→The Out-Lawyer’s Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1  

→The Bridge to Being Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog2

Siritually recharging in Spain.  Back June 3.

→The Bridge to Being Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog2

Soon, all the smoke and thunder of the atheist “surge” will have guttered out. [Surge? What Surge? Check the non-fiction anti-religious literature on the New York times best seller lists during the last 18 months, reference Hitchens, Harris, Dennett.] 

Then decent people everywhere will return (as most already have) to the common sense insights that have served us well: Not all religious institutions are great; not all anti-religious forces are wise; and not all faith – broadly defined – is of the simple minded “tooth fairy” variety. 

Will there be a convergence of humanists, atheists and the faithful?  I am persuaded that a promising convergence is underway and that the answer to my question, over time, will be yes.  Or, if not .. the species is screwed (to put it in the non- technical jargon of the common sense- cognoscenti). 

My article – a short excerpt below -- is posted in full at this link: http://jaygaskill.com/HumanistAtheistBeliever.htm .

Jay

All contents, unless otherwise indicated are

From a sufficient distance, we humans are privileged to a view of the world and the universe in which it resides that has been powerfully amplified by technology and science. This view reveals that our universe has been unfolding according to a general template, one that includes the physical laws. This is a template that is implied by (or can be reverse engineered from) the actual course of events over the eons.

[][][]

In my own journey, this vision of a universe suffused with emergent design and value suggested a divine reality that went well beyond the deist’s disembodied, eternal architect, the “Watchmaker God”.

Coterminous with this insight, I made an independent discovery; it was the introspective sense of encounter with a caring extrinsic persona worthy of ultimate reverence.  I soon concluded that my recognition of an active, conscious, leavening presence among us was hardly unique – there were many recorded instances of essentially the same experience, both within or outside the nominally religious frameworks. On the basis of these two kinds insights (of deep internal apperception pointing to external being and the external apperception illuminating internal being), suddenly all of the stridently atheistic claims of the Freudian atheists were inherently suspect.

It seemed to me that the claim that any brush with the Eternal can dismissed as a psychological problem was a form of Freudian self delusion. When seen from the position of the reasonable observer, Freud’s strong reaction against the very notion of God was an attempt to “clinicalize” an inherently benign human faculty as if it were some malign thought disorder.  It revealed to me a sort of neurotic, faux-reasoning, something of the order, “I hate God; but it is immoral to hate God; therefore I conclude that there is no God”. 

Of course I am not trying to suggest here that, just because many atheists have hidden ‘issues” that profoundly distort and impede their ability to ‘read’ reality, that all do. Nor was I suggesting that the other, reasonably minded doubters and agnostics are similarly affected, or that atheism as a life stance can be discredited merely as a psychological aberration.  But I am persuaded that the notion that belief in God can be similarly dismissed on psychological grounds is clearly false.  And I am also persuaded that there is a sort of cultural fog among the modern intelligentsia that blocks aspects of human apperception as the products of “superstition”, allowing the few that “get though” then to be dismissed as “mere wish fulfillment” or “psychological but not real”.  The root of all this is the quasi-religious doctrine of arch-materialism, something I’ve addressed in depth elsewhere.  Suffice it to say that the glory of a Bach fugue cannot be reduced to “air pressure fluctuations” that elicit certain “electro-chemical neurological changes in some subjects.” 

The purely physical-mechanical accounts of nature and human are powerfully descriptive on one level, but having elided meaning from the account, their adoption as a comprehensive world view constitutes a sort of self-induced autism of the soul..

[][][]

More >>>>  http://jaygaskill.com/DivineTemplate.pdf

We are in a particularly intense period for practicing Christians everywhere, a time for joy and reflection, but one that holds some problematic theology for many thoughtful, ethical people – among whom I can count my younger self. 

Many of our Jewish friends still feel the sting of what I call the “Blood slander” – the hostile (and I believe contextually misleading) references to “the Jews” embedded in some Gospel passages as they still tend to be translated and interpreted. 

I am providing links to two articles of deep personal significance to me:

One is a piece on the “blood curse” and other anti-Jewish elements in some traditional Gospel accounts; there I argue (from a criminal trial lawyer’s perspective and amateur historian) that these accounts falsely describe historical events and I set out what I think probably happened.

The other is an extended commentary or my Gentile Midrash on Easter as a universal inter-religious discovery; I start from a philosophical-historical perspective and end in a personal journey.

→The Out-Lawyer’s Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1  

→The Bridge to Being Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog2

I suspect that much of modern atheism is reactionary.  A couple of years ago I coined the acronym, PEAS, to describe the situation of atheists who suffer from the lingering effects of involuntary exposure to excessive fundamentalism - Post Ecclesial Abuse Syndrome (PEAS).   But all theists aren’t stupid, superstitious dupes.  Few liberal arts atheists have a clue just how sophisticated and faithful (in the sense that faith is a heuristic stance of a reasonable mind) much of contemporary theology has become.  The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne is a wonderful example of a brilliant believer.

Sir John Polkinghorne
Profile of a Physicist-Priest

  

The Rev Dr. John Polkinghorne enjoyed a first career as a working mathematical physicist, then as President of Queens’ College, Cambridge (retiring from there in 1989). At Trinity College Cambridge he studied under Dirac, among others, earning his doctorate in 1955.

While a physical professor at Cambridge, he published papers and books on theoretical elementary particle physics. Then in he began studies aimed at joining the Anglican Priesthood.  While serving as Chaplain of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he was surprised in 1989 (“you could have knocked me over with a feather”) to be appointed President of Queens’ College

Polkinghorne, who was knighted in 1997, has served as Chairman of the Science, Medicine and Technology Committee of the Church of England's Board of Social Responsibility among other positions 

As an “amateur” theologian, his books have explored the boundaries between religion and science from a uniquely sophisticated perspective.  His writing is clear and accessible, even when dealing with highly technical subjects.  As one reviewer put it, - if C. S. Lewis had been a physicist, this probably is how he would write.

I’m fond of the account from first Century Judaism about Hillel the Elder who was approached by a non-believer who offered to convert if the famous sage could state the Torah while standing on one leg.  Hillel stood on one leg and said “Do not do to another that which is hateful to you.  All the rest is commentary.  Now go and study.”

A POLKINGHORNE BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion, Yale 2005
  

• Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship, Yale 2007
  

• Quarks, Chaos & Christianity, Revised and Updated,  2006
  

• Belief in God in an Age of Science, Yale 1998, 2003

Chapter Three, “Does God Act in the Physical World?” was particularly brilliant, lucid and compact. Here are two excerpts --

Since talk of God is inescapably analogical, talk about God’s action has recourse, in one way of another, to the only form of agency to which we have direct experience, namely our power to act in the world. ….[O]ur impression of choosing what to do is not an illusion … I shall treat human choice as being an irreducible fact of human experience.  The second assumption I shall make is that we are psychosomatic unties, indivisible animated bodies, not a dual and separable combination of flesh and spirit. (49) …. I look for a solution along the lines of dual aspect monism, a complementary account of matter in “information”- bearing pattern….  Such a stance takes our material constitution seriously, but it does not capitulate to a reductionist materialism… That unconscious atoms have combined to give rise to conscious beings is the most striking example known to us of the hierarchical fruitfulness of the universe, in which there is a nested and ascended order of being, corresponding to the transitions from physics to biology to psychology to anthropology and sociology.” (50)

…

Thus a realist reinterpretation of the epistemological unpredictabilities of chaotic systems leads to the hypothesis of an ontological openness within which new causal principles mat be held to he operating which determine the pattern of future behaviour and which are of a holistic character.  Here we see a glimmer of how it might be that we execute our willed intentions and how God exercises providential interaction with creation.  As embodied beings, humans might be expected to act both energetically and informationally.  As pure spirit, God might be expected to act solely through information input.  One could summarize the novel aspect of this proposal by saying that it advocates the idea of a top-down causality at work through “active information.”  This is a phrase that Peacocke uses also.  I locate the relevant causal joint in chaotic dynamics; he appears to regard God as constituting the “boundary condition” of the universe.

[Citing his colleague, Arthur Peacocke -- See “Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming-Natural, Divine and Human” 1993.]

• One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology, 1987, 2007
  

• Faith, Science and Understanding, Yale 2000, 2001
  

• Science and Providence: God's Interaction with the World

• The Faith of a Physicist, Reflections of a Bottom-up Thinker 1996

 

JBG

 

The Birth of Optimism, Incarnated,
Took Place in
First Century, Palestine.

Whatever else the world’s non-Christians tend to make of the “Jesus Events”, it is hard to escape the insight that Christianity, in almost all of its forms, represents a distinctly (and almost uniquely) optimistic take on “life, the universe and everything”….

Go to: http://jaygaskill.com/TheBirthofOptimism.htm .

→The Bridge to Being Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog2/  

ONE DAY, I CHOSE MEANING AND….

A Post-Thanksgiving Reflection

One fine day I Chose, And Remarkable Things Followed…                                  

We all choose knowledge before we learn.

Some years ago, I chose an epistemology in which I honored the information provided by my conscious being, in itself, and in relationship with a larger reality.  

This yielded the discovery that other conscious beings exist with me in a universe whose organization is discernible by the rational mind and whose overall organizing structure is one of coherence and unity within teeming interactive diversity.

I then chose a metaphysical framework in which both aspects of the larger reality that contains my life-- its non-material aspects, (the form, organization, latent and expressed, hidden and visible, and my very thoughts about these matters), and its material aspects (the flow of energy, matter, time, events, and all the separations and interactions of “the world”)-- are but two related and ultimately integrated realms of the greater whole. 

Both realms are real.  Each, as I discovered as a result of my choice, are mutually integrated.

I then discovered that my conscious being, and by extension, all conscious being, is an integration of these realms, a bridge state between two realms of existence. So I was led to discover that I exist with one part of my being submerged in the physical, and one part emerged into the non physical. This, I concluded, is a fundamental aspect of conscious being itself.  I chose to honor the evaluation which is at the core of my chosen epistemology and metaphysical stance: that these two realms are integrated; therefore that the integration is not only in me, but in all existence.

Because my thoughts operate within the non-physical realm, I noticed there the presence of the archetypal form of all conscious being.  After reflection, I chose to identify that archetypal being as the center, as its unifying enthrallment, as the “great attractor” at the core of reality.  And I was immediately rewarded in this choice with a discovery:

I am in relationship with this center.  I then made a second choice: I chose to enter this relationship. 

Immediately, from this decision, I reaped the unmistakable sense of being in relationship with meta-personality.  In the relationship, I sensed the presence of living meta-being, and gained the insight that this relationship is not mine alone, but is shared with other conscious beings. 

My core epistemological choice was the choice to awaken.  As if the scales fell from my eyes, as if awakened from a profoundly disabling trance, the universe and my place in it began to make deep sense. My choice instigated a powerfully heuristic and life-sustaining process, a cascade of life illuminating insights. 

“In the Beginning there was the divine word and wisdom.  The divine word and wisdom was there with God, and it was what God was.  It was there with God from the beginning. Everything came to be by means of it; nothing that exists came to be without its agency.  In it was life, and this life was the light of humanity.  Light was shining in darkness, and darkness did not master it.”

(John, from The Complete Gospels, The Scholars Version)

JBG

By

Jay B. Gaskill

We necessarily begin the Approach with a shared insight – that there are no fully adequate mechanical explanations for the shared states of aware being that constitute adult, self-aware and other-aware consciousness.  All great art represents an exploration of this very realm.  Only by correlating our experiences with others are we able to reliably infer that our “subjective” states are not only local but also general. The analysis and deep correlation of our shared “subjective” states yields an emergent picture of the recurring deeper universals in all human experience. This sets the stage for Approach.

We share the sense that all of the behavioral “explanations” leave an Essence that is experienced and therefore real, but beyond the scope of any mechanical level description.   This threshold acceptance that there really is something much more than the mechanical level of explanation constitutes a heuristic mindset. The sense of mystery represents the natural and reasonable response of any thinking, rationally ordered mind that is seeking unity of understanding with the intellectual humility that not all can be immediately known; it is a state of directed openness; it is the beginning of Approach. 

This is the necessary first stage before our actual of the apprehension of the “holy” or the “numinous”.  Note the heuristic key here.  We must suspend any a priori rejection of our deepest experiences of the transcendent. Anything less will frustrate the search for ultimate meaning.  We humans – all of us on some level – are equipped with an appetite for meaning and thirst for the transcendent.  When we deny this thirst and hunger, we can injure our selves on a deep level. To abandon the Approach is to embrace despair.

Even secular thinkers are occasionally forced to look at reality from “the god perspective”.  The very existence of this “universal perch” and the utility of its perspective hint strongly at the “there is something more to all this, something more than the mundane” mindset which is the first stage of Approach.

We humans tend to build and rebuild our “world models” by a process of reasoned differentiation and global integration. Differentiation invites compartmentalization; but  the rigid compartmentalization of key elements of our experience, reason, artistic and spiritual apprehension will bring the integration process to full stop.  The heuristic mindset insists on breaking through our compartmentalizations by seeking the larger integrations that fold in and illumine all that is real.  Integration at this global level entails expanding and deepening the experience of meaning and the meaning of experience. The project quickly becomes an integration of all of the significant elements of our internal mental and emotional life, and the integration of all of this “internal stuff” with the living beings and events that fill the world “outside our heads”. 

Meaning is always increased and enhanced by integration, while confusion represents a failure of integration.  Our natural tendency to take refuge in compartmentalization or mental encapsulation is actually a defensive response to confusion.  The project of the integration of our individual states of beingness, all mystery acknowledged, and the integration of our apprehension of the holy or numinous with the material realm “outside our heads” is both healthy and heuristic, even when - as is inevitable – the integration remains incomplete.

All belief starts with a decision; in this instance we decide to adopt a world view and to live into it while always holding the possibility of correction in reserve.  Our strongest beliefs are anchored in authentic personal experience and in trust of those whom we deem worthy of trust. 

The state of mindedness I have called “On Approach” is rooted in a life-derived heuristic faith stance: that the mystery of shared being is always reconcilable with “the world”; that the arch-materialist mindset, the fad of this age, always can be transcended; and that our deepest urgings, that sense of connection with being-as-universal, including our intimations of the numinous, all these things represent our glimpses of that greater reality that transcends the mundane.

→ The Out-Lawyer’s Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog1

→The Bridge to Being Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog2/  

→ The Human conspiracy Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog3

And

The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com

All contents, unless otherwise indicated are

Copyright © 2005, 2006 and 2007 by Jay B. Gaskill

Permission to publish, distribute or print all or part of this article (except for personal use) is needed. [Permission for use in group discussions is almost always routinely given.]

Please contact Jay B. Gaskill, attorney at law, via e mail at law@jaygaskill.com

Introducing my new article (all 11k words)

http://www.jaygaskill.com/Renaissance.pdf  

This is about the future of religion in the rest of the 21st Century.  I have predicted a religious renaissance, but that may be a product of my innate optimism. In truth, the outcome is not certain.  The downside could be a bloody Dark Age, one that will make that bloody 20th century appear by contrast like some idyllic cakewalk.

In the 1920’s Albert Schweitzer wrote that “The world presents the ghastly spectacle of a universal will to live divided against itself.” (This was taken from his long out of print book, “The Philosophy of Civilization”, first published in 1923.)

Today we might observe that the modern world presents us with the specter of a universal religious sensibility violently divided against itself.

As we witness on the nightly news those “ghastly spectacles” of the carnage wrought by one religious sect against otherwise innocent “apostates”, we are entitled to a measure of pessimism.

Like the Buddha, Dr. Schweitzer embraced an ethos of comprehensive compassion for all sentient creatures.  His “reverence for life” ethos was based on a core evaluation of unity, the result of the same reality glimpse that has informed mystics for millennia. Schweitzer was appalled at the vision of living, sentient creatures locked in a Darwinian struggle against each other, playing out the same fight to the death over and over again. This is “Nature’s Drama”. It still fascinates and repels schoolchildren watching those predator-prey killing scenarios on the National Geographic or Animal Planet cable channels. I believe that if our species did not have a functioning religion we would have to create one. Without religion – or a good facsimile, daily human life would resemble those brutal scenes on Animal Planet. 

One of the most important developing social conditions in the Twenty First Century is the ongoing weakening of hereditary-based coercion and other social pressures supporting religious affiliation.  A free market in religion has arrived. And not all religions will survive in the new environment.

In my new article (linked below), I identify seven ways that 21st Century religion must earn its keep. By that measure, religion is in danger of flunking out…

But my optimism is based on a new development that is already beginning to change minds.  Am I onto something here?

For the entire article, in PDF format, go to this link ▼

 http://www.jaygaskill.com/Renaissance.pdf   

THE CASE FOR

A 21st CENTURY RELIGIOUS RENAISSANCE

And Why Now Would Be a Good Time

By

Jay B. Gaskill

Introduction:

In this article, I address the future of religion in this century. Many of my secular friends are dimly aware of the need to shore up the foundations of the ethical systems that support civilization, what I call “the moral infrastructure,” but they remain clueless as how that can actually happen. 

JBG

→The Bridge to Being Blog: http://www.jaygaskill.com/blog2