In the continuous outflow of meaning in the construction of our social worlds, we must ask again and again: do we have the "backing of the universe". It is a measure of the desperation of contemporary theology and faith in the face of the power of the modern scientific worldview. A general crisis of opinion in the intellectual world has accompanied the emergence of the image of an indifferent universe, barren to any purpose.
The interpretation of "living" in terms of non-living has become the ideal of many modern scientific investigations.
Nature and Purpose by John F. Haught
Physical Reality
One of the most immediately available features of my subjective experience is the quality of "becoming". This leads to the dubious view that the unconscious is the cause of the conscious. As for the question of space, in the universe of classical physics. the concept of matter assumed simple location.
The poet's testimony is no longer alien to the scientific world view.
Perception
Are we obliged to accept this doctrine that sense perception is the ultimate basis for complete and authentic knowledge of the world? With Whitehead we have made experiences the fundamental constitutive elements in our conception of the universe. It is the function of the secondary pole of perception (in the mode of 'presentational immediacy') to project onto the body the spatially clear and distinct objects of sensory perception.
To understand the fact of newness in the world, we need to further elaborate the notion of "prehension".
Emergence
The ultimate goal of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.3. It is therefore crucial that we focus our discussion here on the question of the ontological status, (that is, the question of the "reality") of life and mind, the most obvious cases of allegedly "emergent" phenomena . Our entire discussion of this point could be focused on the question of the logic of the claim that biology and, by extension, neurophysiology is reducible to physics and chemistry.
So the failure of the comprehensive whole truly follows the breakdown of preconditions for biochemical processes. Furthermore, the successful functioning of a cell, organism or brain is conditioned by the repetition of the most basic physico-chemical processes in their compliance with the laws of nature. Somehow it is the achievement of the author's mind.
However thorough one's knowledge of the intricacies of physics and chemistry may be, this knowledge alone cannot provide the rules for successful writing. The key to the logical irreducibility of the latter to the former can be seen in the disparity of the questions we ask at each level. And as we do so, we put in brackets the consideration of the over-all.
1 For a lucid but somewhat oversimplified statement of the traditional hierarchy of "levels" of reality, see Quoted in John Hermann Randall, The Making of the Modern Mind (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), p.
Purpose
The science of the lower is not "adequate" to understand the organizing principles pertaining to a higher emerging being. There is no need for a suspension of the laws operating at a lower level for a new, emerging possibility to enter evolution. Teilhard's particular version of the purpose of the universe, even though I'm drawn to it in many ways.
I see a prior need to demonstrate the theory. nature's sympathy for any form of teleological interpretation, despite many contemporary denials of such a possibility. We can understand the purpose of the world process in terms of the concept of value, interpreted in an aesthetic sense. In a value pattern, conflicts are transformed into satisfying contrasts through the overall harmony of the aesthetic frame of reference.
If the contrast is too obtrusive, then the whole harmony of the painting is endangered. In this broader perspective, then, what is disharmonious from a limited perspective actually contributes to the aesthetic growth of the whole. In an aesthetic model, contradictions and clashes are transformed into contrasts that increase the value of the whole.
Therefore, the dynamism of the universe can be understood as a goal towards achieving and enjoying the highest possible beauty. For an elaboration of the principle that the lowest is not adequate to the highest, cf.
Perishing
Without some sense of the eternity of the value attained in the manifestation of nature, we may easily agree with the gloomy ruminations of those writers, ancient and modern, who have expressed a painful pessimism as a result of their sensibility to temporality. The victory of lower forces over higher forces seems to be most decisive in the case of human mortality. The bits of matter in the classical picture of physical reality are incapable of being incorporated into any sensible salvific scheme.
Intrinsic to this combination of concepts is a framework within which we can legitimately see the impermanence of events and of valued entities as redeemable from absolute loss and thus capable of making a difference of value to the universe as we experience it in the present. And this emptying of themselves, this non-holding onto their own immediacy gives them a status of permanence in the universe of experience. Consequently, there can be no absolute loss in the universe, since every passing opportunity is felt in some way by the perception intrinsic to all the constituents of nature.
Furthermore, what is taken up in God is not primarily our public behavior; it is our experience in the full intimacy of its subjective immediacy. It is this aspect of the vision of God that ultimately sustains us in the assurance that life is worthwhile and that our experience ultimately matters. We suggested that the idea of ​​God points to the element of eternity within this flow of mutual sensitivity in the universe.15 God is understood here both as feeling and as actively feeling.
Nevertheless, it does not seem inappropriate to associate the religious sense of the divine with a metaphysically required ground of order in the cosmos, provided we also associate God with the fact of newness. And such forms of symbolism are generally not encountered, except in the context of a community of shared meaning and hope.
Adventure
The good news of the coming of the Kingdom of God is contrasted with the world order. There is no need to justify, we have no right to justify all the misfortune, all the suffering and evil in the world with the help of the idea of ​​God as Providence and Ruler of the Universe. 3. The concept of God, if it is to correspond to the essence of the universe, must be connected with the concept of adventure.
When we speak of the relationship of the gods to nature, we must do so not only in terms of actualized order, but also of the universe's adventure into new forms of order. 34;There is then the evil of insignificance -- a sketch instead of a complete picture."8 A suppression of the universe's perpetual push toward. Such an attitude would simply not be compatible with love in any meaningful human sense. of the term.
However, there is a certain "freedom" or indeterminacy at the fundamental level of the being of the world that resides in the self-causative aspect of each occasion of experience. And wouldn't the breakdown of any level of cosmic phenomenon, especially human personal interaction, result in a "failure" of the divine to accomplish its purpose. Accordingly, the actualization of the divine presence in the universe would have a fragility and uncertainty even more delicate than that of our own minds in relation to their physical branches.
In the case of God's self-realization in the cosmic adventure, there is a risk of tragedy proportional to the vulnerability of the subsidiaries integrated into the divine field of emergent possibilities. And the question of the meaning of our lives may well be related to such a decision.
Conclusion
Their distrust of religious symbols, myths, and teleological hypotheses is related to a failure to consider the possibility of a primary kind of perception in which beauty, value, meaning, and purpose constitute ontologically "real" experiential data rather than products of wishful thinking. Religion, using a mythic-symbolic language that is always culturally conditioned and historically contingent, refers to the data of primary perception, while science seeks to express correlations between the objects sensed, abstracted or imagined at the pole of secondary perception. Both types of expression have reference to the real world, but in very different ways of symbolic reference.
Although scientific language often pretends to be fundamental, it actually describes an already rather late and abstract realm of objects that lends itself to delineation by the clear logic of mathematics. Like science, religion is not always (perhaps not even often) inclined to respond to this obligation to adapt to the adventure of revision. As Whitehead accurately notes, much of the conflict between science and religion stems from reluctance.
But the conflict also largely stems from scientific thought that does not move beyond the "sensational" doctrine of perception. Perhaps the most impressive way in which scientific thought can display its own alleged glorification of the spirit of adventure today is that it revises its motives for still clinging uncritically to a shallow understanding of.
