Editorial

Plato in the 21^st Century
Michael Cocks

An important assertion by St Paul:

Romans 1.19: For all that may be known of God by humanity lies plain before their eyes; indeed God himself has disclosed it to them. His invisible attributes, that is to say his everlasting power and deity have been visible, ever since the world began, to the eye of reason.

In Brief

I am an Anglican priest, and I still agree that we may find all that is necessary for our spiritual wholeness in the pages of Scripture. But a multitude of Christian sects and theologies says that if we are to have a solid basis for finding the gold in the Bible, we need to follow Paul's advice and look at the world of the physical and Spirit and think for ourselves. Now, formerly, in my thinking, I had been impressed with books about physics and mysticism, physics and consciousness and so on, and was a little evangelistic about them. Then, under the influence of Ken Wilber's Quantum Questions I am led to agree that QM physics is purely and simply a mathematics, manipulating symbols to show the relationships between events. That maths does nevertheless demonstrate non-locality and entanglement, which together with Chaos theory render obsolete the old machine like picture of things. But Wilber notes that Einstein, Heisenberg, de Broglie, Pauli, Eddington and Jeans all intuit an invisible and eternal realm of Forms, templates perhaps, patterns which order all in the visible world we know. They agree with Plato therefore. And therefore as well as being physicists they are mystics.

But then again I want to quarrel with Wilber about some important matters: firstly that he pays no attention to Psychic Research, which most certainly is a science, and which has established many things as fact about the relationships between Spirit and the physical. Secondly he misunderstood and spoke ill of Einstein's protégé David Bohm who makes sense of a great deal, by saying that there is a two way relationship between Spirit and the physical, and if we understand this, then we can also begin to understand about animal instincts, for example, or we can understand more about human souls, paranormal phenomena, and synchronicity. This is what I shall be exploring in this editorial.

Appended to the editorial I shall be quoting from Bohm's friend Rupert Sheldrake on instincts, Carl Jung on the Collective Unconscious, and the Archetypes. With regard to Synchronicity or Meaningful Coincidence, I quote from Maria von Franz, Victor Mansfield, Alan Vaughan, and F. David Peat.

What does it all add up to? We can reasonably say, just as Christian theologians over the centuries have been heavily influenced by Plato and his philosophy, all the thinkers I quote in what is appended to the editorial are also affirming that philosophy, but developing a dynamic understanding of it that makes sense of much of the spiritual experiences that human beings report.

Plato in the 21st Century

As I noted, I have been studying Integral philosopher Ken Wilber’s Quantum Questions, where he considers the thinking of quantum physicists Einstein, Heisenberg, de Broglie, Pauli, Eddington and Jeans. Nobody will quarrel with the assertion that they have been leaders in the field of physics. About Wolfgang Pauli, for instance, Wilber has this to say:

‘behind this outward display of criticism and skepticism lay concealed a deep philosophical interest even in those dark areas of reality or the human soul which elude the grasp of reason. And while the power of fascination emanating from Pauli’s analyses of physical problems was admittedly due in some measure to the detailed and penetrating clarity of his formulations, the rest was derived from a constant contact with the field of creative spiritual processes, for which no rational formulation as yet exists. [Archetypes and synchronicity were two of these processes that were involved] (p.169)’

Wilber quotes Pauli, “All consistent thinkers have come to the conclusion that pure logic is fundamentally incapable of constructing such a linkage [between sense perception and concepts, that can be compared to Plato's Ideal Forms.] The most satisfactory course it seems, is to introduce at this point the postulate of an order of the cosmos distinct from the world of appearances, and not a matter of our choice. Whether we speak of natural objects participating in the Ideas or of the behaviour of the metaphysical, i.e. intrinsically real things, the relationship between sense perception and the Idea remains a consequence of the fact that both the soul and what is known in perception are subject to an order objectively conceived,” (p.169-170)

God creates through these Forms, these archetypes.

Wilber Wilber writes, “The bridge from the initially unordered data of experience to the Ideas is seen by Pauli in certain primeval images pre-existing in the soul, the archetypes discussed by Kepler and also by modern psychology. These primeval images – here Pauli is largely in agreement with the ideas of Jung – should not be located in consciousness or related to specific rationally formulable ideas. It is a question, rather, of forms belonging to the unconscious region of the human soul, images of powerful emotional content, which are not thought but are beheld, as it were, pictorially. The delight one feels on becoming aware of a new piece of knowledge arises from the way in which such pre-existing images fall into congruence with the behaviour of external objects. This view of natural knowledge is notoriously derived in its essentials from Plato, and it penetrated into Christian thought by way of neo-Platonism (Plotinus, Proclus). Pauli seeks to clarify it by pointing out that even Kepler’s conversion to the Copernican theory, which marks the beginning of modern natural science, was decisively affected by primeval images or archetypes.”

Pauli is quoted, “From an inner centre, the mind seems to move outward in a sort of extraversion into the physical world, in which all happenings are assumed to be automatic, so that the spirit serenely encompasses this physical world, as it were, with its Ideas.” Wilber continues, “Thus the natural science of the modern era involves a Christian elaboration of the ‘lucid mysticism’ of Plato, in which the unitary ground of spirit and matter is sought with the primeval images, and in which understanding has found its place in its various degrees and kinds, even to knowledge of the word of God. But Pauli adds a warning: “This mysticism is so lucid that it sees out beyond many obscurities, which we moderns dare not and cannot do.”” (p.170)

My understanding of the beliefs of the physicists cited by Wilber is that they are intuitively affirming that the Forms are immutable; that the mathematics of Quantum Mechanics in its elegance and in its validity in describing subatomic processes, seems to reflect an eternal pattern, a kind of DNA of subatomic reality. Intuitively they feel that QM mathematics seems to demand seeing it as reflecting an Ideal Form.

Important! QM physics is a mathematics, not a belief system, not a philosophy.

All the physicists Wilber quotes are careful to caution against the notion that QM proves the reality of Ideal Forms; they emphasise that QM is purely and simply mathematics; it is a mathematics that works as an instrument of calculation: and as any mathematics, it says nothing about the nature of what is being calculated. Wilber suggests that one physicist’s philosophical position amounted to saying, “Just calculate, and shut up!”

The physicists quoted therefore are careful to correct any overblown notions of the scope of QM, while at the same time affirming their intuitions that QM is a kind of outpicturing of Forms similar to those described by Plato. It should also be added that these physicists would prohibit any notion that science can in any way speculate or attempt to describe That which helps bring these Ideal Forms into being.

David Bohm and the Holomovement

Bohm The picture changes, when we come to consider the thought of Einstein’s protégé David Bohm, another towering figure amongst the physicists. He seems to agree with the physicists just quoted in intuiting Ideal Forms, and prohibiting speculation as to the ultimate Source of these Forms. But he introduces the notion of a two-way process between the world of Forms and the sensory-physical world. He calls them the Implicate or Infolded world, and the Explicate or Outfolded world. The Implicate “unfolds” into the sensory-physical Explicate, but the events of the sensory-physical “infold” back into the Implicate helping modify the Forms, and bring others into existence. It is a kind of feed-back process. Bohm’s picture allows us to make sense of the phenomenon of synchronicity, as described by Carl Jung. Synchronicity names a situation where there is a highly meaningful connection between physical events and events of the mind, where no physical process of cause and effect can be described. Bohm worked with physicists who studied this phenomenon, and also with Rupert Sheldrake who used Bohm’s notions to develop theories to explain the development of instinctive behaviour, and indeed the development of what has been called Natural Law. Sheldrake is very convincing as we shall shortly see.

[In passing we can note that Bohm's interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, as opposed to the Copenhagen Interpretation, would resolve or eliminate many of the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, such as Schrödinger's cat, the measurement problem, the collapse of the wavefunction, and similar concerns. It is sometimes called the de Broglie-Bohm Interpretation. Some readers will find comparison of these two Wikipedia links of great interest. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_interpretation> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation>]

A student of Bohm’s work, Beatrix Morrell, has given me permission to quote from her summary of Bohm’s Gnosis. (The word Gnosis affirms that the thinking is intuitive, and not a scientific and testable hypothesis, even though based on accepted theory.)

Quotations from a summary of Bohm’s Gnosis, by Beatrix Morrell:

1. Any individual element [of totality] could reveal “detailed information about every other element in the universe”

2. “The unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided flowing movement without borders”

3. Two subatomic particles that have once interacted can instantaneously “respond to each other’s motions thousands of years later when they are light years apart.” (Stephen: “The furthest sun is closer to you than your tongue.”§46.)

4. Space and time might actually be derived from an even deeper level of objective reality. This reality he calls the Implicate Order.

5. Within the Implicate Order everything is connected, and, in theory, any individual element could reveal information about every other element in the universe.

6. The Hologram is Bohm’s favourite metaphor for conveying the structure of the Implicate Order. “Everything is enfolded into everything”. The totality of the movement of enfoldment and unfoldment may go immensely beyond what has revealed itself to our observations. We call this totality by the name “holomovement”. This is the “fundamental ground of all matter.” The holomovement is ground for both life and matter. [This ground is not of course the Ground, the Source of all, - that is beyond describing. It is interesting that Stephen (often referred to in this journal) said, two years before Bohm´s work was published, “True life is all movement. The whole of life must be the whole of movement” (§158)]

7. “What is, is always a totality of ensembles, all present together, in an orderly series of stages of enfoldment and unfoldment, which intermingle and interpenetrate each other in principle throughout the whole of space.”

8. The individual is in total contact with the Implicate Order, the individual is part of the whole of humanity, and he is the “focus for something beyond humanity.”

9. It is this collective consciousness of humanity that is truly significant for Bohm. It is this collective consciousness that is truly one and indivisible, and it is the responsibility of each human person to contribute towards this consciousness of humanity, this noösphere. [An objection has been raised that “humanity” is too parochial.]

10. Bohm also believes that the individual will eventually be fulfilled upon the completion of cosmic noogenesis.

11. Intelligence has always been at the very core of the Implicate Order.

(cont. of 10) 12. It will be ultimately misleading and indeed wrong to suppose... that each human being is an independent actuality who interacts with other human beings and with nature. Rather, all these are projections of a single totality.

Marilyn Ferguson in The Holographic Universe p.21, writes: “What appears to be a stable, tangible, visible, audible world, said Bohm, is an illusion. It is dynamic and Kaleidescopic – not really ‘there’. What we normally see is the explicit, unfolded, order of things, rather like watching a movie. But there is an underlying order that is mother and father to this second-generation reality. He called the other order implicate, or enfolded. The enfolded order harbours our reality, much as the DNA in the nucleus harbors potential life and directs the nature of its unfolding.”

We may see what is written above as an Editorial giving a basic picture, and what follows as a series of short articles quoting from a variety of thinkers. The purpose of these articles is to put flesh on the bones just presented. It can be regarded as an appendix to the Editorial.

Plato's Forms, seen as Dynamic and Interactive

Rupert Sheldrake and Instinctive behaviour (Morphic Fields)

The biologist Rupert Sheldrake was a friend of David Bohm, and proposed that the Implicate Order or world consists of Memory Fields, and therefore one might imagine the Ideal Forms as being memory fields, or memory complexes, that order the happenings in the Explicate world. It must be remembered that all of the scholars that we are mentioning accept a hierarchy of orders of being, the higher enclosing and comprising every order beneath it. Such a hierarchy is termed by Arthur Koestler a Holarchy, a hierarchy of holons or wholes. As such it would make no sense to imagine some kind of split between orders, any more than we can think of our Solar System without the planets (a lower order in the hierarchy).

Let’s quote from Rupert Sheldrake: The Presence of the Past: “This book explores the possibility that memory is inherent in nature. It suggests that natural systems, such as termite colonies, or pigeons, or orchid plants, or insulin molecules, inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind, however far away they were and however long ago they existed. Because of this cumulative memory, through repetition the nature of things becomes increasingly habitual. Things are as they are because they were as they were.

“Thus habits may be inherent in the nature of all living organisms, in the nature of crystals, molecules, and atoms, and indeed in the entire cosmos… As a swallow grows up, it flies, feeds, preens, migrates, mates, and nests as swallows habitually do. It inherits the instincts of its species through invisible influences, acting at a distance, that make the behaviour of past swallows in some sense present within it. It draws on and is shaped by the collective memory of its species. [First page of Introduction]

“All humans draw upon this collective memory, to which all of us contribute. If this view of nature is even approximately correct, it should be possible to observe the progressive establishment of new habits as they spread within a species. For example when birds such as blue tits learn a new habit, such as stealing milk from milk bottles by tearing off the bottle caps, then blue tits elsewhere, beyond the range of all normal means of communication should show an increasing tendency to learn the same thing… All these possibilities can be conceived of in the framework of a scientific hypothesis, which I call the hypothesis of formative causation. According to this hypothesis, the nature of things depends on fields, called morphic fields. Each kind of natural system has its own kind of field, there is an insulin field, a beech field, a swallow field, and so on. Such fields shape all the different kinds of atoms, molecules, crystals, living organisms, societies, customs, and habits of mind.” [Second page of Introduction] Read the Wikipedia article on Sheldrake. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake>

Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious, and the Archetypes

David Bohm wrote: “ We introduced the notion of a higher dimensional reality that projects into the lower-dimensional, elements that have not only a non-local and non-causal relationship but also just the sort of mutual enfoldment that we have suggested for mind and body.”

This leads us to consider the thinking of Carl Jung. Here is a description that I found on the internet:

Jung “Carl G. Jung (1865-1961) : Description of the Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious: He found within the collective unconscious the source of all inspirations and instincts -- including the beautiful and spiritual. The uniting or integration of the conscious (thinking) mind with the unconscious mind became the foundation of psychological wholeness and balance in Jung's practice of modern psychology.

The following is from the "Definition" portion of Jung's lecture in 1936 on "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", Collected Works, Vol. 9.i, pars. 87-110. “The collective unconscious is a part of the psyche which can be negatively distinguished from a personal unconscious by the fact that is does not, like the latter, owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition. While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious, but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired but owe their existence exclusively to heredity.

“Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of complexes, the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially of archetypes.

“The concept of the archetype, which is an indispensable correlate to the idea of the collective unconscious, indicates the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere... My thesis, then, is as follows: In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually, but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”

From Carl Jung's "The Structure of the Psyche", 1927: “Just as the constellations were projected into the heavens, similar figures were projected into legends and fairy tales or upon historical persons.” Passage from the "Definition" portion of Carl Jung's lecture in 1936 "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", Collected Works, Vol. 9.i, pars. 87-110; and from Carl Jung's "The Structure of the Psyche", 1927, Coll. Works Vol. 8.

Synchronicity, Archetypes, and the Collective Unconscious

That doyenne of Jungians, Maria von Franz, has this to say

“The great question is whether the field of the collective unconscious is such an arbitrary random pattern of archetypes – or does it have some order? Jung has already pointed out that among the different archetypes, there is one which encompasses and regulates all the others, and that is the archetype of the Self... It is the most powerful archetype, the one which arranges and regulates the relationships of all the others.”

Victor Mansfield

himself a physicist, in answer to this question, gives a philosophic model:

“Physics has been forced to accept a non-local and interconnected quantum world, whose mathematical manifestation requires our participation. This revolution occurred despite the philosophic preconceptions of its practitioners. Similarly, despite our preconceptions, the unity between the inner and outer worlds implied by synchronicity phenomena challenges our belief in a world external to our mind. The philosophical arguments, physical analysis, and psychological experiences of synchronicity all encourage us to abandon the pervasive projection of inherent existence, the false belief in a world external to mind.”

He quotes Jung: “The synchronicity principle possesses properties that may help to clear up the body-soul problem”.

Here are some other passages that I felt moved to underline:

“even the most physical of experiences, whether mountains or microbes, are thoughts within a larger mind that simultaneously unfolds the experiencing ego as a thought complex within it.” [p.129]

“Quantum mechanics teaches that the universe is nonlocally connected and we participate in its definition.”[p.136]

“Destroying the false belief in inherent existence is the prerequisite for recognizing the world as sacred” [p.144]

“Since mind projects our world image, then as long as we stay in the image we will never know the projector – the source.” [p.198]

“synchronistic experiences... are a numinous expression of transcendent meaning that unfolds in both the inner and outer worlds. Synchronicity is soul-making; a revelation of the cosmic self or soul as meaning, an instruction through acausally connected events in both in the inner and the outer worlds. If we have the inner eyes to see, the self is providing us with both the necessary experience and meaning required for our transformation, our individuation."”[P.199]

Alan Vaughan

in his book on synchronicity, The Patterns of Prophecy looks at the sequences of synchronistic events as manifestations of life “blue-prints” which our deeper or more connected selves have created. He concludes his book by writing:

“In a microcosmic way, each human being shares in... a divinity with his own psychic energy. The archetypes of his own inner 'blue-print' become transformed to that divinity into his reality. Each of us participates in the cosmos, a co-creator with God. By developing our own individual 'blueprints' of life to their highest achievement, we come closest not only to individual fulfilment, but also to fulfilment of a higher order of destiny. To those who would seek to find their place in the cosmos, I recommend the shortest of prayers: 'Thy will be done. May my will be Thine'.”

F. David Peat

Peat ….is another physicist friend of David Bohm, who in collaboration with him, developed his thinking in the study of synchronicity. And I must not omit reference to his Synchronicity, the bridge between matter and mind, 1987. I consider it one of the best of the books on this subject, but as much of the ground it covers is treated in the other works I cite, I shall content myself with just a few quotations.

On page 174, he reinforces a concept which is much to the fore in Stephen’s teaching:

...” individual minds could be said to arise out of the one ground. They represent relatively stable forms, identities, as it were, within the underlying background. In this way, it appears that individual minds have a common or collective origin that has something in common with that of matter. In a sense, therefore mind is able to act upon mind, and mind and matter exert an influence one on the other. But this should not be thought of as some form of causal interaction since individual minds, and mind and matter, are not fundamentally separate but are simply the explicate forms that emerge out of a common generative order.”

I now quote the second to last paragraph of the book, pages 240-1:
“What is being advocated here is not a return to the approach of, for example, the ancient Greeks, but a movement forward toward a greater sensitivity and awareness of the limitless possibilities and potentialities of the whole universe. This book began with a discussion of synchronicities, of meaningful coincidences that appeared to defy the normal laws of causality that operate within our universe. At first, the particular incidents of synchronicity may have appeared to be rather superficial and not particularly moving. However, they were intended simply as clues, as tiny cracks in the surface of our rationality that hint at a much deeper world that may lie beyond. Now we have seen that world, or at least taken a first glimpse it suggests that we have built our lives and our civilisations on an illusion. An illusion of the supreme reality of the self, of becoming over being, of temporal progress over infinitely more subtle time orders that merge into eternity of the surface reality of things over their deeper, hidden orders. Synchronicities have opened a window onto a creative source of infinite potential, the wellspring of the universe itself. They have shown how mind and matter are not distinct, separate aspects of nature, but arise in a deeper order of reality. Synchronicities suggest that we can renew our contact with that creative and unconditioned source which is the origin not only of ourselves but also of all reality. By dying to the self and its mechanical reactive responses to nature, it becomes possible to engage in an active transformation and gain access to unlimited ranges of energy. In this way, body and consciousness, individual and society, mind and matter may come to achieve their unlimited potential.”

The opinion of trance personality St. Stephen

If you feel willing to consider teaching received in trance allegedly from the martyr Stephen, you might find his words helpful:

“Provided that we recognise that Reality, the Substance does have an outline, and not confuse reality with what is without Substance, and appears to us in the physical.

Think then of this, that the mind that was the contour, whether [or not] it be at the opposite side of the Substance is immaterial, that if it were to touch the outline, then they touched the Substance, and then of course the thoughts coincided.

It cannot be surprising that this is the case. For touch one of my ears ... then the other ear would be aware. Not the space or air which surrounds me, but the ear has been touched, and all that “Substance” is aware.

Things that you have in the true void or non-Substance [i.e. physical reality] are of no value other than they are an outline.

These things that our Lord spoke of, when he spoke of the camel, and using the camel as the thread to the needle, [contrasting] Substance, and non-Substance. For it would be easier to use the camel as the thread, than to turn what is nothing into something.

The Lord performed miracles, when all that was [required] is [for] the knowledge of Substance to alter the outline of which is non-Substance. To touch from Substance and change the image, would [cause] the one dealing with non-Substance, thinking non-Substance to be real, to cry “Miracle!” for it has been changed!

Your scientists often speak of the non-solidity of what we call “non-Substance” [Atoms are largely empty space associated with patterns of energy.] Solidity is between these minute particles of energy.[Quantum vacuum].”

P.S. What seems to be wrong with the Holographic Universe theory

Some readers will be familiar with Ken Wilber's The Holographic Paradigm, and also with Pribram's holographic understanding of the brain. The following article suggests why these ideas should perhaps be abandoned:

Braude Stephen E. Braude [Essence, Vol.5, No.1 1981, 53-63] writes: "The first thing to notice..about the holographic model, is that it is both reductionistic and atomistic. Nature reduces to, or is composed essentially of, frequencies forming various interference patterns (the 'primary' level of reality); These frequencies, moreover, are atomistic or basic in the sense they are the building blocks for our familiar perceptual and experiential reality." Braude later goes on to note that Pribram's picture of the brain functioning holographically, implies the mind is dependent on the brain, which 150 years of psychic research has clearly demonstrated not to be the case. The gist of our editorial, is that it is inappropriate to apply QM mathematics to the mind, which is another order or reality.
(Some readers will find the whole article of interest:) <http://userpages.umbc.edu/~braude/pdfs_pubd/braude--Holographic%20Analysis.pdf>

Articles

Plato and the Science-Theology Dialogue
Rev Prof. Sjoerd L. Bonting, Nijmegen, Netherlands

[Ed.: We publish this dissenting article without comment, in the hope that readers will consider both articles, and share their thoughts in our next issue.]

Editor Michael Cocks challenged me to write a comment on his extensive and learned editorial "Plato in the 21st century" and to set forth my approach to the science-theology dialogue.

I shall do so briefly; a book-length account is found in my book "Creation and Double Chaos; Science and Theology in Discussion" (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2005). Initially I wanted to use the word 'Dialogue' in the subtitle, but my Editor would not have this. Because, he said, that is a tired word that will make prospective readers immediately put aside the book. What he meant was that so much of this 'dialogue' does not lead to any new and deeper insights, but merely brings meta-physics and philosophy to bear on science. And that is what I think Michael is doing. Using Plato's idea of the Forms behind the sensory world, he quotes approvingly Wolfgang Pauli about "an order of the cosmos distinct from the world of appearances." And he derives similar insights from David Bohm, Marilyn Ferguson, Rupert Sheldrake, Carl Jung, Victor Mansfield, Alan Vaughan, and David Peat. But nowhere is theology brought in, and even less is there a dialogue between science and theology.

This 'metaphysication' is always applied to quantum theory, never to Newtonian physics and rarely to relativity theory. This is probably due to our conceptual difficulties with quantum theory. We should, however, understand that quantum theory is merely an adaptation of Newtonian physics to the particle level, just as relativity theory is its adaptation to the cosmic level. Recently, transition from Newtonian to quantum behavior has been demonstrated when the dimension of the experimental system was sufficiently decreased.

1. Approach

My approach is quite different, and can be summed up in seven points:

1. Science and theology provide two worldviews of a single reality, the cosmos in which we live. Both disciplines are God-given in the sense that God not only re-vealed him-self through human minds and hands in Scripture, but also in the scientific insight that God allowed us to develop through our senses and brain-power.

2. Both disciplines seek a rational explanation of basic data, biblical data in the case of theology and observational and experimental data in the case of science.

3. Both disciplines have certain axioms, such as: God reveals himself in Scripture; nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect.

4. Each discipline has certain limitations: Science can deal with mechanisms, but not with purpose and the supernatural; it answers How?-questions. Theology can tell us about purpose and the supernatural, but little about mechanisms; it answers Why?-questions.

5. Dialogue requires that each discipline is taken in its integrity but be subjected to critical questioning. E.g., when it is found that creationist theory cannot stand up to powerful scientific evidence, the meaning of the 'six days of creation' in Gen.1 should be critically studied.

6. Direct language should be used, and if metaphors are unavoidable, they should be identified as such.

7. The meeting ground for the two disciplines is primarily to be found in creation theology on the one side and cosmic and biological evolution on the other side.

2. Creation theology

A critical look at the traditional creatio ex nihilo doctrine shows that it has five difficulties:

1. conceptual (nobody can picture absolute nothingness);

biblical (creation from nihil is not found in the bible; Gen.1 and 2 have creation from primordial chaos);
scientific (science cannot deal with nihil);
theological (no satis-factory theological explanation of the process of creation from nothing has been given);
theodicy (it does not explain the origin of evil). This leads me to a revised creation theology: initial creation from primordial chaos ('chaos theology'). Then I take the biblical idea of continuing creation with a remaining element of chaos (symbolized as 'sea', 22x in the Old Testament and returning 6x in the New Testa-ment). God is shown as battling remaining chaos. In Rev.21:1 we read: "... and the sea was no more", indicating the complete abolition of chaos in the completion of creation on the last day. Finally, I suggest that both physical and moral evil come forth from remaining chaos (moral evil as due to chaotic thinking; see Rom.7:15).

3. Insights from science

The Genesis stories give different and vague descriptions of primordial chaos: 'a lifeless desert' in Gen.2 and 'a formless void and darkness covering the face of the deep, a mighty wind sweeping over the face of the waters'. Physics supplies the concept of a vacuum with quantum fluctuations underlying the cosmos from the beginning (an immaterial chaos, unlike the gnostic dualism of an evil, pre-existing matter from which an evil demiurge creates). The big bang could be the result of a mega-quantum fluctuation. Don't ask: where did the quantum vacuum come from; that is part of the initial mystery that both scientists and the Genesis authors face. Continuing creation would comprise the processes of cosmic and biological evolution.

4. Jesus Christ: appearance and reconciliation

We have two accounts of the apearance of Christ: the Virgin Birth in Mt.1:18ff and Lk.1:26ff (but nowhere else men-tioned in the New Testament) and the incarnation of God's Word (Logos) in Jesus of Nazareth in Jn.1:14 (also by Paul: Gal.4:4, 1 Cor.2:8, Phil.2:5ff, Col.2: 9, Rom.1:3f). Science can help us make a choice between these two accounts. It tells us that a Virgin Birth would not produce a fully human Jesus (no Y-chromosome), whereas the full humanity of Jesus was recog-nized by the early fathers and Chalcedon as essential for his reconciling work. Thus the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus of Nazareth is the better choice. This would then have taken place at conception, birth or baptism of Jesus (ruling out the idea of the 'pre-existent Christ').

The idea of the cosmic Christ, raised by both John (Jn.3:17) and Paul (2 Cor.5:19), is confirmed by cosmology in the phrase "we are made of stardust". This means that Christ is not only united to us humans, but to the entire cos-mos. Thus his reconciling work is not limited to humankind, but includes animals and plants. The only distinction for us is that we can and must say Yes or No to salvation.

5. God's action in his creation

In the initial creation God created through the Logos according to Gen.1. To this Gen.2 adds that God conferred life to his creatures through his breath, the Spirit. Here cosmology suggests that a tremendous amount of energy must have been inserted in the quantum vacuum at t = 0 to set off the big bang. Remember that Philo and later Maximilian the Confessor called the Logos energeia.

Order must have been brought to the chaotic explosion through the installation of the physical laws and fundamental constants. This is a matter of insertion of information through the Spirit, who can be seen as God's information carrier. So God created through the Logos and the Spirit.

Quantum cosmology tells us that the information can only have been inserted a fraction of a second after t = 0. But it must have occurred just before the start of 'inflation' (a brief exponential increase of expansion). Simple calculation from the cosmological data shows that at that moment 10 Gigabits could have been inserted, which seems plenty for all physical laws and fundamental constants.

How does God interact with the universe during continuing creation? It is unlikely that God would do this by fiddling with physical laws or fundamental constants, since this would have catastrophic effects. I suggest that the influencing of chaos events may be the way used by God (see Creation and Double Chaos, ch. 7).

It should, however, be added that God appears to leave the evolving universe and the evolution of life a great degree of freedom, allowing them to proceed as 'trial-and-error' processes, which in the course of time provide optimal results. Only at a moment of crisis God would intervene by in-flu-encing a chaos event.

6. Eschatology

Here the biblical account and the cosmological prediction seem to be at odds. The bible tells us about the new kingdom as the fulfilment of creation through Christ. Cosmology predicts a complete degradation of the universe in the course of 24 billion years, leaving only a cold photon cloud without any matter. This conflict can easily be explain-ed: the cosmologists consider the universe a closed system with no energy or information coming in. In the biblical view we have God bring-ing in energy and information to transform the present world into the new kingdom, energy through Christ the incarnate Logos and information ('physical laws and fundamental constants' of the new kingdom) through the Spirit. Similar to the initial creation, except that information can now be brought in simultaneously with energy since the universe has now a large dimension.

7. Concluding remark

More examples of the fruitful intercourse of science and theology in the approach described in section 1 could be given. However, I hope to have shown that my simple (to some perhaps 'simplistic') approach can produce a useful dialogue between the two disciplines, more useful than that obtained by 'metaphysication' of the sciences.

Books

What would truly non-theistic science look like?

Excerpt from “Triablogue”

(see link at end of quote.)

- a science that was truly non-theistic and not one which merely appropriated theistic-shaped science while gluing on a thin veneer of non-belief? An exercise in (hypothetical) comparative science may be revealing here. Stalinist principled denials of "idealist" Mendelian genetics, Nazi principled denials of "Jewish" physics, Maoist principled denials of religion-friendly "bourgeois idealist" Big Bang cosmology (and of the "bourgeois" Copenhagen interpretation), Marxist principled preference for Newtonian absolute space and time over "anti-materialist" relativity theory (and rejection of "anti-Marxist" conceptions of the universe as finite but unbounded, or, in some cases principled objections to 'capitalistic' Newtonian physics), and postmodern principled denials of various "essentialist" theories might give one pause. But although I will not go into all of them here, I think that problems might run much deeper than rejection of specific theories and might involve inadequate metaphysical foundations, inadequate epistemological foundations, rational adequacy concerns, conceptual adequacy concerns, and others. The upshot for science could be grim indeed. The Stalinist theorist Nickolai Bukharin once claimed that pure science was a morbid symptom of class society. And we all - including the later-executed Bukharin - know the standard Stalinist response to things and people perceived as 'morbid symptoms of class society.'

the 'fine-tuned' cognitive terrain required by science is religion-shaped

There are several considerations that offer at least some support for that. The first involves the early rise and history of science. Following is a brief examination of that history.

Science's theological history

As a historical matter of fact, modern science arose only once, and that took place within the Western European context of Judeo-Christian theology and praxis - not in Egypt, India, the Middle East, or China, all of which had earlier and longer cultural and technological traditions than had Western Europe. Although there are disputes over degrees, virtually every serious historian of science recognizes that that was not mere coincidence - that some specific Christian theological doctrines (most notably creation and divine voluntarism) played key roles in the origin and rise of modern science. (Indeed, the condemnation of 1277 which emphasized divine voluntarism explicitly against a necessitarian Aristotelianism has been cited by a few historians as the initiating spark for what became modern science.)

I will not pursue the details of the historical dynamics, and I do not claim that a Christian intellectual/practical context caused the rise of science, or that nothing like modern science could have arisen without such a context. But key figures in the emergence and growth of what we think of as modern science deliberately and explicitly claimed to find the grounding and intellectual justification for not only the formative presuppositions of science, but even for the legitimacy of the scientific project itself, in the content and implications of the doctrine of creation and other components of basic Christian theology. Perhaps they were confused, self-deluded, or their claims on this point are otherwise untrustworthy. But given the identities involved - some of the most noted minds of the last several centuries - such easy dismissals are not prima facie compelling.

Very briefly, the strongest version of the doctrine of creation says that the cosmos and everything that exists in it was created by a transcendent, rational God. That implies that the cosmos had a beginning - it has not existed always and is not eternal. The only thing eternal, according to this doctrine, is God. All else is created. This doctrine also says that the things which God created were created out of nothing - that God brought the cosmos itself into existence by His decree and command, and did not merely fashion the cosmos out of some pre-existing (possibly recalcitrant) materials or matter. Further, according to this doctrine, since only God is eternal, there were no substantive pre-existing rules or principles or boundaries that He had to work within. He was not subject to any substantive constraints in choosing what to create, so all else - being made by Him - was utterly subject to His will and free decisions.

Again very briefly, that theological position was explicitly taken to imply that the cosmos (being structured around God's wisdom) was rational and intelligible, that we (being created in God's image) could in principle comprehend that creation, that our senses and cognitive faculties (being designed for knowing) were basically reliable, that we (being finite) could not just deduce a priori what and how God would have created, and consequently that since God had created not only rationally but freely in a way not evident to us a priori that we had to actually look if we wanted to know what God had done - i.e., that our investigation of nature had to be fundamentally empirical.

Read the whole Blog:

<http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/11/where-science-and-religion-fuse.html>

“In the Light of this Thing called Physics”

[The following are quotations from a critical review of work by Ervin Laszlo by Chris Clarke and Mike King from the Winter 2006 issue of Network Review, the journal of the Scientific and Medical Network. The quotations suggest what physics can and cannot say about mind, spirit, and religion.]

“the extraordinary success of physics lies in the extraordinarily restricted scope of inquiry” ... physicist-clergyman John Polkinghorne writes: “Success has partly been purchased by the modesty of its ambitions. Only a limited number of questions are addressed, relying on a corresponding limited technique of inquiry, dependent upon the possibility of the manipulations of impersonal reality and reliant on the marvellously powerful but specialised language of mathematics.”
“The human ambition of one scientist pitted against another ensures that nothing remains unchallenged.”
“The core of quantum physics is a body of procedures for finding theories that correspond to each branch of classical theory (such as electromagnetism, eletrodynamics, gravity and so on.) The aim is to ensure that the quantum version reproduces the classical phenomena, but in addition adds refinements that match phenomena exhibited at very small length scales, which the classical theory is unable to account for.”
“The fact that quantum theory is the physics of the very small, is a vital point, and it is in this domain of the atomic and subatomic that results have emerged which are at odds with human-scale experience. In particular we can cite the uncertainty principle, which put an end to the LaPlacian view of a deterministic universe, and issues of entanglement which put an end to the idea of completely isolatable systems.”
“At the very least, we suggest caution when the layperson attempts to understand the discipline of physics by reading the philosophers – they can be unreliable guides with a vested interest to reframe physics according to their own feelings.”
“We suggest that a balanced view of physics and spirituality must take into account their open and paradoxical nature. Where quantum mechanics is concerned one needs to acknowledge the multiplicity of theory for the known data, while in the case of spirituality there is a multiplicity of phenomena (which according to the work of Jorge Ferrer) is irreducible.”
“there are many areas of physics – notably those concerned with non-locality – that lend support to a world view that is much more harmonious with holistic spirituality, which could in turn foster a more humane society. But we don't believe that spiritual beliefs should be founded on a casual selective reading of the physics. Its real, hard lesson, as in the spiritual life, is to take what you can get from an honest open enquiry, rather than what you would like.”

[Jorge Ferrer is the author of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality (SUNY Press 2002), a book that proposed new epistemological requirements for the development of an open and participative spirituality within the specific tradition of transpersonal psychology.]

Experience

Should we not include such experiences that we find in this section into our theology?

[Acknowledgements to Mike Tymn of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies Inc. (ASPSI) <http://www.lightlink.com/arpr/> ]

A Veridical Death Bed Vision

Skeptics say that the visions of the dying are nothing more than hallucinations. However, it is very difficult to so discount certain cases. Consider the case of “Jennie,” and “Bessie” (both pseudonyms for privacy purposes) as related by Dr. Minot J. Savage, a popular Unitarian clergyman and author, in his 1899 book, Life Beyond Death.

Jennie and Bessie, ages 8-9, were close friends in a city in Massachusetts, and both afflicted with diphtheria. Jennie died on Wednesday, but Bessie was not informed of her friend’s death, as her family felt it might stand in the way of her recovery.

On Saturday, Bessie apparently realized that she was going to die and began telling her parents which of her brothers, sisters, and playmates should receive her treasured belongings. “Among these she pointed out certain things of which she was very fond, that were to go to Jennie -- thus settling all question as to whether or no she had found out that Jennie was not still living,” Savage wrote.

A little later, as she approached death, she began seeing deceased grandparents and others gathered around her bed. “And then she turned to her father, with face and voice both expressing the greatest surprise, and exclaimed, ‘Why, Papa, why didn’t you tell me that Jennie had gone? Why didn’t you tell me of it?’” Savage ends the story, commenting that this and similar stories suggest that more than hallucination and imagination are involved.

Savage also relates the case of a small boy who had befriended a judge of some prominence living in the neighborhood. After the boy was put to bed one night, his parents heard him crying. They rushed to him and asked him what was wrong. “Judge says he’s dead! He has been here and told me that he is dead!” the boy sobbed. The next morning the parents found out that the judge had died at about that time the night before.

An Interview with Psychical Researcher Dr. Gary Schwartz
Mike Tymn

“The quest continues…”

So Dr. Gary Schwartz, a research scientist, ended his 2002 book, The Afterlife Experiments. Subtitled Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death, the book tells of experiments carried out with five prominent mediums by Schwartz and Dr. Linda Russek, his research partner, in their University of Arizona Human Energy Systems Laboratory.

Highly skeptical about the whole subject of mediumship when he first met Susy Smith, a medium and popular author on psychic matters, in 1995, Schwartz, who received his doctorate from Harvard University and served as a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Yale University before moving to Arizona, gradually came to accept the reality of mediumship. “I can no longer ignore the data and dismiss the words,” he wrote in his popular but somewhat controversial book. “They are as real as the sun, the trees, and our television sets, which seem to pull pictures out of the air.”

Among the mediums studied by Schwartz have been John Edward, who hosted a popular television program, Crossing Over, and more recently Allison DuBois, after whose life as a psychic legal investigator, a new American television weekly drama, Medium, is modeled. In its third week of showing during January, the program drew an estimate 15.8-million viewers and ranked ninth among all prime-time programs.

While also involved in energy medicine and healing research, Schwartz is continuing with his afterlife research. “We are not just doing research to get percent hits under different levels of control [as is the focus of the book],” he said in a recent interview. “We are now interested in studying the process. The whole idea of how you establish that the medium is actually receiving communication from a genuine conscious, decision-making person (spirit) is a very important question, and we’re now asking questions as to what the afterlife is like. That takes the work substantially further.”

Schwartz pointed out that in the “discarnate intention” experiment, there are 18 life questions and 38 afterlife questions. “The reason we do the life questions first is to be sure the medium is getting accurate information about a particular deceased,” Schwartz explained. “That allows the medium to earn some credibility before we get into the afterlife questions and take them seriously. And if you have multiple mediums independently contacting the same deceased persons and asking the same questions of the afterlife to the extent that you get replication of information, you then have a scientific way of drawing a conclusion, saying, yes, it’s very possible this deceased person is experiencing the afterlife in this way and another deceased person is experiencing it differently.”

It is too early in this experiment for Schwartz to make any generalizations as to what his findings are, but he did comment briefly. “There is a massive amount of data and we in the throes of analyzing it now” he said. “There is only one thing I feel comfortable talking about now, even though we have all these questions. What I find most amusing and potentially reassuring is that when people are post- physical it’s easier for them to ‘multitask’ in the afterlife, meaning to do just not multiple things at the same time but to be in ‘multiple places’ at the same time, that the capacity for doing non-local and multi-process activities is just easier than when you are in the physical and located in a very specific place. That’s something that has been universally observed.”

Since the release of The Afterlife Experiments, Schwartz has come under attack by the fundamentalists of science, the people some refer to as “debunkers” or “pseudoskeptics,” but whom Schwartz kindly calls “superskeptics.” They have scoffed at his research, calling it “junk science” while pointing out that the studies detailed in the book were not double-blind or subject to replication, two fundaments of hard science.

In fact, Schwartz has since done double-blind and even triple-blind studies (where the researcher, the medium, and the sitter were kept in the dark), but they have been equally unacceptable to the scientific fundamentalists.

“Based on my repeated observations of them and my experience with them, I would say that there is no experiment that I could even imagine designing that would convince them,” Schwartz said. “Let’s say, for example, that we design an experiment where the mediums are sequestered and locked in a room with no telephone or communication and we have them watched by security guards to be certain no one provides them with information from the outside. Well, then these skeptics will ask how we can be sure the guards weren’t paid off by the mediums, how we can be sure the guards weren’t involved in fraud. The truth is that if you are absolutely convinced that the phenomena can’t be true, then no matter what experiment you design, you can always find some way in which there might be fraud. Therefore, you are going to dismiss it, or you’re going to admit that you got it in that case but you want to see it replicated by other people. Then you want to see it replicated again, and it just goes on and on.”

Schwartz recalled recently talking with one of the superskeptics, a university professor, and asking him what his reaction would be if he were able to observe positive results in a multi-center double-blind study. “He said he would want to see it replicated a few more times before he’d take it seriously,” Schwartz said, “but I pointed out to him that the whole purpose of a multi-centered study is that you have independent laboratories replicating the phenomenon. We’ve already built in the replication, so I asked him why he’d need to see it a few more times, and his answer was, ‘Gary, one of the things I’ve become interested in is why it is that I have no control over my beliefs.’ Now, if you can’t change your beliefs as a function of evidence, that’s a sad state of affairs. I’m not hopeful that the superskeptics will accept any degree of data, but I’m not doing research for them. We’re just doing the work. We want to know if it is true. Our project is called “Veritas” (Latin for truth) for a reason.”

Schwartz added that he is just beginning research relative to the mindset of the superskeptic, hoping to find out what pathology drives their closed-mindedness.

As frustrating as the scientific fundamentalists are, Schwartz finds that the mainstream media is just as difficult to deal with. He recalled that after attending a memorial service for Montague Keen, the renowned British psychical researcher, last year, he was interviewed by a London reporter. “He got 15 to 20 facts wrong, some of which he literally changed because he thought it would read better for the London public,” Schwartz lamented. “He’s not a bad guy and was sort of trying, but he got it garbled.” In jest, Schwartz added that the mediums outdo the media when it comes to accuracy.

As Schwartz sees it, the biggest problem with the media is that they see only two sides. “I was recently contacted by a national television show which wanted to have a medium for research and then wanted to have a skeptic,” he explained, “and I said you are telling this as if there are only two stories. There’s the medium and science versus the skeptic. I told him he had it wrong, that there are three stories here. There are what the mediums claim, there are what the skeptics claim, then there is the science which attempts to look at what the truth is. Science is actually the third story. Somebody can criticize the science, but that’s a different issue. The media is making a huge mistake when it sees it as two stories only. They’re looking for conflict, not resolution.”

Orthodox religion has ignored Schwartz’s research, apparently satisfied with faith alone, even though that faith might be turned into conviction with Schwartz’s findings. “It’s remarkable how this research has been for the most part ignored by religion,” Schwartz said, “but, frankly, I’m relieved.”

In spite of the attacks by the scientific fundamentalists, the indifference of orthodox religion, and the ignorance of the mainstream media, Schwartz courageously moves on with his research, feeling that it is having some impact on the public. “I think it is ultimately the research mediums, like Allison DuBois, as they become visible and public,” he ended the interview, “who will awaken the public to the science, and then the people can go to the science and reach their own conclusions.”