This is a reflection that I am
presenting at the Friday Forum of ICUJP, in response to a presentation by Paul
Nugent of the Aetherius Society, a religion founded by George King in the mid-1950s as the
result of what King claimed were contacts with extraterrestrial intelligences,
whom he referred to as “Cosmic Masters."
I was inspired by Paul’s eloquent
and thoughtful cosmic reflection to take a break from everyday peace
and justice activism and look at the Big Picture—how does the work we do for
justice and peace fit in with the universe? Was Martin Luther King right when
he said the “arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justice?” Is that
just a metaphor, based on religious faith, or does modern physics support such
a statement?
The discoveries of modern science
from Darwin to the present have led many to reject God and to see the universe
as either indifferent or hostile to the concerns of human beings.
The film maker Stanley Kubrick sums up this modern angst when he wrote:
“The most terrifying fact about the universe not that it is hostile but that it is
indifferent.”
Albert Einstein pondered this
problem and concluded that “the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe
a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must
answer for themselves.
He felt that how we answer this question will determine our
ethical and political actions. He went on to describe three attitudes we can
take towards the universe:
"For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly
place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our
natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep
out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is
unfriendly and I believe that we are getting to a place where technology is
powerful enough that we may either completely isolate or destroy ourselves as
well in this process.
"If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor
unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then
we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real
purpose or meaning.
"But if we decide that the universe is a friendly
place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our
natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe.
Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its
motives."
Like Einstein, I believe that the
universe is a friendly place, for reasons that have to do with physics as well
as theology.
This morning I want to share with
you some ideas about the universe from a Quaker theologian named Howard Brinton.
One of the most important Quaker
educators of the modern era, Brinton taught physics and math most of his
career, and was deeply influenced by Einstein and modern physics. In the 1930s Brinton became the director of
the Quaker study center called Pendle Hill, where I studied Quakerism. Because
he was such a huge influence on me and many other Quakers, I wrote a book about
him and his wife Anna entitled “Howard and Anna Brinton: Reinventors of
Quakerism in the 20th century.” Brinton was a formidably educated
man: he studied philosophy and mysticism with Rufus Jones at Haverford College,
went on to study philosophy during its “Golden Age” at Harvard, and studied
physics with Nobel prize winning physicists at Columbia University. Throughout
his life he sought to reconcile Quakerism and mystical religion with the ideas
of modern science, particularly the ideas of evolution and relativity.
Howard Brinton believed that the
mystical ideas in John’s Gospel provided us with a way to connect ancient
wisdom with modern science. John begins his Gospel by using the Greek
Brinton related this Logos principle
to the concept of holism—which Einstein considered the most important idea of
the twentieth century, next to his own theory of relativity. Most of us have
heard of the basic idea of holism: the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts. Holism helps to explain the evolution of the universe from inanimate
matter to sentient life. As simple atoms are drawn together, they become
molecules, which can perform more complex functions than isolated atoms.
Molecules become cells, which are not only more complex but qualitatively
different from inanimate matter because they are self-replicating. Cells join
together and become animals that have desires (unlike machines). Animals join
together to become communities that have not only desires but a sense of purpose. To form such communities
animals sometimes sacrifice their individual desires and needs for the
good of the whole. This process of drawing together and forming communities of
increasing complexity leads to greater and greater awareness at the moral and
spiritual as well as cognitive levels.
In a lecture given in 1933 called “Creative
Worship,” Brinton describes this process in poetic terms that evoke the Gospel
of John as well as modern physics:
In the beginning there was a
swarm of electric particles, the most primitive forms of matter, pushing and
pulling on each other from without. The Power which unites uttered the creative
Fiat and these participles cooperated with one another to form organisms called
atoms. The atoms jostled and fought each other until again the Spirit of
Cooperation entered and they combined to create molecules. The molecules were
mechanically and externally related and Creative Harmonizing Love fused them
into fellowships as living cells which exhibited an unprecedented kind of
behaviour. In a similar way cells, by forming new kinds of relation with one
another, gradually achieved great societies such as animal bodies and
eventually the infinitely elaborate structure of a human brain.[1]
According to Howard, this Power or Spirit is
active not only in every aspect of the natural world, but also in every
religion. He saw silent worship as the unifying factor underlying the message
of every great religious leader:
When Moses saw God in the
burning bush or Elijah heard the still, small voice, when Paul went to the
desert of Arabia after his conversion, or George Fox on Pendle Hill saw in
vision a great people to be gathered, when the Buddha sat in meditation under
the Bo-tree or Mohammed listened to an angelic voice in the cave near Mecca,
above all, when Jesus Himself faced temptation alone in the wilderness, a great
new message to the world was born not because God was spoken to but because God
was listened to.[2]
In this
passage Brinton reminds us that taking time to be still and listen can help us
connect with the Logos. The more we listen and reflect in the silence, the more
we realize that we are not alone, separated and isolated. We are all
interrelated, and we all have a role to play in the evolution of consciousness.
As Martin Luther King wrote in his letter from Birmingham jail:
“In a real
sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network
of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one
directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you
are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am
what I ought to be...This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
This is the nature of the universe in which we “live
and move and have our being” (in the words of Paul—the Apostle, not Nugent). As
we come to better understand our place and our role in this ultimately friendly
universe, we become friendlier and more just. We learn to hear the still, small
voice of the Logos in ourselves and in others more clearly. We are led to join
with communities like ICUJP that are seeking to live in harmony with the
universe and fulfill its purpose. My prayer and wish for us to day is to take
time to breathe in and experience that living Logos which connects us with each
other and with the universe. Take a deep breath. Feel the universe within and
around you. Feel its goodness. Feel its friendliness. This is the source of who
we are. This is our purpose and destiny.
Brinton wrote, "Creative Harmonizing Love..."
ReplyDeleteI appreciate Brinton's powerful books, especially Friends for 300 Years, the best book on Quakerism.
However, I don't see how he can speak of existence and nature being influenced by "creative harmonizing love,"
Tell that to the 3 little preschoolers who just lost their young single mother to cancer,a best friend of our relative.
Or the millions dying right now from all matters of diseases, so many lost in alzheiner's (like our in-law at 54, and the constant kill-ratio of the animal world, tooth and claw.
I don't see any creative harmonizing love except in some humans (and hopefully, there are other sentient species who have ethical choice.
Speaking of that, I don't understand Einstein's point either. He was a hard determinist, who thought we humans have no choice, are but specks in cosmic fate:-(