The Emergent Chris t

1. The Emergent Christ Springfield, IL June 15, 2012

2. A Shift in Consciousness Axial PeriodSecond Axial • autonomy relatedness • self-transcendence immanence • freedom ecological • individual person global community 800 – 200 BC1900 – 2011 AD

3. FIRST AXIAL THEOLOGY

4. The very name of God is a cosmological notion (“I Am”); there is no cosmos without God and no God without cosmos. A “theology without cosmology is a mere abstraction of a non-existing God, and a cosmology without theology is just a mirage.”

5. Plato’s World GOOD FORMS Sensible Reality (Matter) Emanation Participation

6. Middle Ages platonic concept of order whereby cosmos seen as: - - - perfect - immutable - hierarchical • - geocentric • - anthropocentric • Order, Sin, Fall, Redemption

8. Gothic Architecture New transcendent relation to nature Lifting up from earth to heaven. Lex orandi, Lex credendi Lex vivendi

9. The Rise of Science • Heliocentrism • Efficient Causality • Contigency • Experience

10. Descartes’ Dualism World of Ideas (Mental world) World of Matter (physical world)

11. Newton’s World • Law • Order • World as machine • God of Gaps • Church - rules, canons and doctrine

12. Newton’s World Believing that Newton told us the truth about how the world works, we modeled our institutions on atomistic principles. You are you and I am I. If each of us will do our parts, then the big machine should keep on humming. . . .Our “God view” came to resemble our worldview. In this century, even much of our practical theology has also become mechanical and atomistic. Walk into many churches and you will hear God described as a being who behaves almost as predictably as Newton's universe. Say you believe in God and you will be saved. Sin against God and you will be condemned. Say you are sorry and you will be forgiven. Obey the law and you will be blessed. Barbara Taylor Brown

13. God is always God for a World, and if the conception of the World has changed so radically in our times, there is little wonder that the ancient notions of God do not appear convincing. To believe that one might retain a traditional idea of God while changing the underlying cosmology implies giving up the traditional notion of God and substituting an abstraction for it, a Deus otiosus (an idle God). One cannot go on simple repeating “God creator of the world,” if the word “world” has changed its meaning since that phrase was first uttered—and the word “creator,” as well. R. Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, p. 186.

14. The New Scientific World View “A mistake about creation is a mistake about God.” T. Aquinas EVOLUTION: COSMOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL

15. The word evolution, to unfold or open out, derives from the Latin evolvere, which applied to the “unrolling of a book.” • The idea that life unfolds from simple to complex structures or that nature is marked by a twofold movement of convergence and divergence now holds true not only on the level of biology but on just about every level of life in the universe.

16. Cosmos: • Old • Large • Dynamic • Interconnected

17. 13.7 billion years “It does not matter what country you Look at. We are all Earth’s children, And we should treat her as our Mother.” Aleksandr Aleksandrov

18. Large • We are one of billions of galaxies • Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a mid-size galaxy consisting of 100 billion stars, and stretching about 100,000 light years in diameter. • The galaxies are often grouped into clusters—some having as many as 2,000 galaxies together.

19. Dynamic Universe • G. Lemaitre (d. 1966) - Big Bang - dense, red hot universe – exploded • A. Penzias and R. Wilson (1965) – cosmic background radiation • E. Hubble telescope (1924) – saw that ours was not the only galaxy- many others with large empty spaces between them; red shift • Universe is dynamic and expanding

21. A Finely-Tuned Universe If gravity had been 1033 times weaker than electromagnetism, "stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster." A trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of one percent faster, the cosmic material would have been flung too far apart for anything significant to happen

22. The embodied person that you are at this very moment—all the constituents that would eventually come together into the person that is you—was present in the Big Bang. Radically amazing!

23. Theory of Relativity • Einstein - 1905 -- No absolute space or time • time does not flow at a fixed rate • Curvature of space-time by matter not only stretches or shrinks distances (depending on their direction with respect to the gravitational field) but also will appear to slow down or "dilate" the flow of time.

24. 4 - dimensional space-time • space-time is not flat but curved or "warped" by distribution of mass and energy in it. • gravity acts to structure space • fields -- spatial structures in the fabric of space itself.

25. The StRange Quantum World! If you are not confused or shocked by Quantum Physics, then you have not really understood it. Niels Bohr

26. Wave-Particle Duality Elementary particles can behave both like particles and waves Movement of these particles is inherently random It is physically impossible to know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. The atomic world is nothing like the world we live in.

27. Uncertainty PrincipleWerner Heisenberg (1901-1976) "The more precisely the POSITION is determinedthe less precisely the MOMENTUM is known“ (Uncertainty paper, 1927)

28. Implications of Uncertainty Principle • No deterministic universe. Cannot predict future events. • What cannot be measured cannot take place exactly. Only what can be observed can be known. • No distinction between process of observed and what is observed. No line between subject and object • The "path" comes into existence only when we observe it. T he act of observation produces physical reality. • We are actors rather than spectators • Anything that cannot be observed does not exist.

29. THE Universe Is INTERCONNECTED

30. Systems System = group of interacting units or elements that have a common purpose. Closed systems: self-contained, self- maintained, little exchange with environment; proceeds in direction of increasing disorder; little complexity Open systems: far from equilibrium; open to environment; spontaneous new order; complexity of environment interactions

31. Chaos and Non Linear Systems E. Lorenz (1961) discovered that small changes in initial conditions produced large changes in the long-term outcome. chaos theory is about finding the underlying order in apparently random data. complex and unpredictable results can and will occur in systems that are sensitive to their initial condition  non-linear systems

32. Chaos Theory markers: • Sensitivity to initial conditions- an arbitrarily small perturbation of the current trajectory may lead to significantly different future behaviour  “Butterfly Effect” • Strange attractors – basins of attraction within system that can lure the system into a new pattern of order over time. • Fractals– geometric shape that is similar to itself at different scales

33. HOW CONNECTED ARE WE? • Albert Einstein - Quantum Entanglement • Rupert Sheldrake – Morphogenetic Fields • David Bohm – Implicate Order • Ken Wilbur – Holons

34. Quantum Entanglement • Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment • Take two particles whose spins cancel each other out to zero. Separate particles by distance. If measure particle A as “up” particle B is measured “down.” • The measurement on A does not merely reveal an already established state of B: It actually produces that state  entangled.

35. The essence of nonlocality is unmediated action at a distance . . .a nonlocal interaction links up one location with another without crossing space, without decay, and without delay.

36. TELEPORTATION Ex. Archie and Betty are deeply in love. However, a deep transpersonal connection is connected between Archie and Petra when they pray or meditate. When Archie and Petra enter a meditative state, the thought or image Petra has been concentrating on vanishes from her mind and reappears in the mind of Betty.

37. Morphogenetic Fields • a morphogenetic field carries information and is available throughout time and space without any loss of intensity after it has been created. • a newly forming system "tunes into" a previous system by having within it a "seed" that resonates with a similar seed in the earlier form. • Information  form  matter

38. “Morphe” (Form) Fields Rupert Sheldrake postulates a field of habitual patterns that links all people, which influences and is influenced by the habits of all people. The more people have a habit pattern -- whether of knowledge, perception or behavior -- the stronger it is in the field, and the more easily it replicates in a new person (or entity).

39. David Bohm: Implicate Order • Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement • Rather than starting with the parts and explaining the whole in terms of the parts, Bohm starts with a notion of undivided wholeness and derives the parts as abstractions from the whole. • Implicate order is a way of looking at reality not merely in terms of external interactions between things, but in terms of the internal (enfolded) relationships among things.

40. Bohm’s World • being is intrinsically relational and exists as unbroken wholeness in a system. • systems are in movement or what Bohm calls “holomovement.” • because reality is marked by relationality and movement, it has endless depth.

41. As human beings and societies we seem separate, but in our roots we are part of an indivisible whole and share in the same cosmic process.

42. Matter is not composed of basic building blocks but complicated webs of relations • no objective reality outside observer. • observer constitutes final link in chain of observational processes and properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of objects interaction with observer.

43. Everything in universe is ''genetically'' related. The universe is bound together in communion, each thing w/all the rest. • We live in interwoven layers of bondedness. • Interconnectedness lies at core of all that exists.

44. THE UNIVERSE IS IN EVOLUTION

45. Evolution is a general condition, which all theories, all hypotheses and all systems must submit to and satisfy from now on in order to be conceivable and true. • Evolution is not background to the human story; it is the human story.

46. The Encyclopedia of Life:30 Volumes Each volume has 450 pages. Each volume = 1 million years Vol. 1 = Big Bang Vol. 21 = Earth Vol. 22 = Life Vol. 29 = Cambrian period Vol. 30 = Dinosaurs go extinct on p. 385 Vol. 30 = Mammals appear on p. 390 Vol. 30 = p. 450 last line, human beings

47. Darwinian Evolution The modern theory of evolution (= the “neo-Darwinian Synthesis”) says that the great diversity of life can be naturally explained by the combination of chance, law, and deep time: 1. Chance: accidental, chance events or contingencies: • a genetic mutation that lead to new characteristics in an organism • a natural disaster that changes the environment that an organism must adapt to 2. Law: the deterministic laws of natural selection (nature “selects” as survivors organism who best adapt to the environment; all others perish),chemistry, and physics 3. Deep Time: enormous depths of time

48. Evolution is a dynamic process, a movement toward more complexified life forms which, at critical points in the evolutionary process, qualitative differences emerge. Law of convergence - complexity At some point, evolution reaches a reflexive state which generates the idea of evolution.

49. "Humans like mammals have existed on earth for a relatively short time -- only about 0.04% of the earth's existence." (0.04% of 4.5 billion) "Most anthropologist believe that between about 400,000 & 300,000 years ago, Homo erectus evolved into a new species called Homo sapiens." The modern human physique first appeared in Africa about 150,000 years ago, and then spread into the rest of the Old World, replacing existing populations of archaic human forms."