others expand the idea of God from a ‘superior being’ with ‘infinite powers’ to the ‘universal agent of becoming’ by which the universe has evolved (and continues to evolve) to states of greater complexity.

Next week we will review how this reinterpretation, instead of ‘watering down’ the concept of God (such as happened with the Theists) can move us on to a much more comprehensive understanding of God which throws new light on both the composition of the universe and as Sacks puts it, a “philosophical understanding of the human condition and our place within the universe.”

January 10, 2019 – The Secular Side of God, Redux

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a look at the potential synergy between religion and science as seen by Jonathan Sacks, who understood it to be not only possible but necessary.

Sacks also returned us to the underlying theme of this blog when he introduced a secular concept of religion:

“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.”

   This week we will look at how this statement is a key insight into “The Secular Side of God”.

 

The Secular Side of God and Continuing Human Evolution

 

We have seen how Johan Norberg in his book, “Progress”, offers significant metrics on the unprecedented two hundred year uptick in human welfare that has occurred since the mid eighteen hundreds.  We also saw how Norberg sees the two characteristics of human freedom and relationships as essential to this increase.  Norberg never mentions God or any of the beliefs common to the God religions in his exhaustive listing of the metrics of human welfare, nor does he go into the ‘noospheric risks’ that we explored last October.

Five things, however, seem clear.

One – Evolution is proceeding under our feet, without conscious and explicit management, and that it is proceeding in the direction that Teilhard postulates (increased complexity).  Such complexity can be seen and even measured in the characteristics of human welfare that Norberg lists.

Two – As Norberg cites, the characteristics of freedom and relationship are essential for these metrics of welfare to unfold.

Three – Even though traditional religion is rife with superstition, dependence on hierarchy and desire for power, its prime focus is the human person and the relationship among persons.  This can be seen in the fact that nearly all religions contain some version of the ‘Golden Rule’ which identifies the key to harmonious relationships as a positive self-image.  We have seen how Jefferson extends this recognition of the worth of the person into a building block of a governmental paradigm which underlays the most evolutionary successful societies on Earth.

Four – While science spasmodically (and often contradictory) attempts to address the human person, as Sacks observes:

“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.”

This leaves religion, warts and all, as the only “philosophical understanding of the human condition and our place within the universe.”  The trick is to reinterpret it (such as Jefferson did) to clarify those ‘understandings’ which will underpin our continued evolution.   

Five – Since “The past is no guarantee of the future”, we have no guarantee of the future of our evolution.   There are, as we have seen, potential pitfalls, and if these noospheric risks are not managed properly, evolution cannot be expected to continue.

   We have seen how Jefferson made use of the core message of Jesus to formulate his position on the importance of the human person to the structure of society.  In doing so, he was thus was the first to envision an ‘attachment point’ between the ‘spiritual’ themes of Western religion and the evolving ‘secular’ themes of Western culture, which had been seen as in opposition for the first half of the two hundred years of evolutionary uptick that Norberg maps.

Knowledge, Power and Evolution

Restating Sacks ’assertion:

“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.”

   This reflects Teilhard’s insight that to manage our voyage through the noosphere, we must understand it.  But Sacks goes a little deeper by quantifying this search for understanding in terms of ‘items of knowledge’ and ‘accession to power’.  As he sees it, both facets of our voyage require us to answer the question “how should it be used?”  Understanding of the noosphere involves more than the empirical insights of science. As Sacks sees it, it is more important to our continued evolution to understand their meaning.

In this approach, Sacks understands religion in one sense as a “philosophical understanding of the human condition and our place within the universe.”  This is quite different from the traditional understanding of religion as ‘truths to be adhered to’, and much more in line with the underpinning of the beliefs that apply to Norberg’s assessment of human welfare.

As an example of how such a ‘noospheric risk’ can present itself, consider how many times in recorded history a despot has come to power by distorting “items of knowledge” to “accede to power” by using news designed to incite fear (such as Hitler’s campaign to blame Jews for Germany’s woes) as a step to power.  Trends such as this can be seen today in the demonization of ‘the other’ in the many arguments on immigration.

As we saw in the posts on morality, Teilhard saw the need for religion’s understanding of morality to be reinterpreted in light of human evolution.  Sacks articulates why this is necessary, and, like Teilhard, understands that managing our existence requires us to understand how such things as information and power must be managed properly.

Beginning to understand such a ‘Secular Side’ of what religion has traditionally referred to ‘God’ is a first step toward unlocking religion’s great potential to partner with science as tools for continuing our personal and collective march into the future.

The Next Post

This week we have seen how Jonathan Sacks returns us to the theme of this blog, “The Secular Side of God”, with his reinterpretation of religion as a “philosophical understanding of the human condition and our place with the universe.”

Next week we’ll begin to review what we have seen in this blog that addresses such a reinterpretation.

January 3, 2019 – The Confluence of Religion and Science- Part 3

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Today’s Post

Last week we looked at the last four of Teilhard’s seven ways of seeing the natural confluence between religion and science.  As we saw, Teilhard understands them to be natural facets of a central synthesized understanding of the noosphere, and therefore potentially of benefit to continued relevance to human life.

This week we will take a look at how another thinker sees this potential for a closer and more beneficial relationship.  Jonathan Sacks, former British Chief Rabbi, comes at this subject from a slightly different perspective.  While Teilhard situates traditional dualities into an evolutive context to resolve them, Sacks understands them in the context of the two primary modes of human understanding intuition and empiricism.

Sacks On the Evolution of Religion

Teilhard of course placed religion (as he does all things) into an evolutionary context as one strand of ‘universal becoming’.  His understanding of the mutual benefit of a synthesis between science and religion is focused on their paired value to the continuation human evolution.

Sacks, in his book, “The Great Partnership”, stays closer to home, focusing on religion’s potential to help us to become what we are capable of becoming.  From this perspective, religion, properly understood and applied, is a mechanism for our personal growth.  As discussed previously, Sacks sees the evolution of human thinking in the unfolding of religion and the evolution of language, and thus as a slow movement towards a balance between the ‘left’ and ‘right’ hemispheres of the human brain.  In this way, the cooperation between religion and science can be seen as simply a more balanced and harmonious way of thinking in which the traditional ‘dualities’ (as seen by both Teilhard and Sacks) can be resolved.

Science’s Need for Religion

With this in mind, Sacks recognizes the West’s unique understanding of the person as the cornerstone of its success in improving human welfare.  Like Jefferson, he also recognizes the role that religion has played in the development of this unique perspective:

“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.”

   The ‘none’ to which he refers can of course be seen in those countries which tried to create a “social order based on secular lines”.  These examples can be seen in Stalinist Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and the Kim family’s North Korea.

As he sees it, the problem arises when an alternative to religion’s value of the human person is sought.  Sacks locates the failure of such searches in science’s inability to address human freedom.  As he sees it:

“To the extent that there is a science of human behavior, to that extent there is an implicitly denial of the freedom of human behavior.”

   He sees this duality at work in Spinoza, Marx and Freud, who argued that human freedom is an illusion, but notes that “If freedom is an illusion, so is human dignity”.  Hence when human dignity is denies, the state no longer viable.

Sacks agrees with the success of science in overcoming the superstitions that often accompany religion, but notes that it does not replace the path to ‘meaning’ that religion offered.  He summarizes these two facets of human understanding:

 “Science takes things apart to understand how they work.  Religion puts things together to show what they mean.”

   For science to be effective, its statements must be ‘proved’, and the means of doing so are accepted across the breadth of humanity.  Both the need for such rigor and the success of its application can be seen in the many aspects of increased human welfare (effectively advances in human evolution) as seen in our series on Johan Norberg’s book, “Progress”.   Clearly the ‘scientific method’ is at the root of human evolution.

However, as we noted in this series, Norberg recognizes the basis of human evolution as human freedom, innovation and relationship.  These three facets of the human person are not ‘provable’, and which existence, as we saw above, is even denied by many ‘empiricists’.  Since they are active in the sap of evolution, they also must be in the root.

At the level of the human person, Sacks observes that “Almost none of the things for which people live can be proved.”  He offers the example of ‘trust”:

“A person who manages the virtue of trust will experience a different life than one to whom every human relationship is a potential threat.”

      Therefore, any group in which all the members can trust one another is at a massive advantage to others.  This, as evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson has argued, is what religion does more powerfully than any other system.

The unprovable human capability to trust, like many others, underpins human evolution at the level of society.  It contributes to the success of relationships, one of Norberg’s three ‘basics’, as Sacks goes on to observe:

“Therefore, any group in which all the members can trust one another is at a massive advantage to others.  This, as evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson has argued, is what religion does more powerfully than any other system. “

Religion’s Need for Science

Just as the left- brained perspectives of science are in need of the right-brained balance of religion, as implicitly recognized by Norberg, so are the perspectives of religion in need of balance from science.

The claims of all forms of religion are based on metaphorical beliefs, many of which are anathema to those who are powering the ‘progress’ curve outlined by Norberg.  As we saw in the case of Thomas Jefferson, he systematically stripped the gospels of such ‘miraculous’ teachings to reveal what he considered to be the bedrock of “The Teachings of Jesus” which he in turn applied to his underlying (and unprovable) assertions of the value and dignity of the individual human person.

Many educated persons believe that scientific insight will eventually replace religion as the base of human action.  It is certainly true that in the past two hundred or so years, many religious teachings have become unacceptable due to the rise of empiricism, such as the formal blaming of the Jewish race for the death of Jesus, the seven literal days of creation, and so on.  The continuing influence of religion in many parts of the world is more due to its ability to push back on state corruption and savagery than its teachings on reincarnation and virgin births.  But with the increasing evolution of state structures more benign to the human person, such as that found in democracies, the underlying importance that religion places on the individual human person plays a larger role.

For religion to continue to play a role in this evolution, it must be seen as relevant.  As Sacks sees it:

“Religion needs science because we cannot apply God’s will to the world if we do not understand the world.  If we try to, the result will be magic or misplaced supernaturalism.”

The Road to Synthesis

So, how do we get to the point where right- and left- brain process are balanced?  Sacks addresses what happens when we don’t:

“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 substitution of cause and effect for reflection, will and choice.”

   He recognizes that science and religion have their own way of asking questions and searching for answers, but doesn’t see it as a basis for compartmentalization, in which they are seen as entirely separate worlds.  Like Teilhard, he sees the potential for synergy “..because they are about the same world within which we live, breathe and have our being”.

He sees the starting point for such synergy as “conversation”, in hopes that it will lead to “integration”.  From Sacks’ perspective:

“Religion needs science because we cannot apply God’s will to the world if we do not understand the world.  If we try to, the result will be magic or misplaced supernaturalism.”

   By the same token, he goes on:

“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.”

   Even though Sacks doesn’t place his beliefs, like Teilhard, in an explicitly evolutionary context, he does envision a more complete manifestation of the human emerging as a result of a more complete balance between the influence of the ‘right’ and ‘left’ brains (modes of engaging reality).  In this sense, he echoes Teilhard’s belief of ‘fuller being’ resulting from ‘closer union’.

The Next Post

This week we have seen how Jonathan Sacks approaches Teilhard’s call for a fresh approach to the potential synergy between religion and science.  Like Teilhard, he concludes that the success of the West requires a synergy between science and religion if it is to continue.

Next week I will begin to wrap up this blog, “The Secular Side of God” with a review of what we set out to do, the steps we took, and the conclusions to which we came.

December 27 – The Confluence of Religion and Science- Part 2

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Today’s Post

   Last week we took a first look at Teilhard’s insights into how we can begin to see Christianity as less a competitor to science and more as a step toward an integrated understanding of the human person and his place in Teilhard’s ‘noosphere’.

Last week’s three insights were taken from Teilhard’s collection of papers entitled “Human Energy”.  This week we will continue looking at Teilhard’s conviction of the value of Science and Religion to each other, taking four more insights from his cornerstone book, “The Phenomenon of Man”.

Science and Religion: Getting From Here To There

In the fourth insight, Teilhard cites his belief that to live the noosphere we must understand it:

“Man is, if I have not gone astray in these pages, an object of unique value to science for two reasons.

(i) (The human person) represents, individually and socially, the most synthesized state of order which the stuff of the universe is available to us.

(ii) Collectively, he is at present the most mobile (in the process of changing) point of the stuff in course of transformation.

   For these two reasons, to decipher man is essentially to try to find out how the world was made and how it ought to go on making itself.  The science of man is the practical and theoretical science of hominisation.  It means profound study of the past and of origins.  But still more, it means constructive experimentation pursued on a continually renewed object.  The program is immense and its only aim is that of the future.”

   In the fifth insight, he recognizes, however, that the emergence of science was not without its seeming competition with religion.  As Steven Pinker outlines in his book, “Enlightenment Now”, the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, while offering great clarification of human affairs appropriate to the ‘articulation of the noosphere’, still placed most of the ills of the noosphere at the feet of religion:

“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.”

This sentiment was strongly evident in the earliest claims of the superiority of empiricism over that of intuition, such as that which appeared in the Enlightenment.  As much as I value the insights of Steven Pinker in his book, “Enlightenment Now”, this biased viewpoint can still be found tucked into the back chapters.

Further, as Pinker undertakes the difficult subject of personal happiness in this book, he is forced to recognize the significant correlation between meaning and life satisfaction.  He does not seem to understand that science does not incorporate meaning at the personal level into its wonderful insights.  As Jonathan Sacks points out:

“Science takes things apart to see how they work.  Religion puts things together to see what they mean.  The difference between them is fundamental and irreducible.  They represent two distinct activities of the mind.  Neither is dispensable.  Both, together, constitute a full expression of our humanity.  They are as different and as necessary as the twin hemispheres of the brain.  It is in fact from the hemispherical asymmetry of the brain that the entire drama of the mutual misunderstanding and conjoint creativity of religion and science derive.”

   In his sixth insight, Teilhard, goes on to envision a future relationship between science and religion in which their viewpoints capitalize on Sack’s potential synergies, and they begin to come into a synthesis in which the manifest structures of human evolution are seen as facets of a single thing:

  “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.“

   And, so, Teihard summarizes his understanding of how the empiricism of science and the intuition of religion, the traditionally understood ‘left’ and ‘right’ brain perspectives that Sacks highlights, can now be seen as potentially two integrated and synthesized human enterprises.  Long envisioned as the opposite sides of a deep-seated duality, Teilhard sees them as destined to bring us to a more complete understanding of ourselves and the noosphere which we inhabit.

In his seventh insight, Teilhard summarizes his belief that such synthesis is necessary for the continuation of human evolution:

“Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge– the only one that can embrace the past and future of evolution so as to contemplate, measure and fulfil them.”

   As we have seen, Johan Norberg, in his book, “Progress”, implicitly agrees when he cites the three factors of freedom, innovation and relationships as essential for the continuation of the human progress (which we have seen is essentially quantification of human evolution).  In showing how these three factors are critical to secular progress, he is in implicit agreement with Teilhard that “neither (science nor religion) can develop normally without the other” and Sacks that “Both, together, constitute a full expression of our humanity”.

These three factors of course are seldom cited as aspects of intuitional thinking, but are addressed in some form in every expression of religious belief.

The Next Post

This week we have completed looking at Teilhard’s seven insights that underlay his assertion that the continuation of human evolution requires a synergy between science and religion if it is to continue.

While this week we cited the belief of Jonathan Sacks on the two ‘domains of thought’ of these two enterprises, next week we will look a little more deeply into his insights of how they can better team to assure this continuation.

December 20 – The Confluence of Religion and Science – Part 1

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Today’s Post

Last week we noted once again that even with the evolutionary progress that can be seen in the secular world, undriven by a singular impetus for advancing evolution per se, but nonetheless effecting a startling increase in human welfare over the past two hundred years, continuation of this trend is not inevitable. It is possible for ‘noospheric risks’ to undermine the continuation of human evolution, but as Teilhard asserts, the potential of science and religion, properly focused, conjoined and applied, are tools which will help us make our way.
This week we will look at the first three of his assertions to understand the potential for religion’s confluence with science to effect a tool for doing so.

The Evolutionary Potential of Religion

In “Human Energy”, Teilhard notes that Christianity, of all the world’s religions, in its fundamental teachings, is well placed for such a partnership with science in overcoming ‘noospheric risks’ and insuring the continuation of the rise of complexity in the human species.

In the first of these assertions, he cites the distinguishing feature which differentiates Christianity from the predominant Eastern beliefs: that of the primacy of the person:
“Like every other form of adherence to a cosmic hope, the doctrine of the personal universe has exactly those characteristics of universality and faith which are, in the broad sense of the term, distinctive of religion. But the religion it introduces has in addition two associated characteristics which seemed, to their mutual detriment, destined to be perpetual opposites in religious systems: personalism and pantheism. (This position) is already virtually realized and lived within Christianity.”
Like Teilhard, Jefferson recognized the personalistic focus of Christianity, but Jefferson saw it as necessary for the success of a democratic governmental progress, and hence as a necessary impetus to continued human evolution. Unlike Jefferson, who lived in a static universe, Teilhard recognized the value of attaching primacy to the concept of the person not only in human affairs, but as necessary for understanding the entire evolution of the universe. Teilhard first identifies complexity as the key metric of universal evolution, then observes how this complexity eventually manifests itself as person-ness in evolution’s most recent stages.

Second, he notes how this primacy of person can be seen in the Christian concept of ‘incarnation’, which can be seen through Teilhard’s insights as an impetus for the personal development that is the cornerstone to continued human evolution:
” The degree to which Christianity teaches and offers a prospect of universal transformation can never be sufficiently stressed. By the Incarnation God descended into nature to ‘super-animate’ it and lead it back to Him: this is the substance of the Christian dogma.”
Here the concept of God as the fundamental agent of the rise of complexity that powers universal evolution overlaps with the core Christian teaching of John that “God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him”. The Christian claim that the universal agent of life is somehow present in each of its manifestations is remarkable among all the world’s religions, and clearly shows the unique Christian belief that whatever is happening in our lives as we grow is powered by a universal agency for such growth.

Third, Teilhard also takes note of how the major elements of Christian theology are not only compatible with Science’s understanding of the ‘natural’ world, they can be enhanced by it. Teilhard, like Blondel before him, understood how the concept of evolution offered religion a more complete understanding of their ancient teachings:
“In itself, (Christian) dogma can be reconciled with many representations of the empirical world. So long, for example, as the human mind saw the universe only as a fixed arrangement of ready-made elements, the Christian had no serious difficulty in introducing the mysterious process of his sanctification into this static assemblage. But was not this, to some extent, a second best? Was a fundamental immobility of the cosmos the best imaginable framework for the spiritual metamorphosis represented by the coming of the kingdom of God? Now that the dust of early battles is dying down, we are apparently beginning to perceive that a universe of evolutionary structure- provided that the direction of its movement is truly located- might well be, after all, the most favorable setting in which to develop a noble and homogenous representation of the Incarnation.”
“Christianity would have been stifled by a materialist doctrine of evolution. But does it not find its most appropriate climate in the broad and mounting prospect of a universe drawn towards the spirit? What could serve as a better background and base for the descending illuminations of a Christogenisis than an ascending anthropogenesis?”
“Drawn towards the spirit” of course invokes Teilhard’s reinterpretation of ‘spirit’ as ‘increased complexity’, with Christogenisis as the personal aspect of this increased complexity. With this observation, Teilhard ‘closes the loop’ between a science which struggles to understand the fundamental force of evolution by which the intensity of its complexity is increased (“drawn towards the spirit’) and a religion loosed from its moorings of superstition, hierarchy and a spirituality which has become detached from the noosphere.

The Next Post

This week we have taken a first look at the possibility of bringing science and religion into a coherence which strengthens both of them and thus permits a clearer understanding of the noosphere; one which provides us with more effective tools for mitigating its risks and insuring the continuation of human evolution.
Next week we will continue this inquiry by seeing how Teilhard addressed this subject in his cornerstone book, “The Phenomenon of Man”.

December 13 – Religion and Science: Noospheric Tools?

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Today’s Post

In the last several weeks, we have been looking at religion’s concept of morality, ending in a look at how Teilhard’s five insights into morality offer a rethinking of traditional religion’s concept from proscription to prescription as we begin to recognize religion’s potential as a tool for insuring our continued evolution.  We saw how religion must recognize its role as a tool for understanding the noosphere to be able to assist us in living it in such a way that we maximize our potential for being fully and authentically human.

This week we turn our focus to the other great human enterprise, science, to begin exploring how a revitalized religion, better focused on an evolving noosphere, might better work with an obviously effective science in effecting such ‘maximization’ of potential. 

Evolution Everywhere

In this series, we have frequently noted that, as asserted and quantified by Johan Norberg (‘Progress’), it is possible for us, with properly focused eyes, to recognize threads of this evolution happening all around us.  Norberg offers, as the Economist identifies, “A tornado of facts” which quantify the many ways that human welfare proceeds by the correct application of human freedom, innovation and relationship throughout the world.  These examples of increased human welfare are without a doubt evidence of the ways the human species can be seen to continue its evolution.

We have also seen that Norberg considered human freedom, innovation, and relationships to be essential for such progress to proceed, which is why the earliest examples of this progress appeared in the West, with its unique emphasis on the three.

By the same token, we have noted that these three characteristics are treated poorly by science, and its companion secular ‘disciplines’ such as economics and politics.   Norberg’s three cornerstones of progress initially only occur in the West, as a slowly building consequence of society influenced by its Christian roots in the uniqueness of the person (more on this subject next week).

Jefferson’s claim that

 “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves”

was a claim to such uniqueness, and not derived from any empirical source.  His inspiration for such an unprovable concept was none other than the ‘teachings of Jesus’:

 “We all agree in the obligation of the moral precepts of Jesus, and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in his discourses.”

   Thus our claim that in religion, for all its creaky hierarchy, superstitions and contradictions, and even the many instances of hostility to Norberg’s three building blocks of freedom, innovation and relationships, we can still find threads of the current which must be maintained if it is to  carry us forward.

We have Jefferson to thank for both a clearer understanding of the noosphere, and how its structure in human affairs has evolved from Enlightenment principles intermixed with Christian values, initially “dripping” with the accouterments of medieval worldview.

As Norberg quantifies at length, this clearer understanding has given rise to the success of the West in providing a mileu which has effected a degree of stability not only unprecedented in Western history, but which has slowly permeated into the rest of the world.

Steven Pinker (“Enlightenment Now”) recognizes how this mileu is unfolding in the West in the form of a “tide of morality” which is pushing against “the historical erosion of racism, sexism and homophobia”.  It is not coincidental that these three negative aspects of society have all, at one time (and even continue today) been paramount in all religions.  Pinker sees in this tide the effect of ‘empiricism’s superiority over intuition’, a sentiment underpinning the beliefs found in the Enlightenment.  As do many thinkers influenced by the Enlightenment, he fails to recognize that in the essential beliefs of Jefferson, and thus of Jesus, the key kernel of belief which makes such a tide possible is the recognition of the essential goodness of the human person.  Without this belief, essentially unprovable and thus ‘intuitive’ rather than ‘empirical’, the tide would not surge, it would ebb.

Enter Religion

And this, of course, is where religion comes in.  We have taken a long look at ‘risks’ to the noosphere, and saw that even with the unconscious ‘tide’ that Pinker cites, there’s no guarantee that it will ultimately prevail over the ‘risks’ to the noosphere that we identified back in September.

At the basis of these ‘risks’ is the necessity for us to choose to continue to power this tide.  We saw that it is possible for humans to simply allow fear, pessimism and disbelief to weaken their will to continue.

Pinker notes, for example, that although the rate of suicide is declining everywhere across the world, it is increasing in the United States.  Increased welfare, it would seem, is no bulwark against despair.  This, of course, is the ultimate duality:  Faith in human progress seems to be declining in the first society to provide an instantiation of the progress itself.

We have looked at examples of how evolution is proceeding through contemporary secular events, as prolifically documented by Norberg and Pinker, but as many of their critics observe, they spend little time addressing the downside, the ‘evolutionary risks’ of these examples.  While this does not diminish the reality of the progress that they describe, neither does it address the risks.

Teilhard believed that religion, properly unfettered from its medieval philosophical shackles, its overdependence on hierarchy, and its antipathy towards science, is well suited to address these ‘downsides’.

We noted last week that Teilhard saw the need for religion, if it is to indeed rise to its potential as a tool for dealing with these ‘noospheric risks’, to enter a new phase of contribution to this process:

“At the first stage, Christianity may well have seemed to exclude the humanitarian aspirations of the modern world.  At the second stage its duty was to correct, assimilate and preserve them.”

We have taken a look at a key facet of religion,  that of ‘morality,’ to understand how this concept can be reinterpreted in terms of building blocks for continued human evolution.  How can religion itself be seen in this same way?  Teilhard’s answer to this question was to see that there is a way for religion and science to overcome the traditional religion-science duality:

“Religion and science are the two conjugated faces of phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge- the only one that can embrace the past and future of evolution so as to contemplate, measure and fulfil them.”

The Next Post

This week we took a first look at science and religion as ‘tools’ for managing the noosphere, particularly in managing the human-initiated risks to it, but recognizing that traditionally, they have been understood as opposites in a long-standing duality.

Next week will look a little deeper at how Teilhard understood the potential confluence between these two powerful modes of thinking, and how they could be brought into a fully and integrated human response to the challenges of evolution.