Purpose-Reality-Meaning-Life & catboxes: Science and spirituality

The Source of Religions

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:02:46 GMT

The Invention of Religions

Don Ray

This morning I have some sense of things unfolding within the Purpose. Perhaps I have that sense this morning because everything seems so totally hosed up in my life, and I desperately need that sense of “it will be OK, it’s all for a reason”.

There is always that question, how much of our faith and belief arises out of simple desperation, for without faith and belief we could not go on.

I don’t subscribe to such a theory though, at least not usually.

Sure, we may convolute our beliefs to conveniently ease our pain and make ourselves the ultimate winners over the bad guys and guarantee that we go to Heaven. The fine details of our beliefs, at which altar we burn candles and to which saint we pray, certainly appear to outsiders as purely self-contrived hokum.

But I believe that overall, “believing” in the first place does not arise from simply a desperate mental gymnastic providing escape from our wretched worldly condition. For you see, it would be far easier to simply not care about our condition. A huge portion of our misery arises from grief and loss and emptiness and loneliness. If we are going to look for a way out of our misery via mental gymnastics, then it would be far easier to simply cease to care enough to grieve and sorrow, instead of contriving elaborate models of gods and heavens, models that by their nature must fly in the face of worldly common sense. Of course many people do resort to this former recourse, turning off their feelings, compassion, and connection as a way to avoid the otherwise inevitable, overwhelming grief and sorrow.

But of course there is still that inconvenient little matter of our own death, and our programmed fear of that death. That fear of our own annihilation is not so readily turned off by whim and wish. So that fear of oblivion certainly provides ample motive to create elaborate models of afterlives and heavens.

So is that the source of all our religions? We’re simply too scared to face the unavoidable reality of our pending demise so, like frightened children, we concoct elaborate tales and models and faiths to ease our blind date with death?

That premise is actually hard to argue against. Without question, uncountable masses have for millennia engaged in ritual, sacrifice, and general towing of the social line out of fear of eternal oblivion or hell. As one of the few inhibiting influences on our enthusiastic propensity for interpersonal larceny and violence, belief in a hereafter has played a pivotal role in fostering at least the occasional fleeting blossoming of civilizations, such as they are. But “blossoming civilizations” digresses to a different topic for another time.

Returning to the premise that simple cowardice about the prospect of the eternal demise of our own personal consciousness underlies the foundation of mythologies and religions, we need to look more closely at the nature of true faith.

I have long argued that a significant number of the people in church, synagogue, temple, or mosque on any given morning are not even remotely committed to the beliefs represented by that institution. Their participation simply provides an insurance policy, their alms paying the premiums, to ensure entry into paradise.

That promise of eternal life is the greatest marketing pitch of all time, putting to shame even the promise of boundless sex that comes with every soda, soap, and sports car sold today. You better believe, that heaven and eternal life sales pitch has, does, and will pack the house on Sabbath morning.

But if we look closer at those people on their knees on Sunday, Saturday, or Friday morning, we see some, in fact, more than a few, for whom the ritual and liturgy and rules and regulations are not actually the most important thing. We see people that don’t just follow the rules about “don’t do this and don’t think that”, but proactively do actions, actions of senseless compassion and irrational generosity.

We see devotees for whom their religion is not belief and guidelines, but a way of living, a way of bringing their God into the world. We see people not assaulting others’ lives in the name of religion, but giving their own lives in the name of a spirit of compassion.

We see people not seeking to please their God by robes, rites, and ritual, but joyfully seeking to invite their God into their hearts, lives, and activities.

In how such lives are led we see a compassionate faith that goes far beyond superficial religion.

This we cannot explain by reference to a fear of death that motivated myths of Heaven.

In the cold, analytical evaluation of beliefs, religions, and institutions, humanity’s almost universal fear of personal end can certainly be invoked as a pretty darned significant motivator for tales of gods eternal and paradise never ending.

But such evaluation of history of religion cannot experience, cannot feel, that core of faith that goes far beyond mere self-preservation. Inarguably, fear of death makes for one heck of a marketing opportunity for any religion peddling eternal life. But in the eyes, hearts, souls, giving, compassion, warmth, tolerance and ready forgiveness of some of the faithful, we experience factors that do not lend themselves to ready analysis based on logic of worldly needs.

We find something more, something deeper, a deeply personal, selfless willingness to sacrifice that arises not from mere recitation of credos.

In that which is intangible and immeasurable, in a gentle touch, in an unconditional welcome, we find the essence that testifies to the foundations that underlie spiritual awareness. From that foundation, into the world and distorted by the world, grow our various religious institutions with their structures and systems that must accommodate our fears and human nature.

That foundation of nascent spiritual awareness speaks of Truth, and Spirit, and Source, and the nature of our relationship to that Truth, Spirit, and Source. That foundation, though often well hidden and disguised, underlies much of what we call “religion”.

Much of the history of church and religion can indeed be analyzed by, and in its superficial forms explained by, the sciences of sociology, psychology, and anthropology.

But at the intensely personal level, that level of individual Choice of how to respond to your world, your life, and the person standing before you, we come face to face with those foundational issues of spirit. In the many moments of each day when we choose whether to strive for deep awareness of that living, breathing, feeling person before us; when we choose whether to look up at the heavens or down at our own feet; when we choose whether to open to whatever might lie beyond us or to remain closed in our own needs and fears, then we share a moment that every human has, does, and will experience.

Those are the moments of personal awareness of Spirit, even if dim and initially unrecognized, that through human history have given birth to faiths borne not of fear, but of courage.

Key terms: "development of religions"; "fear of death"; "eternal life"; "invention of religions"; "reason for religions"; "purpose of religions"; "sociology of religion"; "evolution of religions"; "psychology of religion"

Don Ray

S.D.G.

Carried by the Tides of Life

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 23:41:22 GMT

Key words: Meaning_of_life; nature_of_life; purpose_of_life; river_of_life

Meaning of the river of life

Don Ray

Humanity, as a whole and individually, is simply carried along in great tides and currents of interaction, reacting to the inputs and relationships and circumstances of the moment. Even the seemingly independent and innovative actions that seem to redirect the great currents can in fact be found to be rooted in compiled experience and personal history of those involved.

It is only in the aggregate that tiny unpredictable actions of individual freewill choice become manifest in discernable influence.

And in this great, dynamic, unstoppable cascade of events, relentlessly and irrevocably moving per the dictates of time, does the individual droplet of humanity possess any importance whatsoever? Is it only the great flow of events that carries us along in which we find meaning? Or conversely, is the torrent and cascade actually at the service of the individuals? Is the destiny of the river to reach that next sea, or is it actually to carry the individuals, and all Purpose and meaning is found not in the great course and flow, but in each individual, each focal point of connections, relationships, and interactions that in their sum define the very essence of the river?

We are carried by events, but carried not just to a river’s mouth, but to our own self, our essence, created in the course of the rapids and falls that shape and sculpt, or more accurately said, give us the opportunity to shape and sculpt, our souls.

Don Ray S.D.G.

Morphing universes

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 02:41:26 GMT

The Big Bang, the appearance of life, evolution……

God does play dice! But the dice are loaded!

Don Ray

Morphing Universes

Don Ray

Through the ages, humanity’s view of the universe has regularly changed, sometimes painstakingly over centuries of discovery, sometimes violently during a few days of invasion by foreigners with different gods.

Greeks saw fire and water and earth. Asians saw a giant turtle. Our scientists see rippling sub-nuclear strings and curved dimensions....but wait a moment.....we have a bulletin......, this month "strings" have, for the moment, fallen out of favor.

It seems the height of hubris to think we have arrived at the final answer, the inarguable Truth, that which will stand verified and substantiated as future millennia pass in review.

If honestly and objectively assessed, one would have to conclude from humanity’s panoply of universes that the only certainty is that in a few centuries at most, and more likely in a few months, our “sure and certain foundation of reality” will once again change its ephemeral costume.

Again, if considered honestly and objectively, one would have to admit that for the average person making their way to the office, or school, or field, or pyramid, or altar, or hospital, that day’s grand conceptions for the form of the universe matter not a whit.

Well, maybe those models of the universe matter a little, or else the pyramid and altar wouldn’t exist in the first place. But when one’s child is sick, and you’re hungry, and you wonder how well your tribe or nation’s army is keeping the threatening invaders or terrorists at bay, all those universes and their abstract models and their descriptive equations don’t really mean a great deal.

In moments of crisis and terror, in moments of love and embrace, all is the same, and always has been the same, and all the images and models and structures and equations of all the universes wither into inconsequential dust.

Surely there, in the anguish and joy, passion and compassion of the human spirit, surely there resides a trustworthy and more enduring conception of reality than all our fleeting universes dictated by doctrine and equations.

So let us playfully calculate our equations, let our curiosity explore with happy abandon the infinite possibilities for fleeting universes awaiting our momentary discovery……and let us humbly acknowledge a reality deeper and unchanging, awaiting our Choice in each moment of life.

Don Ray

S.D.G.

Title fight: Science versus Spirituality

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 03:22:03 GMT

In the light trunks, hailing from academia and the Enlightenment, the Scientific Method. In the dark drunks, challenger and former champion, Religion and Spirituality. Now you know the (new) rules, so shake hands, return to your corners, and come out………..embracing.

You are the center of the universe!

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 03:20:25 GMT

Look at the shape of the Universe from every individual’s perspective! You are at the center! You are the focus of a perfect symmetry! All time comes to you! You are the leading edge of time itself! The most distant past lies at the edge of your universe! All events through all time coalesce onto your consciousness at this moment of now! This is not poetry or allegory or religion or spirituality, this is the literal, incontrovertible fact of physics!

Saint Darwin

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 03:18:07 GMT

Saint Darwin

Don Ray

Imagine an infinite God. Imagine that infinite God choosing to throw open the doors of life, creating every possible physical life form, limiting them only in that they possess physically defined forms in order to allow the life forms to exist as physical individuals instead of just a big blob of ethereal ghost goo.

When I say “every possible physical life form”, I mean just that, every possible. That’s a pretty tall order.

How might someone, even God, go about this?….every possible life form, every possible combination, every possible structure, shape, and size.

Before discussing “how”, we should briefly ponder the magnanimity of such a Creation. This is not Creation bounded and constrained to fit a preconceived, convenient wish list. This is not the model town we might construct as kids, built to accommodate our desires and play plans. This is a Creation of glorious free giving, every form allowed existence. One might even see it as a magnanimous, selfless, loving Creation.

But, back to the “how” of creating every possible individual living form.

What might such a Creation look like? All those critters, coming into being, bizarre and mysterious, and bubbling up out of the same soup, with no constraints on form, millions upon billions upon trillions of combinations.

What a sight it would be!

What a sight it is.

For that is exactly the description that fits the development of reproducing, replicating, mutating life forms through the history and the present day of this planet. (No need at this point to discuss other planets, as we have plenty to ponder just on this little blue dust mote.)

If you seriously consider what it would look like to see God in action creating every possible combination of life, magnanimously applying no limits, Creation unbounded, you will realize that you would see life forms created, modified, adapted, changed, evolved, in every imaginable way…..which is precisely and exactly what we do in fact see.

From seeds of precisely defined physical constants, named after Planck, Boltzmann, et al, arise molecular structures that kink and twist and form nucleic acids, which then are unleashed to combine, recombine, modify, link, connect, break, fracture, reconnect, alter and mutate with unbounded statistical possibility.

We see in the history of our planet the infinite variety and potential of life that surely we must expect from an infinite God.

Random mutations?….Natural selection?….Evolution?…..of course! These speak not of godless chance and accident. These testify of infinite potential and every possibility, exactly the form we should expect life to take if cast forth upon the universe by an infinite, unbounded God.

Such a small and unimaginative God it would be that created a few stagnant life forms, limited, finite in number, unchanging.

All the evidence of evolution that we see in Nature triumphantly sings of God unbounded and generous, a God in love with Life itself, a God manifest in Life, Creation ongoing!

And far, far back, at the beginning of it all, the Foundation Miracle, parameters, laws of the universe, Fine Structure Constant, the geometry of light, the gravitational constant, forces strong and weak, symmetries rigorous and symmetries broken, the very foundations of space and time, that would allow the stunning miracle of chains of Deoxyribonucleic Acid ( DNA ) that could, that would, that do, randomly connect, bond, link, and intertwine, in every possible combination, allowing life, precious, miraculous life, to take on every shape imaginable and infinite shapes not imaginable, the living God Itself manifest in life unbounded in form or time.

“Random selection” is the stuff of infinite life sprung of an infinite God, a miracle of a handful of physics parameters compelling in its mystery and wonder, a miracle displayed right before our eyes in its stunning simplicity that leads to infinite complexity.

The devout and religious people of the world should raise the discoverers of natural selection to pedestals of sainthood, for they have proven that indeed God did not run out of imagination after a mere few million species created in a one- off snap of fingers that exhausted all creativity.

Images of Heaven somewhere above the sky and of life forms contained in the Garden and in the Ark are convenient images our finite, spiritually childlike minds could comprehend, important in the gradual revelation of Glory. But now the astronomers and astrophysicists peering into the depths of the universe and back to near the beginning of time, and the biologists and paleontologists peering into our genetic history, have revealed to us Creation ongoing and God unbounded.

Might the discomfort of some with Big Bang and Evolution arise not because of threat those concepts pose to faith, but because such unbounded images reveal the Creator as even greater, more awesome, and therefore more challenging to our small imaginations?

Don RayS.D.G.

Infinite Implications of One

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 03:07:50 GMT

Infinite Implications of One

Don Ray

I remain fascinated by the fact that particles, waves, and energy all blend together at the smallest size scales. I thrill at the thought that at high enough temperatures all forces become one.

This scientifically irrefutable testimony to the oneness of all, to one source, to individual elements and structure arising from a single Wholeness, surely the spiritual implications of this cannot be simply ignored.

Even in our vastly expanded universe, still the physics of quantum wave functions and relativity testify that no thing is fully alone, nothing is fully separate, entities do not and cannot exist with absolute isolation.

So obvious are the implications of this that it is with greatest frustration that I face the fact that the spiritual searchers cannot understand the physics and the scientists cannot understand the spiritual aspects. I am frustrated not with them, but with myself for my inability to succinctly digest both sides to make them clear to the other.

All arises from a unified Source! Hence all remains fully part of that Source!

Even space and time are not, in and of themselves, a thing of existence! They are simply geometries that define the connections among diverse components of the Source, and those geometries we perceive as spatial and temporal separations.

The One Source allows ever greater opportunity for existence of individual entities, hence space and time appear to expand.

In this physics resides stunning Truth and revelations for our perception of reality, revelations I suspect it will take many generations for humanity to comprehend, if ever.

The physicists do a grave disservice to themselves and the populace as a whole if they keep these wonders entombed in cold logic and grave mathematics, discouraging playful and excited exploration of their greater implications.

Don Ray

S.D.G.

Big Bang or Big Opportunity

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 02:59:20 GMT

Void Within the Whole

Copyright 2007

Don Ray

The commonly held image is that “before” space-time, “before/beyond/outside” the Singularity that birthed the Big Bang, before inflating dimensions, there was Nothing. Creation occurred, “something” came into existence, existence itself became possible. (Mind you, we’re focusing on “commonly held image”, ignoring the fact that “before” and the tense of any verbs is rendered meaningless when discussing anything beyond the time structure of our universe.)

It turns out that the presumption of the Big Bang as “existence appearing in nothingness” is completely unnecessary, unjustifiable, and potentially misleading.

The inflating dimensions, the blossoming of space-time, can just as well be perceived as an opening up of nothingness, the expansion of a void, the initiation of emptiness, a making of room for…..well, for particles, planets and people.

In this perspective this blossoming of three spatial dimensions to eventually create that dark emptiness that surrounds our planet can be seen as occurring within a greater surrounding existence. (Oh, for the moment let’s not quibble about trying to visualize the dimensional structure and physics of something surrounding our entire universe.)

Imagine the Nothingness of space-time created out of, and in the midst of, an existent Source. Only then did room exist for unfolding events leading to protons and pions, planets and people.

Here, in the very fabric of interlaced dimensions, resides one of the biggest clues to the overarching laws that govern our universe. Space, volume, and void unfolded to form an emptiness that could then be filled with individual, separate, distinct entities.

Beyond the initial Singularity need not be “Nothing”. It is on this side of the singularity that empty Nothing appeared, albeit initially rather densely packed with annihilating matter/anti-matter and the ensuing radiation storm.

Obviously it’s not easy to come by meaningful analogies to illustrate multidimensional, extra-universal concepts. But for lack of anything better, please consider the following clumsy attempt.

Imagine the formation of a geode. Deep within an endless mountainous matrix of rock, titanic forces induce a small crack, through which acidic waters flow, forming a tiny void, an opening that grows larger but remains within the mountainous matrix of rock. This represents the inflating dimensions that give rise to our space.

The process continues. Solutions of suspended minerals present in the void allow crystals to begin to form, condensing out according to bonding angles and physical laws that define their geometries and growth rates, crystals that could never have formed in the solid rock matrix, though all the constituents were present.

These beautiful growing crystals in the geode correspond to the physical reality we experience in this world, interaction events growing through time according to the geometries dictated by the speed of light.

As I said, it is a clumsy analogy. But with or without analogy, I would hope to prompt a sharpened awareness of just how infinite are the possibilities beyond the initial Singularity, and no a priori reason exists to assume “nothing” before the Big Bang.

Perhaps a better analogy would simply be to view the Big Bang as a photonegative of our usual conceptual image. Instead of a bright flash in the midst of dark nothingness, reverse that shading and imagine the bright flash replaced instead by an expanding void of space (and geometrically connected time) in the middle of a surrounding (though imperceptible) essence.

I would also hope to shift our mental focus on the Big Bang away from the unimaginable energy, the unfathomable density of the condensing matter, the freezing out of today’s four forces from the original unified force, and instead pause to consider the momentous meaning of the inflating dimensions, the space itself, the astounding and contingent void necessary for existence of anything “individual”.

Don Ray

S.D.G.