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Dear all,
 On
another list to which I belong we have just begun an intensive study of
one of Diarmuid O'Murchu's most recent books, Evolutionary Faith.
I wrote the following post as a response to the background paper prepared
by one of the other members of that list seeking to provide an introduction
to the thinking of Diarmuid O'Murchu. I have endeavoured to take a different
tack exploring why there has been this gulf and conflict between Science
and Religion and endeavour to point to how O'Murchu provides a bridge
to lessen the gulf and the conflict.
Before Diarmuid O'Murchu entered my life I had often wondered what Teilhard
de Chardin would be writing today given the further advances in scientific
knowledge and insight since his death in the early 1950s. In many ways
I suspect that Diarmuid is the one who answers that question. I find his
writing and insight some kind of natural extension to Teilhard.
In her background article, Beatrix, seeks to outline a context for understanding
O'Murchu by going back to explore the changes in the scientific paradigm
or frame of reference within which scientists do their thinking. Could
I present a slightly different way of understanding the revolution, or
"u-turn" that occurred in the scientific paradigm in the early
decades of the twentieth century and which finally came to orderly explication
and understanding in disciplines labelled such as Quantum Mechanics, Chaos
Theory, String Theory, Fractal Physics, etc.
 Since
the time of Isaac
Newton (the father of classical Physics - 1643-1727) the base assumption
from which scientists did their thinking was that if we (humankind) studied
things for long enough eventually we would discover all of the laws that
explained how "life, the cosmos and everything" worked. It was
almost a given that eventually everything would be explained by simple
mathematical laws similar to what are known today as the classical laws
of Physics such as the law of gravity that explains why things always
fall down (and not up). There was an expectation that the answers we would
eventually discover would be both simple and complete. In other words
all the mystery and uncertainty would be taken out of our understanding
of why the things we observe about life are as they are.
 As
anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of history would know,
classical Physics had itself been an enormous revolution in the general
thinking paradigm up until that time as to how ordinary people "made
sense" of the world they could see around them. Galileo Galilee,
one of the principal figures who contributed to this "change of paradigm"
was ostracised and placed under house arrest by the other principality
(the Church) which thought it was the institution in society most responsible
for determining what truth is. From time immemorial human beings had looked
up at the heavens, and pondered the mystery of the weather and the seasons.
Much of life was enveloped in "mystery" and "incertitude".
The institutional religions had, down through the centuries, developed
the theologies and explanations that enabled us (humankind) to live in
some kind of equilibrium or harmony with all those things in life which
are mysterious or unexplainable by rational thought and analysis. I submit
that it (institutionalised religion) largely did this by attributing everything
that could not be explained to the realm of the Divine. In other words
God was the explanation for everything that could not be explained about
life. The sky looked the way it did because God made it look that way.
The weather acted the way it did because of God - but not in some architectural
sense that God invented "the weather" but that God was up there
somewhere "pushing the levers or flicking the switches" that
would cause droughts, floods and all the variations in between.
Science came to be seen as a threat to the hegemony of the Church in governing
what people could believe.
Science itself, no doubt, saw itself as challenging at least some of the
areas of human knowledge that had been within the ambit of Church control.
For almost three centuries the "status quo" within science had
been this belief at the paradigmatic level (i.e. at the level of base
assumption from which all other thinking flows) that eventually science
would uncover ALL the explanations as to why life was as it was observed
to be. In other words, if we beavered away at the coal-face long enough
eventually rational explanations would be uncovered that explained all
the mysteries there are in life. Self-evidently the Church continually
felt threatened by this because, if the scientific paradigm or assumption
was correct, then eventually there would be no room left for God in Creation.
Hence for a long time we have lived with the classical "stand-off"
and "antipathy" between Science and Religion.
In the early decades of the twentieth century a number of important breakthroughs
occurred in scientific research. These principally occurred in the realm
of what today we call subatomic Physics - the science of the very smallest
elements in creation. For three centuries scientists had been developing
both more powerful telescopes (to peer into the very largest scales of
events happening within the universe) and more powerful microscopes (to
peer into the very smallest scale of events happening within the universe).
The revolution or "about turn" that began to occur in scientific
thinking in the early decades of the twentieth century was that by actual
scientific LAW some things could never be explained. Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle, to me, is the most basic of the scientific Laws that turned
the whole paradigm on its head. In this new paradigm, which came to be
labelled as Quantum Mechanics or Quantum Physics, by actual definition
there are some things to which we can never have answers.
The most rudimentary of these is summed up in the proposition that we
can, for example, know the speed of an electron or we can know its position
but we can never know, by scientific definition itself, both of those
measures at one and the same time. From there, later science went on to
discover that there are many things which we observe which literally can
never be explained in some absolute sense as had been the prevailing assumption
for the preceding three centuries. The very best understanding we could
have came within the realms of probability and statistics. At the core
of life was "mystery" as to how certain events occurred. Perhaps
the single greatest of these mysteries is the one of what triggered the
Big Bang itself.
Science herself today is able to figuratively "look back" in
time to within literally nano-seconds of the start of time at the Big
Bang but she cannot see the Big Bang itself because of the Quantum limitation
that there are some things that simply can never be explained, or observed,
other than by the probability of them occurring. This is very difficult
stuff for the non-scientific mind to understand. By this I mean the mind
that has come to understand how science, over its long journey, came to
the discovery as a scientific certitude within itself that some things,
by definition, are without explanation and must forever remain mysterious
to us.
Fortunately or unfortunately much of the classical scientific outlook
during the three centuries since Newton and Galileo had percolated into
theological thinking. Today, in some respects we have a Church which is
the Prince of Certitude in the world and it is science that is the Prince
of Incertitude and Mystery. It is as though at the paradigmatic level
within which civilisation does its thinking there has been a reversal
of roles.
 I
submit, the importance of O'Murchu and his predecessor, Teilhard de Chardin,
in all of this is that they provide some kind of bridge for us between
these two enormous paradigms and the fundamental conflicts that exist
between the two paradigms. In an ideal world there should of course be
no conflict. The existence of these big on-going debates in society over
Creationism and the latest little dispute over "Intelligent Design"
should illustrate that there is still an enormous dispute and powerplay
going on for hegemony over the underlying paradigm within which civilisation
does her thinking.
Since humankind emerged from the cave one of the characteristics of the
human condition has been that sense of insecurity that comes from the
elements and events in our environment that have no rational explanation.
What should we do with them? How do we deal with uncertainty and the events,
seemingly serendipitous when they bring bounty into our lives, and seemingly
disastrous when they bring pain and conflict into our lives as happens,
say, with a Tsunami or the sort of earthquake that the people of Jogjakarta
are dealing with at the moment? Both science and religion in different
ways are seeking the same end: the removal of uncertainty and insecurity
from our lives. Through science we want to understand how and why Tsunamis
or Earthquakes occur and either prevent them occurring in the future or,
at the every least, provide as much warning as possible so that people
might protect themselves from the consequences that flow from these events.
Religion of course is not so much concerned with trying to predict or
prevent events that cause insecurity and fear but she posits a framework
of thinking that enables us to cope if and when some disaster should erupt
in our lives.
It is a delicious paradox or irony that through this three-centuries long
meander science herself should have ended up back at the place where,
by scientific definition itself, much of the origins of Life and Creation
are seen to be "shrouded" in mystery and uncertainty. Isn't
that what the original theological insight had been all along - that,
at the heart of Life and Creation, was a large element of Mystery which
resided in the Divine Knowledge alone? Albeit that the quality of Heisenberg-style
uncertainty is very, very different to the quality of some superstitious
type of uncertainty that an illiterate and uneducated people might have,
the challenge we collectively face today is marrying these new and totally
unexpected, insights of modern science to our evolving understanding of
the nature of that who, or which, was the original architect of what is,
at one and the same time, "the wonder (mystery) of Creation",
the wonder (mystery) of the Divine" and "the wonder (mystery)
of Science".
 Through
his seminal books, Quantum Theology and Evolutionary
Faith, Diarmuid O'Murchu seeks to develop a more holistic paradigm
that enables us to transcend (or move beyond) the conflicts and confusion
that exists between the educated theological and scientific minds and
also the uneducated and still quasi-superstitious minds who are unable
to handle any of this but who, despite all their own shortcomings, still
seek certitude and certainty in their lives through some simplistic explanation
or thinking paradigm.
Regards, Tom Scott
 |
Tom
Scott is the pen name of the editor of Catholica, Brian Coyne. |
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Tom Scott can be contracted at:
Tom Scott <tomscott@catholica.com.au>
[Tom's Take Archive]
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