Toward a new Creation Story (I)
Adding Consciousness to Science
The great mythologist Joseph Campbell once observed that the most existence-affirming response we can have to life is to arise each morning and exclaim, “That the universe should be here!”
For thousands of years and in societies all over the world, people have gathered around campfires and theatrical stages – and in temples, ashrams, synagogues, mosques, and churches – to tell stories, to sing, and to dance as they’ve celebrated life and the cosmos and the Power that lies behind them.
People all over the planet have been filled with astonishment, gratitude, joy, and a sense of adventure about both Spirit and Creation. As sentient, creative beings, members of our species have been irresistibly drawn by the great epic of life and the universe.
In nearly every human culture around the world, people have aimed to understand the meaning of both Spirit and Creation and to initiate themselves into life in the cosmos.
And in our time, science itself is able to provide us much of our cosmic affirmation. This was probably not true until the late 20th Century. But it’s true now.
I’ve always been interested in what a new Creation Story would look like – a Creation Story for the 21st Century.
Clearly, what the Story looks like depends on whether we are a theist or a non-theist and what metaphysical assumptions we adhere to. I’ve got mine. You’ve got yours. But science from its fullest standpoint offers each of us a depth of understanding in which we can share.
I thought this “arena” would make an interesting topic here in the New Florence Substack for the month of May.
I began my career in 1988, at age 22, as a science journalist, writing for the internationally influential Brain-Mind Bulletin. I’ve always been interested in “new-paradigm science” and how it fits with the “conventional” science we’re more familiar with and even how it fits with what I regard as flat “Scientism”.
What’s the new paradigm in science? Well, fundamentally, it includes both consciousness and what physicists call the Zero Point Field. “Scientism” includes neither and familiar, conventional science tends to ignore them both.
(The broader question of the soul we can explore in the future. Personally, I believe we have both a soul and a consciousness. But my focus in May’s series of posts will be on consciousness and the natural dimensions of reality.)
Why does a new-paradigm view that includes consciousness and the Zero Point Field matter?
Because “Scientism” is flat. It mechanizes the universe, embalms human consciousness, and freezes into an abstraction the dynamic cosmic dance in which we are all participating.
Because we live our lives differently when we are aware that we’re participating in an open, creative universe that is endowed with deep and subtle purpose – a dance of energy and information, rich with connections.
And because we live our lives differently when we know that underlying our visible universe is a dynamic moving wholeness – and when we know, deep in our bones, that that wholeness is primary.
So I’m going to work my way toward sharing two new Creation Stories here – one for non-theists and one for my fellow theists.
And to get there I’m going to start by sharing a brief history of science – first with a post about major milestones in the physical sciences (later today) and then (this weekend) with a post about the major milestones in the life sciences – as best as I’ve come to understand them since the 1980s.
All my best,
Mike