... so this is my first effort. (me is Stuart Kauffman; I, Ulrike just copied the post in the right field:-)))) I thought I might talk briefly about what using the word "God" to mean the creativity in the universe is starting to mean for me. The answer is, to my surprise, a lot. Like most scientists, but not all, I do not and have never believed in a supernatural God. My own earliest steps towards something spiritual were two. First, I had in about 1971, thought about the origin of life and concluded that life must be based on something far deeper than the beautiful template replication offered by double stranded DNA or RNA. It must, I thought, be based on chemistry, catalysis, and displacement from chemical equilibrium. I sketched a theory in which sufficiently complex mixtures of chemicals would be expected to catalyze so many reactions among themselves that "collectively autocatalytic sets" would be expected to arise. Focusing on small proteins, or peptides, as the molecules in question, led to the question of the probability that such peptides could catalyze reactions, and later, could mimic hormones or other biologically important molecules. In turn this was one route to what is now combinatorial chemistry and high throughput screening. In about 1983 I returned to the topic and managed to prove analytically that one would expect such a spontaneous formation of self reproducing molecular systems. I was, of course, deeply moved, for if correct, life may be far more probable than we had thought. I remember climbing up a waterfall route into Desolation Valley in California, home to many young adventures, and sitting quietly on a boulder and thanking God. I don't know what sense of God I was thanking, but I felt profound gratitude that such an idea might be right, so life might be "At home in the universe', which became the title of my second book.
In 1993 I participated in a small conference hosted by the Gihon foundation in Northern New Mexico, with three others. We were supposed to consider the most important issues confronting humanity - as if any four people could be useful. The centerpiece of this meeting was set by a wonderful bear of a man, N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, six foot six inches, perhaps 260 pounds, bass voice. He told us the most important problem confronting humanity was to reinvent the sacred. I was stunned. As a scientist, I had no conception that it was permissible to speak in such language. Scott's phrase changed my life. Our small group considered an emerging global civilization, the cultural tensions it would create, the need to reinvent the sacred, and, Scott's phrase in the report we wrote, "create the transnational mythic structure" to sustain the global civilization that will emerge.
Obviously, I have taken Scott's phrase as the title of my new book, Reinventing the Sacred, with credit in the chapter notes. I thought then and think now, that Scott Momaday was exactly right. We do have to reinvent the sacred - in part for this secular, commitized, age. In part we must consider doing so to span across our civilizations as, under the pressure of globalization that our little group foresaw, is in danger of retreating into fundamentalisms.
So the Gihon Foundation meeting is the initial source of the book and subject we are discussing. The core of this new book is new science strongly suggesting that reductionism is inadequate scientifically, that emergence is real, and most surprisingly, that the evolution of the biosphere, economy, civilization, and perhaps aspects of the abi0tic universe do not seem to be sufficiently describable by natural law. In its place is an unexpected - since Newton - creativity in the unfolding of some aspects of the universe. We ourselves, as humans, are the unexpected fruit of this partially lawless evolution of the biosphere. But then we are members with all of life in this same partially lawless, awesome "becoming" of the universe.
God, I believe, is our own invented symbol, d0wn the ages, across the thousands of gods we have worshiped. It is we who have told our gods what is sacred, then they have revealed to us what we told them to tell us. It has always been us talking to ourselves. But this is no crisis, it is wonderful. It does not mean that what we deem worthy of being held sacred is not sacred, it means that what we will embrace as sacred is our own choice. So the question becomes, following Scott Momaday, whether at this stage in our human evolution we are just beginning to be ready to be responsible for our own choices of what to hold sacred. I think the answer is yes, and that it is we, together, who must reinvent the sacred. Then we must derive from it a renewed spirituality that will lead us towards a global ethic that will become Scott Momaday's "transnational mythic structure" to guide the emerging global civilization.
So we come to whether we should use the "God" word to mean the fully natural creativity in the universe. I am ever more convinced that we should do so. To those of us who are secular humanists, this step is deeply worrisome. We remember Galileo forced to recant by the Inquisition. We want no religion that requires that we forego the truths of the real world. We remember the millions killed in the name of God. We forget the comfort, sense of unity with a transcendental God, and orientation for life that religion also brings. For those who believe in God, even the idea that it could be we, ourselves, who take responsibility for what we will deem sacred is Godless heresy. I understand and emphathize. Yet, we also need to create a common spiritual space across our civilizations as we co-evolve together. Those who believe in a supernatural God can also consider embracing the idea that the creativity in the natural universe that this God created is itself awesome and worthy of reverence, and that it leads us to hold all of life and this planet sacred and view it with a sense of stewardship to the best of our limited knowledge.
Now to myself: I have now lived for two years with the thought that God is the natural creativity in the universe. It is affecting my life in ways I would not have expected. A summer ago, sitting on my porch along side a sweet little river, the Elbow, looking at a hillside covered with spruce, I found myself thinking, "I can cut down those trees if I choose, but I better have a very good reason to do so, this is God's work." I looked at the river and thought, "I could dam this river, but I'd better have a very good reason to do so, this is God's work." In my own life, I am finding that the symbol "God" used to mean the very creativity in the universe, and membership with all of life that we all share, and the planet we share, does in fact, bring a sweet and enlarging sense of joy, responsibility, and humility. How graced we are, not by a Creator Agent God, but by the staggering emergence of the universe, life, and human civilization, so much of it, it begins to appear, partially beyond natural law. So, since we do no t and cannot kinow, we live into Mystery. We need a sense larger of ourselves and too much of our current society where we are consumers, not citizens of the world. We can lift up our eyes to a reality we can revere, share, use wisely, but protect. This God is reality, even as we love to kill one another. Then we are invited to Scott Momaday's proclamation: We must reinvent the sacred.
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