The terrestrial globe from the beginning was created with all its elements, substances, atoms and minerals, organisms; but these only appeared by degrees …
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’
Oct 28, 2012. Over the last nine months and the last thirty one blogs we’ve covered a lot of territory in our explorations of the relationship between evolution, science, and religion.
One thing we explored was the love/hate relationship that Americans – and increasingly people around the world – have with evolution.
- For some people – and for nearly all scientists – evolution is powerful set of analytical tools, empirical results, and explanatory principles that combined with molecular genetics form one of the most powerful and relevant sciences of the 21st century.
- Many people, including many scientists, also hold evolution to be a powerful set of metaphysical truths about the nature of the world and the meaning and purpose of life – in short, they hold to it as a modern creation narrative. Only rarely do these people distinguish between evolution as science and evolution as a myth. It is this situation that prompted Mary Midgely – one of the most respected of modern-day English philosophers – to ask if evolution was a religion.
For many other people – especially many Christian evangelicals – evolution is simply wrong. It is propagated, they think, as a modern secular attack against religion and belief in God in general – and against Christian morals and ethics in particular. When manifested as Social Darwinism, it taught master-race theories and nourished virulent racism. When manifested as psychological theory, it taught that man was an animal controlled by his instincts and transcendence of those instincts an impossibility. And as theological metaphysics, it taught that religion is unscientific and believers ignorant.
We explored the relationship between evolution and religion, paying frequent attention to Darwinism and its beliefs. Darwin did indeed hold that man was an animal and does seem to have retained little in the way conventional religious belief in his latter years, although he was eager to avoid any kind of controversy by taking a definite stand.
And we explored the Bahá’í point of view. Man is not an animal, that view holds. Our intellectual, spiritual, and rational capabilities make us different than animals. Because of this, and because we are the result of the laws of the universe, not simply the sequence of events that preceded us, it is incorrect to say that we are descended from the animals.
The Baha’i view – we concluded – is completely compatible with evolution the science. It offers different conclusions than evolution the metaphysics.
Does Evolution Prove that God Doesn’t Exist?
Many of Darwin’s modern followers – it isn’t clear what Darwin believed – hold that evolution denies the existence of God.The belief is either (a) that God as an explanatory principle is not needed to explain the existence of life given that a scientific explanation is available, or (b) that evolutionary theory proves that humanity came about by chance. (The later, apparently, is proposed with the intent of denying that man came into existence by deterministic natural processes.)
We looked into the logic of these beliefs to see their merit. Drawing on the scientific view that all things that exist must obey the fundamental laws of the universe, and the fundamental religious view that those laws were created by God, we concluded two things:
- First, as has been widley recognized, there is no contradiction between the view that humanity was created by lawful natural processes and the view that humanity was created by God.
- Second, there seems to be a very definite, widespread – and distinctively non-scientific – metaphysical conception of evolution and nature as having unique powers of creation formerly thought of as belonging to God. The later becomes particularly prominent in the thinking of Stuart Kauffman and Ursula Goodenough, who hold to views that see life as emergent and unpredictable and nature and evolution as creative and generating new phenomena.
If you believe, as many creationists do, that God created earth perfectly formed in its present state without any historical processes involved, or that God intervened via the miraculous introduction of “irreducibly complex” cellular components, then you 
subscribe to the only religious perspective that evolutionary science can defeat. It appears that the creationist/intelligent design and the anti-religious Darwinist schools of thought are locked in a mutually-reinforcing battle that keeps both sides excited and engaged, but at a distance from real science or real religon.
Humans and Other Animals
Humans are animals, according to Darwin. What this means is that Darwinism views the ladder of life differently than religion does, as the diagram on the right shows. Darwinism truncates that ladder – humans are part of the animal kingdom.
Is this what science tells us? My guess – and its only a guess as it is very hard to find a straight answer – is that scientists always assume humans to be different than animals both in their personal lives and in the studies they carry out. The exception is in areas such as medicine or biology in situations where human mental, cultural, or family behavior is not a controlling factor. In other words, the issue is usually sidestepped or ignored because of historical and ideological complications.
Enlightment 2.0: Towards a New View of the Relationship Between Science and Religion.
Why, we must ask, does the evolutionary creaton narrative come to such extreme conclusions? The conclusions I refer to are that humans are simply animals despite profound and very evident differences, that evolution shows that relig
ion is wrong despite religion’s complete compatibility with all other sciences, and the deeply unscientific view that evolution shows humans to be created by blind chance.
As we have shown in these blogs, evolutionary science is no different than other sciences, excepting in its subject matter. Its historical approach to explaining how things came to be differs only in the details, not in the use of standard scientific procedures or the pursuit of empirical data, compared to studies of cosmological evolution, a branch of physics. And the use of random variations – chance – as a component of explanation differs little from its use in countless other sciences and disciplines.
The explanation for its extreme conclusions appears abundantly clear if one considers the historical context in which evolution first developed – a historical context that is that of the aftermath of European enlightenment and its vision of science and reason as the road to redemption for a humanity oppressed by authoritative European monarchs and repressive religious institutions. And the historical context is the turn away from religion that was happening all across Europe at the time of evolution’s rise.
It is this that I want to explore next: the Enlightment Vision of Science, its history, its successes, its failures, and what needs to be done to put its wheels back on. In true Silicon Valley fashion – after all, that’s where I live and work – I want to talk about Enlightenment 1.0 and its dysfunctional relationship with religion and consider what needs to be done to upgrade it to Enlightenment 2.0.
…………………………
This is the 32nd and the last in a series of blogs on evolution and religion.The author, Stephen Friberg, is a Bahá’í living in Mountain View, California. A research physicist by training, he wrote Religion and Evolution Reconciled: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Comments on Evolution with Courosh Mehanian. He worked at NTT in Japan before joining the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley.
12 comments
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Koinotely
October 29, 2012 at 8:41 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Stephen,
I appreciate the mission of this group blog and I think it’s an opportunity to explore fascinating subjects. I take issue with this characterization of irreducible complexity and intelligent design:
“If you believe, as many creationists do, that God created earth perfectly formed in its present state without any historical processes involved, or that God intervened via the miraculous introduction of “irreducibly complex” cellular components, then you subscribe to the only religious perspective that evolutionary science can defeat. It appears that the creationist/intelligent design and the anti-religious Darwinist schools of thought are locked in a mutually-reinforcing battle that keeps both sides excited and engaged, but at a distance from real science or real religon.”
Intelligent design has nothing to do with God, it has more to do with artificial intelligence, anticipatory systems, and information flow in systems biology. I don’t think intelligent design is contrary to Baha’i teachings, especially if you’re familiar with the Bab’s writing on the primal will and how this relates to self-configuring self-processing languages. I think the Baha’i writings are being sold short when it is treated as so simple.
Stephen Friberg
October 29, 2012 at 12:38 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi Koinotely. I phrased things very carefully here, and I think I have stated it precisely and correctly. If you can find some misstatement, by all means do so. It is a favor to us.
Intelligent design mainly means two things – one is modern creationism where the concept of “irreducible complexity” is postulated to play a role. Not only does evolution show it to be wrong, but almost any other approach – philosophical, technical, the Baha’i Writings, logical, you name it – that you can think of shows it to be wrong. In this area, God is postulated as a miraculous designer overriding natural law. God is inherent in this approach, so it is incorrect to say that “intelligent design has nothing to do with God” for this approach.
Intelligent design is also the name for a much broader set of philosophical and theological issues, again relating specifically to God’s role as creator. From this perspective, intelligent design is central to the Baha’i Faith and its teachings. Again, it has everything to do with God, and yes, it is completely compatible with the Baha’i Faith.
I tried to make it obvious that I was not referring to that here by mentioning irreducible complexity, the signature component of the first type. Sorry if it wasn’t clear, but I indeed was very concerned about trying to draw lines of distinction carefully, especially in this arena of discussion where obfuscation is a game plan.
So, it is important to distinguish the two. The modern concept of irreducible complexity – the idea of Michael Behe and a handful of others that certain things in the biological sphere cannot have come about via the natural processes that Baha’is would say were put in place by God – is the distinguishing factor of this narrowly circumscribed view of intelligent design. Scientifically, it has been refuted completely. Metaphysically, it violates laws of causality that are at the very heart of the scientific process. And this has been shown by prominent biologists like Kenneth Miller and other who are deepened Roman Catholics and firm believers in intelligent design in the broad sense.
If you want to talk about the attempt to claim that there is an overlap of these two concepts, that’s a great topic, and is one of the two threads that is at the heart of the modern story of evolution as a supposed refutation of science.
Do these distinctions make sense?
koinotely
October 29, 2012 at 5:55 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Stephen,
I think you make several valid points, but as I don’t think your views speak for all Baha’is or all capable analysts on the issue, and I think we should be careful before making any hasty generalizations. I think we should start with a logical and mathematical understanding of what is intelligence and causality.
Stephen Friberg
October 29, 2012 at 6:48 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi Koinotely.
I’ve been studying this issue for more than 15 years now and have read an extensive amount of literature on the topic, so these are most definitely not hasty generalizations.
Also, Michael Behe’s ideas – due to their prominence – have been studied extensively by a significantly large number of mathematicians, logicians, philosophers, theologians, as well as scientists from a wide variety of different angles. Its a bit like global warming. 99.5% of the people who have studied the topic, including a large number of religiously minded thinkers, reject Michael Behe’s thinking, The very important Dover court case on the teaching of intelligent design has rejected it as non-science as well.
The overwhelming consensus – which I have come to very independently as that is my style – is that it is basically a religious point of view masquerading as science.
Of course, I can’t speak for all Baha’is. Nobody can. But I can speak from the standpoint of someone who has been a professional scientist for more than 30 years and a Baha’i obsessed with the unity of science and religion for 40 years. I am also very sympathetic to the views of the evangelical community who see evolution wielded as if it were a secular religion to try to deny the validity of true religion.
But what I see most dramatically and powerfully is a group of sincere and dedicated people – scientists like Behe – mistakenly embracing the corrosive materialism and reductionism that is the worst legacy of the enlightenment, and dragging the whole of religion into disrepute by making it into what is basically an argument that buttresses all the claims – and worst fears – of those that hate religion. They are doing it by claiming – against the very doctrines of the high traditions of their own church’s teachings – that they have developed a materialistic proof of the existence of God. I sincerely hope that Baha’is do not make the same mistake.
Yes, it is only my own view, and perhaps you have a fresh, new perspective.
I’m guessing that you are not as deeply invested in the topic as I am, and I’m guessing that you are looking at tangential or different issues and perhaps thinking that they are the same as creationist/intelligent design “irreducible complexity” issue. Or maybe you have found a different and new angle.
I ask that you consider this a forum for presenting those points of view. I will try not to roar too loudly. It could be a very wonderful and exciting journey of discovery if you were to share your perspectives.
So, please, share those capable analyses and those logical and mathematical understandings that you have found. And personally, to me, I want to know your analysis of those analyses. Why do you think that they are right?
Warmly,
Stephen Friberg
koinotely
October 29, 2012 at 8:36 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Stephen,
I am probably this topic approaching from a different angle, I don’t see Darwinism and Intelligent Design as totally anti-thetical, and I think both sides tend to over-simplify the issue. So I don’t see how bashing all those who support ID does any good when ultimately they can be reconciled at a higher level of understanding. I think the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) is the only technical theory which not only supports the Baha’i writings on several fronts, it also helps find “common ground”, which is what I thought this blog was all about, rather than taking whichever side was most convenient…I don’t mind being in the minority on this issue, because I know there is a lot more to these issues which neither side will probably couldn’t even imagine for at least a few more centuries.
“Should any one suppose that man is but a part of the world of nature, and he being endowed with these perfections, these being but manifestations of the world of nature, and thus nature is the originator of these perfections and is not deprived therefrom, to him we make reply and say:—the part dependeth upon the whole; the part cannot possess perfections whereof the whole is deprived.
By nature is meant those inherent properties and necessary relations derived from the realities of things. And these realities of things, though in the utmost diversity, are yet intimately connected one with the other. For these diverse realities an all-unifying agency is needed that shall link them all one to the other. For instance, the various organs and members, the parts and elements, that constitute the body of man, though at variance, are yet all connected one with the other by that all-unifying agency known as the human soul, that causeth them to function in perfect harmony and with absolute regularity, thus making the continuation of life possible. The human body, however, is utterly unconscious of that all-unifying agency, and yet acteth with regularity and dischargeth its functions according to its will.
…
Now, formation is of three kinds and of three kinds only: accidental, necessary, and voluntary. The coming together of the various constituent elements of beings cannot be accidental, for unto every effect there must be a cause. It cannot be compulsory, for then the formation must be an inherent property of the constituent parts and the inherent property of a thing can in no wise be dissociated from it, such as light that is the revealer of things, heat that causeth the expansion of elements and the (solar) rays which are the essential property of the sun. Thus under such circumstances the decomposition of any formation is impossible, for the inherent properties of a thing cannot be separated from it. The third formation remaineth and that is the voluntary one, that is, an unseen force described as the Ancient Power, causeth these elements to come together, every formation giving rise to a distinct being.” ~ ‘Abdu’l-Baha
“In agreeing to write this essay, I have promised to explain why I find Darwinism unconvincing. In order to keep this promise, I will be compelled to acknowledge the apparently paradoxical fact that I find it convincing as well. I find it convincing because it is in certain respects correct, and in fact tautologically so in the logical sense; I find it unconvincing because it is based on a weak and superficial understanding of causality and is therefore incomplete. Explaining why this is so will require a rather deep investigation of the nature of causality. It will also require not only that a direction of progress be indicated, but that a new synthesis embracing the seemingly antithetical notions of teleology and natural selection be outlined. But first, some essential background.
…
It is frequently taken for granted that neo-Darwinism and ID theory are mutually incompatible, and that if one is true, then the other must be false. But while this assessment may be accurate with regard to certain inessential propositions attached to the core theories like pork-barrel riders on congressional bills (44 Examples include the atheism and materialism riders often attached to neo-Darwinism, and the Biblical Creationism rider often mistakenly attached to ID theory.), it is not so obvious with regard to the core theories themselves. In fact, these theories are dealing with different levels of causality.
The scientific method says that experiments must be replicable, and this means that the same laws must govern the same kinds of events under the same conditions throughout nature. So where possible, the laws of nature are scientifically formulated in such a way that they distribute over space and time, the same laws applying under similar conditions at all times and places. Science also requires that the laws of nature be formulated in such a way that the next state of an object depends only on its present state, including all of the forces impinging on it at the present moment, with no memory of prior states required. Little wonder that science enforces these two conditions with extreme prejudice wherever possible, for in principle, they guarantee its ability to predict the future of any physical system from a mere knowledge of its current state and the distributed laws of nature.45
Science imposes yet further constraints on causality. One, the empirical discernability criterion of the scientific method46, guarantees the recognizability of physical states by insisting that they be formulated in terms of first-order properties47 called observables that can be unambiguously measured in conjunction with physical objects. Another, which we have already encountered, is the locality principle, which says that there can be no “nonlocal” jumps from one point in a physical manifold to another non-adjacent point.48 This adds an adjacency or continuity constraint to the Laplacian ideal; the laws of nature must not only be formulated in such a way that the next state of an object depends only on its present state, but in such a way that successive states are “near” each other, i.e. so that smaller amounts of time and energy correspond to smaller distances. This proportionality of distance and effect permits the laws of causality to be consistently applied on the macroscopic and microscopic scales.
Of all the preconceived restrictions and unnecessary demands imposed on causality by science, the least questioned is the requirement that the relationship between physical states and laws of nature be one-way, with states depending on laws but not vice versa. Science regards the laws of nature as immutable, states as existing and transforming at their beck and call, and the directional dependency relationship between laws and states as something that has existed for all time. When the laws dictate that an event should happen, it happens; on the other hand, any event chancing to occur without their guidance is uncaused and totally “random”. This leads to the determinacy-versus-randomness dichotomy already discussed in connection with the containment and utility problems.
Due to these criteria, what science calls a “law of nature” is typically an autonomous relationship of first-order properties of physical objects, and so for the laws of state transformation that govern causation. There can be little doubt that science has succeeded in identifying a useful set of such laws. Whether or not they suffice for a full description of nature and causality (and they do not), they are an important part of the total picture, and wherever possible, they should indeed be tracked down and exploited to their full descriptive and prescriptive potential. But at least one caveat is in order: they should be regarded as explaining only that which they can be empirically and/or rationally shown to explain. As with any other scientific assertion, they must be kept pure of any metaphysical prejudice tending to artificially inflate their scope or explanatory weight.
It is thus a matter of no small concern that in pursuing its policy of causal simplification, the scientific mainstream seems to have smuggled into its baggage compartment a certain piece of contraband which appears, despite its extreme resistance to rational or empirical justification, to be masquerading as a tacit “meta-law” of nature. It states that every higher-order relationship of objects and events in nature, regardless of complexity or level of dynamic integration, must be strictly determined by distributed laws of nature acting independently on each of its individual components. Along with the other items on the neo-Laplacian wish-list of causal conveniences to which the scientific mainstream insists that nature be held, this criterion betrays a marked preference for a “bottom-up” approach to causation, suggesting that it be called the bottom-up thesis.49
The bottom-up thesis merely underscores something that we already know about the scientific mainstream: it wants with all of its might to believe that in principle, the whole destiny of the natural world and everything in it can be exhaustively predicted and explained on the basis of (1) a Laplacian snapshot of its current details, and (2) a few distributed laws of nature from which to exhaustively develop the implications. So irresistable is this desire that some of those caught in its grip are willing to make a pair of extraordinary claims. The first is that science has completely explained some of nature’s most complex systems in terms of microscopic random events simply by generically classifying the microscopic events that might possibly have been involved in their realization. The second is that observed distributions of such events, which they again call “random”, prove that no system in nature, regardless of its complexity, has ever come into being from the top down.
The genotype-to-phenotype mapping is a case in point. Many neo-Darwinists seem to have inferred that what happens near the endpoints of this mapping – the seemingly random mutation of genotypes and the brutal, deterministic competition among phenotypes – offers more insight regarding nature and causality than does the delicate, exquisitely complex ontogenic symphony performed by the mapping itself. In response to the observation that the theoretical emphasis has been lopsided, one hears that of course neo-Darwinists acknowledge the involvement of intermediate processes in the emergence of biological complexity from strings of DNA. For are not genes converted to proteins, which fold into functional forms and interact with other molecules to alter the timing of gene expression, which can lead to cytodifferentiation, pattern formation, morphogenesis and so on, and is this whole self-organizational process not highly sensitive to developmental interactions with the environment?
Unfortunately, where the acknowledged processes and interactions are still assumed to be micro- causal and deterministic, the acknowledgement is meaningless. In fact, the higher-order structure and processing of complex biological systems has only been shoveled into an unkempt pile sexily labeled “emergent phenomena” and bulldozed across the interdisciplinary divide into complex systems theory. And thus begins a ramose paper trail supposedly leading to the final owners of the explanatory debt, but instead looping, dead-ending or petering out in interdisciplinary limbo. The explanatory buck is thereby passed into oblivion, and the bottom-up thesis rolls like righteous thunder over any voice daring to question it.
In fact, the top-down and bottom-up approaches to causality are not as antithetical as they might seem. In the bottom-up view of causality, states evolve according to laws of nature in a temporal direction preferred by the second law of thermodynamics, which holds under the assumption that physical states are governed by laws of nature independent of state. But this assumption can hold only up to a point, for while the prevailing model universe supports only bottom-up causation, the situation is dramatically reversed with respect to cosmology. Because cosmological causal regression terminates with an ancestral cosmic singularity representing the whole of nature while omitting all of its details, standard cosmology ultimately supports only a top-down approach. The natural affinity of the cosmos for top-down causation – the fact that it is itself an instance of top- down causation – effectively relegates bottom-up causation to secondary status, ruling out the bottom-up thesis and thus making room for a new model universe supporting and reconciling both approaches.” Christopher M. Langan (Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing)
Stephen Friberg
October 30, 2012 at 12:05 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi Koinotely:
Great! This is going to be interesting.
Can I ask you a favor? It is very hard to respond to a a whole bunch of quotes. Also, other people reading these discussions and trying to follow them simply won’t be able to make much sense out of them.
Can you make you argument in your own words, perhaps illustrating them with selection from quotes?
That said, let me give a couple of quick responses. The gentleman that you are quoting here is Christopher M. Langan, a self taught audodidact. He is quoted on the internet as saying that:
The puts into an important category of modern thought, it seems to me, one similar to the pantheism of some spiritual interpretations of evolutions.
But, in your quote from him, he very quickly makes some very common mistakes. He writes, for example, that:
This is 19th century determinism and out of date since the introduction of quantum mechanics 100+ years ago. And to be honest, it is not at all clear what he is trying to say, other than that he doesn’t believe in reductionism..
But, on the point of intelligent design, he makes no mention at all of creationist type intelligent design ideas or irreducible complexity ideas of Behe. Rather, he makes a vague general reference to something that may be related to the broad ideas of intelligent design that considers God as the architect of the universe.
The quotes that you give from `Abdu’l-Baha are – of course – totally in keeping with a tradition of science and religion stretching back to antiquity – call it theism – that strikes many people – including me – as the origin of the modern scientific perspective.
I’m guessing that your approach is not that ot Behe-type intelligent design – and his view that somehow God has to interupt causality and its implication that somehow the world and nature exist independently of God, a view that I believe to be totally incompatible with the quotes you have given from the Baha’i Faith.
koinotely
October 30, 2012 at 11:03 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Stephen,
It’s definitely not pantheism, and he mentions Behe and irreducible complexity in that same paper I quoted. That’s ok, I don’t expect people to investigate the CTMU or take an autodidact with an IQ between 190-210 seriously.
“Holotheism is the theological system implied by logical theology. Its fundamental premise is that the Mind of God is the ultimate reality…that is, reality in its most basic and most general form. It is thus related to panentheism, but in addition to being more refined, is more compatible with monotheism in that its “mental” characterization of God implies that divine nature is more in keeping with established theological traditions.” – Christopher M. Langan
Stephen Friberg
October 31, 2012 at 11:39 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi Koinotely,
Could you dig out that quote from Langan on Behe and irreducible complexity and share it? We need to see it, I think.
Have you looked into Plotinus (ca 205 to 270) and Neoplatonism? Plotinus argued that the universe “emanated” from the one, the first emanation being Nous, which can be understood as the Mind of God, or as the logos, or as order, thought, or reason, (I’m paraphrasing Wikipedia).
Langan, in his Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) is articulating a kind of neoplatonic theory as far as I can tell – the idea that there are some divine forms or ideas, or as mathematicians would have, a logical and mathematical structuring – and mixing it in with ideas of God in ways that are reminescent of Plotinus. So far, I can’t tell whether it is pantheism – God is manifested in reality – or panentheism – God is active in the world and interrelated to it and the world is in God. `Abdu’l-Baha addresses the issue in Pantheism in Some Answered Questions. Also, you’ve posted some other quotes below.
Maybe we can get Ian Kluge involved in some discussions of these things.
Here is one way that Langan talks about his Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe on his website (http://megafoundation.org/CTMU/Q&A/Archive.html#CTMU)
Stephen
koinotely
October 30, 2012 at 11:31 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I will offer some ammo however for those seeking to be politically correct…he is a supporter of eugenics. However David Starr Jordan and many liberal Americans were also before WWI, perhaps due to immigration, but those were the days of innocence before WWII. However genetic engineering is just around the corner, welcome to “intelligent” self-design. I realize Langan is just a man, he is certainly not perfect, and he is not a follower of Baha’u'llah as far as I know, but that doesn’t make his ideas useless to defenders of Baha’i teaching.
I will no longe mention his work on this blog, as it has finally been acknowledged even if misunderstood…this will be last long post.
“What does this say about God? First, if God is real, then God inheres in the comprehensive reality syntax, and this syntax inheres in matter. Ergo, God inheres in matter, and indeed in its spacetime substrate as defined on material and supramaterial levels. This amounts to pantheism, the thesis that God is omnipresent with respect to the material universe. Now, if the universe were pluralistic or reducible to its parts, this would make God, Who coincides with the universe itself, a pluralistic entity with no internal cohesion. But because the mutual syntactic consistency of parts is enforced by a unitary holistic manifold with logical ascendancy over the parts themselves – because the universe is a dual-aspected monic entity consisting of essentially homogeneous, self-consistent infocognition – God retains monotheistic unity despite being distributed over reality at large. Thus, we have a new kind of theology that might be called monopantheism, or even more descriptively, holopantheism. Second, God is indeed real, for a coherent entity identified with a self-perceptual universe is self-perceptual in nature, and this endows it with various levels of self-awareness and sentience, or constructive, creative intelligence. Indeed, without a guiding Entity whose Self-awareness equates to the coherence of self-perceptual spacetime, a self-perceptual universe could not coherently self-configure. Holopantheism is the logical, metatheological umbrella beneath which the great religions of mankind are unknowingly situated.
Why, if there exists a spiritual metalanguage in which to establish the brotherhood of man through the unity of sentience, are men perpetually at each others’ throats? Unfortunately, most human brains, which comprise a particular highly-evolved subset of the set of all reality-subsystems, do not fire in strict S-isomorphism much above the object level. Where we define one aspect of “intelligence” as the amount of global structure functionally represented by a given sÎS, brains of low intelligence are generally out of accord with the global syntax D(S). This limits their capacity to form true representations of S (global reality) by syntactic autology [d(S) Éd d(S)] and make rational ethical calculations. In this sense, the vast majority of men are not well-enough equipped, conceptually speaking, to form perfectly rational worldviews and societies; they are deficient in education and intellect, albeit remediably so in most cases. This is why force has ruled in the world of man…why might has always made right, despite its marked tendency to violate the optimization of global utility derived by summing over the sentient agents of S with respect to space and time.
Now, in the course of employing deadly force to rule their fellows, the very worst element of humanity – the butchers, the violators, i.e. those of whom some modern leaders and politicians are merely slightly-chastened copies – began to consider ways of maintaining power. They lit on religion, an authoritarian priesthood of which can be used to set the minds and actions of a populace for or against any given aspect of the political status quo. Others, jealous of the power thereby consolidated, began to use religion to gather their own “sheep”, promising special entitlements to those who would join them…mutually conflicting promises now setting the promisees at each other’s throats.
But although religion has often been employed for evil by cynics appreciative of its power, several things bear notice. (1) The abuse of religion, and the God concept, has always been driven by human politics, and no one is justified in blaming the God concept, whether or not they hold it to be real, for the abuses committed by evil men in its name. Abusus non tollit usum. (2) A religion must provide at least emotional utility for its believers, and any religion that stands the test of time has obviously been doing so. (3) A credible religion must contain elements of truth and undecidability, but no elements that are verifiably false (for that could be used to overthrow the religion and its sponsors). So by design, religious beliefs generally cannot be refuted by rational or empirical means.
Does the reverse apply? Can a denial of God be refuted by rational or empirical means? The short answer is yes; the refutation follows the reasoning outlined above. That is, the above reasoning constitutes not just a logical framework for reality theory, but the outline of a logical proof of God’s existence and the basis of a “logical theology”. While the framework serves other useful purposes as well, e.g. the analysis of mind and consciousness, we’ll save those for another time.” – Intro to the CTMU, Langan
“The reality underlying this question is that the evil spirit, Satan or whatever is interpreted as evil, refers to the lower nature in man. This baser nature is symbolized in various ways. In man there are two expressions, one is the expression of nature, the other the expression of the spiritual realm. The world of nature is defective. Look at it clearly, casting aside all superstition and imagination. If you should leave a man uneducated and barbarous in the wilds of Africa, would there be any doubt about his remaining ignorant? God has never created an evil spirit; all such ideas and nomenclature are symbols expressing the mere human or earthly nature of man. It is an essential condition of the soil of earth that thorns, weeds and fruitless trees may grow from it. Relatively speaking, this is evil; it is simply the lower state and baser product of nature.
It is evident therefore that man is in need of divine education and inspiration; that the spirit and bounties of God are essential to his development. That is to say, the teachings of Christ and the prophets are necessary for his education and guidance. Why? Because they are the divine gardeners who till the earth of human hearts and minds. They educate man, uproot the weeds, burn the thorns and remodel the waste places into gardens and orchards where fruitful trees grow. The wisdom and purpose of their training is that man must pass from degree to degree of progressive unfoldment until perfection is attained. For instance, if a man should live his entire life in one city, he cannot gain a knowledge of the whole world. To become perfectly informed he must visit other cities, see the mountains and valleys, cross the rivers and traverse the plains. In other words, without progressive and universal education, perfection will not be attained. 78
Man must walk in many paths and be subjected to various processes in his evolution upward. Physically he is not born in full stature but passes through consecutive stages of foetus, infant, childhood, youth, maturity and old age. Suppose he had the power to remain young throughout his life. He then would not understand the meaning of old age and could not believe it existed. If he could not realize the condition of old age he would not know that he was young. He would not know the difference between young and old without experiencing the old. Unless you have passed through the state of infancy how would you know this was an infant beside you? If there was no wrong how would you recognize the right? If it were not for sin how would you appreciate virtue? If evil deeds were unknown how could you commend good actions? If sickness did not exist how would you understand health? Evil is non-existent; it is the absence of good; sickness is the loss of health; poverty the lack of riches. When wealth disappears you are poor; you look within the treasure box but find nothing there. Without knowledge there is ignorance; therefore ignorance is simply the lack of knowledge. Death is the absence of life. Therefore on the one hand we have existence; on the other, nonexistence, negation or absence of existence.
Briefly; the journey of the soul is necessary. The pathway of life is the road which leads to divine knowledge and attainment. Without training and guidance the soul could never progress beyond the conditions of its lower nature which is ignorant and defective.” – ‘Abdu’l-Baha
“I believe in the theory of evolution, but I believe as well in the
allegorical truth of creation theory. In other words, I believe that
evolution, including the principle of natural selection, is one of the
tools used by God to create mankind. Mankind is then a participant in
the creation of the universe itself, so that we have a closed loop. I
believe that there is a level on which science and religious metaphor
are mutually compatible.” – 20/20 Chat with Chris Langan
“Eugenics is often thought of as predicated on arbitrary standards of desirability or attractiveness. The question is then asked, who will decide what constitutes desirability? Yet, it is relatively easy to develop statistical profiles, given any set of restrictions on the sample, that would relieve any one person of such a responsibility. For example, where the vast majority of people perceive a given facial characteristic as grotesque, it could be rated a “defect” on the grounds that those having it could not escape frequent ostracism or pity on account of it. If it serves (or is inextricably linked with) no beneficial function, it could then be eliminated from the genome regardless of who claims a proprietary interest in its perpetuation. The matter of intelligence, even in this anti-testing climate, is clearer still.” – On the Differences Between People, Birds and Bees (Chris Langan as “Eric Hart”)
“People who wanted to have children would apply to make sure they have no diseases. Why do we have to do it through genetic engineering? Well, we have to let only the fit breed…. Freedom is not necessarily a right. It is a privilege that you have to earn. A lot of people abuse their freedom and that is something that people have to be trained not to do.” Langan interview with Errol Morris
“CML: This, of course, is a kind of moral relativism devolving to an assumed absence of teleology. Fortunately, that assumption is bad. Intelligence is inseparable from purpose, and since the CTMU distributes intelligence over the universe, it does the same for purpose. Voila – a new brand of teleology that prefers increasing control and knowledge to a dysgenic deterioration of cognitive ability. You’re right that humanity can “screw everything up”. But if it does, it won’t enjoy the luxury of a valid philosophical justification for its crime.” – Chris Langan, Colloquy Society Chat
koinotely
October 30, 2012 at 11:35 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Baha’i teachings are against pantheism (see waves on ocean vs. mirror of sun), but the difference is subtle…and not mathematically formulated.
“It is evident then that each elemental atom of the universe is possessed of a capacity to express all the virtues of the universe. This is a subtle and abstract realization. Meditate upon it, for within it lies the true explanation of pantheism. From this point of view and perception, pantheism is a truth, for every atom in the universe possesses or reflects all the virtues of life, the manifestation of which is effected through change and transformation. Therefore the origin and outcome of phenomena is verily the omnipresent God for the reality of all phenomenal existence is through Him. There is neither reality nor the manifestation of reality without the instrumentality of God. Existence is realized and possible through the bounty of God, just as the ray or flame emanating from this lamp is realized through the bounty of the lamp from which it originates. Even so all phenomena are realized through the divine bounty, and the explanation of true pantheistic statement and principle is that the phenomena of the universe find realization through the one power animating and dominating all things; and all things are but manifestations of its energy and bounty. The virtue of being and existence is through no other agency. Therefore in the words of Bahá’u’lláh the first teaching is the oneness of the world of humanity….” – ‘Abdu’l-Baha
robert landbeck
November 4, 2012 at 4:15 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
“Why, we must ask. . . . ?” I would have thought the answer was now more self evident then ever before in history! Religion has for millennia offered a ‘vision ‘ without the means to realize that vision. Progress is about means. And given that religious failure, the human imagination seeks to understand by what ever tools of reason are available. And science as a model continues to offer means to ends. Yet what viable choices are there between any political, religious or intellectual tradition when the planets very capacity to sustain existence is coming under threat. An existential threat caused by the predominant, underlying values which are so unsustainable and finds the path of human development drifting inexorably towards its own self made hell. http://www.energon.org.uk
Stephen Friberg
November 4, 2012 at 8:54 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi Robert:
You wrote:
My guess is that there is more than a lot of truth in that. Increased technical capability is a major component to the way the world changes.
But, it seems to me that ultimately progress comes from people. Of course, development and application of technology is one way that that happens, but large scale organizations, be they religions (the largest of all), or corporations, or governments, or interest groups, are the real driver of change or progress.
So religions did and still do have the means to drive progress and continue to use it. As an example, consider the role of religion in ending slavery. Even to this day, Christianity is a major force in pushing to an end of racism, having first succeeded in ending British involvement in the slave trade almost 200 hundred years and then becoming a major force in eliminating slavery in the United States and subsequently playing a hugely important role in reducing racial segregation. And there is strong evidence that modern American religious movements are a major force for democratization and change around the world.
So, the means were there. It seems more likely to me that the explanation is how those means were used and directed – intrenched and authoritarian power structures, lagging or out of date ideas, etc. – and how they were taken over and “re-purposed” for political, national, or sectarian ends.