Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church -Unitarian Universalist
“Theology in the Age of Aquarius”
Rev. Tony Perrino
February 3, 2008
(a prelude-to-the
sermon “reading” on Holograms)
Any of you who have seen the “Star
Wars” movies knows that a hologram is a three-dimensional image which
seems to be hovering in space. What you probably don’t know is how
holograms are produced. They are created when a laser-beam of light passes
through a photographic plate that is different from the slide or negative
made by a conventional camera. This plate, instead of having the recognizable
features of the image recorded, like an exposed film negative, is a blur
of thousands of overlapping circles. It looks to the naked eye like a water-pond
surface that has been peppered with small pebbles and then suddenly frozen
to preserve the interaction of the waves.
This “interference pattern,” as
its called, is formed when the holographic picture is taken. The laser light,
used to make holograms, is split into two parts on its way to the
photo plate. One half goes directly to the plate while the other half is
first reflected off an object, and then captured on the plate. What occurs
on the surface of the holographic plate is a co-mingling of the pure light
beam with the reflected light, and it looks like an imageless blur.
But, when a pure beam of laser
light is passed through that plate, it projects a three-dimensional re-creation
of the object, which appears to be floating in space: a hologram.
Scientists have been discovering ways
of making holograms with greater clarity, but the most amazing
thing they have learned is that, if the holographic plate is broken into
a hundred pieces, each piece is still capable of reproducing the whole image: the
whole is to be found in all the parts.
Some scientists are now suggesting that
the hologram may be a clue to understanding the nature of reality: that
just as our bodies are holographic, with every cell containing the genetic
coding for the whole organism, so is the whole universe holographically contained
in our minds! Indeed, brain research reveals that its activity most
resembles—an interference pattern!
THE SERMON
Forty-five years ago Time
magazine published a cover story which was greeted with cries of outraged
indignation from orthodox clergy and sighs of smug satisfaction from many
humanistic Unitarians. I am referring, of course, to the April
1963 issue which reported on “the death of God!”
But my contention this morning is that
the deeper implications of that event have more profound significance for
those of us who stress rationality in religion than for our orthodox friends.
For the proclamation of the “death of God” was really a reflection
of the fact that rationalism was dying and we’re witnessing
the disintegration of what had been termed “the modern mind.”
Let me approach the matter historically: Western
civilization has known three great eras in the development of its
understanding of the universe, each of which has been conditioned by the
assumptions which shaped its thought.
I- The first of these eras has it roots in the pre-Christian period, but rose to dominance in the fourth century and lasted until the 1600’s.
Its fundamental assumption was that the world was ruled by a personal, omnipotent and inexplicable God “whose ways are not our ways” and whose creatures were “not to reason why, but to do or die” and glorify His name.
It was, in short, “The Age
of Faith.”
An expression of the mind set of this
era can be seen in The Book of Job. When the Old Testament figure,
a good man who had been visited with terrible misfortune, asked God why this
had happened to him, the answer he received was, in effect, “Who
do you think you are to ask such questions?”
Job, of course, was properly intimidated
and retreated with apologies for having been so preumptious. He later went
on to affirm the proper attitude for the Age of Faith saying “Though
He slay me, yet will I praise my God.”
Thus the mind set for that era was that the
mysteries of life are not to be known by human beings; they are in the
Almighty’s keeping: our salvation lies in an acceptance
of the Creator’s unknowable purpose.
II- Beginning with the seventeenth
century, these assumptions were challenged, and eventually set aside, by
the advent of science.
People like Copernicus, da Vinci and
Galileo, who could not restrain their curiosity, began to explore the mysteries
of nature to discover that they were not mysteries at all!
And a new set of assumptions was born: it contended that, first, the universe is not capricious and inexplicable but orderly and governed by immutable laws. Secondly, that the human mind can, by observation and deduction, discover and understand these laws. That, indeed, therein lies our salvation:
in the subduing of nature by the power
of rational thought.
There was, of course, great resistance to this change. But the progress of science could not be stopped, not because it brought truth (which hardly deters keepers of the status quo) but because it brought power and wealth! (i.e. practical advantages that the ecclesiastical authorities could not ignore.)
The impact of all this on theology
was subtle, but substantial
Some abandoned the idea of God altogether.
On November 10, 1793, what was called the “Civic Naturalistic Religion” of
the French Revolution was inaugurated in a service at the Cathedral of Notre
Dame (the Bishop having been persuaded to abdicate.) On the altar was a sacred
mountain, on top of which was a Greek Temple to honor philosophy and a torch
to symbolize the search for Truth. Around the base of the mountain were busts
of the great figures of the enlightenment: Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesque
etc.. and the congregation sang a Unitarian-sounding hymn which began: “Come, Holy Liberty,
dwell in this temple and be the goddess of the French people.” That
religion lasted as long as the revolution… which wasn’t very
long!
But, for most people, The Age of Reason
did not require the rejection of God altogether. He was merely relegated
to the role of Law Giver, the architect of the Grand Design, unfolding
itself to the human mind. Indeed, the order of the universe seemed to prove
the existence of a Deity, however distant and uninvolved.
This new conception of God was “Deism” It
depicted a Creator who was not at the center of things, manipulating
the universe according to whim, but, as Thomas Carlyle once described
Him “an absentee landlord, sitting idle since the first sabbath,
at the outside of his universe, seeing it go.”
But, again, the most important assumption of the Age of Reason was that this is a law-abiding universe, intelligible to human reason.
III- My contention this morning
is that we have recently entered “The Era of the Post-Modern
Mind:” a time when the assumptions of the Age of Reason are being
toppled. The music of our young people called it “The
Age of Aquarius.” Let’s examine some of
the evidence:
Since it was science which began the
Modern Era, we shall begin there. To do so is to recognize that many frontier
scientists have begun to doubt that reality is orderly—at
least in any way that is comprehensible to the human mind. This seems difficult
to believe because science does continue to work and render enough
predictability to perfect all kinds of new gadgets—from cell phones
which take and transmit pictures to navigational systems, for our cars, which
tell us when we’ve made a wrong turn!
But listen to one of them discussing the matter:
“If modern physics showed us
a world at odds with our senses, post-modern physics is showing us one
that is at odds with our imagination. We have made peace with the
first of these oddities: that the table, which appears to be motionless,
is in fact incredibly ‘alive’ with electrons circling their
nuclei a billion times per second; that the chair which feels so secure
beneath us is actually a near vacuum. Such facts, while
certainly strange, posed no permanent problems for our sense of order.
To accommodate them, all that was necessary was to replace the earlier
picture of a gross and ponderous world—with a more subtle world
in which all was a sprightly dance.”
He then adds: “But
the problems the new physics pose cannot be resolved by refinements in
scale. Instead they seem to point to a radical disjunction between the
way things behave and every possible way we might visualize them. How,
for example, are we to picture an electron passing from orbit to orbit
without traversing the space between them? What kind of model can we construct
of a space that is both finite yet unbounded, or a light which is both
wave and particle? the structure of nature may eventually be such that
our processes of thought do not correspond to it sufficiently to permit
us to think about it at all! We are confronted with
something truly ineffable.”
If post-modern science has become subdued, indeed mystical, in its attitude toward the comprehensibility of reality, philosophy is even less confident.
Two schools of thought dominate contemporary
thought: Existentialism and Linguistic Analysis. Neither of which
will address itself to the traditional task of constructing a coherent understanding
of reality.
Linguistic Analysts say we must first conquer our slovenly use of language or we can’t discuss anything intelligently: our words are too imprecise.
Existentialists urge instead
that we plumb the depths of our own being, that all abstractions are lies;
there is no objective truth, only subjective meanings.
Both camps doubt the capacity of human reason to understand the world in which we live. One U.C.L.A. professor, Donald Kalish, put it bluntly:
“There is no system of philosophy
to spin out, no ethical truths; there are just clarifications of
particular ethical problems. Take advantage of them and work out your own
existence. You are mistaken to think that anyone ever had the answers. There are no
answers. Be brave and face up to it!”
The French writer, Albert Camus,
wrote The Myth of Sisyphus to address the matter. It tells
of a man doomed to push a rock up a hill every day –only to watch
it roll back down every night. Camus observed, “There is enough
to satisfy him in just the effort to put meaning
into life. I have to believe that Sisyphus was happy.”)
But it is in the Arts that the post-modern
world has been most directly and dramatically experienced.
In music, painting and literature the
subjective, disordered and paradoxical view of reality are being vividly
portrayed:
In music composers have devised what Aaron Copland described as “a disrelation of unrelated tones with no continuity of thematic relationship.” (You have probably heard some of the cacophanies which pass for music.)
.
In painting there is a similar
abandonment of large, sublime subjects for the mundane, abstract, or even
distortions of reality. (You have probably see some of Jackson Pollock’s
scattered drippings which pass for art.)
In literature the critic, Russell Nye, observed:
“If there is a discernible
trend in the form of the post-modern novel, it is toward a series of moments,
rather than a planned progression of events, moving toward a defined terminal
end. Recent novelists tend to explore rather than arrange… In the
past, the novel was a formal structure composed of actions and reactions
which were always finished by the end of the story. The post-modern novel
has no such finality.”
And, of course, in drama the
theater of the absurd has dominated the stage for the last 40 years.The major
playwrights, from Ionesco to Allbee and Pinter seem to share the view of Beckett
who depicted the world as a void where foolish mortals are “Waiting
for Godot” a God who never comes.
The public may be horrified or amused,
the critics indignant or confused, but these are the honest expressions of
post-modern artists: reflections which seem to be rejecting the assumptions
of The Age of Reason.
The response of theology to all this--- was to go in one of two directions:
The first was termed neo-orthodoxy and,
as its name suggests, it represents a return to the Age of Faith. Neo-orthodox
theologians similarly questioned the rational capacities of human beings.
One of them, Reinhold Niebuhr, put it this way: “Life
is full of contradictions and incongruities. We live our days in various
realms of meaning that do not cohere rationally.”
But for these religionists, the fact
that Ultimate Reality is incomprehensible, prompted a return to the stance
of faith in God’s unknowable purpose.
The death of God theologians took the
evidence in another direction. They agreed that the “God” of
rational explanation is gone, but there can be no other conception of deity
that will command the respect of thinking persons so “let’s
get on with the task of living as humanely as we can without God!”
And that is where theology has been
for the past 30 years: with a large segment of the population being
drawn toward fundamentalist religions and non-rational faiths, and
another segment striving to hold onto the beliefs of the Age of Reason
in spite of contrary evidence. (It’s not surprising that what has
emerged is a narcissistic pre-occupation with personal concerns.. and a
dwindling commitment to maintream “liberal religion.”)
So, what will be the future of religion in The Age of Aquarius? In the time remaining I can only suggest some of the directions which think it will take:
to provide an alternative way of thinking
about the idea of “God.”
Based on research being done by neuro-surgeons,
Karl Pribram and Barbara Brown, I expect theology to move toward a holographic
understanding of the universe which recognizes that Reality is
ordered, but not in a way that can be wholly grasped by rational thought: human
reason is a limited lens through which to perceive the complexity of
Ultimate Reality. To return to the hologram analogy, our minds are
only able to see “the imageless blur” of the “interference
pattern.”
It will recognize that just as the whole
of YOU is to be found in any one of your cells, the whole of the Universe
is to be known in YOU! As Emerson put it in our Reading: “Within
you—is the soul of the whole.”
So, the mystery of life to be
explored is not out there somewhere, but in the mind-body-spirit unity
which is you: that all living things are more interconnected
than they appear to be, and our separateness is an illusion. That just
as your original cell also belonged to your parents, whose original cells
also belonged to their parents etc… the history of the human race
is not back there—but living in YOU now—in molecular memory.
Thirdly, it will recognize the
principle of “entelechy,” which decrees that the oak tree
is contained in the acorn, also reveals that the Ultimate Reality, “God,” is
not a transcendent Being, looking down from some supernatural heaven,
but a Creative Life-force Energy that is in YOU, waiting to be fully expressed;
that your salvation, and mine, lies in our learning to experience the wholeness
and holiness of “the burning one-ness binding everything!”
Now this is the point in a sermon when
I usually ask myself, “So what?! So, what is the significance
of all this? The significance is that this is a place, a community
of kindred spirits, where these fascinating, new (and sometimes scary) ideas
will always be fearlessly faced and fully explored--- whoever your ministers
may be --- for such is the character of our faith.
And that, my friends--- is very significant!