The Language of God

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The Lan­guage of God: A Sci­en­tist Presents Evi­dence for Belief by Fran­cis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project: I mostly agree with his posi­tion. He says, “Sci­ence reveals that the uni­verse, our own planet, and life itself are engaged in an evo­lu­tion­ary process.” (p 45) I would add that our knowl­edge of God-dess and even God-dess are evolv­ing. Every­thing is in process accord­ing to process the­ol­ogy and Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism.

“An effort to under­stand the ori­gins and work­ings of the cos­mos has char­ac­ter­ized nearly all reli­gions through­out his­tory…” (p 57) Reli­gion seeks to make sense of life. Ancient reli­gions used the knowl­edge of the day to describe the nature of the cos­mos and its rela­tion to us. Such descrip­tions of the ori­gins of cre­ation, life and humans fall under the head­ing of myth. These myths tend to show a God-dess imposed order which elim­i­nates the sense of chaos. We are assured we are not alone, but are con­nected to a lov­ing benef­i­cent God-dess who will insure things work out well in the end.

“Sci­en­tists are con­stantly reach­ing into new are­nas, inves­ti­gat­ing the nat­ural world in new ways, dig­ging deeper into ter­ri­tory where under­stand­ing is incom­plete.” (p 58) I believe this sci­en­tific atti­tude of dis­cov­ery should be applied to the spir­i­tual quest. We should not sim­ply set­tle for truths of the past, but ever seek to dis­cover new truth thus expand­ing human under­stand­ing. God-dess is not sta­tic but dynamic. In an ever chang­ing world, we need ever fresh ways to approach God-dess.

“Per­haps most pro­foundly, our con­cept of the ori­gin of the uni­verse has under­gone a fun­da­men­tal change over the course of the past seventy-five years, on the basis of both the­ory and exper­i­ment.” (p 60) Should not spir­i­tual seek­ers adjust their under­stand­ing of cos­mol­ogy, cre­ation, and ori­gins to the facts as they are known today rather than res­olutely defend­ing out­dated ideas from thou­sands of years ago? Is it pos­si­ble we know things our pre­de­ces­sors did not?

“The con­se­quences of the Big Bang The­ory for the­ol­ogy are pro­found. For faith tra­di­tions that describe the uni­verse as hav­ing been cre­ated by God from noth­ing­ness (ex nihilo), this is an elec­tri­fy­ing out come.” (p 66) Sci­ence has its lim­its. This is where reli­gion steps in. Sci­ence can­not tell us the cause of the Big Bang, what hap­pened before it or what exists out­side this uni­verse. Sci­ence in no way negates the exis­tence of God-dess, the Cause of All Causes, The Ground of Being per­vad­ing and sus­tain­ing the entire cre­ation as well as tran­scend­ing it.

“In the begin­ning was the Word, and the Word was with God-dess, and the Word was God-dess.” John 1:1 “In the begin­ning.” In the begin­ning of what? In the begin­ning of the cre­ation of the mate­r­ial uni­verse. In the begin­ning of time. In the begin­ning of space. Before the begin­ning of cre­ation, there was no time or space. There was just eter­nity, with­out begin­ning or end, just the eter­nal now. There was some­thing at the begin­ning. What was that some­thing? It was the logos, it was the Word, it was God-dess. BANG! The Big Bang! OM! My God-dess, what’s going on here? What’s with all this racket? I believe it is the event hori­zon explod­ing from the pri­mal singularity.

Of course, no one can ade­quately explain the begin­ning of cre­ation. No one was there—not sci­en­tists or reli­gion­ists. Yet per­sons want to know how cre­ation began. Where does all this stuff, includ­ing our­selves, come from? There are many ver­sions from sci­ence and reli­gion, each try­ing its best to explain the unex­plain­able. Peo­ple want to know. Yet, it is unknow­able. Give us your best shot. Give us some­thing to hold on to.

Humans want to know where we come from, what is our pur­pose, why are we here. Var­i­ous reli­gious tra­di­tions tried answer­ing this ques­tion for mil­len­nia in numer­ous ways accord­ing to the under­stand­ing of the per­sons addressed in par­tic­u­lar times and cir­cum­stances. There­fore, we have diverse reli­gious inter­pre­ta­tions of the cre­ation story. Many of these inter­pre­ta­tions are alle­gor­i­cal, and many are based on the best sci­en­tific under­stand­ings of the day.

To teach these mytho­log­i­cal sto­ries as sci­en­tific fact equal to the cos­mol­ogy of the twenty-first cen­tury is absurd just as twenty-first cen­tury cos­mol­ogy will seem absurd in the thirty-first cen­tury. While myths are “true” on a spir­i­tual level, they are not sci­en­tific truth. The ancients who wrote these sto­ries had com­pletely dif­fer­ent goals in mind when writ­ing them than do mod­ern sci­en­tific thinkers. They were not con­cerned with facts as much as mean­ing. What is the spir­i­tual mean­ing of cre­ation? That is what they were try­ing to address, and these mytho­log­i­cal expla­na­tions are “true” from a spir­i­tual, onto­log­i­cal per­spec­tive although they are not objec­tively factual.

I enjoy read­ing the sci­en­tists’ expla­na­tions of the uni­verse and believe the Big Bang and evo­lu­tion to be valid, truth­ful sci­en­tific expla­na­tions of how cre­ation came about. Both the sci­en­tific and mytho­log­i­cal expla­na­tions can be “true” at the same time. They deal with cre­ation on dif­fer­ent lev­els of real­ity or under­stand­ing. One is to be taught in sci­ence classes and one in reli­gion and the­ol­ogy classes.

While sci­ence and reli­gion are sep­a­rate endeav­ors, their cross pol­li­na­tion can pro­duce won­der­ful results. Reli­gious inter­pre­ta­tion can add mean­ing to sci­ence, and sci­ence can add ground­ing in twenty-first cen­tury cos­mol­ogy to reli­gion. The two do not have to be at war with one another. They are com­ple­men­tary. When both views are held simul­ta­ne­ously, a fuller under­stand­ing of mul­ti­di­men­sional real­ity is attained.

Collins says, “The Big Bang cries out for a divine expla­na­tion. It forces the con­clu­sion that nature had a defined begin­ning. I can­not see how nature could have cre­ated itself. Only a super­nat­ural force that is out­side of space and time could have done that.” (p 67) That super­nat­ural force is God-dess.

“This gen­eral con­clu­sion is referred to as the Anthropic Prin­ci­ple: the idea that our uni­verse is uniquely tuned to give rise to humans.” (p 74) This con­clu­sion sup­ports the idea that we are cre­ated in the image of God-dess for the pur­pose of estab­lish­ing a lov­ing rela­tion­ship. The uni­verse is God-dess’ play.

Collins con­tin­ues, “Clearly, the sci­en­tific world­view is not entirely suf­fi­cient to answer all of the inter­est­ing ques­tions about the ori­gin of the uni­verse, and there is noth­ing inher­ently in con­flict between the idea of a cre­ator God and what sci­ence has revealed. In fact, the God hypoth­e­sis solves some deeply trou­bling ques­tions about what came before the Big Bang, and why the uni­verse seems to be so exquis­itely tuned for us to be here.” (pp 80–81) There is pur­pose to life. We are not just an acci­dent of evo­lu­tion, but rather the result of the unfold­ing of a grand cos­mic plan set in motion by God-dess four­teen bil­lion years ago.

“If God cre­ated the uni­verse, and the laws that gov­ern it, and if He endowed human beings with intel­lec­tual abil­i­ties to dis­cern its work­ings, would He want us to dis­re­gard those abil­i­ties? Would He be dimin­ished or threat­ened by what we are dis­cov­er­ing about His cre­ation?” (p 153) I don’t think so. The schism between sci­ence and reli­gion is arti­fi­cial. We should use all of our God-dess given gifts for the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of God-dess and to bet­ter under­stand his-her work­ings along with advanc­ing our con­scious­ness and mate­r­ial well-being.

“Now it is a dis­grace­ful and dan­ger­ous thing for an infi­del to hear a Chris­t­ian, pre­sum­ably giv­ing the mean­ing of Holy Scrip­ture, talk­ing non­sense on these top­ics; and we should take all means to pre­vent such an embar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion, in which peo­ple show a vast igno­rance in a Chris­t­ian and laugh it to scorn.” (p 157) I am embar­rassed by reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ists either Chris­t­ian or Hindu and do my best to dis­tance myself from such will­ful igno­rance. No won­der athe­ism is so pop­u­lar today when reli­gion is most often por­trayed from a fun­da­men­tal­ist per­spec­tive. Who can believe such unbe­liev­able rubbish?

“If God is out­side nature, then sci­ence can nei­ther prove nor dis­prove His exis­tence. Athe­ism itself must there­fore be con­sid­ered a form of blind faith, in that it adopts a belief sys­tem that can­not be defended on the basis of pure rea­son.” (p 165) God-dess’ exis­tence can­not be proved or dis­proved by reli­gion either. It ulti­mately comes down to faith. Faith need not be blind, how­ever. It can be rein­forced by rea­son and experience.

“Sci­ence can­not be used to jus­tify dis­count­ing the great monothe­is­tic reli­gions of the world, which rest upon cen­turies of his­tory, moral phi­los­o­phy, and the pow­er­ful evi­dence pro­vided by human altru­ism. It is the height of sci­en­tific hubris to claim oth­er­wise.” (p 169) If a sci­en­tist can be hum­ble enough to admit the lim­its of sci­ence, reli­gion­ists should also be hum­ble enough to admit the lim­its of religion.

“The inten­tion of the Bible was (and is) to reveal the nature of God to humankind. Would it have served God’s pur­poses thirty-four hun­dred years ago to lec­ture to His peo­ple about radioac­tive decay, geo­logic strata and DNA?” (p 175) The same may be said of the Vedic lit­er­a­ture. The scrip­tures are con­tex­tual and must be rein­ter­preted for each new context.

“Can faith in a lov­ing God be built on a foun­da­tion of lies about nature?” (p 176) The scrip­ture writ­ers wrote to the best of their knowl­edge and abil­ity at the time. They were not try­ing to deceive any­one. If we per­sist in pre­sent­ing the old sto­ries as sci­en­tific truth in the face of new evi­dence to the con­trary, ignor­ing or deny­ing con­clu­sive sci­en­tific proof to pre­serve “the author­ity of scrip­ture,” we do a dis­ser­vice to scrip­ture, sci­ence and truth. This hurts reli­gion more than science.

“I found this ele­gant evi­dence of the relat­ed­ness of all liv­ing things an occa­sion of awe, and came to see this as the mas­ter plan of the same Almighty who caused the uni­verse to come into being and set its phys­i­cal para­me­ters just pre­cisely right to allow the cre­ation of stars, plan­ets, heavy ele­ments, and life itself. With­out know­ing its name at the time, I set­tled com­fort­ably into a syn­the­sis gen­er­ally referred to as ‘the­is­tic evo­lu­tion,’ a posi­tion I find enor­mously sat­is­fy­ing to this day.” (p 199) I also find this sat­is­fy­ing. I would change “Almighty” to God-dess and call it “panen­the­is­tic evolution.”

Collins “pro­poses God as the answer to ques­tions sci­ence was never intended to address, such as ‘How did the uni­verse get here?’ ‘What is the mean­ing of life?’ ‘What hap­pens to us after we die?’” (p 204) In this way, we need to dis­tin­guish the lim­its of both sci­ence and reli­gion and not con­fuse their dif­fer­ent worldviews.

“I do not believe that the God who cre­ated all the uni­verse, and who com­munes with His peo­ple through prayer and spir­i­tual insight, would expect us to deny the obvi­ous truths of the nat­ural world that sci­ence has revealed to us, in order to prove our love for Him.” (p 210) I agree. Yet, many fol­low­ers of fun­da­men­tal­ist sects are asked to do just that and believe the unbe­liev­able. It is time for a ratio­nal approach to spir­i­tu­al­ity, which I call Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 17:20 and is filed under Our Bookstore and tagged with belief, book, Francis Collins, science, The Language of God. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.