First of all I want to thank everyone for keeping the level of this virtual conversation so high and so philosophically minded. Now that we have opened up a discussion about Science and Spirituality I would like to add a little more historical context to frame it.
During the time of the Middle Ages Christianity grew and fought to become the dominant worldview in the Western World. That means that the vast majority of people believed that the Bible contained an infallible recording of the Truth as God presented it to humanity. No matter what you felt about it, no matter what you thought about it, the fact always remained that what the Bible said was the ultimate Truth that described Reality.
Then in the 17th Century the Western Enlightenment erupted. The scientific and philosophical thinkers of that age began to realize that the human mind had the power to understand reality. These great thinkers began to uncover a natural order that was governed by unchangeable laws and their success led to miraculous discoveries and achievements.
Still, during this time and on into the 18th and 19th centuries, most of the Enlightenment thinkers still believed in God, but the nature of that belief changed and gave birth to Liberal Theology. The Bible was increasingly seen not as the literal word of God flawlessly recorded by the prophets (Old Testament) and the Apostles (New Testament), but now was seen as an interpretation of God’s word as created by these great figures. The Bible was then not something to be taken literally, but to be continually studied and reinterpreted so that the essential wisdom contained in the words could be distilled out.
As Science continued to triumph another interpretation of traditional religious views took a strong hold. This was Natural Theology. In Natural Theology there remained a belief in God, but now God was seen as the initiator of a mechanical process. God was the clock-maker, but once he/she wound the clock up it continued to operate with no need of further intervention. Deism was an 18th century form of faith that held this view, and most of America’s founders were Deists. What Natural Theology allowed for was a belief in God that could be completely severed from Christian dogma.
Then a funny thing happened on the way to the 20th Century – Charles Darwin published ”On the Origin of Species.” Evolution was discussed long before Darwin, but it never threatened the belief in God like it did afterward. Prior to Darwin, no matter how cleverly science could explain the workings of natural law there remained a need for a Creator that had created this miraculous world. If you look at the vast complexity and interconnectivity of our living world – not to mention our own human form – there is no way to imagine that it just appeared here this way. Just like if you pick up a wristwatch on the beach, you would never assume that it just appeared there, someone obviously made it. So to with our world, someone obviously made it and that someone was God.
But Darwin punched a big hole in that idea because he devised an understanding of the mechanism of evolution through Natural Selection that could explain how we and our world could have been created as a consequence of the need to survive and the occurrence of chance variations in Nature. This explanation was based only on simple observable “natural laws” that required no outside intelligence to guide them – and it has held up (with some modification) for over 150 years!
In our modern times Darwin’s theory of evolution frames the Science vs. Spirituality debate. In 1925 the “Scope’s Monkey Trial” pitted believers against evolutionists and although the believers won the trial, the debate cranked up the argument into high gear. American Fundamentalism with its insistence on a literal interpretation of the Bible galvanized around the issue of evolution. And in response many in the scientific community veered steadily toward an increasingly materialistic and deterministic worldview.
Is there a higher intelligence than the human ability to reason in the Universe? Is there a purpose driving the process of cosmic evolution? To my mind these are the questions upon which the debate of Science vs. Spirituality rests today. Spirituality if it means anything means a belief and alignment with a universal purpose. Whether it be in a traditional religious context or not, spirituality is an appeal to some higher intelligence, not necessarily one that is separate and apart from human intelligence, but one at least that transcends (while including) our normal faculty for reason and understanding.
Brian
/ August 26, 2009The imagination dreams of a transcendental reality. Time and again this transcendence appeals to the hungry soul; it feeds the creative imagination, soothes life’s suffering, eases death’s unknowns, promises meaning in the face of indifference. There must be something beyond this actual world, beyond space and time, which we cannot detect with our senses. There must be a deeper world, which the intellect ponders and the emotions crave. Here is the opening for the transcendental temptation. Yes, says the imagination, these things are possible. It then takes one leap beyond mere possibility to actuality.
Lisa
/ August 26, 2009Last semester I had a Humanities class. In our Humanity book, it clearly says that a counsel of 70 men called Nicene came together to decide how to portray Jesus of Nazareth to the people.
They decided to make him come from an immaculate birth and say he is the Son of God. There were people preaching his teachings throughout the country causing the Roman army to loose control of its people.
In 313 ad, Catholicism became a legal religion. The Roman army set out to make everyone in the world convert over to Catholicism and denounce any other belief in God, the spirit world, or deities.
If anyone protested against Catholicism, they were tortured until they accepted this religion as the word of God. This is how Christianity was started according to the Humanities book I received in college.
In 1512, Cortez landed on what is now Cancun with 600 men and 20 horses. –Columbus was there about 10 years earlier and learned a lot about the native Indians culture. — What Cortez learned was that the natives were waiting from a sign from their god that would show them the way to heaven. This sign was of a man on a horse. Remember, the natives had never seen a horse. Now, here is this man, Cortez, atop a horse on their shores.
He was immediately taken to the king of their city and given a big welcome party. Once Cortez gain the trust of the king and his citizens, he had his men over take the city. The most beautiful city anyone had ever seen. This city was built on a grid, with running water, and public toilets. There was not any trash in this city to be found.
Cortez and his men ended up killing millions of men, women, and children. If they personally didn’t have some one killed, the diseases they brought with them killed in masses. They forced women to bear children from the Spanish, trying to wash out any of the native Indian blood from their birth. If you were found to be full blood Indian, you were killed.
It took over 200 years to get these people to convert to Catholicism. They never fully converted, keeping some of their rituals to worship their gods.
I find this information to be fascinating, confirming to me what I always believed in my heart about the holy bible not being the ardent word of god as it had been taught in church and at home. And, that this information is being taught in the American colleges. The Christians in my class didn’t believe it for one minute to having any truth.
According to my Humanities book, Christianity was a made up religion to get control of the masses. There has been a lot of blood shed over this religion. It is ironic how none of this was taught to me in bible study.
I am taking an Intro to Sociology class right now. I am learning, on my own, how the American government is programming the minds of its citizens to take control of them, and has been experimenting on people, and infants for the last 80 years.
Carl
/ August 26, 2009Given our earlier discussions, you might guess I would add that there has been an additional step beyond Darwin, who provided a way to understand the evolution of biological species, the process of unfolding through selection by consequences that eliminated the need for Clockmaker or an Uncaused Cause that had everything in Mind prior to creation.
That next step came in the form of behavior science, a set of experimental procedures and discoveries that demonstrated how individuals learn following the very same principles that Darwin applied to species: selection by consequences.
This science eliminated the need to understand humans as uniquely created beings who were previously thought to have the special ability to serve as the god-like “uncaused causes” of their own actions. Instead, just as Darwin described the evolution of biological forms as the result of a process that produced them, Skinner accounted for the learning of behavioral forms — in both individuals and in groups — as the products of a natural process, a process that could also account for the emergence of self-awareness, language, and complex cognitive and ethical or moral behavior. He provided a parallel scientific account individual learning as a form of evolution (or individual evolution as learning).
I would say that for an evolutionary spirituality to be complete, it ought to have a scientific account of individual evolution to match the scientific account of biological evolution to which it refers. Because once we understand the mechanisms of our own individual and cultural evolution, we become more able to fully take responsibility for them, to guide and harness them for the sake of the Whole, to create a more conscious and intentional technology of evolution for our own development. To me that is an exhilarating prospect!
Mette Mollerhoj
/ August 27, 2009Great Carl!
But then we again stumble into the questions of “responsibility” , dont we? “The chooser” or rather “the self” – what is that?’
If the self is identified with the structures in the mind – can that self be any more responsible than a computerprogram for it self? Can it be more responsible than a flower can be responsible for its way of living… But if we identify with a much deeper (and quite mystical) self, the Self that is something like an ever present awareness shared with all being since time began, then yes, that self is somehow responsible for it all…
what do you think?
Anonymous
/ August 27, 2009Jeff, you wrote that there must be something that created this vast complexity that life and the universe is, that there’s no way it just appeared here that way, and that’s the way I sensed it would have had to have happened also. How could such an amazingly intricate and vast web of life have just happened so randomly? However you also mentioned Darwin, how he came along and punched a hole in that theory, he explained creation and natural selection as a way to understand how evolution works. Even if the big bang was a random combustion of events, gases and chemical compounds though, how could it have produced such an extraordinarily detailed, abundant and diverse universe? It doesn’t make sense, something must have been behind it.
When you asked the questions underpinning the spirituality vs science debate about ‘Is there a higher intelligence than the human ability to reason in the universe? Is there a purpose driving the process of cosmic evolution? Well I have to then ask myself as I have done in the last few days, – who is it that’s doing the thinking here, and the answer comes back, it is God. Also as far as if there is a purpose driving the process of cosmic evolution, I think it’s possible to look into our own experience and see that there is something unthinkably good and sacred that is pulling and directing the process up higher to something better, and that is God also. And that is the belief and alignment with a universal purpose. But I think we have to get out of the way first, before we see this clearly in our own doubtless experience. It just is, no empirical proof would suffice for the scientist perhaps, unless they had this experience themselves.
Anonymous
/ August 27, 2009Jeff—thanks for coming back to the project here. You were missed, but we knew you were doing good work. (Warning—I wander off topic–not sure why.)
I find that the way you frame the questions in the last paragraph leads me to difficult choices relative to whether there is a “higher” intelligence or “higher” purpose. Part of me wants to respond, “Of course”, we cannot be so narcissistic to think the we here are the ultimate purpose of the universe–even if we are an important expression and instrument of the purpose. We are a discovery/invention/event along the way. We are part of the process as it goes it’s merry way.
To speak of “intelligence” and “purpose” are to put very human constraints around measuring “higher”, which feels like it clouds the direction of the inquiry. (It does frame it within the historical context however, and that is useful.) I don’t think of intelligence and consciousness in the same dimension—where intelligence seems more tied to one facet of our particular human instantiation of consciousness.
To me it seems that consciousness as a concept is more general than “intelligence.” What we know is that there are many ways of being conscious (experiencing, having awareness) and that the greatest teachers (and some of our experience) has suggested that the way to “enlightenment” * is about shifting your consciousness “over there”. (Sometimes it seems as easy as shifting my awareness from my left brain to my right brain—a weird exercise if you want to try it; and quite aligned with Buddhist practices.) But “higher intelligence” seems too particular a word for this awareness that we are trying to embody as we attempt to find an experience of “higher intelligence/consciousness”.
To speak of the universe’s purpose is very difficult. I find it only makes sense for me to look at what it is doing. And while this is a long discussion, my simple explanation is that it is creating and embodying—color, structure, complexity, diversity, awareness, consciousness. And it has a lot of tools for this including evolution, complexity theory, randomness, and some embodied level of choosing which we seem to get to participate in.
But I have a hard time using “higher” in the context of that understanding. For our relationship to purpose, it works best if I think of one’s ability to align with what the universe is actually doing right here, right now. Not higher but more aligned. But not necessarily aligned with an “intelligence”—but aligned with a process that is aware.
So does that process that is aware and creating have a “higher” intelligence and purpose? It feels like a non-sequitor from that perspective. It is the only consciousness and purpose, and I seem to have a quandary of behaviors that have evolved: some help me align and some seem at cross purposes to that (though they have other purposes evolutionarily—like keeping me alive which is one of the tools of the creative process—being “alive”.)
I appreciate the conversation; I apologize for my wandering somewhat from the topic herein.
* I find that “enlightenment” isn’t very descriptive of this shift in consciousness; for me the analogy is more like finding coherence with the core vibration of the evolving/ever-changing universe. That process of becoming coherent requires us to drop all the behaviors that are incoherent. And it’s not about taking any experience of consciousness “higher”, but about changing its nature altogether.
Mary
/ August 27, 2009Note: the above anonymous comment is from Mary P. I changed browsers and it lost my identity. Hopefully the browser, if not myself, will have recovered it. M
Shizuka
/ August 27, 2009After reading Lisa & Jeff’s”transformation pill” issue(Science VS.Spirituality),I can see myself that I ‘m one of them “Believe & adapt the culturally held view without realizing it”
In spite of getting inspired by the glimpse of evolution though Jeff’s blog which fit in the picture like the excerpt from Francis Collins describe”We need to bring all the power of both scientific and spiritual perspectives to bear on understanding what is both seen and unseen,” =Seek the truth(my interptation),Majority of time and life(let’s say 90% of time) I live according to the culturally held belief as norm.
Then I had the question”What is the difference between belief & Faith?”
This morning when I check Jeff’s blog comment update,by viewing Mette’s comment regarding “Responsibility”.there is “Aha”moment!
If we think the self is identified with the structures in the mind or science perspective of “organic mechanism structure” which is the product and producer of a consequence of the need to survive and the occurrence of chance variations in Nature and evolution of biological forms as the result of a process that produced them. Why we need to take responsibility of it? and Yes,we admit ” hungry soul” which looking for meaning & purpose in our life,aren’t we? and we can’t find it in this perspective.
I grow up in Catholic family ,so my interptation of spirituality is deeply rooted in Bible ,deeply held belief than I thought.So the bible 1Corinthians 13 “The Excellence of Love” If I speak with the tonges of men and angels,but do not have love,…..” is the closest to describe the heart and mind united.But as Mette describe(as Andrew as the frontier),if we identify with a much deeper self, the Self that is something like an ever present awareness shared with all being since time began, then yes, that self is somehow responsible for it all , hungry soul find the meaning & purpose of life and sense of urgency,emotional implication,put our heart in our development,evolution because whole world is upon on my shoulder,depend on ( and by product,I have a fulfillment,sense of completion of circle.)
“bring all the power of both scientific and spiritual perspectives to bear on understanding what is both seen and unseen”->”Take responsibility of the understanding=trust”
So the deeper the understanding what is both seen and unseen,able to take responsibility more,which strength the faith and trust in life and that circle keep going higher and higher like the picture of spiral dynamic.
Yet frustrating part is how to prove or convince “the Self that is something like an ever present awareness shared with all being since time began”?and strength faith and integrity?
I can say it’s the dream,creative imagination as well (but in the history,when some one dreamed to fly like the bird and developed the airplane).
Carl
/ August 27, 2009Taking responsibility is itself a product of evolution, as self-awareness, cognition, and ethical behavior evolved, the complex repertoire of prompting and managing one’s own behavior to achieve a desired consequence — be it personal or greater than personal — becomes a responsibility. And in that context, culture in the form of others especially mentors, teachers, parents, and leaders becomes a source that causes more and more of the repertoire of responsibility to arise. It is God evolving to the point where It can talk to Itself, act in relation to Itself, guide Itself. Not THAT’s evolution!
Joanna
/ August 27, 2009The first anoynmous above is me, I hit the submit button before typing my name.
Carl
/ August 27, 2009Mary, the thing that occurs to me in response to your intriguing last post is that when our actions are more “coherent” or aligned with what is happening here and now, aren’t we in some way more likely to be aware in a bigger way? Seems like most of the things that go against alignment or coherence — fixed ideas, self-obsession, already knowing, attachment to fears and desires, etc. — limit the clarity and expanse or scope of our awareness. In that sense, if we use the metaphor of awareness as some sort of orb, then coherence might be associated with a “bigger” kind of awareness or consciousness, and in that sense “higher.” I guess it’s not strictly hierarchical, but it seems deeper, further, bigger, clearer, etc. In that sense “higher” or less constrained.
Mary
/ August 27, 2009Carl,
I agree that alignment does mean that we are more aware and that helps. Even as I wrote it, I knew that there was more there—more awareness, more capacity. So higher isn’t a bad term. I may have more of an issue with “intelligence” because of some of the ways it can be used to limited our thinking to “being smart” in a very left-brain or even just human way. I think that the universe is aware and capable of movement and change in ways that overwhelm our sense of “intelligence” and on other dimensions. We get a small sense of this as we expand our awareness. Higher is just a relative difference and we know it is that: a relative difference of positive value. But it is also of another quality.
Lisa
/ August 27, 2009I hear people saying that we are either going to evolve or die.
Maybe this is exactly what is happening to the consciousness that created this universe. It is counting on humans to come together to feel peace within them in order to keep it alive.
The fear thoughts are going to make it explode/die, and the only way to counteract fear is peace. This consciousness’ just cannot take any more fear. Humans have to decide if they want life or forever death.
Life really is very simple to live.
Jeff Carreira
/ August 27, 2009Thank you all for all of your thoughts. This is the best blog, you just put up a post and a wonderful insights appear!
Catherine
/ August 27, 2009Hello to all, it is going fast and it is becoming a delightful challenge to catch up with you guys !
I was fascinated by the discussion about the differences between intelligence and consciousness what does it mean to be “aligned”.
I see Intelligence, human Intelligence, as a fundamental spiritual asset of our species. At the retreat, while meditating on the Ground of Being I tried to figure out what function , in my brain, was aligned and what was to be dropped as serving the Ego.
It first appeared that the part of my mind which was carrying this very investigation is really good. We, as a species are blessed with fantastic qualities for logical investigation, which we don’t want to loose !
Then appeared this part of the mind which receives directly some Intuition. Like when you get some Eureka, when suddenly something that didn’t mean anything to you, suddenly makes sense. Those Intuitions seem to come from “Nowhere” ( or is it that they comes directly from this Evolutionnary Intelligence that Jeff is talking about ?) but we, human beings have the power to receive them , understand them, and concretize them. Eureka !
The third sacred function of our mind is for me the power of our Imagination. This is just a pure wonder that we are blessed with ! To use Imagination and our power for Vision is not only a sacred function of our mind, but is usually accompanied by pure bliss and delight !
These are for me the three most sacred assets of our mind that I believe are directly linked with the Sacred, with our highest potential.
In comparison with this, the Intelligence of the Cosmos, or the Intelligence of the Evolutionary Force, seems to me much less sophisticated. It is basic Intelligence, whose power is so big that it is difficult for us to just get a representation of it , but well, the fact remains that the Intelligence of the Cosmos seems basic in nature, incredibly deep, but basic.
For one thing, just look at us. We are weird, aren’t we? We have those funny legs and even more funny genitals. This weird body supporting a brain… ! Strange beast we are. I remember that when my mother died, my father, who was a very good Ingeneer told me that Nature didn’t do that well with the human body, that a good Ingeneer would just do better. So what is the nature of this Force, of this Evolutionary Intelligence, such that a good Ingeneer of the 20th century would certainly cook a much more performant body !
Humm !
And yet, this Evolutionary Intelligence is real, and the most wonderful thing for me is that we, as very sophisticated and developed beings, can interact with it, can talk to it, can align with it.
The alignment of our sophisticated and Sacred Human intelligence with the incredibly powerful , but basic Intelligence of the Cosmos, is for me what defines awareness.
Carl
/ August 27, 2009I think some of what happens as “intelligence” or “intuition” in us, or in nature, or in the universe as a whole, happens so fast that we can’t see the mechanism. “Intelligence” might be a good word for it, but as Mary says, it seems a little too anchored to the verbal/cognitive part of our mechanism that is a tiny subset of the entire process that goes on around and with us. That’s important because we’re mostly looking at the amazing outputs, might have some idea what the inputs or factors were that went into it, but somehow our brains, or collections of people, or other animals or plants, or forces of gravity, etc. etc. — somehow all those things came together to produce an amazing result of some kind. It’s that “generative” capacity of existence that is the most wonderful and mysterious. How all the parts working together CREATE the next thing. Paradoxically, I think the mechanisms could be explained and described in principle, but not in fact – because it’s all too complex and too fast for us to actually watch, record, and understand. Too many moving parts acting too quickly all at the same time!
Mary
/ August 27, 2009I agree that understanding the mechanisms of the universe changing moment by moment from potentials generated by those very mechanisms is vastly difficult. During Darwin’s time, nothing was understood of quantum physics. It’s only in the last 20 years that we’ve started to understand complexity theory—and these things are core to how the universe evolves. I think that we may learn about those kinds of mechanisms that mesh with our kind of intelligence. But it seems to me that there are likely mechanisms that will be so foreign to our brains that we may never see them to understand them. (Even Einstein could not believe quantum mechanics.)
Or maybe we will not see them until we’ve accomplished orders of magnitude of evolution in our consciousness. I guess that links back to Jeff’s point about “transcending our normal faculties”—we have a ways to go on a very intriguing path.
Shizuka
/ August 27, 2009How about “receives directly some Intuition” define as “the experience new way of reality,unmediated reality,look from the inside out” what Stuart discribed on July18 comment?
Jeff Carreira
/ August 28, 2009This discussion reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from William James.
“I firmly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing-rooms and libraries. They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangents to the wider life of things.”
Lisa
/ August 28, 2009There is ancient art work dated back to 15,000-10,000 BCE in the caves of Lascaux, in Dordogne, France that are believed to be part of a ceremony the tribes performed before going hunting.
Hunting tribes such as the Pygmies of the African Congo enacted the hunt prior to the actual event. They drew and then symbolically “killed” the animal by shooting arrows into the drawing. The ritual included chant, mime, and dance in hope to secure the actual hunt. “Landmarks In Humanities.” pg 3.
It is a good thing these ancient tribes and those tribes that still use this method today to insure a successful hunt, are not waiting for scientific approval that this method of hunting works. They would go hungry and start killing off one another.
Brian
/ August 28, 2009The James quote on dogs and cats is cool. But dogs and cats really live in the presence of more intelligent beings. Do we?
“Men became superstitious not because they had too much imagination, but because they were not aware that they had any.” Santayana
Shizuka
/ August 28, 2009I agree with what Lisa say “Consciousnessis counting on humans to come together to feel peace within them in order to keep it alive. ”
How come us humans have hard time to say”Yes”to life? Indeed,mew;)
Jeff Carreira
/ August 28, 2009Brian- I am not ready to say for certain that there are not beings of higher intelligence in our midst – although I have no personal experience of any. I do believe that there are realms of intelligence in the universe that human beings have access to that are higher than our current rational capacities. I imagine that if we could zoom ahead 1000 years (assuming there is a world to zoom to and a human race still in existance) we would be awed and humbled by the hubris that we witnessed in our earlier selves when confronted with what will be a much more vast understanding of reality.
Brian
/ August 28, 2009Jeff – does your stated belief in ‘higherness’ include an obligation to live in accordance with it? If so, what does that look like?
Shizuka
/ August 28, 2009There seems inherent principles toward wholeness and perfection in the universe to be seen.
For example, Barbra Max Hubbard excerpt Jeff posted previously
We see the earth herself as a whole system. We are being integrated into one interactive, interfeeling body by the same force of evolution that drew atom to atom and cell to cell. Every tendency in us toward greater wholeness, unity and connectedness is reinforced by nature’s tendency toward holism. Integration is inherent in the process of evolution.
Other example,Excerpt from “Work the system” by Sam Carpenter
Because the universe’s overwhelming inclination is toward stability and efficiency,the event that go wrong in a typical person’s life are small percentage of that person’s total experience.Systems want to be efficient ..Within one’s life,getting thing to work swimmingly is not a difficult task if one pay attention to the mechanics of how things work….I realized the force is with you…..The life I lead is a result of actions,actions rooted in my gut certainty that in the systems that compose the worlds workings,there is not a cosmic inclination for chaos.Rather,there is a default propensity toward order and efficiency
So my interpretation is more like wake up to…or align to that inherent principles rather than transcends normal faculty, .
It’s like what Sam describe in his book
“we see perfection as an anomaly and imperfection as the norm.The conclusion is backward…if the universe has a predilection for order,it should be a simple thing to “climb on board.”
Catherine
/ August 28, 2009To tell you the Truth I am not convinced that the mechanism of Evolution is too complex or too fast. My view is that we simply don’t understand it yet, that’s why it looks complex to us. I am very cautious before stating that some part of the Reality is too complex or too fast. For example I don’t believe at all in complexity in science. In Science when a theory is established it is simple. Let’s put it that way: under the “right” perspective, things simplify. For me it is a universal law, which is at the core of Sciences. The goal is then to find the high enough perspective.
Jeff tell me whether I am wrong but I believe Andrew Cohen has the same kind of approach, scientific in essence.
When we understand something it is always simple ( at least for me) .
So how can I be sure that the Reality of the Evolutionary Force is too fast or too Complex ? Isn’t it just simply that my vision of it is not high enough to see the
big picture ?
Here is a small quite by Albert Einstein which I love a lot:
“The Intuitive Mind is a sacred gift and the Rational Mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society which honors the servant and forgot the gift.”
I found it beautiful especially he felt like m that the Intuitive Mind reaches the realm of the sacred.