So theories about big bangs, evolution, chaos, plate tectonics, relativity and quanta have collectively revealed a dynamic universe, evolving and expanding, exploding with ceaseless novelty and punctuated equilibrium, yet so ordered and predictable that the editors of The Farmers' Almanac know the precise time of sunset at 40 degrees North Latitude next October 27th. "What immortal eye conceived this awe-filled symmetry?"
But almost imperceptibly, in the past 60-70 years, people have started to notice that the line now appears to bend so that physics and metaphysics are connecting and seen as a single subject. The physical and the metaphysical, science and faith, mass and energy, natural and supernatural; nature and grace are the yin/yang of a balanced and harmonic uni-verse.
And bending the Spectrum of Knowledge, reconnecting physics and metaphysics, has led to deeper and deeper research into the nature of consciousness itself, and maybe eventually to soul and spirit.
Mystical insights from the past have begun to make sense in our scientific age. In the 14th century, German mystic Meister Eckhart said that in a meditative state the seeker and the sought become one. In the 20th century, German physicist Werner Heisenberg said that when conducting the double-slit measurement of quantum activity, the observer and observed make up a single system. Medieval metaphysics and quantum physics are increasingly coming to the same conclusion from very different times and directions.
Now, merge that research in consciousness with work in Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity... Oh brave, new, terrifying, blessed world!?
Science and technology allowed us to develop rapidly from data processing to information processing to knowledge processing in the last half century. The larger question is whether we can develop wisdom processing in time to make sense of it all, and use it to our collective benefit.
Some physicists are even beginning to suspect the universe is hologram, where each thing contains the entire cosmos. Along with that is a growing suspicion the universe may be conscious, self-aware; perhaps managing its own evolution. So did mind evolve from matter after the Big Bang? Or was it mind what made the cosmos start?
During the 1990s, three priests asked me to hear their confession. They said they no longer believe the fables on which the dogma is built. But what are they to do? Leave their congregation?
Jesus was not a dogmatist; he preached ethics: be calm, be kind. Shuck the dogma, Holy Father, and be like a true and loving parent who wants to prepare the children to live successful and happy lives at home in the universe. Not in a place of banishment and fears, outside the gates of Eden.
"Rebuild my church." - Jesus to Francis of Assisi
Pope Francis, here is something that you and the Church can begin to undertake now, urgently, making good use of your bright minds, your communications skills and your global outreach. Focus all the Church's efforts to address the coming of catastrophic climate change. You are invested heavily in many global firms that damage the planet. Divest from them and tell them why. You have branch operations on every other street corner in the world, use them as local centers to help create local climate initiatives. Preach from every pulpit every Sunday. Get other denominations to join in this massive global effort. But, please, do NOT insist that Rome take the lead, as it did at the Parliament of the World Religions in 1893, nearly destroying it.
Every Church issue: salvation, sin, redemption, sacred/secular, pious/profane... They are all merely subsets of saving our home planet; saving sentience in our little corner of the galaxy. Whether we are the only intelligent civilization in the cosmos or one of a billion, we are precious, and we must not let our grandchildren die on a sweltering, scorched planet along with millions of other species.
God isn't dead; he never existed. At least not the crotchety old man on the marble throne painted on the walls of my parish church who stared at me, and scared me witless. That was a chimera created by old men in their own image and likeness.
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