Resurrection: A New Dimension of Reality

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The Pope on the Resurrection

.... I have just finished Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, his new book which was published March 10, and I was quite favorably impressed with it.

On this Wednesday before Easter, let me share some of the Pope’s statements about the Resurrection, which I found very close to my own theological position (and also close to the position of the noted New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, whom he does not cite).

Near the beginning of “Jesus’ Resurrection from the Dead,” the ninth chapter, the Pope asserts, “The Christian faith stands or falls with the truth of the testimony that Christ is risen from the dead” (p. 241). And on the following page: “Only if Jesus is risen has anything really new occurred that changes the world and the situation of mankind.”

The Pope cites New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann on page 246. I write more (and more critically) about him in my book The Limits of Liberalism (see especially pp. 194-5). In his book The Resurrection of Christ (2004) Lüdemann dismisses the “vain resort of accepting the resurrection of Jesus as a historical fact” and then goes on to assert that “we can no longer be Christians even if we wanted to be, for Jesus did not rise from the dead” (p. 202).

In response to what he quoted Lüdemann as saying, Benedict writes, “Naturally there can be no contradiction of clear scientific data.” But, “The Resurrection accounts certainly speak of something outside our world of experience. They speak of something new, something unprecedented—a new dimension of reality that is revealed. . . . Does that contradict science?”

The Pope continues, “Can there not be something unexpected, something unimaginable, something new? If there really is a God, is he not able to create a new dimension of human existence, a new dimension of reality altogether?” (pp. 246-7).

In the last section of the ninth chapter, Benedict says that the resurrection is “a historical event that nevertheless bursts open the dimensions of history and transcends it” (p. 273). He also says that the Resurrection can be regarded “as something akin to a radical ‘evolutionary leap,’ in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence.

“Indeed, matter itself is remolded into a new type of reality. The man Jesus, complete with his body, now belongs totally to the sphere of the divine and eternal” (p. 274). So, the Resurrection “is not the same kind of historical event as the birth or crucifixion of Jesus. It is something new, a new type of event.

“Yet at the same time it must be understood that the Resurrection does not simply stand outside or above history” (p. 275). ....



Taken from:
http://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com/2011/04/pope-on-resurrection.html

Esoterism and Cosmology: From Ptolemy to Dante and Cusanus

 

By Wolfgang Smith

There are doctrinal conflicts which can only be resolved on an esoteric plane. In the present article I propose to reflect upon one such conflict: the antithesis, namely, between a geocentric and a heliocentric worldview. It happens, however, that there is more than one geocentrism, even as there are several distinct kinds of heliocentrism. It is necessary, therefore, to sort out these various conceptions, which pertain to different levels and must not be confounded: only then can we grasp the crux of the problem.

In the first place it is needful, once again, to distinguish between two very different ways of knowing: the way of cognitive sense perception, which takes us into the corporeal domain, and the modus operandi of physical science, which gives access to what I term the physical universe.[1]

This said, it becomes apparent that the primary geocentrism-the geocentrism which is natural to mankind-is based upon the first way of knowing: looking up at the sky, one actually perceives the stars and planets circling the Earth, while the Earth itself is experienced as central and immobile. In regard to the second way of knowing, one generally takes it for granted that science has come down unequivocally on the side of heliocentrism. It happens, however, that contemporary physics does allow a geocentric hypothesis: the notion, namely, that the Earth does not move, does not indeed orbit around the Sun; according to Einsteinian relativity, no experiment can possibly prove otherwise. Admittedly, this is not much of a geocentrism; but so far as the scientific way of knowing is concerned, it is the most that can be said: physical geocentrism, let us call it, to distinguish the latter from the primary kind. To be sure, there is also a physical heliocentrism, which affirms that it is likewise admissible to consider the Sun to be at rest and the Earth to orbit around the Sun. On the level of physical theory, thus, there is no conflict between the two positions, which is to say that both derive support from the principles of relativity. I have argued elsewhere that these principles, which appear to hold on the physical plane, are expressive of the fact that the notion of substance has no more place in fundamental physics: in a world in which only relations exist, I submit, Einsteinian relativity reigns supreme.[2]

It should be noted that there is evidently no heliocentrism based upon cognitive sense perception. Nonetheless, apart from what I have termed physical heliocentrism, there is a renowned heliocentrism championed by Galileo, which insists, supposedly on scientific grounds, that the Earth does move. One sees, however, that in claiming to have demonstrated the motion of the Earth, Galileo was in fact mistaken: his celebrated "Eppur Si Muove" remains to this day unproved. What 1 shall term Galilean heliocentrism turns out to be a bastard notion, a spurious hybrid, one can say, of the aforesaid two ways of knowing.

There is also, however, a third kind of heliocentrism, which might be termed traditional, iconic, and even perhaps esoteric; we will consider that heliocentrism in due course. But first it behooves us to reflect in some depth on the meaning and significance of the primary geocentrism.

I

t has been said that the geocentrist worldview is suited to the mentality of the so-called primitive man, someone who accepts the testimony of the senses uncritically and is supposedly incapable of scientific thought. One maintains, moreover, that human perception is inherently unreliable and subject to manifold illusions, which need to be rectified through scientific means. Even scientists admit, of course, that sense perception does indeed constitute our one and only

means of access to the external world; but one denies that it can per se bestow an authentic and accurate knowledge of things as they are. For that one needs to supplement the human faculties by scientific instruments, and avail oneself of the theories which underlie their use. The role of sense perception in the cognitive process is thus reduced ultimately to elementary acts, such as the reading of a pointer on a scale.

Oversimplified as this brief characterization of the scienceoriented epistemology may be, it does serve to identify the contemporary scientistic denigration of sense perception as a serious and respectable way of knowing. To the scientistic mentality the modus operandi of science appears as the sole legitimate means for the acquisition of authentic knowledge; as Bernand Russell once put it: "What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know." But of course this is far from being the case! We need to understand from the outset that cognitive sense perception can give access to domains of reality beyond the range of scientific inquiry, and that in our daily life it does in fact give access to an authentic world which physical science as such cannot know. We need to remind ourselves that cognitive perception is neither a physiological nor indeed a psychological act, but is consummated in the intellect, the highest faculty within the human compound. So high, in fact, is that faculty, that according to Platonist philosophers it transcends the categories of space and time. Cognitive sense perception, thus, even in its humblest quotidian manifestations, proves to be something quite miraculous, something literally "not of this world." Moreover, in view of the fact that it constitutes our normal God-given means of knowing the external world, its scientistic denigration, I say, is not only fallacious, but impious as well. What actually limits the truth and the depth of human perception are not our faculties as such, but the use we make of them; and one should add that in this regard a collective decline appears to have been in progress since earliest times. It seems likely, moreover, that the scientistic denigration has itself had a debilitating effect upon our capacity to perceive, and has in fact accelerated our collective descent from the pristine state, a state in which, according to sacred tradition, man had the ability to penetrate "the things that are made" so as to apprehend "the invisible things of God" which they exemplify. The evolution of the scientistic outlook constitutes thus a late phase in that age old descent which St. Paul has characterized as a "darkening of the heart." It is no doubt a fine line that separates true science from scientistic negation; yet we are told in no uncertain terms that those who cross that line are "without excuse." In words which appear to have lost none of their relevance, the Apostle describes the resultant condition of these perpetrators: "Professing themselves to be wise," he declares, "they became fools." (Rom. 1:20-22)

Having alluded to the collective decline which our powers of perception have suffered, it is to be noted that even in this diminished state we are yet able to behold a world that is truly sublime, and incomparably richer-and more real! than the universe disclosed by the methods of physical science. To be sure, the scientific way of knowing has its validity and its corresponding ontological domain, as does the way of perception; but the latter, one is obliged to say; is the greater of the two. For it is by way of cognitive perception that we can know not merely the quantitative and material components of being, but can ascend to a knowledge of essences, and even, Deo volente, to a perception of "the invisible things of God."

Getting back to the question of geocentrism, it is to be noted that the worldview at which one arrives through sense perception is perforce geocentric. Now, in light of the preceding reflections, this fact, so far from constituting some kind of stigma, bestows in itself a certain legitimacy and indeed a certain primacy upon the geocentric Weltanschauung. One can say of the latter that it constitutes the normal human outlook, which as such cannot be illegitimate or void of truth. What we learn by way of our senses is that the Earth we stand upon reposes at the center of the universe, and that the Sun, Moon, planets and stars revolve around the Earth. It is true - as we have been told often enough - that the geocentrist outlook is suited to the understanding of simple arid untutored minds; but it is equally true that this worldview is congenial to the understanding of sages and saints.

The traditional doctrine of geocentrism is based upon the conception of the Stellatum, the sphere of the stars, which rotates diurnally around the Earth. Between the Stellatum and the Earth there are the planets, the "wanderers," which differ visibly from the stars by the complexity of their apparent motions. What is of primary significance, however, is the underlying two-sphere architecture of the cosmos: the notion of an outermost sphere, comprised of stars, in perpetual revolution about the Earth, conceived as the innermost sphere. It is crucial to understand that the distinction between the two spheres, so far from being merely cosmographical, is primarily ontological, which is to say that the respective spheres represent two distinct ontologic domains, two worlds, if you will; and it is worth noting that to this day one speaks of "spheres" in a distinctly ontologic sense. It is likewise crucial to understand that the two worlds-the stellar and the terrestrial-define a hierarchic order: that the stellar world, namely, is "higher" than the terrestrial: and again I would point out that the adjectives "high" and "low" have to this day retained their hierarchic connotation. One sees thus that the two­-sphere conception of the cosmos defines a dimension of verticality which is at once cosmographic, ontologic, and axiological. The immensity of spatial distance separating our Earth from the stellar sphere becomes thus indicative of the stupendous hiatus, both ontologic and axiological, separating the two domains. To be sure, the stellar world is not to be identified with the spiritual, which is metacosmic and invisible to mortal gaze; but yet, as the highest cosmic sphere, the stellar world reflects the spiritual to a preeminent degree. According to ancient belief, there is an intimate connection between the stellar and the angelic realm, the realm of the so-called gods. The Earth, on the other hand, occupies the lowest position within the cosmic hierarchy, and this again is to be understood in a threefold sense.

These somewhat sparse indications may perhaps suffice to provide an initial glimpse of what geocentric cosmology is about. One sees that with his telescope and his polemics, Galileo had assaulted far more than a mere cosmography. It was not simply a question of whether the Earth does or does not move-whatever that might mean! Nor was it simply a question of whether the Galilean claim contradicts certain passages in Scripture, such as when the Good Book speaks of the Sun as "rising," or as "running its course." What stands at issue, clearly, is nothing less than an entire Weltanschauung. It is in fact the notion of cosmic hierarchy, of "verticality" in the traditional sense, that has come under attack. But let us note that this notion is intimately connected to the conception of spiritual ascent. One may object on the grounds that it is surely possible to "ascend" spiritually without flying up into the sky; but whereas the spiritual or metaphysical sense of verticality needs indeed to be distinguished from the cosmographic, it yet remains that the two are profoundly related. It is not mere imagination or pious poetry that Christ - ­and before Him, Enoch and Elias - "was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight." (Acts 1:9) The question remains, moreover, whether the two senses of verticality can in fact be separated on an existential plane, and whether the cosmographic sense may not indeed play a vital role in the spiritual life. One wonders whether an individual who thinks, a la Einstein, that "one coordinate system is as good as another," can in fact maintain a living belief in the possibility of spiritual ascent. What counts spiritually, as one knows, is what we believe with our entire being: inclusive, one is tempted to say, of the body itself, the corporeal component of our nature. Does not the First Commandment exhort us to love God "with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might"? There can be little doubt that the ternary heart-­soul-might corresponds to the Pauline pneuma psyche-soma, which is to say that we are enjoined to love God not only with our spiritual and mental faculties, but with our corporeal being as well. Moreover, in line with this basic principle, the Church has decreed that the literal or "corporeal" sense of Scripture must not be denied,[3] must not be simply jettisoned, as contemporary theologians are wont to do. Authentic Christianity has always rejected angelism in any of its manifestations; if man is indeed a trichotomous being, his religious convictions and discipline need to be in a sense trichotomous as well. Getting back to the basic concept of verticality, it follows, then, that the cosmographic sense cannot be cast aside with impunity; and I would add that history appears to bear this out. It is surely not accidental that in the wake of the Copernican Revolution religious faith has visibly waned. In the more educated strata of society, at least, belief in the teachings of Christianity, to the extent that it has survived at all, has become strangely hollow, and conspicuously lacking in the force of existential conviction. There are notable exceptions, to be sure, but the overall trend is unmistakable; in a very real sense, Western man has forfeited his spiritual orientation. Having suffered the loss of cosmographic verticality, he finds himself in a flattened-out universe in which the concerns of authentic religion make little sense. Let it not be said that religion or spirituality have no need of a cosmology: nothing could be further from the truth. As Oskar Milosz has wisely observed: "Unless a man's concept of the physical universe accords with reality, his spiritual life will be crippled at its roots": yes, it is happening before our very eyes! Getting back to Galileo and his famous trial, one cannot but commend the Church for rallying to the defense of a position which in truth is its own.

It is vital to understand that geocentric cosmology is inherently an iconic doctrine. It pertains thus to the traditional sciences as distinguished from the modern, which are concerned with the material and thus non-iconic aspects of cosmic reality. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr explains:

The modern sciences also know nature, but no longer as an icon. They are able to tell us about the size, weight and shape of the icon and even the composition of the various colors of paint used in painting it, but they can tell us nothing of its meaning in reference to a reality beyond itself.[4]

This is a very apt illustration, and a most enlightening one. A great deal of misunderstanding and confusion in the debate over geocentrism could have been avoided if the disputants on both sides had realized that the geocentrist claim is to be understood as an iconic truth, a truth which transcends the domain of the modern physical sciences. In reality geocentrism has to do with meaning, with cosmic symbolism, and thus with the mystery of essence. It is not a truth which can be defined, let alone demonstrated, on a positivistic plane.

Having characterized geocentrism as an iconic doctrine, it may be well to point out that what stands at issue is not a matter of symbolism in some psychological sense, but a matter, rather, of objective truth. Geocentrism is thus a scientific doctrine, one which pertains, as I have said before, to the province of the traditional sciences. As such it demands a certain ability to "see," to enter into a superior mode of vision, a mode that is able to discern the meaning of the icon as distinguished from mere "shapes and colors." The contemporary scientist, on the other hand, has been trained to fix his gaze precisely upon the outermost aspects of corporeal reality: is it any wonder that he misses the iconic sense? After considerable schooling one learns to reduce the icon to mere shape and color: reduce the universe, that is, to its material and quantitative components. And so it comes about that the true meaning of geocentrism generally escapes not only its scientific critics, but its contemporary scientific defenders as well.[5] The debate rages, more often than not, over the outer husk.

Not only the reality, however, but the very conception of science in the traditional sense, has been virtually lost in the modern West. Even theologians, who should know better, have for the most part not a clue: if they had, they would not have busied themselves with the task of "demythologizing" sacred texts. Why this blindness? It is not a question of erudition, or even perhaps of "faith" in the religious sense; what is needed is a traditional ambience, something which in the West has disappeared centuries ago. Nasr is no doubt profoundly right when he compares the traditional sciences to "jewels which glow in the presence of the light of a living sapiential tradition and become opaque once that light disappears."[6] We need to realize that this marvelous metaphor applies not only to various recondite disciplines, such as alchemy or astrology but likewise to geocentrism, the meaning of which everyone presumes to understand. Given that cosmic realities are connected to their exemplars by way of essence, it follows that a worldview in which essence has been lost is one in which no traditional science - be it geocentrism or any other­ - can find recognition. Such a science may of course survive in its outer forms, even as the shapes and colors of an icon remain visible when its meaning has been lost. Geocentrism, in particular, may survive in its cosmographic dimension; thus reduced, however, to its external sense, it becomes in effect a superstition: a mere vestige of a forgotten worldview. In terms of Professor Nasr's metaphor, geocentrism has thus become "opaque."

Geocentric cosmology, whether conceived Ptolemaically or according to the Tychonian system … affirms that the stars and the seven classical planets - Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon - are engaged in ceaseless revolution around the Earth, as if mounted on giant rotating spheres. In short, the heavens revolve while the Earth stands still: what is the significance of that? To the ancients it meant that the stars and planets are principles of motion in the terrestrial sphere. Even as the Sun gives rise to the alternation of day and night, and of the seasons, and the Moon gives rise to oceanic tides and other phenomena, so it is with the stars and the five remaining planets: such was the ancient belief. Astronomy and astrology were thus bound together as complementary aspects of a single science. One must not forget that Ptolemy has left us not only his Almagest - the most comprehensive and influential treatise on astronomy produced in antiquity - but also the Tetrabiblos; which deals with predictive astrology.

Given that the celestial spheres do indeed exert an influence upon the terrestrial world, how, let us ask, is that influence transmitted to the sublunar realm? At the hands of Aristotle this question received a rather physical answer: Having convinced himself on philosophical grounds that there can be no such thing as empty space, and persuaded that the celestial spheres are composed of an element termed the aether, Aristotle thought that each sphere exerts a kind of mechanical force upon the next, from the Stellatum down to the terrestrial. And since the latter sphere does not move, the result must be a mixing of the elements, and thus the production of internal motion and change. Such, at least, is the apparent sense of the Aristotelian doctrine. It seems, however, that earlier conceptions of stellar influence had been far more theological than physical, if one may put it so; we must remember that preceding civilizations had populated the heavens with gods or angels, as we prefer to say - who presumably disposed over more spiritual means of communicating their influence to the sublunar realm. But be this as it may, the celestial spheres were evidently conceived as "active" in relation to the terrestrial, which is to say that the worldview of these early civilizations was inherently astrological.

This basic feature of ancient cosmology has of course been abandoned in the wake of the Copernican Revolution. Copernicus himself tried hard to salvage as much as he could of the old cosmology; he was by no means a revolutionary or an iconoclast. Yet, by a kind of relentless logic, his astronomical innovation did precipitate the collapse of the ancient worldview: in the minds and imagination of those who, following Copernicus, came to espouse the heliocentric cosmography, astrology became a dead issue. For now the Earth itself revolves, and presumably acts upon other planets, even as these act upon the Earth. The new cosmology is visibly democratic: the traditional hierarchy, in which the Earth had been relegated to the lowest position, has been replaced by a planetary system in which the terrestrial globe enjoys more or less equal status with its six companion planets. There is now no more up and 'down, no more east and west,' 'north' and 'south,' except of course in relation to a particular planet orbiting the Sun. Clearly, the very basis for an astrological outlook has disappeared.

In the new cosmology, the stars and classical planets no longer exert an influence upon the Earth; or better said, no longer exert a "higher" influence. According to contemporary physics, there is an interaction via gravitational and electromagnetic forces; and certainly, in that sense, the Sun, Moon and stars still affect the Earth. But it is needless to point out that the action of forces or exchange of particles admitted by the physics of our day are nothing like the "influence of the celestial spheres" as conceived in ancient lore - which is of course precisely the reason why the very idea of astrology appears to us today as a primitive and indeed exploded superstition.

Iconic truth has to do with the relation of a cosmic to a metacosmic reality. However, since every cosmic entity is related to the metacosmic realms in multiple ways, it exemplifies a multiplicity of iconic truths. To read a cosmic icon, therefore, it is needful to make a choice; or better said: to engage in a particular perspective or point of view. What one beholds depends, so to speak, upon one's angle of vision; and as we change our point of vantage, the resultant perception may formally contradict the preceding cognition.

Having spoken of geocentrism as an iconic doctrine, I would like now to point out that heliocentrism, rightly understood, constitutes an iconic doctrine as well. The two seemingly rival contentions, thus, are both correct, which is to say that each embodies an iconic truth; it is the perspective, the point of view, that differs. More precisely: the two doctrines correspond to different levels of vision. The heliocentric position corresponds evidently to a more intellectual or internal kind of vision, inasmuch as it contradicts what might be termed the testimony of sense perception. Its iconic truth, moreover, derives from the fact that the Sun, as the representative of Deity, does by right occupy the center of the universe. As "the author not only of visibility in all visible things, but of generation and nourishment and growth" … the Sun could not be conceived Ptolemaically as a mere planet, one among several that revolve about the Earth. Considering the overtly theophanic, one might almost say, "liturgical" outlook of the traditional heliocentric orientation, it is hardly surprising that heliocentrism has been especially associated with the Pythagorean and Platonist traditions, as opposed to the Aristotelian. Based on the report of Philolaus, the Pythagoreans espoused a non-geocentric cosmology in which the Earth revolves around a central fire, the so-called Altar of the Universe, which however was apparently not identified with the Sun. That identification came about later at the hands of the Neoplatonists, whose cosmology thus became overtly heliocentric. Later still, in the Renaissance movement championed by Marsilio Ficino, the doctrine came alive again, but in a somewhat altered form; one might say that what Ficino instituted was indeed a religion, a kind of neopaganism. Copernicus himself was profoundly influenced by this movement, as can be clearly seen from numerous passages in the De Revolutionibus. To cite but one example (from the tenth chapter of the First Book) which enables us to savor the spirit of those Renaissance times:

In the middle of all sits the Sun enthroned. In this

most beautiful temple, could we place this luminary

in any better position from which he can illuminate

the whole at once? He is rightly called the Lamp, the

Mind, the Ruler of the Universe; Hermes Trismegistus

names him the Visible God, Sophocles' Electra

calls him the All-seeing. So the Sun sits as upon a royal

throne ruling his children the planets which circle

round him.

Yet despite these panegyrics, it appears that the light of iconic truth was fast fading. A kind of earth-bound literalism, hostile to the spirit of Platonic philosophy, was beginning to manifest itself, foreboding the advent of the modern age. Neither in Marsilio Ficino nor in Copernicus do we encounter an authentic revival of Platonist doctrine, nor can it be said that the resultant heliocentristn conforms altogether to its traditional prototype: "rather was it comparable," writes Titus Burckhardt. "to the dangerous popularization of an esoteric truth." ….

It behooves us to ponder this highly significant statement. Why should the truth of heliocentrism be "esoteric"? And why should its popularization be "dangerous"? We have already characterized the truth of authentic heliocentrism as "iconic"; are we perhaps to conclude that "iconic" and "esoteric" are one and the same? But by that token, authentic geocentrism would be "esoteric" as well. I propose to give at least a partial answer to these questions. Let it be noted, first of all, that there is a prima facie opposition, a kind of logical contradiction, between the geocentric and the heliocentric claims. It is to be noted, furthermore, that heliocentrism is based upon an intellective vision which replaces or supersedes the sensory. The crucial point, however, is that authentic heliocentrism does not deny that sensory truth, but accommodates it, rather, within an enlarged and perforce hierarchic vision of reality. Vivekananda has put it well when he said that "Man does not move from error to truth, but from truth to truth: from truth that is lower to truth that is higher." This toleration and indeed recognition of lower truth, I say, constitutes a mark of authentic esoterism. The higher truth is never destructive of the lower: quite to the contrary! A so­-called esoterism, therefore, which undercuts the normal and in a sense God-given beliefs of mankind is perforce a false esoterism. Christ Himself has said: "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." And by way of further emphasis, He added: "For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Matt. 5:17,18) To be sure, Christ is speaking presumably of the Mosaic law, and not of cosmology; yet even so I surmise that His words do also apply to the body of basic beliefs grounded in the Old Testament tradition, which certainly includes geocentrism. Till "heaven and earth pass," all these "lower truths" shall remain effective and binding upon us: let no man cast them off before he has actually attained the higher - before "heaven and earth have passed away" - on pain of falling into what an Upanishad calls "a greater darkness."

Getting back to the prima facie contradiction between the geocentrist and the heliocentrist claims, I would like now to point out that this conflict cannot be resolved on the level of our ordinary "common sense" views concerning physical or corporeal reality. Nor indeed can it be resolved on an Aristotelian basis, let alone a Cartesian. It needs to be resolved on the ground of a Platonist - or if you will, a Vendantistmetaphysics: no lesser realism, it appears, will do. And yes, that ground is indeed "esoteric," to say the least.

There can be little doubt, moreover, that this too is the ground upon which Dante conceived his monumental vision of what might be termed the integral cosmos. In a single poetic cosmography he combined, if you will, the geocentrist and the heliocentrist cosmologies; and it is highly significant that one passes from the former to the latter precisely at the Empyrian, which thus represents the boundary, as it were, between the two "worlds." For indeed, as one crosses that boundary, the ascending spheres no longer expand, but now contract; in that supernal and indeed angelic realm, the hierarchic ordering of successive spheres is reversed: here to "ascend" means to approach the center, where stands the Altar of the Universe, the Throne of God. The Empyrean, thus the outermost Ptolemaic sphere - marks the point of reversal, where "heaven and earth shall pass," which is also the point where "a new heaven and a new earth" shall come to be." (Is. 65:17, Rev. 12:1)

There question arises whether the preeminence of authentic heliocentrism may not be reflected on the physical plane in some corresponding cosmographieal preeminence. Does not the very principle of cosmic symbolism demand that the superior glory of the true heliocentric vision be mirrored somehow in the actual geometry of the planetary system? I submit that what Copernicus refers to as "a wonderful symmetry in the universe, and a definite relation of harmony in the motion and magnitude of the orbs, of a kind not possible to obtain in any other way," is none other than that reflection. Admittedly, the Copernican and the Tychonian systems prove to be mathematically equivalent,[7] which is to say that they predict the same apparent orbits; yet even so, the symmetries and harmony of which Copernicus speaks with justified ardor remain hidden in the Tychonian scheme, while they become resplendently manifest in the Copernican. One has mixed feelings, therefore, concerning the contemporary defense of geocentrism. Christian believers do well in guarding a doctrine which proves to be basic to their faith; but the reductionist spirit of the times has forced the debate onto a cosmographic plane where the essential has already been lost, and where the defenders find themselves at a distinct disadvantage. As 1 have noted before, the principle of relativity has offered a certain protection to the beleaguered Tychonians; but at the same time it has rendered the geocentrist cause hopeless on physical ground. Meanwhile the fact remains that a heliocentric coordinate system offers undeniable theoretical advantages precisely because it is adapted to the symmetries Copernicus had his eye upon: the very symmetries that bear witness to the heliocentric truth. The Tychonians may be right in claiming that they too can explain the observable facts, but one wonders at what cost in the form of ad hoc interventions. …. There is something pathetic in the spectacle of these defenders, whom the opposing side does not deem worthy even of a response.

What necessarily baffles the exoterist mentality is what might be termed the multivalency of authentic revelation, be it scriptural or cosmic. Truth is hierarchical, and so Scripture and the cosmos itself need be in a sense hierarchical as well. No single perspective or level of understanding, no single "darshana," can do full justice to the integral truth: revelation itself informs us of this fact in various ways. Typically both Scripture and the cosmic revelation do so by way of "fissures," that is to say, by way of seeming incongruities which disturb and puzzle us, and hopefully spur us on to seek a higher level of truth. As Christ Himself intimated to His disciples on the eve before His passion: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now."(John 16:12) Humility in the moral sense is not enough: we need also an intellectual and indeed theological humility. To preserve ourselves from falling into some arid dogmatism, we need ever to continue on our way: "from truth that is lower to truth that is higher." Dogmas, it seems, are meant for the viator, the spiritual traveler, not for the armchair theologian. It is not that dogmas of a sacred kind are simply provisional or limited in the ordinary sense, but rather that they harbor unsuspected truths. We need, as I have said, to continue on our way; as the author of Hebrews points out: "Strong meat belongeth to them that are full of age."(Heb. 5:14) Moreover, since truth derives ultimately from God, this progressive ascent constitutes indeed an itinerarium mentis in Deum, a "journey into God." But clearly, it is a journey in which the viator himself is progressively changed; in the words of St. Paul: "But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. "(2 Cor. 3:18)

As I have noted before, the higher truth of heliocentrism is reflected in the superior beauty or "symmetry" of the corresponding mathematical description; but one must remember that the "high truth" in question pertains to what may indeed be termed an esoteric level of vision. Reduced to a scientific theory in the contemporary sense - a mere cosmography - heliocentrism ranks in reality below its geocentric rival; as I have pointed out, the latter doctrine, limited though it be, corresponds to the testimony of human sense perception, and opens therefore upon vistas of truth which must remain forever unknown to the physical scientist as such. The problem with an "exoteric" geocentrism, on the other hand - a geocentrism that simply denies the heliocentric truth - is that it ultimately lacks a credible defense against a scientific heliocentrism: referents and epicycles, figuratively speaking, do not stand up well against the equations of Kepler and Newton. Even the most committed geocentrist can hardly fail to recognize a superior cogency in the heliocentric theory, and secretly sense that another truth must stand at issue, a truth which is not comprehended within the geocentric outlook. But alas, on a strictly exoteric plane that other truth becomes perforce hostile, perforce threatening to the integrity of the geocentric worldview. What by right should spur us on to seek a higher, more comprehensive level of understanding - ­what by right should be liberating - comes thus to be feared and rejected as a rank heresy.

The situation, however, is further complicated by the circumstance that heliocentrism has generally come to be identified with the Galilean doctrine, which is in fact a rank heresy. I have already argued that Galilean heliocentrism erodes the sense of verticality which supports and indeed enables the spiritual life: that it plunges us into a flattened and de-essentialized cosmos in which the claims of religion cease to be credible. I propose now to consider another ill effect of the Galilean heresy, which in a way is complementary to the aforesaid loss of verticality.

Every religion is perforce homocentric in its worldview. To put it in Christian terms: Man occupies a central position in the universe because he is made in the image and likeness of Him who is the absolute center of all that exists. Furthermore, man is central because, as the microcosm, he in a way contains within himself all that exists in the outer world, even as the center of a circle contains in a sense the full pencil of radii. Or again, man is central because he is the most precious among corporeal beings. In fact, Genesis teaches that God created the Earth as a habitat for man, and the Sun, Moon, and stars "for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years." It is on account of man's centrality, moreover, that the Fall of Adam could affect the entire universe. Now, it is true that the centrality of which we speak is above all metaphysical, or mystical, as one might also say; yet even so, it is in the nature of things that this "essential" centrality should be reflected cosmographically. Does not the outer manifestation invariably mirror the inner or essential reality? To suppose that man can be metaphysically central while inhabiting a speck of matter occupying some nondescript position in some nondescript galaxy - that would surely be incongruous in the extreme. Once again: it would deny the very principle of cosmic symbolism, and thus the theophanic nature of cosmic reality. To be sure, it is possible, on an abstract philosophic lane, to affirm metaphysical centrality and cosmographic acentrality in same breath; I doubt, however, that one can do so on an existential level, that is to say, in point of actual credence. To the extent that we truly believe the stipulated acentrality of the Earth, we are bound to relinquish the traditional claim of homocentrism: in reality, I say, these two articles of belief are mutually exclusive. One can, of course, pay lip-service to both, as contemporary theologians might do; but actual belief - that is something else entirely.

The objection may be raised that it is indeed possible to espouse an acentric cosmology without detriment to the rightful claims of religion; and one might point to Nicholas of Cusa by way of substantiating that contention. True enough! One needs however to understand that the Cusan cosmology is profoundly Platonic, and corresponds, once again, to an authentically esoteric point of view. Its so-called acentrality is consequently worlds removed from the contemporary relativistic acentrality, and could be more accurately termed a "pancentrality." By the same token, moreover, the Cardinal does not simply deny the geocentrist claim, as does the Galilean astronomer: in reality he transcends the geocentrist contention, and in so doing, paradoxically, justifies and founds it "in spirit and in truth." "It is no less true," declares Nicholas of Cusa, "that the center of the world is within the Earth than that it is outside the Earth"; for indeed, "the Blessed God is also the center of the Earth, of all spheres, of all things in the world." Here, in this terse and lucid statement worthy of a sanctified mind, we breathe the pure and invigorating air of a Christian esoterism. It is ever the way of authentic esoterism to "deny" only by affirming a higher truth, which contains but vastly exceeds the original claim.

It is true that the Earth enshrines the center of the universe; but so do the Sun, the Moon, and the myriad stars. Yet it is evidently the first of these recognitions that matters most to us so long as we are denizens of this terrestrial world. As I have noted before, we depend upon that recognition, that truth, for our orientation: our spiritual orientation no less than our physical.

What happens, now, when we ascend from a geocentric to an authentically heliocentric worldview: do we retain the original homocentrism? One may surmise that as we transcend the geocentric outlook, we likewise transcend the lesser theological conception of homocentrism, in accordance with the Pauline dictum: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."(Gal. 2:20) The resultant and indeed higher homocentrism is in reality a Christocentrism; but again, that Christocentrism is not destructive of the earlier notion, the lesser truth - even as the Christ who "liveth in me" is not destructive of the "I" that "lives." It is once again a question of levels, of hierarchy. Meanwhile the intrinsic connection between geocentrism and the lesser homocentrism endures on the plane to which either notion applies, which is none other than the plane corresponding to our human condition. Let no one therefore deny either of these notions, either of these truths, "from below": the consequences of that denial cannot but be tragic in the extreme. Such a denial of either truth affects and indeed "poisons" every aspect of human culture, beginning with the life of religion, which it undermines.

….

---

Notes

[1] On this question, refer to my monograph The Quantum Enigma (Peru, IL: Sugden, 1995), especially the first two chapters.

[2] See my article “The Status of Geocentrism,” Sacred Web, July 2002 (to appear).

[3] In 1909, in a ruling on “The Historical Character of the Earlier Chapters of Genesis,” the Pontifical Biblical Commission denied the validity of “exegetical systems” which exclude the literal sense of Genesis. See Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma (London: Herder, 1957), 2121-2128. It is to be noted that Pope St. Pius X, in his Motu proprio of 1907, “Prestantia Scripturae”, has declared the rulings of the Biblical Commission to be binding. See Denzinger, 2113.

[4] The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2001), 487.

[5] It may surprise some readers to learn that geocentrism still has scientific advocates. One of the best-known today is Gerardus Bouw, director of the Association for Biblical Astronomy, and editor of Biblical Astronomer, a journal dedicated to the scientific defense of geocentrism. See also his treatise Geocentricity (Cleveland: Association for Biblical Astronomy, 1992).

[6] Op. cit., 488.

…

[Do not have access to remaining footnotes].

Pope: Humanity isn't random product of evolution

Published April 23, 2011 |
Associated Press Print Email

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI marked the holiest night of the year for Christians by stressing that humanity isn't a random product of evolution.

Benedict emphasized the Biblical account of creation in his Easter Vigil homily Saturday, saying it was wrong to think at some point "in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it."

"If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature," he said. "But no, reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine reason."

....

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/04/23/pope-marks-easter-vigil-holiest-night-year/#ixzz1Ka9UoeeC

Existence of Large Australian Dinosaur Queried

Australia’s biggest carnivorous dinosaur forced to take a walk

Hypothesised reconstruction of the large Lark Quarry track-maker. Illustration by Anthony Romilio, The University of Queensland.

Hypothesised reconstruction of the large Lark Quarry track-maker. Illustration by Anthony Romilio, The University of Queensland.
Doubt has been cast over the only known piece of evidence that large carnivorous dinosaurs once roamed Australia, following new research by The University of Queensland (UQ).

A set of footprints at Lark Quarry Conservation Park, south of Winton in central-western Queensland, was the only evidence that Australia was once home to large carnivorous theropod dinosaurs as big as Tyrannosaurus rex or Allosaurus fragilus.

For the past 30 years, these footprints were believed to show a large meat-eating dinosaur chasing a herd of smaller dinosaurs. The site is world famous as it is also thought to be the only example of a dinosaur stampede.

However, a new study by palaeontologists from UQ has shown that these tracks probably don't belong to a large theropod at all, and were most likely left by a large herbivore akin to Muttaburrasaurus.

UQ's School of Biological Sciences PhD candidate, Anthony Romilio, led the research, which has been published in the latest issue of the journal Cretaceous Research.

Mr Romilio made the discovery after comparing the lengths and other characteristic measurements of the famous footprints.

“Making the distinction between the three-toed tracks of herbivorous ornithopod dinosaurs and the three-toed tracks of carnivorous theropod dinosaurs can be quite difficult,” Mr Romilio said.

“This confusion has lead to numerous ornithopod dinosaur tracks being incorrectly identified as belonging to theropods, and vice versa.

“Since 1979, the large three-toed tracks at Lark Quarry have been regarded as being similar to Tyrannosauropus footprints from the US.

“As the name implies, these tracks were thought to have been made by T. rex. But in 1994 it was shown that they most likely belonged to a large ornithopod dinosaur, not a theropod,” Mr Romilio said.

“Ironically, these were probably similar to the dinosaurs upon which T. rex preyed.”

The UQ researchers took measurements from all eleven footprints at Lark Quarry and compared the shape with other ornithopod and theropods footprints from around the world.

Threshold values for specific foot proportions enabled them to distinguish between the tracks made by each type of dinosaur.

“The footprint analysis shows overwhelmingly that the Lark Quarry tracks were made by an ornithopod dinosaur,” Mr Romilio said.

“The best preserved prints show a remarkable similarity in overall size, shape and claw outline to ornithopod tracks from Canada named Amblydactlyus gethingi. These features mean that we need to re-name the large Lark Quarry tracks Amblydactlyus cf. A. gethingi.

“The footprints were probably made by a large ornithopod, standing over 2.5 metres tall at the hips. The claw impressions indicate that it was one of the more primitive members of this dinosaur group. Based on the age and location of Lark Quarry, we propose that the track-maker may have been a dinosaur similar to Muttaburrasaurus langdoni.”

Fossils of Muttaburrasaurus are known from similarly aged rocks near Muttaburra and Hughenden, both of which are only a few hundred kilometres from Lark Quarry.

Mr Romilio's supervisor, Dr Steve Salisbury, said the previous identification of the Lark Quarry tracks as belonging to a T. rex- or Allosaurus-sized predator was central to the interpretation of the track site as a stampede.

“The approach of the large dinosaur was thought to have triggered the stampede of 150-170 smaller dinosaurs across a mud flat nearly 100 million years ago,” Dr Salisbury said.

“Whether the presence of a large herbivore like Muttaburrasaurus was enough to spook a herd of smaller dinosaurs into a stampede is now unclear. Further research on the actual nature of the stampede itself is what we are now focusing on.”

For further information about dinosaur research at UQ, visit www.uq.edu.au/dinosaurs.

Media: Anthony Romilio (+61 7 3365 1398 or + 61 430 514 169; a.romilio@uq.edu.au); Dr Steve Salisbury (+61 7 3365 8548 or + 61 407 788 660; s.salisbury@uq.edu.au); or Kathy Grube (+61 7 3346 0561, k

A Scientific Imperialism

... contrary to the generally-held media-imposed assessment of things, there is very little real science these days. Instead, we labor beneath a scientific imperialism which, having usurped the place of theology and of metaphysics in the true hierarchy of sciences, puts upon unwitting school children and witless TV addicts, its own preferred heliocentric-evolutionary ideology into which it bends every empirical fact. This monstrous establishment of academic sophistry lords it over every aspect of intellectual life today and has succeeded in convincing almost everyone that this science falsely so called is the sole possessor and distributor of all truth and rationality.

But the truth is irrepressible and will break forth from under the dead weight of error willy-nilly ....

Taken from Net article, The 'Rotating' Earth. http://sites.google.com/site/abafte/geo

Physicist Stephen Hawking Thinks to Replace God with an M-Theory

The Hawking and Dawkins assault on our belief in the existence of God.





Following on from the determined efforts by one of the most famous atheistic scientist of our times, Richard Dawkins, to discredit religion once and for all in his book God Delusion, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has declared that his latest work shows that there was no creator of the universe.



Stephen Hawking solemnly declared, prior to the publication of his brand new book The Grand Design (September 2010), that God did not create the universe. The point is, he says, that our universe followed inevitably from the laws of nature.


Does Hawking’s ‘scientific encyclical’ finally pronounce doom upon all theology, just as Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was said to have done in the case of metaphysics, thereby bringing it completely to an end?


And just what are these alleged ‘laws of nature’? From whence did they emanate?


The German scientist-philosopher Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), though he probably retained his belief in God, was forced to conclude - due to the logic of his quirky epistemology (or how knowledge is acquired) - that all intellectual proofs for the existence of God were invalid and that all metaphysical contentions were groundless. Richard Dawkins, by contrast, is a virulent atheist who is on a hell-bent mission to destroy all belief in God.


Stephen Hawking for his part, who has met with the most recent two popes, is perhaps more ambiguous than Dawkins. Hawking has, in his search for the ‘theory of everything’ - a preoccupation of scientists today - referred to ‘God’ in such fashion that one might have been led to conclude that he does actually think that God exists.


Thus prize-winning author, Graham Farmelo, has commented:

It is perhaps a bit rich for Hawking to make God redundant after granting him/her/it a celebrity cameo at the end of his multi-million selling A Brief History of Time. In his famous conclusion to the book, Hawking wrote that if scientists could find the most fundamental laws of nature "then we should know the mind of God".
But then Farmelo adds: “To be fair, he was writing metaphorically – we all know what he meant”.
Hawking, according to Dr. H. ‘Fritz’ Schaefer of the University of Colorado,

… is probably the most famous living scientist. His book, A Brief History of Time, is available in paperback …. It has sold in excess of 10 million copies, and I think he sold about five million before the paperback version. For a book to sell so many copies is almost unheard of in the history of science writing.


There has been a film made about the book. The film is also good. There has even been a book made about the film. Hawking has a wonderful sense of humor. He writes in the introduction of the second book, "This is the book of the film of the book. I don't know if they are planning a film of the book of the film of the book." [Schaefer’s 1994 lecture, University of Colorado, “Stephen Hawking, The Big Bang, and God”]



A Brief History of Time is considered to be the most popular book about cosmology ever written.


Stephen Hawking has claimed in his writings that "the actual point of creation lies outside the scope of presently known laws of physics," and a less well-known cosmologist, Professor Alan Guth from MIT, says the "instant of creation remains unexplained." Indeed, the kind of science done by Stephen Hawking and others has an almost religious ring to it. He and his colleagues are trying to find the patterns in the basic fabric of reality – the mathematical laws that they believe govern the workings of nature at its finest level.



But can physics, which admittedly has delivered such great technological benefits to our modern world, serve also to determine for us whether or not God exists?


And are the new physical scientists legitimately able to take the place of the theologians and the metaphysicians?


Should we now consider that the traditional view of a rational knowledge above (supra) physics and serving as a handmaid to theology has been rendered obsolete, just as scientists tell us has been the fate also of the traditional cosmology?


Certainly Richard Dawkins would say so.


________________________________________


Dr. "Fritz" Schaefer is the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize and was recently cited as the third most quoted chemist in the world. "The significance and joy in my science comes in the occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it!' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." --U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 23, 1991.




But Dawkins’s virulence is now starting to annoy even his fellow atheists. Thus David Penberthy, writing for Sydney’s Daily Telegraph (16th September, pp. 66-67), and entitling his article, “Atheist zealots a heavy cross to bear”, contrasts the approach of Dawkins with the milder form of American physicist Bobby Anderson, who has mischievously suggested that Earth has been created by a flying spaghetti monster, and who has requested for his ‘religion’, which he calls Pastafarianism, to be included in the Kansas curriculum:

For Anderson, what started as the highly specific ridicule of teaching theological nonsense as science has now ballooned into a more generalised form of juvenile abuse towards anyone who believes in God. ….
Yet Anderson is a paragon of non-believer civility compared to the brilliant English scientist and celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and other books on human evolution and natural selection.
A few years ago Dawkins fired off a particularly narky text – The God Delusion – which became a best-seller ….


The God Delusion starts off promising a reasoned and scientific examination of why there is no God and can be no God, but soon descends into schoolyard teasing of the flying spaghetti monster variety.
Anyone who saw Dawkins’ bullying effort on the ABC’s Q & A last year would recall the manner in which he continually interrupted and shouted down other panellists who disputed his view.


The irony here is that the thing which has always fired up atheists, such as me, is a dislike of the righteousness which many religious people display.


There is an impertinence at the centre of religion, namely the conviction that your God is the one and only and that everyone else is deluded in following a rival God or no God at all.


But this spiritual impertinence can be found in equal measure among many atheists, with the latest entrant to their number being none other than Australia’s own Koran-smoking Bible-inhaler [Brisbane legal academic Alex] Stewart.
… If [all] this is the best atheists can do it’s no wonder some of us are thinking about taking our non-faith and quietly returning to the closet.

Stephen Hawking apparently has no intention of doing this. Whilst being less bullying than Dawkins and less blatantly offensive than Alex Stewart, Hawking has now emphatically joined their chorus, if he wasn’t there already before. According to Farmelo’s assessment, God and all that pertains to Him has been rejected by Hawking, and has been replaced with Hawking’s view of a scientific explanation:

[Hawking] now suggests that the search for this particular Holy Grail is over, now that scientists have come up with a type of theory, known as M-theory, that may describe the behaviour of all the fundamental particles and force, and even account for the very birth of the universe. If this theory is backed up by experiment, it might perhaps replace all religious accounts of creation – in Hawking's capacious mind, it already has.

But: “One problem with the theory”, Farmelo believes, “is that it looks as though it will be extremely difficult to test, unless physicists can build a particle accelerator the size of a galaxy”. Yes that is quite a problem.
And Farmelo adds: “Even if the experimenters find a way round this and M-theory passes all their tests, the reasons for the mathematical order at the heart of the universe's order would remain an unsolvable mystery”.
But Farmelo, despite his caution, can still say:

There is plenty of evidence that these [scientific] laws hold good all the way back to the beginning of time, which is how scientists have put together an extremely detailed and well-tested theory of the Big Bang, the first few minutes of the universe. The Large Hadron Collider will soon be reproducing, at will, the conditions in the universe within a billionth of a second of the beginning of time.

And hence, he believes, the tendency for scientists to theologise:

This has led writers to invest these experiments with a theological significance. The distinguished experimenter Leon Lederman labelled the Higgs particle, being sought at the Collider, as the God Particle, with no good reason except as a hook to promote his book, which he named after it.

“Yet these experiments will tell us nothing about God”, Farmelo concludes. “They will simply steer us towards an improved theoretical understanding of our material universe, ultimately in terms of principles set out in mathematics”.
Such are the firm opinions of scientists and even apparently of those who consider that God does exist. And even certain scientists who like to regard themselves philosophically as Thomists, or vice versa, can be found amongst those who think that the laws of theoretical physics are actually uncovering the secrets of nature.
But are they?
Though scientists with a firm belief in God would place Him above all this, so Farmelo believes:

Even religious scientists – and there are still a few – never use the God concept in their scientific work. Perhaps it is time for a moratorium on the use of the concept in popularisations, too? This would avoid mixing up scientific and non-scientific statements and put an end to the consequent confusions. I think it wise for scientists and religious believers to keep out of each other's territory – no good has come out of their engagement and I suspect it never will.

Indeed, the matter is far too vast to be explained by a popular writer such as Farmelo. And so he is forced to a pacifist kind of conclusion that the best tactic is for scientists and people of faith just to stay right out of each other’s way and thereby avoid an almighty clash.
A philosopher of scientist, on the other hand, will need to face the key issues squarely and try to provide answers to the kinds of questions being posed in this article; for example, whether scientists really are entitled to go as far as they are now going in terms of theologising? This question takes us to the very heart of modern science.
The world in which the typical physicist moves is a world of great order and beauty. And it has its own distinctive mathematically based language. But is it also the real world, as the physicists are now claiming - given their pontifications - and is the language that they talk, and use to communicate amongst themselves, really a grammar of nature? Are scientists really discovering laws about nature, or are they in actual fact writing their own laws into nature? This has become a fundamental question of our age, the answer to which is imperative if we are to defend - or are still to see the need to bother to defend - all of the bygone traditions. And Dawkins and Hawking, who have brought the science-religion debate right back into the limelight, and who seem to be carrying the day, have made all the more urgent the answer to such questions, touching on the very nature of modern physics.
Since these are philosophical questions, it would be normal to expect that only those well schooled in philosophy would be in a position to tackle them. Physics is a highly rigorous and demanding world of its own, and one must wonder if someone as fully absorbed in it as a Stephen Hawking could have the time and the inclination also to master philosophy. Can such people be objective enough about their own science to be able to philosophise about what it really is? We know that creative people, such as artists and writers, can sometimes be the worst people to commentate about their own output - so immersed are they in what they are doing. It is often necessary for informed critics instead to provide that objective assessment of their creative work. And the very same applies to physics. Those who do physics are not necessarily those who know what physics is. To explain it, to classify it properly in the order of being, is the task of genuine philosophers of science. About two centuries ago, Immanuel Kant, a professional philosopher (though by no means a Thomist) with a deep knowledge also of science and mathematics, was able to make such an assessment and to say what the new physicists were actually doing. These, he said were actively imposing their a priori laws of nature upon the world (as opposed to the traditional scientists who had looked to study the world as it is). Thus the new physicists were, contrary to what they themselves imagined, engaging with nature only at the end rather than at the very beginning (if at all).
So the answer to our questions concerning whether or not physicists such as Stephen Hawking and his colleagues, in their trying to find the patterns in the basic fabric of reality, are actually revealing true laws of nature, and whether the new physics can justifiably be said to render obsolete God and theology, is an emphatic No. These people, as physicists, live in their own little theoretical worlds and communicate the one to the other with their fantastic mathematics and complex equations. It is to a great extent a world of science fiction. Perhaps it is fitting, therefore, that that other scientist (non physicist though) whom we have had cause to mention, Richard Dawkins, is married to an actress, Sarah “Lalla” Ward who became known from her appearances as Time Lady Romana in the British science fiction favourite, DR WHO.
Rather fittingly, then, John Cornwell tells that “the encomiums on the dust-jacket [of The God Delusion] feature a line-up of writers in the realm of fantasy fiction” (Darwin’s Angel, p. 10). The mathematical laws devised by physicists like Hawking are not laws of reality, but laws by which nature can be quantified and harnessed for utilitarian and scientific purposes. This was well understood by another philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein (d. 1951), when he wrote in his Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (6.341), in relation to the science of Sir Isaac Newton, that the Newtonian mechanics tell us nothing about the world: but what does tell us something about the world is the precise way in which it is able to be described by these means.
The real existence of many of the elements and particles so fundamental to modern science has never been proven. The same applies to Dark Matter. Recent newspaper articles carried headings such as “Dark matter discovery hopes raised at US mine”, but nothing has been proven. These elements belong to the world of artifacts, partly included in the ancient notion of entia rationis, or objects of thought incapable of existing outside the mind. It is a very low platform level of being indeed from which to presume to mount a Tower of Babel-like challenge against God the Supreme Being.
In time one great system of physics, such as Newton’s - in its day considered to be set in stone - will be rendered obsolete and will be replaced by another, more practically useful (for prediction purposes) model.
That is proof enough that modern physics is not fixed.
Farmelo (op. cit.) says somewhat similarly:

Science and religion are about fundamentally different things. No religion has ever been rendered obsolete by facts or observations, but this happens to most scientific theories, at least in the long run. Science advances over the wreckage of its theories by continually putting theoretical ideas to experimental test; no matter how beautiful a theoretical idea might be, it must be discarded if it is at odds with experiment. Like any other human activity, science has flaws and does not always flow smoothly, but no one can seriously doubt the progress it has made in helping us understand the world and in helping to underpin technology. A useful characteristic of a scientific theory is that it must be possible, at least in principle, for experimenters to prove it wrong. Newton and Darwin, two of the greatest theoreticians, both set out ideas in this way, putting their heads on Nature's chopping block. In Newton's case, at least, his ideas have been superseded after proving inadequate in some circumstances. Unlike many religions, science has no final authority; the Royal Society, the UK academy of sciences, expresses this neatly in its motto "Take nobody's word for it". No religion has ever been set out in terms of scientific statements.
….
The most famous atheist scientist of our times is the fearless Richard Dawkins, whose God Delusion set out to discredit religion once and for all. For him, it was Darwin's theory of evolution that dealt the fatal blow to religious belief. Powerful and eloquent though it was, religion continues to flourish, and scientists (albeit a minority) continue to go to church, just as Galileo, Newton, Faraday and others have done in the past. I suspect that none of them would have abandoned their respective faiths after reading Dawkins (admittedly, not a scientific statement). Religions will survive so long as they steer clear of making statements that can be shown to be factually wrong.
Yet this is where religion can sneak back into the picture. Einstein, to the frustration of many of his colleagues, was fond of referring to God when he was talking about the laws expressing the fundamental harmonies of the universe. As Dawkins rightly stresses, it is quite clear that Einstein did not think of God as a white-bearded benefactor capable of interfering with the functioning of the universe. Rather, Einstein followed closely the views of the philosopher Spinoza, for whom the concept of God is an expression of the underlying unity of the universe, something so wondrous that it can command a spiritual awe.
Einstein's views were largely shared by his acquaintance Paul Dirac, the greatest English theoretician since Newton. Dirac, like Newton and Hawking, held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University. For Dirac, the greatest mystery of the universe was that its most fundamental laws can be expressed in terms of beautiful mathematical equations [sic]. Towards the end of his life, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Dirac often said that mathematical beauty "is almost a religion to me".
As a young man, he was an outspoken atheist, drawing his colleague Wolfgang Pauli to comment, "There is no God and Dirac is his prophet." Decades later, in 1963, Dirac was happy to use theological imagery: "God is a mathematician of a very high order." He was speaking metaphorically, but we know what he meant.
Yet I think it is misleading, especially when talking about science to non-specialists, to play fast and loose with the idea of God.

Scientists can tend to re-cast ‘God’ according to their own mathematico-scientific proclivities.
A very good account of the limitations of modern science, and how it can lead us away from reality, can be found in the Internet article beginning on p. 23 below, “The ‘Rotating’ Earth”. For, as will be argued there:

Heliocentricity not only remains unproven, but the Newtonian physics which [was] its main support [is] being openly questioned, if not discredited, ever since Maurice Allais and others have shown experimentally that Newton’s theory of gravity can no longer account for proven facts. ....
Whether the earth rotates once a day from West to East as Copernicus taught, or the heavens revolve once a day from East to West, as his predecessors believed, the observable phenomena will be exactly the same. That shows a defect in Newtonian dynamics, since an empirical science ought not to contain a metaphysical assumption which can never be proved or disproved by observation.

Stephen Hawking is complex. He had married a Christian, Jane, who made the statement in 1986, "Without my faith in God, I wouldn't have been able to live in this situation;" namely, the deteriorating health of her husband. "I would not have been able to marry Stephen in the first place because I wouldn't have had the optimism to carry me through and I wouldn't have been able to carry on with it." After she and Hawking divorced in the early 1990s she revealed that one of the reasons was his scorn for religion.
Hawking has met with two popes. Here is his account of a meeting with John Paul II:

Stephen Hawking says pope told him not to study
beginning of universe

HONG KONG (AP) – World-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Thursday that the late Pope John Paul II once told scientists that they should not study the beginning of the universe because it was the work of God.
Hawking, author of the best-seller, A Brief History of Time, said that that John Paul made the comment at a cosmology conference at the Vatican. ....
Hawking quoted the pope as saying, “It’s OK to study the universe and where it began. But we should not inquire into the beginning itself because that was the moment of creation and the work of God”.
The scientist then joked that he was glad John Paul did not realize that he had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began.
“I didn’t fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo”.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2006-06-15-hawking_x.htm

John Paul II was quite right. Hawking and his colleagues will never replicate the beginning, nor understand it through their physics. Our world is the poorer for, not science with its fascinations and triumphs, but for today’s complete obsession with the very lowest levels of being to the detriment of our studying the far more fascinating realm of higher being, of all that pertains to God and things spiritual.