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October 30, 2007

Spooky Optimism - Renaming The Universe

As Published On
→ The Out-Lawyer’s Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1

→The Bridge to Being Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog2/  

→ The Human conspiracy Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog3
And
The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com
All contents, unless otherwise indicated are
Copyright © 2005, 2006 and 2007 by Jay B. Gaskill
Permission to publish, distribute or print all or part of this article (except for personal use) is needed. [Permission for use in group discussions is almost always routinely given.]

Please contact Jay B. Gaskill, attorney at law, via e mail at law@jaygaskill.com


 

 spook and friend

 


Spook & Friend

October 31, 2007

SPOOKY OPTIMISM-
RENAMING THE UNIVERSE

 

My new article, Renaming the Universe (linked below in PDF format), fits into a larger schema, one that knits together elements of an integrated natural world view with a ‘faith-friendly’ world model, in which deity hovers within and outside all that is, seen or unseen.  My latest piece doesn’t require the reader to jump wholeheartedly into the realm of conventional religious belief, but it is an intelligent rebuttal to the “accidentalist” and “heartless void” school of “life, the universe and everything”.  That view posits a soulless, mechanistic universe into which we somehow appeared by some absurdist cosmic accident. It was eloquently, if bleakly summarized the atheist-scientist, the late Steven Jay Gould, when he wrote this in a 1997 article in the New York Review of Books:

 

“The radicalism of natural selection lies in its power to dethrone some of the deepest and most traditional comforts of Western thought, particularly the notion that nature's benevolence, order, and good design, with humans at a sensible summit of power and excellence, proves the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent creator who loves us most of all (the old-style theological version), or at least that nature has meaningful directions, and that humans fit into a sensible and predictable pattern regulating the totality (the modern and more secular version).

 

“To these beliefs Darwinian natural selection presents the most contrary position imaginable. Only one causal force produces evolutionary change in Darwin’s world: the unconscious struggle among individual organisms to promote their own personal reproductive success—nothing else, and nothing higher (no force, for example, works explicitly for the good of species or the harmony of ecosystems)….

 

“Darwin’s system should be viewed as morally liberating, not cosmically depressing. The answers to moral questions cannot be found in nature’s factuality in any case, so why not take the ‘cold bath’ of recognizing nature as nonmoral, and not constructed to match our hopes? After all, life existed on earth for 3.5 billion years before we arrived; why should life's causal ways match our prescriptions for human meaning or decency?”

 

In Renaming the Universe, I raise several points, among them:

When we examine the large scale cosmological pattern (Big Bang to Big Civilization), played in fast-forward, the sense that we are observing something like a tropism is compelling.  The emergence of proto-intelligence seems to lead directly to the emergence of the real thing. Random processes are involved, but it does not seem to be an arbitrary development. Why? Generative changes are taking place in a universe that allows randomness and indeterminate processes in the context of an overall governing order. Why?

Why, indeed.  For the article, please go to:  http://jaygaskill.com/ReNamingTheUniverse.pdf .

JBG

 

 

Posted by U2RGood at 02:35 PM |

October 24, 2007

Will Religion Survive the 21st Century?

As Published On
→ The Out-Lawyer’s Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1
→The Bridge to Being Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog2/  
→ The Human conspiracy Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog3
And
The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com
All contents, unless otherwise indicated are
Copyright © 2005, 2006 and 2007 by Jay B. Gaskill
Permission to publish, distribute or print all or part of this article (except for personal use) is needed. [Permission for use in group discussions is almost always routinely given.]
Please contact Jay B. Gaskill, attorney at law, via e mail at law@jaygaskill.com

 

Introducing my new article (all 11k words)

http://www.jaygaskill.com/Renaissance.pdf  

 

This is about the future of religion in the rest of the 21st Century.  I have predicted a religious renaissance, but that may be a product of my innate optimism. In truth, the outcome is not certain.  The downside could be a bloody Dark Age, one that will make that bloody 20th century appear by contrast like some idyllic cakewalk.
In the 1920’s Albert Schweitzer wrote that “The world presents the ghastly spectacle of a universal will to live divided against itself.” (This was taken from his long out of print book, “The Philosophy of Civilization”, first published in 1923.)
Today we might observe that the modern world presents us with the specter of a universal religious sensibility violently divided against itself.
As we witness on the nightly news those “ghastly spectacles” of the carnage wrought by one religious sect against otherwise innocent “apostates”, we are entitled to a measure of pessimism.
Like the Buddha, Dr. Schweitzer embraced an ethos of comprehensive compassion for all sentient creatures.  His “reverence for life” ethos was based on a core evaluation of unity, the result of the same reality glimpse that has informed mystics for millennia. Schweitzer was appalled at the vision of living, sentient creatures locked in a Darwinian struggle against each other, playing out the same fight to the death over and over again. This is “Nature’s Drama”. It still fascinates and repels schoolchildren watching those predator-prey killing scenarios on the National Geographic or Animal Planet cable channels. I believe that if our species did not have a functioning religion we would have to create one. Without religion – or a good facsimile, daily human life would resemble those brutal scenes on Animal Planet. 
One of the most important developing social conditions in the Twenty First Century is the ongoing weakening of hereditary-based coercion and other social pressures supporting religious affiliation.  A free market in religion has arrived. And not all religions will survive in the new environment.
In my new article (linked below), I identify seven ways that 21st Century religion must earn its keep. By that measure, religion is in danger of flunking out…
But my optimism is based on a new development that is already beginning to change minds.  Am I onto something here?
For the entire article, in PDF format, go to this link ▼

 

 

 http://www.jaygaskill.com/Renaissance.pdf   

 

 

10-25-07

THE CASE FOR

A 21st CENTURY RELIGIOUS RENAISSANCE

And Why Now Would Be a Good Time

By
Jay B. Gaskill
Introduction:
In this article, I address the future of religion in this century. Many of my secular friends are dimly aware of the need to shore up the foundations of the ethical systems that support civilization, what I call “the moral infrastructure,” but they remain clueless as how that can actually happen. 
JBG

Posted by U2RGood at 07:23 PM |


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