Bad Science and The Flawed Myth of Materialism

Posted on February 27, 2014 by William Ockham

An examined faith leads to a deeper faith

 

As readers of this blog know, I believe that a synthesis of sound science and ancient spiritual traditions (combined with a healthy dose of humility) is necessary to avoid the dangers of fundamentalism, whether it be religious fundamentalism or scientific fundamentalism.  One of the reasons I am a Catholic is because the Church has long supported science and the integration of faith and reason.

Dave Pruett had an excellent article in the Huffington Post this week what happens when this relationship between science and religion is severed.   The result is contemporary Western civilization with its reduction of human beings to GDP units, consumerism and ecological damage.  I encourage you to read the entire article (which references Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry) but set forth below is an excerpt:

 [I]n The Power of Myth (1988), the late Joseph Campbell explored the vital ways in which mythology — the overarching story of our relationship to the creator, to one another, and to the earth — anchors the human soul to the cosmos. Without that anchor, or with an inadequate one, we lose our moorings. Which brings us to the present: “We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story,” wrote the eco-theologian Thomas Berry. “We are between stories.”

Berry refers to humanity’s modern dilemma which, particularly acute for Americans, lies at the root of the culture wars. From time immemorial we humans have derived our meaning largely from religion’s claims of our divine origins and exalted status. But the modern age is an age of science, and the scientific story has largely discounted the religious one. It is like having two parents, one who underscores our uniqueness and the other our commonness. Which are we to believe?

* * *

“Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), the French paleontologist-priest who first awakened us to cosmogenesis: the story of the universe as dynamic, unfolding, participatory, and spiritual. Teilhard also coined the term Noosphere — a generalization of “biosphere” — as the realm of collective consciousness encompassing the earth and her inhabitants.

Quantum physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli believed the quest to synthesize “rational understanding and … mystical experience … to be the mythos, spoken or unspoken, of our present age.” Why? Scratch the surface and one finds flawed mythology at the root of so many present ills: environmental crises, dysfunctional politics, and an economy that preys upon people rather than serving them, to mention just three. In each case, the myopia of parochial worldviews stymies creative problem solving and jeopardizes the future. America, in particular, is headed over a waterfall, but we don’t see it because of our myopia. And we are dragging much of the world along with us.

Consider the addict whose addiction is destroying not only his own life but the lives of all those engulfed in his personal chaos. The first step in kicking addiction is ending denial. Culturally, this requires that we unmask our dominant mythology and see it for what it truly is. I call the operative American myth — an unhealthy conflation of capitalism and Christianity — “Consuming our way into Heaven. (emphasis added).”

Read Entire Article Here

Other Resources:

Quantum Physics, Relationality and the Triune God
Why Bad Science is Like Bad Religion
Christians Must Confront Scientific Illiteracy
The Fallacy of Scientism
Are Christians Encouraging Mockery of Their Beliefs?
Famous Christian Scientists
Thomas Berry

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Teilhard de Chardin and the Blaze of Holy Unease

Posted on February 26, 2014 by William Ockham

Chardinholdskull-183x300

When I was away on my mini-sabbatical a couple of weeks ago, Shannon Huffman Polson had a wonderful two-part article on Teilhard de Chardin at Patheos. The article describes how Ms. Polson was listening to an On Being radio interview with biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann. Professor Brueggemann was describing how God will always be greater than our human imagination of Him can be and that Christianity calls us to live a life of “holy unease”.  Ms. Polson then describes the life and vision of Teilhard de Chardin as examples of this:

“The reality of our life and the reality of God are not contained in most of our explanatory schemes,” Brueggemann warns.

Tippett asks: “You also think that that unease is a holy thing, or can be a holy thing, that, in fact, the Bible calls the faithful not to be too settled and too comfortable.”

“I think that’s exactly right,” says Brueggemann.

How might we learn to live into a holy unease? By learning from those who did.

Ms. Polson then describes Teilhard de Chardin’s grand vision that God is continuing to create through evolution in both the physical and spiritual dimensions:

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin saw creation as dynamic in matter and spirit, and understood the world and specifically human consciousness as continually evolving. He believed creation to be the process of divine incarnation, all of the world perpetually moving toward God. The process was not and could not yet be complete. As a result “nothing is profane here below for those who have eyes to see.” All is sacred.

In [Teilhard de] Chardin’s Mass of the World, written in the vast expanses of the Inner Mongolian Ordos Desert, he prays: “the offering you really want, the offering you mysteriously need every day to appease your hunger, to slake your thirst is nothing less than the growth of the world borne ever onwards in the stream of universal becoming.”

God is no passive player, as [Teilhard de] Chardin writes in The Divine Milieu:“God truly waits for us in all things, unless indeed he advances to meet us.”

You can read both parts of the article here and here.

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Teilhard de Chardin Quote of the Week (February 24, 2014): The Incarnation and Transformation

Posted on February 25, 2014 by William Ockham

Incarnation

“At the source of its developments an operation was called for, transcendent in order, to graft the person of a God onto the human cosmos, under conditions that are mysterious but physically governed . . . Et Verbum caro factum est. This was the Incarnation. From this first and fundamental contact between God and the human race—which means in virtue of the penetration of the Divine into our nature—a new life was born: an unlooked for magnification and “obediental” extension of our natural capabilities— grace . . . Grace is the unique sap that starts from the same trunk and rises up into the branches, it is the blood that courses through the veins under the impulse of one and the same Heart, the nervous current that is transmitted through the limbs at the dictate of one and the same Head: and that radiant Head, that mighty Heart, that fruitful Stock, must inevitably be Christ. . .”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Future of Man (Kindle Locations 4685-4691).

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Love: The Catalyst of Spiritual Evolution

Posted on February 24, 2014 by William Ockham

I am reblogging this post on Teilhard de Chardin. I disagree with some of the preliminary comments but I agree with the central premise on Teilhard de Chardin’s belief of the necessity of unconditional love as a key turning point in human evolution. Special thanks to Geralyn at Keeping Company blog who had excellent additions to the post.

theowlpress's avatarThe Green Hills Philosopher

Ten Commandments With only two weeks now before the beginning of Lent, the Scriptures appointed for the next two Sundays point to the addressing of the Commandments given to Moses and reiterated [1] throughout the five books of the Torah—the first five of the Bible. During the Sundays of Lent, many congregations recite the commandments as a part of the Sunday worship with a promise that with God’s help they will keep the Commandments.

We know that they tell us what we shall not do, which translates into what we should not and will not do to fulfill the divne and human covenant. But have you ever thought about what they tell us to do? The commandments, as we read them are actually in two parts. The first part instructs the faithful to love God and the second part requires us to love our neighbors. Jesus restates this truth when he is…

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Sunday Reflection, Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (February 23, 2014): Keep Calm and Love Your Enemies

Posted on February 22, 2014 by William Ockham
love_enemies2
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. — Matthew 5:44-45

This weekend is the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. The readings can be found here. The theme is “love your enemy” which is one of the hardest aspects of being a Christian. I am not naturally a loving person. Yes, I love my family and friends. I am friendly and cordial to strangers I meet or people who are nice to me. However, if I feel someone has slighted me (no matter how minor), my strong reaction is to seek retribution. It is something I am working on but I still have a long ways to go.

This week’s reflection comes from the Irish Jesuits at Living Space.  You can find the full reflection here but set forth below is an extended summary:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy’. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the pagans do the same?”

Is Jesus out of his mind? Does he really expect genuine, red-blooded human beings to react this way to hostility and violence? How can we possibly love people who do us harm, whom we know to be evil, wicked and corrupt? Are we really to love the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, to love the terrorist, the sexual abuser…?

The problem here is the word ‘love’. Generally speaking, to say we love a person is to have warm feelings of affection towards them or even to be in love with them. Is Jesus asking me to have the same feelings for my life companion as for some terrible human monster? The answer is unequivocally, NO!

‘To love’ in the Gospel context here means to ‘wish the wellbeing of’. It is a unilateral, unconditional desire for the deepest wellbeing of another person. It does not ask me ‘to be in love with’, to have warm feelings for someone who is doing me and others serious harm. That would be ridiculous. But we can sincerely wish the wellbeing of those who harm or persecute us. We pray that they may change, not just for our sake but also for their own. We pray that from hating, hurting people they become loving and caring people.

Far from being unreasonable to pray for such people, there are no people who need our prayers more. On the other hand, to hate them in return is simply to make ourselves just the way they are, to reduce ourselves to their level. And we see what happens in our world when hate and violence are returned by hate and violence.

Nothing eats away at our innards more than resentment, anger, hatred and violence. Sometimes we think we can punish people by hating them but it is we ourselves, not they, who are the real victims.And, of course, it is in our attitude to hostile and misbehaving people that the genuineness of our concern for people is really tested. As Jesus says, it is easy to care for the people who are close to us, who are good to us. To paraphrase the Gospel, even terrorists love terrorists. The Mafia is known for its loyalty to its members – but not to anyone else.

The passage concludes with Jesus saying, “Be perfect, then, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This obviously is an ideal, a goal to be aimed at. And the perfection intended is not total perfection but rather to aim at that total impartiality of a God who extends his providential care and love equally to all. In the dry, searing heat of the Middle East, all, good and bad, have to endure the burning sun and enjoy the gentle, cooling rain. God stretches out his caring love to all, good and bad, and he does not love the bad less than the good. So, if we want to identify with Him, we have no right whatever to withdraw our love, that is, our desire for wholeness, from a single person. Whether a person returns our love or God’s love is their problem and their loss.

Let us not, then, just see this teaching of Jesus as pie in the sky, something that is hopelessly ideal. If we reflect on it, we will begin to see that this is the only reasonable way for us to deal with people both for our own personal growth and fulfillment and as contributing also to that of others. Jesus is not asking us to do something impossible and unreasonable but to open our eyes and see what is the only really sensible way to live and relate with the people around us.

And why should we treat other people with such reverence and concern? Because, as St Paul says today, “you are God’s temple and God’s Spirit dwells in you. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy and you are that temple” — and so is that person next to me right now. Here Paul is speaking specifically of Christians who form the Body of Christ but, in other ways, every single person is made in the image of the Creator and God is present in some way there.

All in all we are being called on to recognize and respond to God’s presence in every single person and creature that we meet. Irrespective of how they behave. And that is true even when the person acts in ways totally contrary to God’s way. In fact, it is precisely then that the God in me has to reach out and affirm the God in the other. Mutual violence only weakens God’s presence in both of us. Paradoxically, the worse a person behaves, the more that one is crying out to be loved and cared for.

At the beginning, we said that the theme of today’s readings was ‘holiness’. Perhaps we now have some idea just where real holiness is to be found.

Reflections:

Living Space
Creighton Online Ministries

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Hawking: ‘Heaven is a place for people afraid to die’

Posted on February 18, 2014 by William Ockham

Hunt 4 Truth's avatarthe Hunt for Truth

see also:
Scientist debunks
Hawking’s
‘no God needed’
theory

I love science. However, I do believe that science is meant to partner with (hold hands with) faith and the two ought, in my opinion, be like dear friends. Science once was working in harmony with the faithful — however, we know that the Church many times suppressed scientific findings and there were and continue to be numerous conflicts between religious and scientists. Its wrongful use of authority in the churches to suppress real science.

I think its wrong for religion and science to be popping off against one or the other. What I have to say isn’t to violate science.

Real science is good work making our lives more healthy and making our world a better and safer place to live. We need more responsible science… not less.

I want to take exception with marketing practices of scientism (not science).

Famed theoretical…

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Teilhard de Chardin Quote of the Week (February 17, 2014): The Noosphere

Posted on February 17, 2014 by William Ockham

noosphere2

“Man is psychically distinguished from all other animals by the entirely new fact that he not only knows, but knows that he knows. In him, for the first time on earth, consciousness has coiled back upon itself to become thought. To an observer unaware of what it signifies, the event might at first seem to have little importance; but in fact it represents the complete resurgence of terrestrial life upon itself. In reflecting psychically upon itself Life positively made a new start. In a second turn of the spiral, tighter than the first, it embarked for a second time upon its cycle of multiplication, compression and interiorization. This is how the thinking layer of the earth as we know it today, the Noosphere, came rapidly into being.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Future of Man (Kindle Locations 4502-4508).

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The ultimate cause of the ecological crisis: the destruction of the universal relationship

Posted on February 16, 2014 by William Ockham

Great post on evolutionary theology, Original Sin and the impact that the latter has had on our relationships with humans and other aspects of God’s creation.

Leonardo Boff's avatarLeonardo Boff

There are many causes of the ecological crisis. Here we address the most basic: the permanent rupture with the ultimate connectivity of the universe and its Creator that humans have introduced, nourished and perpetuated.

There is a profoundly mysterious and tragic dimension to the history of humanity and the universe. The Judeo-Christian tradition calls that fundamental frustration the sin of the world, and theology, following Saint Augustine, who invented the expression, calls it the original sin or original fall. Original here has nothing to do with the historical origins of this anti-phenomenon, or consequently, with the past. Rather, it relates to that which is original in the human being, which affects the fundamental and radical reason for human existence, and therefore, the present human condition.

This sin can neither be reduced to a mere moral dimension, or to an unsuccessful action by the human being. It refers to a globalized…

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Sunday Reflection, 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time (February 16, 2014): Surrendering the Ego to Christ

Posted on February 15, 2014 by William Ockham

surrendering-to-the-light

“[I]f you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” — Matthew 5:23-24

This weekend is the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The readings can be found here.  The themes focus on Jesus as the fulfillment of the spirit of the law, not just the letter of the law.  The message is tough in that in it goes much deeper than mere externalities; it gets to the core of our soul and all of the baggage that comes with an ego and with being human.  It is easy for me to “follow the law” of not murdering or not committing adultery. But when the message gets to the underlying motivations for these actions (anger, jealousy, lust) my soul is woefully deficient.  I am guilty of these things and more.
Today’s reflection comes from “down under” and the warmer climate of Australia by Fr. Paul Mullins, S.J. of St. Ignatius Parish in Norwood, South Australia.  The following is a homily Fr. Mullins gave in February 2011 on today’s readings:

One has only to read the popular press to recognize that the Church is alive and active. Ironically, in some cases it is the controversial aspects of belief and practice which indicate the vibrancy of Christianity. The scripture passages set for this Sunday – the 6th in Ordinary Time (A) – remind us that human beings have the capacity to choose.  Indeed freedom is an essential characteristic of our human nature. Without true freedom we cannot be held responsible for our choices, nor would we have the capacity to love.  The recent devastation of human life and property by water and fire has provoked some fierce comment in the letter sections of daily newspapers.  As expected some extremely contrasting views are expressed. A fundamentalist has stated that the devastation is God’s judgement, while others have claimed that such devastation indicates that there is no God, or at the very least no Christian God who is promoted as a God of  love.

As believing Christians we have to have some response to both sides of this discussion. Firstly the idea that God somehow punishes people with rain and fire creates an image of an unloving and indeed vengeful God.  Such an image is incompatible with the image of God as reflected in the life, message and death of Jesus Christ.  How then do we as believers understand what are termed ‘natural disasters’?

One explanation and one which is fully compatible with our Christian faith was enunciated by the Jesuit palaeontologist and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  It is an article of Christian faith that God is the source of all creation. Simply put,   God created the world.  The two accounts of creation in the first chapters of Genesis are the basis for this teaching. But these are mythical explanations of creation. A myth, of course, is not a fairy story; rather, a myth is a story which contains an essential truth. The truth for us is that God is the source of all. For Teilhard de Chardin the creation process is not complete.  We are moving toward the fulfilment of God’s creation both for us as fully human beings and in the natural world. Saint Paul speaks about the world ‘groaning’ as it were toward freedom. (Romans 8:22-23)  Thus we are not yet perfect; neither is our world. Natural disasters are just that – a natural part of the evolutionary process begun by God. God could have created a complete world from the start.  However, had he done this, then to avoid all evil he would also have had to create human beings without free will, in other words without the power to choose. It was human freedom which caused sin to come into the world. It is the capacity of human beings to reject love which allows evil to continue.  The problem of reconciling a loving God and evil in the world has challenged both the faithful and the non-believer alike since the beginning of time. Believers trust in a loving God whom they cannot fully understand, yet one who has experienced all that we experience through Jesus his Son. The challenge for the non-believer is to explain the love and goodness in the world despite the evil they see. If God had created a world free from evil there would have been no provision for human choice and no capacity for love.

This Sunday’s readings remind us of the radical nature of Jesus’ teaching. His religious world comprised strict outward observance. Jesus concentrated on the heart.  Jesus demands much more than external conformity. He asks that we choose right actions; that we interpret the law of God and then put it into action. In the final analysis each of us will have to give an account of him or herself. In other words we will have to take final responsibility for our actions and choices. We will be judged on how true we have been to our own informed consciences.

Lord, this week I ask for the grace to continue the process of integrating my ego (with all of its shadow desires of power, attention, lust, hatred, etc.) with my greater self, with others and ultimately with Christ.

Reflection Resources:

Living Space
Creighton Online Ministries

 

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The Road to Superintelligence?

Posted on February 12, 2014 by William Ockham

Cadell Last had an article this week in the Huffington Post that talks about the scientific evolution of humanity with Artificial Intelligence with citations to Teilhard de Chardin. I do not have any great thoughts on the article but it is another example of how Teilhard de Chardin’s vision is continuing to echo today:

In the 21st century, we are walking an important road. Our species is alone on this road and it has one destination: super-intelligence.

The most forward-thinking visionaries of our species were able to get a vague glimpse of this destination in the early 20th century. Paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardincalled this destination Omega Point. Mathematician Stanislaw Ulam called it “singularity”:

One conversation on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue

For thinkers like Chardin, this vision was spiritual and religious; God using evolution to pull our species closer to our destiny. For others, this vision was a fiercely secular and naturalistic technological utopia designed on scientific principles alone. The rapture for the nerds.

Today the philosophical debates of this vision have become more varied, but also more focused on model building and scientific prediction. The closer we get to our destination, the clearer we can see this world. In the early 20th century Chardin could only generalize about its features. In The Phenomenon of Man he described the Omega Point as “super-personalized” and “infinitely enriched”.

Read Full Article Here

 

 

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