It has been a while since my last entry, but that does not mean I have been without thought on the subject of God, creation and our purpose.

In my past musings,  I turned to the Bible and Christianity for clues to our mystical purpose and our relationship with God, primarily through my cultural biases and upbringings but also challenged popular beliefs about prayer and more specifically God’s response to our prayers. There are certainly shared beliefs of love, sacrifice, and redemption in other religions, but my conclusion challenged the notion that God answers prayers even if our aspirations are noble and unselfish, e.g, prayer for world peace, universal health and prosperity. I argued that we see evidence everywhere that our world moves farther from this perfect union, no matter how earnest our desire. My conclusion was and still remains that our prayers can only really be to aspire to a Christ-like life where we actively change ourselves, our relationships and the environment around us for the better.

So where does that leave us?

Although religion certainly provides glimpses into our need for answers to our existence, I have found that the natural world and the scientific pursuit will more likely provide us a more informed statement of truth of our past, present and future. For most Christians, some forms of science prove problematic if not completely at odds, and the same is true for many scientist who find the scientific method a denunciation of God. For me and others, there is yet another view that attempts to harmonize both scientific and spiritual pursuits where the universe exhibits an inherent order, an explosion of creation, a constant form of change and a deepening manifestation of consciousness.  Through science, our understanding of God continues to unfold. In essence, science helps to explain “a deeper relationship between us and the cosmos” as Carl Sagan so eloquently stated.

When we look at the natural world from a scientific perspective, we see a complex cosmic architecture whether from a micro or macro lens. From protons, atoms, and molecules to planets, solar systems and galaxies–through the tools of science–these organic matter show us an incredibly complex web of natural selections that collide, interact and evolve over millenniums.  Those countless permutations of chemical compounds, matter and life-forms have produced immense diversity in our universe, and we are only in the infancy of knowing our place of origin and relationship within the cosmos.

One of the most important aspects of science in relation to our understanding of God is the process of evolution.  Since evolution is difficult to measure on a daily basis, Christian’s and other religious followers struggle with how evolution and God’s design can coexist.  Evolution is fact, not theory. Evolution is the natural and artificial selection process that occurs over millions or billions of years. One form of evolution is the natural selection process. In this form, organic matter undergoes transformations to adapt and survive to its natural surroundings by creating increasingly complex organism for survival. This organic process has been going on for billions of years, and earth and its continued survival has been part of this evolutionary dance. With more and more complex life forms, the planet has increased its survival capabilities by producing life forms that create oxygen which in turn stabilized our atmosphere against significant fluctuations in solar burst over the millenniums. This oxygen rich environment eventually led to human evolution. In this way, we can link stardust–the beginning of time or “Big Bang”–as a literal part of our human ancestry. In other words, stardust gave birth to earth, and earth gave birth to humans as well as many other life forms.

But humans spawned yet another form of evolution through our consciousness or self-awareness. With self-awareness, humans have created a new form of evolution, i.e., artificial evolution. In artificial evolution–where humans participate as architects of creation–we can see the process of evolution accelerated.  An example is seen in the domesticated dog or cat. Through hundreds or thousands of years of selection, we have taken forms of these wild species–and cultivated both physical and personal characteristics–creating our beloved house pets who share only the most desirable human and physical characteristics. In this example, our participation in the evolutionary process has produced no negative impact and arguably accelerated the natural beauty of the world. However, there are many other instances where human’s creative process–through industrialization and agricultural advances– have stripped the earth’s natural resources, induced climate change or caused the extinction of tens of thousands of life forms.

With consciousness, humans arguably possess the highest form of intelligence, creating language, art and science. These higher forms of consciousness continue to accelerate our depth of self-awareness which in turn continue to evolve our understanding of math, science and emerging technologies. Just think what we have accomplished in the last 100 years, but it is also true that with increased knowledge and artificial evolution, we have expedited natural destruction through pollution and resource depletion. 

To keep pace with our scientific and technological advances, we must also increase our desire and awareness of social responsibilities. Now arguably, one can postulate that this need for global stewardship is nothing more than a self preservation mechanism, an evolved sense of ethical or regulatory processes to keep general order for our mutual coexistence in a complex web of sometimes conflicting interests. However, we often see large governing bodies or financial powers influencing, controlling or manipulating their self interests through opaque government regulations–or more often the lack of regulations. So what keeps big business and big power in check? What is the motivation? Most of us sit idle on the side lines while more and more economic, political and environmental toxicity occurs.  Complacency is too often the common tool exploited by the powerful. On rare occasions, however, there are voices heard that rise against the tide of human greed and corruption. These impassioned voices often have no self-interest and often endure hardship in the face of greater powers attempting to suppress their view. So what is their motivation? I would argue love. Love for people. Love for our planet. Love for Justice.

There are probably two forms of love worth mentioning, instinctive love (at a lower-level) for survival and universal love (at a higher level) for the greater good of others, our planet and universe.  For many scientist the notion of love is simply an explanation of complex survival skills within a social confine. For others, love has a higher purpose where we can choose to put others, our planet and the universe before our self interests. Christ demonstrated this type of universal love, and his teachings still play a critical role in our personal and social evolution.

I cannot answer what happens after our short time on earth, but I do think today’s Christians and other religious establishments too often hide behind literal translations of the Bible, Torah or Quran for their personal agendas and conformity rather than the wonders of evolution and change as God truly intended. That part of religion must die or evolve. Or we may find ourselves ironically holding religious beliefs that destroy our very existence as a species.