I have seen no visible evidence of spirit (whether good, benign, or evil), except for the concrete temples humans erect in honor of a good and Great Invisible Spirit, their fearful responses to what they perceive to be evil Spirits, and their confessions about both. Hence I begin with matter.
Observation #1: If the universe is not eternal, it had a beginning. If it is eternal, it is our "Alpha and Omega" (Revelation 1:8).
Observation #2: It does not appear that the universe is eternal, however, since its expansion at a rapid rate is an indication of remarkable change (hence, it is not eternal because it changes). This datum makes the idea of the known universe originating in a Big-Bang-from-Nothing a plausible theory. But from whence came the elements necessary to produce a Big Bang and what ignited it—if nothing existed before the Big Bang? The igniter and matter-from-nothing constitute the Ground of all Being (G/B) in that they have brought an end to Non-Being and revealed Being. But both igniter and matter-from-nothing are invisible, unknown, and unknowable since they are parallel to and not immediately tangential (touching lightly) to the universe. If they were tangent to or part of the universe, then universe, as eternal (see Observation #1), has simply perpetuated itself. Hence, there is an Unknown-Unknowable-Before-the-Big-Bang.
Observation #3: In popular religious thinking G/B is accorded the designator "God." But G/B contrary to popular thinking is not part of the physical universe or even involved with the universe, a fact that is verified by observation of the known natural and social worlds. The survival of the fittest (i.e., Darwin's more plausible theory of the Origin of the Species by Natural Selection) rules out any master plan for the universe and its denizens, and it seems to be the case with social organisms as well, for they succeed or fail based on human ingenuity and energy, and that, one must suppose, includes the church. In short, no guidance or care exists for Being (things as they are). We and the universe have simply emerged into Being, and must do the best we can. Our fate hinges on good genes, lady luck, and natural selection.
Observation #4: human beings are, however, universally "religious." To judge by our universal preoccupation with religion or religious-like actions endemic to all human cultures humans seem to have in some way come by a concept of a Divine-Other (D/O) and seem to have a vague sense, awareness, or impression of D/O—or they claim to. The limitations and imperfections of our sense of D/O accounts for the contrasting varieties of human religious expressions: we sense in part and imperfectly so. Because of the universality of the religious preoccupation, however, our "sensing" D/O seems plausible; so where does the concept of D/O come from, or does it arise from within us—that is, the concepts of D/O are latent in our genes and/or DNA?
Observation #5: Certainly it is possible that we each generate the concept of D/O from within ourselves, or perhaps it is generated by a few and learned by others.
Observation #6: Possibly concepts of D/O arise from G/B from "the other side" of the Big Bang. But how might that occur, if G/B is not and never was a part of our experienced reality (see Observation #2). Astrophysics suggests a possible parallel. Scientists discover unseen planets that orbit stars (those tiny pinpricks of light in the night sky) in distant solar systems by watching for the gravitational effect of an invisible planet on a visible star: "when the star has a planet orbiting around it, the star wiggles slightly from the gravitational attraction of the planet" (Nick Cohen, mathematician, physicist). I am suggesting that there may also be a similar effect from an "attraction" between Being and non-Being that prompts a universal religious response. The scientist sees nothing except the effect of the gravitational pull (the wiggle), and does not actually see the planet or the gravitational attraction. It is similar to the physical/emotional attraction between lovers. Claims of "sensing" D/O may be a similar "wiggle" effect between human psyches and D/O. The only evidence of gravity between the star and the postulated invisible planet is the "wiggle"; the only evidence of D/O between Non-Being and Being is a human religious response.
Nothing is certain, but those seem to be the possibilities; how do they seem to you?
Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University
17 comments:
Regarding observation #4 that human beings are "religious." I would say that this observation has no utility because there is no circumscribed target that can be hit and described as "religious." Religious simply becomes the approval by a greater power of whatever I do. I refer everyone to PBS news last night which reported on the sex-slave trading of ISIS. Rape has become a religious act, thus making it useless to define a religious act. Interviews with women escapees reveal that the rapist first prostrates himself in prayer, justifies the act as the rightful punishment of the infidel, commits the rape, and again prostrates himself in prayer. Further if a rapist has the authority to judge his victim to be truly repentant, she can be given a certificate of freedom to engage in the religiously pure life of a Muslim woman.
Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa.
Good evening Gene!
I too was offended by the Isis actions that go under the name of religion. There are many unethical acts--even horrible, that are thought to be religious acts. I did call attention to such in the blog. Here is what I said:
"The limitations and imperfections of our sense of D/O accounts for the contrasting varieties of human religious expressions: we sense in part and imperfectly so." There are many horrible acts in the name of religion in the Hebrew Bible, and some of my blogs have addressed them.
Cordially,
Charlie
Hi Charlie,
If I'm looking at the blog correctly, you have put forth a number of reasoned propositions. If we take the canonical literature about Jesus seriously, I think it is hard to think of possibilities and probabilities about "God" to be the result of rational processes. For example, in 1 John 4:7ff. we find the claim that "God is love," and, of course, there is the very familiar claim in GJohn 3:16 that God's relationship with the world is one of "love." Love by nature and essence is relational, not conceptual. The relationship between Jesus and God is described as love, the relationship between Jesus and his follower is described as love. The relationship between one human being and another, whether neighbor or enemy, is described as love by Jesus. There is no knowledge of or contact with the Ground of Being or Divine Other without love, according to the NT canon. That's not the only authority, of course, but to me it makes experiential sense.
Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa.
Good Morning, Gene,
I understand you to say that one cannot think logically and rationally about God because God can only be experienced relationally through love. We of course will have to disagree on this issue. Thinking about God is something that Theologians do all the time. Scholars are even awarded doctorates in Theology (study of God). So I feel comfortable in that association. And I also disagree that "love by nature and essence is relational, not conceptual."
Love is at the same time conceptual as well as relational. Professing to love an unknown someone or something seems to me to be so much empty talk, and really doesn't mean much. How is it possible for one to love what one does not know? In any case thinking logically and rationally about God is not an attempt to experience God but rather an attempt to understand what so many profess to love.
Cordially,
Charlie
Hi Charlie,
Two clarifying observations: In my earlier post I don't think that I referred to humans loving God. I agree that it doesn't seem possible to love what is unseen and unknown. I also agree that love has a conceptual component, as does any subject matter.
I would say that the illumination that God is love is a gift to the world of the Christian canon, and is either accepted as true to the best in life or not.
In the matter of thinking about God, I have some familiarity with the disciplines of philosophy and theology. Philosophy was my undergraduate major, I have a seminary degree with an emphasis in biblical theology, and I have two additional post-seminary years of courses in systematic theology.
I think it's fascinating that we represent these different approaches. They should be discussed at the Westar Fall Conference.
Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa.
Hi Gene,
As you know there is a new Seminar on God and the Human Future, and the program seems pretty well set for this Fall (4th R May through June, page 23), but I am sure that the Seminar Chairs will welcome suggestions for future programs.
Cordially,
Charlie
Hi Charlie,
It struck me that our thinking merges if we change your next to last sentence in the following manner:
The only evidence of gravity between the star and the postulated invisible planet is the "wiggle"; the only evidence of Divine-Other between Non-Being and Being is love.
Love is the wiggle.
Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa.
Good Morning Gene,
It might work; it depends on what you mean by love. I understand love to be a description of an emotion shared between human beings that causes them to act in certain ways. So can you expand on how you think love between human beings is the universal religious response to the Divine Other?
Cordially,
Charlie
Hi Charlie,
I would say that love is more commitment and action than emotion. If I understand the NT use of agape, love is intending the best for the other, and not only for those to whom one is positively attracted. But I would also say that love is not limited to interpersonal behavior. One can love life by intending the best for life, for the planet and its population There is nothing else that could be assigned a higher value. In my mind the highest value would be the best indicator of Reality.
I wish others would join in the conversation!
Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa.
Would your definition of love hold true for all religious responses throughout time? I purposely left vague the content of "religious response" in my last blog line, since the response must broadly apply to whatever is labeled religion. I doubt that it would, for not all religions have your idea of love as commitment and action.
Charlie
Charlie,
A simple explanation for human love, spirit, religion, marriage, social clubs, countries, political parties, patriotism, and numerous others. As humans evolved they created all these to serve various human needs. All of these creations continue to evolve as human needs evolve.
JIm
Hi Charlie,
In my first post, for myself I concluded that "religious experience" is an unmeaningful phrase. In human history about everything has been identified as religious, from the reverie of the mystic to the raving of the megalomaniac to the forgiveness of the altar call, to detachment vs. attachment decisions, to the horror of rape.
That leaves us to consider what most people might agree upon as the highest value. We all thrive on seeking the best for the other, on loving and being loved. If as Walter Wink (The Human Being, 2002) suggested, we must think of ourselves as the universe reflecting upon itself, what better value than love to reflect the Reality of the movement from non-being to being. Whether or not that is the teaching of all religions would not seem to be relevant.
Jim, in my mind there is a difference between experiencing love and spirit and creating love and spirit. I lean toward the former.
Gene Stecher
Chambersburg, Pa.
Gene,
I merely intended to answer the question "from where did the concepts of love and of spirit come?". My simple answer was humans created both concepts and the motivation for these creations were/are to satisfy some human need. I would say the same thing about the so called "religious experience". Thus, they are neither parts of the physical world nor created by the universe's creator, if in fact the universe was actually created..
Jim
Hi Charlie,
Jumping over to this essay from the comments exchange we've been having on your "Of Superstition and Religion" essay from May 2019.
With all due respect, if you're not read up on the latest cosmological physics, might be worth a refresher. Your first two observations above in this essay don't account for time itself as the fourth dimension of spacetime Big Banging out of the Singularity. In which case the word eternal needs some unpacking. There could be nothing "before" the Singularity, since the word before denotes a relative position in the time dimension, which didn't exist.
I know, the math and the physics are hard for us lay folk to comprehend.
Your argument that a thing that changes can't be eternal strikes me as a bit of a non-sequitur. It implies that the only conceivable eternity would be static. Or am I misunderstanding your point?
The rest of observation #2 strikes me as building from that same misapprehension of physics. The "Nothing" that everything came from didn't need an igniter, or a Ground of All Being. It was - so this particular physics theory (but I hasten to add, one mightily supported by math) proposes - exactly that, pure Nothing. Nothing before. Nothing outside. Nothing in a parallel plane. Nothing. Nihil.
Once the need for G/B is relaxed, though, another possibility that I don't think your observation #3 considers (although you hint at it at the very end of $4) is that the "master plan" is really the sum total of the laws of the universe, from the pure abstractions of mathematics on to physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, etc... There is nothing in our current knowledge set that precludes algorithmic rules in those laws. (See Wolfram Rule 30, for a particularly profound example). Darwin's "adaptability" is a "plan" in the sense of a description of a set of processes/rules that lead to certain outcomes and help both explain the past and give some insights into how the future may unfold.
The D/O concept could just as easily be a sort of ultimate abstraction that is generated perhaps not by our genetic makeup, but our memetic one, once homo sapiens achieved its cognitive liftoff. Say, like pyramid architecture or basic arithmetic or astronomy, which seem to have developed independently in several parts of the world.
Maybe once any thinking animal embarks on a speculative intellectual journey into "Why?" - into trying to understand a universal law that explains some cause and effect - it ultimately leads to a boundary, beyond which "Magic Happens" is the only satisfying answer, which begs the question of who's the Magician, to which God/Superbeing is likewise the only satisfying answer.
I think this is roughly where you come out on observation #5.
But then observation #6 slips back into "Turtles All The Way Down" territory. There's no need to postulate a wiggle/resonance phenomenon from outside the universe to inside. The universality (no pun intended) of beliefs in the supernatural is more simply explained by the human mind's ability to abstract and speculate - what Harari calls our unique capacity for fiction.
To answer your final question: sure, possible. But I think less probable than our Universe is all there is. For giggles, I personally like the "classical physics is a simulation running on a quantum computer" hypothesis. But that's probably just because I too have a hard time wrapping my head around all this wonder springing from the void.
Really appreciate your writing.
-Mark
Hi Charlie,
Jumping over to this essay from comments exchange we've been having on your "Of Superstition and Religion" essay of May 2019.
With all due respect, if you're not read up on the latest cosmological physics, might be worth a refresher. Your first two observations above in this essay don't account for time itself as the fourth dimension of spacetime Big Banging out of the Singularity. In which case the word eternal needs some unpacking. There could be nothing "before" the Singularity, since the word before denotes a relative position in the time dimension, which didn't exist.
I know, the math and the physics are hard for us lay folk to comprehend.
Your argument that a thing that changes can't be eternal strikes me as a bit of a non sequitur. It implies that the only conceivable eternity would be static. Or am I misunderstanding your point?
The rest of observation #2 strikes me as building from that same misapprehension of physics. The "Nothing" that everything came from didn't need an igniter, or a Ground of All Being. It was - so this particular physics theory (but I hasten to add, one mightily supported by math) proposes - exactly that, pure Nothing. Nothing before. Nothing outside. Nothing in a parallel plane. Nothing. Nihil.
Once the need for G/B is relaxed, though, another possibility that I don't think your observation #3 considers (although you hint at it at the very end of $4) is that the "master plan" is really the sum total of the laws of the universe, from the pure abstractions of mathematics on to physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, etc... There is nothing in our current knowledge set that precludes algorithmic rules in those laws. (See Wolfram Rule 30, for a particularly profound example). Darwin's "adaptability" is a "plan" in the sense of a description of a set of processes/rules that lead to certain outcomes and help both explain the past and give some insights into how the future may unfold.
The D/O concept could just as easily be a sort of ultimate abstraction that is generated perhaps not by our genetic makeup, but our memetic one, once homo sapiens achieved its cognitive liftoff. Say, like pyramid architecture or basic arithmetic or astronomy, which seem to have developed independently in several parts of the world.
Maybe once any thinking animal embarks on a speculative intellectual journey into "Why?" - into trying to understand a universal law that explains some cause and effect - it ultimately leads to a boundary, beyond which "Magic Happens" is the only satisfying answer, which begs the question of who's the Magician, to which God/Superbeing is likewise the only satisfying answer.
I think this is roughly where you come out on observation #5.
But then observation #6 slips back into "Turtles All The Way Down" territory. There's no need to postulate a wiggle/resonance phenomenon from outside the universe to inside. The universality of beliefs in the supernatural is more simply explained by the human mind's ability to abstract and speculate - what Harari calls our unique capacity for fiction.
To answer your final question: sure, possible. But I think less probable than our Universe is all there is. For giggles, I personally like the "classical physics is a simulation running on a quantum computer" hypothesis. But that's probably just because I too have a hard time wrapping my head around all this wonder springing from the void.
Really appreciate your writing.
-Mark
Good Morning Mark,
Thank you for reacting to this essay. I am happy to have your brief critique a part of the record. You give me too much credit. I don't need a "refresher," but rather several basic courses in cosmological physics. I have backed into the subject as questions arose in my own mind, and hence read a few books in the area.
A few comments on your critique.
I take your point that "before the singularity" is a concept that could not apply since there was nothing before the Big Bang--not even time existed.
"Things that change cannot be eternal": Think of it as a bridge and a river. Water flows under the bridge. While one may think that the "river" is the same, it is not. One cannot step into a river that is exactly the same twice. From that (and a few more things) I infer that what is eternal must be static.
I will have to ponder your comments about "there being absolutely nothing before the singularity," since it raises the question how from nothing comes something?
Cordially,
Charlie
Hi Charlie,
To your last question, let me just quote Hawking's conclusion (excerpted in that review of his "Brief Answers to Big Questions" I pointed you at on the other essay's comment chain):
"As we travel back in time towards the moment of the Big Bang, the universe gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until it finally comes to a point where the whole universe is a space so small that it is in effect a single infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense black hole. And just as with modern-day black holes, floating around in space, the laws of nature dictate something quite extraordinary. They tell us that here too time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."
Earlier, he explains the relationship between space(time) and energy/mass (which are interchangeable via Einstein's famous E=mc^2). The short of it being that space is a massive store of negative energy. The longer version, again quoting:
"When the Big Bang produced a massive amount of positive energy, it simultaneously produced the same amount of negative energy. In this way, the positive and the negative add up to zero, always. It’s another law of nature.
So where is all this negative energy today? It’s in the third ingredient in our cosmic cookbook: it’s in space. This may sound odd, but according to the laws of nature concerning gravity and motion — laws that are among the oldest in science — space itself is a vast store of negative energy. Enough to ensure that everything adds up to zero."
For what it's worth, even as a non-Believer in creators along the lines of the major superstitions/religions' mythologies thereof, and as much as I defer to the great minds (the Newtons, Einsteins, Hawkings et al.) when it comes to cosmology, I don't claim to comprehend all the math. I can believe this idea of an infinitely dense Singularity from which Everything exploded. Sort of the way an entire human being can explode out of two single cells combined.
Examples of information compression abound across all the sciences. The famous Mandelbrot Set (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set) is a particularly profound one to some of us. All Laws of the universe are in some sense these sorts of compressions.
Not very satisfying, as it begs the question of where the Singularity came from, but at least there are models (and possibly even experimental physics) that may someday allow for more unpacking/testing/investigating.
But I'll take that over the endlessly skipping record pointing to Genesis Chapter 1, or any other stories made up by primitives who had only the most rudimentary understanding of how the cosmos actually works.
Sincerely,
-Mark
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