Science, Faith, and the bridge of Metaphysics.
by Alex Marthaller on Sunday, August 29, 2010 at 1:51am.
The destruction of the relationship between man and God is largely due to the modern denouncement of metaphysics as relative in the realm of science. Metaphysics is the bridge between modern scientific understanding and of our relationship with God, as it is the science of the soul. Philosophers like Kant and Schopenhauer have wrestled with it as they tried to include mention of the will within itself and the Noumenon central to absolute reality, but as science entered the age of enlightenment the use for such terms was limited as philosophical flights of fancy, and God was reasoned out. Reasonability can not account for the consequences for our actions we must now face in a dying world. Science must be revisited to incorporate a system of modern cosmology and metaphysics that allow room for the spirit and for God to exist;likewise, religion and spiritual faith must be able to be strong in its foundations, yet allow for enough flexability to incorporate the observations and probabilities of good science. For example, I can believe in Christ and believe that the Earth is not the center of the universe; just as, I can believe in the probability of evolution over vast epochs of time and still believe that it is God's hand which guides such creation, and still believe in the virgin birth, crusifiction, and resurection. There are no contradictions except the minds which maintain them. This new paradigm, a marrage of sorts, will be the saving factor for our existence and the restructuring of a deep ecology.
Science and faith, which allows metaphysics to flourish, are quite compatible. This is an insight that is slowly beginning to build in the scientific and academic circles. For we are beginning to realize that everything we observe with our sciences, including our magnificent minds, are really phenomenal aspects, or material incarnations, of a much greater reality; the greater reality of which I speak can be metaphorically described as an onion. An onion is made of several layers of cells which incorporate to create the onion in totality. Our universe, and reality are similar to this model; in that, the totality of our universe, of reality, of nature is a rich multi-layered, multi-dimensional reality of which we are aware of the most minute aspects. The sciences allow us to understand physical phenomenon, while metaphysics and religion allow us to experience yet other reflective layers, there may even be layers that we can not begin to perceive until our material bodies die and we assume form in a higher spiritual dimention. The abstract source of our being which we understand through our personal faith’s and religions as God, can also be felt in the patterns of nature. Indeed, every time we look through a microscope at our DNA, or through a telescope at the mysterious vastness of the cosmos, we are looking at direct evidence, at artifacts of God’s creation and the inner-workings of God’s mind.
The very structure of the cosmos contains a spiritual message, and why wouldn't it for it is God who created that very stucture. The very structure which is way out in space when you look at galaxies and nebula, and the very structure within your own cells. These structures which we are identifying through the sciences are quite literally revelations coming from the same source as religion itself. Both the sciences and spiritual traditions of faith in God are manifestations of Universal Intellect, the Logos, the cosmose itself as an integral aspect of God and the total Universe of meaning in which man lives, contemplates, and dies, and continues on in his spiritual heritage.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Late night ramblings
During our life 500,000 cells die each second, each day about 50 billion cells in our body are replaced, resulting in a new body each year. So cell death is totally different from body death when you eventually die. During our life our body changes continuously, each day, each minute, each second. Each year about 98% of our molecules and atoms in our body have been replaced. Each living being is in an unstable balance of two opposing processes of continual disintegration and integration. But no one realizes this constant change. And from where comes the continuity of our continually changing body? Cells are just the building blocks of our body, like the bricks of a house, but who is the architect, who coordinates the building of this house. When someone has died, only mortal remains are left: only matter. But where is the director of the body? What about our consciousness when we die? Is someone his body, or do we “have” a body? Better yet, am I simply a body of cells and fluids; am I a body which is tied to a soul; or am I a soul that is temporarily possessing a body. If so could it be that the I that is the real me, my soul, already exist in an extra dimentional place out side the body, but linked in a body/mind/spirit relationship. And, if so, then perhaps it is that what I do here while possessing this body is what determines the dwelling place of my soul, a direct reflection. As I become either acts of hate or acts of love in this life, I am eminating onto my soul, and the dimention of which it exists, the light or darkness that will forever become its place once the earthly body is gone. In essence Heaven or Hell, but in an energetic or multi-dimentional sense rather than a physical one.
There are just so many rabbit trails to go down with this series of thoughts: for example, if 98% of our material bodies change completley within a year, then how is it that we can retain memories for decades? This only adds to the hard pro...blem of consciousness, and supports the idea that though thoughts are influenced by the matter of the brain, they actually originate and exist in a dimention higher than that of the matter itself. Perhaps thoughts are something like radio waves from God, and our individual minds are merely organic transducers of consciousness. This is why individual consciousness seems subjective, but really it is just a very small part of the total universal and objective state of consciousness, something like Jung's idea of the shared collective unconscious.
Patterns everywhere... 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55... existing in and around us, like pieces of a holligram. 50 billion cells each day, 40 thousand people, 1,000 stars... The atom, the solar system, the galaxy... Branches on a tree, veins in a leaf, our lives, ripples on a pond, waves in the ocean... all just the rantings of a mind that needs to fall asleep
There are just so many rabbit trails to go down with this series of thoughts: for example, if 98% of our material bodies change completley within a year, then how is it that we can retain memories for decades? This only adds to the hard pro...blem of consciousness, and supports the idea that though thoughts are influenced by the matter of the brain, they actually originate and exist in a dimention higher than that of the matter itself. Perhaps thoughts are something like radio waves from God, and our individual minds are merely organic transducers of consciousness. This is why individual consciousness seems subjective, but really it is just a very small part of the total universal and objective state of consciousness, something like Jung's idea of the shared collective unconscious.
Patterns everywhere... 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55... existing in and around us, like pieces of a holligram. 50 billion cells each day, 40 thousand people, 1,000 stars... The atom, the solar system, the galaxy... Branches on a tree, veins in a leaf, our lives, ripples on a pond, waves in the ocean... all just the rantings of a mind that needs to fall asleep
Monday, August 23, 2010
The Cult of Social Narcissism in the industrialized consumer Western Civilization (excerpt by A.K. Marthaller)
It is our own widespread social narcissism of epidemic proportion that eludes the majority from the fact that we humans too are fragile animals that could easily join the other 99.8% of all other species that once thrived on Earth but are now extinct. To vainly believe that our race is so superior and "entitled" to the point of negligent destruction of the world's biosphere reeks of the very arrogance and blasphemy of which many an ancient tale and holy scripture had warned against as it may anger God enough to allow us to perish. Indeed there are even those who observe the impending collapse of everything we know of as our world as a prophesy playing itself out into a manmade destructive crescendo of apocalyptic proportions. Narcissism arises in the child who "suffers from a prolonged state of unmet needs" (Winter, Koger, pg. 45). As a society who is displaced from the "source" of our being we too suffer a prolonged unquenchable thirst of unmet needs; thus, we have become a narcissistic society of starving consumers of material reality that just isn't as real as we think. The problem is, is that many of us are so far removed from the source of our being that we do not know how to properly feed our psyche; that is we do not know where to begin to find the correct and healthy food for our minds and souls. We will not find the proper nourishment on the television, nor will we find it in any consumer product or underwear ad, nor will we find it on any of the artificial summits of the mountains of distorted notions we climb in search of our selves. We're just not there, anywhere to be seen. We can never truly meet our psyche's needs by applying artificial and material things to ourselves to fill in the desolate void in our lives; inasmuch, we will always hunger and thirst for more money, more ego status, a faster car, a bigger house, and more power because these are not the things that our souls' and minds' need. This would be like eating nothing but cotton candy and drinking muck when we really need a sustainable meal and fresh clean water. This blinding epidemic of cultural narcissism and global ecological destruction allude to a greater dysfunction within the shared psychology of Western industrialized materialist consumer society.
Narcissism arises in the child who "suffers from a prolonged state of unmet needs"; thus, causing the individual to enter into a life long pattern of traits and behaviors which signify infatuation and obsession with one's self to the exclusion of all others and the egotistic and ruthless pursuit of one's gratification, dominance and ambition. This is a sever neurotic reaction to anxiety caused by lack of nurturing substance sometime during child development; inasmuch, the neurotic behavior eventually morphs into neurosis and eventually into a diagnosable (DSMIV) psychological disorder. The Narcissist must create and maintain a perceived reality that makes them the central figure, and all other persons merely extentions of themselves rather than real people with a seperate reality, lives, and boundaries. They will often think themselves to be elusive and somehow better than most everyone else, this may appear to them as being wealthier or more intelligent than anyone else; thus, relationships are very (black or white), they will either include others into their grand dilusion of being greater, or they will damn others to the opposite of them. If they think they are the most intelligent person in the world, others will be reduced to being imbeciles. The Narcissist believes much like an infant child, that the world revolves around their hunger for self and for nurturing. Often times the Narcissist will seek to feed their hunger-lust for nurturing and self by excessivley nurturing their false reality and delusion of grandure, or in manipulating others to gain the emotional attention they hunger for: much in the same way that a child cries when hungry.
That is the individual behavior of the Narcissist. It is a real disorder on a personal level, but it has also become a large scale epidemic as a social dysfuntion in the patterns of our societies behavior in terms of how we view ourselves, our rights, and our interaction with the rest of the world. Thus, we continue to hunger and inexhaustably consume our relationships, our natural habitat, and our spiritual identities. Narcissism is a sign of the times, and is the large scale psychosis that will dismantle our civilization as we know it.
Now think about that, then take a look around. Is it you? Is it someone you know? Is it a group of people you know? Do you belong to that group? Are the problems our world is facing a byproduct and symptom to the larg scale social epidemic psychological disorder of Narcissism?
It is our own widespread social narcissism of epidemic proportion that eludes the majority from the fact that we humans too are fragile animals that could easily join the other 99.8% of all other species that once thrived on Earth but are now extinct. To vainly believe that our race is so superior and "entitled" to the point of negligent destruction of the world's biosphere reeks of the very arrogance and blasphemy of which many an ancient tale and holy scripture had warned against as it may anger God enough to allow us to perish. Indeed there are even those who observe the impending collapse of everything we know of as our world as a prophesy playing itself out into a manmade destructive crescendo of apocalyptic proportions. Narcissism arises in the child who "suffers from a prolonged state of unmet needs" (Winter, Koger, pg. 45). As a society who is displaced from the "source" of our being we too suffer a prolonged unquenchable thirst of unmet needs; thus, we have become a narcissistic society of starving consumers of material reality that just isn't as real as we think. The problem is, is that many of us are so far removed from the source of our being that we do not know how to properly feed our psyche; that is we do not know where to begin to find the correct and healthy food for our minds and souls. We will not find the proper nourishment on the television, nor will we find it in any consumer product or underwear ad, nor will we find it on any of the artificial summits of the mountains of distorted notions we climb in search of our selves. We're just not there, anywhere to be seen. We can never truly meet our psyche's needs by applying artificial and material things to ourselves to fill in the desolate void in our lives; inasmuch, we will always hunger and thirst for more money, more ego status, a faster car, a bigger house, and more power because these are not the things that our souls' and minds' need. This would be like eating nothing but cotton candy and drinking muck when we really need a sustainable meal and fresh clean water. This blinding epidemic of cultural narcissism and global ecological destruction allude to a greater dysfunction within the shared psychology of Western industrialized materialist consumer society.
Narcissism arises in the child who "suffers from a prolonged state of unmet needs"; thus, causing the individual to enter into a life long pattern of traits and behaviors which signify infatuation and obsession with one's self to the exclusion of all others and the egotistic and ruthless pursuit of one's gratification, dominance and ambition. This is a sever neurotic reaction to anxiety caused by lack of nurturing substance sometime during child development; inasmuch, the neurotic behavior eventually morphs into neurosis and eventually into a diagnosable (DSMIV) psychological disorder. The Narcissist must create and maintain a perceived reality that makes them the central figure, and all other persons merely extentions of themselves rather than real people with a seperate reality, lives, and boundaries. They will often think themselves to be elusive and somehow better than most everyone else, this may appear to them as being wealthier or more intelligent than anyone else; thus, relationships are very (black or white), they will either include others into their grand dilusion of being greater, or they will damn others to the opposite of them. If they think they are the most intelligent person in the world, others will be reduced to being imbeciles. The Narcissist believes much like an infant child, that the world revolves around their hunger for self and for nurturing. Often times the Narcissist will seek to feed their hunger-lust for nurturing and self by excessivley nurturing their false reality and delusion of grandure, or in manipulating others to gain the emotional attention they hunger for: much in the same way that a child cries when hungry.
That is the individual behavior of the Narcissist. It is a real disorder on a personal level, but it has also become a large scale epidemic as a social dysfuntion in the patterns of our societies behavior in terms of how we view ourselves, our rights, and our interaction with the rest of the world. Thus, we continue to hunger and inexhaustably consume our relationships, our natural habitat, and our spiritual identities. Narcissism is a sign of the times, and is the large scale psychosis that will dismantle our civilization as we know it.
Now think about that, then take a look around. Is it you? Is it someone you know? Is it a group of people you know? Do you belong to that group? Are the problems our world is facing a byproduct and symptom to the larg scale social epidemic psychological disorder of Narcissism?
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Einstein's brain and evolution.
The super folded neo-cortex which led to massive dendrite growth and to the extreme linking of the parietal lobe to the temporal lobe found in Einstein's brain suggests that mutation and variance can be detected in the brain, that brain evolution does happen. And, as we all know, those slight variations in Einstein's brain allowed him to access areas of his mind unknown to most other humans. We saw the power of his thought in the discovery of E=MC2; the prediction of black holes decades before they were confirmed; and in the nuclear explosion that ended WWII. Much power in the slightest of genetic variation in a small amount of time, in one species, in one generation; now, consider the power of genetic variation and brain development over 3 billion years, millions of species, and millions of generations.
Brain Evolution and Theistic synthesis
Brain evolution is a perfect road map of brain development through epochs of time. At our base stem our brains are most like reptilian, and then emotional centers like dogs and cats, then into the neo-cortical regions found in other apes. Ours are the most developed. Does this mean that we are directly descended from these species? Perhaps, but not necessarily, but there is strong correlation to show similar genetic patterns that have emerged through time, and through the development of species. We could share common ancestors all along the way. We were never Chimps; however, we diverge from a similar genetic lineage, and the clues are in the genes. There have been some eyebrow raising finds in the fossil record more recently (in the past 9 months) to suggest that we share lineage, and that is the new idea in evolutionary science, and not that we are or were ever chimps. Looking for direct evidence in the fossil record is like searching for a needle in a haystack; inasmuch, where we will find the direct evidence of the process of evolution will come from our modern technical advances in being able to read the genetic code. The evidence is to be discovered right here in each of us, in our genes and by looking at the development of our brains. It does leave room to suggest that there are more general or common genetics shared by many species, and that through time and development we could share common ancestral genetics. Or one could even muse (from a theistic evolutionary point of view) that these genetics are common for the above reasons, and that they also act as a map or blue print of brain development through species as intended by a divine source of creation. The arguments between "Aquinas Creationism" and "Atheistic Evolutionists" are inexhaustible, full of holes, and rather boring. They are not supporting arguments for or against evolution as much as they are clinging desperately to narrow world views that are grasping at straws. Sad to me is that one would ever be caught in such desperation of belief that they couldn't even entertain possibilities, ever find commonality, or see beyond the intellectual smog and fallacy of reductionism. Both extremes are mistaken, there is a bigger picture, and it is called "Theistic Evolution". I contend that the contradictions raised in such arguments are perceptual contradictions, and not real contradictions. Because we can or can not perceive of something doesn't mean it doesn't happen or exist. This is the key to faith, because I can believe in the product without seeing the equation, or I can believe in the hand of creation without being able to put a glove on it. As far as I'm concerned there is no contradiction between theism and the observations of biology known as evolution. There is room for both theism and evolution to coexist.So really, evolution theory (variance, isolation, natural selection) can coexist with the concept of divine creation. Simply that, all of our observations in the sciences (cosmology in the times of Galileo, and biology now) are as accurate as our system of measurements and statistics; together these powerful tools of our minds are able to find "probability" in nature, A nature which was created and is perpetually being created by a divine omnipresent consciousness, God. So, I can believe in God, and that God created me with a mind to use and make sense of this amazing creation he placed me in... perhaps so that I can advance my civilization; enjoy the beauty; be amazed; and glorify him in all of it. Perhaps...
Friday, July 9, 2010
The mountian and I
think about how we are much more than we perceive on a day to day basis, in our worries, strides and struggles. It leads me to think not that I am simply just this body, and not even simply just a body that has a soul, but that I am a soul that is more currently entertaining this body. And that it is this same soul that transcends my body; moves beyond the subjective experience of "I myself" and into the objective experience of "I in of itself" or "I am" in that my soul is not only entertaining this body, but it is also entertain that which I usually perceive as my direct environment, and ultimatley a relationship with God. We can stand in the beauty of a mountian side and think, "wow, what a beautiful mountian, I am here and it is there; or, we can think "wow, what a beautiful existence, I am of the same quality which defines the mountain side of which I am able to directly perceive". The mountian and I are of different phenomenon, but we are of the same noumenon. Is this mountian really something separate from a deeper part of what defines me; or, is the real me something that converges with the existence of the mountain, of us both being an expression of the same creation by the same God? The more noumenal self awakening to observe and experience itself in greater depth through our more subjective central nervous systems.
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