Re: Science and God
Looking at the evolution of thought at the frontiers of physics and cosmology over the past quarter century it is difficult to interpret what's been happening as anything less than a search for God. See peterussell.com for example. I also have recommended Evan Harris Walker's The Physics of Consciousness on this thread to those who which to get a feel for this evolution in scientific thought.
One of the real differences between science and religion is that science is prepared (even if often reluctantly) to let the evidence speak and to consider alternative hypotheses on their merits. This is very different from the dogmatic approach found in most religions which maintains that an authoritative and final divine revelation occurred in the distant past and is not subject to question, much less revision, in light of individual experience. This is particularly true of Islam, but is also a common trait found in most branches which call themselves Christianity as well as other faiths.
I've made no secret here of the fact that I find the message contained in Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God series highly resonant. In its essence this is a revision of St. Anselm's ontological argument but with a very important twist. The reason classical forms of the ontological argument fail is because they contain a hidden contradiction at their core. They attempt to demonstrate the existence of something separate and apart from that which is. God is imagined to be a separate "other", wholly apart (and implicitly "above") creation. This really should come as no surprise. St. Anselm and the scholastics who followed him, of course, were not really interested in finding God but in justifying Christianity and the notion that God could exist part from Christian revelation and the person of Jesus Christ was never remotely under consideration. Augustine's dictum of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) was the watchword here.
What Walsch and other "new thought" proponents and modern science are converging on, I believe, is something we might call the holistic ontological argument. The theological slant here is more eastern than western and closer to Hinduism than Christianity, though to characterize this as Hinduism would pay disservice to both. In this view everything (ourselves, God, the universe, etc.) are simply nomenclature we use to designate different "points of view" of the same infinite reality. Consciousness, not energy or matter, is taken to be the fundamental a priori and everything flows from the infinite manifestations of consciousness.
What is surprising is just how close such a "theology" is to radical atheism. Both observe a universe without purpose or moral values and an existence which has no need for God or anything else. That such an ordering is a necessary consequence of true "free will" is something that all religionists find profoundly disquieting, hence my observation about no religion being happy with this result. Not only have we no need for institutional intermediaries to God, we have no need for God either.
It's easy to misinterpret such a statement, but it is neither impious nor despairing. The greatest (and hardest) gift a parent can give a child is independence. Does this mean the parent no longer loves the child nor the child the parent? Far from it. True love is free; given without requirement. The root of all dysfunction in relationship is dependency. This is as true in our relationship with God as it is with a spouse or other family member, or with a job, government, or society. That upon which we perceive ourselves to be dependent is that which we instinctively resent, because intuitively we know ourselves to be free. Hence all religion in which our relationship to God is viewed as contractual ("love me and keep my commandments and I'll reward you in heaven, or else I'll toss you into hell") is inherently dysfunctional and "unnatural". It is only when we come to know that we have no need for God that we can truly and freely love God, and indeed everyone and everything, just as He loves us. |
