Session 0c
On the Shoulders of Giants
The God Delusion   by Richard Dawkins
"It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God - imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant - and the need has to be satisfied whether God really exists or not. But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we'd be better off filling with something else?"

Index On the Shoulders of Giants - an essay on the value of religion
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Jock McTavish, ver 1.1 19jan08
References
I have always had a foot in both camps of religion and science. I am a proponent of both. I am a critic of both. In some ways we are passing from the childhood of our race into a future without fear of the supernatural. But in other ways, the largest part of the human family fervently embrace supernatural traditions of religion. How then do we communicate with each other? And why are we moderns without respect for those before us? In this little essay, I'd like to consider a little about understanding the human search for truth, and why we get so angry with each other in the quest.
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." - Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke, 1676

"Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians." - John Maynard Keynes

"The attacks made against pre-Enlightenment "magical thinking," and the mystical elements of Christianity, were given their foundation with Boyle’s mechanical conception of the universe. Newton gave Boyle’s ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more importantly, was very successful in popularising them.[20] Newton refashioned the world governed by an interventionist God into a world crafted by a God that designs along rational and universal principles.[21] These principles were available for all people to discover, allowed people to pursue their own aims fruitfully in this life, not the next, and to perfect themselves with their own rational powers.[22]" - Wikipedia article on Newton
RELIGION AND SCIENCE

Isaac Newton stands for me as a hero at a turning of history. Newton was said to be the last alchemist and the first scientist. link1  His "Natural Philosophy" or Alchemy has become our Science.  link2  Alchemy was a more holistic undertaking than it is now remembered. It was not focused on the transmutation of lead to gold, as is the general remnant memory of their concern, but the transmutation of the soul as well. They searched out the inter-relationship all three platonic ideals - truth, beauty and goodness. Alchemists were the "giants" he referred to. Newton was part of the illustrious group that founded the Royal Society in 1660, and started the modern era. "Science" began with him. The genius of science is that it has concerned itself with truth alone. That is also its weakness and an element in the breach between religion and science.

Religion is not concerned with developing new knowledge, but with conserving spiritual traditions going back to ancient times. Religion views itself as possessing the central organizing principles (rules) of human society. Religion is largely still tribal and/or cultural. Religion has an exclusive mind-set. God is a integral part of most traditional religion. Religion's rules of truth connect to authority and individual conviction - in either order, with little relevance to demonstrable repeatable evidence. The ancient idea was "as above, so below". Life was to be understood and organized "below" on the earth as it was understood to be "above" in the heavens.
"That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below." Newton, quoting the "Emerald Tablet" of Hermes (ancient tradition embraced by the alchemists)
Science operates on quite different principles. The purpose of science is to extend knowledge in all areas guided by rules of inquiry. The open discipline of scientific method has led to an astonishing efficiency, and an unprecedented rate of change. link3. Science has no inherent ethos. Science's rules of truth connect less to authority than demonstrable repeatable evidence. God (heaven, religion) is irrelevant to science.
Napoleon asked Laplace just where God fit into the perfected Newtonian system. "I had no need of that hypothesis," Laplace famously replied.
The religious community finds science an easy target - they are generally innocent of science's deeper knowing. The religious take the benefits of science for granted - a "magic" they don't understand. Science is seen as deeply challenging to the ethos and schema of the religious community. Yet science continues to grow in authority because of its great success with technology.

The science community finds religion an easy target - they are generally innocent of religion's deeper knowing. Their inability to see truth in any other way than scientific makes it impossible to appreciate religious values. Yet religion has been a part of how societies operate since beyond memory. Religion is thoroughly entangled in every aspect of society: family, law, festivals, war, education, music, art, healing, caring, culture.

Science and religion are not the competitors they sometimes seem. Generally, they simply ignore each other's frames of reference. Those that participate in both worlds often organize their lives and their minds into the familiar sunday and monday paradigms.
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." ... Albert Einstein
It is helpful to note the methodology of science is not directed at truth as directed at un-truth. Truth is that hypothesis that survives the aggresive assault of the "scientific method". Any proposed truth is attacked. Every claim is challenged. Every successful result is repeated again. They are differentiators. Science is not particularly hostile to religion, it's just that their method makes it appear so.

Religion has less a methodology as an attitude. They are integrators. They are holistic. Religion is integral to human social patterns - or at least has been until modern times. And even in secular society, there seem equivalent attitudes.

STAGES OF KNOWING

What is the reason people undertake to learn more? Why are we wanting (willing) to learn new things? It would appear that present understanding would have to prove insufficient. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Even curiosity driven learning won't notice new things, unless there exists a dissonant pattern to notice in the first place.

There is also a great problem of misunderstanding. People seem to experience the same things differently. From young to old, novice to expert, unskilled to skilled, unlearned to learned, inexperienced to experienced, male to female, insider to outsider, one culture to another, even friend to friend. Why that we cope at all is just amazing. Despite the difficulty, we hunger for truth.
"Some Hindus have an elephant to show. No one here has ever seen an elephant. They bring it at night to a dark room. One by one, we go in the dark and come out saying how we experience the animal. One of us happens to touch the trunk. "A water-pipe kind of creature." Another, the ear. "A very strong, always moving back and forth, fan-animal." Another, the leg. "I find it still, like a column on a temple." Another touches the curved back. "A leathery throne." Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk. "A rounded sword made of porcelain." He's proud of his description. Each of us touches one place and understands the whole in that way. The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant. If each of us held a candle there, and if we went in together, we could see it.
Elephant in the Dark" ... Rumi, 13th Century Muslim Sufi poet, tr Coleman Barks
The two most useful models I have on this issue of understanding, come from friends. Many years ago a friend who taught high school, told me his theory of learning, which since I've called the Heibert Helix, after him. Each year the program of teaching rotated through the various fields - from art to physics - and each year the level ascended to a higher level of understanding. Each year the new truth replaced the older truth. People couldn't handle big truth straightaway but always had to start with small truth and build up.

The other model is from a current associate who likes the image of a layer cake - that the icing on the cake may hide the existence of layers - of multiple, deeper meanings. Experience dictates nothing is as it appears. Things are seldom simple. These layers often comprise the sophisticated science of the cake. But only the icing and the flavour attracts folks to the eating. Or in neo-platonic terms, truth is accompanied by beauty and goodness.

We are generally unable to see another's perspective, and others are equally unable to see ours. Each expects the other to make the effort of understanding. Why do we behave so intolerantly? We should be able to consider that others might be at earlier levels of understanding without being patronizing. We should be able to recall our own path of learning, and recall when the truth we could manage was smaller, or simpler, or preliminary.

To ascend the scale of knowledge there must be motivation - a reason. The utility of some knowledge might turn useless, or false, or insufficient. Curiosity may lead one to a discovery that challenges earlier understanding. Doubt grows faith. When doubt raises the opportunity of learning, there are two possibilities. Either the new understanding grows or replaces the old understanding.

The quest for knowledge seems most distinctively human, and the desire to share knowledge is our next instinct. Again there seems to be 2 paths: growth or change. There may be a comfortable learning, or a significant disruption to the person.

A person may for example, come to recognize the anthropomorphism in their understanding of god, and find a different metaphor such as Paul Tillich's idea "god as the ground of being" is meaningful. But while they were in the earlier paradigm of understanding they were comfortable with supernatural traditions.

From our borning we learn the traditions of family and community. First we are children, then adults. First we are innocent, then experienced. We must learn our lessons. We none of us come ready for the game. But sadly, we disparage these earlier stages, though each is requisite to further understanding. We live in an arrogant present, thinking everything our own doing, our generations accomplishments, the only contributions of interest, our culture's perspectives the only valid point of view. This is the opposite of Newton's respect for those whose understanding he built upon.


RELIGION AND THE SUPERNATURAL
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." ...Niels Bohr
There is large religious disparity in human society. Yet the spiritual path is rather a similar one for many persons and for many peoples. The understandings of the disciple are paltry compared to the master. The simple understandings of sunday school are not the philosophys of theology. The lengends and myths of our race are not our histories. When TS Elliott said we return to the place of our beginning with new insight he was quite right.

Is not then the supernatural set of understandings an earlier place on the spiritual journey of our race? What might be the proper spirituality for any person has the necessary context of his time, her place, their circumstance.

It is quite evident that we have samples of every part of the spectrum of belief and unbelief. What one calls faith another calls credulity. What one considers moderation another calls reckless abandon. What one experiences as revelation, another considers delusion.

Many reach a point in their spiritual journey where they abandon the notions of the supernatural in religion. But for those for whom supernatural understandings are their familiar paradigm, why is it wrong?

Simple knowledge is given in the form of procedures, principles and rules. The beginning part of all learning is the distilled knowing of others, and of necessity is this compressed efficient foundational sort of knowledge. Before a person can gain their own experience, they must become qualified to proceed. They must learn the language and basic skills of the field.

Advanced knowledge however is invariably given in the form of stories. Stories may even have happened the way they are said. But not likely. Stories grow more perfect as a natural consequence of telling. The story of the Good Samaritan grows our understanding of neigbour. The story of the Tortoise and the Hare encourages children to stay the course. The stories that comprise religious traditions about the world contain the ethos and structure of the societies they issue from. They sound like history. But when concepts like truth and history and myth come into our modern understanding, we need be careful not to get confused.
"The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact," ... Joseph Campbell.


SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY

"It always seems to me that we are trying anxiously in this way to reserve some space for God; I should like to speak of God not on the boundaries but at the center, not in weaknesses but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man's life and goodness. As to the boundaries, it seems to me better to be silent and leave the insoluble unsolved. Belief in the resurrection is not the "solution" of the problem of death. God's "beyond" is not the beyond of our cognitive faculties. The transcendence of epistemological theory has nothing to do with the transcendence of God. God is beyond in the midst of our life. The church stands, not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village. That is how it is in the Old Testament, and in this sense we still read the New Testament far too little in the light of the Old. How this religionless Christianity looks, what form it takes, is something that I'm thinking about a great deal..." Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters from Prison link4
In the last century, many new ways to consider our world have come to us. So we call ourselves "modern". Certainly science has become a prolific provider of knowledge in consequence. But so also has religion been involved in such change. "Biblical Criticism" and archeology have led to much deeper understandings of our stories - our histories and our myths.

We both have come in our time to a strange place. We've a new meme - "I'm spiritual but not religious." We acknowledge the mystery of our world and the marvel of our selves. We experience awe and wonder and call it spirituality. This spirituality is our own - no one can dispute it - it is inside us. It is impossible to compare.

But with religion, we have a different thing. Everything about religion is visible for dispute. And dispute we certainly do. With so much religion contrary to other religion, many cast the whole lot out. But what really is religion except more people in community brought together because of common spiritual experiences? People brought together in acknowledgement of themselves being part of the whole. People seeking guidance and sharing and understanding in becoming better people and coping with their lives.

The atheist wants to take religion out of society for the damage he credits it with. And even within the religious community, there are many voices of criticism that would take the "religion" out of religion. Is this much more than the usual process of change and reformation? Is this not evolutionary? We have much in common with this new atheism if we in the religious community can accept due criticism. Both are trying to tell only true stories.

LINKS & REFERENCES

Link1 Royal Society poll finds Newton greater influence than Einstein.
Link2 Royal Society discovers lost alchemical papers of Newton.
link3. Ray Kurzweil's aggregation site celebrating the advances in science that are bringing on the "singularity".
link4. Ethics and the Will of God - The Legacy of Deitrich Bonhoeffer. Archive material and 1 hr audio program with Krista Tippett of PBS Series "Speaking of Faith"
Commentary -
Summary of Discussion Notes after Small Groups
Clicking the icon left will activate the e-mail on your machine and direct your comments to us. Comments are welcome and will be posted with usual editorial courtesies. St. David's United Church.Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Jan 2008