Continuing with some thoughts and reflections on the lecture I attended just a week ago tomorrow.  In his essay “Science and the sense of the holy,” Dr Eiseley mentions that science has two basic practitioners: one the educated man who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery and the second practitioner is the extreme reductionist who is busy stripping things apart- where the tremendous mystery is reduced to a trifle. He then points out a serious difference between the two in ethical situations. I will quote from two passages:

The reductionist too frequently claims that the end justifies the means…asserting reason as his defense and the mysterium which guards man’s moral nature falls away- a phantom without reality…

If you have the feeling that all animals – all living things have a common ancestor- that we are all “netted together” then you come to your scientific work with a much different sensibility than the person who blithely wields the scalpel- you will be less inclined to “murder to dissect” because you will feel a sense of kinship with what you are murdering…

Remember, Dr Eiseley is not talking about sensing a person God- but a sense of oneness with all creation- an essential oneness to life, a sense of awe and wonder. And that “sense of holy” has a ethical barrier to it.

Blaise Pascal, the 16th century mathematician wrote this ”

There are to equally dangerous extremes:  one, to shut reason out and two- to let nothing else in.

That is something to think about.

Dr Loren Eiseley also reminds us that it was not the logical inductionists who solved the problem of evolution, it was what Darwin choose to call “speculative men” – men with a touch of the numinous in their eyes, a sense or marvel.”

I like his thoughts. I think a person who has this “sense of holy” or sense of wonder – sense of being one with animals is more in tune with what it means to be a human being and more in tune with every other living creature.

There is an ethical sense here that having a “sense of oneness with creation” should make me more responsible for the environment.

What do you think?

Recently, I was introduced to the writings of an anthropologist from Nebraska- Dr Loren Eiseley. He was actually from Lincoln, Nebraska-not to far from where I live in Red Oak, Iowa. His writings were very infuential. Then just this Thursday evening I went to a lecture in Omaha where the speaker, a Rev Ron Knapp gave a talk on Loren Eiseley. I must tell you I fell in love with this writer. The lecture was on Science and the sense of the holy…a chapter in Eiseley’s book- The Star Thrower.

Before I talk about the lecture, allow me a few comments about Eiseley and the way he writes. You can tell what kind of man he is by the way he writes. He is a man that loved nature. His writings, I would say, are an expression of American Spirituality at home with Emerson and Thoreau. Dr Eiseley is an example of what I call a spiritual naturalist or a mystical humanist.

In Science and the Sense of the Holy, Dr Eiseley borrows a phrase well known in theological circles- the holy. It is from the writings of one Rudolf Otto who in 1917, wrote a major work entitled The Idea of the Holy in which he investigates the center or focal point of all religions- that being the experience of the moment- the holy being. Matter of fact, Rudolf Otto went so far as to say- “the experience of the holy being is a fundamental component a religion, and if it does not have it, it is not a religion.” There is one other term that Rudolf Otto uses – the numinious, a term he uses to try and capture the specific sacred- mysterious quality of this experience.

There is a problem for Dr Eiseley when he uses this term- the Holy and the numinous. The problem is in the modern Western Church, theologians have used Rudolf Otto’s terms to an effort to prove that the religious experience is a transcendant experience- relationship-an intentional contact with a holy other- in other words- GOD. That is not Dr Eiseley’s intention in his writings. He uses the terms- “holy” and the mysterium tremendum” to describe the feelings of something that is so beyond our understanding- something wonderful- a sense of awe.

May I just say- one does not have to believe in God or a higher power to experience a sense of awe – a “sense of the holy” that moment in time when you look over the horizon and you see a flock of geese soaring across the sunset and you feel the fresh cool breeze and smell a hint of moisture in the air ….awe.

Dr Eiseley uses the term the term- “a sense of the holy” as experiencing a sense of awe before the universe.

The lecture that I attended concentrated on what Dr Eiseley calls the two extreme approaches to the interpretation of the living world . These two approaches are typified in two characters from science: Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud. Charles Darwin was 28 years old when he began to recognize the connection between nature and man; that animals are our fellow brothers. The reason we are connected is because we share a common ancestry. “We are all netted together. Darwin was an agnostic- yet he had a sense of the awe of the holy playing upon nature. In a mystical sense, we are one single diffuse animal.  On the other hand, Sigmund Freud shows the sense of being cold, clinical and reserved. Freud explains away this sense of awe believing it to be childhood ghosts. He discared any type of “religious ” feeling (even the illuminative quality of the universe) as an illusion. In other words, feelings of awe before natural phenomena were basically remnants of childhood and dismissed.

I will continue to write on this in the next few days- I want to reflect on this lecture and some thoughts and ideas about ethical issues that arise from these two approaches. I hope you will comment and give some thought to this.

ED

Since migrating out of Evangelical (Fundamentalism) Christianity in 2009, I have been wrestling with the issue of prayer and I have finally accepted the idea that prayer – that is talking to myself or talking to a force of universal love is okay. You see, I no longer believe in a personal God. I am a humanist or to be more specific, I am a mystical non-theistic naturalist or a spiritual naturalist. 

If you read my book, Journey into Love, then you realize that I no longer believe in a personal. I hold to some type of non-theistic presence of love in the universe. It is interesting to note that all the major religions have a concept of this presence. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the presence of God is referred to as AUM or OM. It is a song or a mantra that is vocalized and is very ancient. Among the Jews, it is called the Shekinah. In Islam, it is called al-hadra. Among the Native American Sioux, the term is Wakan Tanka or Great Mystery,

I still pray as a Spiritual Naturalist but my prayer as changed. I no longer cry out to a higher person, the old man with the white beard sitting on the throne wait out there.  I no longer beg for help from some angry God who must be appeased with my continual works of supplication.

But I do often in quiet stillness affirm the presence of love in the world and in my life.

Still I no longer believe is a personal deity, does this mean when I “pray” -am I talking to myself?

The answer is yes. And I must admit, when I stop praying to a personal deity, I stopped praying altogether. But recently it was at the dinner table that I realized that I can pray even though I no longer believe in a personal God. I discovered the power of oral affirmations. I was sitting there thinking how my wife was such a good cook and I just said, “I thank my wife for such a delicious healthy dinner.”

That is not the only time I find myself “praying.” When I need wisdom or guidance, I ask the “Spirit of Love” to give me wisdom. Often, as I quiet my mind I discover the wisdom or the answer to my needs.

When I “pray” for someone who has a need or is sick, I open my eyes and ears for a way that I can be helping someone. In order words, my “prayers” are followed up with action. My “prayers” are now more about looking for ways to be the answer.

What I am trying to say is that for prayer no powerful conscious entity or person is needed.

Someone might ask: Isn’t that kind of prayer an illusion? Good question- you are right! It was Ludwig Feuerbach, an 18^th Century philosopher who introduced the Western world to the notion that religion is a dream; that objects of religious faith are human projections in which we unconsciously create God in our own image. Never heard of Ludwig Feuerbach? I am not surprised. Most people have not heard of him. You’ve probably heard of Sigmund Freud…right? Freud was a student of Feuerbach at the University of Berlin. It was Freud who got all the publicity for his ideas about “religion being an illusion.”

So -I admit the possibility of this being illusion but psychologically, I am better off. I find myself more gratuitous. I am more thankful.

I am more philanthropic. I find myself more open to helping other people. In other words when people say to me “pray for me”; I look for ways to meet their needs. I don’t just say, “of course, I’ll pray for you.”

I have also developed an easier practice of prayer. It is far easier for me now-to sit in silence and be thankful than to “rant and rave” in a constant oral rumination of worries. My old way of prayer was very unhealthy!

So yes, I pray but it is based a different belief system and a far different practice.