Christian conceptions will need change.
Certainly, this need will not arise from any change in God. Consistent with Christianity’s most basic tenets, we can anticipate that God will continue on just as is.
Why then this bold statement? Why the need for change?
Christian conceptions will need change because humanity changes.
God – to the degree and manner such a deity exists, and not withstanding God’s creation and incursions into our actuality – God exists fundamentally as a transcendental existence, “residing” outside our time and space. God thus lies beyond our full comprehension and understanding, i.e. humanity can not conceive God completely.
Rather, we understand God only within the boundaries of existing thought, experience and knowledge. Given that humanity constantly seeks to, and does, broaden and deepen those boundaries, that broadening and deepening creates a necessity to alter, and also offers an opportunity to improve, our conception of God and religion.
Past Evolution of God and Religious Conceptions
I have set a high bar, i.e. demonstrating what expansions of human understanding challenge Christian conceptions. But first let’s look backward. Change in religious conceptions would not be ground-breaking; multiple and significant changes in religious conceptions have occurred in the past.
Polytheism to Monotheism – In antiquity, polytheism served as a mainstream, if not the mainstream, religious belief structure. The great cultures of Samaria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, among others, all developed extensive, and intricate, theistic systems of multiple gods, with each god exhibiting defined and differing powers and attributes, and reflecting different human or natural characteristics. These belief systems drove daily rituals, communal services and civic construction, among other activities, and became central components of the culture.
Today, in Western and Near East cultures, monotheism has clearly displaced those ancient belief systems. The prophecy, life and teachings of Abraham, Jesus and Mohammad have spawned the dominant, and monotheistic, religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Certainly the conception of the single God differs across these three (for example in the status of Christ, and in what texts represent revelations from God), but these religions represent clear and distinct breaks from former polytheism.
Separation of Governance from Religion – From the dawn of religious belief, up through the Middle Ages, the kings, emperors and pharaohs of many and various countries in the Mediterranean and Europe possessed God-privileged status. Such leaders stood as a god themselves, or held power by grant of a god, or could become a god upon death, or received guidance from a god, or otherwise held a special status in the eyes of a god.
That linkage, between a god and a ruler, has by and large been replaced. Many, if not most, modern nation states in the West provide for distinct separation of Church and state, as a founding constitutional principle. Even where a nation maintains a state religion, political power in most cases resides with secular forces, be that the vote of the people, or power of the army, or will of an autocratic leader, or the economic interest of the wealthy, or other worldly origin.
Decline of Direct Animal Sacrifice – Whether an adoption from pagan practices, or a ritual prescribed by revelation, or a symbolic substitution for human cleansing, animal sacrifice arose as a common and central religious and cultural practice in the ancient world. Religious services and communal meals involved, when and as dictated by custom or prescription, specific procedures for killing, offering and consuming sacrificial animals.
These practices evolved. Judaism, in part from the loss of the great temple, shifted toward services based more on religious texts and readings, de-emphasizing actual animal sacrifice. In Christianity, the Eucharist, instituted by Christ, replaced animal sacrifice, since in Christ’s own teaching the Eucharist provided a better, actually a perfect, forgiveness and unity with God. These religious developments, plus the cultural decline of the great empires of Greece, Rome and Egypt, and the rise of science and modern economies after the Middle Ages, largely removed the role and motivation for animal sacrifice.
The Institutionalization of the Early Christian Church – Of necessity, and under believed divine guidance, the early Church, as it evolved in the first centuries after Christ, made critical decisions, changes and adjustments. Different writings, epistles and gospels appeared, and the early leaders included some in the Bible, and excluded others. Different variations of belief grew among different early communities, and early leaders declared some true dogma, and others heresy. Jewish and Gentile customs did not always match, and early leaders adjudicated what could remain and what needed to change.
Many early believers expected the second coming of Christ to be in their lifetime, or at least soon. That expectation did not materialize. The early leaders, include St. Paul himself, thus created and refined teachings on such items as whether a person needed to be alive at the time of the second coming, and the status of those needing repentance prior to the second coming.
So early Christian conceptions underwent evolution and consolidation, as the Church grew from an informal collection of communities to a unified, strong religious institution.
Future Developments
I offer that six current and future developments in human capabilities and understandings have and will challenge main Christian and religious conceptions. Challenge need not be considered detrimental. Religion centers on belief in the spiritual, but also on the journey to gain a deeper belief. A journey can make great progress not only in moving forward smoothly but also as it resolves and overcomes the questions and challenges it encounters.
Now let’s look at three of the developments of interest.
The Emergence of Consciousness in Computers – Consciousness stands as a central characteristic and capability that enables mankind an awareness of a God, and elevates mankind above other life, as worthy of salvation by God.
What if a computer, or robot, or some variant of man-made machine, gained consciousness? What would be the religious status of such a conscious device? Would a conscious robot have a soul? Would it be a creature of God? Could it be saved after death? .
Some may reply with surety that such a device would lack any religious standing, much less a soul. Only a human can possess a soul.
The question then arises as to what characteristic of biological mankind distinguishes us, in the eyes of a supreme deity, from the conscious mechanical device.
Would some reply because mankind possesses a soul? That would be circular, i.e. the reason a conscious machine would not possess a soul lies in that it does not possess a soul. Would some reply because God made man? That contains some validity, but God didn’t make mankind directly, but rather made an environment in which man evolved. When did mankind become human enough to possess a soul? What makes a conscious robot not human enough to not deserve a soul?
I thus offer that the emergence of a conscious device would pose significant questions about the nature and uniqueness of the spiritual dimension of humans.
But one might counter that conscious mechanical devices will prove impossible, because consciousness itself, like a soul, possesses properties not reproducible.
That conclusion stands open to challenge. Across recent history, humanity has mastered many complex, at one time unintelligible, natural phenomenon. The theory of vitalism once held life itself had impenetrable properties, but we now understand life and cure disease through microbiology and biochemistry. We once held that ancient gods controlled weather, but we now predict (reasonably) weather with meteorology. The cosmos once consisted of mysterious spheres, but we now chart and comprehend the cosmos via great instruments and astronomy. The atom once was impenetrable, but we now we shatter the atom (with very expensive machines) and harness the electron through physics and electronics.
And we have accomplished this mastery of diverse physical phenomena within less than five centuries. Assuming humanity continues to exist, could we not reasonably project that within future decades, or centuries, mankind will master consciousness. While consciousness maintains a great mystery, consciousness seems no more or less of nature than say the brain, or flight, or vision. Just like multiple living organisms have varying degrees of those three items, and just like those items have changed and developed across evolutionary time, consciousness exists in varying degrees across living organisms, and has changed and developed across evolutionary time. Consciousness, despite its current mysteriousness, mimics in its appearance across species and development across time, other animal and human characteristics that we do understand.
The Detection of Other Intelligent Life – Christian religious doctrine largely stands silent on whether or not, across our galaxy, only mankind possess intelligence. Such silence should not perplex us; much of Christian religious revelation, scripture and doctrine arose well before mankind recognized other stars as similar to our sun, and before mankind had any inkling of the existence of other planets.
But astronomy has zoomed ahead. Through its efforts and instruments (for example the Kepler space telescope), we have collected an enormous range and depth of planetary observations and have analyzed and extrapolated from those observations. The conclusion? Our galaxy likely, very likely, possesses numerous, as in millions and billions, of Earth-like planets. Planets abound.
Does that indicate life has emerged on those planets? Would the emergence of life lead at times to intelligent life?
We lack sufficient data, as of yet, to answer with any level of confidence. However, based on what we do know, would the detection of life, even intelligent life, surprise us? Maybe in past decades, but based on the accumulating observations and deepening understanding we have now, astronomers today would likely not be.
So the question stands as relevant – what would the existence of other intelligence imply for religious teachings.
Did God create them? Do they (or did they) have religion? How do they or did they conceive God? Will we meet them upon salvation? Will they be part of the Second Coming? Given such life could have different revelations and beliefs, and different cultures and concepts, could detection of other intelligent life trigger significant disruptions of religious dogma?
Actually conversing with other intelligence, if such intelligence exists, may well stand as impossible, given the light-year distances involved and the light speed limitation on communication rates. But don’t dismiss, if other intelligent life exists, our ability to learn of their culture. Just like archeologists examine ancient artifacts to learn of past cultures, astronomers have and will exploit an array of techniques, for example spectra-analyzing light from distant atmospheres, to tease out the nature of life and possible intelligence on distant planets.
Human Generic Control – A decade ago, DNA analysis required enormous funding and unique and extensive equipment. The first human genome project spanned years and required millions of dollars.
Now, National Institute for Health data show that by 2013 the cost of basic genome mapping fell to under $10 thousand. In the same year, commercial websites offered sampling of a person’s DNA (for example for ancestry matching) for $99. These mapping advances now allow for genomic cancer testing, which analyzes the specific gene structure of an individual patient’s tumor to develop a customized drug therapy.
On this and many fronts genetic science has and will continue to advance, rapidly.
Can we look forward, not now, but in the coming decades and centuries, to mankind controlling its own fundamental genetic structure? Could mankind at some point use genetic techniques to improve its intelligence, or extend its life span, or integrate with electro-mechanical augments?
The generic code and underlying cellular mechanisms exhibit tremendous, mind-boggling complexity. We might never crack the code or understand the mechanisms. But advances have progressed rapidly enough that we might.
If mankind itself can in some future century create a nirvana-on-earth by extending life, what implications exist for the role of religious salvation? If genetic developments allow man to make future man, and to control his own evolution, does that fit God’s plan?
The Relevance of the Long-Term, plus Near-Term Challenges – These three developments – artificial consciousness, detection of other worldly intelligence, human genetic control – will emerge, if they do, over the relatively long-term, i.e. decades and centuries. Do they compel our attention now?
We must answer yes. These three developments have reached a threshold of sufficient plausibility that serious scientists and businesses now invest large sums of time, effort and money towards their achievement. So much so that we cannot dismiss them out-of-hand.
Further, regardless of any plausibility, these developments pose legitimate “what-if” questions. So, for example, given all that human ingenuity has conquered, we can conceive that consciousness may be possible for mechanical devices, and can have reasoned conversations about the implications.
But near-term, here-and-now, we have trends that challenge Christian conceptions. Let’s turn to those.
Near-Term Challenges
The Convergence of Religious and Scientific Truth – Science focuses ultimately on phenomenon which can be verified through observation. Religion focuses fundamentally on the spiritual which exists beyond our experience.
So in their archetypical forms science and religion cover different spheres, and can pursue their truths without conflict.
But science, with its continuous expansion and reach, now treads into foundational questions such as the creation of life, or the origin of the universe. And religion, in its tenets, believes that the transcendental, the God, has crossed into and intervened into actuality to create and manipulate our material world, to give rise to life and humanity, and to assist and save mankind on an ongoing and daily basis.
So while in pure concept science and religion cover different realms, in the details they overlap, and as theological and scientific thought advance, they will overlap more. And in that overlap, inconsistencies and contradictions have arisen. Let’s focus on two prominent questions: by what mechanism does God respond to prayer, and how do and did individuals perform miracles?
In both responding to prayer and in performing miracles, the spiritual must cross the threshold from the transcendental into the actual. Prayer requests include many and multiple appeals involving worldly action, e.g. healing, safe travel, healthy off-spring, successful rescue, clear thought, fair play. Miracles similarly include worldly actions, i.e. water-to-wine, restoral of sight, conquest of enemies, healing from leprosy, parting of the seas, food from heaven, and of course raising of the dead.
Now, science explores nature and actuality down to extremely minute dimensions, and in the other extreme gathers light from enormous distances across the universe. In doing so, science postulates theories and entities at the Plank dimensions, organizes the cosmos in light-year dimensions, and models cellular activities with thousands and thousands of genes, proteins and metabolites.
So science has dug down and around and out to enormous depths and lengths.
And yet science has not detected any phenomena speaking to or revealing how God influences and intervenes in our world. No mechanisms have been uncovered as to how the deity crosses over from the transcendental into the actual, to transmute water into wine, or to alter the processes inside cancer cells, or to instill revealed truths into the mind of a prophet or priest.
Nothing.
Now, God certainly operates in enigmatic and mysterious ways. But religion remains largely silent on why those ways remain so mysterious that no hint of them appears even under the intense observation of science. In prior eras believers could readily conceive of unknown forces, but today the observational sophistication of science renders that ability for God to operate in the gaps more confounding.
Maybe as advanced as science observation has become, that advancement still lacks the required depth to detect God. Maybe God will remain undetectable within human capabilities. Maybe, likely, science as an admittedly social undertaking simply has not interpreted its observations correctly, i.e. science observations could be reconceived as indications of a transcendental intervention.
Many maybes might exist. But as the record now stands, science has not detected, observed, uncovered or otherwise come upon any evidence or mechanism of God’s intervention into actuality. Religion can choose to remain silent, but the lack of evidence for how a transcendental deity pierces through into actuality will increasingly strain credibility.
Religion must, I would judge, posit an explanation. This is not to defend itself, but to stay true to its mission to uncover and represent truths.
The Convergence of Religious Truths – The religions of the world differ. That does not mean those religions stand in contradiction. When we ponder the spiritual, and the truth, and our existence, we ponder enormous things. The enormity of those realms clearly means different individuals and groups, peering into corners of those realms, develop different formulations and perspectives.
A common analogy states that the gnats perched on an elephant would all tell different descriptions of the elephant, depending on where they were situated.
But lack of a contradiction does not imply lack of an issue.
The gnats, in our elephant analogy, could change positions, talk with each other (let’s assume they can talk), and in other ways gain added perspective, so that over time each develops the same, consistent picture of an elephant. After all, they are examining the same elephant.
Most would hold that similarly one truth exists about religion and a deity. Consistent with that, religions, including Christianity, strive for ecumenical harmony and even possible unity, i.e. at a minimum to get along and ultimately to achieve a convergence of perspectives.
Predestination, Trinity, Christ as God – different religions and denominations hold different conceptions on these topics, and others. These topics serve as foundational items. Convergence of religious truth will involve hard work and exquisite (likely divine) guidance, but it is difficult to see how such convergence could occur without some modification or alteration in existing conceptions.
The Reasonableness of Modern Naturalism – A searching individual could reasonably accept a modern naturalistic viewpoint. Such a viewpoint would not actively reject God, but would rather posit that on balance human rationality, culture and technology provide a sufficient, even superior, basis for understanding existence, for guiding one’s life and for improving humanity. So God becomes unnecessary.
This individual would see that science has provided, and continues to provide, plausible explanations for natural and human phenomena. Technology has enabled creation of useful machines, and processes, and structures, and devices. Political institutions and governments, thought not without many missteps, over time have moved incrementally towards protection of freedom and peace. Laws and constitutions similarly, again not without many missteps, have gradually, incrementally, encoded moral principles and concepts of fairness and justice. Economic systems attempt, with some success, to provide for the needs of the population and for growth in general economic welfare.
In contrast, God, this individual might conclude, in some despair, seems missing. Few miracles occur, or seem to occur; new revelations appear to not be forthcoming; prayers from believers achieve results randomly; at a personal level, God’s presence seems uncertain, and if present, not easily discernable from normal emotions.
This individual would also see that naturalistic philosophy reasonably addresses great questions. What created existence? Science provides a hypothesis, not unreasonable, that time and space could emerge from a singularity, or that our universe was birthed from a prior universe. While speculative, the answers from science could be seen as no more or less plausible as those of religion. Religion answers that God created existence, but that tends to push back the question one level – in what manner did God arise, and does a God that created existence need to be the Gods of current religions?
Religion might point out that the historic record of great prophets speaks to the existence of a supreme deity. But religions differ on the status of prophets, including Christ. Believers might point to their inner experience of the spiritual. But could that inner experience be more succinctly understood as a psychological, and thus natural, state. Religion looks to the moral teachings as critical. But ethical theories can be developed without reference to a God. And it something moral because God decreed it, or does God decree what is moral?
Believers might ask where is meaning without a deity. But no a prior reason exists that declares actuality and existence must contain intrinsic meaning. One can hypothesize that nature and life just are.
So the individual does not include God in their world view. Such an individual does not start out rejecting God, or having any particular bias either way. Rather, such a thinking individual simply seeks an effective, consistent and robust paradigm. And in that search, religion might not become part of that paradigm. A conscientious, searching individual could reasonably conclude a secular, naturalistic perspective provides a better, more compact basis for living.
And that poses a challenge to religion. What do they say to the individual to persuade him or her to adopt a religious viewpoint? Try harder? Pray? You lack faith? The conscientious individual would respond they did all that, and in the end adopted a secular outlook. The individual sought truth.
Added Questions
The six developments pose significant challenges. Can non-human entities possess a soul? If man controls his genes does mankind become his own salvation? How does the transcendental influence the actual? Why does science not reveal God’s mechanisms? What conceptions must change to reconcile religions? How can a conscientious individual find a secular explanation of actuality more compelling and parsimonious?
Other challenges also emerge as corollaries to these questions.
Bodily Resurrection – Christians, among other religions, believe in the resurrection of the body at the final judgment. As generally conceived, this belief foresees the rising of human figures replicating, most likely in a perfected form, the body of each individual during their life.
That resurrected bodies are so conceived, i.e., as human forms, should not surprise. Until the last century, and really until the last few decades, the human form stood as the only entity that humanity could imagine as possessing human consciousness and intelligence. Even in depicting the Transfiguration of Christ, artists drew basically a human form, just bathed in extraordinary light, or floating above the ground, or surrounded by angels, halos, lightning or similar.
That conceptual limitation has evaporated. As touched on earlier, we can conceive of intelligent life existing on other planets, as robots, or as genetically and/or electro-mechanically enhanced humans. We can conceive of our identities existing as virtual characters in a cyber-space. The movie Avatar depicts human consciousness and intelligence being transferred into a different bodily form.
Objections to these alternate conceptions arise. For example, one could site that the human body stands as a sacred and privilege repository of the soul. One could point out that fictional movie images hardly represent a credible source for theological discussion. One could look to revealed scripture as a basis for ruling out non-human forms for resurrection.
I judge, however, that the cat is out of the bag. While many objections might exist, these objections can not completely rule out that human-like intelligence and consciousness might, on some other world, or in some future robot, or in some altered human figure, reside within a form significantly different from the current human body. Astronomers calculate the existence billions and billions of planets; brain specialists work daily to integrate computers into the brain; robot technicians labor intricately to reproduce human attributes into mechanical machines.
So when we rise from the dead, will we come back in our human form? Why would we? Why not come back as an improved cyber-robot, or in a virtual environment?
Absurd, right? Maybe no more or less absurd than a conception that resurrection will involve recombination of individual atoms to reconstitute physical bodies. And in my close reading, a virtual resurrection does not involve gross inconsistencies with theology or scripture text. St. Paul, for example, indicates the body must die like a seed, and be reborn.
On the Last Day – Just as questions arise on how to conceive of resurrection, the six developments argue for broader conceptions of “the Last Day.”
Traditional discussions and images picture the Last Day as just that, an earth day of 24 hours, complete with cataclysm and destruction. But do we need to conceive of the Last Day in those terms.
Consider that we no longer consider days in Genesis earth days. Creation in Genesis now represents for many, most, an allegory. The essence remains, i.e. a Deity creating actuality out of love, but the details of the individual days are symbolic, not literal.
With the discovery of other planets, a “day” now becomes indeterminate. Different planets have different rotation periods. And at a galactic level, the Milky Way has a “day,” i.e. the period required for one rotation of the galaxy, of a couple hundred million earth years.
Within computers, we can set the “day” to any length desired. We can slow computer clock cycles so computer days equate to earth years, or speed them up to simulate millions of years of time in a few earth hours.
Now Christ himself employed the term “day,” giving weight to interpret the Last Day as an earth day. If Christ really meant “Last Decade” he could have said that. But then again the term “Last Day” represents not only a period of time, but finality. In New Testament times computers did not exist and the concept of alternate universes had not emerged (the concept of even our home universe hadn’t emerged). So if the Last Day involves, hypothetically, our future virtual computer selves combining with our souls from an alternate universe, Christ couldn’t say so in those terms.
Now this hypothetical example may (or may not) lack validity, but certainly the actual last day could be an event for which humanity has no current concept. So Christ described it in terms understandable in that era. So the biblical use of the term day does not assure that the term represents a literal description.
Prospective Conception
The discussion so far presented developments and issues that one could argue challenge Christian concepts. But so far the discussion has only hinted at what such revised concepts would be.
So what would be examples of revised conceptions? Certainly in a discussion like this a case-in-point would prove helpful, and even expected.
Now, rather than consider multiple, individual examples, I would like to offer one larger example. So let’s consider a meta-concept, i.e. an over-arching paradigm that influences individual ideas. This meta-concept considers the basic “location” of the spiritual.
To set the stage, religious discussion implicitly regards the spiritual as existing “out there,” different from our actuality, separated from our physical time and space. God, and angels, and heaven, and souls, dwell in a distinct realm, unreachable with normal human means, transcendental. The soul exists in the body, but consists not of atoms, or energy, or space.
But maybe that notion of a division between physical and spiritual is misguided. Maybe everything is one. A revised meta-concept would state that no boundary exists to the spiritual; that the transcendental exists not as an unreachable realm.
What does that imply? That implies that God, the spiritual, the transcendental, that realm beyond time and space, do not lie beyond a separation. That which is beyond mankind’s experience lies there only because humanity has not yet the ability to get there. But in truth no inherent barrier prevents us from so doing. Mankind in future eons, if of proper motivation, faith and determination, can expand the actuality he knows and reach the spiritual not through a sudden, miraculous leap through a mystical barrier, but through a constant, focused expansion of human intellect, thought and development.
Basically, God will not suddenly come to us on a singular last day; rather we will come to God gradually over millennium upon millennium.
An analogy would be useful. A common view would picture the physical and spiritual as two rooms, each with their own room, with a door between them. Mankind can not open the door through secular means; rather God and faith are the keepers of the door. On the last day, God opens the door, and rewards the faithful with entrance to the spiritual room.
A revised view would picture man and God not in two separated rooms, but rather on a continuous sphere, with no boundaries. Man currently exists on a small portion of the sphere, and can not see where the deity lies simply because the deity resides on the polar opposite of the sphere. However, over time, man could expand his reach, and arrive at the other side. But reaching the other side is not assured; mankind needs proper action or will just wander around in circles. Reaching the other side becomes not so much a reward from God, but the result of man’s proper actions.
Why is this a meta-concept? The basic relationship of the spiritual and the actual set the framework for other concepts. Our concepts of grace, souls, salvation, miracles, faith, operate and exist as subsidiaries within that framework, so different frameworks alter the range of consistent concepts we can have about these subsidiary items.
Journey in Faith
This expose has covered questions and challenges to religious conceptions posed by current and emerging developments. It does not aim not to undermine religion, or dissuade individual from their convictions. Rather just the opposite is true. As noted before, faith involves not only a belief, but a journey towards a wider and deeper belief. As humanity and cultural advances, and as mankind gains in physical and intellectual mastery, new perspectives and concepts arise. These provide avenues for advancing a journey towards truth and belief.
God and Truth reside our there, for our discovery. We can not get there standing still, but only by facing and surmounting challenges.
