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... to restore theology to the mainstream of science
" ... Someone has to say, 'I'm sorry,' and begin again. Otherwise the old history corrupts the new and there is, in the end, no hope at all ..." (West p 85)
The Problem
Our basic global problem is warlordism at all scales ranging from the political superpowers to street and domestic bullies. The basic feature of warlords is that they earn a living not by constructing and marketing something useful, but by extortion through violence and corruption, taking the produce of others without payment.
Why does this happen? Why don't we all work together for our common good? The answer lies not in fallen human nature, but in our evolutionary history. Cosmology, physics and biology tells us that we are the result of a long evolutionary process that began from an initial singularity some thirteen billion years ago.
This evolution is by no means at an end; indeed, from a human point of view, our rate of change seems to be increasing all the time. Contemporary human evolution is concentrated in mental rather than biological space. While our nature remains relatively stable, our nurture is changing rapidly.
The invention of agriculture and the exploitation of fossil energy have fuelled an explosion in human population and human impact on the planet that was nowhere in sight for our African ancestors. These vast and obvious technological changes have been matched by equally great but less obvious changes in our understanding of ourselves and our world.
We are struggling to keep up with this rate of change, and many are suffering because the environment no longer supports them as it once did. This, we believe is a religious problem. It is religion that bonds large numbers of unrelated individuals into a community. Our problem is to replace outdated elements of religion with new ways to bond into a caring whole. It is painful, but necessary, to write off old ways. The pain becomes more bearable if it is clear that the new system will indeed be better.
Various evils have been named as the root of human suffering: the Fall, original sin, money, wealth, greed, corporate power, sex, overpopulation, materialism, individualism, ignorance, bloody mindedness, and so on. Let us lump them all under the heading 'system error'.
Error drives the search for knowledge. Although some may seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge, most of us are motivated to understand only when something is broken and needs fixing. It is disease that drives medical research and evil in general that leads us to spend time on theology and religion.
One cannot easily fix things without knowing how they work. A break in one tiny wire may stop a motor vehicle. For the average driver, such a defect is a mysterious and frustrating evil. An experienced mechanic, on the other hand, may ask a few questions about the manner of the vehicle's death and from the answers pinpoint and fix the trouble.
The growth of science has given us a a comprehensive view of the world. This has led to the conquest of many evils and some ideas about how to deal with others. The problem is that, despite all our wonderful technology, troubles seem to be multiplying faster than we can fix them.
The human system needs to be renovated. There is a need to bring our religious understanding up to par with our scientific understanding. The first step, we believe, is a new look at theology. I propose that we attack the problem of violence with a global theology that comprehends the whole of the world and shows us where we fit in.
Further reading
Books
| Archer, John , The Nature of Grief : The Evolution and Psychology of Reactions to Loss, Routledge 1999 Jacket: 'The Nature of Grief is an innovative and provocative new synthesis of material from evolutionary psychology, ethology and experimental psychology on the process of grief. It argues that grief is not an illness or a disorder but a natural reaction to losses of many kinds.' Amazon back |
| Bell, John S, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press 1987 Jacket: JB ... is particularly famous for his discovery of a crucial difference between the predictions of conventional quantum mechanics and the implications of local causality ... This work has played a major role in the development of our current understanding of the profound nature of quantum concepts and of the fundamental limitations they impose on the applicability of classical ideas of space, time and locality. Amazon back |
| Dawkins, Richard , The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin/Pelican 1976 Preface: '[Darwinism] is, indeed a remarkably simple theory; ... In essence it amounts simply to the idea that non-random reproduction where there is hereditary variation, has consequences that are far reaching if there is time for them to be cumulative ... ' Amazon back |
| Ehrlich, Paul R, Population Resources Environment: Issues in Human Ecology, W H Freeman and Company 1970 Jacket: 'This book is the first comprehensive, detailed analysis of the worldwide crisis of overpopulation and the resulting demands on food, resources and the environment. Taking a broad ecological approach, the Ehrlichs demonstrate that problems of modern society ... are closely interconnected and that together they constitute a challenge without precedent in human history.' Amazon back |
| Flannery, Timothy Fritjof, The Future Eaters: An ecological history of the Australasian land and people, George Brazilier 1994-1995 Introduction: '... biologists are finally discovering that evolution in Australia is not driven solely by nature 'red in tooth and claw'. Here a more gentle force - that of coadaptation - is important. This is because harsh conditions force individuals to cooperate to minimise the loss of nutrients ... Thus entire ecosystems have evolved in Australia that, when untampered with, recycle energy and nutrients in the most extraordinarily efficient ways. Aboriginal people have long understood this and have shaped their culture accordingly. Even the Europeans, with their code of mateship, are perhaps being shaped by these same forces.' Amazon back |
| Genesis, and Alexander Jones (editor), in The Jerusalem Bible, Darton Longman and Todd 1966 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God's spirit hovered over the water.' (I, 1-2) Amazon back |
| Khinchin, A I, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.' Amazon back |
| Philippians, The Letter of Paul to the Church at Philipi in The Jerusalem Bible, Darton Longman and Todd 1966 Paul wrote this letter from prison to accept gifts from the Philippians and to thank them. Introduction: 'The risen Lord opened [Paul's] mind to the truth of the Christian faith and revealed that he had chosen him to be the apostle to the pagans ... Philippi had been evangelized by Paul in 50 A.D. ... It is not particularly doctrinal, it is just a friendly letter, giving some news to his converts at Philippi, warning them against the 'bad workmen' who are ruining his work in other places and might turn on them next, and, above all, appealing for the unity of corporate humility.' (251, 260) Amazon back |
| Pierce, John Robinson, An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols Signals and Noise, Dover 1980 Jacket: 'Behind the familiar surfaces of the telephone, radio and television lies a sophisticated and intriguing body of knowledge known as information theory. This is the theory that has permitted the rapid development of all forms of communication ... Even more revolutionary progress is expected in the future.' Amazon back |
| Savitch, Walter J, The Formal Complexity of Natural Language, D Reidl 1987 Introduction: 'While the mathematical questions involved in defining context-free grammars and languages may have deterred some readers from looking closely at the question of whether natural language is context-free, we believe that the mathematical results needed can be covered rather quickly and that the more subtle and interesting questions are those concerned with how mathematics meshes with natural language as phenomenon and with linguistics as a discipline.' (ix) Amazon back |
| West, Morris, Daughter of Silence, Readers Book Club 1961 Amazon back |
| Wilson, Edward Osborne, Sociobiology: The new synthesis, Harvard UP 1975 Chapter 1: '... the central theoretical problem of sociobiology: how can altruism, which by definition reduces personal fitness, possibly evolve by natural selection? The answer is kinship. ... Sociobiology is defined as the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behaviour. ... It may not be too much to say that sociology and the other social sciences, as well as the humanities, are the last branches of biology waiting to be included in the Modern Synthesis.' Amazon back |
Papers
| Hairston Jr, Nelson G, "Rapid evolution revealed by dormant eggs", Nature, 401, 6752 , 30 September 1999, page 446. 'Lake Constance, in central Europe experienced a period of eutrophication (the biological effects of an input of plant nutrients) during the 1960s-70s, which caused an increase in the abundance of nutritionally poor or even toxic cyanobacteria. By hatching long dormant eggs of Daphnia galeata found in lake sediments, we show that the mean resistance of Daphnia genotypes to dietary cyanobacteria increased significantly during the eutrophication". back |
| Kumar, Sudhir, "A molecular timescale for vertebrate evolution", Nature, 392, 6679, 30 April 1998, page 917-920. Letters to Nature: 'A timescale is necessary for estimating rates of molecular and morphological change in organisms ... until recently the number of genes available for estimation of divergence time has been limited. Here we present divergence time estimates for mammalian orders and major lineages of vertebrates, from an analysis of 658 nuclear genes.. back |
| Nowak, Martin A, "Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring", Nature, 393, 6685, 11 June 1998, page 573-577. 'Theories of cooperation are based on kin selection (depending on genetic relatedness), group selection and reciprocal altruism. The idea of reciprocal altruism usually involves direct reciprocity: repeated encounters between the same individuals allow for the return of an altruistic act by the recipient. Here we present a new theoretical framework, which is based on indirect reciprocity, and does not require the same two individuals ever to meet again'. back |
Links
| Indigenous Cultures back |
| US Global Change Research Program US Global Change Data and Information System back |
Click on an "Amazon" link in the booklist at the foot of the page to buy the book, see more details or search for similar items
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