Tag: physics

SYNTHESIS

Newton’s mechanistic universe was the harbinger

of Nietzsche’s “death of God” – God was replaced

by the inexorable laws of physics as the means

of explaining things – no need for God anymore.

 

The abandonment of God and religion

is no longer unusual – it is seen as a requirement

of scientific progress and a new humanism

which has affected the arts/literature/history/law

and has left people shaken not stirred.

 

However, the great role for religion

in our postmodern world is to move people

from pre-rationality to rationality to trans-rationality

from child to adolescent to adult spirituality.

 

There have been great religious thinkers

trying to bring about a new synthesis

by including everyone. Rev. Dr. John Macquarrie

put us in touch with traditional wisdom

through Augustine and Aquinas

but also with contemporary great thinkers:

psychologists Freud and Jung

neo-Marxists Bloch and Marcuse

theologians Tillich and Rahner

philosophers Wittgenstein and Sartre.

 

And William McLoughlin outlined five stages

of religious awakening:

  1. doubting the old ideas
  2. seeing institutional malfunction
  3. a new vision of human nature/spirituality/God
  4. new practices/ways of life/being emerging
  5. the transformation of institutions.

 

Universal oneness/we are all one/all connected

was described by the ancient mystics

and now is being discovered anew

by modern physics.

 

Thesis: religion

Anti-thesis: science

Synthesis: religion and science as equals.

 

KNOCKING ON THE PEARLY GATES

On all the key issues in spirituality:

the equality of men and women/

the harmony of body and soul/

the holiness of being/the goodness of humans/

the compatibility of mysticism and prophecy

Meister Eckhart exceeded the Aristotelian Thomas Aquinas

and so Eckhart was definitely not a Neo-Platonist

as he is often portrayed – he sought the unity of opposites –

the unity of Heaven and Earth.

 

But Newtonian physics separated all things –

and thinking of matter composed of     hard     separate     atoms

impacted our view of self – the individual against community

and our view of Spirit – as somehow opposed to material science

and our view of nature – as a product to be exploited for gain –

the result has been massive alienation

from self/God/nature.

 

The Jewish world of Jesus thought of all things

as created/hierarchical/anthropocentric/

governed by fixed laws with a fixed beginning and fixed end.

But modern evolutionary physics sees reality

as a dynamic interplay of chance/law/interconnection –

Aristotle’s fixed reality of matter and form

has been deconstructed by relativity and quantum mechanics

into a never-ending/interconnected/flow

of energy and information.

 

The creative union of God and matter

is not a metaphysical doctrine as much as a

pragmatic explanation of the universe –

the religious paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

had an innate tendency/power to see God

not apart from the physical world

but in it/through it/as it.

 

The Kingdom/Queendom/Kindom/Presence of God

is within us and all around us

so we do not have to die

to get to the Pearly Gates

(owned, conspirists claim, by Bill Gates –

therefore the “Gates of Heaven”)

we only have to be fully alive with God

in this present spiritual/material world.

THE CHRIST-MIND OF BUDDHA

The nuclear physicist David Bohm clearly explains

how a “particle view of matter”

harms all the sciences

as well as how we think and live

and therefore harms society and its future.

 

The universe is not a static framework

of separate particles – therefore if Jesu

is the Christ and alive today we need a Christology

that is organic/interrelated/dynamic/cosmic.

 

Buddhists have this with their cosmic lineage

of wonderful/interconnected/universal Buddhas –

when they say they believe in the Buddha

their faith is in this lineage not in the one

historical Buddha – Gautama – of our era.

 

The Buddha-mind or Buddha-nature

can be compared to the Image of God within us

or having the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16)/

being one spirit with Christ/the Cosmic Christ within.

This Buddha-mind/Christ-mind/Image of God within

integrates Buddhism/Christianity/Judaism –

we are all talking about the same thing.

 

A key concept for Meister Eckhart was conformity

to the mind of Christ/conformity to God/deiformity –

this union with God within us transforms our knowledge

of God/births God into the world/transforms the world

so that “our hands become gloves for the hands of God”

– Frederick Buechner

 

But John of the Cross and Ignatius of Loyola agree:

mystics open themselves to cosmic forces of good

and evil – many locutions and visions from the devil

are similar to those of God, therefore

constant discernment of spirits is necessary:

is this ecstatic rapture from the Holy One

or from the Father of Lies

and Deception?

COSMOLOGY AND GOD’S LOVE

Theology was queen of the sciences for 500 years

science usurped that role for 300 years

now cosmology is the queen:

the study of large-scale properties of the universe as a whole –

its origin/structure/content/laws/development/evolution

including space/time/causality/freedom –

the Big Bang Theory is an example

that all moral/political/social/economic/personal decisions

even our highest mystical concepts of God

must bow to cosmology.

 

David Bohm’s Implicate Order is another example

based on the idea that the whole, not the parts, is primary.

Classical physics focused on the parts, the new physics sees

that all the parts connect to each other

in one indivisible whole system, that is,

All is One –

Cosmology is the new scientific mysticism.

 

But, as Richard Rohr says:

“We are one yet not one.”

We are one with God

and yet we are not God –

the two great encounters: with True God and True Self

are experienced simultaneously

and grow in parallel with each other.

And “Even if we sin, we are God’s.

But we will not sin, knowing we belong to God”

– Wisdom 15:2.

 

Meister Eckhart focused on joy/

relegated penitential practices to the background/

maintained that the more you let God’s love conquer you

the freer you are.

 

“The test of authentic religious experience

is a life well-lived – religion begins

in the affections/emotions and results in

love of God and neighbour.” – Jonathan Edwards

REDISCOVERING THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

Starting with Copernicus and then Galileo,

heliocentrism – the Sun as the center of things

not the Earth – the new cosmology

totally upset the watermelon cart

displaced God’s immutability/hierarchy/

humans as the center of the universe/

our race as the center of God’s care/

the stable relationship between self/cosmos/God

was completely disrupted.

 

No wonder Alan Watts, who embraced eastern mysticism,

noted that modern culture is peculiar:

every other culture, East and West,

from 6000 years ago to the birth of modern science

believed in the Great Chain of Being.

 

However, we can rediscover this Great Chain

by recognizing our bodies, thru sexual intercourse

have been coming out of each other:

male out of female, female out of male

since day one – the whole human race is one –

one flesh/one body/one blood.

 

And now in addition we recognize

that it took the universe 13.7 billion years

to create YOU – from atoms/molecules/cells/

multicellular organisms/vertebrates/

your thousands of ancestors/to YOU –

YOU are 13.7 billion years old –

think about it – YOU are made of the dust of stars –

stardust – and God chose YOU

before the foundation of the universe.

 

Other scientists further disrupted all things –

besides Darwin, the new physics

changed our view of the cosmos

as dynamic and relational not static.

And new quantum laws incorporated chance

and indeterminism. But chance does not change

the cosmos into a lottery –

it is the way the universe explores

and realizes its potential:

the divinized human being –

YOU filled to the full with GOD.

EINSTEIN, MARX, AND ‘I AM’

 Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in 1905

swept away Newton’s World

of absolute/empty/space and fixed time.

Space and time are now one continuum and

time is no longer seen as an absolute constant

flowing at the same rate everywhere.

 

Einstein resisted the idea that the universe

is constantly expanding, but this led

the Belgian priest/physicist George Lemaitre

to conclude that the universe must have a beginning

and in 1949 George Gamow proposed the Big Bang Theory

the best explanation so far.

 

The Marxist cult of constant expansion/progress

accused Christianity of leaving humans

divided/alienated/mournful.

But the solution continues to be Christian optimism:

God leads us to the Promised Land

we don’t get there by political revolution.

It is God’s kingdom not Karl Marx’s.

 

For Christians the main discipline is to let the horsepower

of our experiential union with God do the work

to keep the cart (us) behind the horse (God)

and not foolishly take on the harness our self.

 

Led by the Holy Spirit

well-developed individuals and civilizations

go thru archaic/magic/mythic stages

in infancy/childhood/adolescence

but 70% of believers remain stuck there.

Only religion, which contains these stages,

legitimizes/honors/respects people at these stages thus

only religion can lead them out of these stages

to higher consciousness.

 

When you surrender to God

God stops being an ‘object out there’

and becomes your own ‘I Am’.

And since you now know your self

thru/with/in Somebody Else who loves and guides you

your little ‘I Am’ becomes a great ‘We Are.’

 

INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE CREATES HUMANITY

It is impossible to prove or disprove

the denial or assertion of religious beliefs.

Religious belief is a choice

but religious symbols and practices

have given people meaning and strength

to cope with troubles down through the ages:

“O God our help in ages past

our hope for years to come

our shelter from the stormy blast

and our eternal home.”

This hymn provides comfort

when humans are more and more de-centered:

in the universe by Copernicus

in life by evolutionary biology

in our inner core by the subconscious.

In Newtonian physics, physical reality

followed rigid causal pathways

but in Chaos Theory, physical reality

is flexible, open to change and new

spontaneously emerging properties.

Things are out of our control and in God’s control.

Spontaneous revival happened in Hinduism:

decline in the 1800s gave birth in the 1900s

to great spiritual teachers:

Aurobindo/Gandhi/Tagore/

Yogananda who claimed unity

with Buddha/Jesus/Mohammed 

and that all religions are one

since they all seek the same goal: God.

Inter-religiosity may be written off

as postmodern/New Age/goofiness

but the fact is that all of religion’s

key dimensions of

belief/behavior/belonging

are being dramatically transformed

by contact with other major world religions.

Vatican II called for recognition

that all humans are interconnected.

Interreligious dialogue creates

the Beloved Community, humanity.

RELIGION OVERCOMES SCIENTISM

The Integral Philosophy of Ken Wilber

overcomes problems that arise

when we dismiss inner or outer worlds.

Outwardly there is energy/matter/objects

inwardly there are feelings/desires/visions.

Both are necessary.

Conscience is the most secret core

and sanctuary of humans

where we are alone with God

and God’s voice echoes in our depths.

“The soul and the true self know

my life is not about me

but I am about life.” – Richard Rohr

We need to include not only God’s voice

but also our shadow’s voice. Integrating our shadow

makes us more fully human and alive.

True self-knowledge grounds and liberates us

and gives us confidence to be our self.

The truth sets us free.

The release of repressed creative energy

makes us less fearful and more enthusiastic.

Enthusiasm = “en theos” = in God.

The Second Vatican Council proclaimed

“be true to your self”

when it advocated primacy of conscience.

Fidelity to conscience unites Catholics

with all people of good will

whether other Christians/world religions/

agnostics/humanists/atheists –

all who are engaged in a search for truth

and solutions to Mother Earth’s problems.

Catholicism welcomes and appreciates

great Protestant and Anglican theologians

like John Macquarrie, a marvellous guide

to the deeper mysteries of human life

with creativity rooted in tradition

balanced theology creating dialogue

Christian anthropology affirming self-transcendence.

Macquarrie believed the living teachings of Jesus

must be practiced in community –

to be manifest the Trinity needs the Church

and the People of God need the Church

the mystical Body of Christ

to touch the Trinity and make it present.

But trying to reason your way to God

is ultimately impossible – God transcends reason

just as humans transcend ants.

But rationalists want to eliminate God altogether

in transcendence and tradition.

Since the mythic God died

and spiritual intelligence froze at its lowest level

the Enlightenment began with science

– and ended with “scientism” –

science as the answer to Ultimate Questions

of life/death/meaning – which are beyond

the ken/reach/pay grade of science.

Fortunately, as always, science progressed:

in Newton’s view, all things are machines

governed by deterministic laws.

But in quantum physics there are no

separate building blocks – everything is

an interconnected Sea of Possibilities.

Atoms are interconnected packets of energy

genetics interconnects all creatures

Internet interconnects the whole globe.

The Second Axial Person

is global/pluralistic/interconnected.

Through science we know

Extinction and Transformation

the evolutionary equivalent of

Crucifixion and Resurrection

are central features of

personal/cosmic/planetary evolution.

Scientism is giving way to interplay

of science and religion:

Buddhists preached “interbeing” forever

now quantum scientists and Buddhists

can talk to, and learn from, each other.