Between Science and Spirituality

The Chronicle of Higher Education ^ | Nov. 29, 2002 | John Horgan

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the heads up to your views and especially your witness!

But in His reckoning, it is all of one time ... like that 'panoramic' plane. It is our understanding of the phenomenon of time that needs work, for faith's sake and for further scientific advance.

I couldn't agree with you more on either statement. When people say "the universe is 15 billions years old" they rarely finish the sentence "from our space/time coordinate as observer." In even the most disciplined of science, the effect of space/time is rarely considered.

In his book Relativity Einstein made it very clear the space/time is the quality of the extension of field. It does not pre-exist. Getting my arms around that concept has made all the difference to me!

For lurkers:

Postulates of Special Relativity

Schwarzschild Geometry

Space-Time-Matter Consortium Publications

This is how I see it "all together:" Freeper Views on Origins

[LogicWings]

What I tell you is real, although unless you have been reborn of the Spirit this will seem as foolishness or may play into the hands of deception.

Please, you've had your say, now go back to whatever you were doing.
No wait,

Go read the Nag Hamadi scripts and then get back to me.

[beckett]

Before we can talk about 'spirituality' don't we have to define 'spirit?'

Pardon me for not getting back to you earlier. Your question requires a thoughtful response, and I haven't had time to devote much thought to posting the last few days.

On page 31 of his new book, The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker makes a remarkable statement. He says, "We now know that cells did not always come from other cells and that the emergence of life did not create a second world where before there was just one. Cells evolved from simpler replicating molecules, a non-living part of the physical world, and may be understood as pieces of molecular machinery --- fantastically complicated machinery, of course, but machinery nonetheless." In the previous 30 pages Pinker uses about 70 footnotes, a pretty high rate, but this rather interesting assertion goes unfootnoted. I wonder why.

Actually, of course, there is no need to wonder. Pinker makes a bald assertion because he needs to paper over abiogenesis, one of the deepest mysteries in science. Like many before him, he just wanted to skip this difficult little patch and get on to the more tractable problems of evolutionary theory itself. I don't fault him for it. But I do think his omission tells us something important about the much maligned "God of the gaps." Pinker's omitted footnote is a gap of the kind that can almost make God respectable again.

Imagine: inside, the nerves, in the head --- that is these nerves are there in the brain...(damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering...that is you see, I look at something with my eyes and then they begin quivering, those little tails...and when they quiver, then an image appears... doesn't appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes...and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a moment --- devil take the moment! --- but an image; that is, an object, or an action, damn it! That's why I see and then think, because of those tails, not at all because I've got a soul, and that I am some sort of image and likeness. All that is nonsense! Rakitan explained it all to me yesterday, brother, and it simply bowled me over. It's magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man's arising --- that I understand...And yet I am sorry to lose God!

Dmitri Karamazov to his brother Alyosha
The Brothers Karamazov,
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1880

A hundred billion neurons connected by a trillion synapses. Wow! The software combinations that can emerge from that amount of hardware, if one accepts Pinker's modular, computational theory of mind, certainly can account for the amazing complexity of human behavior, perhaps even, when one factors in Hofstadter's "strange [recursive] loops," for the crafty "illusion" of free will itself. Despite Michael Polanyi's categorical denial that biochemistry can be reduced to chemistry, it seems that step by creeping step the genome and its issue are giving up their secrets by reduction.

But how important is it, really, to parse out all these steps? By vanquishing the ghost in the machine, does this new knowledge really vanquish the altar too? Does BettyBoop's formidable metaxy no longer apply? Or does knowledge simply move us a little further down a path still jam packed with an unending supply of mysteries? Pinker notwithstanding, the luminous, numinous genome's great leap into Being is hardly well understood. But even if Polanyi is wrong and abiogenesis is replicated in the laboratory, does that somehow settle the question of existence?

In the immortal words of Macaulay Culkin: I don't think so.

Which brings us to the Big Bang and GUT. Kierkegaard tells us that "God is totally other." The extra-cosmic Absolute, if it exists, is not accessible from this plane --- from these dimensions. No Grand Unified Theory can bridge the chasm. For us, the moment before the Big Bang is eternally SILENT. We are hopelessly handicapped by our structure in the physical plane, caught in a strange, paradoxical loop with no exit. But here we be, hurled into this mystery without so much as a by your leave from any deity. How did we get here?

Julian Jaynes believed we formed God-consciousness by first worshipping our clan chieftan during the period when the "bicameral mind" was breaking down just before true human consciousness arose. The theory is fascinating and powerful, but has few adherents among cognitive scientists today. Apparently his emphasis on weird mass hallucinations and use of an unrealistically tight dating scheme don't hold up. Nevertheless there are plenty of solid theories among evolutionary psychologists to explain the God concept, most of them owing at least some debt to Jaynes.

None of them satisfy me, however. Some insanely huge piece of the puzzle is missing, and not even the best theories of evolutionary psychology show much promise of finding it. I noted with interest your pejorative use of the term "insane" to describe theists earlier in the thread. Is it so bizarre to be a little insane when presented with the great surprise of life? Is a leap of faith really that irrational?

Vitalism has long been discredited, supposedly. Hardcore materialists confidently aver that no leakage occurs between the material and the non-material. Knock on wood, baby, and wood is all you hit. Well, LW, my friend, here is where I finally get around to answering your question (remember your question?). I believe they are wrong. I think that somewhere way, way down deep in Mandelbrot's fractals --- way, way down, almost infinitely way down --- there is a leak. That's how the light gets in, as Leonard Cohen might say.

Through the leak comes Spirit.

[MHGinTN]

None of them satisfy me, however. Some insanely huge piece of the puzzle is missing ... Oh my! I know better than to do this, but here I go anyway, donning my asbestos underwear.

Let's assume there was a 'big bang, preceded by the Guth (is that the right guy?) inflation. Something happened that 'evolved' dimension space and dimension time as a conjoined spacetime phenomenon. Could it have happened something like this(?): before inflation, time existed as a zero variable dimension, and space existed as a zero variable expression, and life existed as a zero variable expression, and spirit existed as a zero variable expression ... and these four zero variable dimensional qualities were/are but four of the seven (I choose that because of my beliefs) dimensional zero variable expressions that are the essence of Our Creator ... the unmoved mover in whom there is no 'variable' of turning. With the command 'Let There ... Be Light' the Creator commanded an event of change that caused zero variable time to express a variable, then zero variable space to express a variable ... first causing the expression of a melding of dimension time and dimension space. Later, long after inflation and the bang, the additional melding of life results in an expansion of the 'bubble' of spacetime, and the even later addition of spirit, again, an expansion to the universe, the greater universe of time and space and life and spirit. [I'll pause here to hike up by asbestos undies. Have at it in all the fury possessed of any naysayer.]

[f.Christian]

good pt!

m_c...

Capitalism is not a system of government as Communism and Fascism are. It is the free market system of economics. To equate it with the other two is inaccurate.


33 posted on 12/07/2002 12:17 PM PST by music_code

Maybe you could expound on this and get the nobel prize in economics...

or 5 mins on rush limbaugh---

the new walter williams at least!

[beavus]

The latter. No insult intended.

You might link it. It's a marvellous web site.

[beavus]

How do you explain reported out-of-body-experiences, without ignoring more evidence than the testimonials provide?

It appears people imagine themselves floating out of their bodies. Efforts to demonstrate actual extracorporeal vision, by e.g. reporting things that could only be seen from the extracorporeal perspective, have not been persuasive.

This shouldn't be surprising considering what we know about vision. It seems to require eyes.

[Cvengr]

It is quite pedantic that vision seems to require eyes, at least within the bodily realm. The query isn't only about the bodily realm.

This is why cognizance of the soul and spirit, especially after devotion to materialism becomes so profound. Interestingly, it has been known throughout the history of man, and even throughout all of science, it is ignored.

Scripture provides incredibly robust discussion on this facet of our lives which is God created in us after His own image.

[Cvengr]

Happiness is discernable from joy.

[Cvengr]

I Corinthians 2:14: "But the natural (psuchikos in the Greek) man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

[Cvengr]

I have considered the "Jesus Seminar" and the Nag Hamadi scripts which you refer. Those which have been accepted in the canon of Scripture are great. The others speak for themselves.

You might find it enormously fulfilling to give equal time and read the Old and New Testaments completely,....or even partially while in fellowship with God.

[Cvengr]

Hank, I don't dispute the material or bodily realm.

The significance of the spirit is that it isn't of that realm, but is equally real, with persons and distinct discernible activity. The best way to understand it is through the Word of God. There also exists deceiving persons within that realm. Unfortunately, man might become exposed to spirit from that deception.

This is why I bring up the issue of Scripture, (the Bible), because it provides the best direct truth regarding the issue.

[Cvengr]

On the subject of healing and belief inducing action.

Gnosticism fails to properly address the issue, although recognition of one's mind, and the seeming causal effect on reality can be used by those persons in the spirit domain who are deceiving (demons and deceiving spirits) to further deceive the unrepentant.

Healing may be caused by fallen angels as well as by holy power. Not the best example to use when discerning the Holy Spirit.

[Hank Kerchief]

The significance of the spirit is that it isn't of that realm, but is equally real, with persons and distinct discernible activity. The best way to understand it is through the Word of God. There also exists deceiving persons within that realm. Unfortunately, man might become exposed to spirit from that deception.

This is why I bring up the issue of Scripture, (the Bible), because it provides the best direct truth regarding the issue.

If you think of the material world and "spiritual" world as distinct, you have the huge philosophical problem of how there is intercourse between them. If, on the other hand, you think of all existense a single thing, thus including the material and the spiritual, with material existense being a subset of the spiritual, the intercourse (or interface or intercommunication and influence) problems all go away.

If the spiritual existense is everything, and material existense is that same existense, "with something left out and 'inferior' to it," in some way, spirit is, "everywhere," (not geographically, but conceptually) and material existense is differentiated from it by those qualities we think of as the qualities of matter, i.e. space, time, mass, energy, life, consciousness (or sentience), and rationa/volitional (cognitive/moral) consciousness.

As for the Bible, very little explication of the nature of spirit and even the nature of man will be found there. The Bible does not explain spirit at all, it simply assumes it. For example, Compare:

1 Thess. 5:23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Luke 10:27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

1 Cor. 6:20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

Gen. 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Here man is described variously as having a "spirit, soul, and body," or a "heart, soul, and mind," or "body and spirit," or the whole man, body and spirit breathed into him, being a "soul." (This is no doubt the best picture of the nature of man and the one most consistently used in Scripture.)

It is this way througout the entire Bible. The Bible does not explain, it is not a book of science or philosophy, it is a book of revelation of spiritual principles and those aspects of history relating to God's relationship to the world and man.

The highly metaphorical language of the Bible does not help understand the nature of things it never explains. Do you really believe the soul and spirit can be separated by a sword cut the way bones and flesh can be? (For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Heb. 4:12) Of course this language is rhetorical, and effective, but not very illuminating in a philosophical or scientific way.

Hank

[MissAmericanPie]

That is simple, who gives the best evidence? Jesus, who turned water into wine, fed 5,000 with a handful of fish and a few loaves of bread, walked thru closed doors, and manipulated atoms and molecules as if they were tinker toys, or Muhammad, who claimed that he could do miracles, but chose to "refrain"? Jesus said the evidence he gives are the miracles, and those that bear witness, His Father and the Holy Spirit. Ask them who Jesus is, they will be happy to speak to your soul.

Between the two, whose life was a monument to truth and mercy? Who suffered for the truth without retaliation? Between all of them, who has ALL of the answers? Who called men to selflessness that is unheard of, or to a future so great that the mind can only begin to grasp it, and whose promise only now science is begining to nibble around the edges of? Don't go through your life asleep, wake up, pray for the answers, and read about your destiny and destination, then you decide. I think it's kind of important.=o)

[f.Christian]

"If the Christ of God, in His sorrowful life below, be but a specimen of suffering humanity, or a model of patient calmness under wrong, not one of these things is manifested or secured. He is but one fragment more of a confused and disordered world, where everything has broken loose from its anchorage, and each is dashing against the other in unmanageable chaos, without any prospect of a holy or tranquil issue. He is an example of the complete triumph of evil over goodness, of wrong over right, of Satan over God,-one from whose history we can draw only this terrific conclusion, that God has lost the control of His own world; that sin has become too great a power for God either to regulate or extirpate; that the utmost that God can do is to produce a rare example of suffering holiness, which He allows the world to tread upon without being able effectually to interfere; that righteousness, after ages of buffeting and scorn, must retire from the field in utter helplessness, and permit the unchecked reign of evil. If the cross be the mere exhibition of self-sacrifice and patient meekness, then the hope of the world is gone. We had always thought that there was a potent purpose of God at work in connection with the sin- bearing work of the holy Sufferer, which, allowing sin for a season to develop itself, was preparing and evolving a power which would utterly overthrow it, and sweep earth clean of evil, moral and physical. But if the crucified Christ be the mere self-denying man, we have nothing more at work for the overthrow of evil than has again and again been witnessed, when some hero or martyr rose above the level of his age to protest against evils which he could not eradicate, and to bear witness in life and death for truth and righteousness,-in vain... (not!/link)---."

[MissAmericanPie]

That was beautiful, and so true. Jesus was no stable boy to be kicked about by evil. He is the creator of all we behold and master of it, and able to manipulate it to his own pleasure and purpose.

All things work to the good of those that love Him, even evil is no more than a tool of instruction to perfect the perfect response, in those that seek to do His will, and conform to His likeness, to the question, yes? no? "For it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He returns we shall be like Him".

[beckett]

If a renowned astrophysicist can speak of multiverses with a straight face and get a serious hearing among his peers, surely your theory deserves a serious hearing too.

We're all staggering around in the dark. I have no problem admitting it. More and more, however, it seems our self-appointed scientific avatars do. They want us to believe they've solved it all, you see.

[BikerNYC]

That is simple, who gives the best evidence? Jesus, who turned water into wine, fed 5,000 with a handful of fish and a few loaves of bread, walked thru closed doors, and manipulated atoms and molecules as if they were tinker toys...

Evidence is a good thing. What is your evidence that Jesus walked through closed doors?

[MissAmericanPie]

Where is the evidence? It comes from the testimony of some very frightened men, hiding from the Romans, fearful for their own lives. Men, some of whom, did go on to die horrible and painful deaths, crusified, sawed in half, stoned to death, who overcame their fear in the face of the evidence of His ressurection and who spent the rest of their lives boldly and fearlessly testifying to the truth they bore witness to.

When was the last time you met someone who would even tell the truth, much less die for it in such fashion? If they did not believe, with all their hearts, that they would live again in glory, why would they bother with a lie? What a great deal huh? Live in poverty, on the run, hunted, arrested, beaten, and end up facing a horrible death for a lie, couldn't talk me into it, most people have much better survival instincts. Did these men exist? Well we do have their bones. Would you believe, even should someone return from the dead? Many didn't and don't to this day, that is too bad, it's a "no"
choice, even in the face of the evidence recorded in prophecy a thousand years before His birth.