The Divine Universe

Neurologists, molecular biologists and others in the field can tell us a lot about the electrical, molecular and chemical processes that take place when we think or feel with our senses, but such information seems remote from our subjective experience of consciousness. There is a huge gap between objective, scientific knowledge and our experience. Feeling and consciousness are not confined to human experience; other animals and even insects have sensory organs and brains, and they too have feelings and thoughts.

Where does it stop? Some philosophical scientists today believe it doesn’t stop. They believe that what we call mind, as distinct from brain, is an inherent element of the universe. Conscious animals and insects are not a freak phenomenon, strictly localised on a very rare type of planet; they are a natural outcome of an evolutionary process that began some 13.8 billion years ago in a universe in which consciousness, mind and feeling are of its nature. It is interesting that the most basic assumption upon which science is based is that nature is rational.

The one who brought the idea that matter is mental to life, early in the last century, was the famous philosopher, mathematician and physicist, Alfred North Whitehead. Charles Birch, is a more recent pioneer in this branch of thinking. He was recently interviewed on the ABC program Encounter. He believes that everything feels, even quarks. Quarks are related by the strong nuclear force to other quarks. They relate together organically in threes. Neutrons, protons and electrons also have an organic relationship, “feeling” each other through the electro-weak nuclear force. In the macro world, gravity is a “messenger” between all material objects. The stars and galaxies “feel” the gravitational pull of each other and move in an elegantly rational manner in response.

Of course, Birch is not saying that atoms have brains, but he is saying that they have a “feeling” for other atoms and a complex rational way of relating to each other. That is what chemistry is about. Brains are a rarity in the cosmos, but mind is universal.

Whitehead’s view is anathema among conservative scientists, notably among biologists, who tend to be very mechanistic in their thinking. They hold that the appearance of mind – a non-material element – in matter requires some kind of change in nature. In other words, mind is an extra, added to the universe in the last split second of the cosmic ‘day’. Geneticist, Dobjansky even refers to it as a miracle. This notion appeals to religious people, of course. But if you believe that no intervention was needed: that God gave birth to the universe already equipped to produce intelligent and sensitive creatures, you can still be just as religious.

Paradoxically, the ‘miracle’ theory is held by people who believe in a mechanical universe with no place at all for God. Personally, I don’t believe in an interventionist God; I believe in an indwelling God who works within nature, not outside it. I also believe that God is both physical (incarnate) and spiritual (mental). One doesn’t need religion to believe in an intelligent universe, but religion is no impediment to such a belief either. You don’t have to believe that nature began in a faulty state and had to be fixed up by God as time went by. It makes perfectly good sense to believe that the Big Bang singularity emerged with the potential and everything needed to evolve to what it is now, and to continue to evolve to a fuller state of consciousness and perfection for incalculable billions of years in the future.

A few decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul began to think of Christ in a metaphysical way. To the Colossians he wrote that he was “the image of the invisible God . . . for in him all things in heaven and earth were created.” (1:15,16) Everything, the universe, is in Christ, and we now know that that is a living process, not just a past event.

Some decades later, John moves from metaphysics into theology by saying that Christ is the “Word” of God. “Word” renders the Greek word Logos. In both the New Testament and the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) the word logos has a bafflingly rich and varied meaning in different places. As John uses it is seems to mean the mind or thought of God. Like Paul, John declares that, in and through the Word, everything comes into being. Once again, Christ is a cosmic being, the embodiment of the mind of God in the totality of all things, the whole of existence.

The universe then, the cosmic Christ, is not just thoughtful; it is the embodiment or incarnation of divine thought. To avoid any suspicion of pantheism I must point out the distinction between the thought and the thinker. God is the Thinker, both physical and spiritual, and not to be thought of as just the thought or just the embodiment of the thought. And the Whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

In Christ we see with unique clarity how God is thinking, but for all its clarity it is a profound mystery. In the universe there is constant death and rebirth going on; there is violence and destruction and nurture and creativity. The universe, it has been said, is in the process of becoming what it truly is. The abiding mystery is why God should go to so much trouble in space-time and physical process.

I think we have to say that God is not a thing, a discrete entity; God is an eternal event, a life that expresses love. Love is also a profound mystery involving both ecstasy and agony. Saint Paul said to the Romans that the whole of creation is groaning in labour pains in bringing Christ to birth. But it is a labour of love.

So the universe is not only thoughtful; it thinks loving thoughts, facing very real problems in the search for perfection. But, as a Christian optimist, I believe in the ultimate wisdom of the universe because I believe in the wisdom of God. Though it may not seem that way to us because we are not all that wise, cosmic evolution is a wisely guided process,