Posted on 22 May 2013, 14:10

I have been watching a video of the debate between the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams (below) and noted biologist Richard Dawkins at the Sheldonean Theatre, Oxford on February 23, 2012. The topic of the debate was, “On Human Nature and Ultimate Origins.” The moderator was Matthew Kenny. What happened between the two protagonists led me to think how urgent it is that there should be a general understanding of what science actually is, and what it is not.  Despite his own great learning, the Archbishop had little to say to counter the aggressive philosophical materialism of Richard Dawkins. He seemed to defer to him as the expert.

(In writing what follows I am not commenting on whatever Dawkins or Williams have to say about theology, important though this may be, but rather I am discussing their attitudes to scientific endeavour.)

Scientific endeavour is based on the use of a series of investigatory tools that are used by scientists of all nationalities, religions, and philosophical beliefs. Properly used these tools can be used to test theories and establish matters of likely fact, regardless of the beliefs and ethnicity of the scientist. Describe any class of such tools as “Atheist” mathematics, “Presbyterian” Chemistry, or “Chinese” physics, and we see the silliness of describing the collection of the tools called science with any such word.

Richard Dawkins (below) was University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.  As such we would expect him to be aware that in the Western world a large minority of scientists are not philosophical materialists.  We would have expected him to be aware that there are leading Nobel prize-winning QM physicists, who would profoundly disagree with his materialistic interpretation of reality. I am surprised that the Archbishop did not refer to this.

If Dawkins was acting as a responsible scientist, he should have let on that he was aware of the work of these scientists. In not doing so he showed himself to be acting here not as a serious scientist but as a closed minded pseudo-sceptic, even though in his own sphere of biology he has earned considerable respect.

Dawkins is a passionate advocate of a materialist interpretation of reality. Spirituality and religion presuppose a non-materialist interpretation.  Materialism and non-materialism were the whole point of the debate.  So why was Dawkins not challenged to disprove the validity of the theories held in common by a large number of quantum physicists, or at least to provide strong arguments why they were wrong?

Whoever challenges Dawkins on this issue does not need advanced scientific education: it is up to biologist Dawkins to present a reasonable case for the wrongness of the physical theories of these Nobel Prize winners.

If he had been challenged, neither Richard Dawkins nor Rowan Williams might have won the debate in the 90 minutes allowed, but at least viewers around the world would have had a clearer idea of the actual issue at stake, materialism versus non-materialism, instead of viewing a closed-minded sceptic poking fun at Bible stories.

The Archbishop did not have to be an expert scientist to know that scientists frequently disagree with each other. I believe biologist Dawkins should have been asked to defend his materialist standpoint against the non-materialist views of such pivotal thinkers as the quantum physicists Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, David Bohm, and Brian Josephson. (below)

The moderator, Anthony Kenny asked the protagonists whether they “believed in science”, “believed in the importance of logic” and that “the laws of physics are never disobeyed.” Dawkins and Williams both agreed that they did in all cases. Dawkins said that he liked the first lines of a certain hymn, “It is a thing most wonderful, Almost too wonderful to be.” But he introduced his own words to follow: “that the laws of physics through the process of evolution produced us.”

Do biologist Dawkins and theologian Williams know what these supposed laws are? Do those QM physicists that Dawkins presumably disagrees with, not understand these laws when they theorise about consciousness, write learned books on extra-sensory perception, telepathy, clairvoyance, synchronicity, and even afterlife? CERN physicist John Bell has his Theorem, which at root denies local causation. There is also the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment that inadvertently demonstrated action at a distance. While neither Bell’s Theorem nor the EPR effect confirm the reality of the paranormal, they do rule out simplistic interpretations of laws of physics.

As for believing in Science! Do I believe in the library of the British Museum? Science is much of everything: the varying scientific disciplines have of course immeasurably enlarged humanity’s understanding of the world, and of the universe. But scientific activities are always work in progress, with much infighting amongst scientists, usually jostling for research funds from commercial sponsors. One cannot believe in Science in the way suggested by the moderator. What he seems to be inviting us to believe in is Scientism.

Similarly in the case of believing in logic: being logical and thinking clearly is plainly important, and computers work on the principles of logic. But there is a dictum used by computer buffs, “rubbish in, and rubbish out.” Start with rubbishy presuppositions, then however good the logic, one gets rubbishy answers.

With regard to being Oxford’s former Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Dawkins does not at all help the public to understand science. He is simply a popular affirmer of Materialist dogma. And I doubt that he would disagree with that.

Why Dawkins got away with his rubbish, during the debate, is ultimately not the fault of the former Archbishop Williams, but it is the deeper matter of a materialist culture, and more especially materialist academia. In academia, the scientists who are materialists usually hold the power in university politics, and deny non-materialist scientists funding, jobs, access to the learned journals, and often try to make sure that they are publically discredited. This is probably how Dawkins was appointed to his former office of Professor of Public Understanding of Science in the first place.

(Scientific dogmatists like Dawkins do a great disservice to open-minded science, that priceless collection of investigatory tools that humanity has developed to understand the nature of things. That must be true. But equally true is the huge disservice rendered by religious dogmatists of all kinds, in all countries. Open-minded scientific and other methods of investigation are vital defences against dogmatists of all kinds.)

In a lecture that Nobel Prize winning QM physicist Brian Josephson (professor of physics at Cambridge between 1987 and 2004) gave to a number of other Nobel winners, he outlined the unethical tactics used by materialists to try and discredit non-materialists. [see link below.]

[Wikipedia: “Brian David Josephson, FRS (born 4 January 1940) is a Welsh physicist. He became a Nobel Prize laureate in 1973 for the prediction of the eponymous Josephson effect.

As of late 2007, he was a retired professor at the University of Cambridge, where he is the head of the Mind–Matter Unification Project in the Theory of Condensed Matter (TCM) research group. He is also a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.”]

Not stated in the Oxford debate is the fact that Richard Dawkins will deny the existence of any valid evidence collected by psychic researchers over the past 150 years, despite the calibre and trustworthiness of the scientists involved.  He must do this: one undoubted case of telepathy, truly premonitory dream, or whatever, is sufficient to call the dogma of materialism into question.

LINKS FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
Wikipedia on Rowan Williams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_Williams
Wikipedia on Richard Dawkins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins
Wikipedia on Josephson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_David_Josephson
Josephson’s Home Page:
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/

The video of the debate at Oxford

Department of Physics, University of Cambridge: [Josephson’s]  Lecture given at the Nobel Laureates’ meeting Lindau, June 30th., 2004 © B D Josephson 2004 Edited version of presentation (rev ised Aug. 20th., 2004

Rupert Sheldrake recounts another example of lack of scientific integrity in Richard Dawkins.

A review of the Dawkins-Williams debate

News Independent on the debate

The Cambridge debate between Dawkins and Williams: “That with this house believes that Religion has no place in the 21st century”

Michael Cocks edits the journal, Ground of Faith.

Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr by Michael Cocks is published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and other bookstores.

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Posted on 07 May 2013, 14:29

That’s the title of an interesting article by a Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski. But we are not going to get a meaningful answer until we sort out what we are doing when we use the word “God.” Failure to do this poses us with all sorts of insoluble conundrums, including the perennial Problem of Evil: namely, how can a good God permit evil? Let Kolakowski ask the question, then let Lawrence LeShan, and St Stephen suggest the answer.

“Some theologians,” Kolakowski (below) writes, “have argued that we can speak of God only by negation: by saying what He is not. Similarly, perhaps we cannot know what Nirvana is and can only say what it is not. Yet it is hard to be satisfied with mere negation; we would like to say something more. And assuming that we are allowed to say something about what it is to be in the state of Nirvana, the hardest question is this: Is a person in this state aware of the world around him? If not—if he is completely detached from life on earth—what kind of reality is he a part of? And if he is aware of the world of our experience, he must also be aware of evil, and of suffering. But is it possible to be aware of evil and suffering and still be perfectly happy?

The same question arises with regard to the happy residents of the Christian heaven. Do they live in total isolation from our world? If not—if they are aware of the wretchedness of earthly existence, of the dreadful things that happen in the world, its diabolical sides, its evil and pain and suffering—how can they be happy in any recognizable sense of the word?”

Kolakowski asks the hard question. To answer we need once again to go to Lawrence LeShan’s Alternate Realities of which there are four: the sensory-physical world of the light of day, where good and evil, right and wrong most certainly are real, then the reality of the Transpsychic, or that of prayer, then the reality of symbolism and language, and then finally the clairvoyant or holistic reality.  But when we come to ask whether God is happy, we are placing God in a sensory-physical environment. It is, however, a wrong question, because God is that which is in all, through all and above all. The reality of God is apparent in universality; and it is to that everywhere/holistic God we come in prayer when great disasters strike us. It is said for instance that this was very evident in Aceh, in Western Indonesia, where over 170,000 people were killed by tsunami and about 500,000 were left homeless; that far from doubting God, they found strength in prayer. As I suggested in the previous blog, they were transcending themselves to their “higher” “wider” “eternal” selves.. even their “true” or “divine” selves. And this can happen when we meditate or pray.

On page 94 LeShan (below) writes: “Three classes of people work in this [clairvoyant/holistic] mode: These are theoretical physicists working with relativity theory trying to understand how reality works; mystics attempting to experience their oneness with the universe, and clairvoyants attempting to obtain paranormal information.”

We perhaps remember John Bell’s theorem that affirms universal causation, rather than individual chains of cause and effect. But let LeShan speak for himself. On page 92 he writes:

1. “All objects and events are part of the fabric of the total of being and cannot be meaningfully separated from it. The most important aspect of any object or event is that it is part of the total ONE and it is to be primarily considered under this aspect. Considering it under any other aspect is an error.

2. Boundaries, edges, and borders do not exist. All things primarily are each other, since they are primarily one.

3. This lack of boundaries applies to time also. Divisions of time, including divisions into past, present, and future, are errors and delusion. Events do not “happen” or “occur,” they “are.”

4. Since no object or event can be considered in itself without considering the all of space-time, the concepts of good and evil do not have meaning. Any application of them would automatically mean the application applies to the total context of being, to everything. The universe cannot be categorised in this way.

5. All forces or situations in space-time, or places where the fields of activity are weak or strong, move with dynamic company with each other. The very fact of the universe as a flow-process universe means of moves with harmony.

6. One can only be fully in this mode when one has, if only for a moment, given up all wishes and desires for oneself (since the separate self does not exist) and for others (since they do not exist as separate either) and just allows oneself to be and therefore to be with and be one with the all of existence. To attain this mode, one must – at least momentarily – give up on doing and accept being. Any awareness of doing or the wish to do disrupts this mode.

7. Valid information is not through the senses, but through a knowing of the oneness of observer and observed, spectator and spectacle. Once this complete oneness is fully accepted, there is nothing that can prevent the flow of information between a thing and itself.

8. The senses give a false picture of reality. They show separation of objects and events in space and time. The more completely we understand reality, the less it resembles the picture given by our senses, by the sensory mode of being.

9. This is the only valid way to regard reality. All other ways of are illusion.”
[But when we are thinking in the sensory-physical mode, that mode then seems to be the only valid way to regard reality.]

The clairvoyant/holistic mode, as said, is familiar to theoretical physicists, mystics and meditators, and to psychics. It is also the mode in which we experience “God”, in all, through all, and above all. So then, can we ask, “Is God happy?” If we did that would be like asking, “Is the Universe happy?

In Afterlife Teaching we find St Stephen devoting much of his teaching to helping us get our heads around what it means to live largely in Stephen’s   reality, (LeShan’s clairvoyant/holistic mode) which Stephen regards as the basic reality. If we are familiar with Plato, and with QM physicists such as David Bohm and F. David Peat, we will find them agreeing with Stephen about the clairvoyant/holistic world being the “implicate” world, and agreeing that this world or mode brings the sensory-physical world into being. This sensory-physical world in which most of our conscious activity takes place, is a kind of projection or dream of the clairvoyant or implicate world. We become most aware of this fact when we experience striking synchronicities which appear to defy physical possibilities. Stephen regards this world as illusory, and unreal. It is his eternal holistic timeless world which is real.  That is not to say that our “dreamed and projected” world is without value. The God who is in all, through all, and above all, has created it for very good reasons, as an arena where the soul can gain experiences vital for its health and growth. “Guidance through pain toward love,” said Stephen. The soul is eternal, not limited by time and space.

Some of this seems to be said in the Gospel of John 1.1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

If you like, “the Word”, “Christ”, “Anointing Spirit”, these creative agencies, can be compared to Plato’s Ideal Forms, or to Bohm’s Implicate Order. Whatever term we use, we are saying that the Eternal brings the events of time and space into being. Stephen expresses it by saying that the events of this world are brought into being by Christ. St John calls it “the Word.”

John 18.36: Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

Philippians 3.20: “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body.”

I am very conscious that readers of this blog will have a strong interest in psychic and afterlife research. They will have seen much good evidence of what to expect when we die, and experiences that we are likely to have after death. We are told that our spiritual development at the time of death will determine whether our risen self will find itself in higher or lower spheres. We are given convincing evidence that the departed can communicate with the living. Those involved in the Stephen experience accept that we are hearing from that individual who was martyred 2000 years ago.  In contrast however, when we talk about “Christ’s Kingdom” or the clairvoyant/holistic mode of reality, we are talking about the context in which all of this comes about. It could be said that psychic research is more concerned with the particular, and that spirituality is more concerned with the Whole.

Spirituality is of course very much concerned with our relationships in the here and now. But one needs to see these relationships in the context of the eternal “Kingdom of Heaven.”

I have to say that eight years conversations with Stephen about the spiritual life led us back to a deeper understanding of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, to both its simplicity, and the challenge to take it into our spiritual development.

Kolakowski’s article translated from the Polish
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/dec/20/is-god-happy

Michael Cocks edits the journal, Ground of Faith.

Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr by Michael Cocks is published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and other bookstores.

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