Steven Dick on Harmonization

Steven Dick

Steven Dick

naturalismharmonization

[Future religious thinkers] must be open to radically new conceptions of God, not necessarily the God of the ancients, nor the God of human imagination, but a God grounded in cosmic evolution, the biological universe, and the three principles:

  1. Why would a Messiah only come to us?
  2. Humans are likely not the center of anything.
  3. Nor the ultimate creation of God (likely not the head of the class when it comes to brainpower and intelligence)

. . . A major effect of the concept of a natural God is that it has the capacity to reconcile science and religion. For those with a vested interest in the supernatural God of most standard religions, this may be too great a sacrifice for reconciliation. But consider the benefits. A natural God is an intelligence in and of the world, a God amenable to scientific methods, or at least approachable by them. A supernatural God incorporates a concept all scientists reject in connection with their science. For some, this may be precisely the point: that God cannot be, and should not be, approachable by science. But for Einstein and many other scientists (perhaps expressed in a different way for the latter) “the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.”

Cosmotheology: Theological Implications of the New Universe, Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life, and the Theological Implications, page 201–204, Steven J. Dick, Templeton Foundation Press, 2000

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