Tag: thinkers

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.