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This site is part of the natural religion project The natural religion project A new theology A commentary on the Summa The theology company
Philosophy is written in this grand book - the universe, which stands continually open before our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and to read the alphabet in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics ... .Galilei, p 238.
Welcome to natural theology
The Roman Catholic Church
This site is the log of a trip from 'Catholicism' to 'natural religion'. It is part of a set of sites called the 'toward natural religion project', whose corporate front is the theology company pl. The I in these pages speaks through the mask (persona) of the theology company to maintain formal anonymity and interchangeability. This site is founded on human personal experience.
Theology was once considered the keystone of the sciences. Its position began to deteriorate with the scientific revolution that began about 500 years ago. New mathematical, empirical and critical methods both released and fed off the energy of industrialization. The resulting explosion of scientific knowledge and industrial power still engulfs us. One of the few areas relatively untouched by industrialization is traditional religious and theological belief. The paradoxical result seems to have been a revival of the old theologies within industrial communities.
I was brought up amidst Catholic theology, and so it is my natural starting point. This theology embraces traditions many thousands of years old. It emphasizes the vast difference between the eternal life of god and our own lives. The Catholic God is omniscient, omnipotent, infinite, etc, and the Church tells us that we live in a world fatally flawed by original sin. This doctrine has very important social, political and economic consequences.
Catholic theology is the fiction at the heart of a huge corporation, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), which has power over the minds and actions of approximately one billion people. Over two thousand years, the RCC has developed and embellished a 'history of salvation' which gives it a central role in God's plan.
The Church gained its power using this history, and strategies ranging from war and occupation to promises of eternal salvation in return for earthly obedience. My religious environment led me to trust Catholic belief, and I set out to live it in a religious order. I began to train for priesthood. I was convinced then that there is no salvation outside the Church,
This training opened my eyes to a whole new world of knowledge, which at first looked beautiful. Soon it began to clash with science I had learned at school. This conflict made me look around and eventually come to questions like: why does god have to be so different? Why can't this be god? Why do we need the Church?
Catholic theology has answers, of course. Answers built on a strong theoretical backbone that can be traced from the writings of Aristotle and Plato through Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas and Bernard Lonergan (and thousands of others) into the twentieth century. Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Lonergan.
This theoretical tradition confirms the Christian belief that God is wholly other. I began to see, however, that everything depends on your model of God; and that any model (eg the Bible) is a human fiction which must be tested against reality before it can be trusted.
My question struck at the heart of Catholic belief. The RCC is an authoritarian institution that claims the right to control human minds. It employs only true believers, so I was asked to leave.
Natural theology
Galileo opened our eyes to the 'book of nature'. This book assumed critical importance for theological modelling when Darwin's Origin of Species provided an explanation for our origins at least as plausible as the Book of Genesis. Darwin,Genesis.
Let us assume that the book of nature is also the book of god, and that for all practical purposes, god and our universe are one and the same. That is to say, the universe lives its own life and is not the product of something other. What follows?
First, we and our world are parts of god, divine and entitled to behave us such, although first we have to develop a new theology to see what 'divine' means, To me it means we must cast aside the ways of the puppet (master and slave) and take responsibility for our actions. This includes the responsibility of learning the consequences of our actions.
Second, theology can become a science in the modern sense of the word. Natural theology (think natural science) may consider every thought, feeling, action or event in the whole universe as revelation from and of the natural god. The data for natural theology are everything that happens, a vast treasury that outweighs countless ancient texts.
Science is not just observation. Modelling, the fitting of models to experience, and estimating the goodness of fit is also required. The purpose of this site is to present the personal motivation and development of a candidate model for theology. An important feature of this model is that it seems to be consistent with the idea that our universe is divine.
Bernard Lonergan's treatise Insight is a comprehensive twentieth century restatement of the metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas. Lonergan. Just one more step would bring Lonergan's metaphysics into the realm of science: we need a mathematical model that embraces both physics and metaphysics.
Lonergan's work shines with his observation that insights can build on insights to reach 'higher viewpoints'. The getting of wisdom is a recursive process in which each moment of inquiry builds on the moments before. Knowledge evolves. This suggests that we might model insight using recursive function theory, the theory of computation. Davis.
The theory of computation embraces the transformation theory used by quantum mechanics to describe the physical world.von Neumann., Dirac It also shows us how to expand the quantum mechanical description from the physical to the metaphysical realm. This in turn shows us where to look for God.
This dream model (stable name 'transfinite network') is very nice, but getting it down is a slow process. The toward natural religion project needs work to realize itself.
(revised 25 June 2007)
Further reading
Books
| Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books 1985 Amazon.com: 'This book is a must-read not only for students (broadly defined) of the social sciences, but also for politicians and bureaucrats, especially those in charge of military and foreign affairs. Axelrod's book is a tour-de-force in multi-method approaches. Although the author is a trifle repetitive and occasionally laborious, I think the profound content of the book far outweighs the minor inadequacies of its form. At the risk of sounding like a logical positivist, I would venture to say that Axelrod's approach offers hope for a bottom-up construction of cooperation in an uncertain world without a central authority.' Reeshad Dalal Amazon back |
| Cantor, Georg, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers (Translated, with Introduction and Notes by Philip E B Jourdain), Dover 1955 Jacket: 'One of the greatest mathematical classics of all time, this work established a new field of mathematics which was to be of incalculable importance in topology, number theory, analysis, theory of functions, etc, as well as the entire field of modern logic.' Amazon back |
| Cummins, Denise Dellarosa, and Colin Allen (editors), The Evolution of Mind, Oxford University Press 1998 Introduction: 'This book is an interdisciplinary endeavour, a collection of essays by ethologists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers united in the common goal of explaining cognition. . . . the chief challenge is to make evolutionary psychology into an experimental science. Several of the chapters in this volume describe experimental techniques and results consistent with this aim; our hope and intention is that they lead by example in the development of evolutionary psychology from the realm of speculation to that of established research program' Amazon back |
| Darwin, Charles, and Greg Suriano (editor), The Origin of Species, Gramercy 1998 Introduction: 'In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species has not been independently created, but has descended, like varieties, from other species.' (66) Amazon back |
| Davis, Martin, Computability and Unsolvability, Dover 1982 Preface: 'This book is an introduction to the theory of computability and non-computability ususally referred to as the theory of recursive functions. The subject is concerned with the existence of purely mechanical procedures for solving problems. . . . The existence of absolutely unsolvable problems and the Goedel incompleteness theorem are among the results in the theory of computability that have philosophical significance.' Amazon back |
| Dirac, P A M, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (4th ed), Oxford UP/Clarendon 1983 Jacket: '[this] is the standard work in the fundamental principles of quantum mechaincs, indispensible both to the advanced student and the mature research worker, who will always find it a fresh source of knowledge and stimulation.' (Nature) Amazon back |
| Galilei, Galileo, and Stillman Drake (translator), Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo: Including the Starry Messenger (1610 Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina) , Doubleday Anchor 1957 Amazon: 'Although the introductory sections are a bit dated, this book contains some of the best translations available of Galileo's works in English. It includes a broad range of his theories (both those we recognize as "correct" and those in which he was "in error"). Both types indicate his creativity. The reproductions of his sketches of the moons of Jupiter (in "The Starry Messenger") are accurate enough to match to modern computer programs which show the positions of the moons for any date in history. The appendix with a chronological summary of Galileo's life is very useful in placing the readings in context.' A Reader. Amazon back |
| Jones, Alexander (ed), The Jerusalem Bible, Darton Longman and Todd 1966 Editor's Foreword: '. . . The Bible . . . is of its nature a written charter guaranteed (as Christians believe) by the Spirit of God, crystallised in antiquity, never to be changed . . . . This present volume is the English equivalent of [La Bible de Jerusalem] . . . an entirely faithful version of the ancient texts which, in doubntful points, preserves the text established and (for the most part) the interpretation adopted by the French scholars in the light of the most recent researches in the fields of history, archaeology and literary criticism.' (v-vi) Amazon back |
| Lo, Hoi-Kwong, and Tim Spiller, Sandra Popescu, Introduction to Quantum Computation and Information, World Scientific 1998 Jacket: 'This book provides a pedagogical introduction to the subjects of quantum information and computation. Topics include non-locality of quantum mechanics, quantum computation, quantum cryptography, quantum error correction, fault tolerant quantum computation, as well as some experimental aspects of quantum computation and quantum cryptography. A knowledge of basic quantum mechanics is assumed.' Amazon back |
| Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight : A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '... Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding' Amazon back |
| Nicolis, G , and Ilya Prigogine, Self Organisation in Nonequilibrium Systems: From Dissipative Structures to Order through Fluctuations, Wiley Interscience 1977 General Introduction: 'The aim of the present monograph can ... be expressed as the studiy of self-organisation in non-equilibrium systems, characterised by the appearance of dissipative structures through the amplification of appropriate fluctuations. ... The natural approach to the problem of the emergence of new patterns is bifurcation theory. The purpose of this theory is to study the possible branching of solutions that may arise under certain conditions. We have tried to present a readable introduction to this rapidly expanding field ... Our main emphasis is in physical examples and simple but representative models, and our aim is to give the reader an idea of the variety of space-time structures that may arise through bifurcation. ... ' Amazon back |
| Schopenhauer, Arthur, The World as Will and Representation (Volume 1) (translated by E F J Payne), Dover 1969 Jacket: 'Arthur Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung is one of the most important philosophical works of the 19th century, the basic statement of one important stream of post-Kantian thought. It is without question Schopenhauer's greatest work, and, conceived and published before the philosopher was 30, and expanded 25 years later, it is the summation of a lifetime of thought. Amazon back |
| Shephard, Ben, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century, Harvard University Press 2001 'Ben Shephard has exhaustively combed through literature of all kinds concerning psychiatric breakdown in war, although he found both the Falklands and the Gulf campaigns deplorably unresearched. His book will be the standard work on the subject for a long time ahead, and it is as remarkable for its humanity and absorbing narrative as for its historical accuracy. It is a notable achivement.' Hugh Freeman Nature 409:139 11 January 2001. Amazon back |
| Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man, Collins 1965 Sir Julian Huxley, Introduction: 'We, mankind, contain the possibilities of the earth's immense future, and can realise more and more of them on condition that we increase our knowledge and our love. That, it seems to me, is the distillation of the Phenomenon of Man.' Amazon back |
| von Neumann, John, and Robert T Beyer (translator), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 1983 Jacket: '. . . a revolutionary book that caused a sea change in theoretical physics. . . . JvN begins by presenting the theory of Hermitean operators and Hilbert spaces. These provide the framework for transformation theory, which JvN regards as the definitive form of quantum mechanics. . . . Regarded as a tour de force at the time of its publication, this book is still indispensible for those interested in the fundamental issues of quantum mechanics.' Amazon back |
| Wiener, Norbert, Cybernetics or control and communication in the animal and the machine, MIT Press 1996 The classic founding text of cybernetics. Amazon back |
Links
| Aquinas Thomas Aquinas in English: A Bibliography THOMAS AQUINAS IN ENGLISH: A Bibliography Welcome! Select a category for a list of Latin titles, with clues in English, and then a Latin title for a list of its English versions. (For the most part, extracts are noted only in the absence of complete translations.) back |
| Aquinas Aquinas Latinus I intend to post here as many of Aquinas's Latin texts as I can. My own source is the CD-ROM version of Busa's Opera Omnia. back |
| Aristotle Index of /Aristotle Index of /Aristotle: The works of Aristotle online. back |
| Augustine Works, online Browse to Augustine of Hippo for a list of Augustine's works online. back |
| Lonergan The Bernard Lonergan Website 'A virtual place for collaboration in Lonergan studies. back |
| Plato Index of /Plato Index of /Plato, his works online. back |
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Related sites:
Concordat Watch
Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty
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