An Evolving God Concept Archives

February 28, 2014April 25, 2015

World Interfaith Harmony Week: Two Observations

God 4.0 - The Next Step in the God Concept - The Golden Rule (UN Photo/ Milton Grant)

When Blurred Lines Help

I was lucky enough to spend a day at an interfaith event that took place as part of World Interfaith Harmony Week. It’s focus was sharing ideas about the different religions present. Jainism, Baha’i, Judaism, Natural Pantheism, Paganism, Christianity, Islam the list went on.

Two things struck me that day.

One was how those religions, and others present, complimented each other. How when points of similarity are emphasised, points of difference blur.

One God Many Voices

Rabbi David Mivasair ended his talk that day with a story from Hebrew oral tradition. In the Midrash Rabbah, the story goes, God spoke at Sinai in seven voices and each voice went forth in seventy languages.

It’s a simple and poetic picture for the diverse ways we hear, and so understand, God.

It reminds me of the story of the elephant behind the screen. The one where an elephant is hidden behind a curtain with slots large enough only for a hand to go through. Different people slide their hand though the hole and when asked to describe the thing behind the screen, they can’t agree. One says “It’s hard and pointed at the end,” another, “It’s very wide and thin, rough to the touch.” And another still, “It’s long and thin and hairy at the end.” A tusk, an ear and a tail. All parts of the same creature. Each on their own, difficult to see as being part of the same animal.

Like Rabbi David’s story, it sums up the need for things like World Interfaith Harmony Week.

Moving The Conversation On

Interfaith events like the one I attended aren’t rare and they don’t just happen on World Interfaith Harmony Week. If you’re in the States, Harvard’s Pluralism Project holds frequent events with the mission of “helping Americans engage with the realities of religious diversity through research, outreach, and the active dissemination of resources”. If you’re in Canada. The Interfaith Observer plays a similar role and if you’re in the UK have a look at The World Congress of Faiths.

It’s refreshing to see while that “mind-numbingly circular” debate for or against God I mentioned in my last post drones on (and on, and…), there’s still a real desire for some to share ideas about God.

Letting Go

I said there were two things that struck me at that event. The other was this. At the end, when everyone was tidying up or stacking chairs, a man handed me a booklet. It told me Jesus was my saviour.

That simple, no doubt well intentioned, gesture speaks volumes about how difficult it is for some to let go of their one fixed idea about God.

Hold On, Lose Out

It’s holding on to one fixed idea about God that could be the reason younger generations are giving up on God. Although a survey released earlier this month by the Public Religion Research Institute points the reason squarely at a perceived anti-gay bias in organized religion, Jon Terbush writing in The Week offers a broader view. The “outright hostility to science from some on the right,” Terbush writes, “— on global warming, evolution, and even something as seemingly benign as vaccines — only further impugns religion’s credibility with younger voters. It should be no surprise then that solid majorities of Millennials describe Christianity as “hypocritical” and “judgmental.”

Is it any surprise belief in God is losing ground? Put simply, if God really were as some right wing religious views depict it, then God too would be hypocritical and judgemental. Who wants any part of that?

Interfaith: The Beginning of A New View

World Interfaith Harmony Week isn’t about glossing over the problems of religion. It’s about respect for all religions.

And here’s something else it could be: the beginnings of a new way of looking at God. One that sees God not just present in all religions, but transcending religion as well.

Imagine that for a moment.

In a world that sees its religions as an attempt to understand God rather than having the definitive take on God everything changes. It means we can put religious differences aside, knowing one view is no more complete than another. It means we can start working together to solve some of the world’s problems. It might even mean we attempt to solve those problems with a sense of equality, justice and integrity.

And then who knows what kind of world we’d create for oursleves.

Picture: The Golden Rule (UN Photo/ Milton Grant)

January 16, 2014April 25, 2015

Darwin & Holding onto Old Ideas. What They Have in Common.

Darwin may have worried about the impact of his ideas. Turns out he didn’t need to.

Back in 1838, Charles Darwin was reading Malthus’ An Essay on the Principle of Population. He was already fifteen months into figuring out how new varieties of life formed, but what struck him in Malthus’ book was the idea of checks and balances in nature that maintained populations. Writing in his notebook on September 28, 1838 Darwin said those external factors were “a force like a hundred thousand wedges trying [to] force every kind of adapted structure into the gaps in the economy of nature, or rather forming gaps by thrusting out weaker ones”. It was the beginning of his ideas on natural selection.

Twenty years later on November 24, 1859 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was published. Twenty years. According to the Natural History’s website, Darwin spent those years “agonising over every detail.”

Although Dr John van Wyhe in his essay “Mind The Gap: Did Darwin Avoid Publishing His Theory For Many Years?” shuts down the idea Darwin was nervous about the impact of his ideas on a creationist worldview, I think it’s disingenuous to think Darwin wasn’t concerned about how his work would be received. But if Darwin did worry about offering a theory of natural selection, it turns out he didn’t need to.

Darwin’s Idea: Yet To Catch On

A PEW Research Center analysis published in the fading moments of last year shows that 33% of American adults don’t believe in evolution. With an idea that would have been at home in the Victorian age, the poll found those 33% believe that “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”

Of those who do acknowledge evolution, “roughly a quarter of adults (24%) say that ‘a supreme being guided the evolution of living things for the purpose of creating humans and other life in the form it exists today.’”

What are we to make of that?

The More Things Change…

Well, for one thing, that’s not the first time a good idea’s been rejected to keep a belief system going.

Throughout history people have a done a good job of holding onto whatever cherished idea they hold regardless of the evidence against it.

Back in the 17^th century what people wanted to believe was that the Earth was the centre of the solar system. Actually of all creation. The stickler was explaining why Mars and the other known planets fall behind the Earth at some points as they pass through the sky. The phenomena’s called planetary retrograde and it’s one of the reasons Copernicus put the Sun at the centre of the solar system. You can watch an animation of the Mars retrograde as seen from Earth here.

But having rejected Copernicus and his ideas, astronomers at the time came up with ever more complex explanations for why this happened. And here’s what they did: they deemed that for no apparent reason planets moved in small circles or epicycles which in turn move along a larger circle in what we’d think of as a very complex orbit. If that sends your mind spinning, you can check out an animation of epicycles here. The advantage of this idea was that it explained why sometimes Mars went backwards.

As inventive as that explanation was it only worked for so long before more accurate data cast doubt on it. But once again that didn’t stop anyone from believing it. Instead, the astronomers of the day came up with epicycles within epicycles, or little circles within little circles. “Planets,” these astronomers were saying, “don’t just have one epicycle, but within the first epicycle, there’s another and another and another.”

All the additions necessary to keep the idea of circular orbits and an Earth centred solar system alive. Johannes Kepler, using Tycho Brahe’s data, offered a very simple reason for planetary retrograde. One that didn’t need epicycles. Adopting Copernicus’s sun-centred solar system, Kepler showed that planets don’t move in circles at all. They move in elliptical orbits. His three laws of planetary motion explained why planetary retrograde happened and predicted orbits for planets that hadn’t yet been discovered. No mental gymnastics, no philosophical mumbo-jumbo, just an observation based on what’s really happening.

Four Options for Handling New Ideas

One thing faulty logic has in common the world over is that it starts with a conclusion and finds, distorts or invents data to support it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s the thing: I think there’s four options we face when we come across an idea that challenges the way we think about the world. We can:

1. Ignore it and pretend the idea doesn’t exist.

2. Shoehorn it into our current ideas like our 17^th century astronomer friends.

3. Denounce it.

4. Let the new information refine our idea if possible, or lead us to a better one.

God: Time for a New Idea

Historically, in the God debate, number four hasn’t been a popular option. It’s why, as Oliver Burkeman’s writes in The Guardian, the modern God debate has become “mind-numbingly circular” with each side arguing for the existence of a God that may or may not exist. The problem with those debates is that both side fail to move the conversation forward.

And since no-one has (or maybe even can) prove there is no God. And since the idea of a creator and personal God seems silly to many. Well, maybe it’s time for a new way to understand God. One that isn’t contrary to evidence and reason. Maybe it’s time for the next stage in the God concept.

January 2, 2014April 25, 2015

Rethinking God. Here’s why we should.

A New Take On An Old Idea

I’m not the only person who’s considered rethinking God. As a matter of fact it’s an idea that’s gaining traction these days. Type rethinking God into google and like me, you might be amazed at the number of sites that come up. Why so many? Well, I’d say it’s becoming more and more apparent that the idea of a traditional God has become less and less relevant for lots of us.

“Nones” on the Rise

If that sounds unlikely to you, consider the PEW Research Center’s study. It found that the number of Americans who don’t identify with any religion keeps growing. Nones (so named because when asked to declare a religious affiliation in forms they select “none”), have grown from 15% to 20% between 2007 and 2012. That’s a big uptick. Of that group, 13 million report as atheists or agnostics. But what about the rest? As the guys at PEW put it:

“many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day.”[1]

How do we understand those numbers? My take is it’s a clear message that it’s time to start rethinking God.

Rethinking God or Revising God?

That may sound like an academic question, but rethinking God vs revising God is, for me, at the heart of the discussion. Take a cursory glance at those websites I mentioned and you’ll find they’re revising an idea of God we already have. Of course there’re more radical ideas, but they ultimately fall into the same revise trap too. Let’s take a look at one.

Process Theology

Around the mid to late 1920s an idea began to emerge that seemed to signal a new way of understanding God. Today it’s attributed to Alfred North Whitehead, an English mathematician turned philosopher and Charles Hartshorne, an American philosopher. Process theology sees lots of problems with a traditional view of God. In light of the universe science shows us, it acknowledges that God can’t be an absolute being that stands apart from creation.

For process theology, if God isn’t apart than God can also be affected by what goes on in the universe. If we follow the idea we get a God that changes as the universe changes.

Everything, including God, exists in relation to each other. Each affected by the other. That means God can’t know the future because it’s being created as we speak. It also means that though process theology can still envision a creator God, that God didn’t force its will on the universe, it “persuades” in much the same way the sun persuades the traveller to part with his coat in Æsop’s fable. If that feels to you like revising rather than rethinking God, it’s a view I’d agree with.

Where Revising God Gets Us

Process theology has been assimilated into Protestantism, Catholicism, Unitarianism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam through groups like Process Faith who “believe that theology grounded in the process thought of philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne makes the most sense of both historical faith and contemporary experience”. That means ideas like Whitehead’s get pulled back into our understanding of God 3.0 – the creator and personal God – with all the problems inherent in a God 3.0 worldview. It’s for that reason you see debates about sin and cases being made for God as creator in Marjorie Suchocki’s booklet, What is Process Theology?

What I’m trying to say is revising God can only take us so far in understanding God. Because it starts with much the same premise, it ends up with much the same God. It’s akin to rearranging deck chairs on a religious Titanic.

Some of process theology’s ideas are genuinely revolutionary. The move away from a God that forces its will on the universe for one. But it’s ability to fit neatly into existing ideas about God is what limits it. Maybe that’s because there will always be those who want to fit new ideas into an existing worldview. But maybe process theology’s a little guilty of that itself.

Think about that for a second. It’s because we’re stuck with the idea of a creator God, that process theology needs the concept of a persuasive God. But the theology could just as easily do without a persuasive or creator God. It’s idea of a God that is changed by the universe, that it exists in relation to it, is beautiful to me. Of course you can argue we can do without a God at all if it didn’t create or influence the universe. We can do that, but that means we’d be arguing that truth is only what we can see, touch and measure. And that’s about as arrogant and human-centric as an argument gets.

Where Rethinking God Could Get Us

Thousands of people throughout history have lived powerful lives based on their idea of God. Many have died for what they believed in. Many more have had brushes with something they feel is neither explained nor understood by the world science shows us.

Fundamentally rethinking God might allow us to get a clearer idea of what that something is. And of course process theology has a part to play in that.

I don’t know much about what that something is, but I’d say whatever it turns out to be, we might find it neither created us or looks after us. It won’t have a view on what we wear, eat or which day we pray on. It won’t have all the human qualities we’ve given it, but it won’t far removed from us.

Free from debates about sin and creator Gods, it might be that understanding whatever that something is helps us see the truth of our interconnectedness. Of our reliance not just on each other, but the universe from which we spring.

How might that change the way we see each other? See the world? What implications might that have on things like wars? Climate change? Global inequality?

The answers to those questions? Well, that’s what’s waiting for us if we’re brave enough and strong enough to let the idea of a traditional God go.

December 13, 2013April 25, 2015

Why Bother With God At All?

God 4.0 - Why bother with God. Sliced oranges shaped in question mark.

A Question Worth Reflection

Perhaps for people who don’t feel the need for the God concept, why bother with God at all? is one of the most valid questions. Seriously, in a world where science is revealing more and more; where our understanding of medicine means full face transplants are not only possible but successful; and where technology now allows humanity (in the form of the European Space Agency) to attempt to land a probe on the surface of a comet; why bother with God? It’s an amazing world, and humans, are doing amazing things in it.

So, the question is reasonable: why do we need the God concept at all?

God of the Gaps

One, view raised and derided by Christians such as Henry Drummond in the mid-nineteenth century is what’s often referred to as the God of the gaps argument. It’s an idea that uses God as an explanation for things we can’t currently explain. Think explaining sunrise and sunset as the work of a God; or the thunder or stars or even good crops and you’ll see what I mean. As we begin to understand the effects of a revolving planet in a sun-centred solar system, we being to realise God isn’t waking up early to push a sun up or setting an alarm to remind it to take the thing down again. This leaves us with what one blog post on Skeptico calls “The Incredible Shrinking God.” The more we understand, the less we need God to plug the gap of our ignorance. That means, though some might want to explain the cause of the big bang by God lighting a match, someday science will be able to explain what happened. And when it does we won’t need God to plug that hole. Keep that logic going and it’s true: it’s only a matter of time before we won’t need to bother with God at all.

No Gaps Here: Evolutionary Creation

But for those who believe in God, the idea isn’t that easy to dismiss. Take BioLogos, for example. Their website explains they’re a “community of evangelical Christians committed to exploring and celebrating the compatibility of evolutionary creation and biblical faith”. The group hold to a view they call Evolutionary Creation or the “The view that all life on earth came about by the God-ordained process of evolution with common descent”. For them, though the universe evolved, it was kicked off by God in the first place. Put that thought beside a comment by the former head of the human genome project, Francis Collins: “if God chose to intervene from time to time in the natural world by allowing the occurrence of miraculous events, I don’t see why that is an illogical possibility” and it’s clear the idea of a creator God is very much in full swing for many people.

The logic seems to be something like, if God did create us and everything in it; and if it intervenes in our daily lives, how could we not bother with God?

Navigating The God 3.0 Impasse

Though some people see God’s role as diminishing, others see its role very much intact. And we can argue both sides forever.

I started this post with those two points because those are the kind of arguments that abound in contemporary discussions about God. Whichever way you slice it, one is saying there is no God for this reason, and the other is saying there is a God because of this. It’s the kind of impasse I started this website to try to navigate around.

To my mind, those arguments centre around God 3.0: our current ideas about God. The creator God that set the wheels in motion and comes back to grease them from time to time. The one we have to please. The one who in some versions is waiting to reward or punish use depending on how well we’ve followed its dictates.

So, Why Bother With God?

One answer to navigating that impasse is to rethink the God idea. That’s the point of this website, of course, but it still begs the question, “Why bother to reinvent God? Why not just let the idea go, already?

The Controller of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World would say we don’t let the God idea go because we’re conditioned to believe it. On the other hand Guy P. Harrison in his book, 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God offers, well, 50 reasons. Everything ranging from “My god is obvious” (number 1) to “I am afraid of not believing” (50).

The need for comfort or fear of death are often cited as reasons for why we bother with God. But that doesn’t really cut it for me. Mark Twain’s famous “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it” makes it clear that humans can live just fine without recourse to a God for comfort.

The question keeps coming back. Why bother with God? Why not give up on the whole idea?

Of course, lots of people have. The Washington Post reports that atheism is on the rise in the US. The BBC quotes Egypt’s al-Sabah newspaper as claiming three million Egyptians are atheists. And yet, despite the apparent international decline, a recent Gallup poll shows belief in the God concept is still strong. In fact 90% of Americans bother with God – a number that’s stayed fairly constant since the 1950s.

But when asked about religious affiliation, the numbers change. In the 1950s the poll says “almost all Americans identified themselves with a particular religion”. These days that number drops by 10%.

What does that tell us? Well, though there may be a decline in religion’s influence, the God concept still remains. That it endures despite humans being able to live with the certainty of death. That it survives even though religions that claim to represent it decline.

Bothering In A Different Way

To me, that signals a need for God, but not the God of tradition. The picture science offers shows us means the traditional idea of God is fast becoming bankrupt. But still, people bother with God. And it’s because the human spirit is still struggling to engage with whatever God is that we haven’t given up on it. Reinventing it, yes. But not willing to let the idea go.