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Class for Feb. 15, 2006

Religious Studies 101

Needed: Bowl, candle, matches, Quantum mechanics graphic; pictures by Gauguin and de Chirico (webmail); Robert A. Johnson’s description of the "Golden World"; portion of Rilke’s letter #4

CHRISTIAN POEM

Author: Jessica Powers

The saints and mystics

Had a name

For that deep

Inwardness of flame,

The height or depth

Or ground or goal

Which is God’s dwelling in the soul.

All day and when

You wake at night

Think of that place

Of living light,

Yours and within you

And aglow

Where only God

And you can go.

None can assail you

In that place

Save your own evil,

Routing grace.

Not even angels

See or hear,

Nor the dark spirits

Prowling near.

But there are days

when watching eyes

could guess that you

hold Paradise.

Sometimes the shining

Overflows

And everyone

Around you knows.

We’re going to take a look at the three big challenges of life for everyone and how various periods of history have handled the "religious problem".

THE THREE BIG CHALLENGES OF LIFE

(Discussion from class)

1. The problem nature poses: How to get food and shelter in our natural environment.
2. The problem our culture, society poses: How to get along with one another
3. The problem of religion: How to relate ourselves to the total scheme of things, visible and invisible, the "More"

THE THREE MAJOR PERIODS IN HUMAN HISTORY

(Discussion from class)

1. The traditional period (beginning of human beings > rise of modern science in the 16^th and 17^th centuries)
2. The modern period (rise of modern science > first half of the 20^th century
3. The postmodern period--features include globalization, consumerism, the fragmentation of authority, and the commoditization of knowledge—selling ideas (first half of the 20^th century > ????)

Before we get to these three, some definitions are needed. Definitions I want you to know for exams will be *.

*WORLDVIEW

The general beliefs held by a culture, or a subculture at a particular period of time.

TWO BASIC WORLDVIEWS

1. *COSMOLOGY: The study of the physical universe; the world as science conceives it
2. *METAPHYSICS: The study of all that is, visible and invisible.

NOTE: If a person believes that nature reflects all that is, cosmology and metaphysics are equal. This position is called, *naturalism.

In this class, we will be looking at religion from the perspective of metaphysics.

Now let’s look at the three major periods and their strengths and weaknesses.

THE TRADITIONAL PERIOD

--Openness to all that is; a metaphysical view of "heaven and earth"

--A sense of the sacred, the sense of a "higher power" involved in everyday life; a sense of the mystical

--Ways of interacting with this "higher power"

--Generic science: careful attention to nature and its regularities

--literal interpretation of mythological, biblical accounts of "what is."

--inability to integrate new scientific discoveries into their existing worldview

--violence perpetrated against "heretics"

THE MODERN PERIOD

--Discovery of a new way of knowing, the *scientific method: the controlled experiment

--New medicines, technologies, astronomies….

--Critique of former beliefs

--the assumption that science can take in all that is

--the hubris (ego pride) that all that came before has been replaced by science

THE POSTMODERN PERIOD

--Critique of the modern way; some humility creeping in

--social injustices are being recognized and addressed more earnestly than by our ancestors

--Metaphysics is distinct from Cosmology, allows for the "More"; quantum mechanics

Examples: (Class discussion)

An African-American placed in a zoo in 1919, unthinkable today

Civil rights movement of the 60’s

Women’s rights movement of the 70’s

Protest over a "bad" war—Vietnam

Liberation theology in Central-South America

Pope’s 2000 C.E. prayer for forgiveness of the Church’s sins

200,000 Australians apologize to aborigines for injustice and poor treatment—skywriting

SORRY over the Sidney Opera House

--"incredulity (doubt) toward metanarratives" (metaphysics)

--worldviews are restrictive and oppressive

[Paradox: Postmodernism has a worldview concerning the rights of minorities]

Note: We have a worldview, whether we know it or not. We can choose to let it go unexamined and live out of it, or become conscious of it and critique it.

WHAT ARE WE LEFT WITH????

RUN A STRAINER THROUGH OUR PAST AND LIFT OUT THE "GOLD"!

Class Discussion Who’s right about reality? What do you prefer?

"Is the Universe friendly?" Class discussion

William Sheldon, Columbia University:

"continued observations in clinical practice lead almost inevitably to the conclusion that deeper and more fundamental than sexuality, deeper than the craving for social power, deeper even than the desire for possessions, there is a still more generalized and universal craving in the human makeup. It is the craving for knowledge of the right direction—for orientation."

Human beings need a worldview.

An integrated worldview : The holder believes the world makes sense. If the fit is perfect, the energies of the cosmos pour into the believer and empower her to a startling degree.

An unintegrated worldview: The holder lives with a sense of meaninglessness, alienation and anxiety. Needs to go back to an earlier time and get the gold; let go of that which is "rusty".

A LOOK AT SOME WORLDVIEWS

--The freshness of a child discovering the world for the first time

--Allows fulfillment of the basic longing in the depths of the human heart

--Experiences an "incredible mystery" in life; experiences that feel as if they come from a different world

Longing for the More: Notice your feelings and how your body responds.

Gauguin’s Who Are We? Where Did We Come From? Where Are We Going?

Class feedback

De Chirico’s Nostalgia for the Infinite

Class feedback

"Simply to be human is to long for release from mundane existence with its confining walls of finitude and mortality."

Examples of experiences that "feel" as if they come from a different world.

Class feedback

People who have a talent for sensing places where life’s "shell" is cracked, and through its chinks they catch glimpses of a world beyond.

Robert A. Johnson’s description of "the Golden World."

"The first light of dawn was about to come up. I absentmindely handed him [the taxi driver] a handful of coins, he departed, and I stood there staring at the minarets of a great mosque—and then it happened. I was no longer just watching the sun come up, I was overtaken by a vision of the Golden World. All my senses were set spinning, I heard the music of the stars singing…absolute glory and joy…Once again, I was caught in the grip of a divine ecstasy." Pg. 208 , Balancing Heaven and Earth

Isaiah: "I saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple…."

The Buddha: Finding the universe turning into a bouquet of flowers at the hour of his enlightenment

Stories like Isaiah’s and The Buddha’s grow up around *"theophanies"-- a visible (but not necessarily material) manifestation of a deity or sacred being to a human person.

Myth is the language of religion. Number is the language of science.

Fairytales: Locate their happy endings in the world.

Myths: Anchor themselves in the "final nature of things." This stretches our imagination to the limit. We can have what the myth reveals, but only after surmounting ordeals of daunting magnitude. Our individual myths are discovered through our dreams.

*Principle of Maximum Meaning—Philo of Alexandria and Origen (and others) proposed this: Does the scriptural passage in question inspire and strengthen us?

At a terrible time in my life:

Example: Isa 43:2 - Show Context

My sense of God directly communicating with me. An inner movement of "lift."

When we notice an inner sense of "lift" or its opposite, a sense of "heaviness", an inner logic is at work to help us discern a vital message for our lives. It is not enough information in itself to determine a decision, but is a compelling piece of evidence.

Example:

Choice of schools

Choice of jobs

Direction to take

A change of behavior needed

Traditional peoples:

The world is not freestanding.

The world derives from a divine source (Great Spirit, God, the One, Infinite)

This source is not separate from the world=immanence

This source is exempt from the world’s limitations=transcendence

Catholic Mass: "As he (Christ) came to share in our humanity, may we come to share in his divinity."

Buddhism: "There is an unborn, an unbecome, an unmade, uncompounded, therefore there is an escape from the born, the become, the made, the compounded." [Applies to Nirvana which has "existence"]

Pg. 31--…it is the spark of divinity that God plants in human beings that initiates the journey in the first place. Transcendence takes the initiative at every turn: creating the world…shaping civilization through revelation…an invincible ground for hope…

1. Tension between tradition and new discoveries that shake that tradition
2. The long time needed for major historical change

A few accept only the scientific view.

A few accept only the traditional view.

Most subscribe to one or the other, but include aspects of the other in their view.

Traditional vs. Scientific

The "spirit" is fundamental and matter is derivative. God’ creates the world.

Human beings are the less who have derived from the more.

There is a happy ending.

The world is meaningful throughout. "I’m born for a purpose."

The Pawnee people: Sitting on their rooftop, explaining to their children how Evening Star created the first girl child, and Morning Star and Sun created the first boy child.

All things are full of mystery and vitality.

Nature is all that is.

Human beings have evolved from the lesser

There is no happy ending, only death.

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.

All mystery will someday be comprehensible.

The Current Crisis:

No society before ours was ever rent by contradictions so agonizing. In both primitive and classical cultures the [traditional view] saw knowledge and values stemming from the same source. For the first time in history a civilization is trying to shape itself while clinging desperately to the [traditional view] to justify its values and at the same time abandoning it as the source of knowing.

Class discussion: Where do you see yourself?

Conclude with portion of Rainer Maria Rilke’s letter #4:

"…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

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Last modified: February 15, 2006