What's the Meaning of the Universe?

visit my nonfiction blog Cybernoetic Man.

visit my micro-fiction blog 1001 Tales of an Ironic Man

Recursive Evolutionary Panentheism

snippets from my notes

1,2,3 of God and Recursive Evolutionary Panentheism: there best be a better word for this! 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd person perspective of God:

Evolution of Godview in 4 quadrants:

Paul Tillich has a great definition of the ever-elusive God—he defines God not as a personified God, not as ultimate reality, but as an individual’s ultimate concern. There’s certain degree of elegance in that definition, because the flexibility allows room both for a 2^nd person personified God and a 3^rd person God of ultimate reality.

A few years ago, when I was examining history of scientific progress to the religious worldviews, I realized there are certain flaws in any fundamentalist claims—because there can’t be any real fundamentalist claims. Allow me to illustrate what I mean.

Before humankind ventured out into space, the heavens, with its vast expanse of sky and puffy white clouds are held to be the abode of Father. Naturally it’s understandable—nobody knew back then, what could be beyond the blue sky, no one was aware that there could be a dimension beyond the heavens, and that the sky would be traversed by aluminum aircrafts in the modern age. (it’s also interesting that the English language continues to use the word “Heaven” to be “paradise.”)

Recursive refers to the tendency to repeat certain habit of the past. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, the whole idea is that there is a fractal motion to the Kosmos, both internal and external.

What I claim are just some orienting generalizations, by no means do they claim to have any scientific basis—they are just some brisk insights of the pattern of the universe. It’s important to examine the difference between process holarchy and structural holarchy. First let’s what what we mean by the word holarchy.

etra-recursion, tetra-holarchy.

Evolutionary refers to the universe’s tendency to create emergent novelty in the Kosmos, here God is simultaneously evolving with the universe. Though the empty unmanifest is not evolving—because by definition it is not. If it is evolving, then it’s not unmanifest Awareness! It’s what Whitehead would call “a creative advance into novelty.” For the universe to play with the already existing and create something so new, so fresh, that it is unpreditactble. Despite history’s desire to repeat its own path—like new water in the river tend to stay along the cracks defined by the track of previous water, there’s some tendency in the Kosmos toward risk, toward emergence.

Tetra-evolution

Recursion and Evolution, thus would add the dimension of time to the Holy. Not straight arrow, space-like time, as we normally picture them. But time with two tendencies, two drives—a drive to repeat the Kosmic grooves, laid down in each of the quadrants, to recursively repeat what could be several millennia away—microgeny of life recapitulate ontogeny, then phylogeny, and even if we dare to extend the concept, biogeny, physiogeny, cosmogeny… Yet, there is an inherent drive toward creativity, toward a novel emergence never repeated in history before, and it’s that “creative advance into novelty,” that winding-up, that evolution running opposite from direction of entropy, that makes the universe so damned fascinating!

Panentheism: God is seen as both Transcendent of the universe and immanent to the universe. This particular Godview unifies what Rudolf Otto would call the “Wholly Other” with the more pantheistic view of God as manifest world.

Christian mystics are fond of saying there are two ways of knowing God—apophatic, Kataphatic. Frederick McLeod describes Kataphatic prayer as employing thoughts and images, and while apophatic transcends the thoughts and images. (1986, McLeod, http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2day/863815mcleod.html)

Panentheism in all 4 quadrants, across 8 levels.

Pantheism and relations to spiritual experience

Wholly other and the complete unknowable.

Wholly Other and Partial Other—the balance of Unknowable and familiar. If Wholly other, why does Christianity keep on using the image of an old man to represent God?