Is the universe divine?
My hope is to inspire our lives with a theology that identifies God and the Universe. If the Universe is divine, all our experiences are experiences of God. Theology can therefore become a discipline founded on evidence.
Since we see just one consistent Universe, the scientific approach will lead theology toward unity as it has unified mathematics, physics and biology. The unification of theology is a step toward conscious global cooperation. Global human cooperation is a step toward respecting and caring for ourselves and Earth, our common home.
This website is a tribute to Aristotle. He created a path from the matter and form of his Physics to the potency and act he applied to explain knowledge in De Anima and divinity in Metaphysics.
Aristotle enlightened the thirteenth century theologian Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas built on Aristotle to create the comprehensive account of the nature of God which is still current in the Catholic Church. Following Aristotle, Aquinas concluded that God is actus purus. The first step in this work is to identify God and the modern sense of the term action. I work from there to develop a tentative model of a divine Universe.
The authors of Genesis wrote that we are images of God. Our evolutionary history shows how we share the intelligence of the Universe that created us. I wish to exploit quantum theory, our current model of communication, computation and creation, to provide a new map of Aristotle's journey from physics to theology.
The imperial age of theology and religion crystallized with Constantine and Nicea. It has overshadowed indigenous belief that the world is the source of our spirit and security. We are learning now that the pleasures of our lives depend completely on preserving our habitat.
Cognitive Cosmology
Is my work theology?
For more than 50 years I have held an answer to the world's theological woes hidden in my breast. I restrained myself from preaching it for two reasons. First I spent fifteen years recovering from my Catholic education. I took the Catholic doctrines of sin and salvation very seriously, particularly the regular reminders that sexual pleasure outside marriage is a sure route to Hell. I could not help myself. Monastic supererogation seemed to be my only path to salvation. I was helped along this way by the Catholic school I entered when my family moved to the city.
After five years my solemn vows were nullified by Papal fiat and I was expelled from the Order. My fault was to question the foundations of the Catholic Church.
At school I had learned that science is based on measurement rather than opinion. The union of matter and spirit thus requires a common unit for their measurement. Matter and spirit share information. The unit of information is the bit, the distance between yes and no. This idea came in 1965 while reading Bernard Lonergan's Insight. I wrote an essay: How universal is the universe?. If my conclusion is true, the whole business plan of the Catholic Church, marketed as the only route to human salvation, is moot. From a corporate point of view, the Order was right to dismiss me but I was disappointed. Jeffrey Nicholls (1967): How universal is the universe?, Bernard Lonergan (1992): Insight: A Study of Human Understanding
The second constraint was to get my story right. I have worked on it for forty years and there is a long way to go. Now I feel that I should say something before I hit the eighties and begin lose my mind.
If the universe is divine, physics and theology must be compatible. Traditionally physics is the science of matter and theology is the science of spirit. Tradition also says matter and spirit are like chalk and cheese, completely different. Many theologies teach that the material world is inherently defective and evil. The Catholic Church claims that we are defective sinners that it alone can save. Paul the Apostle says the flesh wars against the spirit (Ga 15:15-21). The general idea is that God made a beautiful world for us and then wrecked it in response to our sin. Platonism - Wikipedia, Gnosticism - Wikipedia, Robert Crotty (2016): Jesus, His Mother, Her Sister Mary and Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Background to the Gospel of John
Physicists are looking for a single explanation for the four elementary communication channels in nature, gravitation, electromagnetism, the weak interaction and the strong interaction. The standard model fits the last three into a common paradigm, but gravitation remains an outlier. Theory of everything - Wikipedia
My path to unification of matter and spirit is little more ambitious: I want to learn how God created us, not by a simple fiat, but through the evolution of complexity explained by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1965); The Phenomenon of Man
I follow a the trajectory pioneered by Aristotle. He understood physics as the science of change and developed his idea matter and form to account for the participation of Plato's eternal forms in the changing world. He extended matter and form to potency and actuality to show how the moving word was driven by a divine unmoved mover. Aquinas introduced Aristotle's mover to the Christian theology of God. The only difference is that the Nicene Creed puts God outside the world. Thomas Aquinas, Summa, I, 2, 3, Nicene Creed - Wikipedia
Christianity introduced the Trinity to ancient monotheism. Dogma limits the Trinity to three but the logical explanations devised by Augustine and Aquinas to describe the Trinity are not so limited. They may be expanded from a threesome to the enormous number of independent sources in the universal communication network.
The next step requires an exploration of modern physics which is largely beyond me. At present, despite its manifest successes, fundamental physics is in the doldrums, struggling to find a credible theory of everything. I feel that the answer to the problems of both physics and theology is to unite them through the assumption, hinted at by a few physicists, that the universe is the mind of god and we are ideas in that mind. Paul Davies (1992): The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning
Cognitive cosmology seems consistent with the energetic and exciting universe we live in. Many ancient theologies have proposed invisible and mysterious gods. We cannot communicate with these gods, so we have no basis for scientific theology. Given an observable god theology can enter the world of science. The universe then plays all the roles traditionally attributed to gods: creator, sustainer, guide, judge, the source of our lives and their meaning. Theology - Wikipedia, Scientific Revolution -Wikipedia, Jeffrey Nicholls (2008): The Church that stole God
Mind processes information. The scientific foundation of the universe is quantum mechanics which also processes information. It seems, therefore, to be quite reasonable to feel the universe as a mind. Here we assume that it is the mind of god, identical to god. The purpose of this site is to look into this possibility in some detail, drawing on philosophy, theology and science. This may help us to appreciate the true spiritual value of ourselves and nature. Nielsen & Chuang (2016): Quantum Computation and Quantum Information
(revised 17 August 2022)
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Notes and references
Further readingBooks
Crotty (2016), Robert, Jesus, His Mother, Her Sister Mary and Mary Magdalene: The Gnostic Background to the Gospel of John, David Lovell Publishing 2016 ' The Gospel of John has always been a difficult book to interpret. The differences between John and the Synoptics have always been a stumbling block for students. . . .
This book takes up these problems. It demonstrates that the present text has followed a long and tortured journey from Jewish Gnosticism to a Christian Gnostic compendium, later extensively edited by Roman Christianity.
The result is a surprising re-reading. The book throws light on a different Jesus to the canonical one (he is not human). . .
The Roman Christians disagreed on all these interpretations and heavily edited the gospel in order to silence its Gnostic statement. This book will show how the gospel of John should be read at the present time to take account of this complex tradition history.'
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Davies (1992), Paul, The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning, Penguin Books 1992 'Paul Davies' "The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning" explores how modern science is beginning to shed light on the mysteries of our existence. Is the universe - and our place in it - the result of random chance, or is there an ultimate meaning to existence? Where did the laws of nature come from? Were they created by a higher force, or can they be explained in some other way? How, for example, could a mechanism as complex as an eye have evolved without a creator? Paul Davies argues that the achievement of science and mathematics in unlocking the secrets of nature mean that there must be a deep and significant link between the human mind and the organization of the physical world. . . . '
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Lonergan (1992), Bernard J F, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '. . . Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding'
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Nielsen (2016), Michael A, and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2016 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002.
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Teilhard de Chardin (1965), Pierre, The Phenomenon of Man, Collins 1965 Sir Julian Huxley, Introduction: 'We, mankind, contain the possibilities of the earth's immense future, and can realise more and more of them on condition that we increase our knowledge and our love. That, it seems to me, is the distillation of the Phenomenon of Man.'
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Links
Gnosticism - Wikipedia, Gnosticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός gnōstikós, "having knowledge") is a collection of ancient religious ideas and systems which originated in the first century AD among early Christian and Jewish sects. These various groups emphasised personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) over orthodox teachings, traditions, and ecclesiastical authority. Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a blind, malevolent demiurge responsible for creating the material universe. Viewing this material existence as flawed or evil, Gnostics considered the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the supreme divinity in the form of mystical or esoteric insight.' back |
Jeffrey Nicholls (1967), How universal is the universe?, ' 61 The future is beyond our comprehension, but we can get an idea of it and speed its coming by studying what we already have. Contemplating the size and wonder of the universe as it stands in the light of its openness to the future must surely be a powerful incentive to men to love God. We have come a long way since the little world of St Thomas. Ours is open to all things, even participating in god. This is what I mean by universal. ' back |
Jeffrey Nicholls (2008), The Church that stole God, ' So far as I know, the two biggest beasts that ever walked the earth are the Roman Catholic Church and the Chinese Empire. Between them, they have controlled the lives of billions of people over thousands of years.
We are wary of the Chinese, but somehow the Church has slipped beneath the radar. . . ..
It remains nevertheless a militant organization whose stated objective is to control the mind of every person in the whole world. . . . ..
The Church takes its mandate from the Gospels: Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News to all creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned. (16:16).' back |
Nicene Creed - Wikipedia, Nicene Creed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Nicene Creed (Greek: Σύμβολον τῆς Νίκαιας, Latin: Symbolum Nicaenum) is the profession of faith or creed that is most widely used in Christian liturgy. It forms the mainstream definition of Christianity for most Christians.
It is called Nicene because, in its original form, it was adopted in the city of Nicaea (present day Iznik in Turkey) by the first ecumenical council, which met there in the year 325.
The Nicene Creed has been normative for the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox churches, the Anglican Communion, and the great majority of Protestant denominations.' back |
Platonism - Wikipedia, Platonism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at least affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are asserted to exist in a third realm distinct from both the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness, and is the opposite of nominalism. This can apply to properties, types, propositions, meanings, numbers, sets, truth values, and so on (see abstract object theory).' back |
Scientific Revolution -Wikipedia, Scientific Revolution -Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature. The Scientific Revolution took place in Europe towards the end of the Renaissance period and continued through the late 18th century, influencing the intellectual social movement known as the Enlightenment. While its dates are debated, the publication in 1543 of Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is often cited as marking the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. back |
Theology - Wikipedia, Theology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Theology is the systematic and rational study of concepts of God and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university, seminary or school of divinity. . . . 'During the High Middle Ages, theology was therefore the ultimate subject at universities, being named "The Queen of the Sciences" and serving as the capstone to the Trivium and Quadrivium that young men were expected to study. This meant that the other subjects (including Philosophy) existed primarily to help with theological thought.' back |
Theory of everything - Wikipedia, Theory of everything - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'A theory of everything (ToE) or final theory, ultimate theory, or master theory refers to the hypothetical presence of a single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe. ToE is one of the major unsolved problems in physics. Over the past few centuries, two theoretical frameworks have been developed that, as a whole, most closely resemble a ToE. The two theories upon which all modern physics rests are General Relativity (GR) and Quantum Field Theory (QFT). ' back |
Thomas Aquinas, Summa, I, 2, 3, Does God exist?, 'I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways. The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. . . . ' back |
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