Chapter 7: Theology: a new paradigm




Synopsis

The origin of theology is lost in history but it remains a very important subject. Christianity is a child of Judaism, already thousands of years old when Jesus, the Son of Yahweh, appeared in Judah. He was nothing like his Father, no longer the Lord God who must be obeyed, but a preacher with a new message and disdain for the theological establishment who valued law over love. Christianity is now nearly 2000 years old and the Catholic Church, like the scribes and pharisees, has created a huge structure of dogma inconsistent with our modern understanding of ourselves and the world. The idea here is to treat the Universe as a divine descendent of the ancient omnipotent God. We see that it has created itself through 14 billion years of evolution.

Table of contents

7.1: New paradigms



7.2: God is not some mysterious other



7.3: Satan is not the cause of evil

7.4. Evolution and evil I: Variation



7.5: Evolution evil II: Selection



7.6: Cooperation, love and survival



7.7: Business as usual in the Roman Catholic Church?


7.1: New paradigms

Thomas Kuhn, a physicist, historian of science and a philosopher proposed that scientific revolutions are caused by changes in the disciplinary matrix or paradigm shared by people working in a particular field. The paradigm represents business as usual, dealing with small problems as they arise. The time comes, however, when the accumulation of problems forces some people to take a new look at the data. Thomas Kuhn (1962, 1996): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Although theories may change radically, carefully collected data do not because they are coupled to the world. The most significant paradigm change in the twentieth century was the introduction of quantum mechanics to describe the invisible processes that underlie classical world. Nineteenth century spectroscopic measurements remained valid although the gradual introduction of new instrumentation increased their precision by many orders of magnitude.

Life remains impossibly difficult for many people. For others, however, technology and good government have brought enormous improvements in health and welfare. Much of this may be attributed to the the moral messages of love and care that are intrinsic to the more personal aspect of Christianity. The cosmology underlying Christianity is, however, long out of date.

7.2: God is not some mysterious other

The fundamental paradigm shift proposed in this book is very clear: The Roman Catholic Church says that God is absolutely other than the Universe. My alternative is that God is absolutely identical to the Universe.

Aquinas emphasizes the otherness of God by arguing for the ancient tradition that God is absolutely simple, immaterial, immutable and eternal, in no way resembling our complex and ever changing material world. Here we see that that is how the Universe started, but it has come a long way since then.

The error on Catholicism and many other religions comes from basing theology on the imagined behaviour of ancient Gods. Constantine, like many other emperors and theocrats, coopted theology and religion to reinforce acceptance of their regimes. Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia

The existence of relatively huge multicellular creatures like ourselves, made from the cooperative activity of trillions of individual cells, shows that huge harmonious systems are possible. In our bodies all our cells are equally human and work to support one another. Many of them form an immune system to protect their fellows from pathogens and cancers caused by individual cells going rogue. This harmony is based on all our cells sharing a common genome. Here I feel that a prerequisite for world peace would be for us all to share a common scientific theology, a theory of everything that puts us all in the same picture.

7.3: Satan is not the cause of evil

The entire stated raison d'etre of the Roman Catholic Church is to save everyone from the consequences of a trivial original sin, eating from the wrong tree. For this God collectively punished the whole human species with death, pain and work. Humanity was deprived of its primordial innocence and the world was turned against us. In this story the force of evil was embodied in the devil disguised as a snake, Satan. Pope Francis, still sees Satan as an active force in the world and Satan enjoys official recognition in the Catholic Catechism. Courtney Mares: Pope Francis: The devil uses ‘three widespread and dangerous temptations’ to divide us, Catholic Catechism: §§ 385-412: Satan and the Fall

The authors of the New Testament devised a happy ending to the Old Testament and the disaster of the Fall. They were all Jewish and knew the Hebrew Bible well. They could see in it references to a Messiah and a Saviour, although they probably expected a military leader rather than a moral genius.

They built a fanciful story that the Roman murder of Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be both the Son of God and the Messiah, was a human sacrifice that propitiated his Father for the Original Sin. Ultimately all the damage caused by the Fall would be repaired and eternal life would be restored. Jesus definitely existed. It is very likely that he antagonized the local theocracy and they had him murdered. But none of this has any real cosmological significance. This history of salvation has no foundation in reality, but it has deceived billions of people over thousands of years and made the Church the most powerful deceiver in the history of the world.

7.4. Evolution and evil I: Variation

The invention of Satan served to solve a central problem in Christian theology: the problem of evil. How can an omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent God, who is generally believed to love humanity, allow the horrendous evils that we see around us? As the Catholic Catechism tells us, God created the world for their own glory. Early in the Old Testament we learn that Yahweh is a jealous God, ready to kill anyone who does not bow down to them. If glorification by creatures is to be genuine, it must be freely given, so God had to give angels and people free will.

But as parents and teachers know, children given too much freedom are inclined to go astray. So, the story goes, Lucifer the most magnificent of the angels was so proud of themself that they revolted against God and took many of their associates with them. One of these, Satan, (perhaps Lucifer themself) led the naive humans astray. God, forced to introduce evil to punish sinful humans and angels, wrecked our paradise and established Hell.

People who do not buy this story argue that the fact that there is evil proves that there is no god, or at least no omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent lover of humanity. From the evolutionary point of view this is true. Because any proposed initial singularity at the beginning of the world is structureless, it has no material detail capable of representing information. It cannot be omniscient or vindictive. Because it predates the Universe, there is nothing to know.

There is no reason, however, why the initial singularity should not be omnipotent. Like the omnipotent god of Aquinas, it is capable of doing anything which does not involve contradiction. It is considered to be the source of the big bang and the Universe.


 Because the initial singularity has no structure to constrain its behaviour its action is random and unpredictable, like the toss of a fair coin. There is no reason for it to choose between heads or tails. Even when the Universe begins to develop structure the second law of thermodynamics decrees that the future will most probably be more complex than the past. The cybernetic principle of requisite variety therefore shows that the past cannot always control the future (Chapter 28: Principle 16). Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia

Random events are the key to the evolutionary exploration of possibility and the awesome variety and complexity of the Universe. Some of these events will be interesting and exciting, but others will be judged to be evil. A deterministic Universe cannot create anything new. Random events are the source of both creation and such evils as arise from the failure of control, also known as crashes.

7.5: Evolution and evil II: Selection

In the evolutionary paradigm, selection imposes the constraints of consistency and determinism on the products of variation. In the long run, the survival of a species depends on its reproductive success. A entity is headed toward survival if its creation rate exceeds its annihilation rate, otherwise it approaches extinction.

The incidence of evil in the selective phase of evolution is linked to reproductive success and the means that are used to achieve this. Here, among humans, many of the behaviours that help creatures to survive, reproduce and pass their genes on to the next generation are traditionally judged to be evil.

Between families, tribes and nations war, rape and pillage, all forms of predation, are in many circumstances easier ways to survive than gentler and more productive activities. Deception is rampant in the evolving world. It accounts for the cryptic colouring and behaviours of most species. These including the beautiful strategies that the female individuals of all sexually reproducing species develop to encourage males to fertilize them.

Predation occurs at all scales in the natural world because we are all resources for each other. Alive, we can be enslaved. Dead, we are food for worms.

7.6: Cooperation, love and survival

It is impossible to overestimate the power of evolution. It is by far the simplest and most powerful scientific theory ever developed. At present we have no convincing theoretical model for the origin of life although we know that many of the simpler molecular ingredients of life are available on the early Earth and low entropy solar energy was always available, at least on the surface. It seems impossible to doubt that life arose on Earth without any special creation and we will eventually understand how this worked.

The recent coronavirus pandemic has shown us that even viruses, which are not capable of independent reproduction, can evolve by mutation when they are reproduced in living cells. Viruses kill the cells they use to multiply, so it is not surprising that even the simplest forms of life, the Archaea, have a rudimentary immune system to defend against viruses. The evolution of multicellular creatures has required the development of more complex and effective immune systems. Knvul Sheikh (2019): Is Crispr the Next Antibiotic?

Most of us have a very effective immune system which can identify and kill the pathogens which are everywhere around and within us. The initial invasion of a pathogen may elicit only a weak response from the immune system. If the pathogen is very virulent, the victim may die soon after infection. If the patient lives their immune system can rapidly build up the strength to overcome the infection. In 1957 the Australian Frank Macfarlane Burnet proposed the clonal selection theory to explain this buildup. Clonal selection - Wikipedia

From the religious point of view the basic ethical and moral tone of this book is not to be built around sin and guilt and the weirdness of divine mystery but on the reality of the evolutionary process that brought us to be. This history provides us with a model for peaceful and durable human community based on the physiology of multicellular creatures.

The important point is that gratuitous evil is not an intrinsic feature of reality. Such evil as we experience is by-product of evolution and can often be avoided by prudent action. In this sense it is true that the Universal system permits evil for the selection of a greater good but from a cybernetic point of view it could not be otherwise. In nature failed variants die and their elements are recycled into something new.

We do not say that the cells in our bodies love one another, but their behaviour looks like love. They protect one another, feed one another, deal with waste from each other, and carry out many other roles associated with love, all the while acting to maintain the human individual they belong to. On the human scale, it is good that we love one another like independent cells in a body politic so that we can maintain the communities and nations that support us.

I feel that a common scientific theology and associated religions can play the same role in political organization as genetic unity plays in the existence of multicellular living bodies.

7.7: Business as usual in the Roman Catholic Church?

The New Testament brought a paradigm change in theology and religion. It was built around the personality of Jesus of Nazareth who seems to have been nothing like his Father on Sinai who announced "I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other Gods before me" and then ordered the slaughter of unbelievers.

Jesus had a temper, but he directed it against the oppressors of his people. He did not use his divine power to kill anyone. Instead he healed people sick with both physical and psychological disease, fed the hungry and preached the love of all, even Samaritans.

It took another three centuries to develop the body of doctrine that became the religious foundation of the Roman Empire. Politics as usual had by then set in. Constantine stopped persecuting the Christians and coopted Christianity to consolidate his empire. When the empire had failed and the political roles were taken over by popes, cardinals and bishops Europe became a Christian theocracy. The monasteries became the first universities. Aristotle entered from ancient Greece via the East and Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas rebuilt theology on an Aristotelian basis, often unscientific, but a step away from ancient mythology.

The Church is now constituted by the Code of Canon Law, which establishes the Pope as an absolute autocrat. Canon §333.3 states: No appeal or recourse is permitted against a sentence or decree of the Roman Pontiff. Code of Canon Law 333: The Roman Pontiff

Since then its intellectual development has stagnated. It has rejected science, democracy and human equality, and is now an absolute, infallible autocracy supporting ignorance and autocracy around the word. It is a magnificent anachronism which needs rebuilding in the light of modern democracy, human rights and science.

Hopefully the ideas in this book will wake it up a bit.

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Notes and references

Further reading

Books

Kuhn (1962, 1996), Thomas S, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, U of Chicago Press 1962, 1970, 1996 Introduction: 'a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man, and never overnight.' [p 7]   Amazon   back

Links

Catholic Catechism: §§ 385-412, Satan and the Fall, '391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing." ' back

Clonal selection - Wikipedia, Clonal selection - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Clonal selection theory is a scientific theory in immunology that explains the functions of cells (lymphocytes) of the immune system in response to specific antigens invading the body. The concept was introduced by the Australian doctor Frank Macfarlane Burnet in 1957, in an attempt to explain the formation of a diversity of antibodies during initiation of the immune response. The theory has become a widely accepted model for how the immune system responds to infection and how certain types of B and T lymphocytes are selected for destruction of specific antigens.' back

Code of Canon Law 333, The Roman Pontiff, ' Can. 333 §1. By virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff not only possesses power over the universal Church but also obtains the primacy of ordinary power over all particular churches and groups of them. Moreover, this primacy strengthens and protects the proper, ordinary, and immediate power which bishops possess in the particular churches entrusted to their care. §2. In fulfilling the office of supreme pastor of the Church, the Roman Pontiff is always joined in communion with the other bishops and with the universal Church. He nevertheless has the right, according to the needs of the Church, to determine the manner, whether personal or collegial, of exercising this office. §3. No appeal or recourse is permitted against a sentence or decree of the Roman Pontiff.' back

Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia, Constantine the Great and Christianity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' During the reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (AD 306–337), Christianity began to transition to the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. Historians remain uncertain about Constantine's reasons for favoring Christianity, and theologians and historians have often argued about which form of early Christianity he subscribed to. . . . Constantine's decision to cease the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was a turning point for early Christianity, sometimes referred to as the Triumph of the Church, the Peace of the Church or the Constantinian shift. In 313, Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan decriminalizing Christian worship. The emperor became a great patron of the Church and set a precedent for the position of the Christian emperor within the Church and raised the notions of orthodoxy, Christendom, ecumenical councils, and the state church of the Roman Empire declared by edict in 380. He is revered as a saint and is apostolos in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Church, and various Eastern Catholic Churches for his example as a "Christian monarch”.' back

Courtney Mares, Pope Francis: The devil uses ‘three widespread and dangerous temptations’ to divide us, ' The pope pointed to the Gospel of Matthew to offer advice for how to overcome the three types of temptations, as Jesus did when he was tempted by the devil after 40 days of fasting in the desert. “Jesus defeats the temptations. But how does he conquer them? By avoiding discussion with the devil and responding with the Word of God,” he said. Pope Francis explained that Jesus resisted the devil “by opposing him in faith with the Divine Word.” To counteract the temptations of attachment to material things, mistrust, and the thirst for power, Jesus quotes three phrases from Scripture that speak of freedom from goods, trust, and service to God. “In this way, Jesus teaches us to defend unity with God and among ourselves from the attacks of the divider,” he said.' back

Knvul Sheikh (2019), Is Crispr the Next Antibiotic?, ' Crispr is a specialized region of DNA that creates what amount to genetic scissors — enzymes that allow the cell (or a scientist) to precisely edit other DNA or its sister molecule, RNA. (Crispr is shorthand for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.”) Crispr was originally discovered in bacteria, where it helps keep track of past injury. When a virus attacks, the bacterium stores small chunks of the viral genome within its own DNA. This helps the bacterium recognize viral infections when they occur again. Then, using Crispr-associated enzymes, it can disarm the virus and prevent the infection from spreading.' back

Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia, Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The term Variety was introduced by W. Ross Ashby to denote the count of the total number of states of a system. The condition for dynamic stability under perturbation (or input) was described by his Law of Requisite Variety. Ashby says: Thus, if the order of occurrence is ignored, the set {c, b, c, a, c, c, a, b, c, b, b, a} which contains twelve elements, contains only three distinct elements- a, b, c. Such a set will be said to have a variety of three elements. He adds The observer and his powers of discrimination may have to be specified if the variety is to be well defined. Variety can be stated as an integer, as above, or as the logarithm to the base 2 of the number i.e. in bits.' back