A theological question- What is the nature of Spirit?

09 Dec 2011 Leave a comment

by Roger Eugene Hill in Metaphysics, Ontology, The Cosmos, Theology Tags: , , , , , ,

If the Big Bang was not a random event but a purposeful event arising from outside spacetime (Spirit), then Spirit can be considered as the Creator of our Cosmos. What can we know about the Creator? Nothing that can be observed by science directly. But, perhaps, something of the nature of the Creator can be inferred from the nature of creation.

One of the most striking aspects of the material universe, aside from the fact that it had a beginning, is the fact that it is expanding and it has been doing so in accordance with the law of General Relativity from 10-32 seconds after its birth until the present day. The miraculously fine-tuned conditions that permit the material universe to have survived for 13.7 billion years were built into the singularity and the initial conditions of the Big Bang itself. The creative principles are still operative today in the form of physical laws that are knowable to human awareness through the observations and reasoning of science. There is no evidence that Spirit has ever interfered with or altered the creative principles instilled in spacetime from the time of its birth. It is only logical that Spirit, all that exists outside of spacetime, has no influence on that part of the material universe that exists completely within spacetime. There does remain, however, the mystery of how Spirit initiated the Big Bang – the mystery of Creation that is beyond human awareness and understanding.

But there is a part of creation that is not completely contained within spacetime – awareness. A thought may originate in the electromagnetic activity of the brain, but are thoughts or their products, ideas, completely material? Can they be measured or localized? Are our relationships with each other purely material? Is love purely material? Can the human appetite for the good, the true and the beautiful be completely explained by physics and chemistry?

From the dawn of human civilization people have given testimony to creation myths and to their belief in an afterlife not confined to spacetime. Human awareness came into its dualistic existence with one eye on the material world and one eye on the spirits. It is through awareness that Spirit, the Creator, influences and interacts with the material world of spacetime. This influence and interaction occurs through what we call inspiration or mystical experience.

For centuries the material eye of awareness has focused on the world around us and brought forth the beauty and wonders of science and art. At the same time the theologians of the world have focused awareness on inspiration and mysticism and brought forth the faiths and narratives (religious beliefs and ontologies) at the heart of the world’s cultures.The earliest consensus of the theologians is that Spirit is singular- the Creator, God, Allah, Brahman is the One and only.

If the theologies are true and the Creator is One, all theologies will arrive at the same truth. The theology I’m most familiar with is Christian theology. The inspiration at the heart of the Christian faith is that the Creator is Love itself. (1John 4, 16). Arguably the greatest of Christian theologians, Saint Thomas Aquinas reasoned in the Summa Theologica that “Truth is the equation of thought and thing” and so it follows that the Creator ” is Truth itself”. If awareness is the act of understanding producing the equation, it follows that Spirit, the Creator, is Awareness itself.

So the reason that Spirit can influence and interact with the material world through awareness is because Spirit is Awareness itself.

Another aspect of Christian theology that defines the nature of Spirit is the doctrine of the mystery of the Trinity that states that the Father,  the Son and the Holy Spirit all co-inhere as the One God. Generalizing this to the nature of Spirit just presented would argue that Spirit (the Creator, God, Allah, Brahman) is the co-inherence of Awareness, Truth, and Love as The One.

(This question is explored further in the three somewhat theological poems  “IHS”, “Flow of Creation” and “Ṛta” posted in November, 2011, on my Waypoints webpage.)

A metaphysical question – Was the Big Bang a random event?

30 Aug 2011 Leave a comment

by Roger Eugene Hill in Metaphysics, The Cosmos Tags: , , , ,

I suspect most of my colleagues would naturally prefer to think of the Big Bang as a random event. But the only way for an event to be both random and miraculous is for there to have been a very large sampling of events. In other words, an event with a probability approaching zero is bound to occur in a population of events approaching infinity. The assertion of randomness implies that there are a large number (approaching infinity) of other Big Bangs in some larger Cosmos.

This is the observationally unverifiable metaphysics of the “multiverse”. From a physics point of view, this is a logical choice: especially considering that there are  plausible mechanisms for Big Bang type events – such as random energy fluctuations in an infinite quantum vacuum. (Note that this involves a leap of faith that the quantum behavior observed in our spacetime also exists outside of spacetime.) The choice of the multiverse is a significant challenge to Occam’s razor since it amounts to postulating the existence of a very large number of unobservable objects to explain the existence of one object.

But physics is not the only source of knowledge about our existence. What does your intuition tell you? Does everything about you and your life appear to be the result of randomness? Can randomness explain everything you see about you? Do you not sense that there is a purpose to your life (even if you’re not too sure what it is)?

Time (entropy) has an arrow. The discovery of epigenetics, the evidence of master genes, and symbiosis and cooperation in biology all argue that evolution is not a purely random process: it, too, appears to have a direction. The logical candidate for that direction is toward the evolution of ever more complex awareness.

On earth, biology mysteriously emerged from the material world of physics and chemistry. Microbiology reveals that the simplest forms of life demonstrate awareness: single cells process information from the environment and from each other and adapt their behavior accordingly. As multi-cellular organisms evolved, the brain developed, making possible the emergence of animal intelligence and awareness.  After the brain evolved to the level of complexity of the human brain (1011 neurons in a network of 1014 synapses), the self-aware human mind with all its amazing capacities mysteriously emerged. And the process continues. (What will mysteriously emerge from the linking of human minds in the network of the noösphere? Doesn’t your intuition tell you that it will be a higher form of awareness – like global consciousness?)

As a self-aware being with free will, I choose to believe that the purpose of the Cosmos is the evolution of awareness. And so I choose to believe that the Big Bang was a purposeful and not a random event. Furthermore, I choose to label all of whatever scientifically unobservable existence there may be outside of our spacetime with the name Spirit.

What is co-inherence, anyway?

24 Aug 2011 4 Comments

by Roger Eugene Hill in Metaphysics, Ontology Tags: , , , , , ,

The term co-inherence was coined by the English writer and theologian Charles Williams (1886-1945) to describe a concept that was central to his rather unorthodox theology. This concept was derived from the Christian mystery of the unity of God in the three persons of the Trinity. Williams extended this to the idea that the unity of mankind consisted of their analogous co-inherence with  each other. Williams believed this applied to all of mankind.

A limited definition of co-inherence has been given as “Things that exist in essential relationship with another, as innate components of the other.” I say “limited” because the phrase ” innate components” doesn’t fully capture, to my mind, the mysterious origins of the concept.

Williams’ original concept of co-inherence, as it related to Christian theology, can be expressed in the following diagram ( though I have added an unorthodox twist by identifying co-inherence with the Holy Spirit.) If Muslims took to heart the concept of co-inherence, they might understand that their God and the Christian God are one and the same.

                 Father
                        Son
                            Co-inherence (Holy Spirit)
                               =God, Allah

In the co-inherence diagrams given below I hope to provoke a sense of what I mean by the term co-inherence in a broader sense. Some of these (after a little meditation) may expose the mysterious nature of co-inherence but as someone who studies quantum physics, I have become quite accustomed to including mystery in my world view.

The initiation of the Big Bang is a mystery. Quantum entanglement is a mystery. Complementarity as exposed in Young’s double slit experiment is a mystery. The phenomenon of emergence in complex adaptive systems, such as the emergence of a self-aware mind from the network of synapses in the human brain, is a mystery. But these things all happen, and so might co-inherence.

               These parts                             These parts
                         Those parts                            Those parts
                            = Sum of the parts                   Co-inherence (Network)
                                                                                   =The Whole
                Brahman
                       Atman
                            Co-inherence (Love)
                               =The Self
                Me                 Me
                    You                 You
                     = Duality             Co-inherence (Love)
                                                      =Oneness
                Creator
                        Creation
                           Co-inherence
                               =The One
                 Awareness
                          Matter
                                Co-inherence (Life)
                                    =The One
                  Spirit
                       Matter
                            Co-inherence (Awareness)
                               =Creation
                    Spirit
                         Matter
                              Co-inherence (Love)
                                  =Awareness
                 Love
                    Awareness
                         Co-inherence (Bliss)
                             =The One
                 Spirit
                       Body
                            Co-inherence
                               =Man

More down to earth diagrams might be:

            Wave                               Wave
                 Photons                            Photons
                = Duality                                  Co-inherence (Field)
                                                                    =Light
                 Musician
                        Instrument
                            Co-inherence
                               =Music
                 Subject
                        Object
                            Co-inherence (Verb)
                               =Information

Perhaps you can suggest others.