Tuesday, September 30, 2014

God Unbound, Chapter 1


DEDICATION
 
This book is dedicated to the literate, well educated Seeker. Such a soul needs intelligent challenge and inspiration even just to survive. This work is meant to provide such a challenge.
 
 
 
 
 
 


 
Chapter Zero        Red Flag
 
RED FLAG
 
In my early college years I told myself that I must leave the Church for science. I said it didn't matter because I could always return. But, I wanted to live free and unencumbered, ready to explore the plains and rivers of reality, the mountains and valleys of truth, seeking certainty in knowledge and with no baggage of belief to weigh me down. I wanted to live life so fully that I might actually get tired of it. And, if I did tire, I knew the Church would take me back without question or recrimination. So I left on my long journey, my sabbatical, full of hope and confidence.

I went so very far and I did witness, incredibly, so much that I can hardly remember it all. The verdant jungles of great national laboratories beckoned. Rivers of worthy data gushed from my computers as they dammed the experimental flows from my own custom built, sophisticated instruments in my lab at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Mountains of information crossed my desk as I planned my teaching course-work, prepared research efforts, detailed lecture material and secured my research laboratory notes for the dissertation that would never be written. In the mean time, in the cool valleys of science research libraries all over Chicago, I rested peacefully and drank deeply of the sparkling spring waters that nourished the very ground of all human innovation. I was supremely happy.

But things must change. The mean temperature of the universe is 3.2 degrees Kelvin. Earth bakes at 284 K. Only for a perfect crystal at absolute zero does time stop. When inevitable disappointment turned into disaster, I found I could not consummate my studies for the Ph.D. in chemistry that I had worked for since my second year of high school. But I still had hope.

I founded a commercial analytical laboratory that was subject to U.S. government regulatory enforcement whims. After five years I had to close it because the frenzy of fear surrounding the infamous asbestos hysteria abated. The E.P.A. stopped emphasizing remediation of this form of environmental contamination. Markets for my lab's services evaporated in the flames of the new rage against radon pollution of indoor air.

I gave my noble quest to do science one more try, in the name of pure knowledge and of my alma mater, when an unusual new opportunity arose in the pharmaceutical world for an inorganic analytical chemist like me. But, I was hired only as window dressing to run a show-laboratory for the approbation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Once the time for impressing the government bureaucrats had passed, my services were no longer needed. My expertise could be outsourced to any of a number of consulting laboratories. Only earnest proprietary drug firms maintained facilities in my area of analytical prowess (chemical microscopy). This was a generic pharmaceutical firm that was not really serious about aggressively pursuing quality.

After these three major setbacks I began to reconsider my trek away from God and the Church. Perhaps it was time to return, I thought. But, I had spent too much time thinking like a scientist to throw it all over now and blindly return to faith. I needed some rationale, some motivation.
 
But, I could find no solace in the writings of apologists for faith whose works had already been considered and discounted. They all sounded lame and trite, almost canned and prefabricated, like a sermon that had been delivered for the four hundredth time. I needed something different, something new, something convincing and above all, something intelligent and challenging as well as inspiring.


C.S. Lewis offered some new insight, but I needed even more. There must be seeds of faith in the very science I had been studying, for scientists pursue truth and Truth is what I coveted. So I looked at what I had been taught and searched it for the most pertinent and profound veracities that I could find in. In all of Modern Science, there must be some Truth that I could actually use.

During my sojourn, my faith had shriveled and was crippled with the diseases of disuse. So I crawled around in the dust and found a few good pieces of nice wood, a couple of sturdy rods from which I could fashion some strong trustworthy crutches. When I had finished my work, I set these tools, my new instruments, on flat hard ground and used them to painfully climb to my feet. I stood, but I could not walk. I was amazed at what I saw from that so very slightly loftier vantage.

* * *

Now, from this surprising new perspective I can see just above the milling crowd to distant places that before I could not even imagine. One tall, fine man quickly walks past in the distance. The crowd is parting in front of him and closing in behind, as though he is being propelled by the pressure of the multitude behind and attracted by the welcoming vacuum of clear perfect space in front. He seems to sense my presence and gently alters his trajectory toward me. As the humanity between us thins, I can see his kindly young face wears a wide new smile as if he had just been laughing.

He beams at me for a moment, examines my peculiar stance and the odd pieces of furniture I had fashioned out of wood and twine. ‘It is good!’ he declares.

I grin. ‘Yes. It took awhile, but now I am up again for the first time in years!’

‘Now walk. Come to me. And cast down your crutches. They are indeed just crutches!’ Jesus commanded.

‘Oh no, Sir, I have not taken a step for so long - I have forgotten how!’

‘Walk! Come to me. Throw away the lumber, you don't need it!’

There is something about a direct command from Jesus that cannot be ignored. I don't even want to. So, I hunch my shoulders; I draw a deep breath and take one, slow strangely painless step. Then the other foot follows. Suddenly I yield to an explosive urge to ditch the crutches. I walk!

After that, I come straight to Jesus, having journeyed almost thirty years. I walk to Him despite my atrophied muscle, my weakened bone. I follow Him with the crowd. I grow stronger; my legs carry me with growing vigor with each new step. I walk straight, upright with strength and stamina at every stride.
 
Great Good God, I even jump for joy!

But I do not forget my crutches. I have drawn up a design. I describe my plan here in great detail. I offer it with this book of instructions. It will help get your head up above the crowd so Jesus can be seen, and He will see you! Then, at His command and only then, you will come to Him unaided, walking tall and strong with gladness, confidence and hope equal to my own.


A.           FREE GOD!
 
FREE GOD!
 
I jumped for joy because Jesus made me free. We humans use the language of metaphor like this not only to tell inspiring stories but also to attempt the reverse: we strive to enslave God. We use words, dogma, doctrine, expert interpretation of scripture, propagandistic religious commentary and even crass public prayer to try to control That which cannot be controlled.
 
The following section of this chapter will show how language can describe God approximately, but can never enclose His Essence. Only meditation, silent, unarticulated peaceful attention, can approach God and then only roughly. But even so, we still hope our crude articulated representations of God get better and better with time, over millennia. We trust that God’s Revelation to us will make this happen.
 
Except ing our articulating, lexical minds which are indentured to inevitably bad logic, God is unlimited. God is, was and ever will be unlimited, whether we like it or not. For our sake, God does need to be liberated, however. He needs, we need, to be emotionally freed from the shackles we place on Him in our own minds.   We and He need to be freed from the boundaries we place on Him in our irresponsible use of various kinds of languages. He and we need to be freed from the wordy prison we put Him in, in order to make Him do as we wish. We say to ourselves He must be our servant or we will never let Him out of this our deep, dark logical dungeon.
 
I have heard Christians pray: “Father God, I bind thee to listen to the plight of our brother, your son…”        My brain recoiled and my soul cringed.
 
God cannot be chained. God can be freed by acknowledging that nothing we can say about Him is perfectly certain or one hundred percent complete. We must realize that the lexical and other language boundaries of God do not exist.
 
 
...
 
Their indescribability and their non-existence do pose questions and answers. These are all contradicted in the ‘Residuum’.
 
There is a sort of Heisenberg uncertainty about articulated statements pertaining to God (and about everything else, actually). Language and even the ideas it represents and especially mind itself generally act in a quantum physical way. Werner Heisenberg said that if you want to know where a small particle is, you cannot know much about its motion. If you know its inertia, its tendency to move, you can never deduce exactly where it is.
 
Then there is the superposition principle. Words and ideas, even images, can not only superpose, interfere and reinforce, they follow a law of irreducible uncertainty that is defined by how much effort we are willing to put into refining them. There is a point where more effort and more description and more information become counterproductive to any improvement in understanding. We can never afford to put an infinite amount of work into it.
 
One more word, one more noticeable brush stroke, one more sigh raises more questions than it settles. God is freed when we open the door to His cage into the Residuum of the inexpressible and unexpressed plausible unknown.
 
The best way to open the door is to shut up.
 
Dogma, ritual, doctrine and all artistic representations of truth are all fundamentally limited and uncertain. The time comes when it is appropriate only to be quiet. Conflict and violence over words, semantic war, speeds this time forward and expands the Residuum of Plausible Deniability.
 
Silence in the presence of God is required or He will not be present. Still and peaceful apprehension must be employed to find Truth.
 
Thus, we can free God. 
 
B.           Quantum Campbellian Teilhard
 
Quantum Campbellian Teilhard
 
The Ultimate Goal of All Human Truth and Knowledge is to know God - as well as to free Him.
 
There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the illustrious emeritus Episcopal Bishop (Generalissimo) John S Spong and his mighty rebel army of Believers in Exile. The Primal Empire strikes back and the Force is with all of US, however.
 
Quantum science proves utterly that it is valid to superpose or mix mathematical equations that describe matter in opposing states or in quite different states. Our best, most thoroughly verified physical law thereby gives an explicit mandate for us to add together or mix logical expressions of ideas, even ones that appear contradictory. This we do in order to synthesize better indicators that more perfectly describe reality. Quantum science shows that this philosophical ‘syncretism’ is an inherently valid exercise.
 
Furthermore, Joseph Campbell reveals that High Myth incarnates the most profound human truth. The dictionary definition, or “denotation” of detailed ‘myth’, is incidental. The connotation of ‘Myth’ is what is important. Between the lines, the metaphor is the message.
 
So, quantum Campbell implies that it is not merely desirable but necessary to add or combine (but not to mix or scramble) metaphors. We must superpose them appropriately, the way quantum science sums algebraic expressions, combining solutions to Schrödinger’s differential equation.
 
My analysis of the metaphorical basis of all types of human language or communication suggests that this is the only way to satisfy the need for more precise (but still approximate) descriptions of deepest human truths.
 
Also, I and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin aver that Revelation is ongoing so that, among other sources, science is adding to the store of human knowledge of both the secular and the divine. Scientists and all other seekers after truth share the noble goal of lifting human understanding to higher and higher levels. The motto of science is ‘Excelsior!’
 
Thus, as time progresses, not merely the human organism but also the human wealth of intellect, the expressed and expressible mind, evolves by a process of natural selection toward more perfect understanding of all things, particularly of God.
 
The Quantum Campbellian Teilhard thesis declares that ‘God’ is a word we use that cannot be else but metaphor. To achieve an understanding of God that is closer to ultimate Truth we must evolve our idea by insouciantly compounding metaphors. We must allow definitions of divinity that cover the known spectrum from theistic ‘Father God’ to deistic ‘Allah’ to quintessential ‘Ground of All Being’.
 
The science of document interpretation, especially of scripture, is called hermeneutics
 (her-men-OO-tiks). Application of quantum principle to scripture at once simplifies this science and complicates it. It offers more degrees of freedom to the directions of possible interpretation but demands that equal attention be paid to several, possibly contrary, simultaneous initial premises. There are often very few ways that this can be done consistently with Spirit, that is, with the Spirit of Scripture.
 
But what is unknown is just as important. To take this into account in a formal sense, I have postulated the Residuum of Plausibility in the above text. This ‘Residuum’ is the repository of all doubt about what is claimed or denied. Most pertinently, it is the sum of all nascent countercontrary statements about the existence of God that have not yet found expression such as: God exists → God cannot exist → God really does exist.
 
This Tao or Infinite Ocean of Residual Truth is the vacuum into which is rapidly expanding the inflationary Big Bang of human knowledge and understanding of all things, including of our metaphor for God. It is the ecological niche that supplies the reason for existence and the motive power for the evolution, indeed the perfection, of all human knowledge.
 
The Residuum binds together apparently disparate equations in the logic of language. For the scientist, one may say that the Residuum undergoes a phase change when it ‘evolves’ into human knowledge. It allows older essential metaphor to coexist with eloquent new poetry in their joint portrayal of truth that would be inexpressible by any other means.
 
God exists because quantum science allows all our expressible ideas of Him to be true simultaneously, even statements of His non-existence. All things are true in Him. Language is infinitely malleable, yet bounded. Once ideas of God are consciously expressed in ‘literal’ truth, they can be truthfully denied. But, the quantum algebra equation of divine state collapses to any definition we require whenever we conduct any real or even any kind of ‘thought’ experiment.
 
Without matter to get in the way, this ‘thought’ experiment always takes the form of some type of decision. For instance, one way or another, we may decide about God. For example, we can decide that He exists. Then, for us and for all others, as far as we ourselves are concerned, He does.
 
Those who decide in the opposite way focus only on the inevitable imperfection of the multiple metaphorical expressions that we use to define Him ‘between the lines’. For them and for all others, in their own view, He really does not exist. This is a good definition of Hell.
 
The damned condemn themselves.
 
Hell is a place, this place. As the designated righteous custodians of our own destiny, we are all responsible Christian existentialists whether we know it or not. We are commissioned by God to know or to deny Him. If we decide to know Him, we transform this place into Paradise. Our Paradise is not lost. We do not wander aimlessly in the jungle of language or crawl in the desert dust of our dismal dreams. With thanks and praise we shatter the shackles of word, sentence and paragraph which articulate the bonds that our minds try to tighten around God.
 
As Christian Believers at Court who know that we are one with our King, wary of the metaphor inherent in all language and at the same time celebrating it, we love and honor our
 
Great God,
 Unbound.
 
C.           The following offering is proffered
 
Einstein’s God
 
“The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle wreaking, thought reading, sin punishing and prayer answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason.” --  Richard Dawkins.
 
Einstein’s God is the physicists’ God, the God of metaphor and poetry. No other God makes sense. The God described by Bishop John Spong when he decries the tiny fundamentalist mini-God of the rabbis, mullahs and priests is unworthy of worship, any more than is the universe itself. But, we do not worship the Milky Way anyway, any more than we worship the law of gravity. As scientists, we do not worship our God. We respect Him or It.
 
Our God is not a personal God, except in the sense that He infuses the whole universe with His presence and makes Himself part of each of us by nature, like ponderable mass is part of our bodies and living rational energy is within us by means of our profoundly active souls. The laws of the universe are part of us as is our fundamental nature as men and women, as humans. We think, therefore we are. We are what we think we are. We are existential creatures of the light.
 
We are creatures of the light and of the night who nevertheless do not live in darkness. We carry that light that we make inside our skulls. We spread the light within us by every means we know. We are teachers.
 
We love truth. If anything, Truth is our God. Understanding is our highest value.
This is worthy of respect. We are not atheists. We subscribe to a higher principle. That principle is one that establishes rationality as the organizing principle of the universe. Einstein said “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.” Comprehensibility is the key. If the universe were not comprehensible, men would not care about it. Science would not exist. We would be blind and in darkness too, with no hope of seeing.
 
But, we do see.  We see plenty. We have almost solved the riddle of the universe. We have the unified theory of everything within our grasp. Even so, when it is achieved, it will still not be worshipped by scientists. Worship is for children. We are adults. At least we like to say so. We must give up childish things to make it so. When we were children we laughed as children, we played as children, we thought as children and we spoke as children. Now, we are grown and childish things are of the past. We would not have it otherwise.
 
 
The following offering is proffered
 
The following two sections are offered to the reader in the hope that he or she may understand where the rest of this book is aimed. Like driving a car too fast, one cannot really steer language to a conclusion, one can only ‘aim’ it.
 
I read John Spong’s Why Christianity Must Change or Die [i] and was impressed by the seriousness of some of the issues he raises. I feel his book simply must be answered with urgent attention and I do not see anything filling this bill just yet. So I think I'll give it a whack.
 
I apologize for the title. I mean no disrespect for God or for believers in Him. I only mean that some of our talk about God has attempted to limit Him and I deny all limits on God and declare that he is free of all boundaries and cannot be shackled. As of now, He is unbound in the sense of His having no manacles of the type forged by human language and in the sense that He never has had any kind of boundaries. Now I declare that we explicitly know it and we must constantly say it.
 
God cannot be bound by language. He subtends or encompasses all contradictions, the children of language. All things are true in Him. He can be both a Ground of all Being and a Father God at the same time. I use Joseph Campbell’s idea of Myth and scientific quantum law to answer John Spong who says Christianity must change or die.
 
My argument is non-scriptural. But Spong’s argument is non-scriptural too, although he tries mightily to prove otherwise.
 
My secular arguments, inasmuch as they involve Joe Campbell’s study of the high truth of Myth, are not repugnant to scripture. Campbell has respected with a deep and abiding love all Given human scripture in everything he wrote.
 
Campbell’s Christian critics have focused more on his discussion of the origins of scripture than on his interpretations of it. His interpretations were inspired.
 


The philosophy I express is one that parallels the idea that one dies to hatred when she eschews rancor. She denies to enmity the fertile ground in which it would grow into those most loathsome thorny vines with their bitter fruit of animosity. By an identical construction, the Church dies to change when it discovers anew the living water and vital soil of love and forgiveness.
 
Conscious of their stewardship, faithful Christians endeavor toward a spiritual environmentalism. Thus, we conserve this, our sweetest fruitful tree of many ancient values and traditions. These have helped make Christianity the great religion, indeed the salvation, of billions of sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, all around the world. The Church dies to change by denying the destructive tendencies of contemporary social evolution.
 
The Quantum Church must also die in order to change. Dead forms must be discarded when they shrink and become obsolete, like a snake's old skin. Otherwise those thin outward forms will strangle the spirit of the people. New ways of worship and praise must be invented, discovered or affirmed. Tolerance of every Christian's efforts to prayerfully enjoy the Triune Godhead through Jesus with the help of the Holy Spirit must be shown by every other Christian. The walls of this Church, this living tomb, this verdant mausoleum that so divide us must themselves die ‑ they must utterly disappear.
 
I exuberantly embrace Darwinian evolution with spiritual and intellectual evolution in the sense advocated by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his powerful work The Phenomenon of Man [ii] and many letters to his close friends. Yes, I do also consult the ultimate meaning of mythologist Joseph Campbell's life work. See The Power of Myth [iii], written with Bill Moyers. Those vivid mathematical descriptions of the ground of all being, Quantum Science, are also crucial elements in my approach, but my discussion is non-technical.
 
I differ with Bishop Spong. I do not believe that God is solely the Ground of All Being. He is utterly beyond ‘being’. I think that Spong falls into the very trap that he criticizes others for failing to see: he puts God in a box. He defines Him and he believes his own definition. I say, now, not for the first time, we can consciously decide not to shackle God. We can deliberately avoid putting the manacles of language on Him. We can thereby free Him to do the wonderful things that He has always wanted to do for us. We can give Him the very permission that He gave us: the authority and responsibility to grant or withhold from Him our trust. Finally, in modern times, partly with the help of science, again I say to you
 
God is Truly Unbound
 
I am a scientist. John Spong is an (emeritus) Episcopal bishop. He uses secular arguments to advance his thesis that Christianity must change. So, I feel compelled to do so also. Yes, I do indeed explain my position in terms of quantum science, Darwinism including the evolutionist views of Teilhard and the essentials of Campbell. But I maintain, as Spong does, that the evidence is everywhere in scripture. I have provided appropriate references to the Bible and to sources of scriptural commentary.
 
Suffice it to say that scripture and extended scripture, consisting largely of today's continuing revelation in the form of fully verified science, existentially implies that God really does exist and He is responsible for us, in His truest image. This implication is inherent in our impossible human quest for final essential truth, Absolute Truth. For if we had no notion of such a truth, falsehood would reign supreme and we would not even realize it. But more importantly, we would have no standard with which to judge either. That standard is an ideal, and we must take this particular ideal as real or it will have no motivating power. We have no choice, existential or not, but to believe in God.
 
I take that ‘God made us in his image’ to mean He made us responsible beings. He cannot interfere in our affairs to save us from ourselves. We are responsible, so we must bear the consequences of our actions. Jetliners crash and hundreds are killed. But humans designed the aircraft, piloted it, maintained it and human air traffic controllers decided to land it in dangerous conditions. God would thereby revoke our privilege to act responsibly if He were to miraculously prevent the inevitable unholy accident.
 


We build cities in earthquake zones and at the feet of volcanoes, God doesn't. We build resort cities in the paths of tsunamis, God does not. We sail ocean liners at full speed through iceberg laden waters, God doesn't. We poison the air and water so that even the tadpoles are encouraged to grow into grotesquely deformed frogs while we suffer from heretofore most‑rare types of cancer. God doesn't poison things: He cleanses them.

 

* * * * *

 

I illustrate using religious graphics of the type that were made available to me by my very good friend and erstwhile mentor, Rev. George B. Koch, pastor of the Anglican Church of the Resurrection in West Chicago, Illinois.

 

Art is a driving force in Christianity. Our religion cannot be discussed adequately without reference to it. Artistic endeavor has elevated Christian thought since long before The Middle Ages. It is so important that we can barely speak without referring to some concept, idea or notion that has not been influenced by artistic convention. The artist’s metaphor is part of faith.

 

This book is for those readers who are searching their hearts and souls for an answer to the modern question ‘Is God real?’ You want to believe, maybe even attend church, but you wonder if there can really be a God in the light of science. I have written an apology for the Christian Faith and thereby apologize for all faiths. You are the same ladies and gentlemen who sought John Spong's answer and I know that you will seek this book also.

 

This introductory chapter is mainly comprised of a letter I wrote to John Spong responding to a letter he wrote to me. His letter was in regard to essays that I gave him entitled God and God 2. The essays have been incorporated into this book as part of Chapter 1.

 




[i].  Why Christianity Must Change Or Die; A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile - A New Reformation of the Church’s Faith and Practice, Rt. Rev. John S Spong, HarperSanFrancisco, 1998
[ii]. The Phenomenon of Man, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
[iii]. The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers,