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
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