I’d like to address a few simple everyday questions:
Why is anything alive at all?
Why are some things alive and some things not?
Where does consciousness in living things (like us) come from and does it survive in some form after our physical death?
Like I said, simple stuff.
In today’s world, there are two major alternative (and opposing) answers to these questions – the “Religion Answer” and the “Science Answer”, though a third alternative that doesn’t have a name yet is slowly beginning to gain traction. We’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s start with the usual answers.
Alternative 1: The answer in the Western religions is that an all-powerful God made everything including us and that our consciousness is a gift “He” gave us by creating us in his “own image and likeness”. Lower forms of material (rocks, soil, water) were not given life. Plants and animals were given life and animals were given consciousness, but in a lower form than ours. Our consciousness, usually called the “soul”, is the center of our being and could be considered “who we really are”. Our souls are connected to our bodies but can be led astray by the body’s physical desires for sex and material goods. Prayer and following the church’s rules (the 10 Commandments for instance) can help us resist the body’s urges. The soul survives after death and will enter a place of paradise or punishment depending on how well the individual has followed God’s rules while alive. The “meaning” of human life is entirely tied in with our relationship to God and our following of God’s plan for us.
In many Eastern religions, the soul is distinguished from the body and can be led to a state of unrest by those same “earthly” desires or “cravings” as well as dissatisfaction with our condition - such things as aging, illness and death. While no all-powerful God is behind it all, the soul’s goal is to achieve a state of inner peace or “enlightenment” which will release the person from the cycle of birth and rebirth.
These views have more in common than not despite their surface differences. With or without a divine overseer, humanity is seen as out of synch with the surroundings of our material nature and in need of redemption. Death in both belief systems is also seen as a transition to better or worse conditions based on how well or badly the current life has been lived.
Alternative 2: The second “scientific” alternative, is that life, like everything else in the universe, evolved out of the interaction of matter and energy and follows clearly definable laws, such as the law of gravity. The big bang happened as a natural process and not because an almighty intelligence decided to push the button. Life is an accident caused by the effect of the sun’s light energy on cells in our planet’s ocean. The development of increasingly complex life and the emergence of consciousness is simply the result of the survival value of these traits. Life, like everything else in the Universe, begins, thrives for a while, then goes out of existence. “Meaning” is a human concept that will either enhance an individual’s life or cause discomfort depending on how the individual deals with it. It’s a private matter with nothing eternal behind it.
Alternative 2.5 “Intelligent Design” is essentially Alternative 1 using elements of Alternative 2 to make its case for a guiding intellect behind creation. The question of course is whether intellect created the process or the process created intellect. Which brings us to:
Alternative 3: The third alternative, which has yet to have an official title or organization to promote it, but which is peeking out from between the cracks in the day to day lives of the majority of homo sapiens, is the idea that while the realities of biology, birth and decay are operating without an almighty hand at the wheel, there’s more going on here than meets the eye. The rise of the idea “spiritual not religious” as a self-identifier reflects this notion. Many individuals and groups both formal (the Unitarians for instance) and informal (any number of “New Age” and self-help groups) have expressed a sense of an “inner life” than can transcend the messy realities the “real world” keeps throwing at us. There are also elements of this approach in Buddhism and Taoism, which advocate individual spirituality without an almighty overseer.
The question of course is “Does our sense of an inner life indicate a connection with a higher reality or is it just a function of our unconscious minds, unconnected to anything but our own thoughts, feelings and memories?”
As someone once said, “Elementary my dear Watson.” This is a big question, possibly the big question. The reason we bother to ask it is because of some major problems with both the religious and scientific alternatives.
The most troubling thing about the religious alternative is that it has been used throughout human history to put a great deal of power into the hands of the people who claim to speak for the almighty, be they representatives of “official” faiths or cult leaders. The message is “Obey our rules or God will burn you in hell”. In addition, the clash between religious mythology and documentable historical and scientific fact has done a lot, especially in recent years, to undermine religion’s credibility.
The most troubling thing about the scientific alternative is that it portrays human life as a meaningless accident, an “absurd” event in a mindless universe. If our being here at all is pointless flip of nature’s coin, what does it matter what we do?
Alternative #3 looks for a middle ground between these two and is really very simple. It’s easy to forget that the universe is primarily energy. Matter is a passenger on the energy bus. Life is essentially a form of energy – those cells in the earth’s ocean were energized by the sun’s rays and started twitching around and reproducing – and the rest is history. Consciousness arises in the more complex energy systems – the more the complexity, the higher the consciousness – compare a single celled organism with 100 billion celled human brains. 100 billion cells at work means there’s a whole lot of energy going on - with the dual task of operating the unconscious systems (things like breathing and digestion) that keep us alive while also fueling our conscious and unconscious minds - the more the complexity, the more the energy.
Let’s ride this train of thought a little further. What is the most complex thing in the universe, containing the most energy? That would be the universe itself, which contains all the matter and all the energy in the universe. And now for the big “what if?”.
What if the universe is alive? Alive and conscious of itself in a way that is beyond our understanding - pure energy, pure thought and the root source of our energy and thought - but no more conscious of us than we are of the millions of bacteria that help us digest out food? We’re in that consciousness, it runs on the same energy that’s keeping us going – in fact, it is the energy that keeps us going - it grows, it changes, it came into existence and will go out of existence, though in a much larger timeframe than we or the planet we live on.
This idea has been around in different forms for a long time in both Eastern and Western thought – Pantheism, Deism, and what is sometimes called “Secular Theology” all reflect elements of this idea. The twist I’m suggesting is that while the life force of the universe created us and in effect is us, this consciousness has no expectations of us and certainly has not delegated power or authority to tribal leaders, the Pope, the Taliban or the Christian Right to run our lives. The direction of our lives is our choice and our problem – a notion that is as liberating as it is terrifying. In short, the universe is alive but not divine. We’re on our own – or are we?
Prayer has been around as long as homo sapiens – that sense of being in touch with a larger realty, and of drawing strength from it. Meditation is a variation on the same idea, and it’s benefit for both psychological and physical health have been amply demonstrated. The idea that it’s not “all in our heads” but a way of getting in touch with the real force behind things could bring a sense of comfort to our frequently troubling situation.
I’d say we need all the help we can get.
Why is anything alive at all?
Why are some things alive and some things not?
Where does consciousness in living things (like us) come from and does it survive in some form after our physical death?
Like I said, simple stuff.
In today’s world, there are two major alternative (and opposing) answers to these questions – the “Religion Answer” and the “Science Answer”, though a third alternative that doesn’t have a name yet is slowly beginning to gain traction. We’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s start with the usual answers.
Alternative 1: The answer in the Western religions is that an all-powerful God made everything including us and that our consciousness is a gift “He” gave us by creating us in his “own image and likeness”. Lower forms of material (rocks, soil, water) were not given life. Plants and animals were given life and animals were given consciousness, but in a lower form than ours. Our consciousness, usually called the “soul”, is the center of our being and could be considered “who we really are”. Our souls are connected to our bodies but can be led astray by the body’s physical desires for sex and material goods. Prayer and following the church’s rules (the 10 Commandments for instance) can help us resist the body’s urges. The soul survives after death and will enter a place of paradise or punishment depending on how well the individual has followed God’s rules while alive. The “meaning” of human life is entirely tied in with our relationship to God and our following of God’s plan for us.
In many Eastern religions, the soul is distinguished from the body and can be led to a state of unrest by those same “earthly” desires or “cravings” as well as dissatisfaction with our condition - such things as aging, illness and death. While no all-powerful God is behind it all, the soul’s goal is to achieve a state of inner peace or “enlightenment” which will release the person from the cycle of birth and rebirth.
These views have more in common than not despite their surface differences. With or without a divine overseer, humanity is seen as out of synch with the surroundings of our material nature and in need of redemption. Death in both belief systems is also seen as a transition to better or worse conditions based on how well or badly the current life has been lived.
Alternative 2: The second “scientific” alternative, is that life, like everything else in the universe, evolved out of the interaction of matter and energy and follows clearly definable laws, such as the law of gravity. The big bang happened as a natural process and not because an almighty intelligence decided to push the button. Life is an accident caused by the effect of the sun’s light energy on cells in our planet’s ocean. The development of increasingly complex life and the emergence of consciousness is simply the result of the survival value of these traits. Life, like everything else in the Universe, begins, thrives for a while, then goes out of existence. “Meaning” is a human concept that will either enhance an individual’s life or cause discomfort depending on how the individual deals with it. It’s a private matter with nothing eternal behind it.
Alternative 2.5 “Intelligent Design” is essentially Alternative 1 using elements of Alternative 2 to make its case for a guiding intellect behind creation. The question of course is whether intellect created the process or the process created intellect. Which brings us to:
Alternative 3: The third alternative, which has yet to have an official title or organization to promote it, but which is peeking out from between the cracks in the day to day lives of the majority of homo sapiens, is the idea that while the realities of biology, birth and decay are operating without an almighty hand at the wheel, there’s more going on here than meets the eye. The rise of the idea “spiritual not religious” as a self-identifier reflects this notion. Many individuals and groups both formal (the Unitarians for instance) and informal (any number of “New Age” and self-help groups) have expressed a sense of an “inner life” than can transcend the messy realities the “real world” keeps throwing at us. There are also elements of this approach in Buddhism and Taoism, which advocate individual spirituality without an almighty overseer.
The question of course is “Does our sense of an inner life indicate a connection with a higher reality or is it just a function of our unconscious minds, unconnected to anything but our own thoughts, feelings and memories?”
As someone once said, “Elementary my dear Watson.” This is a big question, possibly the big question. The reason we bother to ask it is because of some major problems with both the religious and scientific alternatives.
The most troubling thing about the religious alternative is that it has been used throughout human history to put a great deal of power into the hands of the people who claim to speak for the almighty, be they representatives of “official” faiths or cult leaders. The message is “Obey our rules or God will burn you in hell”. In addition, the clash between religious mythology and documentable historical and scientific fact has done a lot, especially in recent years, to undermine religion’s credibility.
The most troubling thing about the scientific alternative is that it portrays human life as a meaningless accident, an “absurd” event in a mindless universe. If our being here at all is pointless flip of nature’s coin, what does it matter what we do?
Alternative #3 looks for a middle ground between these two and is really very simple. It’s easy to forget that the universe is primarily energy. Matter is a passenger on the energy bus. Life is essentially a form of energy – those cells in the earth’s ocean were energized by the sun’s rays and started twitching around and reproducing – and the rest is history. Consciousness arises in the more complex energy systems – the more the complexity, the higher the consciousness – compare a single celled organism with 100 billion celled human brains. 100 billion cells at work means there’s a whole lot of energy going on - with the dual task of operating the unconscious systems (things like breathing and digestion) that keep us alive while also fueling our conscious and unconscious minds - the more the complexity, the more the energy.
Let’s ride this train of thought a little further. What is the most complex thing in the universe, containing the most energy? That would be the universe itself, which contains all the matter and all the energy in the universe. And now for the big “what if?”.
What if the universe is alive? Alive and conscious of itself in a way that is beyond our understanding - pure energy, pure thought and the root source of our energy and thought - but no more conscious of us than we are of the millions of bacteria that help us digest out food? We’re in that consciousness, it runs on the same energy that’s keeping us going – in fact, it is the energy that keeps us going - it grows, it changes, it came into existence and will go out of existence, though in a much larger timeframe than we or the planet we live on.
This idea has been around in different forms for a long time in both Eastern and Western thought – Pantheism, Deism, and what is sometimes called “Secular Theology” all reflect elements of this idea. The twist I’m suggesting is that while the life force of the universe created us and in effect is us, this consciousness has no expectations of us and certainly has not delegated power or authority to tribal leaders, the Pope, the Taliban or the Christian Right to run our lives. The direction of our lives is our choice and our problem – a notion that is as liberating as it is terrifying. In short, the universe is alive but not divine. We’re on our own – or are we?
Prayer has been around as long as homo sapiens – that sense of being in touch with a larger realty, and of drawing strength from it. Meditation is a variation on the same idea, and it’s benefit for both psychological and physical health have been amply demonstrated. The idea that it’s not “all in our heads” but a way of getting in touch with the real force behind things could bring a sense of comfort to our frequently troubling situation.
I’d say we need all the help we can get.
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