Dear Sidney,
Thank you for your comment on my article in one of the threads. I was struck by your use of the term ‘sacred architecture’, and am going to pick up on that concept and use it to give a brief summary of the argument that I make in the essay (but coming at it from another angle).
From early times humans have perceived the sacred in the world around them, and felt that this quality extended to them, too. That is why their deities, often personifying natural forces, were usually in human form, and why, later, they could readily accept some humans as gods.
This changed with the spread of the monotheistic religions, once their priestly establishments raised the "one true God" to such an elevation that He was no longer of this world. This sucked the sacred out of the world, leaving them, as God’s representatives, to dole out bits of it in their rituals and dogmas. Also, with humans now bereft of the sacred, both in their world and in themselves, it was easy to make them direct their attention solely to the sacred in the afterlife, to achieve which required them to assiduously follow the prescriptions of the faith and its guardians.
As scientific enquiry and rational philosophy increasingly weakened the hold of religion, the newly freed still found themselves in a world that was devoid of the sacred. Thus, today, while the best of modern knowledge and thought can accept that there is an architecture to the universe, it sees no evidence for anything sacred in it. For many people, such a world is a cold and empty place in which to pursue an existence that has lost so many of the old certainties and purposes.
However, it is possible, without going beyond the constraints imposed by science and reason (which preclude belief in the interventionist God of religion), to understand this architecture of the universe in a way that can imbue it, and all that is in it, including ourselves, with the sacred. This line of thought, pursued further, can lead us to derive the role of human beings within this sacred architecture, and to realize that it is to move forward the process that makes this world of ours sacred.
In earlier times, when limited knowledge did not provide a sound basis for rational speculation, the human mind had recourse to mystical intuition to solve the conundrum of human existence and its purpose. The best of these intuitions founded the great religions, but they were buried and lost beneath the elaborate religious superstructures that humans later raised over these original truths. It is only in the case of the latest of these religions ‒ Islam ‒ that we still have preserved (in the Qur’an) the founding inspiration in its original form.
Studying the Qur’an (as it should be studied: on its own terms, and not through the views of others), one finds that it gives us almost exactly the same answer that can be derived from logically extending the findings of our empirical sciences. It, too, speaks of the sacred architecture of the universe, and calls upon human beings to fulfil the role that our sacred status imposes upon us. (It also claims that the essentials of its message are the same as those of the earlier inspired visions that founded the other great religions).
Acknowledging and accepting this sacred architecture of the universe is to acknowledge and accept our place and our role in a universe that did not come into being by happenstance, but through the purposeful unfolding of a measured intent. A cosmos with a thrust and direction which finally brought us into being in one of its far corners through a long evolution from inanimate matter into beings capable of unmatched thought, feeling and action. Our role (which the Qur’an calls the Trust) is to accept responsibility for ourselves and our world, to preserve and nurture all that is good within it, to work and struggle to make it into one of peace and plenty, beauty and harmony, freedom and justice.
No longer, then, need we feel we stand on a flimsy perch looking out at the empty, meaningless darkness of unending space. Instead, from this azure orb, what we see unfolding before and around us is the majestic handiwork of the Creator, a progression of which we are a part and in which we have a role to play.
Regards, FB.
If interested, Download Thinking About God.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110308.html
Posted by: Sidney O. Smith III | March 08, 2011 at 05:53 AM
Its a beautiful thing FB.
The estrangement from and mystification of Creation by theology is why I take my sermons from the crotch of my favourite tree, zingoed oiut of mine.
The purposeful measured intent raises my hackles as an antisocial child, er, as an alien subjectivity from the objective Creation. From your beautifully wrought "majestic handiwork of the Creator, a progression of which we are a part and in which we have a role to play.
Creation is Sacred not as handiwork of some other object or subject, but as Creation itself, participated in not as part and player, but as Creation. We are not removed from it, forced to seek. We are it. That's the unity, the beauty that is. That's what's in my pipe, pure Creation itself, not the blood of Jesus nor the wisdom of Allah. . . omg i'm channelling Charlie Sheen. . .
When from my tree, I defy time and the speed of light to . . . to be with the star that shines on my tree that night, following an individual photon track to its chemical origin so long ago, its exactly the same Creation, mind blowing, thrilling, confusing, but still physics, biochemistry, bit of electricity.
As far as I can tell, the Creator is the shadow in The Cave, look to Creation, be it. Sentience and education makes us aspire to beauty, justice, etc, well and good. I suspect the I-want-that-food-and-gamete-and-I'll-fight-you-for-it-justice, or concepts developed in sentients unknowable to us - what is Whale justice? - will outlast ours.
My soul, but not Creation as I know aspires to beauty and justice and peace. Look around, even at the the unpaved bits, Creation is beautiful, but it is nasty brutish and short all things considered, for most of us. Its not just, nor peaceful. Progress it turns out is a violent physical process.
Sidney, thanks for the link. I bought a big" computerized Celestron telescope for the cottage last year, needless to say, Saturn and Jupiter are the first stops after the Moon. Beautiful stark photo. Calls Rothko to mind.
Posted by: Charles I | March 08, 2011 at 05:57 PM