077 - The Journey Not the Destination: The Case for Universal Purposeful Evolution

Does Spirit evolve?  

How about God?

And what exactly does the term panentheism mean?

This episode takes a deep dive into process philosophy, process theology, and the evolutionary nature of "becoming."  

The pioneer work of Charles Hartshorne, Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Sanders Peirce, and of course Hegel, all in a way process philosophers, is addressed. 

Transcript

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Hello. I'm Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist episode 77. Welcome back. The purpose of this podcast is to explore philosophy psychology self-help and modern science in light of current issues and topics. With a special emphasis on the great 19th century philosopher, George Wilhelm, Friedrich Hagle. My basic paradigm is that we have a free mind that can envision a better future and design plans to achieve what the mind conceives through taking specific concrete actions here in the real world. In this episode, I will be discussing an interesting notion that I've covered here before, particularly in episode 43. And that is that the universe itself is evolutionary. But what I want to do today is provide some new insights on this and that's what we'll be exploring. Why does this such an important topic is that it means that all in everything is evolutionary, including not only as human beings in nature, but spirit as well, or if you prefer to call spirit, God, then you feel like God as well. Now I realized that the words, spirit and God mean many different things to different people. And I'll not be analyzing all the various. meanings of these terms in the different contexts in which they were used here. But I will be covering this. No matter what your conception of spirit and or God or nature or humankind is, I believe that they are all part of the evolutionary aspect of the entire cosmos. That becoming is fundamental, fundamental to all things. And this is what I intend to show in this episode. Now I realize this is a controversial notion. Uh, science sees a kind of blind mechanical evolution, but does not acknowledge any purpose behind the evolution at CS. And traditional religion. For the most part would reject our right that God is somehow evolving along with us. And much of Western philosophy, going back to Plato believes that there are eternal forms and that they're unchanging. And, certainly not evolving. and that Western philosophy has been particularly more concerned with substance primal substances. If you will, this goes back to the preset. Socratics. And these primal substances are not evolving. Now on the other hand. There has been an increase in what some call evolutionary thinking and all of these disciplines. And I will address each of these areas and show how evolution is central to all of them and why I believe this is so. And just why I think this is a better description. Of what is going on here regarding God or spirit? And humanity and nature. Now I want to work backwards here. So I'm going to start with philosophy, then move to religion then onto science to show how the evolutionary nature of the cosmos is established in each discipline. First philosophy. Closely related to the evolutionary nature of the universe is what is now called process philosophy. This is the worldview paradigm that basically challenges the substance oriented cosmology. That has dominated Western philosophy and science for over 2000 years. The substance paradigm asserts that everything is just subatomic particles bouncing around. Uh, and it's a paradigm that still exists in large part today. Uh, now the earliest known Western philosopher that saw things differently was. H Hereclitis. He is the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from around 500 BCE. He's best recognized for his notion that change is fundamental and it is. The most fundamental thing there is. And he famously said you cannot step into the same river twice. However, I should mention that the ancient Chinese eat Ching or book of changes. It was also formulated around that time. And it presents 64 different hexagrams that are constantly changing. And there are a total of 4,096 total possible hexagrams that can resolve from these changes. And when consultants at different times for different situations, the meetings are infinite. I focused on the eating specifically in episode 30, if you're interested going back and listening. So this notion of change, driving things along is not purely a Western idea at all. But now we must ask is a process the same as evolution. The concept that the universe is about change and not steady things can be agreed upon, but those embracing the process stance. But a split occurs immediately, whether or not there is any underlying purpose or teleology to this change. And hence we have two camps. One is naturalistic, which contends that the evolution we see in the universe is comprised of randomness and mechanically utility. Much like Darwin's theory of evolution. Random genetic changes appear in an organism and have useful for survival. They remained in her pants down. That's the Darwinism in a nutshell. The other camp is teleological, meaning that there is some underlying purpose beneath is random as and change driving it forward. I believe hago really got the ball rolling here on this TLR Ziglar. The view of evolution. So let's begin with him. Listeners are aware that Hagle begins his science of logic with the dialectic of being nothing and becoming, you can go all the way back to episode three and four of this podcast for a refresher on that. Becoming is fundamental. And that is the first form of being that is determined. That is there. Being that is there. It's becoming. Becoming is the unity of being in nothing. The two notions behind it. Yet, they maintain their own nature in the unity of becoming, and this is the first example of identity and difference, which is so, so much. Key part of the Galean system. Becoming contains both being in nothing in one notion. And as I previously said here, the identity in difference of becoming as best seen in the present moment of time that we all experienced the now. The present moment. The now. Now is always becoming the being of the present moment, passes away to the nothingness of the past, and then nothing necessarily the future becomes being in the moment. And both these processes happen at the same moment. At the same time, the present moment, the now remains in becoming it always remains there. It's always there. But it's not stagnant. It's always moving forward. But again, it is the same, but different. The tall remains in the river. It's the same toe, but it's not the same river. But how does this becoming. Or does this becoming involved and evolution of some sort or is it just change for changes sake? Well in the science of logic, Hagle traces the development of being all the way through to the absolute idea, which is free creative thought recognizing itself. But it does not end there. He goes on and is encyclopedia. the absolute idea is just abstract. In this point while timeless, it is a subject with life. However it does not kind of Crete. The creative subjective life becomes actual in nature nature, being the dialectical, other of this subjective identity. And this is now what we call spirit. Uh, the soul of the individual subjectivity coming to know itself in concrete reality in life in nature. And what's important to recognize though, that this is doesn't work in three steps. First idea, then nature, then spirit. It's actually all at once at the same time. And this actuality is one of evolutionary development. Spirit corresponds to becoming in the original trader, the logic, the creative absolute subjective mind corresponds to beating. Nature, corresponds to nothingness. This is the historical development of spirit. It's an evolutionary process. Of spirit coming to recognize itself in the world. And Hey, Google's philosophy clearly establishes that this is a creative process of development underway and it is purposeful. Which is, as I said, it's to better know its true self. Now. A couple of points here for hago life. Does. It doesn't just appear spontaneously and randomly by some accident. As most scientists would have you believe it's part of abstract logic and is therefore more fundamental and indeed timeless when compared to the finite nature of things in time and space. But life and subject would, we're not created. They are eternal aspects of the universe, but does he turn to exist within the finite world of space and time? And that's, what's important to recognize, and this is what gives us our own life and our own reasoning capabilities. And it's important to recognize that. But also this it's the purpose of life to increase itself to better itself. That is what becoming truly is. It's not just a repetition of things. But an advance, a betterment. It's not just a circle of being than nothing than being than nothing endlessly. That's a dead end that does not re represent true becoming or life. Which is what being in the science of logic is sound like a circle and thusly repeating, but it's more like an ever-widening spiral. And even if the universe itself eventually runs its course, it will nonetheless be born again and another big bang and a new beginning with a new potential. We'll we'll arrive. And this is actually as a scientific theory proposed by physicist Roger Penrose, which I discussed back in episode, 61. So that's Hagle. Now, let me move on next to Charles Sanders Pierce. We've talked about him a lot in the podcast. He was an American, pragmatic philosophy of falling on after Hagle. And he had the benefit of coming after Darwin and the theory of evolution. No Pierce believed in three types of evolution. First randomness second mechanicalness. And third, when he called. I gape is a more creative love. The first tour would drive Darwin's theory of evolution, but creative love is the third type of evolution that he envisions. And it's fundamental to the cosmos, not just to people has been there always and forever. And all three modes of evolution. Explain how we got here and where we're headed. And this then brings us to the third of our process philosophers. And I want to talk about British philosopher, Alfred north Whitehead. He was the one that put process philosophy on the modern map. If you will. White had had a strong distaste for the belief that matter is the foundation of all. There is. For the most part, because it does not recognize change that viewed is now recognized change. Why did also stressed the importance of relations. Much like Hagle did before him. We know a thing, not for what it is. Only, but through it's also through its relationship to something else. But to cut to the chase. White had also believed in a purposeful universe and that there there's no such thing as an inner matter, all things he believed, even electrons have some measure of creativity. And freedom. Everything has at least some limited ability to experience things. He believed that. The higher life forms. Eh, not only have this capability, but also. the ability to seek life, to seek a better life and to live well. And this is all part of his evolutionary development. White had also had a lot to say about God. Not the traditional conception of God that we have in the west, but a God that works in tandem with the individual in a way it's completed by the individual and that the individual is in turn completed by God. And he has quite an interesting philosophy and I would like to swing back to him someday and spend more time with him. Maybe do a whole episode, but now that we've touched on religion, I want to move on to the 20th century American philosopher of religion. Charles Hartshorn. And he took the process philosophy of Whitehead to a new level. And that's what we call today. Process theology. And he was greatly influenced by both peers and white ed we've discussed. But he had many ideas that were his own and were different than, than these two predecessors. And he's perhaps best known for popularizing the term panentheism to describe his process theology. So let's start with just what is meant by the term. Panentheism. To understand the meaning of this term. One is to begin with a word that it was derived from, and that word is pantheism. Pantheism breaks down into two words, pan, meaning everything and theism, meaning belief in God. So pantheism means everything is God, which means that everything in the entire universe is a unity. And that unity is God. Uh, pantheist believes that God is not a separate being as so much of the Western religions. Do. But then every single part of the universe, every person, everything every had is part of God. While trace is a pantheistic thought can be seen in some of Greek theology. And some mystics of the middle ages as well. It became more of a formal doctrine with the philosophy of the 17th century philosopher, Baruch Spinoza. Spinosa rejected. The Cartesian dualism of Descartes that mind and body are separate. Are in separate worlds. He thought they were both part of one whole. Now, some have referred to spinosa as believing in a nature. God, he's often credited as laying the framework for the later 18th century enlightenment, but it's focused on nature. In terms of taking a kind of what the universe is as it is without an external God or gods. Which by the way, got his books banned by the Catholic church at the time. Now spinosa never used the term pantheism in his lifetime, but after his death, his work became more known and his philosophy was branded pantheism. So that's what pantheism refers to now onto panentheism. And pantheism was first coined by German philosopher, Karl Kraus in 1828. To differentiate the philosophy of Hagle from that as spinosa. Cross felt that Hegel's philosophy was different, that there wasn't a nature, but something else was going on. There's something more, something greater than nature was happening. And spirit is determined. Hagle used to describe this. Something more is going on. Spirit is both. Intertwined with nature. One would nature as well as being an urge on its own and uplifting transcendence to nature. If you will. So cross came up with the word panentheism, which is essentially asserting the syllable N in between pan and theism and means in. So this new word is meant to say that all is in God. Pan all N N theism God. All in God. That God is not just equal to the world, but God is also greater than the world, rather than saying that the world in nature is identical with God. The term panentheism has meant to say that the world is within God. Which is a subtle yet a very meaningful difference. Because the world is within God. It means that God is evolving just as the world is. Now you have to be carefully. It's not that the world is equally real to God that separates God from the world. God, the world is part of God. Uh, is in God within God. And even though, The world is part of God. God is more than the world because the God of panentheism allows us to transcend the finiteness of nature. And this is much the same as Hegel's true infinity whereby the finite becomes real only when transcended by the infinite, which we've discussed so many times. Particularly in episode four. I should be clear that there is no formal, generally recognized definition of panentheism and scholars have different takes on exactly what it means, the nuances, et cetera. But I believe I provided a good general definition here, which, which most would agree with. And it. Fits the evolutionary model that I've been discussing. I Hagle. Said that everything includes both being and nothing, everything, and that there's nothing I've got or anything else, which does not contain both a mediation and an immediacy. So spirit is the mediation of free thought. Life's subject of creativity with nature. And in this sense, it is more than just nature, more than spinosum pantheism. Now, finally. Let's move on to science. So they said most scientists still hold to the old classical paradigm of a materialistic universe governed by natural laws. Now there are a few renegades as I've discussed here before, particularly in episode 43. Charles Pierce was perhaps the first of the renegades just suggested the laws of nature themselves evolve much like habits. I mean, it goes into a lot of detail on this with. Touched on this before. And this was picked up. In today's world by astrophysicist Lee Smolan as well as my biologist, Rupert Sheldrake just to name two contemporary scientists who are open to such a view. And if, if endorsed it and talk about it. And what this means is that the laws of nature did not just miraculously appear at the beginning of the big bang. And a lot of people say, it seems that the universe has really fine tuned for life. Well, maybe this is part of the habit forming. the development is becoming this evolution. Maybe that's what's going on. Obviously, this is only one scientific hypothesis at this point, but it's one worth considering that all in everything, including nature's laws. I have evolved are developing, are continuing to develop. Along with us. So to summarize. I've discussed how the universe and all that it entails is a process and not a thing. That it is evolving. It is eternally becoming, and this way of looking at things could be seen in philosophy, religion and science. No, that's not the generally accepted view of those three disciplines, but you can find strains of that. As we've discussed. Uh, within each of those areas. Now Hazel's abstract logic and the life and creative idea contained within R and D timeless. But nonetheless, They are brought to actuality in the real world of nature and spirit. This is the world of becoming. Spirit is becoming. Uh, much like the present moment is timeless, but it's brought to life by the coming and going of being. The abstract. Absolute ideas. And it does not exist on its own, apart from the universe, just like the abstract. Being does not exist on its own at the beginning of the logic. But through its interplay with nothing. It established its unity. With nothing in becoming. And the good news is that we are all part of this process, this ongoing process. So onward and upward. Okay. That's a wrap for this episode. Thank you once again, so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. And for all your wonderful comments and help and suggestions. on the podcast, Facebook page at cunning of guy. So if you haven't checked that up, please do so. Please follow. Follow it like it. And as I mentioned, I do post there frequently, almost daily in, in between episodes. And I've engaged in interesting discussions with page followers. I always comment back. So, um, please, if you haven't gone, gotten there yet, please do so. And, check it out, provide your comments, let your voice be heard. And feel free to share this and other episodes in your various social media accounts. As I said, help spread the word. So, let me sign off by saying I'm Gregory Nowak. This is the cutting of Geist. See you next time.