This site documents the Divine Mind:
the Universe that enables us to create ourselves
page 4: Theology: a new paradigm?
Table of contents
4.1: Is the Universe divine
4.2: An impossible promise of Salvation
4.3: New paradigms
4.4: Evolution and the problem of evil I: Variation
4.5: Evolution and the problem of evil II: Selection
4.6: Cooperation, love and survival
4.7: Business as usual in the Roman Catholic Church?
4.8: Paradigm change in the Catholic Church?
4.1: Is the Universe divine?
I was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church soon after I was born, and educated in Catholic schools run by the Sisters of Mercy, the Marist Brothers and priests of the Dominican Order. This education is my starting point for this website.
I received the habit of the Dominican Order on the 26 February 1963. I was asked to leave after 5 years, in 1968. I have an academic record from those years which shows good results, but in my third year I wrote an essay exploring the idea that the Universe might itself be divine, and after a few years of discussion with the Master of Studies it was deemed unsafe for the Church to keep me in the Order and I was dismissed, my solemn vows dissolved by the Pope. Jeffrey Nicholls (1967): How universal is the Universe?
My proposed paradigm shift can be stated very succinctly: The Roman Catholic Church says that God is absolutely other than the Universe. My alternative is that God is absolutely identical with the Uiverse.
The Roman Catholic Church relies heavily on the work of Thomas Aquinas (12225 - 1275) for its theology. His work is recommended in its Constitution, the Code of Canon Law:
There are to be classes in dogmatic theology, always grounded in the written word of God together with sacred tradition; through these, students are to learn to penetrate more intimately the mysteries of salvation, especially with St. Thomas as a teacher. There are also to be classes in moral and pastoral theology, canon law, liturgy, ecclesiastical history, and other auxiliary and special disciplines, according to the norm of the prescripts of the program of priestly formation.' Holy See: Code of Canon Law: Canon 252 §3
Aquinas emphasizes the otherness of God by arguing for the ancient tradition that God is absolutely simple, immaterial, immutable and eternal, in no way resembling our complex and ever changing material world. Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 7: Is God altogether simple?, Aquinas, Summa: I, 9, 1: Is god is completely immutable?
4.2: An impossible promise of Salvation
The stated raison d'etre of the Roman Catholic Church is to save everyone from the consequences of original sin. The promise is based on the punishment that Yahweh decreed when the first people ate the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. This sin was committed at the instigation of Satan, the fallen Angel who convinced Eve that God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil. Forbidden fruit - Wikipedia, The Book of Genesis: The Fall and God's punishment of humanity
God collectively punished the whole human species with death, pain and work. Humanity was deprived of its primordial innocence and the world was turned against us. All this story is of course mythical, although it does serve as an explanation for the actual difficulties of life after the pristine paradise of creation. Here also the force of evil is established embodied in the devil, Satan. The most recent Catholic Pope, Francis, still sees Satin as an active force in the world. This view is embodied many other religions in one form or another and Satan enjoys an official position in the Catholic Catechism. God continues to punish evil humanity throughout the Hebrew Bible. Yahweh is eventually beaten by Satan in the popularity contest described in the Book of Job. Given a certain dating of the books of the Hebrew Bible, we never hear from Yahweh again. Anthony Faiola: A modern Pope goes old school on the Devil, Catholic Catechism: §§ 385-412: Satan and the Fall, Miles (1996): God: A Biography pp 308-328
The authors of the New Testament devised a happy ending to the Old Testament and the disaster of the Fall. They were all Jewish and knew the Hebrew Bible well and could see in it references to a Messiah and a Saviour, although they probably expected a military leader rather than a moral revolutionary. They proposed that the Roman murder of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, was a human sacrifice that propitiated his Father for the insult delivered to him in the Garden of Eden. Ultimately all the damage caused by the Fall would be repaired and eternal life would be restored. The only sour note was the introduction of Hell for those who did not merit the salvation on offer. Overall the whole story became the business plan for an imperial religion which has perpetrated fraud on billions of people over thousands of years. Barely a word of it is actually true. Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament - Wikipedia
4.3: New paradigms
Thomas Kuhn, a physicist, historian of science and a philosopher proposed that scientific revolutions are caused by changes in the disciplinary matrix or paradigm shared by people working in a particular field. The paradigm represents business as usual, dealing with small problems as they arise. The time comes, however, when a large accumulation of problems in a discipline forces some people to take an entirely different view of things. Kuhn noted that this view may be so different that it is difficult to see its connection with the old system. Thomas Kuhn (1962, 1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Alexander Bird: Thomas Kuhn, Episteme - Wikipedia
Although theories may change radically, carefully collected data do not because they are coupled to the world. The most significant paradigm change of the twentieth century was the introduction of quantum mechanics to describe the invisible processes that underlie the behaviour of the classical world. Nineteenth century spectroscopic measurements remain valid although the gradual introduction of instrumentation based on quantum theory increased their precision by many orders of magnitude. The Christian theory of evil and redemption may no longer be very useful, but life remains impossibly difficult for many people. For others, however, technology and good government have brought enormous improvements in health and welfare. Much of this may be attributed to the the moral messages of love and care that are intrinsic to the more personal aspect of Christianity.
By basing theology on the nature of the world rather than the imagined behaviour of ancient Gods, many of whom are based on the work of warlords like Constantine (who employ theologians to reinforce acceptance of their regimes) we can exploit the better angels of our nature. Although some have conceived evolving nature as red in tooth and claw and used an interpretation of Darwinism to abandon the weak and helpless, it is nevertheless true that love and cooperation remain central elements of survival, so that all successful species (like ants and bees) can be seen to implement elements of clever technology and good government. The existence of relatively huge multicellular creatures like ourselves, made from trillions of individual cooperating cells, including an immune system to protect the other members of the body from pathogens and cancers, shows that huge harmonious systems are possible. In our bodies all our cells are equally human and work to support one another. This harmony is based on all the cells sharing a common genome. Here I feel that a prerequisite for world peace would be for us all to share a common scientific theology. In Memoriam A.H.H. - Wikipedia , Steven Pinker (2011): The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
The creative heart of science is identified by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler in their massive exposition of Einstein's gravitation:
Here and elsewhere in science, as stressed not least by Henri Poincare, that view is out of date which used to say: "Define your terms before you proceed". All the laws and theories of physics, including the Lorentz force law, have this deep and subtle character, that they both define the concepts they use (here B and E) and make statements about their concepts. Contrariwise, the absence of some body of theory, law and principle deprives one of the means properly to define or even use concepts. Any forward step in human knowledge is truly creative in this sense: that theory, concept, law, and method of measurement—forever inseparable—are born into the world in union. Misner, Thorne & Wheeler (1973): Gravitation, page 71
Einstein's theory of gravitation itself marked a paradigm change. Newton had a theological bent, and he took a "God's eye" view of the solar system as he developed his theory of universal gravitation. He envisaged an absolute space and an independent time and saw the Solar System as created and sustained by God:
It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God; a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God. And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a Living, Intelligent, and Powerful Being; and, from his other perfections, that he is Supreme or most Perfect. He is Eternal and Infinite, Omnipotent and Omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from Eternity to Eternity; his presence from Infinity to Infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. He is not Eternity and Infinity, but Eternal and Infinite; he is not Duration and Space, but he endures and is present. He endures forever, and is every where present; and, by existing always and every where, he constitutes Duration and Space. Isaac Newton (1726): General Scholium
Einstein, on the other hand, worked from the point of view of a person within the Universe. Since the time of Descartes it had become customary in physics to establish coordinate frames of reference from which to measure the positions and motions of physical particles. From earliest times astronomers have sought to establish such frames in understand motions in the heaven. This is not simple. We inhabit an orbiting and revolving planet and all the other planets and moons are also in motion.
In classical physics it is axiomatic that physical phenomena are totally independent of the choice of reference frame used to measure them. This requires a mathematical relationship of covariance and contravariance between frames and reality. If we rotate the frame of reference clockwise, we must rotate the measurements taken from this frame anticlockwise so as maintain consistency with the measurements taken before the frame is moved.
Einstein's first step toward general relativity was special relativity which concerns only bodies and observers moving according to Newton's first law of motion: a body at rest remains at rest and a body in motion continues to move in a straight line unless acted upon by a force. Special relativity is based on two postulates: every observer sees the same laws of nature in their own rest frame; and every observer sees the same speed of light, regardless of their own motion relative to the source of the light. These constraints mean that when I look at you moving relative to me your laws of physics look different to mine, but I can transform what I see in your frame to my frame with a Lorentz transformation which removes the effect of our relative motion. Then I see your laws of nature in my frame as if I was at rest in your frame. This is the somewhat tortuous story of special covariance. The reason for all this is the finite velocity of light. When I look at you moving some distance from me, I see you as you were some time ago. Looking back into space with the cosmic background radiation, a form of light, we see the Universe as it was nearly fourteen billion years ago. Albert Einstein (1905): On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, Special relativity - Wikipedia, Lorentz transformation - Wikipedia
Special covariance was just the beginning. What Einstein sought was general covariance, the transformation between bodies in accelerated motion. His work had the remarkable result that the effect of gravitation, which is present in every moment of our lives, is caused by the geometry of spacetime. Newton knew that there was a force acting between the Earth and the Moon that explained the Moons orbit, but all he could say was that this force is something established by God about which he could say nothing. He might have been amazed if Einstein told him that in the new geometric paradigm of general covariance gravitation is a consequence of the "shape" of spacetime which itself is a consequence of the distribution of energy throughout spacetime. Gravitation is treated in detail (after pages 8 to 15 on quantum theory) on page 16: Potential + kinetic = zero energy Universe and page 17: Gravitation and quantum theory—in the beginning
The principle of general covariance, that the presence of an observer makes no difference to the phenomenon observed, works well when we are dealing with large classical objects like planets. It fails in the realm of sensation and quantum theory because to observe is to interact. We live in a cognitive world. Every interaction changes both parties. You see and hear me only because I am emitting light and sound and changing myself in the process. In reality every meeting changes both participants. The determinism assumed in general covariance is broken when particles and persons interact with one another. In the early days Einstein made massive contributions to quantum theory but he could not come to terms with it in later life because the "personal" nature of physical interaction involves uncertain consequences. We return to this issue on page 14: Measurement: the interface between Hilbert and Minkowski spaces. Quantum mechanics is the theory of communication between personal sources that see and react to one another.
4.4: Evolution and the problem of evil I: Variation
A central problem in Christian theology is the so called problem of evil. How can an omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent God, who is generally believed to love humanity, allow the horrendous evils that we see around us? The fundamental Catholic story is that God created intelligent beings like angels and people to glorify themself. As the Catholic Catechism tells us, God created the world for their own glory. If glorification by creatures is to be genuine, it must be freely given, so God gave angels and people free will. But as parents and teachers know, children given too much freedom are inclined to go astray. So Lucifer, the most magnificent of the angels, was so proud of themself that they revolted against God and took many of their associates with them. One of these, Satan, (perhaps Lucifer themself) led the naive humans astray. God was then forced to introduce evil to punish sinful humans and angels (perhaps for the greater good of preventing more evil). Problem of evil - Wikipedia, Catholic Catechism, p1, s2, c1, a1, p4: III. "The world was created for the glory of God", Marilyn McCord Adams (1999): Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, Aquinas, Summa, I, 63, 2: Can angels sin only by pride and envy
Some would argue that the fact that there is evil proves that there is no god, or at least no omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent god who loves humanity. From the evolutionary point of view this is true. Because any proposed initial singularity at the beginning of the world is structureless, it has no material detail capable of representing information. It cannot be omniscient. Because it predates the Universe, there is nothing to know.
There is no reason, however, why the initial singularity should not be omnipotent. Like the omnipotent god of Aquinas, it is capable of doing anything which does not involve contradiction. We take it as axiomatic that actual contradictions do not exist. Nevertheless it is the source of the Universe. Looking at the traditional doctrine of the Trinity we see that God may produce God, as the Father is the source of the Son. Christian doctrine restricts the Trinity to three persons or sources. Here we place no limit on the fertility of the initial singularity. Aquinas, Summa I, 25, 3: Is God omnipotent?
However, because the initial singularity has no structure to constrain its behaviour its action is random and unpredictable, like the toss of a fair coin. There is no reason for it to choose between heads or tails. Even when the Universe begins to develop structure the second law of thermodynamics decrees that the future will most probably be more complex than the past. The past cannot always control the future. Laplace's demon, like the omniscient God that controls everything, is impossible. You are driving along a suburban street, obeying the speed limit. A child runs out between the parked cars. You quickly brake hard but it is too late. We know that despite our best efforts, there will always be random events with evil outcomes. Principle of sufficient reason - Wikipedia, Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia, Second law of thermodynamics - Wikipedia
Random events are the key to the evolutionary exploration of possibility and the awesome variety and complexity of the Universe. Some of these events will be interesting and exciting, but others will be judged to be evil. A deterministic Universe cannot create anything new. Random events are the source of both creation and the evils that arise from the failure of control. Many such evils suggest better means of control, like automatic braking in motor vehicles.
4.5: Evolution and the problem of evil II: Selection
We bet on a number and throw the dice. Our number comes up, we win, otherwise we lose. Depending on the size of the bet and its importance in our life, the loss could be negligible or a great evil.
In the evolutionary paradigm, selection imposes the constraints of consistency and determinism on the products of variation. In biology we may distinguish fitness from reproductive success. This distinction is related to the distinction between genotype and phenotype. Fitness (biology) - Wikipedia, Reproductive success - Wikipedia, Genotype - Wikipedia, Phenotype - Wikipedia
Herbert Spencer coined the phrase survival of the fittest to describe Darwin's idea of natural selection. In the long run, the survival of a species depends on its reproductive success. A species is headed toward survival if its birth rate exceeds its death rate, otherwise it approaches extinction. Reproductive success is linked to phenotype which is in turn related to the genotype. A fit genotype tends to increase its frequency in a species, crowding out the less fit genotypes.
The incidence of evil in the selective phase of evolution is linked to reproductive success and the means that are used to achieve this. Here, among humans, we can see many of the behaviours that help creatures to survive, reproduce and pass their genes on to the next generation are traditionally judged to be evil or sinful. Between families, tribes and nations war, rape and pillage, all forms of predation, are in many circumstances more effective means of the obtaining the resources for survival than gentler and more productive activities. In time of severe shortage, it might be more reasonable to die fighting for resources than to starve to death. Deception is rampant in the evolving world. It accounts for the cryptic colouring and behaviours of many species including the beautiful strategies used by flowering plants to deceive insects into transporting their pollen to receptive seeds.
4.6: Cooperation, love and survival
It is impossible to overestimate the power of evolution. At present we have no convincing theoretical model for the origin of life although we know that many of the simpler molecular ingredients of life are available in the physical environment. There can be little doubt that life arose on Earth without any special creation and we will eventually understand how this worked. Abiogenesis -Wikipedia
The recent coronavirus pandemic has shown us that even viruses, which not capable of independent reproduction, can evolve by mutation when they are reproduced in living cells. Viruses kill the cells they use to multiply, so it is not surprising that even the simplest forms of life, the Archaea, have devised a rudimentary immune system to defend against viruses. The evolution of multicellular creatures has required the development of more complex and effective immune systems. Archaea - Wikipedia, Philippe Horvath & Rodolphe Barrangou: CRISPR/Cas, the immune system of bacteria and archaea
Our bodies comprise trillions of cells, all of which are human, but differentiated into different tissues. We are also hosts to an even greater number of parasitic cells, some of which assist important services like digestion. The integrity of our bodies depends on two facts: first every one of our cells carries a copy of our genotype. Even though each of our genotypes is specifically human, every person differs in the genetic detail which identifies each one of us as an individual. This identity enables all our constituent cells to communicate with one another and work together as a huge community for their common good.
The second fact is that most of us have a very effective immune system which can identify and kill the pathogens which are everywhere within us and on us. The initial invasion of a pathogen may only elicit a weak response from the immune system. If the pathogen is very virulent, the victim may die in soon after infection. If the patient lives their immune system rapidly builds up the strength which enables them to overcome the infection. In 1957 the Australian doctor Frank Macfarlane Burnet proposed the clonal selection theory to explain this buildup. Clonal selection - Wikipedia
From the religious point of view the basic ethical and moral tone of my work is not to be built around sin and guilt and the inefficacy of divine mystery but on the reality of the evolutionary process that brought us to be. This history provides us with a model for peaceful and durable human community based on the physiology of multicellular species. Jeffrey Nicholls (2019d): Political dynamics: Rousseau, Rawls and the Physiology of Contract
The important point is that gratuitous evil is not an intrinsic feature of reality. Such evil as we experience is by-product of evolution and can often be avoided by prudent action. In this sense it is true that the Universal system permits evil for the selection of a greater good. In nature failed variants die and their elements are recycled into something new. We might say that the essence of wilderness is local action. The only place to find this is in reality itself, so the mind of god is the world itself, not the separate outside omniscient and omnipotent control system imagined for thousands of years of theology. Aquinas, Summa, I, 22, 3: Does God have immediate providence over everything?
We do not say that the cells in our bodies love one another, but their behaviour is very much like what we call love at the human scale. They protect one another, feed one another, deal with waste from eachother, and carrying out many other roles associated with love all the while acting to maintain the human individual they belong to. On the human scale, it is good that we love one another so that we can maintain the communities and nations we belong to. Jesus truly said that the most important rule is that we love one another. Pope Pius XII wrote an Encyclical which describes the Roman Catholic Church as the mystical body of Christ. Although his ideas are a bit medieval, they are relevant to this project. As we go along we will build the Universe, as we build a living body, with layer after layer of processes, each one using the tools provided by the layer beneath it to support the layer above it. These layers are not labelled by their size but by their complexity. We begin with the initial singularity and we build the Universe which supports stars and planets, like the Sun and the Earth which support us. Pius XII (1943): Mystici Corporis Christi
4.7: Business as usual in the Roman Catholic Church?
Kuhn suggests that paradigm changes like quantum mechanics are forced upon us when scientific business as usual begins to feel that it has hit a wall. Do we need a paradigm change in theology and religion?
The history of the God of the Old Testament and many other old gods suggests that they were (and are) rather capricious and violent characters. The very first pages of Genesis record how the God of the Hebrews created a Paradise and then trashed it. This reaction was way out of proportion. A naive newly created young woman ate an apple at the instigation of a very cunning serpent (also created by God). A petulant God sentenced the whole human race to death. Like most of the ancient Gods, this God was modelled on warlords who did not hesitate to murder hundreds of thousands in their pursuit of empire. Zahiru'd-din Mohammad Babur (2020): The Babur Nama
The New Testament brought a paradigm change. Jesus of Nazareth changed the divine attitude. He was nothing like the Father at Sinai who announced "I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other Gods before me". This God then ordered his servant Moses to have all the people who were following ancient tradition and worshipping a Golden Calf murdered. Exodus 32: Moses slaughters the worshippers of the Golden Calf
Jesus had a temper, but he directed it against the oppressors of his people. He did not use his divine power to kill anyone. Instead he healed people sick with both physical and psychological disease, fed the hungry and preached the love of all, even Samaritans. The Roman occupiers of his homeland, apparently encouraged by the local ruling class, identified him as a dissident and tortured him to death. Tradition has it that he came alive again, founded a church to carry his message to the world and ascended into heaven, sending the Holy Spirit to nurture his new followers.
Politics as usual then set in. Constantine stopped persecuting the Christians and coopted Christianity to consolidate his empire. The Roman empire failed and the political roles of the Pope, his Cardinals and Bishops expanded. The Church went on the warpath to recover the Holy Land and having got a taste for the military approach to eliminating heresy conducted a Crusade in the South of France. During this period Europe acquired its first universities, Aristotle entered from the East and Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas rebuilt theology on an Aristotelian basis. The Papal affection for war and money got out of hand. Their power corrupted their spiritual role, leading to Martin Luther and the Reformation. The Popes turned more and more to autocracy, lost the Papal States and declared themselves infallible. The clerical habit of abusing children began to draw attention. The Church as a moral and intellectual force now stands ashamed by its behaviour and very much poorer. The time has come for a paradigm change. Albigensian Crusade - Wikipedia, Kieran Tapsell (2014): Potiphar's Wife: The Vatican's Secret and Child Sexual Abuse
The Church is now approximately 2000 years old and has the status of a sovereign nation, established by the Lateran Treaty in 1929. It is huge organization, an absolute, infallible autocracy with approximately 1.5 billion members and approximately a million staff. Carol Glatz (2021): Vatican statistics show continued growth in number of Catholics worldwide
The Church is based on faith. According to the definition given by Aquinas, taken from Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, faith explicitly rejects evidence, replacing it with hope. Experience shows that it rests on a long series of unverifiable hypotheses, which are nevertheless claimed to be true. It is therefore unscientific and the Church has no means to establish that it can deliver the goods it promises to its followers. Aquinas, Summa: II, II, 4, 1: Is this a fitting definition of faith: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not?" (Hebrews 11:1)
Its constitution is the Code of Canon Law, which establishes the Pope as an absolute autocrat. Canon §333.3 states:
No appeal or recourse is permitted against a sentence or decree of the Roman Pontiff.Code of Canon Law, §333: The Roman Pontiff
The Papacy, through the First Vatican Council, has declared itself infallible:
. . . we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable.
And there is a sting in the tail:
So then, should anyone, which God forbid, have the temerity to reject this definition of ours: let him be anathema.First Vatican Council (18 July 1870): IV: Concerning the Infallible Teaching of the Roman Pontiff
4.8: Paradigm change in the Catholic Church?
There are many features of the Catholic Church which are repugnant to modern ideas of corporate governance, social licence and human freedom and independence. Because it is such a huge and ancient imperial organization it has enormous social momentum and will not be easy to redirect. Dominic Crossan draws attention to the fact that imperial civilization is intrinsically violent. We can only overcome this tendency by insisting that our societies grant support and autonomy to every person, just as our bodies do with the cells that constitute us. Dominic Crossan (2007); God and Empire: Jesus against Rome, Then and Now
I imagine as a starting point for this reformation the establishment of a scientific theology, that is a set of beliefs about the nature of the Universe and ourselves that are consistent with reality. The following pages are my attempt to articulate the position I have reached over a long lifetime. I have moved from absolute fealty to the Catholic Church to a strong feeling that it is a massive burden on the human spirit, actively propagating false hypotheses about myself and my world and serving as an encouraging paradigm for the propagation of autocracy in the world.
It is a common ploy for a politicians wishing to cast themselves as saviours of the people to construct a paper tiger to represent the danger they are defending against. The story of the Satan and the Fall plays this role in Christianity. It is a story with no factual or scientific basis whatever. The current Pope Francis has surprised us by his frequent mentions of Satan, a mythical being. Anthony Faiola: A modern Pope goes old school on the Devil
It is true that there is evil in the world. However evil does no arise from the anger of an omnipotent and omniscient creator, but from the nature of the evolutionary process that brought the Universe to be. The fundamental problem is that while living creatures can reproduce exponentially, the resources available to support them are both limited and variable, so that times will come when there is not enough to go around. In the human world war and pillage then become to some degree rational: for many it is better to die fighting than to die of starvation. I return to this issue on page 6: Evolution: genetic memory, variation and selection
The Catholic Church, having comprehensively established the human species as a vast multitude of sinners, has then taken upon itself to be our saviour. The salvation on offer, however, is not of this world but in an afterlife where the alternatives are an eternity in heaven if one is baptized and refrains from mortal sin, or an eternity in Hell if one commits mortal sin and does not get baptized so as to be able to take advantage of the sacrament of penance to obtain forgiveness.
Given that there is no more evidence for an eternal afterlife than there is for an original sin, this whole program looks rather incredible. If Churches were subject to the normal consumer protection and corporate discipline that operates in civilized democracies, such a Church should not be permitted to collect funds on the claim that it is capable of rendering the services it offers. Environmental, social, and corporate governance - Wikipedia
Of course it may be considered that I am bitter because as a youth I fell this whole story hook, line and sinker. I joined the Dominican Order (encouraged by my teachers) and took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in the belief that I was securing my salvation. Later I found that the story I had been told was a dream, a castle in the air.
I am not bitter about my past. I am excited. I was saved by writing an essay undermining the Catholic business plan and was expelled from the Order as a consequence. During my time in the order I read the work of Aquinas continually and slowly formed the opinion that if one could replace the rather rudimentary Aristotelian science that was available to Aquinas with modern science, one could make a good case for establishing a scientific theology in the modern sense of science. That is my objective here. Jeffrey Nicholls (1967): How universal is the Universe?, Aquinas, Summa, I, 1, 2: Is sacred doctrine is a science?, Fortun & Bernstein (1998): Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the Twenty-First Century
(revised Monday 22 April, 2024)
Copyright:
You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.
Notes and references
Further reading
Books
Adams (1999), Marilyn McCord, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, Melbourne University Press 1999 Jacket: 'Thinkers in all societies have struggled to make sense of horrendous evil. This provocative book takes a religious perspective. It tackles a fundamental dilemma in Christian thought -- how to reconcile faith in God with the evils that afflict human beings.
Distinguished American philosopher Marilyn McCord Adams argues that analytic philosophy of religion is too narrowly focussed. The ground rules for debate have allowed philosophers to avert their gaze from the very worst evils and from their impact on human lives.
She proposes a radical shift away from the preoccupation with morals and towards more fruitful evaluative categories such as purity, defilement, honour, shame and aesthetics. The innovative approach of Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God will challenge thinkers both religious and secular.'
|
Babur (2020), Zahiru'd-din Mohammad, and Annette Susannah Beveridge (Translator) and William Dalrymple (Introduction), The Babur Nama, Knopf / Penguin Random House 2020 Jacket: 'Zahiru'd-din Mohammad Babu (1485-1530) a poet-prince from central Asia, was the first Mughal emperor and author of one of the most remarkable autobiographies in world Literature. The Babur Nama reveals its author as not only a military genius but also a ruler unusually magnanimous for his time, cultured, witty and possessing a talent for poetry, an adventurous spirit and an acute eye for natural beauty.'
|
Crossan (2007), John Dominic, God and Empire: Jesus against Rome, Then and Now, HarperCollins: HarperOne 2007 Jacket: 'John Dominic Crossan has achieved the status of a pivotal theological scholar of the rank of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Barth and Tillich. This book is incisive, original and fascinating.' John Shelby Spong
|
Fortun (1998), Mike, and Herbert J Bernstein, Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the Twenty-First Century, Counterpoint 1998 Jacket: ' Messy. Clumsy. Volatile. Exciting. These words are not often associated with the science, which for most people still connote exactitude, elegance, reliability and a rather plodding certainty. But the real story is something quite different. The sciences are less about the ability to know and to control than they are about the unleashing of new forces, new capacities for changing the world. The sciences as practised exist not in some pristine world of "objectivity," but in what Mike Fortnum and Herbert Bernstein call "the Muddled Middle".
This book explores the way science makes sense of the world and how the world makes sense of science. It is also about politics and culture—how these forces shape the sciences and are shaped by them in return.'
|
Kuhn (1962, 1996), Thomas S, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, U of Chicago Press 1962, 1970, 1996 Introduction: 'a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man, and never overnight.' [p 7]
|
Miles (1996), Jack, God: A Biography, Vintage Books 1996 Jacket: 'Jack Miles's remarkable work examines the hero of the Old Testament . . . from his first appearance as Creator to his last as Ancient of Days. . . . We see God torn by conflicting urges. To his own sorrow, he is by turns destructive and creative, vain and modest, subtle and naive, ruthless and tender, lawful and lawless, powerful yet powerless, omniscient and blind.'
|
Misner (1973), Charles W, and Kip S Thorne, John Archibald Wheeler, Gravitation, Freeman 1973 Jacket: 'Einstein's description of gravitation as curvature of spacetime led directly to that greatest of all predictions of his theory, that the universe itself is dynamic. Physics still has far to go to come to terms with this amazing fact and what it means for man and his relation to the universe. John Archibald Wheeler. . . . this is a book on Einstein's theory of gravity. . . . '
|
Pinker (2011), Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Viking Adult 2011 Amazon book description: 'A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Stuff of Thought and The Blank Slate
Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence. In his gripping and controversial new work, New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.'
|
Tapsell (2014), Kieran, Potiphar's Wife: The Vatican's Secret and Child Sexual Abuse, ATF Press 2014 Back cover: 'For 1500 years the Catholic Church accepted that clergy who sexually abused children deserved to be stripped of their status as priests and then imprisoned. . . . That all changed in 1922 when Pope Pius XI issues his decree Crimen Sollicitationis that created a de facto 'privilege of clergy' by imposing the 'secret of the Holy Office' on all information obtained through the Church's canonical investigations. If the State did not know about these crimes, then there would be no State trials, and the matter could be treated as a purely canonical crime to be dealt with in secret in the Church courts.'
|
Links
Abiogenesis -Wikipedia, Abiogenesis -Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In biology, abiogenesis or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but a process of increasing complexity involving the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Many proposals have been made for different stages of the process.' back |
Albert Einstein (1905), On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, An english translation of the paper that founded Special relativity. 'Examples of this sort, [in the contemporary application of Maxwell's electrodynamics to moving bodies] together with the unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the ``light medium,'' suggest that the phenomena of electrodynamics as well as of mechanics possess no properties corresponding to the idea of absolute rest. They suggest rather that, as has already been shown to the first order of small quantities, the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference for which the equations of mechanics hold good.' back |
Albigensian Crusade - Wikipedia, Albigensian Crusade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'When Innocent III's diplomatic attempts to roll back Catharism met with little success and after the papal legate Pierre de Castelnau was murdered (allegedly by an agent serving the Cathar count of Toulouse), Innocent III declared a crusade against Languedoc, offering the lands of the schismatics to any French nobleman willing to take up arms. The violence led to France's acquisition of lands with closer cultural and linguistic ties to Catalonia (see Occitan). An estimated 200,000 to 1,000,000 people were massacred during the crusade.' back |
Alexander Bird (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Thomas Kuhn, ' Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996) is one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, perhaps the most influential. His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time. Kuhn’s contribution to the philosophy of science marked not only a break with several key positivist doctrines, but also inaugurated a new style of philosophy of science that brought it closer to the history of science. His account of the development of science held that science enjoys periods of stable growth punctuated by revisionary revolutions.' back |
Anthony Faiola, A modern Pope goes old school on the Devil, 'VATICAN CITY — A darling of liberal Catholics and an advocate of inclusion and forgiveness, Pope Francis is hardly known for fire and brimstone. Yet, in his words and deeds, the new pope is locked in an epic battle with the oldest enemy of God and creation: The Devil. After his little more than a year atop the Throne of St. Peter, Francis’s teachings on Satan are already regarded as the most old school of any pope since at least Paul VI, whose papacy in the 1960s and 1970s fully embraced the notion of hellish forces plotting to deliver mankind unto damnation.' back |
Aquinas, Summa I, 25, 3, Is God omnipotent?, '. . . God is called omnipotent because He can do all things that are possible absolutely; which is the second way of saying a thing is possible. For a thing is said to be possible or impossible absolutely, according to the relation in which the very terms stand to one another, possible if the predicate is not incompatible with the subject, as that Socrates sits; and absolutely impossible when the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject, as, for instance, that a man is a donkey.' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 1, 2, Is sacred doctrine is a science?, 'I answer that, Sacred doctrine is a science. We must bear in mind that there are two kinds of sciences. There are some which proceed from a principle known by the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic and geometry and the like. There are some which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science: thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic. So it is that sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed.' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 22, 3, Does God have immediate providence over everything?, ' I answer that, Two things belong to providence—namely, the type of the order of things foreordained towards an end; and the execution of this order, which is called government. As regards the first of these, God has immediate providence over everything, because He has in His intellect the types of everything, even the smallest; and whatsoever causes He assigns to certain effects, He gives them the power to produce those effects. Whence it must be that He has beforehand the type of those effects in His mind. As to the second, there are certain intermediaries of God's providence; for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures.' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 7, Is God altogether simple?, 'I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His "suppositum"; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple. . . . ' back |
Aquinas, Summa, I, 63, 2, Can angels sin only by pride and envy, ' But there can be no sin when anyone is incited to good of the spiritual order; unless in such affection the rule of the superior be not kept. Such is precisely the sin of pride—not to be subject to a superior when subjection is due. Consequently the first sin of the angel can be none other than pride.' back |
Aquinas, Summa: I, 9, 1, Is god is completely immutable?, 'I answer that, from what precedes, it is shown that God is altogether immutable. First, because it was shown above that there is some first being, whom we call God; and that this first being must be pure act, without the admixture of any potentiality, for the reason that, absolutely, potentiality is posterior to act. Now everything which is in any way changed, is in some way in potentiality. Hence it is evident that it is impossible for God to be in any way changeable. . . . ' back |
Aquinas, Summa: II, II, 4, 1, Is this a fitting definition of faith: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not?" (Hebrews 11:1), 'I answer that, Though some say that the above words of the Apostle are not a definition of faith, yet if we consider the matter aright, this definition overlooks none of the points in reference to which faith can be defined, albeit the words themselves are not arranged in the form of a definition, just as the philosophers touch on the principles of the syllogism, without employing the syllogistic form.' back |
Archaea - Wikipedia, Archaea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Archaea . . . constitute a domain and kingdom of single-celled microorganisms. These microbes . . . are prokaryotes, meaning they have no cell nucleus or any other membrane-bound organelles in their cells. Archaea were initially classified as bacteria, receiving the name archaebacteria (in the Archaebacteria kingdom), but this classification is outdated. Archaeal cells have unique properties separating them from the other two domains of life, Bacteria and Eukaryota.' back |
Carol Glatz (2021), Vatican statistics show continued growth in number of Catholics worldwide, Members: 1.34 Billion; Bishops: 5 364; Priests: 424 336; Deacons: 48 238: Brothers: 50 295; Women: 630 099. back |
Catholic Catechism, p1, s2, c1, a1, p4, III. "The world was created for the glory of God", '293 Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: "The world was made for the glory of God." ' back |
Catholic Catechism: §§ 385-412, Satan and the Fall, '391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing." ' back |
Clonal selection - Wikipedia, Clonal selection - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Clonal selection theory is a scientific theory in immunology that explains the functions of cells (lymphocytes) of the immune system in response to specific antigens invading the body. The concept was introduced by the Australian doctor Frank Macfarlane Burnet in 1957, in an attempt to explain the formation of a diversity of antibodies during initiation of the immune response. The theory has become a widely accepted model for how the immune system responds to infection and how certain types of B and T lymphocytes are selected for destruction of specific antigens.' back |
Code of Canon Law, §333, The Roman Pontiff, ' Can. 333 §1. By virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff not only possesses power over the universal Church but also obtains the primacy of ordinary power over all particular churches and groups of them. Moreover, this primacy strengthens and protects the proper, ordinary, and immediate power which bishops possess in the particular churches entrusted to their care. §2. In fulfilling the office of supreme pastor of the Church, the Roman Pontiff is always joined in communion with the other bishops and with the universal Church. He nevertheless has the right, according to the needs of the Church, to determine the manner, whether personal or collegial, of exercising this office. §3. No appeal or recourse is permitted against a sentence or decree of the Roman Pontiff.' back |
Differentiable manifold - Wikipedia, Differentiable manifold - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematics, a differentiable manifold (also differential manifold) is a type of manifold that is locally similar enough to a vector space to allow one to apply calculus. Any manifold can be described by a collection of charts (atlas). One may then apply ideas from calculus while working within the individual charts, since each chart lies within a vector space to which the usual rules of calculus apply. If the charts are suitably compatible (namely, the transition from one chart to another is differentiable), then computations done in one chart are valid in any other differentiable chart. ' back |
Environmental, social, and corporate governance - Wikipedia, Environmental, social, and corporate governance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG), also known as environmental, social, governance, is a business framework for considering environmental issues and social issues in the context of corporate governance. It is designed to be embedded into an organization's strategy that considers the needs and ways in which to generate value for all organizational stakeholders (such as employees, customers, suppliers, and financiers).' back |
Episteme - Wikipedia, Episteme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In philosophy, episteme (Ancient Greek: ἐπιστήμη, romanized: epistēmē, lit. 'science, knowledge'; French: épistème) is knowledge or understanding. The term epistemology (the branch of philosophy concerning knowledge) is derived from episteme. . . . For Foucault, an épistémè is the guiding unconsciousness of subjectivity within a given epoch – subjective parameters which form an historical a priori. He uses the term épistémè in his The Order of Things in a specialized sense to mean the historical, non-temporal, a priori knowledge that grounds truth and discourses, thus representing the condition of their possibility within a particular epoch. In the book, Foucault describes épistémè (183) "In any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one épistémè that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice".' back |
Exodus 32, The Lord orders Moses to slaughter the worshippers of the Golden Calf, '27 Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbour'.” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day”.' back |
Exra Ecclesiam nulla salus - Wikipedia, Exra Ecclesiam nulla salus - Wikipedia, thee free encyclopedia, ' The Latin phrase extra Ecclesiam nulla salus (meaning "outside the Church [there is] no salvation" or "no salvation outside the Church")[1][2] is a phrase referring to a Christian doctrine about who is to receive salvation. The expression comes from the writings of Saint Cyprian of Carthage, a Christian bishop of the 3rd century. The phrase is an axiom often used as shorthand for the doctrine that the Church is necessary for salvation. It is a dogma in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, in reference to their own communions. It is also held by many historic Protestant churches. However, Protestants, Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox each have a unique ecclesiological understanding of what constitutes 'the Church'.' back |
First Vatican Council (18 July 1870), IV: Concerning the Infallible Teaching of the Roman Pontiff, ' . . . we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable.' back |
Fitness (biology) - Wikipedia, Fitness (biology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Fitness (often denoted w in population genetics models) is a central idea in evolutionary theory. It describes the capability of an individual of certain genotype to reproduce, and usually is equal to the proportion of the individual's genes in all the genes of the next generation. If differences in individual genotypes affect fitness, then the frequencies of the genotypes will change over generations; the genotypes with higher fitness become more common. This process is called natural selection. back |
Forbidden fruit - Wikipedia, page 4: Theology: a new paradigm?, the free encyclopedia, ' In Jewish mythology, forbidden fruit is a name given to the fruit growing in the Garden of Eden which God commands mankind not to eat. In the biblical story, Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and are exiled from Eden: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. — Genesis 2:16–17, King James Version As a metaphor outside of the Abrahamic religions, the phrase typically refers to any indulgence or pleasure that is considered illegal or immoral. ' back |
General covariance - Wikipedia, General covariance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, In theoretical physics, general covariance (also known as diffeomorphism covariance or general invariance) is the invariance of the form of physical laws under arbitrary differentiable coordinate transformations. The essential idea is that coordinates do not exist a priori in nature, but are only artifices used in describing nature, and hence should play no role in the formulation of fundamental physical laws.' back |
Genotype - Wikipedia, Genotype - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The genotype of an organism is its complete set of genetic material. Genotype can also be used to refer to the alleles or variants an individual carries in a particular gene or genetic location. The number of alleles an individual can have in a specific gene depends on the number of copies of each chromosome found in that species, also referred to as ploidy.' back |
Gnosticism - Wikipedia, Gnosticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός gnōstikós, "having knowledge") is a collection of ancient religious ideas and systems which originated in the first century AD among early Christian and Jewish sects. These various groups emphasised personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) over orthodox teachings, traditions, and ecclesiastical authority. Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a blind, malevolent demiurge responsible for creating the material universe. Viewing this material existence as flawed or evil, Gnostics considered the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the supreme divinity in the form of mystical or esoteric insight.' back |
Holy See, Code of Canon Law: Canon 252 §3, ' There are to be classes in dogmatic theology, always grounded in the written word of God together with sacred tradition; through these, students are to learn to penetrate more intimately the mysteries of salvation, especially with St. Thomas as a teacher. There are also to be classes in moral and pastoral theology, canon law, liturgy, ecclesiastical history, and other auxiliary and special disciplines, according to the norm of the prescripts of the program of priestly formation.' back |
Holy See , Catechism of the Catholic Church, §293, '293 Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: "The world was made for the glory of God." St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things "not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it", for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: "Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand." The First Vatican Council explains: This one, true God, of his own goodness and "almighty power", not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel "and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal. . ." [Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius] back |
In Memoriam A.H.H. - Wikipedia, In Memoriam A.H.H. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' "In Memoriam A.H.H." is a poem by the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, completed in 1849. It is a requiem for the poet's beloved Cambridge friend Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Vienna in 1833. . . . . It is widely considered to be one of the great poems of the 19th century. |
Isaac Newton (1726), General Scholium, 'Published for the first time as an appendix to the 2nd (1713) edition of the Principia, the General Scholium reappeared in the 3rd (1726) edition with some amendments and additions. As well as countering the natural philosophy of Leibniz and the Cartesians, the General Scholium contains an excursion into natural theology and theology proper. In this short text, Newton articulates the design argument (which he fervently believed was furthered by the contents of his Principia), but also includes an oblique argument for a unitarian conception of God and an implicit attack on the doctrine of the Trinity, which Newton saw as a post-biblical corruption. The English translation here is that of Andrew Motte (1729). Italics and orthography as in original. back |
Jeffrey Nicholls (1967), How universal is the universe?, ' 61 The future is beyond our comprehension, but we can get an idea of it and speed its coming by studying what we already have. Contemplating the size and wonder of the universe as it stands in the light of its openness to the future must surely be a powerful incentive to men to love God. We have come a long way since the little world of St Thomas. Ours is open to all things, even participating in god. This is what I mean by universal. ' back |
Jeffrey Nicholls (2019d), Political dynamics: Rousseau, Rawls and the Physiology of Contract, ' Rousseau begins to build society with asocial individuals. In this he is about three billion years too late, since the evolutionary solutions to the social and political problems we face began with the emergence of multicellular creatures. The integrity of a human body comprising an enormous set of more or less free living cells depends on two facts: their common genome and the differentiation that arises during the growth of each body which assigns some hundreds of different roles to different cells. This integrity is made possible by genetic unity. All my cells (which are in fact a minority within my body) share a common genome. On this foundation they work together and my immune system has a clear criterion to identify strangers. We might consider the Bible and the Creeds as the genome of Christianity. They have served to bind billions of people into more or less coherent societies for nearly two millennia. Other religions have played similar roles. More generally, on the assumption that theologies are human theories of everything, different concepts of the nature of God are the sources large blocs of human social and political unity. ' back |
Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.' A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, Essai philosophique dur les probabilites introduction to the second edition of Theorie analytique des probabilites based on a lecture given in 1794. back |
Lorentz transformation - Wikipedia, Lorentz transformation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics, the Lorentz transformation or Lorentz-Fitzgerald transformation describes how, according to the theory of special relativity, two observers' varying measurements of space and time can be converted into each other's frames of reference. It is named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz. It reflects the surprising fact that observers moving at different velocities may measure different distances, elapsed times, and even different orderings of events.' back |
Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament - Wikipedia, Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The books of the New Testament frequently cite Jewish scripture to support the claim of the Early Christians that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah. Scholars have observed that few of these citations are actual predictions in context; the majority of these quotations and references are taken from the prophetic Book of Isaiah, but they range over the entire corpus of Jewish writings. . . . .. The Hebrew scriptures were an important source for the New Testament authors. There are 27 direct quotations in the Gospel of Mark, 54 in Matthew, 24 in Luke, and 14 in John, and the influence of the scriptures is vastly increased when allusions and echoes are included, with half of Mark's gospel being made up of allusions to and citations of the scriptures. Matthew contains all Mark's quotations and introduces around 30 more, sometimes in the mouth of Jesus, sometimes as his own commentary on the narrative, and Luke makes allusions to all but three of the Old Testament books.' back |
Phenotype - Wikipedia, Phenotype - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In genetics, the phenotype (from Ancient Greek φαίνω (phaínō) 'to appear, show', and τύπος (túpos) 'mark, type') is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism.[1][2] The term covers the organism's morphology (physical form and structure), its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological properties, its behavior, and the products of behavior. An organism's phenotype results from two basic factors: the expression of an organism's genetic code (its genotype) and the influence of environmental factors. Both factors may interact, further affecting the phenotype.' back |
Philippe Horvath & Rodolphe Barrangou, CRISPR/Cas, the immune system of bacteria and archaea , ' Microbes rely on diverse defense mechanisms that allow them to withstand viral predation and exposure to invading nucleic acid. In many Bacteria and most Archaea, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) form peculiar genetic loci, which provide acquired immunity against viruses and plasmids by targeting nucleic acid in a sequence-specific manner. These hypervariable loci take up genetic material from invasive elements and build up inheritable DNA-encoded immunity over time. Conversely, viruses have devised mutational escape strategies that allow them to circumvent the CRISPR/Cas system, albeit at a cost.' back |
Pius XII (1943), Mystici Corporis Christi, '. . . Christ our Lord should be declared in a very particular way Head of His Mystical Body. As the nerves extend from the head to all parts of the human body and give them power to feel and to move, in like manner our Savior communicates strength and power to His Church so that the things of God are understood more clearly and are more eagerly desired by the faithful. From Him streams into the body of the Church all the light with which those who believe are divinely illumined, and all the grace by which they are made holy as He is holy.' back |
Principle of sufficient reason - Wikipedia, Principle of sufficient reason - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause. The modern formulation of the principle is usually attributed to Gottfried Leibniz, although the idea was conceived of and utilized by various philosophers who preceded him, including Anaximander, Parmenides, Archimedes, Plato and Aristotle, Cicero, Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas, and Spinoza. Some philosophers have associated the principle of sufficient reason with "ex nihilo nihil fit". Hamilton identified the laws of inference modus ponens with the "law of Sufficient Reason, or of Reason and Consequent" and modus tollens with its contrapositive expression.' back |
Problem of evil - Wikipedia, Problem of evil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with that of a deity who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent (see theism). An argument from evil attempts to show that the co-existence of evil and such a deity is unlikely or impossible, and attempts to show the contrary have been traditionally known as theodicies.' back |
Reproductive success - Wikipedia, Reproductive success - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Reproductive success is an individual's production of offspring per breeding event or lifetime. This is not limited by the number of offspring produced by one individual, but also the reproductive success of these offspring themselves. Reproductive success is different from fitness in that individual success is not necessarily a determinant for adaptive strength of a genotype since the effects of chance and the environment have no influence on those specific genes. Reproductive success turns into a part of fitness when the offspring are actually recruited into the breeding population.' back |
Second law of thermodynamics - Wikipedia, Second law of thermodynamics - Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia, 'The second law of thermodynamics states that in a natural thermodynamic process, there is an increase in the sum of the entropies of the participating systems. The second law is an empirical finding that has been accepted as an axiom of thermodynamic theory. back |
Special relativity - Wikipedia, Special relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Special relativity . . . is the physical theory of measurement in an inertial frame of reference proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein (after the considerable and independent contributions of Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others) in the paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". It generalizes Galileo's principle of relativity—that all uniform motion is relative, and that there is no absolute and well-defined state of rest (no privileged reference frames)—from mechanics to all the laws of physics, including both the laws of mechanics and of electrodynamics, whatever they may be. Special relativity incorporates the principle that the speed of light is the same for all inertial observers regardless of the state of motion of the source.' back |
The Book of Genesis 3, The Fall and God's Punishment of Humanity, '1. Now the snake was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the LORD God had made. He asked the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?” |
Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia, Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The term Variety was introduced by W. Ross Ashby to denote the count of the total number of states of a system. The condition for dynamic stability under perturbation (or input) was described by his Law of Requisite Variety. Ashby says: Thus, if the order of occurrence is ignored, the set {c, b, c, a, c, c, a, b, c, b, b, a} which contains twelve elements, contains only three distinct elements- a, b, c. Such a set will be said to have a variety of three elements. He adds The observer and his powers of discrimination may have to be specified if the variety is to be well defined. Variety can be stated as an integer, as above, or as the logarithm to the base 2 of the number i.e. in bits.' back |