FAITH AND
SALVATION - PART 1
An essay
by John W. Hawkins
What is faith?
The word "faith"
is used in many ways and contexts.
However, even a dictionary definition gives us a platform from which to
launch this little essay:
Faith: 1. A confident belief in the truth,
value, or
trustworthiness of a person, idea or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical
proof or
material evidence: e.g. faith in miracles
3. Loyalty to a person or thing;
allegiance.
4. Belief and trust in God and in the
doctrines
expressed in the Scriptures and other sacred
works; religious conviction.
5. A system of religious beliefs.
-The American Heritage
Dictionary
Also instructive is the definition of the
adjective "faithful" which pertains to those who have faith or who
are "full" of faith:
Faithful: 1. Adhering strictly to the person,
cause, or
idea to which one is bound; dutiful and loyal.
2. Worthy of trust or credence; consistently
reliable: e.g. a
faithful guide.
3. The steadfast adherents of any
faith or cause.
4. Synonyms: loyal, true, constant, steadfast,
staunch, resolute, devoted, and trustworthy.
- Ibid
As you can see from the above definitions,
the essence of what we are dealing with here is that which is true, dependable,
constant, trustworthy, and reliable - a tall order, in a world, which,
especially in the last fifty years or so, appears to be changing at an ever
increasing rate. Governments topple one
after another. Wars and man's inhumanity
toward man and his environment appear to be chronic and epidemic. Crime, drug use, and corruption abound. Over half of all marriages end in divorce,
and over half of those still married have reportedly engaged in one or more
acts of infidelity. In what then, or in
whom, are we to place our trust?
Is it any wonder that people are returning
to religion o find something solid in a world seemingly made of shifting
sand? Is it not comforting (which
originally meant "strengthening", from the Latin,"cum
forte") to be able to depend on someone with whom there "is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning" (James
The current search for meaning and
stability is not new - far from it. Men
from the dawn of civilization, and perhaps for untold millennia prior to that, have sought to propitiate the gods in order to keep
them safe from the vagaries of the elements, to maintain the fruitfulness of
their harvests and the fertility of their animals. In a world where events seem to overwhelm the
individual, and even society as a whole, man turns to
that from which "all blessings flow" and to that which lies beyond
his own power to accomplish or to prevent from happening. For example, the Anglicans in their Litany
service, even today, still pray:
"From lightning and tempest; from
earthquake, fire
and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine;
from battle and murder and from sudden death, good
Lord, deliver us." And: "
That it may please thee
to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits
of the earth, so that in due time we may enjoy them;
we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord."
The primary difference between primeval and
modern man, then, lies not in his seeking the aid of the unseen powers in
nature and the universe but in his rituals. Instead of the animal and human
sacrifices and burnt offerings of our progenitors we Christians, for example,
now symbolically celebrate in Holy Communion the one time offering of "the
Lamb of God" upon the cross, which
constitutes "a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice,
oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world." (Anglican "Book of Common
Prayer") Some of us still burn
incense at the altar which is symbolic of the burnt offerings of the ancient
Hebrews, which was "a pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the
Lord." (Exodus 29:18).
There are several kinds of faith in
addition to faith in a supreme being.
You will recall in my previous essays on the nature of reality the
emphasis that was placed on the triune nature of all things. In man the primary trinity is commonly
defined in terms of his body, mind and spirit.
Belief or faith in God then relates to the spiritual side of his nature,
while principles believed to
be true in the field of
science relate to his material nature and principles which relate to the mind
and abstract thought are largely the domains of psychology, mathematics, and
philosophy.
Faith in Nature
Nature pertains to all
that is perceived by the senses, the everyday world that we live in. The systematic study of nature, its
structure, laws and development is the domain of science. That field of science that deals with what we
know and how we know what we know, its validity and limits, is known as
"epistemology". Although
scientists must contend with the fact that all of their data are inevitably
linked to perceptions and observations by human beings, who sometimes have
distorted, faulty or partial sensory impressions, they try in so far as
possible to concentrate their efforts on the objective side of reality and
minimize the distortions encountered by subjective perceptions.
It is not at all surprising then that most
sciences begin by describing, defining and classifying objects, ihings, facts and data belonging to their particular area
of interest - things that are tangible, or at least verifiable, as opposed to
merely subjective impressions, feelings or opinions. Then the search for patterns begins:
repetitions of similar events, recurring cycles, and events which appear to be
linked causally in time and space. Next
a hypothesis is formulated which seems to explain the phenomena under study. Then the hypothesis is tested by observation
of additional data that were not part of the original set used to frame the
hypothesis. If
an experiment was performed which had a certain outcome
by a group of scientists, other scientists attempt to repeat ee if they also get the same or similar outcomes. In other words, the hypothesis is tested for
validity to see if any new facts contradict it.
If so, a new hypothesis is formulated, retested, refined, etc. etc.
Eventually, a theory begins to emerge which
best explains the observed facts. Often , but not always, the theory may relate its elements
mathematically. Then after long and
successful use in predicting future events or invariable sequences of events
(e.g. If "A" happens, "B" always follows) a theory becomes
a scientific law - something that for all practical purposes is
"true" and can be depended on to give reliable results. For example, the elaborate calculations which
are made today by
computers that allow us to put satellites into exact orbits or
send space probes to intercept planets after a journey of many years are all
based on the theories (now laws) of gravity and motion formulated by Isaac
Newton three hundred years ago. While it
is true that Einstein's theories of relativity have now modified and enlarged
our knowledge of the nature of the universe, Newton's laws still obtain as long
as the relative motion between observers does not approach the speed of light
(i.e. 186,000 miles per second) and as long as there is not a massive
gravitational field nearby (e.g. that which surrounds stars such as our sun).
Another example of scientific induction is
the now infamous "theory of evolution", which was first propounded by
the French naturalist, Lamarck, in 1801 but is more
commonly associated with Charles Darwin and his publishing of "The Origin
of Species" in 1859. By observation
and correlation of data over many years by many scientists from the fields of
geology, paleontology, archaeology, biology and anthropology we now know beyond
any shadow of doubt that all life (in so far as it has left its fossilized
remains or imprints) originated in the ocean.
Also, we know that the complex and
diverse forms of life on earth today, including the body of man, had their
beginnings in relatively simple organisms like plankton, both plant and animal,
which still populate the oceans today.
As reptiles, amphibians, and mammals begin to appear on land, they
carried the ocean and much of its chemistry with them so that today about two
thirds of their weight is water and the salinity of their blood is much like
the salt content of the oceans many million of years ago when their ancestors
first climbed out onto the land.
By analyzing data from the fields of
comparative anatomy and embryology we further know that during the process of
gestation an embryo retraces its ancestral history so that in its earliest
stages it is practically impossible to tell from the shape of the embryo
whether it is a fish, a frog, a man, a cow or one of the other Mammalia. At an
early stage of the human embryo gill slits can be seen, and later even a
rudimentary tail appears. In scientific
parlance these and similar findings can be succinctly stated by saying:
"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."
underlying Thomas Robert Malthus'
'Essay on Population' published in 1798.]
From these facts
That evolution is a firmly established
scientific fact or "truth" is no longer subject to scientific
controversy, so called Creationists to the contrary notwithstanding. What is
not so firmly established, however, are the factors or mechanisms by which new
species arise from older and more primitive ones.
of the species died off
leaving only those best able to cope with their environment to perpetuate the
species – in short: a theory based on the survival of the fittest by natural
selection. Over time, as environmental
factors changed, new species emerged which supplanted those less
adaptable. A second school of thought,
first propounded by Jean-Baptiste Lamark,
believed that as a man or another species encountered changes in its
environment and strove to overcome them, it was able in some manner to impart
those adaptations to future generations through changes in its own hereditary
germ cells. Subsequent discoveries would
throw cold water on this theory, however.
A rather obscure monk, Gregor Johann Mendel, who by his own admission was
"addicted to the study of Nature", was the first to investigate
systematically the mechanism of heredity in determining the variation of traits
in successive generations. His
subject was the lowly garden pea.
Although he published his results in 1864, they were not widely
publicized until a Dutch botanist, Hugo de Vries, republicized his findings before the German Botanical
Society in 1900. Soon afterward came the discovery of threadlike structures in the nucleus
of cells called "chromosomes".
It was suggested that these might indeed be the mechanism by which
traits are transmitted from one generation to another. Further research showed that inherited
characteristics could be traced to specific locations on chromosomes. The determining units at these locations were
given the name of "genes". It
was not until quite recently (the 1950's), however, that the structure of the
DNA molecules was discovered by Crick and Watson which enabled scientists to
determine the exact mechanism responsible for passing on these hereditary
traits to future generations.
At this point you may be wondering whether
this is an essay on "Faith and Salvation" or on "Science and
Evolution". I dwell on the history
of the "theory" of evolution for two reasons: (1) It is an excellent
illustration of the manner in which what is known about the natural world
develops and evolves, and (2) It sets the stage for discussing the principle of
evolution in the next two segments of the essay concerning Man and God. That
which characterizes the "truths" of science is the ability for men
and women similarly trained in a scientific discipline to duplicate or
replicate experiments made by their predecessors and to use logical or
mathematical models of the phenomena under study to predict future events
satisfactorily. When new facts don't fit
the existing models or theories, new theories have to be constructed which
include all of the old as well as the new observations. As Francis Bacon, the father of modern
scientific method, expressed it in the
sixteenth century:
"The universe is not to be narrowed
down to the limits
of the
understanding, which has been man's practice up to
now; but
the understanding must be stretched and enlarged
to take
in the image of the universe as it is discovered."
Thus new facts often make for new theories.
Scientists, therefore, never know the true causes of
events in the world of phenomena. They have recorded events, however, such as
the movements of the sun, moon, and the visible planets for hundreds of years
and have been continually refining their models and theories so that today they
not only can predict when and where these bodies will appear in the heavens but
also can send space probes from earth which will intersect their locations many
years after their launchings.
That in which Science places its faith and
beliefs, therefore, is the orderliness and predictability of nature. It often causes great consternation in the
scientific community, therefore, when new facts fail to fit into the tried and
true theories and models of how the world works. In the twentieth century the physical
sciences, which are the bedrock for the methodology of all the others, have
been shaken to their core. Like Humpty Dumpty who fell off the wall, "All the king's horses
and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again."
What has happened in the
twentieth century is not merely an extension and refinement of the theories
formulated by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo,
The famous experiment by Albert Michelson
and Edward Morley in 1887 set the stage for the new paradigm. It was designed to measure the difference in
the velocity of light sun in the direction of the earth's rotation and its
velocity when measured at right angles to that direction. Just as the velocity between two trains moving on
parallel tracks will be greater when they are moving in opposite directions
than when they are moving in the same direction, so it was believed since the
time of Galileo and Newton that the velocity of light would be greater or less
depending on the relative velocity between the source of a light and an
observer moving relative to that source through what was believed to be a
"calm sea of aether" which permeated all
space. In other words all motion was
relative to the ether sea by which light waves were propagated. Not only was space believed to be the same
for all observers but also the concept of time.
Both were viewed as absolute in nature and entirely independent one from
the other.
Much to the consternation of the scientific
community, however, the Michelson-Morely experiment
(performed not only by them but subsequently by others) showed that the
velocity of light was the same regardless of whether you were moving toward,
away from, or at rest with the source of the light. In short, the speed of light was a universal
constant traveling through the vacuum of space at 300,000 kilometers (or about
186,000 miles) per second. The man who
conceived the new world view which would fit the incontrovertible fact of the
constancy of the speed of light was Albert Einstein. His
"Theory of Relativity", written in 1905 at the age of 26, not
only shattered the concepts of absolute space and absolute time, but also
demonstrated that they were, in fact, inseparable - that they formed a
"space-time continuum". The nature of reality had just made a quantum
jump from three to four dimensions.
In fact in his "lifetime Einstein
joined light to time, and time to space; energy to matter, matter to space, and
space to gravitation. . . At the end of his life [in 1955] he was still working
to seek a unity between gravitation and the forces of electricity and
magnetism."
(J. Bronowski's
"The Ascent of Man", p. 256) Physicists today are still bent on
making the grand unification of the four known fundamental forces: (1)
electro-magnetism; (2) gravity; (3) the strong nuclear force; and (4) the weak
nuclear force. Their latest theory of a
"super-symmetrical" universe requires not only the four dimensions of
space-time but also another six - making ten dimensions in all. (Could
Pythagoras with his tetractys of ten points have been
2500 years ahead of his time? See my
essay: "Symbolism of Numbers", p. 7.)
Not only did the concepts of absolute
space, absolute time and the aether sea collapse with
the gradual acceptance of Einstein's theory of relativity, but also the
fundamental concepts of matter and force and with them the collapse of the
entire philosophy of a materialistic, mechanistic, and deterministic
cosmos. "Throughout two hundred
years of scientific research force and matter were the underlying concepts in
all endeavors to understand nature. It
is impossible to imagine one without the other because matter demonstrates its
existence as a source of force by its action on other matter." (Einstein and Infeld, "The Evolution
of Physics", p.56).
Because of the success of these earlier
concepts applied by Galileo,
“Finally, therefore, we discover the
problem of
physical
science to be to refer natural phenomena back to
unchangeable
attractive and repulsive forces [between
particles
of matter] whose intensity depends wholly upon
distance. The solubility of the problem is the
condition
of the
complete comprehensibility of nature." (ibid p.58)
Thus, you can see what an impact the
dethroning of matter and force had on the very foundations of the science of
physics in particular and on all sciences in general. In all fairness it was not Einstein's theory
alone but also "the results of the work of Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz
[which] led to the development of modern physics, to the creation of new
concepts, forming a new picture of reality." (ibid, p.129) The successors to the concepts of force and
matter were those of the "field" and "quanta". Of course we still make great use of the
concepts of force and matter, but they are now seen in a larger context as
"true" under a special set of circumstances which are included and
subsumed under the newer and more generalized concepts.
Paradoxically, the more we find out about
the natural world, whether perceptible to our human senses or by devices and
instruments which let us study the otherwise invisible universe and the
incredibly small world of molecules, atoms and even subatomic particles, the
less becomes that portion which is known to that which is unknown. As Albert Einstein put it:
"Science is not and never will be a closed book. Every important advance brings new questions.
Every development reveals, in the long run, new and deeper difficulties." (ibid, p.308). In
other words, the more we know, the more we don't know. Other great minds have
also grasped this paradox:
1) Socrates, when told by his students that
he had the
reputation
of being the wisest man in all of
replied:
"Since the only thing I know for certain is that
I
know nothing, perhaps you are right. I
may be the
wisest
man in all of
(2) Isaac Newton, reflecting on his own
considerable
knowledge
of nature and her laws, said: "I do not know
what I
may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to
have been
only like a boy playing on the seashore, and
diverting
myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble
or a
prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean
of truth
lay all undiscovered before me." (as found in J.
Bronowski, op. cit., p.236).
(3) Thomas Edison, the genius who in our own
century
invented
the electric light, the phonograph, the motion
picture,
etc. once said: "I know less than one thousandth
of one
percent about anything."
(4) One of my professors at M.I.T., Erwin H.
Schell, was
fond of
saying: "There are two types of people.
One is a
specialist
and the other a generalist. The specialist
learns
more and more about less and less until he knows
everything
about nothing while the generalist learns less
and less
about more and more until he knows nothing about
everything."
As scientific knowledge advances on all
fronts, a number of problems arise when scientists try to communicate their
findings to others: (1) Concepts and terms required to explain theories become
more and more abstract; (2) The wider the set of facts a given theory tries to
explain, the more complicated and esoteric the mathematics becomes; and (3) The
more abstract and abstruse that scientific concepts and theories become, the
closer they approach the realm of metaphysical and religious concepts and
beliefs.
Nuclear physicists have now identified over
one hundred subatomic particles grouped under such exotic names as leptons,
hadrons, baryons, and mesons. Neutrons
and protons are now believed to be "made of three quarks, one of each
color [red, green or blue]. A proton
contains two up quarks and one down quark; a neutron contains two down and one
up." (Stephen Hawking, "A Brief History of
Time", p.65). In astronomy
scientists have discovered "quasi-stellar objects" named
"quasars", invisible "dark matter" (which may make up 90 to
95 per cent of the entire universe), pulsating stars called
"pulsars", super nova, black holes, etc. Just pick up any scientific journal today and
you will usually encounter arcane and unfamiliar terms and concepts which can
only be understood by many
years of study in that field.
The problem of formulating theories and
applying mathematics to include an ever increasing set of facts is dramatically
illustrated by the complexities encountered in Einstein's formulation of his
theory of general relativity in 1915 to include all possible coordinate systems
and not just an "inertial" coordinate system that was the basis for
his theory of special relativity formulated in 1905. In his own words:
"New difficulties arising in the
development of
science
force our theory to become more and more abstract.
.
. [However] our final aim is always a better
understanding of reality. Links are added to
the chain of
logic
connecting theory and observation. To
clear the way
leading
from theory to experiment of unnecessary and
artificial
assumptions, to embrace and ever-wider region
of facts,
we must make the chain longer and longer.
The
simpler
and more fundamental our assumptions become, the
more
intricate is our mathematical tool of reasoning; the
way from
theory to observation becomes longer, more
subtle,
and more complicated. Although it sounds
paradoxical,
we could say: Modern physics is simpler than
the old
physics and seems, therefore, more difficult and
intricate. The simpler our picture of the external world
and the
more facts it embraces, the stronger it reflects
in our
minds the harmony of the universe." (ibid, p. 226)
Even years after publishing his general
theory of relativity there were very few people who pretended to understand
it. One of those men was the British
astronomer, Sir Arthur Eddington. "According to some accounts, a
journalist told Eddington in the early 1920's that he
had heard there were only three people in the world who understood general
relativity. Eddington
paused, then replied, 'I am trying to think who the
third person is.'" (Stephen Hawking, op. cit., p.83)
Many, if not most, scientists today
maintain a skeptical or even negative attitude on the need to
postulate a divine law giver to account for the
"laws" of nature that have been discovered to date. Stephen Hawking typifies this viewpoint when
he states: "The whole history of science has been the gradual realization
that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a
certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely
inspired." (Op. cit., p.122)
However, there are an increasing number of
scientists who today believe that Science, as the concept of ultimate particles
becomes less and less certain, is moving closer and closer to a perception of
reality similar to that held by religious teachers and philosophers for several
thousand years. For example,
Edward R. Harrison in his "The Masks of the Universe" (Macmillan, NY,
1985, p. 134) says:
"We have reached the point of postulating
fundamental
particles that in principle cannot be observed
directly
as isolated entities existing in their own right.
They
are beyond the reach of direct verification.
This is
something
new in science, tantamount to postulating the
mythical
gods of long ago."
In the same vein Professor Louis J. Halle has written:
"To
a greater degree than we readily recognize . . [the
physical
universe] approaches the status of a metaphysical
entity in
the conception we entertain of it. For,
as we
strive
toward an ultimate comprehension of the whole, or
toward a
fuller comprehension of either space-time or
quanta,
we sustain an increasing impression of being close
to the
borderline between physics and metaphysics." ("Out
of
Chaos", Houghton Mifflin,
Some even are approaching a view of the
universe in general and the earth in particular that is close to pantheistic
concepts held by Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism and even
paganism. For instance, Rupert Sheldrake
in his "The Rebirth of Nature" commenting on the discovery that most
of the universe is "dark matter" whose nature is unknown says:
"It is as if physics has discovered the unconscious. Just as the mind floats, as it were, on the
surface of the sea of unconscious mental processes, so the known physical world
floats on a cosmic ocean of dark matter."
The same author goes even further to say:
"The modern conception of nature gives an even stronger sense of her
spontaneous life and creativity than the stable, repetitive world of Greek, medieval,and Renaissance
philosophy . All nature is
evolutionary. The cosmos is like a great
developing organism, and evolutionary creativity is inherent in nature
herself." (ibid,p.95-6) This conception is no
doubt influenced by philosophers like Henri Bergson,
who has expounded similar ideas in his treatise on "Creative
Evolution", but it also is not much different from traditional Christian
thinking as stated by its great theologian Thomas Aquinas in his "Summa Theologica":
"There is a certain Eternal Law, to wit,
Reason,
existing in the mind of God and governing the
whole universe."
Nor is this conception much different from
Alexander Pope's (who was poet laureate in
"All are parts of one stupendous whole
Whose body Nature is and God the soul."
This new view of the cosmos even takes on
an aura of mysticism. As scientists
strive to communicate the truths at which they have arrived in the theory of
relativity and in quantum mechanics, they find ordinary language inadequate to
convey their discoveries.
"The problem of language encountered by
the Eastern mystic is exactly the same as the problem the modern physicist
faces. . . Both the physicist and the mystic want to communicate their knowledge,
and when they do so with words their statements are paradoxical and full of
logical contradictions. These paradoxes
are characteristic of all mysticism, from Heraclitus
to Don Juan [the Yaquis Indian in the books by Carlos
Castenada], and since the beginning of this century
they are also characteristic of physics." (Fritjof
Capra, "The Tao of Physics", p.33)
The concept of "field", which, as
was noted above, replaced the earlier concept of "force" as a
fundamental principle of science, is an invisible matrix (whose etymology is
the Latin word "mater" meaning "mother") out of which
arises the visible universe. Therefore,
this concept of the "field" is not unlike that postulated by mystics
as the nature of the "Second Logos" or "the Only Begotten Son of
God" described in the first chapter of the gospel according to John by
whom the world comes into
being. ("In the beginning was the Word" etc.
where "Word"is translated from the Greek
word, "Logos", who is identified by John with Jesus, the Only
Begotten Son of the Father.)
Physicists even now talk about a
"primal unified field, from which the known fields [i.e. four fundamental
forces] of physics arose, and of which they are aspects." (Sheldrake, op. cit., p.158). The Greeks originally postulated four basic
elements (fire, air, water and earth) from which all other matter is
derived. To account for the various
phenomena of nature they postulated a number of gods, of whom the chief was
Zeus, (whose Roman name was Jupiter, a contraction of "Jovis
Pater", or Father Jove.) As a ruler over lesser gods and over the four
fundamental elements, his dwelling place in the heavens was surrounded by a
fifth element called "Aether" which was the
primal element from which the other four derived. (Zeus was therefore also
known as "Father Aether" by the Greeks and
by the Roman poet Virgil as "Pater omnipotens Aether", Father
of the great Aether.)
Our English word, "quintessence", meaning the highest or fifth essence
is etymologically related to the "aether" from
which the other four "essences" devolve. Thus, except for their belief in a hierarchy
of gods who they believed influenced the lives of men, the ancient Greeks'
conception of four fundamental elements with a higher and unifying principle is
quite similar to the modern scientific concept of four fundamental fields or
forces with a higher, primal one which is the substrate of the other four.
Although the universe is inconceivably
large (even infinite in size for all we know), modern cosmologists have reason
to believe that it is finite since space itself is thought to have a positive
curvature. However, it appears to be
expanding at a rate that increases in
proportion to the distance of the galaxies from each other.
"An
obvious question to be asked about the expanding
universe
is: how did it all start? From the
relation
between the distance of a galaxy and its recession
velocity - which is known as Hubble's law - one can
calculate the starting point of the expansion, in other
words, the age of the universe. . . . Most cosmologists
believe today that the universe came into being in a
highly dramatic event about 10,000 million years ago, when
its total mass exploded out of a small primeval
fireball.
The present expansion of the universe is seen as the
remaining thrust of this initial explosion. According to
this 'big-bang' model, the moment of the big bang marked
the beginning of the universe and the beginning of space
and time." (F. Capra, op. cit., p.183)
With radio telescopes astronomers are now
able to observe what the universe was like seven billion years ago and believe
they have even picked up the background radiation, however faintly, of the time
of creation itself. This
"big-bang" theory of creation is very close to the biblical account
of creation with the exception that it postulates an all powerful supernatural
force, God, as being responsible for the universe coming into being. ("In
the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth." - Genesis 1:1) while science, quite naturally,
is silent on postulating supernatural or invisible causes to account for the
creation of the visible universe.
Some modern models of the history and
destiny of the universe which are compatible with Einstein's field equations
predict that although it had a beginning in time it will continue to expand
forever. However, other compatible
models "describe an oscillating universe, expanding for billions of years,
then contracting until its total mass has condensed
into a small ball of matter, then expanding again, and so on without end."
(ibid) This model is remarkably similar
to the "day" and "night" of
Brahma described in the
Hindu's "Bhagavad Gita"
by the god
"At the end of the night of time all things
return to
my nature; and when the new day of time begins I bring
them again to light." (ibid, p.184)
The universe is not only expanding but is
also evolving. Shortly after the "big bang" according to modern
physics sub atomic particles began to congeal into atoms of hydrogen with a
simple nucleus and a single orbiting electron, the lightest of all the
elements. Even 10 billion years later it
is estimated to comprise about 92 per cent of the matter in the universe. As the hot gases of atomic hydrogen expanded,
they cooled and by the operation of the force of gravity began to congeal into
stars. Most
typically this resulted in the formation of a myriad of helium atoms in the
core of the star, which today comprise perhaps some 7 percent of all matter -
leaving only 1 percent of matter for the other 90 odd naturally occuring elements in the universe.
"In 1939 Hans Bethe,
working at
for the
first time explained in very precise terms the
transformation of hydrogen to helium in the sun [by a
nuclear
fusion reaction], by which a loss of mass streams
out to us
as energy. What was revealed in the
years that
followed
. . . is that in all the stars there are going on
processes
which build up the atoms one by one into more
and more
complex structures. [Just as
all life
on earth evolves from the simple to the more
complex
we now know that] matter itself evolves." (J.
Bronowski,
op. cit., p.343-4)
Whether or not earth and its sister planets
were born from our own star, the sun, it is certain, given our knowledge of how
matter is generated, that every atom composing the earth, the other planets and
all life forms wherever they may appear in the universe were generated by stars
during their life cycles. As Carl Sagan, author of "Cosmos" is fond of saying:
"We are all star stuff."
One last point before leaving this rather
lengthy section on "Faith in Nature": all that we know about the
objective world of nature whether from science or our own sense perceptions
requires splitting reality into categories.
The very act of perception and the creation of language require naming
objects and describing events between them.
As we have seen, science then tries to
construct theories or logical and mathematical models which try
to "put Humpty Dumpty together again". By definition, however, the universe is an
indivisible whole.
The
word "universe" is from the Latin, "universum"
which
is a translation of the Greek, "to
means "the whole". Thus, even though it consists of a
multiplicity of stars, galaxies, clusters, interstellar
dust and electromagnetic radiations of all sorts, it forms
an organic whole.
As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
more
eloquently makes the same point:
"All around us, as far as the eye can
see, the
universe
holds together, and only one way of considering
it is
really possible, that is to take it as a whole. ....
The
stuff of the universe, woven in a single piece
according
to one and the same system . . . represents a
single
figure. Structurally, it forms a
Whole."
("The Phenomenon of Man",
Harper, N.Y.,1959, p. 44-5)
George Sciama
makes a similar point in his "The Unity of the Universe" when he
expounds upon Mach's principle that the existence of the inertial frame used by
Newton in his laws of motion and by Einstein in his Special Theory of
Relativity is due to all the mass in the entire universe.
While the Western approach to reality
focuses on understanding that which lies outside of the individual by
categorizing and analyzing sense perceptions, the Eastern approach is to seek
reality by turning inward "to become aware of the unity and mutual
interrelation of all things, to transcend the notion of an isolated individual
self and to identify themselves with the ultimate reality." (F. Capra, op.
cit., p.10).
From an Eastern point of view "all
things and events perceived by the senses are interrelated, connected, and are
but different aspects or manifestations of the same ultimate reality. . . .[To
a Hindu or Buddhist the outer world is an illusion (which they call 'Maya')]
and is seen as the state of a disturbed mind which has to be overcome."
(ibid)
Slowly, but perceptibly, a number of
scientists and philosophers are moving away from mechanism, determinism and
materialism as the philosophy underlying their hypotheses and theories toward
one which views the universe as an evolving organic whole. For the last billion or so years our own
world , which is but a tiny drop in a vast ocean universe, has been and is
evolving ever more complex and conscious life forms. The most evolved life form of which we have
knowledge is the species known as "homo sapiens", better known simply
as "Man", to whom we now turn our attention.
Faith in Man
From the scientific point of view man is an
animal which has evolved along with the rest of creation from simple one-celled
organisms, which originated in the ocean around three billion years ago. All life forms, therefore, have the same
Mother and are intimately related to one another. It is no accident that the Latin words
"mare", "mater", and "materia"
meaning respectively "ocean", "mother", and
"matter" all have the same root. The French call the ocean "mer" and mother, "mere" while the Spanish
call the ocean, "mar" and mother, "madre". In English we retain "ma" and
"mama" for mother and words like "marine" and
"maritime" still carry their Latin roots pertaining to
"mare", the ocean.
Even the common feminine name,
"Mary", can be traced to the ocean (from the Hebrew, "Miryam", meaning "exalted" but also
"bitterness of the sea"). The
same root is found in the name of the Greek and Roman goddess named "Maia" meaning "majestic", but it is also
believed by etymologists to derive from words beginning with "ma"
which signify both "mother" and "ocean". The perfection of femininity to the Greeks
was the godess Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans). Her name comes from the Greek word "aphros" meaning "foam of the sea". She sometimes was also called "Anadyornene" meaning, not surprisingly, "rising
from the sea".
If the material form of man comes
originally from the ocean and hence from Mother Nature, the question naturally
arises: "Who then is his Father?"
Science, by its own ground rules, never invokes "supernatural"
causes to account for anything within its purview, which includes all phenomena
including at least the body of man. The
word "phenomena" comes from a Latin word meaning
"appearance". The scientific
approach, therefore, looks at things beginning with their outer appearance and
looks backward in time from the occurrence of an event for an
"efficient" cause but never invokes a supernatural one in order to
explain or account for an event or phenomenon.
Religion, on the other hand, begins with
the premise of the supernatural and explains all natural phenomena as
derivative from invisible, but nevertheless real, causes. The ultimate source
of Being from the Christian point of view is "God,
the Father". Even in the Old
Testament Isaiah speaks of "the everlasting Father" (9:6); Elisha witnessing the translation of Elijah directly into
heaven by a chariot and horses of fire exclaimed: "my father, my
father" (II Kings, 2:12); and in the Book of Psalms God himself is quoted
as saying: "He [David] shall cry to me, 'Thou art my Father, my God, and
the Rock of my salvation" (Ps. 89:26).
In the New Testament Jesus, as the Son of God, constantly refers to God
as his heavenly Father but he also admonishes all of us to pray to "Our
Father which art in Heaven" (Luke 11:2).
Furthermore, he tells us that "The Kingdom of Heaven is within
you." (Luke 17:21) and not somewhere out in space. It is therefore in the inner and subjective
world of the mind and spirit that we will find the Father and not in the outer
and objective world of science and Mother Nature.
Please do not infer, however, by my use of
the word "Father" for God and Spirit that I am postulating that He is
therefore a male deity. To accommodate
our modern concepts some religious rituals now refer to God as
"Father-Mother" to underscore the androgynous nature of the Godhead
and the importance of the mother no less than the father as an authority
figure. In this essay I am using God=Father=Spirit=Heaven=Fire
in order to contrast them with Nature=Mother=Matter=Earth=Water - their polar
opposites. Perhaps
"complement" would be a better choice of words rather than
"opposite" since one is incomplete without the other. The creation story in the second chapter of
Genesis tells us that man was created in the image of God, that is, like the
Universe itself, a complete entity, and only later was man (i.e. mankind)
separated into male and female by taking a rib from the original Adam. ("She shall be called Woman, because she
was taken out of
In the ancient chinese philosophy recorded in the "I Ching" (The Book of Changes) from which both
Confucianism and Taoism trace their roots the "fundamental principle of
the world are heaven and earth, spirit and matter." (from
Richard Wilhelm's translation, Bollingen Series XIX,
3rd Ed., p.263) ... "Confucious,
standing by a river, [once] said: 'Everything flows on
and on like this river, without pause, day and night.' This expresses the idea
of change. [However,] he who has perceived the meaning of change fixes his
attention no longer on transitory individual things [i.e. phenomena] but on the
immutable, eternal law at work in all change.
This law is the 'Tao' of Lao-tse, the course of things, the principle of
the one in the many." (ibid lv). As the French say: "Le
plus ca change, le plus ca meme." (The more it changes, the more it
is the same.)
The principle underlying change is thus the
unchanging, immutable, and eternal law of the Tao. Its symbol, a circle containing one dark and
one light half, signifys the primal duality of
"yin" and "yang" (the female and male principles in all
things) which together in constant embrace produce the phenomenal world of
changes. The nature of the female (i.e.
material), yin force is passive and receptive while that of the male (i.e.
spiritual), yang force is active and creative. As the "I Ching"
expresses it:
"The Creative [force] is heaven,
therefore,
it is called
the Father.
The Receptive [force] is the earth,
therefore,
it is called
the Mother." (ibid p.274)
The old mechanistic, deterministic,
atheistic philosophy of science must rely on chance mutations of inorganic
molecules in order to explain the extraordinarily complex structure and
behavior of even a
single cell. Any
scientifically trained biologist or geneticist is hard pressed to accept this
hypothesis for the beginning of life much less its evolution into the myriad of
multicellular organisms we find on the earth
today. As the English
philosopher, Herbert Spencer, put it: "Since the accidental variations of
all parts of the body are independent of each other, if the entire organization
of animals were due to such accidental variation alone, the amount of mutual
adaptation and harmony that we now find there could hardly possibly have come
about in any finite time." (As found in William James',
"Principles of Psychology", Britannica, Great Books, Vol. 53, p.897).
Not only is it impossible to account for
higher orders of life by the chance hypothesis but it has been calculated, for
example, that it would take 10 followed by 243 zeros of years to create one
average protein molecule (with a molecular weight of 20,000) by chance. Compare this with the estimated age of the
entire universe of 10 or 12 billion years (10 or 12 followed by 9 zeros) and
you
can see for yourself how
implausible it is that chance combinations of atoms can account for the
appearance of life on earth or indeed any place else in the universe. As the well-known French scientist, Pierre Leconte du Nouy,
concludes regarding the chance hypothesis to account for organic life:
"We are brought to the conclusion that
actually, it is
totally
impossible to account scientifically for all
phenomena
pertaining to Life, its development and
progressive
evolution, and that, unless the foundations of
modern
science are overthrown, they are unexplainable."
("Human
Destiny", Longmans, Green and Co.,
p.36).
The German biologist and philosopher, Hans Driesch, at the beginning of the twentieth century founded
a school of biology called "vitalism" as an
alternative hypothesis to
that of mechanism, determinism and chance in order to
explain the whole field of biology and the evolution of life forms. About the same time the French philosopher,
Henri Bergson, wrote his treatise on "Creative
Evolution", which postulated not only a purposive "elan vital" (vital forms but from the very beginning
of creation itself. Since, however, "vitalism"
and creative evolution smack of
supernaturalism or pantheism to the orthodox scientist, these views
are not given much credence today in the life sciences.
One approach to get around the obviously
flawed theory of random or chance mutations of molecules in the primeval oceans
to account for the origin of life was developed by Leslie Orgel
and Francis Crick. (Crick was one of the co-discoverers of
the molecular structure of DNA for which he received a Nobel Prize in 1962.)
Orgel and Crick's theory is known as "Directed Panspermia"
“This theory
"postulates that the roots of our form of life go back
to another place in
the universe, almost certainly to another
planet; that it had reached
a very advanced form there before
anything much had
started here; and that life here was seeded
by microorganisms sent
on some form of spaceship by an advanced
civilization." ("Life
Itself, Its Origin and Nature",
Simon and Schuster, 1981,
p.141).
Thus, an intelligence,
even a superior intelligence, is postulated somewhere "out there" to
account for the beginnings of life here on earth. It begs the question, of course, as to how
life began on this distant planet, and so we are right back where we started
from.
The eminent British physicist and author,
Fred Hoyle, concurs in the theory of "panspermia"
as the source of life on earth but not in its method of delivery. He believes that microorganisms exist
throughout the universe. "Life is
therefore a cosmological phenomenon, perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the
Universe itself." (from his "The Intelligent Universe", Holt,
Rinehart and
Modern scientists also find it difficult to
account for the harmony and cooperation found between species in contrast with
"the survival of the fittest" doctrine of
In fact after examination of extensive data
from many observers gathered during the 130 years since his publication of
"The Origin of Species", Robert Augros and
George Stanciu conclude that "..
all
A fundamental difference between the
physical and the life sciences is that the physical sciences are based on the
premise that all events are driven by external forces while the life sciences
are beginning to acknowledge that a force within all life forms appears to be
acting with purpose and design - in short, with intelligence. Therefore,
whereas "
In the same vein the biologist Edmund
"Sinnott holds that 'Life is not aimless, nor
are its actions at random. They are
regulatory and either maintain a goal already achieved or move toward one which
is yet to be realized.' He says that
every living thing exhibits 'activity which tends toward the realization of a
developmental pattern or goal . . . Such teleology, far from being unscientific,
is implicit in the very nature of the organism.'" (ibid p.197-8) Also Monod in his
"Chance and Necessity" says:
"One
of the fundamental characteristics common to all
living beings without exception is that of being objects
endowed with a purpose or a project." (ibid)
(Lecomte
du Nouy calls his concept
of an entelechy or end result
toward which man is evolving "telefinalism"
and Telhard de Chardin
calls his the "Omega point", of which more later.) Some life scientists (the behaviorists, like
B. F. Skinner, for example) still cling to the idea of intelligence or mind in
life forms as an epiphenomenon or by-product of matter since to hold the
opposite viewpoint that mind is pre-eminent over matter would be to acknowledge
a fundamental dualism about reality itself. Yet that is precisely what the
renowned, Jesuit trained, paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin, postulates in his "The Phenomenon of
Man" when he says:
"The
time has come to realize that an interpretation of
the universe - even a positivist one - remains
unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the
exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true
physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion
of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the
world." (p.35-6) "Since the stuff of the universe
has an
inner aspect at one point of itself, there is necessarily
a double aspect to its structure, that is to say, in
every
region of space and time - in the same way, for instance,
as it is granular; co-extensive with their Without,
there
is a Within to things. . . The 'within',
'consciousness',
and then 'spontaneity' [are] three expressions for the
same thing." (p.56-7)
As early as 1932 the well-known biologist,
J.B.S. Haldane goes even further to speculate that
although "We do not find obvious evidence of life or mind in so-called
inert matter. . . if the scientific viewpoint is correct, we shall ultimately
find them, at least in rudimentary forms, all through the universe. . . . Now
if the cooperation of some thousands of millions of cells in our
brains can produce
consciousness, the idea becomes vastly more plausible that the cooperation of
humanity, or some sections of it, may determine what [Auguste]
Comte calls a 'Great Being' [i.e. the Universal Man, of which more later] (ibid
footnote p.57)
The modern findings of quantum physicists
go even further than the admission that mind is an independent reality.
"With atomic materialism matter was the
source
of all action and mind was a passive by-product. The new
physics
reverses this perspective: matter is passive,
potential, and incomplete while mind is a source of
action. ...
[Therefore] Our consciousness is not just a
passive epiphenomenon carried along by chemical events in
our brains, but is an active agent. ... Thus modern
physics asserts that the human mind is an agent, an
independent, irreducible source of action. We must
therefore revise the schema of the sciences, taking into
account this recognition of mind as a cause. ...
Concerning man, the new physics implies that mind and
choice [i.e. free will] are irreducible elements. They are
real causes of human action and cannot be resolved to
material forces. [Therefore] Man's
understanding and will
belong to the independent realm of the human sciences:
psychology, politics, ethics and economics. ... [However]
since man is composed of matter and mind, the human
sciences must include references to matter, although their
chief subject is the mind and its works."
(Augros and Stanciu, op. cit., p.15-17)
In previous essays I have alluded to this
preeminence of mind in relation to the study of man using, for example, Decartes' famous dictum: "Cogito, ergo sum." (I
think, therefore I am.) and this little verse:
"Mind is the master power that molds
and makes;
And
Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The
tools of thought and thinking what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand
joys and a thousand ills.
He thinks in secret and it comes to pass.
Environment is his looking glass."
Unlike the mineral and plant kingdoms and
the other animals, man has the power not only to understand his environment but
to manipulate it and transform it. As
the psalmist says:
"Thou has
made him little less than God
and dost crown
him with glory and honor.
Thou hast given him dominion over
the works of thy
hands.
Thou hast put all things under his
feet."
(Psalm 8:5-6)
In the same vein the bard from
Stratford-on-Avon says:
"What piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in
faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action
how like an angel!
in apprehension how
like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of
animals!" (Hamlet, Act 2, Sn 2)
In many respects, then, man himself is the
creator and shaper of his own environment.
His future is in his own hands.
He is with but little exaggeration a microcosm or monad which contains
within itself the whole universe. Similarly for Thomas Mann every created being
is a microcosm within the macrocosm:
"The world hath many centers, one for
each created
being, and about each one it lieth
in its own
circle. Thou standest but
half an ell [21 inches]
from me. Yet about
thee lieth a universe whose
center I am not but
thou art." ("Joseph in
That which distinguishes man from the rest
of creation is his capacity to reason, to abstract from reality, to conceive
ideas, to communicate with his kind by a spoken and written language, to paint,
to compose and play music, to imagine, and to transmit his knowledge to future
generations whether by myth, written history, or by his scientific achievements
- in short he is distinguished by his intelligence. The very name of his species is "homo
sapiens", thinking or wise man.
The first half of man's scientific name,
"homo" designates his genus and the last half his species. From the fossil records paleontologists say
that the genus, "homo" (which they believe evolved from the earlier
genus, "australopithecus" meaning
"southern ape") first appeared around two million years ago. His species name was "habilis" which is Latin for "skillful" or
"handy". His remains were
found in
erectus", meaning "upright man". (Representatives of this species are "Java man"
discovered in 1893 and "Peking man" in the 1920's.) One million and perhaps more years would pass, however, (circa 300-500 thousand years ago) before
scientists would label the species "sapiens", even though this
creature appears to be transitional between earlier and later types.
The next rung on the human ladder of
evolution was first discovered in the Neander Tal or Valley in
Finally, with the discovery of Cro-Magnon
man in
in many caves, e.g. at
When viewed from this vast panorama of two
million years that the genus "homo" has been on earth, or even since
the first appearance of the species, "homo sapiens", some 300-500
thousand years ago, the upward thrust of the evolutionary arc is dramatic and
unmistakable. With the advent of spoken
and written language man is no longer dependent on nature to
"improve" the species by natural selection or random mutations of the
germ cells. As Jacob Bronowski
puts it: Man no longer "depends primarily on
biological evolution to provide adaptation to a changing
environment but rather it is his imagination, his reason, his emotional
subtlety and toughness [that] make it possible for him not to accept the
environment but to change it. ... And that series of inventions, by which man
from age to age has remade his environment, is a different kind of evolution -
not biological, but cultural
evolution." (which he calls
"The Ascent of Man", Little Brown & Co.,
Professor Halle
takes an even wider panoramic view of this upward sweep of evolving life when
he says:
"Evolution, constantly providing improved
conditions
for its
own advance, has followed an exponential course of
acceleration
over at least 3,500 million years. In
the
most
recent times it has begun to provide the conditions
for a
cultural evolution that increasingly drives the
genetic
evolution on which the development of life has
exclusively
depended until now. So it is that, at
last in
our short
day, the whole earth is being transformed by the
life that
invests it, at a rate that makes its
transformations conspicuous within a small part of the
reader's
lifetime or my own. ... A cultural heritage,
which has
its seat in mind rather than in the genes, may
be
transmitted from generation to generation by teaching
but is
not like the genetic heritage, susceptible of
automatic
transmittal through the physical process of
generation."
(op.cit.,
p.292-295)
Thus it is that the focus of evolution has
shifted from the biological to the cultural sphere, from the physical to the
mental realm, from one centered on the search for man's origin to one centered
on his destiny and on his role in helping to determine that destiny. After all "Freedom of choice is
inextricably bound up with the capacity of thought. The word 'intelligence' comes from the Latin
'inter' (between) and 'legere' (to choose). Choosing means making up one's mind." (Corliss Lamont,
"The Philosophy of
Humanism", Fredrick Ungar, New York, 1949-1982
6th ed., p.160).
The real birth of "homo sapiens"
occurs therefore with the birth in man of the faculty of self-consciousness and
the awareness of his power to choose in large measure his own destiny. Teilhard de Chardin describes this birth of self-consciousness in man
as "The being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence of
that very doubling back upon himself, [who] becomes in a flash able
to raise himself into a new sphere. In reality, another world is born [i.e. a new
dimension]. Abstraction, logic, reasoned
choice and inventions, mathematics, art, love - all these activities of
inner-life are nothing else than the effervescence of the newly-formed centre as it
explodes upon itself." (op. cit., p.165)
He also concurs in the idea that the path
of evolution is now in the hands of mankind as recipients of this power of
self-reflection by asking: "Is evolution a theory, a system or a
hypothesis?" He then answers his
own rhetorical question: "It is much more: it is a general conditon to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems
must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable
and true. Evolution is a light
illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must
follow. ... Now the
thrust of evolution has been converted from the physical nature to the domain
of mind. Man discovers that 'he is
nothing else than evolution become conscious of itself', to borrow Julian
Huxley's concise expression. ... On this
summit and on this summit alone are repose and illumination waiting for
us. ... The consciousness of each of us
is evolution looking at itself
and reflecting." (ibid, p.218-220)
This identification of man with mind,
especially with his ability to turn the mind upon itself in
self-reflection together with the obvious upward sweep of the
evolutionary arc, has inevitably led many to embrace a philosophy of optimism
and inevitable progress when speculating on man's destiny and even on the
future course of evolution in general.
Progress, of course, has many faces, and in some ways, like beauty, is
in the eye of the beholder. Looking
backward, however, it is apparent that there is progress from the standpoint of
our vastly increased knowledge of the natural world, in the
harnessing of energy, in
the advances in transportation and communication, in the conversion from an
agrarian to an industrial economy and now to one focused on service and
information, in the realization that we now live in a global village instead of
in independent sovereign nation states, and in the awareness that we are now
responsible in large measure not only for our own welfare as a species but
perhaps also for other forms of life on the planet as well - these advances
would be seen by the majority of informed men as facts and not subject to a
wide range of opinion. It is only when
we look to the future that we introduce an element of the unknown, and it is in
the future that we must spend all the rest of our lives.
Since it has already been shown that man's
capacity for self-reflection and his superior intelligence give him an enhanced
ability to make choices and to alter the course of his own evolution by
cultural means instead of by merely genetic ones, it follows that he
(collectively at least) can choose to continue the path of progress or he can
choose to regress to previous more primitive and
uncivilized levels. Count
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, an Italian Humanist of the 15th century speaking
for man's creators states the choice that each of us as individuals must make:
"Thou, constrained by no limits, in
accordance with
thine own free will in whose hand We have placed thee,
shall
ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature.
We
have made
thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither
mortal
nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and
with
honor, as though the maker and molder of thyself,
thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt
prefer. Thou shalt have the
power to degenerate into the
lower
forms of life which are brutish. Thou shalt have
the power
out of thy soul's judgment to be reborn into the
higher
forms which are divine."
To those who feel this freedom of choice most
keenly there is often a deep-seated feeling of anxiety ("angst" to
use the german word) accompanying the realization of
this responsibility even (and perhaps especially) for those who do not believe
in a personal survival after
death. Teihard de Chardin explains that
in addition to evolution becoming conscious of itself
in man "it becomes free to dispose of itself - it can give itself or
refuse itself. ... [Therefore] It cannot be denied that, in a primordial form,
human anxiety is bound up with the very advent of reflection and is thus as old
as man himself. Nor do I think that anyone can seriously doubt the fact that,
under the influence of reflection undergoing socialization, the men of today
are particularly uneasy, more so than at any other moment of history. Conscious or not, suppressed anguish - a
fundamental anguish of being - despite our smiles, strikes in the depths of all
our hearts and is the undertone of all our conversations." (op. cit., p.225-6)
Man's
freedom to assist in the upward path of evolution or to refuse participation in
it hence gives rise in him of a state of "angst" or anxiety. At root this is an ontological question of
whether to accept life (i.e being) or to reject it
(i.e. death or nonbeing). As Hamlet
explains the problem in his famous soliloquy:
"To be or not to be that is the
question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of trouble,
And by opposing, end them. To die; to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and
the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; .
."
Sigmund Freud addresses the same problem in
his analysis of the "libido" (Latin for "instincts")
wherein he posits a life wish and a death wish within each of us. In the
patients of psychologists and psychiatrists this anxiety often manifests itself as
a neurosis or even in extreme cases as a psychosis. The psychiatrist, R. D. Laing,
in his book, "The Divided Self" describes
this conflict between being and nonbeing as one of "ontological
insecurity". It may be exaggerated
in pathological cases but as the renowned theologian, Paul Tillich,
reminds us: There is "lack of a clear distinction between existential and
pathological anxiety. ... Since anxiety
is existential, it cannot be removed." (from his
"The Courage to Be", Yale University Press, 1959 ed., p.65-66)
The choice of "nonbeing" is a pessimistic
one of hopelessness and despair while the choice of "being" is an optomistic one of hope and faith, one that brings
increasing consciousness, life and happiness.
As Teilhard de Chardin tells us: "Between these two alternatives of
absolute optimism or absolute pessimism there is no middle way because by its
very nature progress is all or nothing.
We are confronted
accordingly with two directions and only two: one upwards and the other downwards, and there is no possibility of finding a halfway
house. On neither side is there any
tangible evidence to produce. Only, in
support of hope, there are rational invitations to an act of faith." (op. cit., p.232). Or
as Jehovah tells the Israelites during their forty years of wandering in the
"I have set before thee life and death,
blessing and
cursing. Therefore, choose life that both thou and
thy seed may
live." (Deut. 30:19)
The path of pessimism (and therefore of death)
is that chosen by many today including, it seems to me, existentialists like
Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. In their writings the feelings of
"angst", loneliness, forlornness, and despair seem to be perennial
themes. Since they believe that
"God is dead", as Nietzsche states in his "Thus Spake Zarathustra", they are
left with man himself as the judge and jury of all his actions. He alone must decide right from wrong and
good from evil.
For example, Sartre states that
"Existentialism is nothing else than an attempt to draw all the
consequences of a coherent athestic position." ("Existentialism and Human Emotions", Philosophical
Library, N.Y., 1957, p.51). He
therefore "thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all
possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him;
there can no longer be an 'a priori' Good, since there is no infinite and
perfect consciousness to think it." (ibid, p.22) Man is thus driven to try and transcend himself by himself. He "will fulfill himself as man,
not in turning toward himself, but in seeking outside of himself a goal which
is just this liberation, just this particular fulfillment." (ibid p.51). Thus,
"Man is the being whose project is God. ... To be man means to reach toward being
God. Or if you prefer, man fundamentally
is the desire to be God." (ibid p.63)
The existentialists clearly therefore
commit the sin known to the ancient Greeks as "hubris", i.e.
identifying themselves with the gods. Do
you remember what happened to Icarus when he
attempted to fly too high? The sun
(which the Greeks worshipped as a god) melted the wax by which his wings were
attached to his shoulders and he fell into the sea. His father, Daedalus,
however, who followed the middle path, neither too high nor too low, between
the sun and the sea, succeeded in escaping his Cretan labyrinth.
Carl Jung explains the story of Icarus in pychological terms:
"The human ego can be exalted to experience godlike attributes, but only
at the cost of over-reaching itself and falling to disaster." (As found in "Man and His Symbols", Doubleday, Garden
City, NY, 1964, p.121). Or as
the Old Testament book of Proverbs puts it: "Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a
fall." (16:18) "All the
same", Carl Jung continues, "the youthful ego must always run this
risk, for if a young man does not strive for a higher goal than he can safely
reach, he cannot surmount the obstacles between adolescence and maturity."
(ibid, p.122) The poet, Robert
Browning makes the same
point when he tells us:
"A man's reach must exceed his grasp
Else what's a heaven for?"
Modern secular humanists, like the
existentialists, believe in man's ability to continue his own upward evolution
without the benefit of 'a priori' moral standards and of faith in a
supernatural power or powers. As Professor Corliss
Lamont states the case for the modern humanists:
"Within
certain limits prescribed by our earthly
circumstances and by scientific law, individual human
beings, entire nations and mankind in general are free to
choose the paths they truly wish to follow. to a
significant degree they are the holders of their own fate
and hold in their own hands the shape of things to
come."
(op. cit., p.109)
However, we have witnessed man's playing
God result in two worldwide conflagrations in the twentieth century, the last
one of which took over 50 million lives and left many more not only physically
but emotionally scarred for life. Nor has belief in Nietzsche's doctrine of the
Superman
been extinguished by the horrors of world war. Neo-nazis,
fascists, and racists of all stripes are still very much alive in many
countries today, including our own.
Man is not the only creature, however, to
arrogate to himself the omnipotence of God.
You will recall that the
"Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his
angels
fighting against the
dragon; and the dragon and his angels
fought, but they were
defeated and there was no longer any
place for them in heaven.
And the great dragon was thrown
down, that ancient
serpent, who is called the Devil and
Satan, the deceiver of the whole world - he
was thrown
down to earth, and
his angels were thrown down with him."
(Revelation 12:7-9)
We find a similar story in Greek mythology
when the chief god in the Greek pantheon, Zeus, imprisons all of the Titans in Tartarus (i.e. in Hades).
The Titans were sons and daughters of Uranus and Ge
(Heaven and Earth). The letters of their name, like the Anti-Christ in the book
of Revelation, have a value of 666. (See
my essay, "The Symbolism of Numbers", p.4). Also in Greek mythology we have the story of
Prometheus, who stole fire from the abode of the gods and brought it to earth
for the benefit of mankind. As a
punishment, his father, Zeus (known to the Romans as "Jovis
Pater", Father Jove, or Jupiter), chained him to
the black rocks on
Prometheus in the Greek language means
"forethought". Hence the stealing of "fire" from the gods
is equivalent to bringing light or knowledge to mankind. In the Old Testament book of Genesis the same
mythological theme appears in the story of Adam and Eve being expelled from
unconscious mind. He
suffered not only the loss of his "participation mystique" with the
world of Mother Nature but also separation from the spirit world of God the
Father and the roots of his own being. As the poet says: "In Adam's fall we sinned all."
Man finds himself then not merely at the
pinnacle of creation in the upward sweep of the evolutionary arc over the last
3.5 billion years or so of life on earth but as one who strives to overcome his
own mortality, to regain "Paradise Lost" and become like God
Himself. His status is eloquently
summarized by the poet, Alexander Pope in his "Essay on Man":
"Placed on this isthmus of a middle
state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great;
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's
pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself
abused or disabused;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to
all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error
hurled;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the
world!"
"This isthmus of a middle state"
signifies not only man's position on earth poised in space midway between the
infinitely small world of the microcosm and the infinitely large universe of
the macrocosm but also, with his faculty of mind, midway between the opposite
poles of spirit and matter and between heaven above and hell below - in fact
poised equally (or nearly so) between all opposites. In the Rubaiyat of
Omar Khayyam we find a similar thought:
"I
sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that afterlife to spell;
And by and by my Soul returned to me,
And answered: 'I myself am both Heaven
and Hell.'"
Or in the words of Walt Kelly's comic
character Pogo:
"We have met the enemy and he is
us!"
"O
wretched man that I am! Who shall
deliver me from
the body of this
death?" (Romans 7:24)
To attempt an answer to his plaintive
question let us now turn to a discussion of the realm of Spirit and of Him
"by whom we live and move and have our being".(Acts
Faith in God
The Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno, once said:
"To
believe in God is to desire His existence, and
what is more, to act as though he existed." (Du Nuoy, op. cit., p.134)
Even Voltaire, although a Deist (who like
the agnostics do not believe in a personal God), wrote:
"If
there were no God, it would be necessary to invent
Him." (as found in Corliss Lamont, op. cit., p.66)
Professor Lamont, who like
other secular humanists does not believe in God or life after death says that:
"Even I, disbeliever that I am, would frankly be more than glad to awake
someday to a worthwhile eternal life." (op. cit.,
p.98)
Carl Jung, the eminent psychologist and
explorer of the human psyche, who was often accused of being a believer in
mysticism and in the fundamentally religious nature of the soul, has written:
"I have been accused of 'deifying the
soul'. Not I
but God
himself has deified it! I did not
attribute a
religious
function to the soul, I merely produced the
facts
which prove that the soul is 'naturaliter
religiosa', i.e., possesses a religious function." (from
his
"The Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy"
as found
In "The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung:, Modern
Library,
Random House, N.Y., 1959, p.443).
The psalmist echos
similar thoughts when he tells us:
"As
the hart panteth after the water brooks,
So panteth my soul
after Thee, O God." (Psalm 42:1)
It is therefore a psychological truth, if
not a rigorously scientific one, that there is a human need for, a desire for,
and longing for God within our very psyches and souls. But hope, desire, need and longing are still
far removed from the concept of faith.
"Faith", as the
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us, "is the ssurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not
seen." (11:1 emphasis added). Faith
is thus something that transcends hope and even belief in that it is
accompanied by "assurance" and "conviction" and not merely
wishful thinking or intellectual assent to an appealing idea. "By faith", the writer of Hebrews
continues, "we understand that the world was created by the Word of God,
so that what is seen was made out of things which do not ppear."
(11:3)
Thus religious faith and true conviction do
not begin with the phenomenal world of appearances but with the noumenal world of inner perceptions, with an inner and
subjective knowing rather than with an outer and objective sense
perception. It is in this interior world
that the real source of truth, life and being dwell. As Robert Browning tells us in his poem,
"Paracelsus":
"Truth
is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er
you may believe.
There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness;
and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear
perception, which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and to know,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be
without."
"We
might say, then," as Carl Jung explains it, "that the term 'religion'
designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been changed by
experience of the 'numinosum' [from the Latin 'numen' meaning 'a presiding spirit or deity'].. [which] seizes and controls the human subject, who is always, rather its victim than its
creator. The 'numinosum'
whatever its cause may be - is an experience of the subject independent of his
will."
(From
his "Psychology and Religion", op. cit., p. 471-3).
This seizing of the consciousness by "numinosa" is what Jung came by long experience with
his patients to call "archetypes" from the collective unconscious
mind. They often appeared in dreams or
reveries but were identifiable by their relationship with the dreamer and the
part they played in the drama of the dream or reverie. He gave them names like the "anima" (a personification of
the feminine soul in men), the "animus" (the male counterpart of the
soul in women), the "shadow" (those undesirable traits repressed by
the ego), the "great mother", and the "wise old man". To the quintessential archetype, however, he
gave the name the "Self" which comprised the person in his entirety -
a composite of his conscious, unconscious, and superconscious
selves. The Self is the Supreme center
of our being. Emerson called it the Oversoul, Nietzsche called it the Superman, the Hindus call
it the Atman, and
Religious faith often begins, therefore
with an inner personal experience of the "numinosum"
which we call by various names. When
Moses had his encounter with God on
"God is like a circle whose center is
everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
The writer to the Hebrews continues his
epistle by recounting examples of faith as shown in the lives of Abel, Enoch,
Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and others so exemplary that the 11th
Chapter of Hebrews is sometimes referred to as the Faith Hall of Fame. (See Appendix p. 1-2 for
the text of the complete chapter.) In many if not most instances named
in this chapter the person exhibiting faith has had an encounter with the
living God whether by vision, voice, dream or other inner experience.
Similarly, after Jesus' death and
resurrection while his disciples were meeting together in an upper room in
After the teachings of the apostles had
converted many, a devout Jew named Saul, who had been persecuting members of
this new sect of Christianity, was struck down by a light from heaven as he
approached the city of
Almost two thousand years later
Christianity has become the largest organized religion with over one billion
adherents (fragmented, however, in the
350 million or so are
Protestants (of all stripes) and around 150 million are Eastern Orthodox. The Roman Catholics operate under the
centralized authority of the pope, the bishop of
himself after he had identified Jesus as the long awaited
Messiah of the Jews. "And I tell
you, you are Peter [from the Greek word "petros"
meaning "rock"], and on this rock I will build my church and the
powers of death [or 'the gates of Hades'] shall not prevail against it."
(Matthew 16:18)
The split between East and West began
partly as a matter of geography and cultural differences but largely as a
result of the shift of political power from
religions and appointed a bishop of
The final separation, however, did not
occur until 870 A.D. when the Archbishop of Constantinople was unable to obtain
agreement to change the word "filioque"
("and the Son") in the Nicene Creed.
The dispute between Eastern and Western Christianity was whether the
Holy Spirit proceeded "from the Father through the Son" (as
originally adopted by the Council of Nicea in 325
A.D. and reaffirmed by the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D.) or whether He
proceeded "from the Father and the Son" (as adopted by the Council Of
Toledo in Spain in 589 A.D. nearly 300 years before the formal
separation). There had been other
differences between them, of course, but this seemed to be "the one that
broke the camel's back".
A further split or schism occurred in the
western branch of Christianity at the beginning of the 16th
century. Martin Luther, a Roman Catholic
and Augustinian Monk, who taught and preached in the city of
The sale of indulgences by the Church was
not the only thing that so inflamed the young 34 year old doctor of theology,
however. "The papal chair had been
occupied for half a century by men who were more interested in the revival of
learning and Italian politics than they were in giving Christendom the kind of
leadership which it needed. ... The Reformation of the 16th century started as
an effort to bring about reforms within the Roman Catholic Church, and it was
only after this seemed impossible that the leaders [of the reform movement]
withdrew from organized Roman Catholicism." (ibid, Vol. XXIII,p.301).
In addition "the invention of printing
brought about wide diffusion of knowledge.
There was an opportunity through the study of the writings of the
This fragmentation of Christianity has
continued unabated, in one form or another, from the Reformation to the present
time. Every denomination or sect seems
to find cause for separating itself from its parent group. Even Roman
Catholicism itself, although still recognizing the authority of the Papal See
in
This dissension between the various sects
and denominations of Christianity and within the separate entities as well has
led to a disenchantment by many with organized
religion of whatever stripe. As a
result, many are Christians in name only, who attend church primarily at
Christmas and Easter services. Others
seem to go from one church to another in search of one that fulfills their religious
needs. Still others, including many
non-churchgoers, are turning to an interest in ancient pagan beliefs such as
the efficacy of wearing crystals and talismans and of astrology, to a renewed
interest in eastern religions and practices such as yoga, meditation and the
chanting of mantras (or words furnished by the gurus of the transcendental
meditation movement), and to an interest in psychic readings, healing,
channeling, fortunetelling, and to an interest in psychology in general.
"This 'psychological' interest of the
present time", as Carl Jung explains it, "shows that man expects something
from psychic life which he has not received from the outer world: something
which our religions, doubtless ought to contain, but no longer do contain - at
least for modern man. The various forms
of religion no longer appear to the modern man to come from within - to be
expressions of his own psychic life; for him they are to be classed with the
things of the outer world; but he tries on a number of religions and
convictions as if they were Sunday attire, only to lay them aside again like
worn-out clothes." ("Modern Man in Search of a
Soul" as found in "The World Treasury of Modern Religious
Thought", Jaroslav Pelikan,
Editor; Little, Brown &
It is to those disillusioned by the
conflicting currents of dogma and beliefs for whom the words of the old hymn,
"Faith of our fathers living still! We will be true to thee till death.", no longer carry a deeply felt and shared
conviction. Yet it is perhaps inevitable
that the passage of time results in the gradual replacement of a once vital,
dynamic and shared faith and conviction by one that is overlain with dogma,
ritual and parochialism, and one which has lost much of its energy and
vitality. Henri Bergson in his "The Two Sources
of Morality and Religion" discusses at some length the differences between
a static and a dynamic religion. A
static religion is one which has dissipated its original vitality and is a mere
shell or husk of the original ideas and energies by which it sprang into being. It is authoritarian and usually imposes a
strict set of observances which must be followed to the letter in order to
remain a member in good standing in that particular church. A dynamic religion, on the other hand, is one
that retains its youthful vigor, its "elan
vital", by interacting creatively with its environment and by a continual
unfolding of its latent but powerful impulses for expansive life and xpression.
This situation is no less true today than
it was nearly 2000 years ago when Jesus began his earthly ministry. The sect of the Pharisees typified the static
religion of the Jews at that time. They
believed in strict adherence not only to the ten commandments brought down by
Moses from Mount Sinai but also to the hundreds of rituals, rules and
regulations which had been superimposed on the law in the thirteen centuries or
so following the exodus of the Israelis from Egypt. It was the Pharisees, therefore, that Jesus
continually took to task for their overemphasis on ritual and outward
observances and their neglect of the faith that comes from the heart and soul.
"Woe unto you scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites!
for ye
devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long
prayer:
therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites!
for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and
when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of
hell than yourselves.
...
Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites!
for ye
pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have
omitted
the weightier matters of the law: judgment, mercy
and
faith. These ought ye to have done, and
not to leave
the other
undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at
a gnat
and
swallow a camel.
Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites!
for ye
make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but
within
they are full of extortion and excess.
Thou blind
Pharisee,
cleanse first that which is within the cup and
platter,
that the outside of them may be clean also.
Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites!
for ye are like whited
sepulchers, which indeed appear
beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's
bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly
appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of
hypocrisy and iniquity." (Matthew 23:14-28)
It is little wonder after these attacks by
Jesus on the influential and politically powerful Pharisees that they
conspired, and were eventually successful, in having him arrested and brought before
the Roman authorities. As a result,
Jesus was sentenced to a slow and cruel death by crucifixion. There are some "holier than thou"
Christians who no doubt would receive the same condemnation from Jesus today if
he were alive in the flesh. There are
many more, of course, who maintain that vital, dynamic and conscious
realization of his presence in their thoughts,hearts and lives that was found in believers in the
early church.
This inner recognition of a divine presence
does not belong exclusively to Christians, however. We have already noted those who lived by
faith prior to the Christian era that were cited by the writer of the epistle
to the Hebrews. We have also noted Carl
Jung's finding that every soul is religious by nature - that it possesses a
sense of the "numinosum", a presiding
spirit or deity. He also discovered that just as we inherit our material bodies
from the germ cells of countless generations of men and women, so too do we
inherit our psychic structures
from our progenitors including what he came to call the
"archetypes of the collective unconscious". This explains too why the same mythological
themes occur over and over in all cultures regardless of race, religion, geographical
location or historical era. In fact,
"the fundamental themes of mythological thought", as Joseph Campbell tells us, "have remained constant and universal, not
only throughout history, but also over the whole extent of mankind's occupation
of the earth." ("Myths to Live By", Bantam
Books, 1988, p.19).
Just as our physical bodies and mental
faculties have evolved from more primitive types, so also have our concepts of
divinity evolved from those first held by our primitive ancestors. Sigmund Freud held that the religious sense
arises from the "terrifying effect of infantile helplessness .... which the father relieved, and that the discovery that his
helplessness would continue through the whole of life made it necessary to
cling to the existence of a father - but this time a more powerful one." ("The
World Treasury of Modern Religious Thought", p.75).
Freud's hypothesis, although based on
atheistic premises, when considered in light of Joseph Campbell's findings of
the persistence of mythological thought "over the whole extent of
mankind's occupation of the earth" leads us to conjecture about a possible
connection between them. You will recall
in the section on "Faith in Nature" we discussed that during the
process of gestation the embryo retraces it entire evolutionary history. (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.) So in like fashion it is quite possible that
a young child retraces the evolution of "homo sapiens" in his
perception of the mystery of the world about him and the sense of the divinity
within him.
Thus, "Primitive man', says Miguel De Unamuno,"feels himself to be dependent upon the
mysterious forces invisibly environing him; he feels himself to be in social
communion, not only with beings like himself, ... but
with the whole of Nature, animate and inanimate. ... Not only
does he possess a consciousness of the world, but he
imagines that the world, like himself, possesses consciousness also. Just as a
child talks to his doll or his dog as if it understood what he was saying, so
the savage believes that his fetish hears him when he speaks to it, and that
the angry storm-cloud is aware of him and deliberately pursues him. For the newly born mind of the primitive
natural man has not wholly severed itself from the cords which still bind it to
the womb of Nature; neither has it clearly marked out the boundary that
separates dreaming from waking, imagination from reality." (ibid, p. 290)
The world of the primitive, therefore, like
that of the child, is one in which self-consciousness is not yet fully
developed. So ill-defined is the concept
of self in both early man and a young child that there is no clear
differentiation between their interior and exterior worlds, their objective and
subjective perceptions. The interior
awareness of the "numinosum", the feeling of
divinity, is projected outward onto objects, both animate and inanimate, creating a perception that nature itself is alive
and conscious, that everything possesses a "god"within
it.
As Mircea
Eliade notes in his "The Sacred and the
Profane": "... for those who have a religious experience all nature
is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality."
(Harcourt, Brace & Sons, N.Y., 1959, p. 12). Elizabeth Barrett Browning also expresses
this feeling in one of her verses:
"Earth's crammed with heaven and
Every common bush is ablaze with God,
But only he who sees takes off his
shoes."
When we grow older, we tend to lose much of
our "participation mystique" with Nature. We also tend to lose the inner feeling of the
"numinosum". As Miguel de Unamuno
affirms: "The clearer our consciousness of the distinction between the
objective and the subjective [i.e.the feeling of
divinity within us." (ibid)
"Desacralization",
Mircea Eliade concurs,
"pervades the entire experience of the nonreligious man of modern
societies and [consequently] he finds it increasingly difficult to rediscover
the existential dimensions of religious man in the archaic societies."
(op. cit. p. 13)
It is only a step in the evolution of
consciousness from the primitive's notion that the world and everything in it
is sacred and alive to one that perceives a hierarchy of powers and spheres of
influence, that is to say, only a step from a belief in animism to one in
polytheism. A theogony,
or family tree, of the gods and goddesses varies with a particular mythology or
culture,
but most of them contain a number of incestuous
relationships and extra-marital affairs.
They even interbreed with mortals creating demigods - half men and half
gods. The story of gods interbreeding
with human beings is even recounted in the Old Testament:
"And
it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and
daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men,
that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. ...
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the
sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them,
the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." Genesis 5:2-4
Even the word translated
"God" in the above passage, "Elohim"
in the original Hebrew, is the plural of the word "Elhoa",
meaning a "god" or "celestial being". "Elohim",
therefore, would better be translated as "gods" or "celestial
beings". It is understandable, of
course, that `the English translators of the bible "from the original
tongues", who believed in only one God, would be reluctant to render the
creation story in Genesis by: "In the beginning celestial beings created
the heaven and the earth."
Still the story of creation by celestial
beings appears in many ancient civilizatons. The Hindus refer to them as "Prajapatis", the Zoroastrians as "Amesha Spentas", the
Egyptians as "mystery gods", while the Greeks, Romans and
Scandinavians named their creative celestial beings after the visible heavenly
bodies. We even continue to honor them
today by using their names for the days of the week - Sunday (Sun); Monday
(Moon); Tuesday (Tyre or Mars); Wednesday (Woden or Mercury); Thursday (Thor or Jupiter); Friday (Freya or Venus); and Saturday (Saturn).
It well may be, therefore, that the
creation story whereby "what is seen was made out of things which do not
appear" and the ancient stories of gods decending
from the celestial spheres to intermingle with the daughters of men are more
than mere mythology and allegory. But
descent is only half the story. You will
recall the Old Testament telling about when Jacob, sleeping out under the
stars, "dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top
of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and decending on it!" (Gen. 28:12).
Thus "ascending"
is the rest of the story. Creation
involves a never ending cycle from spirit into matter and from matter back into
spirit.
Henri Bergson
confirms this idea when he tells us:
"In the universe itself two opposite
movements are to
be
distinguished ... 'descent' and 'ascent'" (from his
"Creative
Evolution" as found in "The Philosophers of
Science",
Random House, NY, 1947, p. 283)
Cardinal "Cusa defined God Himself as a 'complexio
oppositorum'[a complexion of opposites]". (C.G. Jung, "On the Nature of the Psyche", Modern
Library, p.77).
Similarly, a favorite theme in medieval
alchemy is the "circulatio" or circulating
process. "By this is meant firstly,
the 'ascensus' and 'descensus'
... and secondly the rotation of the universe as a model for the work."
(C.G. Jung, "Psychology and Alchemy", p. 164)
Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, taught that over time
all things tend to turn into their opposites.
He called this phenomenon: "enantiodromia",
meaning a "running of opposites".
As he explains the process:
"From
the living comes death; and from the old, youth;
from
waking, sleep; and from sleep, waking; the stream of
creation
and decay never stands still." "Construction and
destruction,
destruction and construction - this is the
norm
which rules in every circle of natural life from the
smallest
to the greatest. Just as the cosmos itself
emerged
from the primal fire, so must it return once more
into the
same - a double process running its measured
course
through vast periods, a drama eternally
re-enacted."
(As found in "The Basic Writings of C. G.
Jung",
p.247)
The writer of the Old Testament Book of
Ecclesiastes
reminds us that:
"The
sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the
place where it
rises.
The wind blows to the south and goes round to
the north;
round and round
goes the wind, and on its circuits the
wind returns.
All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not
full.
To the place where the streams flow, there
they will flow
again."
(1:5-7)
Similarly, in the ancient Chinese
philosophy found in
the "I Ching"
commentary on the Feng Hexagram:
"When
the sun has reached its meridian height,
It begins to decline.
When the moon has become full,
It begins to wane.
Heaven and Earth are now full, now empty,
According to the flow and
ebb of the season."
Thus, ascent and descent of angels, gods,
or spiritual forces involve a circular never ending cycle of evolution (ascent)
and involution (descent). In the
language of the Chinese, "I Ching",
evolution is an upward movement of the yin (female or earthly) forces from the
material level to
the spiritual while involution is a downward movement of
the yang (male or heavenly) forces from the spiritual level to the
material. This downward arc of
involution is analogous to the way water vapor, as it falls through
successively colder layers of air, first condenses into droplets, then forms layer after layer of ice which fall to the earth
as hailstones. Some believe that the
descent of Adam and Eve from paradise came about by a similar process of
involution from the spiritual to the material level - from heaven to earth.
("Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and
clothed them." - Genesis 3:21)
The cycles of night and day, the phases of
the moon, the seasons of the year and the cycle of birth and death are familiar
to us all. Not familiar to our direct
experience, however, are longer cycles such as the rise and fall of
civilizations, the 25,868 year precession of the vernal equinox due to the slow
wobbling of the earth about its axis, or the birth and death of the universe
believed by the Hindus to be a cycle of some 35 billion of our years.
History confirms the cycle of civilizations
while modern science confirms the longer cycle of the equinoxial
precession and admits that an oscillating unverse is
consistent with the "Big Bang" hypothesis of the beginning of
space-time. (Additional support for this
theory has just been made by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite, which
indicated that matter started "clumping"
into extremely thin clouds as early as 300,000 years after
the Big Bang. - 4/24/92)
In this concept of the cyclical nature of
time we discover not only one that is confirmed by our everyday observation but
also one that is confirmed by historical records, by science, by mythology, and
by religions of many stripes both archaic and modern. It is a concept which thus allows us to
accept the fundamental tenets of both science and religion and to meld them
into a new synthesis - a new paradigm which includes not only space-time but
being itself as an integral part of reality.
True, it requires an acceptance of the existence of higher levels of
being than mere matter, but it also explains the process by which matter is
created from pure energy (i.e. the process of involution from spirit into
matter) and the process by which matter evolves into
higher and more complex forms with a built in capacity for
change and increasing levels of consciousness (i.e. the process of evolution
from matter to spirit).
Just as there are hierarchies of systems in
the physical universe from electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus, to atoms
forming planets, to satellites circling a planet, to planets orbiting stars such
as our sun, to stars revolving around galaxies, etc., so also are there hierachies in life systems beginning with organic molecules
forming a single cell, groups of cells forming a specialized function (like an
organ), specialized functions forming an individual, individuals forming
families, families forming communities, etc.
Furthermore, there is a hierarchy of the food chain with minerals being
assimilated by plants, plants by animals, and animals by men. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to postulate
a hierarchy of celestial beings with each higher level integrating the beings
of a lower level into a new and more complex being.
Similarly, our concept of divinity has
evolved from primitive animism to polytheism to tribal gods to the concept of
monotheism. Zeus, the chief god in the
Greek pantheon of gods, " was in the process of being converted into an
only god, just as Jahwe, originally one god among
many others, came to be converted into and only god, first the god of the
people of Israel, then the god of humanity, and finally the god of the whole
universe." (Miguel de Unamuno, op. cit., p. 291) .... "And God of the heart, the God who is felt, the
God of living men, is the Universe itself conceived as a personality, is the
consciousness of the Universe." (ibid, p. 299).
This idea of God as a personality of the
universe may seem to many to be nothing but an
atavistic throwback, an "anthropopathism"
(i.e. a projection of human feelings on nonhuman things or beings). Still the idea of the universe as a man
occurs repeatedly among philosophers,religious
thinkers, mystics and in mythology. In
the Kabbalah, the book of Jewish mysticism, the
Universal Man is called Adam Kadmon or the Heavenly
Adam. "Out of the substances of
this divine man the universe was formed." (Manly P. Hall "The Secret
Teachings of All Ages", p. 121)
In the New Testament St. John begins his
gospel by identifying the creation of the world by the "Word" (from
the Greek, "Logos"): "He [the Word, the Christ man] was in the
beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not
anything made that was made."
(John 1:2-4). Thus, the Heavenly Adam of the Kabbalah and Jesus, the Word Incarnate, described in John's
Gospel are the same person. The resurrected
Jesus, who
of the Father", is the same divine man who was
present at the beginning of creation, the same man "by whom all things
were made". ("Before Abraham
was", Jesus told the Pharisees, " I
AM.") Therefore, the Christ, who as
Universal Man typifies the beginning of mankind (before his fall) as well as
his ultimate perfection in the resurrection body, is often referred to as the
"Alpha and
Omega",
encompassing man's beginning as well as his end.
Similar concepts were envisioned by Auguste Comte with his "Grand Etre"
(Great Being); by Ezekiel's vision in the firmament above the four tetramorphs of a heavenly being
with "a likeness as it were of a human form";
and by Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish seer, who
believed that the "entire creation is only a titanic man and that we are
made in the image of the universe." (Eliphas
Levi, "The History of Magic"); and others too numerous to mention.
All modern believers do not have the same
conception of God, of course, in spite of the evolutionary thrust which
supposedly has given us superior mental faculties over our neolithic
ancestors. As
through a glass darkly ...". There are also different ways of perceiving
the same truth. This is brought home
vividly to us in John Godfrey Saxe's delightful
little poem, "The Blind Men and the Elephant", wherein each man
grasped a different part of the elephant and thought that he alone knew the
"truth" about what the elephant was like. (See Appendix, p.3 for the complete text.)
There are also differing levels of
consciousness among modern men and women.
As Aldous Huxley tells us in his "The
Perennial Philosophy: "Knowledge is a function of being. When there is a change in the being of the
knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount
of knowing." (Harper & Brothers, 1945, p.
vii) (We will discuss this more fully in
the next, and hopefully last, section on "Salvation".)
Perhaps the greatest problem, however, in
trying to formulate a conception of God is that in spite of all our efforts He
is ultimately "inconceivable".
As the Buddhists say, paradoxically, He is the "Clear Light of the
Void" while Pascal tried to define God as the circle whose center is
everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere; and the medieval theologians
attempted to prove
His
existence by negation (not this, not that, etc.) until at last they were left
with "no thing" (i.e. nothingness).
As De Unamuno
puts it: "This God, arrived at by the methods of
eminence and negation or abstraction of finite qualities, ends by becoming an
unthinkable God, a pure idea, a God of whom, by the very fact of His ideal
excellence, we can say that he is nothing.... Or in the words of the psuedo-Dionysius, the Areopagite,
in his fifth Epistle, 'The divine darkness is the inaccessible
light in which God is said to dwell.' The anthropomorphic
God, the God who is felt in being purified of human, and as such finite,
relative and temporal, attributes, evaporates into the God of Deism or of
pantheism." (op. cit., p.292) ... [and] "the God obtained by way
of negation, the absolute entity merges, like reality itself, into nothingness;
for, as Hegel pointed out, pure being and pure nothingness are identical."
(ibid, p. 299).
San Juan de la Cruz (St. John of the
Cross), a Spanish mystic, expresses much the same idea as De Unamuno when he says: "One of the greatest favors
bestowed on the soul transiently in this life is to enable it to see so
distinctly and to feel so profoundly that it cannot comprehend God at all. These souls are herein somewhat like the
saints in heaven where they who know Him most
perfectly perceive most
clearly that He is infinitely incomprehensible; for those who have the less
clear vision do not perceive so clearly as do these others how greatly He
transcends their vision." (As found in Aldous Huxley, op. cit., p.25).
Thus, when we try to conceive of an only
God of the universe, we find ourselves faced with a God so transcendent that it
becomes inconceivable that He could be interested in us mere mortals on a tiny
speck in a vast ocean universe. Yet
there are many who have testified from personal experience that God is not only
transcendent but also immanent and that He can, therefore, be
intimately experienced by all men.
while Emerson and the Transcendentalists call it the "Oversoul"; Nietzsche
labels it the Superman; and Carl Jung calls it simply "the
Self".
It is because of this immanence at the
heart of all creation that St. Luke is able to affirm that "He is not far
from any one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being." (Acts
the archangel Gabriel (as recorded in the Koran):
"We [God] are nearer to him [man] than his jugular vein." (as found in Pelikan, op. cit.,
p.518) The Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, likewise affirms that "God is nearer to me
than I am to myself; He is just as near to wood and
stone, but they do not know it." (ibid p.530)
Why is it then, we may well ask ourselves,
if God is nearer to us than our jugular vein, that many (if not most) men and
women act as if He doesn't exist at all. Furthermore, even if He does exist, why doesn't He seem
to be having much influence on the human race today with its growing rates of
poverty, disease, crimes, and wars; with a growing inhumanity of man toward his
fellow man, with mistreatment of his fellow creatures and misuse of the
resources and the environment of the entire earth? The answer lies in the degree to which he has
allowed man to exercise the free will with which he has been created. As we have seen in the previous section on
"Faith in Man",
the evolving powers of his mind and his consciousness of
self give him a corresponding power to choose (in large measure) his own
destiny, including the power to destroy himself.
A symposium held recently in Stockholm
composed of past Nobel laureates from all disciplines from the physical and
life sciences to economics and the humanities debated the question: "Has
mankind, on balance, harnessed its intelligence to build a better
world?" The affirmative position
was chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, recipient of the 1984 Nobel peace prize
while the
negative side was chaired by Professor Henry Kendall of
M.I.T., recipient of the 1990 Nobel prize for physics. Archbishop Tutu, although the leading
spokesman in favor of the question, concluded that mankind had only marginally
applied his intelligence to build a better world. Professor Kendall, on the other hand, gave
persuasive evidence that unless drastic measures are taken to change our
collective lifestyle and stem the rising tide of world population (expected at
current rates to triple its present level of 5.3 billion by the end of the next
century) we are facing disaster on an unprecedented scale. If we do not act and act promptly, concluded
Dr. Kendall, nature will do the job of controlling population for us and do it
without pity.
While there is a tendency for developed
nations such as those in the
the projected population increase in the next century is
due to occur in the poorest nations. The
only restraints, therefore, will be those postulated by the English economist,
Robert Thomas Malthus, nearly 200 years ago - namely:
disease, famine, war and natural catastrophes.
Is this, then, what mankind will inevitably
face in the next century or will God Himself intervene to save us from
ourselves? Let us turn, therefore, to a
discussion of "salvation", both here now on earth and hereafter in
heaven.
Salvation on Earth
Few would deny that mankind today stands at
an historic crossroads. In the twentieth
century his scientific knowledge has enabled him to master his physical
environment with the invention of revolutionary methods of transportation and
communication, the ability to feed a population with only two or three percent
of its human resources, cures for age-old diseases, the harnessing of the
awesome power in the heart of the atom, the exploration of space, and with the
invention of
computers to enhance education, scientific research, weather
prediction, and to replace countless repetitive tasks formerly done by humans.
On the other hand, even in the
"It was the best of times,
it was
the worst of times,
It was the age of wisdom,
it was
the age of foolishness,
It was the epoch of belief,
it was
the epoch of incredulity,
It was the season of Light,
it was
the season of Darkness,
It was the spring of hope,
it was
the winter of despair,
We had everything before us,
we had
nothing before us,
We were all going direct to
Heaven,
We were all going direct the
other way
In short, the period was so far
like the
present
period that some of its noisiest
authorities
insisted on its being received,
for good
or for evil, in the superlative
degree
of comparison only."
Yet, Dickens was comparing the situation
just prior to the French Revolution in 1775 with that of
on: (1) scientific concerns and projections; (2)
biblical prophesies; (3) the rapidly growing "New Age" movement; and
(4) the prophesies of other seers who have credible track records in being able
to predict future events.
We have already alluded to the remarks made
by Dr. Henry Kimball of MIT at a symposium of Nobel laureates in
(which
appropriately means "Good Air") attests to the concerns of
scientists, environmentalists, and leaders of many nations on the deteriorating
quality of our air, water and other natural resources.
Not only is the quality of the global
environment deteriorating but the avaricious appetite by the developed nations
for energy, goods and services is rapidly depleting these resources as
well. (The
the shocking study done at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the Club of Rome and resented in the
book 'Limits to Growth' [Universe Books, 1972], the computers time after time
told the same story: 'Without a complete change of basic values and goals at
individual, national, and world levels there is no chance to avoid
international catastrophe.'" (Hal Lindsey, "There's
a New World Coming", Vision House Publishers, Santa Ana, CA 9275, 1973,
p.106).
Similarly, "William and Paul Paddock
warned in their sobering book, 'Famines - 1975!' that 'the crisis of population
explosion versus static agriculture is indeed formed. The nations of the undeveloped world are no
longer grain exporters; they are grain importers. There is no more unused land to bring into
cultivation; even the deficient marginal land is by now in use. Hunger is rampant throughout country after
country, continent after continent around the undeveloped belt of the tropics
and subtropics. Today's crisis can move
in only one direction - toward catastrophe.
Today hungry nations; tomorrow starving nations."
(ibid, p.106-7).
(Also see the cover story of Time magazine for September,
7, 1992: "The Agony of Africa".)
Both the Old and New Testaments in the
Judeo-Christian bible are replete with references to a future climactic period
in world history called variously: "the time of the end" (Dan.
8:17-19, 11:27); "a time of trouble" (Dan. 12:1); "the time of
Jacob's trouble (Jer. 30:7); a period following
"the times of the gentiles" (Luke 21:24); "the last days" (Isa. 2:2, Acts 2:17, 2 Tim. 3:1, 2 Pet. 3:5); "the day
of the Lord" (Isa. 2:12, 13:6, Joel 1:15, 2:11, Zeph. 1:7, Zech. 14:1, 2 Pet. 3:10, "the day of Jesus
Christ" (Phil. 1:6); "the great day" (Rev. 6:17, 16:14); and
"the end of the world" (Matt. 28:20). (The word translated
"world" in the King James version is from
the Greek, "aion" meaning an "aeon" or "age". Hence the Revised Standard version
translates the phrase, "the end of the age".)
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all agree
that in "the last days" the Messiah will appear on earth to judge the
living and the resurrected dead after which he will rule over the earth for a
long period (eternally for the Jews and for a thousand years for the
Christians). (For the Jews and Moslems it will be his first coming and for
Christians it will be his second.) In
the Messianic Age men will "beat their swords into plowshares, and their
spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore." (Isa.
2:4).
Preceding the appearance of the Messiah,
however, will be a period of worldwide tribulation "such as has not been from
the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been shortened, no
human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect
those days will be shortened." (Matt. 24:21-22). Even prior to the period of tribulation Jesus
told his disciples:
"You will hear of wars and rumors of
wars; see that
you are
not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end
is not
yet. For nation will rise against
nation, and
kingdom
against kingdom, and there will be famines and
earthquakes
in various places; all this is but the
beginning
of the birth pangs [of the new age]". (Matt.
24:6-8)
And
"But understand this,
that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of
money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, grateful,
unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good,
treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than
lovers of God, holding the form of
religion but denying the power of it." (2 Tim. 3:1-5)
Anyone who reads today's newspapers or
watches television will have to agree that we are now living in such a
period. Still, as Jesus tells his
disciples in his discourse on the
Concomitant with a growing awareness among
knowledgeable professionals about an impending world crisis there are growing
numbers of people who have begun to enunciate the philosophy necessary for a
revolutionary change in our traditional political, economic and social
structures. These changes are so
radically different from the present notions of sovereign nation states,
outdated economic systems, etc. that they are being described by their
protagonists as a new paradigm, a new level of consciousness, a new world view
- in short, a "New Age" way of thinking. Not surprisingly, these views are being
enunciated by an "avant garde" which could be characterized as
antiestablishment, liberal and humanistic as opposed to those in favor of the
status quo, ultraconservatives, and those whose religion admits little or no
tolerance for the views of others differing from their own. While a new world system has yet to emerge,
many national leaders, including our own, are talking in terms of a "new
world order".
Not only are the exponents of the "New
Age" philosophy expressing the need for radically different political,
economic and social structures, but they are saying that these institutions can
only be transformed if the individuals within them are transformed. As Marilyn Ferguson tells us in her book,
"The Aquarian Conspiracy" (J. P. Tarcher,
Inc., 1980, p.118): "More than a decade
ago [the 1960's] Eric Fromm was
warning that no great radical idea can survive unless it is embodied in
individuals whose lives are the message.
The transformed self is the medium.
The transformed life is the message."
This idea of the need for a transformed
life is not new - far from it. It is a
basic theme of all major religions. For
example, more than 2,500 years ago God through the prophet Ezekiel told the
Jewish people, who had been driven out of their homeland:
"For I will take you from among the
heathen, and
gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into
your own land. . . . A new heart also will I give you, and
a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take
away
the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a
heart of flesh. And
I will put my Spirit within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my
judgments, and do them." (Ezekiel 36:24-27)
Similarly, the prophet Jeremiah wrote:
"After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my
law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God,
and they shall be my people." (Jeremiah 31:33) Such a transformed life is what the gospel
of the New
Testament is all about -
that by faith and through the grace of God we are able to crucify our sinful
nature and by the agency of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, be reborn with a
new heart, a new mind and a new spirit within us.
As
"Through
him [the Christ] we have obtained access to
this
grace in which we stand . . [by means of which] God's
love has
been poured into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit which has been given to us." (Romans 5:2-5)
"Even the mystery which hath been hid
from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: to whom
God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the
Gentiles which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Col. 1:26-7)
"Let this mind be in you which was
also in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 2:5)
And Jesus himself tells us that the way to
be transformed or converted is to give up the life of the natural man and be
born a second time as a spiritual one:
"He
who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses
his life
for my sake will find it." (Matt. 10:39)
Hinduism, the major religion in
Similarly, "Islam", the name
Mohammedans use for their religion, means "submission" - a surrender
of one's personal will to the will of their Supreme God, Allah; and the essence
of Judaism is a submission of the individual to the laws of Moses, as written in
the first five books
of the Bible and later expanded and interpreted in the
Torah.
Although both Judaism and Christianity
subscribe to the moral code contained in the ten commandments handed down by
God to Moses on Mount Sinai, only Christians believe that salvation (the
conversion from the natural to the spiritual man) does not depend on the coming
of a
future Messiah. To
achieve salvation in this life a Christian believes it is only necessary that
you: (1) renounce your former life (the natural man); (2) repent and be
baptized with water (symbolic of the washing away of all past sins); and (3)
accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
As
"Behold,
now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the
day of salvation." (2 Cor.
6:2)
13:46-7).
"In less than a generation began a
series of events
that not
only sealed the fate of Judaism but crystallized
the form
it was to assume for the centuries to come.
In
the year
70 [A.D.] the Roman armies under Titus besieged
slavery
its inhabitants to the number of half a million."
(John
A. Hardon, "Religions of the World:, Vol. 1, Image
Books, 1968, p.256). Thus, once
again were the Jews
forced
into exile from the land which God had promised
Abraham
and the other patriarchs would be theirs forever.
From
the
earth. "Some remains discovered a
few years ago seem
to
indicate their presence in far-off
(Encyclopedia
The Jews were not able to reclaim their
"promised land" until the United ations
proclaimed a Jewish state in 1948, nearly 1900 years since the destruction of
their temple in Jerusalem and their dispersion (called by them "The
Diaspora") throughout the nations of the world. Their return from exile
into their own land was prophesied by Ezekiel nearly 2500 years ago:
"And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I
will take the children of
whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side,
and bring them into
their own land: And I will make them
one nation in the land upon the mountains of
Eze. 37:21-22)
Their ruler is to be their long awaited
Messiah. Christians believe this will be the return of Jesus. Before his second
coming, however, Jesus tells us that "the sun will be darkened, and the
moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the
powers of the heavens will be shaken." (Matt. 24:29) Likewise, the prophet Isaiah reminds us:
"Behold, the day of the Lord comes,
cruel, with wrath
and fierce anger, to make the earth a desolation and to
destroy its sinners from it.
For the stars of the heavens
and their constellations will not give their light; the
sun will be dark at its rising and the moon will not shed
its light." (13:9-10). . . . "I will make the
heavens
tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at
the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce
anger." (
"Behold, the Lord maketh
the earth empty, and maketh
it waste,
and turneth it upside down, and scattereth
abroad
the inhabitants thereof (24:1) ..... for the
windows
from on high are open, and the foundations of the
earth do
shake. The earth is utterly broken down,
the
earth is
clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.
The
earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall
be
removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof
shall be
heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise
again."
(24:18-20)
While it is true that many passages in the
Bible may be interpreted symbolically and metaphorically as well as literally,
there is substantial evidence that worldwide
catastrophic events have occurred many times in the long history
of the earth. Perhaps the best
documented is that which occurred some 65 million years ago causing the sudden
extinction of the dinosaurs and marking the end of the Cretaceous period. A thin layer (only half an inch thick) of
red-brown clay containing an unusual amount of iridium, a material commonly
found in meteorites, was found all over the world overlaying the remains of the
giant reptiles. Scientists therefore now
believe that this disaster was caused by a giant meteor or comet which struck
the earth with the force of many thousands of nuclear bombs. (Interestingly,
the original meaning of the word, "disaster", was "the evil
influence of a celestial body".)
They even have evidence that it landed in the
Other dramatic, but less publicized,
catastrophes have occurred in more recent times. According to Professor Frank C. Hibben in his book, "The Lost Americans", some
forty million animals lost their lives in a violent cataclysm that encompassed
nearly all of the northern
hemisphere at the end of the Pleistocene period (around 12,000
years ago):
"This was no ordinary extinction of a
vague geological period which fizzled to an uncertain end. The death was catastrophic and all-inclusive.
. . . The large animals that gave their name to the period [the mammoths]
became extinct. Their death marked the
end of an era."
(As
found in John White, "Pole Shift", Berkley Books, 1982, p. 23).
Many of these behemoths (some were fourteen
feet tall) discovered in the frozen tundra of
could account for such a sudden and violent change in
climate? The late Dr. Immanuel
Velikovsky tells us that the answer lies in a catastrophic shifting of the
earth's axis:
"The evidence is overwhelming that the
great global
catastrophes
were either accompanied or caused by shifting
of the
terrestrial axis or by a disturbance in the diurnal
[rotation] and annual [revolution] ... of the earth."
(From
his
"Earth in Upheaval" as found in J. White, op. cit., p.126)
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