List of Reasons for an Old Earth

Here we go and in no particular order.

1. Evidences of natural time esp. geological and astronomical
2. Fitness of natural selection to explain and predict biological changes
3. Evidence of ancient life / fossil evidence
4. Paucity of the challenges
5. The false-friend of ID (really an attempt to resurrect the Argument from Deisgn or the Teleological Argument. These are not explanatory; we see what we want to see. 
6. The "brain weight" including contemporaries like Francis Collins and John Polkinghorne as well as ancients like Augustine
7. Hermeneutics properly practiced: thinking correctly about how to read ancient documents especially according to time and genre
8. The "very good" of God / God as trustworthy
9. The goodness of matter / natural law and its necessity for confessing the incarnation, the benefit of Jesus's sacrifice, and obtaining a real hope for eschatological deliverance
10. The danger of replacing the theology of the cross with a theology of glory
11. The importance of the Book of Nature
12. Animals need to hope as well
13. The danger that bad thinking poses for the health and growth of the church.

Objections that a friend of mine raised: Radiometric dating -- when does it start? Tampering. Mt. St. Helen's rocks. Slow formation of sediment trees. Logs in Mt St. Helens. Ken Ham and his group-basis for evaluations.

Sollereder 2: The Bible and The Fall

Bethany Sollereder is trying to make sense of God's goodness as creator in the light of natural selection. In the previous chapter, she explained her overall goal and defined some terms. In this chapter, she wants to dismantal cultural readings of the curse language in Genesis three. Why? Because such language has been used to support a cosmic or ontological fall. If such readings can be be upended, nature can be treated as unfallen. That would clear the way for a theodicy that includes natural selection.

I want to argue against the reading that finds a justification for the theology of a cosmic fall . . . [so that] apart from human sin and its direct effects, the world remains God's "very good" creation. . . . [And therefore] the realities of death and suffering are not unambiguously condemned as irreconcilable with God's goodness. (13)

What is meant by fall?

What do Christians mean when they talk about a fall?[1] Turns out, several things. Sollereder groups them into event-based fall theories, such as a human or satanic fall, and mysterious fallenness theories, such as the cosmic fall. Event-based theories are relational; sin enters the word through willful disobedience. The cosmic fall is not a direct but indirect result; it is a punishment for disobedience. Because of it, the cosmos suffers natural evils. Dividing the types of fall into groups is necessary to peel off and, hopefully, disprove the cosmic fall while leaving the human and satanic falls intact.[2] "If it can be shown that the non-human creation is considered uncorrupted at any point in real history by [scripture], the primordial fall theories [read: mysterious fallenness] will face a serious challenge" (14).

Before advancing further, let me reproduce her description of the human and satanic falls in order to highlight their antimony to the thick community of shalom called flourishing in the previous chapter.

The human fall, sometimes called the "relational fall," refers to the event that marks the entrance of sin into the world through human action. The effect of the human fall is the severing of harmonious relationship between human persons and God, between one person and other people, and between humans and the non-human creation. However, apart from the direct result of human sinful action in the world, such as pollution or exploitation of natural resources, the human fall does not independently affect the wider cosmos . . . In the same way, the satanic fall refers to the event of some of the heavenly host deciding to rebel against God and becoming fallen angels. The satanic fall was primordial, meaning that it was in effect from the very origin of physical creation. (Ibid)

Does the Curse of Genesis 3 Require a Cosmic Fall?

The Curse on Childbearing. Sollereder begins her examination of Genesis 3:14-19 by choosing one particular curse, the curse on childbearing. The idea is to show not only that tradition has read it incorrectly, but that a fresh examination yields better data. The traditional way of reading the curse on childbearing is that, because of Eve's sin, the act of childbirth would now be painful due to an actual physiological change. What may have been painful before is now severe. But we know today, she says, that the pain of childbirth is the result of physics, not an alteration to the poorer of a once-better design. Nevertheless, an examination of the Hebrew suggets a better reading than has been available in English translations. Nowhere else do the two words used refer to the pain of childbirth; there are other words for that. The kind of pain these words convey is emotional. Children born now will enter a world of difficulty, uncertainty, and, yes, pain. "Genesis 3 makes no claims at all about the origins of physical labor pains, but only of the sorrow-filled world into which children are born" (25). In this one part of the curse, (a) no physiological/ontological change is required and (b) the pain of the curse is disvalue created by social alienation and violence, not natural evil. And there is also hope: hope that birth and life will go on, fulfilling the creation mandate, and hope that sin itself will one day be dealt with as well.

The Curse on the Ground Sollereder also addresses the curse of the ground. "And to the man [God] said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, "You shall not eat of it," cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life" (Gen. 3.17). The Hebrew here in God's address to Adam is paralleled in God's later address to Noah in Genesis 5.29. Noah is prophecied to bring a relief of this curse for humankind. And, after the flood, when Noah is offering a thanksgiving sacrifice to God, God says, "I will never again curse the ground because of humans." God is not here talking about the flood, but about the curse on the land. Adam's curse and Noah's relief form an inclusio. What Adam wrought, Noah relieved.

The removal of the curse [on the ground] means that nature is fully alive once again, fully green and vibrant. Now there is no fallen creation, no dark side to nature because of human sin. Nature is free of the curse, liberated to become lush, green and plentiful."[3]

Sollereder's case is made that there is no cosmic or ontological fall in the curse texts of Genesis. There remains now only to address Paul's interpretation of the status of the ground in Romans chapter eight.

Romans 8

Romans 8.18-23 is often cited as a prooftext that joins the event-based fall of human beings and a cosmic or ontological fall of nature.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time (τὰ παθήματα τοῦ νῦν καιροῦ) are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility (τῇ ματαιότητι), not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor (πᾶσα ἡ κτίσις συστενάζει καὶ συνωδίνει ἄχρι τοῦ νῦν), and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

I have never heard this passage interpreted formally or casually where it did not cement a human and natural fall; this text exists and therefore nature is fallen and yet-unredeemed--an eschatological passage. Sollereder references a marginal (though Richard Bauckham and Gordon Moo are fans) reading of the text where συστενάζει and συνωδίνει, rather than being read together in a hendiadys, "groaning in labor," should be read separately, "groaning" and "trevailing." The tradition appealed to by this change is a Biblical motif of the earth going into mourning, a mourning based on suffering at the hands of sinful human beings. "The world is made subject (by God) to matoites, to a frustrated state where the world displays the 'ineffeciveness of that which fails to attain its goal.'"[4] Nature can suffer without a fall because human beings are fallen. In parallel, nature flourishes when human beings flourish. Paul's statement does not necessitate a cursed creation, only one continually traumatized and victimized.

God and Nature's Violence

There is another argument going on in this chapter about God and violence. Examining the primordial state before creation in Genesis 1, Sollereder interacts with the Chaoskampf tradition about whether Yahweh was in combat with or ruled over original chaos or the flood or Tiamat or satanic forces etc.[5] The argument is close, and her interlocutors come, oddly, not from ANE people but from Openness theologians, e.g. Gregory Boyd of God at War. In the argument is the entire point of the book: God can be good and natural selection be what it is. So although it does not take up majority of the chapter, it is no less an important part of the overall argument. Here's where she winds up:

Chaos has [not] in any way inhibited God's creative endeavor. Instead, . . . even the waters and the darkness form a necessary part of creation. The (literally) dark and dangerous elements of creation were left precisely because they were good and useful--fit for the purposes of God's very good creation" (17).

__________

Previous Posts in this Series: Sollereder 1: Leaving the Courtroom

[1] Sollereder does not like this term "fall" because it presupposes a height to fall from, an Augustinian fall from moral perfection.

[2]] "The view that the fall of Satan had no effect on the goodness of the world was held by most Christian thinkers during the Patristic period" (37n8).

[3] Norman Habel, The Birth, the Curse and the Greening of the Earth: An Ecological Reading of Genesis 1-11 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2011), 111.

[4] Quoting C. E. B. Cranfield.

[5] p. 39n53: The refusal to see chaos in the creation narratives is not . . . a recent phenomenon: it was characteristic of the Patristics (Clement and Hippolytus), and many post-enlightenment writers as well (Herder). [Rebecca] Watson [Chaos Uncreated (Walter de Gryter, 2005) also adds that "the association of the supposed 'Chaoskampf' theme with creation seems not to be original or central in the Hebrew Bible." (379).

Not the Guilt but the Consequences

It seems in keeping with the way Genesis works that human beings suffer the consequences of our parents' primordial sin but not their guilt. Putting aside the question of historicity, the point is the meaning now, and not some kind of historical meaning, but a cultic meaning more interested in helping me understand me (as a member of humanity today) than caring much about the details of the past. Adam and Eve are my story and the story of everyone else in my community. The fall, then, marred but did not eliminate the imago. Human beings cannot walk a straight line, morally speaking, but they have a sense of straightness. Innocence shatters against pitiless experience again and again. The story of the world is the long failure--but not without hope.

I do think this includes mortality because human beings are by nature mortal. It is the tree of life, the gift of God, that grants ongoing everlastingness to mortal flesh. This also means that I do not ascribe to the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the soul.[1]

In saying this, I do not agree with Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin as it teaches the universal application of guilt. Historical theologians do not see it taught in the first few centuries of the church. Gerald Bray has said, "It is a virtual axiom of historical theology that the doctrine of original sin, as we recognize it today, cannot be traced back beyond Augustine." What the early church, Greek and Latin-speaking, affirmed was what I have said here--inherited consequences, not guilt. J. N. D Kelley said, "There is hardly a hint in the Greek fathers that mankind as a whole shares in Adam's guilt." The Latin fathers did teach sin as a corrupting force, but Adam's guilt, they said, "attaches to Adam himself, not to us." Had the apostles taught guilt, wouldn't it be evident? It is just as evident they did not.

Damnation, then, is not a product of our being, but of the inevitable and irresistable selfward curvature of our hearts and the inevitable choices and consequences this creates. Damnation is just a recognition of the truth of things. Damnation is every day.

Simultaneously, justification undoes damnation. Salvation promises and begins the restoration of the imago. In the words of the church: "I will with God's help."

__________

See also "Penciling in a gesture toward providence, determinism, liberty."

[1] A careful reader will note a dialogue here with Plato's Phaedo 74-76. In that dialogue, Plato argues that even though we only see imperfect things, such as sticks of different length, we discern the underlying ideal form of Equality. We discern ideal forms, he said, because our souls see them in the state between reincarnated embodiment. Platonism teaches the immortality of the soul. And the discernment of ideal forms is a plank in Plato's argument for soul immortality. This scaffolding further informs the Platonic doctrine that education is reminding the embodied soul of what it already knows; education as recollection. In that case, knowledge is a priori and the seventeen-century Rationalists were correct. Marc Cohen provides a thorough analysis of Plato's argument in the Phaedo and its context in the history of ideas.

Plato's doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a direct influence on the Christian doctrine of eternal punishment. Because souls are immortal, punishment must be analagous. But if souls are not immortal, then eternal punishment is not a dogmatic necessity.

The knowledge of the ideal forms is reworked in Christian theology from a knowledge obtained in some pre-bodied state of unmediated contemplation to a product of logos which, through creation, is available in the imago of every human being. The logos is the source of all ideal knowledge, which humans reflect imperfectly by means of participation in the imago Dei.

Noodling around in 1 John 1

In preparation for teaching basic Greek in January, I am working through 1 John chapter 1 and saw a few things. A friend encouraged me to write them down. Beginning, then, at the beginning--

1 John 1.1

"That which was from the beginning.
That which we have heard;
That which we have seen with our eyes;
That which we marveled at
and we handled with our hands
-- concerning the word (logos) of life:"

 ὃ  ἦν         ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς,

 ὃ  ἀκηκόαμεν,

 ὃ  ἑωράκαμεν  τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν,

 ὃ  ἐθεασάμεθα

     καὶ

[ὃ] αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν

περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς--

I made a rough translation of verse one and laid the Greek out in order to highlight the structure. Pronoun and verbs build in a series, stairstepping one to the next, trumpet blasts announcing their object: the word of life. The parallels between this and Genesis 1.1-3 in the LXX are hard to miss, beginning at the beginning itself--

1 John	Parallel
ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς	᾿Εν ἀρχῇ (LXX)
"we heard" (ἀκηκόαμεν)	Genesis's "God said" (καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός)
we see with our eyes (ἑωράκαμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν)	God said "let there be light" (Γενηθήτω φῶς)
"we marveled at" ἐθεασάμεθα	Job 38:7
τοῦ λόγου	the wisdom which orders creation in Prov 6
τῆς ζωῆς	Genesis 3:20 LXX: καὶ ἐκάλεσεν Αδαμ τὸ ὄνομα τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ Ζωή, ὅτι αὕτη μήτηρ πάντων τῶν ζώντων.

Couple of thoughts on these parallels. On the Job 38 reference, I suspect that the creation side alludes to the sons of God, the heavenly council, rejoicing at creation. Now, however, 1 John includes a we, meaning the church. As for logos, John's Gospel equates the word, logos, with the wisdom or reason which gives order to creation in Proverbs 6. Stoic philosophers and gnostic mystics of the first century would agree. But 1 John blows it up. We "handled with our hands" is a body blow. Until then, the entire progression of 1 John's opening prologue is a kind of mystical contemplation on creation. But, instead of arriving at gnosis, "we handled with our hands" takes a baseball bat to the face--very hard, very painful, definitely solid.

Moving on: the verb "we marveled" (ἐθεασάμεθα) occurs in structural progression with the verbs before it. But it has something they do not. It is joined with the conjunction "and" to the verb "we handled" (ἐψηλάφησαν). As above, Job's elohim, the sons of God, the heavenly council rejoiced at creation. But we who marvel with them go one better. We handle it with our hands. The allusion to the incarnation is inescapable.

Finally, it would be erroneous to miss the name of Eve here, Zoe (Ζωή) in the LXX. Eve, of course, wanted wisdom but on human initiative. Now the τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς, the wisdom of Eve, has come, but this time at the initiative of the Creator. There is an entire theology, almost a mystagogy, that wants to spill out here. And, somewhere, I hope someone has done work on the New Testament's literary rehabilitation of Eve. I suspect something profoundly eschatological is going on here. Perhaps it is my protestantism bumping up against Mariology. I have nothing to say about this more than to point it out. And also to say that the narrative is holding its Adam very close to the chest and will do so until verse three.

1 John 1.2

The parallels between creation's development in Genesis 1 and the verbal series of 1 John 1 makes verse 2 a puzzle. It doesn't follow the parallel. "This life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us." I wish it followed Genesis on into the days of creation, but it does not. I'm not sure what it does. So, here is a guess. The following verse almost picks up where verse one left off. It uses the same verbs--we have seen" "we have heard." So, perhaps 1 John 1.2 is a sort of confession sandwiched between verses 1 and 3. In Genesis, God parts things: light from dark, the waters above from the waters below. Perhaps verse 2 exists in a space made by the parting of verses 1 and 3. Verse two deserves a closer look.

Verse 2 displays a beautiful layout of verb tenses. It says "The life was revealed (the past tense verb is passive) AND we have seen it (perfect tense: something happened, the affect of which is influencing the writer) AND we are bearing witness (now present tense and ongoing) AND we are announcing (again, present tense and ongoing) it to you all."

1 John 1.3

Well, that is just the way it works, right? God reveals himself, we see it, own it for ourselves, and announce it. Perhaps this evangelism does occur in a kind of parting, like a new day of creation is being hollowed out now for it to happen.

New thing I'm noticing in 1 John: the fundamental nature of communal belonging (koinonia). "We write this so that you will have koinonia with us / our community is with the Father and the Son [the eternal divine community] . . . anyone who habitually sins is not in community with us."

This picks up, of course, on the sweep of scripture: God makes the world in order to be in community w human beings and to enjoy a community of priests mediating his wise rule to our world of things.

1 John 1.5

The parallels between it and Genesis 1 keep going. Life comes before light. The reader is a few verses in before light is mentioned (though "seeing" is in verse 1), but life is in verse 1. Note also the emphasis placed on verbs of speech: we confess, we announce, we say, we claim to. In Genesis, God speaks. Here, the emphasis is on our speaking.

Imagine how this places preaching at the bow of the new creation: the proclamation of the word is analogous to God's Genesis-speech. The fellowship made by preaching is analogous to the human family made by God. And now I have this weird thought going on: if preaching is the analog to God's speaking in Genesis, creating the context for the new community, is baptism the victory over death and the sacraments the offering up in thanks of the fruit of the promised land?

Finally, there are a number of if/then (conditional) statements in this first chapter. I want to dig into them. And I also want to count them to see if these verbs of speaking might not mirror in some way the spoken days of creation.

Integrating Davies and Weinberger

I found two interviews on Salon today that really got my brain going. Unfortunately, I can only post the chunks that inspired me. Over time I'll whittle them away so I'm not participating in copyright infringement and begin to add my own thoughts. Anyway, here are the two interviews:

Steve Paulson “We are Meant to Be Here” Salon July 3, 2007. Interview with physicist Paul Davies.

There are some obvious questions about the big bang. Can we really talk about it coming out of nothing? Don't we have to ask, wasn't there something that caused the big bang?

Many people fall into that trap. But Augustine, in the fifth century, pointed out that the world was made with time, not in time. I think he got this exactly right. Of course, most people think that there must have been a previous event that caused whatever event we're talking about. But this is simply not the case. We now know that time itself is part of the physical universe. And when we talk about the big bang in a simplified model, then we're talking about not only matter and energy coming into being, but space and time as well. So there was no time before the big bang. The big bang was the origin of time.

People want to ask, what happened before the big bang, or what caused the big bang? But in a simple picture where there's just one universe, the big bang can be the ultimate origin of space and time as well as matter and energy. So unless the universe has always existed, you're faced with the problem that time itself comes into existence. And any attempt to talk about causation has to be couched in terms of something that comes after the beginning and not before the beginning ... because there was no before.

There are some obvious religious implications to all of this. My sense is that a lot of Jews and Christians are actually quite delighted with the big bang -- the idea that the universe was created out of nothing. It seems to correspond to the story of creation in Genesis.

I think there's a misunderstanding by religious people if they think that creation ex nihilo is anything like the big bang. People misunderstand what creation ex nihilo is about. It's not that there existed a God within time who was there for all eternity and then at some particular moment, on a whim, decided, "I'm going to make a universe" and then pressed a button that made the big bang. That raises exactly the objection that Augustine was addressing: What was God doing before making the universe? If the universe was a good idea, why wasn't it made an infinite time ago?

I might also say that it's always a bad idea for people to decide what to believe on religious grounds and then to cherry-pick the scientific facts to fit, because these facts are likely to change. And we may find that the big-bang theory goes out of favor at some point in the future. And then what? Religious people will have backed the wrong horse. So it's fraught with danger to seize on these cosmological ideas. But I personally think we can draw the conclusion that we live in a universe that's deeply imbued with meaning and purpose.

You want to stay away from God.

I want to stay away from a pre-existing cosmic magician who is there within time, for all eternity, and then brings the universe into being as part of a preconceived plan. I think that's just a naive, silly idea that doesn't fit the leanings of most theologians these days and doesn't fit the scientific facts. I don't want that. That's a horrible idea. But I see no reason why there can't be a teleological component in the evolution of the universe, which includes things like meaning and purpose. So instead of appealing to something outside the universe -- a completely unexplained being -- I'm talking about something that emerges within the universe. It's a more natural view. We're trying to construct a picture of the universe which is based thoroughly on science but where there is still room for something like meaning and purpose. So people can see their own individual lives as part of a grand cosmic scheme that has some meaning to it. We're not just, as Steven Weinberg would say, pointless accidents in a universe that has no meaning or purpose. I think we can do better than that.

Do you think one reason the multiverse theory has become so popular in recent years is to keep the whole idea of God at bay?

Yes.

Because a lot of physicists seem to be at a loss for how to explain this cosmic fine-tuning. But with the multiverse, you can say there are an infinite number of universes and we just happen to be lucky to live in one that supports life.

There's no doubt that the popularity of the multiverse is due to the fact that it superficially gives a ready explanation for why the universe is bio-friendly. Twenty years ago, people didn't want to talk about this fine-tuning because they were embarrassed. It looked like the hand of a creator. Then along came the possibility of a multiverse, and suddenly they're happy to talk about it because it looks like there's a ready explanation. Only those universes in which there can be life get observed, and all the rest go unobserved. Notice, however, that it's far from a complete explanation of existence. You still have to make a huge number of assumptions. You need a universe-generating mechanism to give you all these universes. You need a set of laws that can be scattered across these universes, distributed in some way, according to some algorithm. You're no better off than saying there is an unexplained God.

Even the scientific explanations for the universe are rooted in a particular type of theological thinking. They're trying to explain the world by appealing to something outside of it. And I think the time has come to move beyond that. We can -- if we try hard enough -- come up with a complete explanation of existence from within the universe, without appealing to something mystical or magical lying beyond it. I think the scientists who are anti-God but appeal to unexplained sets of laws or an unexplained multiverse are just as much at fault as a naive theist who says there's a mysterious, unexplained God.

You say in your book that there's another explanation for how the universe is structured. You suggest we may actually live in a fake universe. We could be part of an "ingeniously contrived virtual reality show," as in the "Matrix" movies. Do you really think that's a possibility?

Clearly, it's a logical possibility that this entire universe could be a simulation, if we imagine that in a hundred or a thousand years we'd be able to make computers that are sufficiently powerful to simulate consciousness. You need only to believe that consciousness is ultimately a physical process, which in principle we can mimic. Then we clearly have the possibility of building a machine and feeding in electrical impulses to produce this or that sensation. So this raises the obvious question, is there a real world out there? And how do I know that it's not all a gigantic virtual reality show, with my own mental experiences being created by some super-duper computer, so that I'm just living inside this machine? Now, there are a number of philosophers who are enamored of this idea. How would we know from within the simulation that it is a simulation and not the reality? If it's a good simulation, we couldn't know. So we must be open to the possibility that this whole world is in fact a gigantic simulation.

Near the end of "The Cosmic Jackpot," you say that all these explanations about the universe are probably wrong, and "Perhaps we have reached a fundamental impasse dictated by the limits of the human intellect." Do you think future scientists will ever resolve these questions?

If future scientists are human beings, they may be stuck with the same problems that we have. The way we think, the way we like to analyze problems, the categories that we define -- like cause and effect, space-time and matter, meaning and purpose -- are really human categories that cannot be separated from our evolutionary heritage. We have to face up to the fact that there may be fundamental limitations just from the way our brains have been put together. So we could have reached our own human limits.

Scott Rosenberg, “Delight in disorder” Salon May 23, 2007. Interview with David Weinberger, author of Everything is Miscellaneous.

You've described your book as an "argument with Aristotle." Here you are, it's a book about "the new digital disorder," and we're arguing with the ancients. How did that happen?

Our culture's been arguing with him for a long time. The argument is, whether there is a right order of the universe -- one right order. Aristotle didn't come up with the idea, but he was the person who articulated it so forcefully that for 2,000 years he was simply believed. This is an order in which everything has a place, and to know what something is is to know that place, and in knowing it you're seeing what makes it what it is. That's why it can't be in two places on the chart, on the diagram -- because then it's two things, and that's chaos.

You also need to know within a category, things are different from the other things in that category -- this is the genus/species idea. It's a deep and fascinating notion -- that to be something is to both be like something else and be unlike it. And it works really well -- it allows you to construct a universe. And it allows you to keep some things implicit. We know this is a bird without also having to think, oh, bird, that's a type of animal, oh, and animal therefore is a type of thing, and things all have these properties. That's one of the mysteries of knowing -- that we don't know everything simultaneously all the time.

So we have this definition, and it's clear and it's precise. The entire system is beautiful and balanced and harmonious. And this is the vision that we carried with us for a long, long time. But we've been shaking it off for generations now -- it's not like, the Web came along and suddenly we were free of Aristotle.

Multiculturalism, relativism, postmodernism -- all these things are disputing the notion of a single order. The Web just slaps us in the face with the fact that there's lots and lots of ways of slicing up the world.

But how we slice it up, how we cluster it, how things connect, depends on what we're trying to do. It's an amazing tool for consciousness to have, to be able to see the world according to the relevant attributes based upon a project -- that's what lets us survive, and do more. But that places the clustering of the universe, to some large degree, on our interests and our cares. Which is, from the Aristotelian point of view, to put it in the realm of whim and madness.

This is also why it seems to me so important that we're doing this socially. One of the mistakes that we've made in our history is to think that if there isn't a single order that's right, then it's up to every person to make it up for herself. And that's what we call madness.


Paul Davies; Steve Paulson; David Weinberger; Scott Rosenberg; cosmology; creation; Augustine; the Big Bang; Aristotle; ontology; taxonomy; the Great Chain of Being; networks; duality; mind/body problem; science; Genesis.