3. G*D, Nature and Reality

from: http://www.seanet.com/~realistic/idealism.html

"The Discovery of the Universe IS the discovery of G*D."

The Evolution of the Concept of God

In the earliest thoughts of mankind, all was magic. There was no distinction between magic and reality. All human beings believed in, and worshipped, many spirits. Because each human being was material and was living, so each material thing in the world had a living spirit. This is called "animism" and is still practiced today.

By the time Mankind entered the dawn of literacy, the spirits had become numerous gods controlling great aspects of nature (heavens, earth, water, light, and dark), specific cities (the better the city, the better the god), and even private gods for individuals. These gods were collected in pantheons.
The Sumerian Cuneiform writings (3,500 BC) have been translated to contain the seeds to many of the stories of Genesis. These were polytheistic times and the gods were called "dingir". The early Biblical writings reflect this heritage of polytheism: Gen1:26 'Then The Lord said, 'Let US make a man, in OUR image.' and, Gen3:22 'Then the Lord said, 'Now that the man has become as WE are, knowing good from bad..' these writings were so holy that these ideas were never purged.
In the Old Testament, The Lord is often referred to in a plural form. Elohim is plural, adonay is plural. For example, you have King of kings, G-d of gods (which men worship). The Hebrew is elohay ha-elohim, elohay being a contraction of elohim shel ha-elohim, and translated G-d of gods.
In the Creation story, G-d lived visibly in his creation. Adam hid from G-d. G-d was thus limited in his powers while humans had freewill. G-d punished Adam and Eve with death (of oblivion), among other things.
By the time of Moses, G-d had become invisible. He became fierce, jealous, and vengeful. He offered death to sinners. Unlike the Gods of the Egyptians, He offered no after-life. He now had a few, chosen people. By the time of Isaiah, He was proclaimed the only G-d of the world and was to be kept a secret by his chosen people. G-d had a personal relationship with humans where humans had freewill, and G-d was not aware of everything that transpired. There are numerous Biblical accounts where Moses reasoned with G-d and changed His mind, for instance.
By the time of The Christ, He became everyone's God, and offered eternal life, and forgiveness of sins. The relationship of humans to God was that of give and take in the spirit of freewill. Over time, God had become forgiving, loving and magnanimous. In Medieval times, God was often portrayed as a king. This concept faded after the Middle Ages. God was the greatest magician above the firmament who would intervene either to punish or rescue a wayward society.
Today there has evolved yet another concept of God. A concept of an Omnipotent (all powerful) and Omniscient (all knowing) God. This is due to a (more than ever) awareness of an overall interacting universe. However, this concept raises many questions about freewill, (theological) morality, and the basic nature of God in allowing bad things to happen now that He is "all responsible". These were not problems with previous concepts of God. Humans had freewill and brought bad things upon themselves.
The weakness of the Omnipotent, Omniscient concept of God is that He is still anthropomorphized. Due to the occurrence of bad things, this "all responsible" God is cast in a bad light and called evil as if He could be judged like a mortal.

The Realistic Idealist equates G*D with Nature, and Reality.
With this concept the evolution of all that has come before, the social act of worship, and humankind's relationship to spiritualism all begin to fall into place as an evolving unity between humans and their environment. Then how did the first humans come to find and believe in God? What the Atheist says has substance and meaning, but is also a circular logic. To find god, one must have a definition of God in which one can believe. This stops many people, because they thought they knew the "true" or "real" definition of God.. but the definition of God has evolved over the centuries. Some people still believe in the oldest definitions. Most people have some mixture of many definitions.
The philosophical standpoint could be: "do you think we can really comprehend what God is with our tiny little brains?" It isn't that God is changing, just our ability to define "Him" is evolving. G*D is so great that actually no human brain can conceive of It.
The recognition of G*D is important for strength of faith, humility, and the raising of children.
The Realistic Idealist understands that humankind's relation to G*D has always reflected humankind's relation to the perceived environment and society of the time.
At one extreme it was believed God manipulated all worldly interactions without regard to the laws of conservation of mass, energy, momentum, and the laws of entropy and gravity. As we grew to understand Nature we came to realize that some things were mechanical and did not need a magic spirit to make them function. Technology has come so far, some mistake this for the death of God. At the other extreme, to the Realistic Idealist, God who is not magic, but clearly reveals his laws for us to study and to abide by. It is our conceit that leads us to believe that if we ignore God's laws and get into trouble, that we may whine, and flatter God, and get God to forgive us.
If we are free of such conceit, and have the humility to study, work hard, and honestly, take responsibility for our own mistakes, and promote a truthful education for all who can learn, then we will prevail over our social problems. Man has yet to fully accept God's laws in relation to himself.
The Realistic Idealist sees no conflict between Science and Religion, for science is the continuing discovery of G*D and His laws.
Man clings to myth
What man has really accepted for himself is still mythical. He has logically dreamed up the "rights of man", many of which have practically no regard for all the true evolutionary factors. For himself man has usurped God's laws and prescribed magic. Man has declared himself divine. It is little wonder that man has repeatedly failed in solving his most prevalent problems such as: ignorance, poverty, crime, and especially war.
In spite of all his vanity man will undoubtedly survive as long as any creature will survive on this Earth, but the quality of his life may be more in question. When resources are relatively abundant, much can be wasted without effect on the quality of life, but when the ratio of population to resources becomes greater, the effect of wastefulness cuts deeper into the prospects for a continued good quality of life. The question is: Has the time come for scientific human know-how to be a factor in successful human evolution, or shall we succumb to a belief that there is nothing better than we are and never will be.
Man as the center of the universe
Humanity has resented any implications that they are not at the center of things. Gallileo was castigated for supporting and validating the Copernican theory stating that the Sun is at the center of our planetary system instead of our Earth. The very fact we are located very much off center may have saved us from extinction even before we got started on this Earth. Scientists have found suggestive evidence that many, or even all large galaxies, may undergo recurrent nuclear outbursts. The Milky Way, our galaxy, may spend a million of every hundred million years as an intensively radiating Seyfert galaxy. The resulting enhanced cosmic-ray activity, at repeated intervals, would be able to keep the galaxy sterile of life, except, of course, for Earthlings whose solar system is fortuitously placed at the protective distance of a spiral arm.
There could be a lesson in all this: We are not the reason for the universe. We are part of a very thin skin of a planet, and we should learn to live within it rather than believing that God will protect us no matter what we do. Rather than being the center, we are more like an infection of a remote particle of the universe! Rather than strutting as kings around whom the universe turns, we must accept our role in a limited environment, one that will not continuously expand to accommodate a continuously expanding population.
The newness of Science
In the experience of mankind, science is very new. Knowledge of human chemistries so sufficiently matured by about 1940 we could finally just begin to put aside witchcraft and apply Science to our bodies and minds. As a physician educated during this transition, I have learned that our philosophy, as it affects our attitude toward life, can affect our health too. A good philosophy can promote good health, whereas a bad philosophy will afflict a person with poor health. This we will take as a scientific basis for ethics which will be discussed in several chapters following. Worse yet, our philosophy can affect the health and even life-span of our innocent children. In this respect there is a moral issue: Whether we have the right to afflict another person, especially our children, by our own misdirected attitudes. Such are the constraints that Nature places on our realms of thought. Furthermore, if our actions afflict our children's lives, their lives will in turn afflict the lives of our grandchildren, perhaps even further generations, and eventually our society may suffer as more and more people ignore their natural constraints. We will discuss some of these established relationships.
The dysfunction is between the Nature of God and the conceit of man. Man has not quite become used to the idea that he is an animal. He is a confused super-animal and desperately clings to a faith in magic.
The Science of Religion
As we look at the history of understanding we can find that as far back as three thousand years ago rational people tried to test the repeatability and reliability of religion. In their minds, proper magic results followed properly performed rituals. If the desired results did not follow a given ritual, the belief was that the ritual was not done correctly. We see instances where the rituals are described in great detail; down to the type of cloth the priests wore. Their belief was that God was in direct control of man's destiny. They did not understand that God's control worked through the laws of conservation, entropy, and gravity, for instance.
They believed that God would protect good people who went through the proper ceremonies of allegiance to him. The early people understood that there were times when things went well with them and they tried to record the situation accurately. When things went wrong, they believed that it was because they had sinned against God. They went back and examined their memories and records, and tried to compare what was happening during good times and bad times. Sometimes the differences eluded them, therefore, they concluded that they were in some way sinners unbeknownst to themselves. Another possibility that occurred to them was that something in their ceremony was not done properly and that undermined God's confidence in their discipline and allegiance, therefore, they were being punished and trained. They tried to do their rites exactly alike each time, being critical of mistakes and omissions.
If the ancient religious writers would be asked if they believed in magic in the sense that they were ignoring the laws of Nature, they would have denied it. They thought their expectations were justified in reality. They never heard of the laws of conservation, entropy, and gravity, and to them events occurred according to God's will. It may be pointed out here that God's will is now understood to work through the laws of Nature. In other words God's will and the laws of Nature are equated.
Though God was the controller, they paradoxically felt that they could control God by proper ceremonial rites. They tried simple sacrifices. When that did not work, they spent more money, time, effort, incense, holy water, and gold. They even tried returning to rituals with human sacrifice, which entailed the eating of the flesh and blood of the sacrificed. When the results of those rites were found to be no more consistent with success than those which used animals and vegetables, they switched to those substitutes. It seems that only the wealthy could afford to sacrifice good food that way, and the less wealthy, who used only a little dab of bread and wine, were every bit as "favored in the sight of God". Thus, they all switched to the sacrificing of bread and wine which symbolized the flesh and blood of the former sacrifices.
As social structures evolved among real people, similar social structures in mythology were derived in the spirit world. Never have refinements in the spirit world come before those in the real world. Recently the hierarchy of Saints was reviewed and some of the Saints, such as Saint Christopher, lost their positions. These decisions are much more complex than in earlier times.
Beginning of dialectic materialism
All such things were recorded, studied, and thought about. Progress was made, enlightenment spread, and they were proud of it. As we now understand, the consistency was never perfect, no matter what they did. When all seemed to fail, some few people were discouraged enough to try to go it alone, denying that there was a God. Their thoughts were of dialectic materialism, but they still did not know about the laws of Nature, and their conclusions were as magic as ever, maybe, even more so.
The thrust of the argument in this book is to get away from a stagnation of faith in the unreal (or supernatural) and the placement of our faith in reality (or nature), and at the same time preserve our ideals.
In the final analysis, the scientist is still a philosopher. There are still boundaries of the unknown. The purpose of Realistic Idealism is to suggest a philosophy that will not cripple our efforts to use science to our best advantage.
There may be confusion, dilemma, and irony in acquiring this type of understanding. If you read on, you will pass the ruins of temples and cathedrals. On the way, a citadel of magic must be destroyed. Your armor of understanding must deflect magic arrows shot by creatures of a dream world. Yet, if you have true humility, you may unite with the spirit of Nature. Then your life may have a minimum of guilt; your heart may be filled with love; there may be better health; there may be more satisfaction in your work; and, there may be more freedom. The mystery of life will not be destroyed, but merely advanced to a more sophisticated state. The study of Nature is the discovery of God's laws.
Realistic idealism argues that reality can be consistent with idealism, and also with faith and hope. This requires a faith in science, reality, and a displacement of a dependence on magic to which the world is heir. Man has prayed, fought, and worked for control of himself and his environment. Yet, he has resisted, even stopped the spread of the knowledge that would give him that very capability. Reality and magic are antithetical. Man started as an, animal. To an animal there is no understanding. To a great extent the world's concept of the universe is still magical in spite of all our Science.
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(Click Here)Copyright© RFHall,1995
Chapter 4. Logic: Dialectic Whatever.
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