High Gravity={Religion + Science}_________________________

Philip Clayton

Claremont School of

Theology

September, 2013

Class 3

High Gravity={Religion + Science}_________________________

Evolution and

Creation

Cosmogonies:The Drive toward a World- and Life-View

1.

Ta’aroa was the great supreme being, who existed alone in a little world, in a shell like an egg, revolving in dark empty space for ages. At length, he burst forth from confinement, and finding himself quite alone he conjured forth the famous God Tu, who became his companion and artisan in the great work of creation.…

After creation, peace and harmony everywhere existed for a long time. But at last, discontentment arose and there was war among the gods in their different regions, and among men, so Ta’aroa and Tu uttered curses to punish them.

-Tahitian Cosmogonyfrom Barbara Sproul, Primal Myths: Creating the

World

The chief above made the earth. It was small at first, and he let it increase in size. He continued to enlarge it, and rolled it out until it was very large. Then he covered it with a white dust, which became soil. He made three worlds, one above another—the sky world, the earth we live on, and the underworld. All are connected by a pole or tree which passes through the middle of each. Then he created animals. At last he made a man, who, however, was also a wolf. From this man’s tail he made a woman.

 -Salishan-Sahaptin, Primal Myths

The people of San Cristobal have Agunua, who made the sea and the land, caused storms, and created men and one woman. Agunua caused the rains to fall in order to quench his own thirst. He too had a brother companion to whom he gave a yam. He told his brother to plant it, and from this primeval yam grew all the banana and almond trees, coconuts, and other fruits. But one time the brother burnt up a mess of yams, thus causing some plants to be inedible forever.

 

-Melanesian Cosmogony (from Primal Myths)

After a while Nyambi (the high god) began

to fear Kamonu. Then one day Kamonu forged a spear and killed a male antelope, and he went on killing. Nyambi grew very angry at this. “Man, you are acting badly,” he said to Kamonu. These are your brothers. Do not kill them....”.

-Bartose Cosmogony, from Primal Myths: Creating the World

The Evolution of the Cosmos (in 17 minutes)

2.

Emergence Defined, Part 1:

• The natural world is much more

complex and more fascinating when

seen through the lens of emergent

complexity than it was before.

• The discussion of naturalism and

creation becomes rather more

productive.

• There are openings to complex

religious responses to emergence…

EMERGENCE:

* the things that evolve remain

dependent on the physical particles

and forces from which they emerge,

and they are strongly influenced by

their own unique evolutionary history;

YET

* the organisms (and behaviors

and ideas) that emerge are more than

the earlier objects and forces out of

which they evolved.

Relatively simple building blocks,

arranged according to relatively simple laws,

produce phenomena of great(and often unpredictable)

complexity.

The Physical Sciences

Planck Satellite Photo: The microwave background at 370k years

John Wheeler“When you put enough elementary units

together, you get something that is more than the sum of these units.”

“A substance made of a great number of molecules, for instance, has properties such as pressure and temperature that no one molecule possesses. It may be a solid or a liquid or a gas, although no single molecule is solid or liquid or gas.”

from http://www-tech.mit.edu/Chemicool ("Chemicool Periodic Table")

Phase Transitions: Neon gas heated through a Tesla wire (above, left) and Liquid (above, right)

Snow Crystals

The Biological Sciences

“All life is chemistry”

Van Helmont, 1648

Stuart Kauffman

“Life — self-reproducing chemical systems capable of evolution — is an expected collective emergent property of critically complex, far-from-equilibrium chemical systems.”

“The problem of biological order involves the transition from the molecular activity to the supermolecular order of the cell.”

-- Ilya Prigogine

The complexity program aims to show that

“life, far from being outside the natural order, appears as the supreme expression of the self-

organizing processes that occur” (Prigogine)

Studies of the origins of life describe the emergence of teleological systems, that is, goal-directed organisms.

This “whole-part emergence” can be studied as a natural phenomenon. It may not reduce to physics, yet it is a pattern that runs across the entire range of biological evolution and that we can study scientifically.

Reception

Internalprocesses

Response Reception

Internalprocesses

Response

ENVIRONMENTPLANT

Stuart Kaufmann, reprinted in Clayton, Mind and Emergence

Stuart Kaufmann, reprinted in Clayton, Mind and Emergence

The “embedded systems” description of the natural world

Chris Langton, reprinted in Clayton, Mind and Emergence

Rapid Fire: The different theories of evolution

3.

Evolution vs. Creation?

• An American battle … now global!

• The task: to recognize the mistakes on both sides

• The $64k question: What does it mean to say that God brings about the creative divine purposes through the agency of other creatures?

Theological Implications4

.

What about the evolution of biology, culture, ethics, and mind?

• Pannenberg: In contemporary science, “the universe appears as a process within which new forms of reality continually emerge” (456). This is the Christian doctrine of creatio continua.

• The science picture: complexity-producing mechanisms run on other complexity-producing mechanisms.

• God as the producer of novelty. The focus on “in the beginning” has skewed the prophetic witness.

• Reappropriating the idea of progressive revelation.

• Theologians need to stress the contingency of each organism and event: we are now this way, but the future will be different.

• Whitehead and process thought…

Conclusion5.

Ethics and the Environment

Ethical, Social, and Religious Implications

Practicing spirituality differently as a result of science

Discussion and Q & A∞

www.philipclayton.net