#78. "Thank God for Evolution"

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In recent weeks I've received two comments from readers with opposite views. One said, "I do not find the themes in Wilber’s book at all interesting." The other said, "I have no interest in what Michael Dowd has to say."

I, of course, think we need to know about both authors.

Wilber is probably best described as a philosopher concerned with the big picture of the evolutionary development of human consciousness. In his book Sense and Soul he focuses on how religion and science became alienated from one another and what's needed on both sides for our culture to bring them together.

Dowd, in contrast, is an evangelist-- a "preacher" in the old time sense. 

But he's not a preacher of "that old time religion." He calls himself a "story-teller." He wants to spread the good news of the New Story of the Universe that's ours today thanks to modern science.

It's of interest that the phrase "marriage of science and religion" occurs in the subtitle of both Sense and Soul and Thank God for Evolution. 

Although they are coming from very different perspectives, these authors really are about the same thing.

Despite those differences, it's their common concern-- what I call, in the title of this blog, "the convergence of science and religion"-- that makes them both so significant.

In the last few posts, I've emphasized Wilber's insights into the social and cultural reasons for the split between these two basic areas of human life. In this and the next few posts I plan to share my thoughts about Dowd's practical concerns for living the New Cosmology.

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I've described Thank God for Evolution in several previous posts as "extraordinarily comprehensive." It really is, as I said in post #77 (From Theory to Practice), a "unique compendium or manual of praxis for living out the New Cosmology in everyday life."

It's almost 400 pages long, and it's such a vast treasury of practical ideas that I hardly know where to start in trying to describe it.

I think one of its most valuable things is the large number of small anecdotes that fill the pages. Dowd says that these down-to-earth stories about ordinary people have been included at the insistence of his wife, Connie Barlow. She has gone to the heart of his practical concern! 

Just reading the book's many anecdotal stories-- easy to find because they're printed with a clear background so that they readily stand out-- is a delight.

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Another thing which makes this book such a strong resource for anyone interested in the New Cosmology is the section called Who's Who. Dowd offers seven pages of brief biographies of the many influential thinkers and writers who have contributed in one way or another to our new understanding of the universe and of our place in it. With approximately 20 persons listed on each page, this Who's Who of the New Cosmology is-- as book reviews often say-- "worth the price of the book."

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Another especially valuable thing Dowd's book offers is the numerous quotes by many well-known people in our culture who help us to understand the new scientific story of the universe. When I first starting writing this post I thought I would simply list the names of all the people who are quoted, but the list would be much too long.

I decided instead to pick out the names of persons quoted that you are likely to recognize. It still comes to a long list, but I think it might be worth sharing, just to make the point that the thoughts of many well-known persons are available for helping us to understand the practical aspects of the convergence of science and religion.

Here's the list: Thomas Berry, Winston Churchill, Mary Conrow Coelho, Bill Cosby, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Loren Eiseley, Albert Einstein, Black Elk, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Matthew Fox, Steven Jay Gould, Vaclav Havel, Helen Keller, Miram Macgillis, Ashley Montague, Lewis Mumford, the poet Rumi, Carl Sagan, Carl Sandburg, Percy Shelley, Brian Swimme, Teilhard de Chardin, Alan Watts, Edward O. Wilson, Alfred North Whitehead, Robert Wright.

They are an example of the breadth of Dowd's efforts as a story-teller. 

And like the anecdotal stories, their quotes are highlighted and easy to find.

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Another example of Dowd's breadth in his story-telling efforts is his inclusion in an appendix of a letter written by the noted atheist Richard Dawkins. The letter is not addressed to Dowd but to Dawkins' own then-10-year-old daughter. I mentioned in the previous post that with Dowd's ability "to address believers, non-believers, and everyone in between," he is a model of the Post-modern Deconstructionist respect for the diversity of persons, perspectives and cultures that Ken Wilber describes. Dowd's inclusion of this letter is an excellent example of his openness. He's definitely not a preacher in the old time sense.

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With this collection of anecdotal stories about little-known people, the quotes from well-known people, and the Who's Who of influential New Cosmology persons, it's obvious that the New Story of the Universe is not just something which a few quirky members of contemporary society are interested in. It is what's happening in our world.

Neither gossip about celebrities, nor the corruption of politicians, nor the insensitivity of corporate executives is the whole story. They are not even the main story. No, even that's not correct. They're not the story at all!

The real story of our time is our gradual discovery of a far-deeper-than-previous understanding of our place in the universe and of our participation in the cosmic process.

So Thank God for Evolution is of the greatest relevance to our contemporary problems. As no other book I know, it helps us to see the big picture and to recognize that war, damage to the environment, the imposition of poverty or gender inequality, and the cover-up of child abuse are all "distortions of the cosmic process."

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Probably the single most significant thing about Dowd's book is his emphasis on the fact that the big picture we have from modern science is the birthright of every human being. He spells it out from the start. In the first pages of his Introduction he says, "The scientific story of the cosmos, Earth, life and humanity is now our shared sacred story-- our 
common creation myth."

And this common story of all humanity reaches back billions and billions of years. Every person on the Earth is "heir to a magnificent and proud heritage."

I see the most significant practical value of this book is in the help it offers us to update that common heritage. As the book cover says, bringing science and religion together can "transform your life and our world." While there are certainly many ways we can transform our lives, only communion with the Earth and one another in daily life can transform our world.

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Dowd points out that one of the major questions of our day is: Who can we trust? Given the ineptitude of politicians, the insensitivity to human suffering by leaders of corporations, and our betrayal by religious authorities, we repeatedly (if unconsciously) ask,"What can we count on?"

Dowd's main point is that in the context of the New Cosmology we see that "We can count on the universe itself." He doesn't mean the static universe of past ages, of course, but the universe as we know it today: the dynamic-evolutionary cosmos. It's the cosmic process itself that we can count on.

But to trust the evolutionary universe we have to be informed about it. 

We need to know the facts; our cultural awareness-- of our selves and of our place in the world-- needs to be updated. I would say, as a long-time teacher, that we "need better science education." Dowd puts it in religious language: "Facts," he says, are "God's native tongue."

Once we have the data modern science offers us, it's much easier to see that the dynamic universe can be counted on to continue in its evolutionary development. After fourteen billion years, it isn't likely that the cosmic process is going to do an about face. It's not going to make a "drastic U-turn," as Ken Wilber puts it.

With the facts available to us, we can trust that the universe is going to continue to develop in the directions it has been moving ever since the Big Bang.

I've mentioned some of the directions the cosmic process moves in repeatedly in these posts-- diversity, complexity and consciousness, for example. Some are easier to understand than others. Dowd lists seven of them and I could easily use a whole post just to describe them briefly. 

But the main point here is that we're just coming to appreciate these ongoing aspects of the cosmic process; we're just coming to realize that we can indeed count on the mystery of the universe to continue what it's doing. And that is a major change from both the religious and non-religious perspectives of the past!

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You may be thinking, "Well, I know a lot about all that. At least to some extent, I am familiar with the big picture that we have thanks to the New Cosmology." What you may be more interested now is how you can personally live it out in your everyday life.

If you've been thinking along those lines, Dowd offers an exercise to discern your calling. It's a way of matching your inborn talents and skills with your interests and concerns. By comparing "Your Joys" and the "World's Needs," you can figure out where you personally fit in, and what you can contribute, to our many-billion-year-old heritage.

This Discerning Your Calling Exercise is on page 178. It may only take you about 20 minutes, but you will find yourself refining it for days and weeks afterwards as you come to a deeper and fuller understanding of what might be your personal and unique contribution to humanity's Great Work.

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Another aspect of Dowd's book which makes it a great treasure is the collection of resources it provides for updating ourselves. If there's an aspect of the New Cosmology you feel weak about, help is available: Dowd lists several hundred books, in nine categories.

To give you some idea of the extent of these available resources, the nine categories and the number of books available in each category are listed below.

1. The Big Picture: 25 books.

2. The Trajectory of Divine/Cosmic Creativity and Human History: 23 books.

3. Living in Deep Integrity:19 books.

4. Parents and Children: 5 books.

5. Humanity, Technology and the Future: 5 books.

6. Evolutionary Psychology, Brain Science and Ethics: 23 books.

7. Visions and Tools for an Evolutionarily Sustainable Future: 20 books.

8. The Limitations of Flat-Earth Faith:12 books.

9. Toward an Evolutionary Faith: 52 books.

There's also a free study guide available on Dowd's web site: ThankGodforEvolution.com.

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I have just described a half-dozen major treasures in this book. You can see why, in earlier posts, I have referred to it as "remarkably comprehensive."

If you're wondering whether I think the book has any limitations, I've found one. It's Dowd's comments about ritual. I don't think they are wrong or incorrect, but they are inadequate.

I have struggled repeatedly-- and not yet satisfactorily-- to express my own thoughts about ritual and evolution, so I'm not being critical. I do think, however, that there's something more about the importance of ritual in our understanding of the New Story that still needs saying. I hope I will be able to express my thoughts about it more adequately. Eventually!

Meanwhile, in the next few posts I plan to share some thoughts about what I think are Dowd's own most significant and helpful ideas. Some have to do with things we don't often connect with science or religion, such as our need, in light of modern knowledge about how our brain works, to trust our shadow side. Others have to do with what Dowd calls "day and night language" and some changes he says the "old time religion" needs to make.

I find it all fascinating. Hope you do, too!

sam@macspeno.com

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#77. From Theory to Practice

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This post is part of the series I began with post #73: "Two Important Books."

In posts #74, 75 and 76 I spelled out some important ideas from Ken Wilber's The Marriage of Sense and Soul, Integrating Science and Religion. He provides a wonderfully clear explanation of why science has been at odds with religion ever since it began about 400 years ago and how it came about that science not only "corroded away all of religion's teachings" but also "led to the denial of the very existence of spiritual realities."

What was especially new to me was Wilber's description of Western culture's attempts over the last two centuries to deal with the loss of the traditional religious perspectives.

Those attempts-- known as the "post-modern movements" of Romanticism, Idealism and Deconstructionism-- all failed, but we have learned something of great significance from each of them for integration of science and religion in our day.

Two important principles have emerged.

Thanks to Romanticism, we can see that we do indeed need to recover our communion with the natural world that had been lost because of the take-over of culture by science.

And thanks to Idealism, we can see that the evolutionary perspective isn't anti-religion. Evolution is what religion is all about.

These two Post-modern principles provide us with a good summary of the basic ideas and ideals of the New Story of the Universe that's ours today thanks to science.

And as strange as it may seem, we can even learn something of importance from Deconstructionism. It can be stated both negatively and positively. Negatively, it's that we can see better, now, that no single viewpoint or position-- about anything-- is privileged: every truth, from whatever source, has to be considered partial.

What we can learn from Deconstructionism, stated positively, is the great value of diversity-- diversity of persons and ideas, diversity of ethnic backgrounds and cultural perspectives. Along with subjectivity and communion, diversity is one the three basic principles of the New Cosmology listed by Thomas Berry.

Wilber's Marriage of Sense and Soul has helped me see how all these ideas fit together. The more I learn of Wilber's work the more I think he may go down in the history of ideas as an extremely significant contributor to our self-understanding at this great turning point in humanity's cultural evolution.

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I think Michael Dowd may go down in history, too. His book Thank God for Evolution presents us with a wealth of practical suggestions for a daily living out of the ideas and ideals of the New Cosmology. So these two important books go together as theoria and praxis.

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The title of his book makes it clear that Michael Dowd is especially concerned with helping people from a religious background to see that the contemporary scientific view of the world-- far from being in conflict with religion-- allows it to blossom in a way traditional religion never could.

Dowd puts into everyday language what the Post-modern movement called Idealism recognized: that evolution is, indeed, "what religion is all about."

His book is not, however, addressed only to people coming from a religious background. With his remarkable ability to address everyone, believers and non-believers and everyone in between, Dowd is himself a model of the Post-modern Deconstructionist respect for the diversity of persons, perspectives and cultures.

So in my next few posts I will be sharing some thoughts about the practical ideas available in Dowd's book.

In this post I want to include some thoughts about just what praxis means in the context of the New Cosmology.

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You may be thinking "we know what 'practice' means." I agree that we're comfortable with terms like "football practice" or "band practice."

But because science "corroded away all of religion's teachings and led to the denial of the very existence of spiritual realities," we may not have as clear idea as we can have of just what's meant by "spiritual or "religious" practice. As far as I know, no one has yet used a phrase like "New Cosmology praxis."

Wilber notes that the Post-modern Idealism had "one crippling inadequacy." Although it was "a glorious spiritual flower, the finest the West has ever known," he says "it lacked a yoga." It lacked, that is, an appropriate spiritual practice.

This may seem strange, given the profound religious history of Europe, with its contemplative traditions going all the way back to the early centuries of Christianity; but we need to keep in mind that, for most Western people, the cultural shift to Modernity wiped out all understanding of interiority. The "mind, soul and spirit" part of the Great Ladder of Being simply ceases to be a reality for most individuals in Western culture. Even today the concept of contemplation and spiritual practice remains an odd one for many-- maybe most-- Americans.

The science-religion conflict isn't just in terms of theoria. It's in terms of praxis, too.

After the Middle Ages, the idea of "spirituality" tended to be limited in meaning to a concern for the higher rungs of the Great Chain, so the more recent Western religious tradition overflows with spiritual "how-to" books like The Imitation of Christ and An Introduction to the Devout Life. They focus on an individual's relationship with the Divine-- the "God and me" attitude-- to the exclusion of the physical universe and humanity as a whole.

A contemporary understanding of spiritual practice obviously needs to include cosmos and anthropos as well as theos-- the physical world of human beings as well as of God.

In the perspectives of the New Cosmology, spiritual practice has to do specifically with we humans taking responsibility for our world. The New Story of the Universe lets us see, perhaps for the first time in human history, that we are called to create our own world.

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One of Post-modernism's "moments of truth," as Wilber calls them, is the Deconstructionists' understanding that, in expressing itself via language, human consciousness isn't "simply a representation of a pre-given reality." It is, as he says, "a participation in the very construction of our world."

Speech, our uniquely human characteristic, is a powerful creative force: "Language creates worlds."

This idea-- that we human persons are participants in the creation of our world-- is not one found in traditional manuals of spiritual practice. But it is, I think, the very essence of any praxis for the New Cosmology.

In the dynamic perspectives of the New Cosmology, we humans, made in the image and likeness of the Creator, recognize ourselves as responsible for creating our own world. That responsibility-- being creative-- is what the New Cosmology spirituality is all about.

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I mentioned in an earlier post that creativity refers especially to our powerful need and desire to know and understand the world-- its meaning, purpose, significance-- and that it refers to the drive we experience to seek to make our existence better. Words like "quest" and "invention" are basic aspects of the creative drive we find in us.

And it wasn't only religion which overlooked creativity. Wilber notes that the understanding of our creative role in the world was totally ignored-- completely missed-- by the flatland perspectives of Modernity as well. It's being newly discovered thanks to the New Cosmology-- as the very essence of New Cosmology's spiritual praxis.

Wilber uses the word "performance" to express this still strange idea that we actually make our own world by our understanding of it. Thomas Berry calls this participatory role in the evolution of the universe our "Great Work."

If "evolution is what religion is about" then, in the evolutionary perspectives of the New Cosmology, what the practice of religion is all about is precisely this Great Work of creating or making our world.

Dowd offers some down-to-earth practical details for going about performing our job. His Thank God for Evolution is a unique compendium or manual of praxis for living out the New Cosmology in everyday life. So I'll be sharing some thoughts along those lines in the next few posts.

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Meanwhile, I want to mention another person whose practical ideas are of great relevance to the New Cosmology praxis: Dr. Vandana Shiva, a philosopher and physicist from India who has become world-famous for her work combining concern for the Earth and the rights of the oppressed, especially the rights of women. I hadn't heard of her until a few months ago.

She was principle presenter at a recent conference the Sisters of Earth held on the weekend after the Fourth of July at Thomas Berry's old place on the Hudson, north of New York City. She spoke at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia a few days later.

Her talk has been made available on the web by the Academy of Natural Sciences' Center for Environmental Policy. With the introductions, it runs 80 minutes, but it's well worth watching.

It's a wonderful presentation of what spiritual practice means in the New Cosmology and an outstanding example of what creativity means as the essence of religious practice in our time.

The video link is http://www.ansp.org/environmental/2010/07/video-follow-up-vandana-shiva/.

I hope you will be able to view it.

sam@macspeno.com

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#52. "Exciting Times"

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For readers who did not receive the announcement I sent out about starting a new series of posts dealing with the convergence of science and religion, here's what I said:

If you're receiving this, it's because at some point in the last two and a half years you expressed interest (in one way or another, positive or negative), or because you're attracted to the new cosmology, or because your work (in science or spirituality-- or both) is mentioned, or simply because I know that you're goodwilled and would like to receive this announcement.

It's a one-shot. You won't hear from me again about it-- unless you would like to be notified when a new post appears, as some readers in the past have requested. Let me know if you want to be on the new list.

That's it. We live in wonderfully exciting times. My good wishes for your part in it.

Those last lines resulted in some interesting comments from readers who sent a request that they be put on the notification list.

The comments were primarily about the environmental crisis, and made two main points: that "we also live in frightening times" and that the reason why our times are so frightening is that "people just don't give a damn."

Those comments suggested to me that I should say why I think that we do indeed live in "wonderfully exciting times."

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As I see it, the essence of what's happening in the contemporary world is that humanity is moving out of the patriarchal worldview.

We are in the midst of an immense transition, a great turning away from those long-held static attitudes of the past which are responsible not only for the Earth's present environmental crisis but also for innumerable injustices to the Earth's people.

We are recognizing-- thanks to 20th-century science-- that we live in an evolutionary world.

We can see, now, not only that the universe is developmental rather than static, but that we ourselves are the world coming to its conscious stage of development on our planet. This is the very essence of our new scientific understanding of the cosmos.

But it is also a new understanding of anthropos. That, as the famous British biologist Julian Huxley worded it, "we are the universe become conscious of itself."

Of course, even in the static worldview, it is obvious that humans are uniquely self-aware creatures. But now, thanks to modern science's dynamic worldview, we are also aware that our self-awareness is the self-awareness of the evolving universe.

And that's what allows us to see, in a way that our recent ancestors could not, that we are participants in the Earth's evolutionary development, that we belong to it and are part of it all.

In the most literal sense, all the creatures of the Earth are our relatives. And if they are our relations, then they matter to us. And we know from experience that we take care of what matters to us. As I see it, the fact that we take care of what we value is the only "solution" to the environmental crisis.

I wrote about the idea of our time of Great Turning in several previous posts, specifically #35 (Aspects of the Immense Transition, Parts 1 & 2) and #36 (Aspects of the Immense Transition, Parts 3 & 4). But it is the central idea in this entire blog. Almost every post deals with it in one way or another; for example, #14 (Person as Process), #17 (What is the Universe Doing?), #22 (The Other Half of "Person"), #47 (The Growing Edge) and #50 (The End of Patriarchy).

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While our Paleolithic ancestors understood well, as do the peoples of surviving tribal cultures, that all the living things of the Earth are our relations, an understanding of this "human-Earth relationship," as Thomas Berry calls it, was lost to western culture and patriarchal religion a long time ago.

Its recovery, in this time of Great Turning, is one of the reasons why the Earth-centered spirituality of Native Americans is so attractive to those who are aware of the new cosmology. What's "new" in the term "new cosmology" is precisely humanity's beginning to see again the connection between ourselves and the evolving universe. This new view of both cosmos and anthropos together is precisely what makes our times so exciting.

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I certainly don't deny that our times are also frightening. But life has always been frightening.

We are easily injured and often get sick. Our parts break down or don't work right. Just being born is a major accomplishment; most human embryos don't make it through the nine-month gestation period. And once we're born we begin life totally helpless and clueless. It takes us months and years to become aware of ourselves and the world around us.

Parents usually do the best they can, often in difficult circumstances, but our emotional and psychological development is easily distorted; we readily get scarred by what happens to us-- or what doesn't happen to us when it should. And imbalances in society make for unequal opportunities and unfair availability of decent supplies of food, shelter and education.

Our whole existence is fragile. And no matter how healthy and well-off we are, we know that our life will come to an end, just as does the life of every living thing on Earth.

So, as I see it, it's not so much our times as it is our very existence that's frightening.

And yet it's no less true-- specifically because of our growing awareness of the global environmental crisis-- that our times are especially frightening as well, since we are beginning to realize that by destroying the environment we are damaging our home-- our own human habitat, our ecos. Words like "ecology" and "economics" are based on that Greek word for "home."

We know that most plant and animal species become extinct if their habitat is destroyed-- that they can't survive in an inhospitable habitat which isn't really their home. And neither can we.

So what's really frightening is that even though we are more adaptable than most other living things-- that adaptability is part of our uniqueness as self-aware persons-- to not "give a damn about saving the Earth" is the pathological destruction of our own our habitat.

But I think it's exactly that pathological situation that's changing.

We are coming to see that planet Earth is in fact our mother, that we're not aliens trapped in the natural world but participants in it.

Just recently I heard a young person say to her father, "I want to be 'green'." It's exciting when little people, you and me, want to care about the physical world of nature, our mother, our home. They do "give a damn."

And this really is new. After several centuries of the static and mechanistic worldview promoted by 18th-century rationalist science, and the depression, discouragement and despair that characterized much of the 20th century which resulted from it, human existence is once again, and this time thanks to late 20th-century science, becoming meaningful.

Life is indeed frightening, biologically and culturally, but what makes our times so exciting is that for the first time ever we're coming to see not only that we can do something about it but also that that's what we're supposed to be doing.

We are becoming aware, as never before in human history, that what happens to us is up to us. We're coming to see that things like poverty, hunger, racial and gender injustice, war and violence of every kind-- including violence against our mother planet-- are not simply "fate" or "the will of God" or "just the way things are." Doing something about it is our very vocation in the cultural evolution of life on Mother Earth. It's what we're for. It's our purpose, our calling, our role, our task. In Thomas Berry words, it's our "great work."

After several centuries of the static mechanistic perspective, we're coming to see our own significance. And that to me, by any meaning of the word, is exciting.

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Thomas Berry notes that the necessary "transformation of human priorities" won't come easily. But, as he says, from now on “the primary judgment of all human institutions, professions, programs and activities will be determined by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore or foster a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship.”

When we are aware of our place in the grand scheme of things, we can see that the promotion of "a mutually enhancing relationship" between anthropos and cosmos is indeed our task and that it is our "great work.”

In academic anthropology, a people's understanding of their "place in the scheme of things" is called their cosmology. The new cosmology which results from the dynamic-evolutionary worldview-- the growing awareness of the human-Earth (anthropos-cosmos) relationship which we have in our day from the findings of modern science about our place in the grand scheme of things-- is one that all of the peoples of the world can share in common. And every day more and more people are becoming aware of it.

Ours is the first time in world history that all humanity has a common cosmology. That's at least part of why I can say, "We live in wonderfully exciting times."

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Berry specifies that, in this transformation of human priorities, we need to put our energies into four big areas: "politics, economics, education and religion."

When it comes to evaluating the area of politics-- in terms of whether it is inhibiting, ignoring or fostering "a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship”-- probably nothing helped us more than the disasters of the American presidency in the first eight years of the 21st century. Even those who lives are caught up in the distractions of so-called "reality" TV such as American Idol eventually became aware that something was drastically wrong, that our political leaders had betrayed us.

And in the area of economics, probably no one in the world remains unaware that in terms of inhibiting, ignoring or fostering "a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship,” our economic leaders have also betrayed us.

Neither politics nor economics has been a personal focus of my life.

But the areas of education and religion have been-- especially science education and a viable everyday spirituality. The need to share my thoughts about their convergence led me to begin this blog.

Religion never meant for me following a list of dos and don'ts about private behavior that was handed down by authority figures. It was always about understanding the world we live in-- how it works and how it got to the way it is and where it seems to be going-- and of entering into it and enjoying it.

While there's no question that our political and economic leaders have betrayed us, it has taken much longer for an awareness of a betrayal on the part of our religious leaders to become widespread. I think it's simply because religion is such a conservative thing; its patriarchal-institutional forms remain stuck in the old static worldview.

But that awareness has begun to dawn on many. The fastest growing "religious" group in the United States is now made up of those who don't want anything to do with institutional religion.

A question we may ask is, "Why is it that our religious leaders remain so clueless?" My response is that I don't think they're any more clueless than our economic or political leaders. In all three areas, our leaders simply don't know any better. They are ignorant in the most basic sense; their betrayal is due to their lack knowledge about themselves and about real people in the real world.

What they lack is precisely the dynamic worldview of new cosmology, that human beings as responsible participants in the cosmic process.

This is why I think education-- the fourth of Berry's areas of our great work-- is the most central one. You are probably thinking that I'm now going to say that our education leaders have also betrayed us. But I'm not. The fact is that the field of education doesn't have any leaders.

There are certainly lots of good teachers, and even some good administrators. But they are good at their jobs in spite of the educational system they work in, not because of it. Lack of leadership in the field of education makes even the institutional churches look like growing edge cultural phenomena.

If you think I'm being too hard on education and religion, I repeat again Berry's words, that from now on “the primary judgment of all human institutions, professions, programs and activities will be determined by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore or foster a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship.” (Italics added, this time.)

Using that criteria, we can see that if there's any area where putting our energies to our great work is a "do it yourself" project, it's the area of education. And no greater gift along those lines has been given to us than the internet. A tremendous amount of the world's knowledge, and even much of its wisdom, is available at our fingertips.

A good example of the promotion of self-education is Ryan McCarl's web site Wide Awake Minds. I first came across McCarl's work while reading his article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about religion and imagination. It appeared on December 10, 2007, the same day I had published post #26 (Help From Uncle Louie). Both deal with the same topic-- although obviously from very different starting points. But even that coincidence seems to me to be one more example of the fact that we live in exciting times.

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When a few paragraphs back I said that religion has always meant for me "understanding the world we live in-- how it works and how it got to the way it is and where it seems to be going-- and of entering into it and enjoying it," you may have thought, "that sounds more like science than religion."

For me, it's a description of both. Obviously they're different, although just how they are different is not as obvious as it may seem, and understanding how they differ is important if we are to see their convergence. I'm planning to write about that distinction in my next post.

Why religion and science are similar is more clear: they are both doors to wonder and awe.

In a strong essay on the connection between the environmental crisis and the encounter with one another of the world's religions, Dr. Heather Eaton of St. Paul University in Ottawa says that wonder and awe are the very basis of that area of human life we call "religion." I agree, of course, but I think they are the basis of science, too. At least that's been my experience.

That's why I called this blog "sharing thoughts about the convergence of science and religion." Those two areas of human life, which seem so utterly different as to be mutually exclusive for some of us, really do converge, as I see it, with our experience of wonder and awe.

Dr. Eaton has some very important things to say in her essay about dealing with the environmental crisis in terms of wonder and awe. Her analysis of how the different views about it tie in with religious perspectives is simply excellent. I hope to share my understanding of it with readers in the very near future. So I have an agenda for the next few posts. Your feedback is welcome.

Sam's Sum: We are moving out of the static patriarchal worldview. We're turning away from those long-held attitudes of the past which are responsible for the Earth's present environmental crisis. And we are, thereby, waking up to our ability to deal with what makes our times so frightening. That's encouraging. And, for me, makes our times wonderfully exciting!

sam@macspeno.com

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