Quick Post About Science and Society

I am typing this blog post on January 20, 2025. Besides today being a national holiday for most of us in the United States (MLK Day), we have had a presidential inaguration. Many citizens of my country (including me) have a sense of foreboding here about our new president. Outside of voting, I can’t do much more except to practice secular Buddhism / process theology techniques in order to pray, relax, and move on. So, onwards!

Nature just published this open access journal article: “Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries.” This study was a survey that was quite complex requiring a weighted statistical analysis. The authors have provided more defined methods and statistical results here.

The study was a 12-item scale with four dimensions of trust: perceived competence, benevolence, integrity, and openness. The survey was crowdsourced and consisted of 71,922 participants in 68 countries. A total of 31% of the world’s countries were covered in the survey as well as 79% of the world’s population.

Here is the big graph:

It is so fascinating to look at the countries involved. The graph above shows that people in Russia and in the former members of the Soviet Union have a low trust in science / scientists. I imagine this aspect has to do with current political climates in those regions of the world. I gotta say that I am glad the United States is as high as it is on the list. Honestly, I was surprised. In my daily work in academic medicine, I sometimes perceive the opposite belief system in some patients and their families that I encounter.

Linear random-intercept regression models of those surveyed found that higher levels of trust in science was present in the following groups: women, the elderly, people living in urban regions, people with higher incomes, religious people, educated people, and left-leaning / liberal people.

The authors noted that the positive relationship between tertiary education and trust in science was statistically significant but the effect was small.

My thoughts here:

  1. We should stop the stupid expression of “war between religion and science.” We should celebrate that religious people are pretty much pro-science (at least in this survey). Let’s get science education into the church, chapel, synagogue, temple, and mosque. I feel strongly that understanding basic ideas about science can help the metaphysics of understanding God, regardless of religious tradition. If Pascal, Mendel, Collins, Maimonides, Ibn Sina, Abdus Salam, and Eddington could and can get their faith and their science to work well together, then so can we.
  2. It is disturbing that so-called “right wing” individuals have less trust in science. It has not always been this way. I think this problem is due to the world’s current interest in populism with an associated disdain of any authority.
  3. Although the study showed educated people seem to trust science, the effect was statistically small. I have often seen that educated people in my life are not always the most trustful of science. Why is this? Well, I can imagine a very educated accountant, liberal arts professor, business person, or actor not understanding or appreciating science even if they went to a university. I image the readers of this blog know such people in their life. I can’t speak for university education worldwide, but U.S. higher education is becoming more siloed with many graduates having minimal to no liberal arts education in their training. In my opinion, this is tragic.
  4. Fund public education better. Not much more to add here.
  5. Seminaries need more science training and make that science training accurate (no pseudo-science). I took ethics training in medical school. I received a doctorate in theology later in life from a seminary that appreciated science. It is not hard to incorporate such a curriculum. Andy Crouch talks about this aspect very clearly here.

That is about all I have to say about this super interesting article. I hope you have a good week! I am going to be very busy this week at work, so I wanted to get a quick blog post out.

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Entropy and Theodicy, Part 2

In my prior post, I provided a discussion as to why I think we should consider that evil explored in theodicy likely should only be explained as “natural evil”. I provided some research / references suggesting that organic brain disease seems to describe why people often cause moral evil. Thus, moral evil is physically just natural evil. This is a theology statement. It cannot be proven, but it can be considered.

What does such a statement mean in terms of how we look at the world and how we consider theodicy?

First, I think that if we say that evil is natural, then the supernatural goes away and causes of evil are easier to study and to prevent. This idea an be uncomfortable for many people, including me. However, in my theological training, process theology and open & relational theology have taught me that one can be quite religious and look at the world through the lens of natural theology.

There will be no solutions to the problem of theoci y, but perhaps we can “cut around the edges” in order to take comfort when we see horrific problems in the world or are affected by personal tragedy.

I will provide some potential ideas below that should warrant theological research.

This argument is weak but here goes… Perhaps we will learn more about entropy as we learn more science. The connection between evil / theodicy and entropy could become more clear with time and research. As an example, the “heat death ” of the universe is expected to occur in about 10<sup>100</sup> years from what I have read. Our view of the universe has changed drastically from Ptolemy to Galileo to Einstein in less than 2000 years. Perhaps we will learn more about the universe and entropy that change our ideas about disorder, theodicy, and death. I have no clue.

The universe could be cyclical in nature. Thus, the potential for creativity, novelty, or rebirth of life could be eternal in nature. This idea is extremely controversial.

Even in a more entropic universe, creativity could continue. I heard a physicist or cosmologist (I am not sure) on a podcast or Youtube videal (I am not sure) state that a life form living trillions of years from now would see the universe as it is at that moment in time. The life form would still see creativity in the world around them but not in a manner that we see it.

If there is a multiverse (or if there is no entropy outside of our observed universe), then entropy could be somewhat of a pointless concern as new bubble universes continue ad infinitum.

image from Smithsonian

I am not sure that entropy would increase in an infinitely large system with no boundaries. Entropy might increase or decrease, but it is not clear if it would move in one direction or another.

In a space containing complete entropy, there is always a chance, no matter how remotely small, that particles would get together and form structures. This structure formation would be certain if time is infinte. This is the Boltzman brain idea. Perhaps a completely entropic universe could, over infinite time, form even larger structures…new galaxies? A new universe? Granted, this idea has many problems to consider.

The Many Worlds Interpretation can, theorectically, suggest a person lives forever on some branch. This has theological implications but it also has pretty significant entropic the theodicy implications.

Image from Britannica

Finally, theology… If one accepts a God of love in the setting of process theology or open & relational theology, there is always a lure for creativity or novelty in all of nature, including our universe. There is always the eternal lure for “the good” which I would define as continued creativity through time...no matter what happens. Creativity wins every time.

I explain the possible theology aspects of this idea in my recent book, A Theology of the Microbiome. In the book, I state, “God is not a deistic God or a philosophy of materialistic naturalism. God desires creativity, and God’s divine lure at every second in time exists for all entities. God loves all of reality, as expressed by the inherent drive of the divine lure for creativity throughout the universe.”

Theologians should consider some of the ideas that I have expressed above. Their consideration is especially important as our colleagues in the sciences are exploring and testing these theories already.

image from Meta AI

Odds and Ends:

  1. Dinofest is coming to the University of Utah! It is amazing. You should come if you are close by. Link is here.
  2. Speaking of entropy, this New England Journal of Medicine has a review on an intractable problem in U.S. medicine. No real solutions were given in this article.

Entropy and Theodicy

Bad things are just going to happen. We can go round and round about the awfulness of natural evil and moral evil, but there appears to be no way to get around the fact that the presence of evil persists in a world that many people believe God is present in it. This is the issue of theodicy.

From my prior posts, you probably have ascertained that I assume God’s presence in the world is more naturalist in perspective — a natural theology. Much has been written about how Christianity and Judaism have the potential for naturalist tendencies. Other strains of the world’s religions also have this potential. I don’t need to expand on this issue as others have written much more here. How does theodicy as a theological concept in the scientific concept of entropy?

Entropy is described by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Simply put, energy available to organize systems will change from useful to non-useful energy over time even as the total energy of the system remains the same. Thus, matter (for example, particles) will move to their most probable state over time. Consider several particles in a box separated by a tunnel or hole. If you put the particles just in one side of the box, they will spread out evenly over time to both sides of the box. The chance of them all moving randomly back to that same, one side is incredibly small. It is not impossible for such an action to occur, but it is a really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really small chance in time.

The image above comes from a great link that describes entropy.

In other words, matter spreads out over our observable universe over time. The energy needed to put matter elements back into an ordered state is essentially wasted and not usable. This fact explains why we see entropy throughout the universe. As our universe continues to expand (apparently faster and faster), the volume of the universe grows which gives particles more and more areas to move into. This is entropy…a complete flattening of the position spaces of particles with no useful energy to make particles form usable structure.

Thus, in the setting of natural evil, theodicy makes sense. A planet’s energy is used up, and life on that planet ends. An animal eats another animal in order to get energy with an overall reduction in usable energy. A star expands and explodes making the star and its associated planets useless. From a human perspective, illness occurs as more random mutations occur in an individual’s DNA or as immune systems break down. Death occurs. Death is universal.

In the setting of moral evil, theodicy and entropy may not appear to naturally match. For example, is murder due to entropy? Here is where I wonder the following:

Is moral evil still simply natural evil?

Possible evidence:

  1. Psychopaths may have abnormal gyrification in the brain.
  2. Abnormal white tract density may be abnormal in psychopaths.
  3. Psychopaths may be cortical thinning of the brain.

Brain gyration (from Wikipedia)

Images of cortical thinning (from PNAS)

It should be kept in mind that relating brain structural anomalies to human behavior are filled with issues. Often such studies are poorly performed. It is very well known that two independent readers of a radiographic image (or MRI) can have some human interpretation issues when describing a finding (Cohen kappa testing). It can be hard to diagnose psychopathy in some patients. A great review article about the limitations of this research is here. I highly recommend this open access article.

Finally, if one thinks about moral evil in the setting of society or culture, can one argue that moral evil in such arenas are not natural? I think this is yet again natural evil. A drought from weather patterns causes people to fight for resources. Wars are often simply fights over limited resources found in and on the planet (for example, the Pacific Theater in World War 2). In the end, is the inital cause of the suffering / evil simply natural and not moral? If one considers the ideas contained in panexperientialism, would all theodicy have a natural cause?

I want to bring up two potential ideas that need work:

  1. Perhaps all theodicy is natural and should not be divided into natural and moral theodicy.
  2. God fits into this idea…somehow.

In my next post, I will post some potential ways forward although the issue of theodicy never provides clear answers.

Painting by Caravaggio

Odds and ends:

  1. Interesting review in Nature has come out about a new book that emphasizes organism development as a driver for evolution. Link is here.
  2. God and Nature Magazine has a good open access, on-line article titled “The Questions We Ask AI.” I personally think that current AI projections are greatly overhyped.

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Teaching Science to Fundamentalist Communities

I am a huge fan of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), and in fact, I have been a member of the ASA for over 20 years. The ASA is a collection of scientists (broadly defined) who are also Christian. Although I am speaking from a Christian perspective, the work of the ASA is parallel to science education being done in other religions.

Specifically, the ASA reaches out to Christian groups to help them understand that science is extremely important in our society, including in religious societies. If one wants to love one’s neighbor, then appreciating and understanding simple scientific principles are completely congruent with the Christian faith. Such examples include understanding the importance of evolutionary science, genetics, Big Bang cosmology, prevention of global warming, and the importance of vaccines.

Evolutionary tree of birds from Nature

When one thinks about “Christian fundamentalism”, one may suppose that fundamentalism is an ancient concept. Not so. It is really more of a religious movement that started up in the early 20th century. It is a new movement Good references are here and here. Christian fundamentalism is decidely anti-science, which in my opinion, makes it potentially anti-Christian especially when it is involved in the anti-vaccination movement.

The ASA has a wonderful peer-reviewed journal called Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith (PSCF) that is helpful in 1) understanding this fallability of fundamentalism and 2) providing helpful resources for those in science who try to teach and promote science in educational settings, churches, and communities.

The September issue PCSF had a great artile titled “Contemporary Challenges to the Pursuit of Truth” by Keith Miller. Typically, PCSF embargoes articles for one year before making them open to the public, but I did find a link that works.

Miller defines the overall issues that we run into when dealing with fundamentalists and their understanding of science. Specifically:

  1. Absence of shared presuppositions and methodologies (you can be religious and still can see an objective reality as described by science)
  2. Loss of trust in expert consensus communities
  3. Lack of historical knowledge (big one — hey, even scientists and physicians don’t always realize the history of our fields)
  4. Isolation from diverse perspectives
  5. The inability to set personal egos when searching for truth.

Miller defines each of these issues and provides potential ways to interact with other individuals, especially when dealing with those who appear hostile to modern science. Honestly, we who understand science fairly well need to set aside our presumptions about the intelligence of those in fundamental communities. My interactions with such communities is that their pastors and laity are quite intelligent, but they simply do not understand how science works. In many ways, I blame the lack of funding of public education in the United States for this issue.

I would recommend this article highly if you want to understand how the Christian fundamentalist mind works. The author provides solutions for dealing with the issues brought up by people who live in a fundamentalist environment. Perhaps you can share it with someone who is in such a community. I am sure there are wonderful resources for other faith streams as well.

Odds and ends:

  1. Interesting “Theories of Everything” podcast with David Bentley Hart. I enjoyed it.
  2. The same September PCSF journal has a wonderful article titled, “Flood Geology and Conventional Geology Face Off Over the Coconino Sandstone.” It is a wonderful article refuting the so-called “science” (really it is pseudo-science) attempting to prove the global flood described in the Old Testament. It is okay that the story of Noah and the diluvial flood are a myth. Myths are very important for teaching and for understanding the human psyche. The article should be free to the public in a year.
  3. The ASA has another journal that is open access and free to the public called God and Nature Magazine. I recommend it as well for more reading resources.

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God and Society

I have been working my way through We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour.

Early on, I came across this quote:

“No one is truly modern who does not agree to keep God from interfering
with Natural Law as well as with the laws of the Republic. God becomes
the crossed-out God of metaphysics, as different from the premodern
God of the Christians as the Nature constructed in the laboratory is from
the ancient phusis or the Society invented by sociologists from the old
anthropological collective and its crowds of nonhumans.”

Hmmm…I have some thoughts here. First of all, I think it is quite a mistake to believe that all religious people have some sort of faith in a directly interfering God a priori. There have been exceptions, and although I believe such exceptions to be relatively rare, they have been influential. Deism provides such an example. Some have regarded the Tao as a potential example (see Buber’s “eternal You”). Both deism and Taoism are good theological as well as philsophical ideas. Do they necessarily work in a modern Western (whatever “Western” means) construct?

Science is observational with an associated search for the “why”. There are “small whys” such as an observation of a singular beetle species movement. There are “big whys” such as what occurred before the Big Bang. The big and the small are of equal importance with the exception that it takes much more processing power (such a computer power) and reliance of metaphysics to go after the “big whys”.

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As I have worked in the fields of process theology and open & relational theology (ORT), I have seen a potential solution here. It is a theological solution and not a scientific solution although it does have metaphisical potential to help religious people understand the importance of science. I do not think that process theology or ORT will become a branch of Christianity or of any other religion in a manner similar to a denomination. I do think, however, that their influence will change how many religions, especially Abrahamic religions, can view the world.

What do I mean by such statements? I think that the ideas expressed by process theology / ORT emphasize a two-way street or openess (communication?) between God and nature. In a way, God and nature learn from each other, especially if God is open ended in God’s understanding of the future. God would be open ended with no omniscience if God is present in real time and is part of time.

Both process theology and ORT would accept the terms of prehesion (God is in time as past events influence the future and in which the future is open since it is based on the panoply of past events), panentheism (nature is in God), and panentheism (all entities experience). The human use of science would be part of this eternal process of learning and experiencing. In the setting of process theology / ORT, our species learning about nature equals our learning about God’s love of novelty, and perhaps, creativity. ORT would suggest that this two-way street of interaction between God and nature / God and each human is personal.

Now on to “laws of the Republic.” In an open theism setting, God would not be able to or perhaps even want to directly influence human civilization, including a legal system. However, God desiring “the good” — whatever this good is — may passively influence outcomes. This is the “divine lure.” If one proposes that God “calls” for the good (defined as creativity) at every level of nature, then this call would include the human quest for law and governance. Every singular human and every civilization through time can accept, ignore, or go against such God’s divine and eternal lure through time.

The “laws of the Republic” responding to the lure would care for the poor, provide education for all, assist in healthcare, and would protect the environment. Broken systems such as facism or Marxism associated with oppressing others and putting the state as a lead priority instead of its people would be ignoring this divine lure.

Thus, I agree with Latour that humans are not modern if they feel that God directly interferes with the laws of nature and the laws of the land. In so many ways, omniscience and omnipotence are loaded with fallacies (see my recently published book). However, a God who loves novelty, loves creativity, and loves for love’s sake would desire for our species to continue to care for each other and for our planet.


Odds and Ends:

  1. I enjoy reading the blog Discourses on Minerva. It had a recent lecture titled, “Understanding the World of Plato.” It is interesting.
  2. The Theories of Everything Youtube channel had a recent discussion about the good and the bad of string theory. l liked it.

Smolin’s (et al.) Universe that Learns

I’m a big fan of Lee Smolin (at least of his layperson works). Two of his books, The Trouble with Physics and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution, are books that I have checked back on many times. He may not want to admit one this aspect of his work in that I think he can do metaphysics better than most.

Recently, I have re-read his ArXiv post, “The Autodidactic Universe” (2021). He was a co-author of this article.

Simply put, the authors of this article (including Smolin) argue that there is a correlation between gauge field theories and neural networking. This suggests a metaphorical “brain” or “intelligence.” The authors make this correlation by describing a learning system as “autodidactic” if it self-learns / wants to learn without concern of threat (subjective?) as well as learning for survival in a Darwinian sense (objective?). One could then further describe learning as a survival technique at multiple levels of reality — not just in biology.

Per the authors:

“A consequencer accumulates information from the past that is more influential to the future than is typical for other contents of the system. It is the negative feedback loop in your home’s thermostat, or a star, or a naturally occurring reactor. It is a bit in a computer, or a gene.”

In a sense, a matrix model could represent quantum gauge theories but also learning machines. Any change in the model would lead to “learning” in the universe as represented by universe dimensions and gauge groups. I assume this learning would consist of moving through time. The degrees of freedom in such a model could have thermal limitations as seen in nature. Such limitation of learning can be seen in neural networks as well. Additionally, the universe learning would be like a computer that learns on its own…with the eventual capacity of consciousness (my addition)? The article states that internal adversaries would be built into the universe’s system in order for the system to learn. The ability to evade or outsmart an adversary would be evolution in action and would also constitute learning.

The Pleiades, from Harvard University

I am not a physicist at all, and the math in this paper does be difficult. However, I am intrigued by the idea of the universe learning over time. If the universe learns, do the laws of physics change over time? The article suggests this is a possibility. Does the possiblity of the laws of physics changing suggest that evolution is a process on the broadest scale. This idea suggests that Darwin’s theory of evolution is much more profound than realized.

Charles Darwin, from the Natural History Museum

So, consider: 1) The universe may learn. 2) Biologic entitites tend to learn (even small organisms). 3) The learning occurring in the universe progresses through the component of time. 4) Darwinian evolution may involve a deeper level of universal change (at all levels of reality) than we realize. This level of reality of learning to survive and learning more through time matches much of what we see in ideas surrounding process theology.

I would not match such ideas with pantheism as seen with Spinoza. I would more identify this idea as the universe being contained IN God (panentheism) with God experiencing with all of reality in time (panexperientialism). The universe if not God; the universe is in God. The universe learns; God learns more about the universe; God learns.

In the setting of process theology, God desires novelty over time. In the setting of process theology’s cousin, open and relational theology, God may even desire creativity for some type of ultimate goodness. The desire is not actively pushing for a goal. God’s “hand” is not pushing for me to type this blog post. God’s “hand” did not guide the cardiac surgeon who replaced my heart valve a few years ago. I have had a happy marriage overall and have 2 pretty good adult children. I have had some tragedies in life as well dealing with family substance abuse as well as dementia. God did not force happines and tragedy into my life as well into the lives of others. God perhaps has desired creative outcomes for my life and for those entities around me through a gentle, passive lure for the good. Nature can ignore or take up the lure all with complete freedom.

Of note, God hopefully is desiring my creativity on this blog post. If not, well I guess I am ignoring the lure. : )

In summary, the work by Smolin, et al. is a very good read. It is 72 pages long, not counting references. One can get through most of the article without knowing complex math, but it does take concentration.

I have heard Lee Smolin talk on several occassions via podcasts and on YouTube. As I have mentioned above, I have read some of his books. In my opinion, he has process philosophy (not process theology) leanings. However, his (and his co-authors) work on reality being potentially autodidactic should be required reading for those theologians looking for models of process theology.

Odds and Ends:

  1. Speaking of models, Theology and Science has a new essay on modeling in theology. I am thinking of reviewing it.
  2. The “Theories of Everything” podcast / YouTube channel has a great discussion with Matthew Segall about the history of process philosophy. I have a love-hate relationship with TOE, but this episodes is very good. Dr. Segall is a nice person. He was on my dissertation committee.
  3. Link to a great opinion piece in the New York Times: “AI Isn’t Genius. We Are.”

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More Musings on Misinformation in Medicine

I’m going to comment on this article: He Built a Wellness Empire While Adventuring With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The article was in the New York Times but also was re-published in our local paper. This post is not a diatribe against RFK Jr. and his uninformed advisors although I think he is a dangerous person when it comes to his lack of medical knowledge. However, my bigger complaint is that our country allows people like RFK Jr. to spread such horrible misinformation. His anti-vaccine stance is atrocious — full stop. There is really no excuse for this type of pseudoscience rubbish. Unfortunately, humans tend to have magical thinking, and there is a long history of vaccine fear going back to the 1800s. I know much has been written about how to address the international issue of the anti-vaccine movement as well as the tendency for humans to go along with conspiracy theories. From an evolutionary perspective, I guess it makes sense that humans are fearful of the “new” as it might be correlated with the ancient and primal fear of investigating new sounds or sights during the Paleolithic period. Investigating something “new” might lead to one being eaten, thus, ending the genetic line.

Solutions off the top of my head:

  1. Bring back the liberal arts in higher education. Learning literature, philosophy, foreign language, art history, and history in general would teach people that humans are quite complicated. We make dumb decisions. We repeat mistakes throughout history. In many ways, training in the liberal arts makes us all become “humanists” in the respect of wanting to respect and protect each other while promoting an equitable society. One can be an atheist and be a humanist. One can be a theist and be a humanist. I am religious and want an equitable society. Access to vaccines to prevent horrendous diseases is a humanist stance.
  2. Teach statistics. The United States has a terrible track record of teaching statistics. Thus, our country tends to have a mob decision making capacity without considering nuance. I always have thought that statistics should be a mandatory course(s) in high school and in the undergraduate curriculum. It does not need to be complicated statistical teaching. Medical school should have a dedicated statistics class. My medical school experience consisted of one small book and a 6-week class that was pitiful. Medical school should have at least a college curriculum course equivalent for statistics required by the AAMC. Residencies and fellowships should be required to have a real statistics curriculum in place by the ACGME. It is not hard to open up a Khan Academy video series for trainees to watch and then to follow up with test questions. Some residencies and fellowships offer related MPH and MSc concurrent degrees which is good as these degrees are statistics heavy. What if we made such training more feasible?
  3. Stronger messaging by medical societies. I’m sorry, but the American Medical Association has lost so many of its members due to poor messaging, often misplaced priorities, and its inability to listen to member concerns. It is very involved with Medicare cost determination. If one think about how messed up Medicare has become, then one realizes the AMA is partially to blame for the issue. The American Academy of Pediatrics (of which I am a member) had, frankly, a soft statement about RFK, Jr. being nominated as head of Health and Human Services. Just ridiculous. The AAP should have stated that this nomination was dangerous and put the lives of children at risk. The AAP needed to have strong messaging here. I’ll be positive about one organization…the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition (of which I am also a member). NASPGHAN has tried very hard to influence legislation in regards to toy magnet dangers and infant formula access even though it is a relatively small society with minimal legislative influence.
  4. BETTER SCIENCE EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. If that means cutting athletics to pay for better science education, then so be it.
  5. Hey religious people, try acting religious. I’m a religious person. I’m quite particular about where I attend church. I expect church to not be filled with pro-American and anti-science stances. As I have heard before, it is better to be an “American Christian” than to be a “Christian American.” The last noun in the couplet expresses one’s priority. The anti-vaccination movement is steeped in Christian nationalism. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in Christian nationalism that matches the Beatitudes seen in Matthew 5. Jesus’ Great Commandment (Luke 6:31) will never match Christian nationalism. I’m no Islamic scholar, but the Quran states that God is all forgiving and all kind (85:14). I am sure God would expect God’s followers to be the same, and yes, I know we all fail at loving our neighbor repetitively. If Jesus, Mohammed, and God make it quite clear that we should walk forth in love, then being anti-vaccination in order to bring back horrible diseases seems pretty clearly anti-God.

God gave us brains (even from a process theology or open & relational theology perspective). Brains gave us science. Science, if used well, is a wonderful gift from God.

Odds and Ends:

  1. The decline of funding in the liberal arts in U.S. colleges and universities linked here.
  2. Consider reading “We Have Never Been Modern” by Bruno Latour. It is relevant.
  3. Consider reading “A Secular Age” by Charles Taylor. It is also relevant.

Answering an IRAS Listener Question

I had a great time doing a talk for the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) last week. I was expected to put together an accurate and comprehensive lecture, and I appreciate the audience attending the lecture who asked me hard questions. Hard questions are always good in science, philosophy, theology, and many other subjects.

One comment that I received was the following: “What we are working with here is physical. Makes sense because that is our neighborhood. We understand things based on what we experience. Love / God is incorporeal and and yet blends somehow with the corporeal. How do they integrate?“

This is a deep comment and question that reflects centuries of philosophical inquiry.

First of all, I am not a substance dualist. Mind and body, mind and God, and human body and God are difficult to separate for many reasons. I would need a good reasoned theological argument that the two dualism realms 1) are demonstrably separate and 2) have some way for communication to occur between realms.

Aristotle

Aristotle states in his Metaphysics: “For the science which it would be most meet for God to have is a divine science, and so is any science that deals with divine objects; and this science alone has both thesequalities; for (1) God is thought to be among the causes of all things and to be a first principle, and (2) such a science either God alone can have, or God above all others. All the sciences, indeed, are more necessary than this, but none is better.”

Rene Descartes

Descartes stated later: “It is not [the figures] imprinted on the external sense organs, or on the internal surface of the brain, which should be taken to
be ideas—but only those which are traced in the spirits on the surface of
the gland H (where the seat of the imagination and the ‘common’ sense is
located). That is to say, it is only the latter figures which should be taken
to be the forms or images which the rational soul united to this machine
will consider directly when it imagines some object or perceives it by the
senses.” What is machine? Well, per Descartes, “I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us.”

This “gland H” was the pineal gland. Lots of issues here.

If God is the “first principle”, then how does nature communicate or follow? Is there some substance undefined that connects the nature and divine?

Is God truly “alone” is the richness of experience? Does God not experience what nature’s entities, including Homo sapiens, experience?

Is “gland H” / the pineal gland the seat of consciousness of humans? No. Scientific discovery shows that the pineal gland controls melatonin production which subsequently controls our sleep – wake cycle. There is no large anatomic or small cellular structure in the pineal gland that could be described as some type of antenna for the soul or for communication with God. Trust me. Lots of people have examined this area. I have also examined the pineal gland during my gross anatomy class in medical school.

By the way, when I consider the Penrose–Hamerof ideal of brain microtubules involved in quantum mechanics processes, I sometimes wonder if this is a recapituliation, of sorts, of Cartesian dualism. I’m not sure and am no expert.

location of pineal gland (from cancer.gov)

So, dualism doesn’t seem to work.

What to do, what to do….

If God and nature (including our species) are not separate, then they are, to some degree, one. Here is where panentheism exists. All of nature, including humans, are in God. “I know the Lord is always with me” (Psalm 16:8). “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galations 2:20). Many other such verses are present if there is a need for Biblical justification.

May I perhaps provide another justification?

As we learn more about our world, our species’ concept of deity must necessarily change. Ideas surrounding “religious fundametalism” may crop up in all of the world’s religions occasionally. However, as we learn more about nature objectively, we always change our philosophy, sociology, and theology subjectively. Always.

The so-called “Venus of Willendorf” may have had religious meaning in the Paleolithic in the hope of divine intervention for a good food supply and a delivery of a healthy infant. In modern times, we have the capacity to feed the world as well as the ability to mostly have successful deliveries. Of course, due to racism, facism, and war, such possibilites are limited.

Praying to saints or carrying holy verses, pilgrim badges, or icons on the body were used to protect against disease and other types of suffering in the Middle Ages. There was no ability to accurately diagnose and to treat diseases that today are often incredibly easy to cure. We still pray and carry religious momentos in the so-called modern world. We could rid the world of diseases worldwide, if we wanted to. The science is there; the human will is not.

What has happened in objective ideas of science in the past 200 years? It is amazing to consider. Let’s list some discoveries: 1) evolution, 2) modern medicine, 3) modern chemistry, 4) discovery of other galaxies, 5) finding black holes, 6) quantum mechanics, 7) finding gravitational waves, 8) discovering DNA, 9) understanding both special and relative relativity, 9) the computer revolution with the resultant smart phone and artificial intelligence, 10) germ theory, 11) antibiotics, 12) vaccines, 13) satellites and on and on.

Our theology must advance as the science advances. There is no other way to reconcille how humanity thinks about God. In fact, I believe strongly that the objective (science) affects the subjective (art, theology) and the subjective reflects back onto the objective to help science consider ever more far reach and important potential discoveries. Philosophy helps science. Understanding history helps the understanding of science. Theology with its elements of philosophy and history can be essential as humans always will be religious to some degree.

Back to panentheism… Science has shown that our observable universe has up to 2 trillion galaxies. Experiments surrounding wave-particle duality so far have found no hidden variables to cause a deterministic outcome (so far, of course, and more discoveries might be made to change this proposal).

image from NASA

So, an immense universe in the setting of some randomness at the microscopic level could theologically point to God who encompasses all (panentheism) and experiences all (panexperientialism).

The ideas of objectivity and subjectivity surrounding the human condition will continue to influence each other in a circular sense through real time as long as our species exists.

The science will change. The theology will change. Perhaps we will understand God a bit more.

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Process Theology and Potential

I recently gave a talk to the IRAS (Institute on Religion in an Age of Science) as part of their monthly lecture series. I spoke to this organization because 1) it was free (so no stress about being paid for content), 2) it is important to utilize the liberal arts part of one’s brain, and 3) the IRAS asked tough but fair questions. Theology is similar to philosophy in that propositional statements are often questioned deeply which is certainly appropriate as it leads to further statement refinement.

During my talk I talked about Stephen J. Gould’s “wall of minimal complexity” as seen in biological evolution. As an aside, Gould is one of my favorite writers. The illustration that he developed is below:

Basically, this diagram shows that the entirety of Earth’s biomass is mainly unicellular in origin. Thus, organisms with complexity are very, very rare. Keep in mind that this diagram doesn’t include plant-life which has the most biomass.

Now, if one adds a ray at the bottom of Gould’s diagram described as time, then one sees that increased complexity matches increases in time. I’m willing to admit that very complex organisms have ocurred in Earth’s history (such as during the Cambrian explosion). However, it does seem that increased biological complexity involves a time function.

In the theological ideas of process theology (derived from process philosophy) as well as in Open & Relational Theology (ORT), time is pretty much a priority function. Extremely long time periods are even more essential (for example, billions of years; trillions of years; time running eternally). Time allows for the occurrence of novelty or creativity. God desires novelty / creativity in process theology; God desires loves novelty / creativity in ORT. God loves all of levels of the natural world in ORT.

Another way of thinking about this issue is to consider God wanting novelty / creativity through time at all levels of nature. There is some type of divine lure desiring the “good” or the best for creativity. This lure affects all levels of nature in which nature can be neutral, negative, or positive in response. I like the idea of the divine lure.

God is not actively involved in novelty / change. God does not force. In process theology, both God and nature are in the flux of change, and change is primordial to God and nature. In a sense, God learns. From a Christian perspective, God as Christ can be seen to learn (for example, Christ is described as being “amazed” as in Luke 7:9). In ORT, God and nature indeed may be in the flux of change, but God has the divine lure in place eternally at every time moment and at every location to plead for or desire for novelty / creativity. This divine lure is prioritized as divine love with God loving every entity throughout time and place. Creativity can be seen as love.

Process theology and ORT have components of 1) time, 2) prehension (experience over time in which the past affects the present which affects the future), 3) panentheism (all of nature is in God), and 4) panexperientialism (all entities experience — even God). I have discussed time, the divine lure, prehension, panentheism, and panexperientialism in my prior blog posts.

Back to the Gould’s wall of minimal complexity…

I would like to first suggest that the huge amount of biomass that is “basic” in complexity such as bacteria are the potential for the continuing divine lure in creation. In such a setting, biological evolution leads to continuing creation in time. Keep in mind that unicellular organisms are still pretty complex.

The red oval (above) surrounds the bacterial or unicellular biomass. It is loaded with evolutionary potential to proceed from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms, including sauropods and humans. As an example, think about Lynn Margulis’ endosymbiont theory in which mitochondria were previously bacteria (the prokaryote) absorbed into other cell types in the distant past leading to a new type of cell (the eukaryote). It is a beautiful theory and quite true as mitochondria have their own separate DNA different from the cell nucleus. The beauty here has subjective elegance perhaps, theologically, due to the presence of a divine lure. This potential requires 1) time (immense), 2) potential (similar to potential energy with potential creativity changing to actual creativity in time), and 3) a divine lure.

However, what happens before and after the complexity limitations set forth in Gould’s wall of complexity? Consider the figure above. Again, if we include an element of time, this idea means that time keeps occuring (makes sense), potential continued / continues (before life on Earth; beyond humans currently) eternally, and the divine lure is ever present throughout the universe eternally but in real time.

Before life on Earth, there was complexity. Planetary formation arising from a disc of gas and dust around our sun was complex. Planetary bombardements from meteors hitting our planet prior to life on Earth was complex.

As time extends forward from the present, God will lure for novelty / creativity eternally. This lure will continue even if our species goes extinct. The lure for novelty / creativity will continue on our planet or somewhere else in time and in space in our unbelievably massive universe.

This lure for creativity (which I really think is a lure for the “good”) suggests a God that wants all entities to have some degree of freedom and suggests a God who loves…even if we don’t understand this degree of love associated with the divine lure.

Odds and Ends:

  1. Here is the link to my talk to the IRAS. It is on YouTube and free to the public. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Id8-zQCVA
  2. Here is a great link on Arxiv about writing letters of recommendations in academic astronomy. I do such letter writing frequently. It is interesting how the fields of academic astronomy and academic medicine relate when it comes to writing letters of recommendations.
  3. Here is a link to BioLogos. I support this organization financially. It is a great resource to help introduce Christians to scientific ideas, especially evolution. Their resources are free to the public. Consider supporting them financially. I am pretty sure there are such resources for other religious groups which are just as equally important.

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Progress and Novelty

In my recent blog posts, I talked about my awesome trip to the Galapagos Islands with my spouse. Beautiful place. Beautiful pictures. I read On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin during my trip which is a beautiful read. Thus, beautiful place, beautiful pictures, and beautiful read can cause one to think.

picture of a giant Galapagos tortoise that I took during the trip

In the book, Darwin talks quite a bit about progress in the setting of evlution. If you look at his book (here is an open access link), he has these statements.

And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.

The inhabitants of each successive period in the world’s history have beaten their predecessors in the race for life, and are, in so far, higher in the scale of nature; and this may account for that vague yet ill-defined sentiment, felt by many palaeontologists, that organisation on the whole has progressed.

I do not doubt that this process of improvement has affected in a marked and sensible manner the organisation of the more recent and victorious forms of life, in comparison with the ancient and beaten forms; but I can see no way of testing this sort of progress.

Progress: I am keeping in mind that Darwin is a 19th century writer, and his wording can be interpreted in different ways. Also, Darwin didn’t know about genetics involving DNA, and he didn’t have experimental tools to most accurately determine the ancient aspects of our planet.

I am thinking that when he says “progress”, he means “change” or “superior change” or perhaps “novelty.” Keep in mind that Darwin was in the milieu of speculative ideas of the 19th century which proposed that humans were experiencing overall progress as a species.

When we look at his writing, we are considering it through our own 21st century lens of a postmodern (perhaps with some remaining modernism) / neoliberal / and recently post-truth (unfortunately) society.

In other words, perhaps Darwin is really meaning novelty when he describes evolution. Simply put, novelty can be unique, but in over time and in other spacial locations, it can be repetitive. Convergent evolution might be such an example. Novelty is contained in creativity, and creativity is thought to contain purpose. In the setting of a divine lure (see my prior posts), a gentle reassurance to all levels of nature by God with no associated direct divine intervention could lead to creativity which, of course, would contain novelty. A helpful reference is here.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin would suggest that evolution, and thus creativity, has a purpose that is both cosmic and divine. Simon Conway Morris would suggest that evolution has a directional signal, not necessarily theistic.

What about me? I don’t know. As a physician, I see a large amount of suffering. This observation would go against creativity by God in an active sense. On the other hand, I have seen amazing advances in diagnostics and therapeutics in modern medicine. This observation suggests our species is doing some things right regarding creativity although we still need to do so much work involving basic needs worldwide — clean water, clear air, ease of access to vaccinations, etc.

As a baby theologian (I’ve had my DThM degree for less than one year), I am inclined to think there is creativity in reality which would contain novelty (see graph above).

My idea is contained in my new book (A Theology of the Microbiome) which I have included below:

This figure is from the book. In Figure A, I propose that God and nature (which contains the universe) progress forward in time. Time moves forward eternally. Both God and nature react to change as time is fundamental to all reality. Time also allows entities to potentially experience creativity. Such an idea is fundamental in ideas which surround process theology. There are limits to creativity put in place by nature which I define as lim Δ or a “limit to change.” I discuss lim Δ more in the book if you want to buy it (hint, hint).

In Figure B, I propose a different model that is somewhat similar to Figure A. God and nature do progress forward in time. However, God lures for the “good” which I define as creativity. Love in all of its forms is inherently creative. This lure by God at all levels of nature is never directly acting in terms of making nature change. God is love, and love does not force. This divine love is a simple pleading for creativity, for novelty, for a continuation of love that is eternally present in all places, in all moments of time, and progressing forward in time eternally. Every entity in nature can respond positively, negatively, or neutrally do this eternal call.

One last thought….I have read Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now. I think it is a very good book. Many people don’t like it because I think they just don’t like Pinker. Regardless, he demonstrates throughout the book that humanity seems to be improving over time when one evaluates human life span, disease prevention, education, food safety, and other factors. However, he is quite clear that 3 things will stop this progression in our species: 1) uncontrolled global warming, 2) nuclear war, and 3) the rise of facism.

I think Pinker is correct. Our species has the ability to listen to the divine lure. We can ignore it and put our species, other species, and our planet in a multitude of dangerous scenarios. We can listen to it and move forward with wonderful potential.

Odds and Ends (I just started this new section for extra stuff that I have thought about or am doing. I won’t always include this section):

  1. I am sorry that my writing is infrequent. I have a full-time job as a physician which keeps me quite busy. I try to write once per week at a minimum.
  2. My talk for the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) seemed to go well. I spoke on Wednesday this week. Supposedly, IRAS will have the talk (video and audio) up next week. I will provide a link later.
  3. I do some occassional clinical research, writing, and speaking about medicine, mainly in the field of pediatric gastroenterology. A co-worker and I just had this review of cystic fibrosis published in Practical Gastroenterology which is a free, open access journal. The link is here.
  4. An interesting article in Nature about Artificial Intelligende, industry, and academia has come out. Honestly, ALL of academia — science, liberal arts, and the fine arts (and you too, theology!) should be at the table during this discussion.

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