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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Quick Note…I will be speaking at IRAS

Hi guys, just a quick note.

I will be giving a talk at the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science this Wednesday 5PM EST, 4PM CST. It is free to attend on line, but you have to register. 
https://starisland-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_KZRy4193TSm74JeaegFLzw#/registration

Information about my talk is below.

God in Time

I’m going to link to my recent book again (“A Theology of the Microbiome“, SacraSage Press). I do this 1) because I write about these issues in detail in the book and 2) I need to market the book (right?).

In my book, I go into detail about process theology which is a theological model that I very much find matching to the natural world around us and in us. One of the better things about process theology is that science is good. All science helps us understand God in real time since God contains nature, and nature’s actions are not controlled by God.

As such, God is involved in the world prehensively (present in all occasions in real time), panentheistically (encompasses the universe and all entities through time), and panexperientially (experiencing all).

In many ways, a cousin / derivation of process theology known as Open and Relational Theology (ORT) probably appeals to me more since (in this theory of theology) God can lure for creativity while never actively demand or forcing change. This lure for creativity is a “divine lure” or an ever-present lure by God for creativity. I define such a lure for creativity as a “lure for the good” or “lure of God’s love.” See the amazing work from Thomas J. Oord about ORT.

Also and in my book, I use Stephen Wolfram’s ideas of cellular automata and hypergraphs to explain change throug time. Wolfram is a great writer who I respect very much from a philosophical and perhaps metaphysical perspective. Wolfram’s ideas are mathematical and have theoretical physics implications. They definitely are not theological, but Wolfram’s emphasis of time flow in reality has always been striking for me when considering process theology and ORT.

I am going to comment on his recent essay, “On the Nature of Time.”

One issue that Wolfram points out is that we describe space and time as “spacetime” (per Einstein). Space and time are necessarily together. This is true as far as we know now. A good review of spacetime described by the journal, Nature, is here.

Curvature caused by the Earth in space time (image from freeastroscience.com)

However, we feel time. Time seems to flow.

Per Wolfram’s recent essay: But ultimately the progress of time is always associated with some choice of successive events that “computationally build on each other”. And, yes, it’s more complicated because of the possibilities of different choices. But the basic idea of the progress of time as “the doing of computation” is very much the same. (In a sense time represents “computational progress” in the universe, while space represents the “layout of its data structure”.)

What does this mean metaphysically? The actual “doing of computation” requires time. There is never instant computation. Thus, I take it to mean that time is real but not static (as in a static geometric universe). If our universe is block, static universe, I do not understand why we would FEEL time from a sensory perspective. There does not seem to be a brain anatomic structure, microstructure, or defined neurologic mechanism that would help us to perceive time in a static world structure.

So, although spacetime is real, perhaps space and time are open and closed like a two strands wound around each other. Spacetime means that we know space and time are essentially and eternally linked. Space and time also being considered as separate allows us to appreciate space and time as two essential but separate structures. Spacetime would be ojective; perhaps separting space and time would be subjective. Being open and closed could be concurrent. A mathematical example would be a clopen set (a cool name BTW).

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Wolfram states further in his essay: And at some rough level we might imagine that we’re sensing time passing by the rate at which we add to those internal perceptions. If we’re not adding to the perceptions, then in effect time will stop for us—as happens if we’re asleep, anesthetized or dead.

I have had deep anesthesia for a serious surgery in the past. Indeed, time did seem to stop or disappear. This suggests consciousness is important for time.

Where do we go with such ideas theologically? In the setting of Naturalismppp (prehension, panentheism, panexperientialism), we assume assume a priori (really, theologically deduction a priori) that God is in the time flow. God experiences time just like every entity, including every human. Thus, God would experience both the geometric structure of spacetime as well as the separation of space and time at each moment — objective and subjective together similar to a type of monad. Since space is curved and time is slowed by massive objects, God would experience all of these different times from the past and into the future. Time is relative; God is sensitive to the relativeness of time.

God experiences what we experience in time. This is panexperientialism in an ultimate form.

As God experiences time from past to present, God is aware of the possible although God does not make the possible. This concept is basic to the idea of prehension and concretion as seen in process philosophy as well as in process theology. God may have a lure for creativity that is a passive influence, and such a “divine lure” has been discussed in this blog and other resources. I find the divine lure an important concept in my theology work.

Finally, if all of reality (nature, universe, multi-verse (if a mult-verse exists)) is in God, and if reality experiences time, then God experiences all of time, including all of spacetime with its weirdness in the physics equations. This is panentheism.

So, let’s do a bit a of mathematical symbols which will represent a subjective, theological idea although space, time, and relativity have definine mathematical objective structures. Again, the subjective and objective working toegher…

Naturalismppp =

God experiencing prehension in nature without interference in real time =

God experiencing panenthism in nature without interference in real time =

God experiencing panexperientialism in nature without interference in real time =

Naturalismppp =

Time is essential for all reality, including God’s reality.

God is caught up in time just like every entitity from every electron to every human to every galaxy. If God is love (which I strongly believe), then God experiences love for each entitity in real time and throughout eternity regardless of the universe’s future.

The prophet Isaiah may have wrapped up my random thoughts into a much nicer bow: Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed.

The sun will expand and absorb the Earth (5 billion years from now). The universe will expand so that we won’t see other galaxies around us (“us” will be long gone — 150 billion years from now). The universe will progress into total entropy (trillions of years from now). God’s love will be still there.

This is simply a fascinating embrace of science (time) and theology (Divine Love).

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Another Tiny Cut in Academic Medicine

*Death by a Thousand Cuts

First, I want to be positive, and I want to talk a bit about my current work in theology. If you have been reading my blog, you know that I am very much into stimulating the artistic / subjective part of the brain since much of my life is centered in the medical science / objective part of my brain.

image from Springer Healthcare

First, theology… A good thing about academic medicine is that many universities utilize “community engagement” as part of academic advancement in non-tenure positions. Although I am a full professor, I am non-tenured. This position may sound strange to people who are in academics but who do not work in medicine. Typically, physicians who work at an academic medical centers / universities are salaried simply because they provide and generate revenue for patient care just like any private medical office you might drive by. I see patients — I bill for my care — I keep my job. It is actually quite hard to lose a physician job in such a setting since I generate money for the academic medical center / university, and I should be a positive revenue stream. I could get tenure, but I’ve seen friends in medicine who work for the tenure track. It involves extra paperwork, and I honestly have not seen any difference in their day-to-day work.

Thus, my community engagment for many years has been trying to reach out to religious groups in order to talk about the importance of science in the setting of religion. The “war” between science and religion makes absolutely no sense theologically, philsophically, and metaphysically. The worst of the worst among religious people as well as non-religious people have made up a fight that doesn’t need to exist.

My engagement work in this area includes on-line religious journals, Youtube videos, and my recent book. I have never been punished by my university for this outreach (and I work at a publically-funded university).

Although I do this work outside of my job, this part of academic medicine is very good.

Now the sad part.

Academic medicine has changed vastly since I entered medical school in 1991. There are many good things — better drugs, better openness about mental health, better surgical outcomes.

The bad thing is that academic medicine and private practive are becoming the same thing. Research and medical education are dissolving as medical schools and their respective universities chase after dollars from clinical care.

Clinical care in academic medicine pretty much trumps everything these days. Funded research is hard to do if not impossible to do with a busy clinical practice. More and more journals are charging extraordinary amounts to publish articles often at the expense of the journal author(s). Finally, much has been written about the demise of medical education.

So…The December issue of the Journal of Pediatrics has an #openaccess article about pediatric endocrinology fellows transitioning from training to the full-time faculty work force. A “fellow” in medicine is someone who is training for subspecialization. For example, I am a pediatric gastroenterologist. My residency was in “pediatrics.” My fellowship afterwards was in “pediatric gastroenterology.”

The article is titled “Measuring Up: Do Pediatric Endocrinology Fellows’ Career Expectations Align with Workforce Reality?” It is worth the read. Here is a summary:

  1. Article data came from a survey of pediatric endocrinology fellows in the U.S. and Canada using a 15 part questionairre in 2024.
  2. Most of those fellows surveyed wanted to go into academic medicine. This makes sense. Most pediatric subspecialists go into academic medicine in the U.S. and Canada (unlike adult subspecialists).
  3. Fellows wanted 61% of their time to be spent on patient care. The other 39% would be available for teaching and research. Their actual time in patient care for their new faculty jobs was 75%. That 75% does not allow for much time in the areas of teaching and research. In my experience such a “free” 25% involves taking care of patients through the 24-hour ubiquitous electronic medical record demands. That 25% involves contacting patients, contacting other specialists, dealing with insurance companies, and dealing with often absurd departmental and overall university mandatory forms. It is of utmost importance to be in contact with patients and specialists when needed, but it eats up that 25% quite a bit.
  4. Ideal free time to pursue non-clinical activities (education, research) was 39%. The actual free time for their new faculty jobs was 18%.
  5. It should be noted that 9% of fellows were being offered jobs with less than 50% clinical care time. These would be considered research jobs. However, let me tell you have this career works. When one takes a job like this, the young faculty has a very short time period to get an NIH K award for initial funding. Sometimes a university provides seed grant money to aim for a K award, but this is not a universal benefit. The K award then needs to be transitioned to a R01 award in order to be an indepedent principle investigator. If you don’t get on this track quickly or if the grant opportunities disappear, then you are moved over to the busy clinical patient care track. I have worked at a few academic medical centers during my training and in my career, and in my experience, most of the physicians on the research track just end up just seeing patients as their career evolves over time.
  6. A total of 87% of fellows thought they would have a long-term research career. Let’s be honest. If you have 18% free time and can do medical education with the addition of good, funded research, then you are a genius. My friends with MDs who have gone into full-time research typically work longer hours and make less salary than those who are mainly seeing patients. Full-time research for an MD is very, very hard. Some of the best junior MD researchers that I have known have ended up switching to clinical medicine in 5 to 10 years. It is all very tragic as they often have ideas that could change the priorities of their fields.
  7. The Discussion section of the article is quite good. You can read it yourself. I did see the following statement in it: “As some authors have envisioned, finding financially sustainable ways for physicians to participate in research beyond the ‘traditional’ physician-scientist model may be a meaningful way forward.” My friends, I can tell you that some variant of this statement has been put in articles about the loss of physician researchers over the past 20 years.

graph from the NIH

Someone once said “What is the use of dreaming of a better world when we can’t even fix our own?”

If the problem is not fixable, then we just need honesty in our medical training at the medical student, resident, and faculty level. We all see the academic medicine job ads in medical journals with the following statement: “Clinical and basic science research opportunities available.” This wording should be translated as “Clinical and basic science research opportunities available on your own time, outside of work, with little help of getting funding by the institution, at the risk of alienating your friends and family while getting burned out.”

An oldie but goodie book on this topic is here:

I’m not exactly sure what end-stage capitalism consists of, and I know there is a variety of soft definitions. However, in the setting of academic medicine, 1) the push for more and more clinical revenue with 2) less emphasis and funding for medical education and 3) less opportunity for good research leads to 4) all of us being replaceable cogs in the healthcare economic machine. Clinician with hopes and dreams comes in; clinician gets burned out; clinician drops out; new, young clinician with hopes and dreams comes in; ad infinitum & ad nauseam.

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RFK Jr. and Evolutionary Disadvantage of Ignorance

*God is sorrowful

I’m a physician and a theologian at this point in my life. I have a medical career at an academic medical center. I also have a DThM for which I have done some writing, including on this blog. One part of my career is mainly objective (medicine) and one part is mainly subjective (theology).

As a result, I often become interested in where science and faith intersect. In a more basic sense, I am very interested in where human objectivity and subjectivity intersect. Fundamentalist religious folks as well as scientism folks would assume that the objective and subjective should never intersect. This is madness as our species has been both objective and subjective for millenia.

The human objective / subjective interaction likely has a genetic and epigenetic component. If one assumes that God is a part of nature (as in natural theology, process theology, or open & relational theology), one can see natural aspects of humans as both organic and metaphysical. We can make particle colliders (organic), and we can or cannot believe in God (metaphysical).

Let’s take war as an example. War is terrible, costly, and immoral. “Costly” is objective. “Immoral” is subjective. However, war also has a genetic cost. I’m not an expert here, but there is a debate if war in H. sapiens is part of a way to remove less fit genetics from the gene pool versus becoming just a terrible part of human culture over time not related to genetics. Margaret Mead has said, “Warfare is only an invention — not a biological necessity.” A good article discussing this perspective is here (sorry, has a paywall). The idea of war being associated with an initially violent species versus an initially peaceful species has interesting arguments either way, and the arguments will wade into philsophical and theological waters.

Normandy Landing

Ideas surrounding human evil and war leads to the controversy of “original sin.” I use the word “controversy” because original sin is more than likely a Christian concept as it is not considered as frequently in Judaic understandings of the Old Testament. We can point to Augustine in his defining of original sin, but very quickly we also find arguments for and against his theory (see Tertullian and Origen). A good review article is here. In a modern setting, original sin seems to be just a theological concept prior to the understanding of genetics.

However, we do see moral evil as in warfare. We see pandemics. Pandemics are a natural evil, but the vaccine denialism, and frankly, science denialism complicates pandemics and increases the death rate by adding moral evil to natural evil. Perhaps moral evil + natural evil equals some type of logarithmic increase in evil (with evil being demonstrated as the uneccessary loss of life — human or otherwise).

In my recent posts, I talked about my trip to the Galapagos Islands. I saw many marine iguanas there, and interestingly, they have pretty stable populations until times of El Nino in which weather conditions can lead to high death rates. It is all very tragic, but imagine the death rate of these animals if we, as humans, didn’t preserve the islands (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), killed the animals indiscrimately, or allowed continuing man-made global warming?

A photo I took of marine iguanas on Fernandina Island (the Galapagos)

How do my random ideas here related to the anti-science push in U.S. top governments picks (such as JKF, Jr.)? Some people have described this anti-science movement as a “post-truth society” which seems extremely accurate.

Tragically, RFK, Jr. is highly uninformed. I am trying to be gracious enough to think that the mulitiple tragedies in his life have contributed to his conspiracy mind set. But he is uninformed, a conspiracy theorist, anti-science, harmful to good religious ideas about caring for the other, and simply wrong.

So, regarding our country’s current anti-science leanings:

  1. Natural evil (earthquakes, forest fires) will occur. There are ways to prevent the totality of such devastation with human science and intervention. The subjective and objective come together in a potentially beautiful way here.
  2. Moral evil, in my opinion, is simply based on ignorance and not some sort of genetic evil quality. Epigenetics such as cultural racism, religious fundamentalism, woo spirituality, and nationalism contribute detrimentally to one’s personal imprinting of morality.
  3. I think H. sapiens probably have always been tribal. Our tribalism allows large numbers to fight off predators and “the other.” Perhaps this activity allowed members of the group to successfully reproduce. However, was this activity moral to the other group next door who needed resources? It may have been evolutionary helpful from a gene transfer sense (objective) but not from a moral sense (subjective).
  4. Human warfare accelerated during human cultural development. I do not think the need to kill others in large numbers is not due to evolutionary pressure. I think it involves the hatred of others with different cultures, religions, sexuality, etc. This hatred is based on ignorance. I believe this idea. I don’t know if it is true, but it seems to make sense. The objective and subjective come together here.
  5. We have always lived in a world where a metaphorical Eden was possible. Even today, if our various societies would work together for peace or for a stable planetary environment, we would advance so much more culturally and scientifically. I think that presumption could be made with objective modeling. I think this presumption is based on love which is a wonderful subjetive idea. The objective and subjective come together here as well.
  6. Thus, this “original sin” is simply ignorance. This ignorance often is based on a refusal to learn although it can be based on an inability to learn. The refusal to learn abounds in world history — think about discrimination based on not understanding different religions, discrimination based simply on melanin, and discrimination based on the sexual “other.”

From a theological perspective, I strongly believe that God does not work this way. I fall into my religious metaphysics from a Whiteheadian perspective in that I think God desires infinite novelty (thus, change). However, I also accept Teilhard de Chardin’s argument that there an overall goal for the good even if we, as humans, cannot define an ultimate divine good. Evolution may have a goal. On the other hand, it may not necessarily have a goal but may have a divine lure in place to potentially make the world better. “Having potential” is different than “having a goal.” I think God lures for the good in all of nature — from atom to human to galaxy. Humans in particular can freely choose — “the good” versus “ignorance.”

My country is currently very much in the throes of choosing ignorance. This is a sin. The consequences worldwide are potentially devastating. We still have time to choose good. If we fail, God will feel sorrow for our country and perhaps our species but will also lure for the good somewhere else in space and time.

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