Tag Archives: #God

A Connecting Bridge

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“The very order, disposition, beauty, change and motion of the world and of all visible things silently proclaims that it could only have been made by God”

– Augustine, “City of God”

“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate seized planet”

      Stephen Hawking, as quoted by David Deutsch in the “Fabric of Society”.

“I do take life, mind and purpose seriously and I concede that the universe at least appears to be designed with a high level of ingenuity. It seems to me that there is a genuine scheme of things–the universe is about something”

– Paul Davies, “The Goldilocks Enigma”

And there it is:  We begin with a historical, traditional/religious point of view (Augustine); we proceed to a very modern, very skeptical, and very nihilistic point of view where Hawking basically writes off biological life in general and human life in particular as a statistical abnormality in an otherwise random universe with no meaning; and we end with Paul Davies, like Hawking a noted physicists and writer, who tries from a secular perspective to build a bridge back to Augustine. But where Augustine defines this “something” as God, and while Hawking denies its existence, Davies asserts that while this “something” (which the universe is about) exists he leaves it undefined.

Paul Davies in his very readable book “the Goldilocks Connection” spends hundreds of pages taking his readers through the history, thought process, and intellectual dilemmas and baggage that each of these three philosophical positions have and what modern physicists know, think and feel about the science of cosmology.

The very traditional and orthodox position taken by Augustine about the existence of a God who created the heavens and earth AND who tracks our every thought, mood and action, keeps copious records, and assigns, based on these records, either eternal damnation or eternal bliss to individuals at the moment of their death does not resonate well with most thinking people today.

The rejection of this position comes easily to people who resent the basic unfairness of the threat of eternal damnation for people who lived before the birth of Jesus; or who lived far from the Middle East and never heard of him in their lifetimes; or who honor God within their own traditions. The rejection of the Church’s assertion that one needs to accept Jesus as one’s personal savior or to suffer eternal pain as a consequence is made even easier when one becomes aware of the corruption, greed, lust, lack of compassion and overall hypocrisy exhibited by so many Church leaders over many hundreds of years.

The life of Stephen Hawking, confined in recent years to a wheel chair being totally paralyzed by Lou Gehrig’s disease, but with a very active and creative mind that has made him a world famous physicists, teacher and writer makes him a model for all of us as to how to have a meaningful life on many levels despite crippling handicaps….and this is true whether or not we accept or do not accept his assertion as to the role human life and human consciousness plays in the world.

And Paul Davies, trying to bridge the philosophical gap between the world of religious orthodoxy and the understanding of modern physics, seeks to affirm the possibility of there being somewhere in the mix a benign, if not defined, intelligent life force that is Not the controlling and punishing God of Augustine, or the Goddess of Randomness that so many modern thinkers pay homage to in any discussion as to whether the universe in general or our individual lives in particular have any real meaning.

It is into this discussion that the noted author and philosopher, David Birnbaum, offers his very thoughtful definition for that “something” which Paul Davies left undefined.

For Birnbaum, that “something”, as outlined in his three books “Summa Metaphysica I, II and III”, is the concept of “Potentiality” which he defines as a creative impulse inside the Life Force that drives all change, all evolution (random and otherwise) and is responsible for the Big Bang and the resulting cycles on all levels of energy/matter with regard to birth, growth, decline, death and the continued transformation of energy/matter to ever increasing and higher levels of complexity and level of consciousness.

Paul Davies writes as follows in “The Goldilocks Enigma”

“The carbon atoms so essential for life were forged inside stars somewhere billions of years ago. As these stars entered into the final stages of their lives their nuclear material collapsed to a density of almost a billion tons per square centimeter causing a cataclysmic explosion that propelled carbon laden star dust across billions of miles of space some of which ended up through a process of long evolution into biological life on earth culminating in the creation of human consciousness”.

The beauty of Birnbaum’s philosophical view of Potentialism is that it allows for randomness to function within evolution within an intelligent design that made it possible against overwhelming statistical odds for star dust from dying stars to find their way to a moderate sized planet and to produce the “chemical scum” that made human life possible.

The fact that Birnbaum is able to accomplish this without mandating or insisting that the Potentialism at the heart of the concept of intelligent design is linked to or restricted by any specific system of religious beliefs makes it possible for modern individuals living deep within a culture of secularism to take a fresh look at the challenging and complex cosmological questions with which physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies are struggling with not only within the academic walls of their profession and publicly in their books and public discourse; but also no doubt privately within their own souls as they like all thinking individuals ponder the meaning of life.

The fact that Birnbaum finds within the Jewish tradition a deep mystical and poetical understanding of the Universe that is now being mirrored more and more by the experimental and theoretical findings of modern day cosmologists is indeed a vibrant, valuable and most welcome connecting bridge for those of us who have one foot planted in the world of Jewish tradition and the other foot planted equally as firmly in the secular world.

Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com

Adam and Eve in the Garden II

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“On what level is the Garden of Eden tale to be understood? Did the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) determine the course of untold billions? Was my destiny chartered by one one or two primitives?”
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-Questions posed by David Birnbaum in “Summa  Metaphysica 1” page 90
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A Brief commentary on David Birnbaum’s “Theory of Potentialism”
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The question of “On what level is the Garden of Eden tale to be understood” summarizes a major fault line that exists today in American society.
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The far right of both Christianity and Judaism would answer this question with great confidence and a certain smugness: “We (in contrast to the unbelievers in our midst) understand it (this tale and the whole Bible) AS it is written.”
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In contrast, the “unbelievers” symbolized by the secular left in today’s political terms, would, because they are on the defensive, respond with a somewhat longer answer:
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“The story of the Garden of Eden, the entire bible, and god him/herself (to be politically correct) are all fairy tales that no longer need to be or should be read or thought about, much less venerated….because if one begins to take the bible seriously on any level (including as philosophy or literature much less, god forbid, as a religious or spiritual guide) one risks the very serious possibility of sliding down the proverbial slippery slope where pure fanaticism, intolerance, and dangerous behavior toward others awaits.”
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For most people, mainly concerned with day to day life of surviving and prospering within a rapidly changing and at times disorienting world, philosophic arguments over the bible outlined above is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
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Proof of this is the continued decline of church and synagogue attendance by all ages but most pronounced by the young. The exception to this rule is in the most fundamental religious groups who feel increasing isolated and therefore all that more determined to preserve their religious points of view.
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For more liberal churches and synagogues swept up in our culture’s scientifically correct understanding of evolution, and  based on the new god known as Random Selection with no context, it is very hard for these religious leaders to present any kind of acceptable religious philosophy other than “Be nice; Be kind; Be considerate, and Be tolerant”…which while is important and valuable advice is not a sufficiently enough deep philosophy to bring people coming back to the pews or to convince them to contribute to or publicly identify with any particular religion.
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And as the gap between left and right grows, the opportunity to find common meeting places decreases with unfortunate consequences for America.
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But even though “religious” people think they have ALL the answers, and more secular people think that because the universe unfolds ONLY through random selection, as is well known in the halls of academia, there, therefore, are NO answers;  it is still nonetheless true that all human beings continue to ask and struggle with the questions of
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“Why is there evil in the world?” and the even deeper question of “What is our life all about?”
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With regard to the first question as to “Why is there evil?” the answers are not so hard to come by.
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Freud has taught us that all human beings, from Adam and Eve going forward, have an Id, Ego and Superego. And that when young innocent children are traumatized, brutalized, abused and neglected that their later ability to contain the selfishness, wish for revenge, rage, lust, disregard for others may know no boundaries; and the resulting weakness of their ego’s and superegos to regulate, contain and transform the raw and now traumatized energy of their Ids can sometimes result in massive acts of self destructive and destructive behavior that can cause great pain and suffering in ever growing concentric circles.
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With regard to natural evil..the pain and suffering caused by nature being nature…with shifts in weather patterns causing floods or droughts, not to mention the earth shaking due to the violent movement of fault lines that criss cross the world; and thereby making a huge proportion of human beings vulnerable to massive acts of natural destruction …which we can try to remedy with good building codes, but which are not sufficient to protect against the instant damage that major earthquakes have  and will continue to inflict on both minor and major population centers.
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Given Freud, and our understanding of how nature works one does not need fancy or complicated philosophical or religious theories to account for man made and natural disasters.
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But one does need a good philosophical theory  to even begin to discuss, much less wrap our arms around the harder question of “What exactly is the meaning of our lives?”
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It is to reflect on this question that David Birnbaum in his book “God and Evil Summa Metaphysica 1” postulates his theory of “Potentialism”…a theory that gives space for a religiously oriented person to accept evolution and randomness within evolution as part of a larger context going back to what ignited the big bang in the first place; and space for more secular inclined individuals to begin to understand that the recognition of evolution within the context of “Potentialism” provides the context which allows for continued intellectual, emotional and spiritual contemplation of a major philosophical question that our scientific theories cannot by definition answer.
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In this light, Adam and Eve were not two primitive who on a whim or by poor judgement or ignorance or by seduction by a snake, or the malicious advice of Satan gave up for themselves and for all future generations the comforts and security of the Garden of Eden.
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And if one adopts a more nuanced view of Adam and Eve one might indeed begin to see them as the first conscious philosophers and religious leaders in recorded human history.
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And within this philosophical framework there is the understanding that Life was/is/and will continue to be about Potential expressing itself through opposites, balance, and the continued expression of potentiality in every aspect of the Universe.
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Adam and Eve’s great realization was that if they accepted the opportunity to continue to live in the static but comfortable womb of the mythical Garden of Eden it would be to opt to return Life (their own particular lives as well as the full Potential of the Life Force of which they felt  themselves to be an integrable part) to the static moment before the big bang…before Potentiality first expressed itself; and before they as individuals had a chance to connect their potentiality (small p) to the larger Potentiality (large P) that created the Universe and against all statistical odds brought Life and later human consciousness into being.
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Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com
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