metaphysics

First Principles in expressions

Physicists seek to discover first principles of the manifest universe. Why? These principles, if identified, would reflect the fundamental nature of reality and represent the origins of natural law and process.

Relativity theory takes us to an essential singularity where matter is crushed into a point of infinite curvature and gravity—which produced the Big Bang.

Quantum theory takes us to a state where the universe exists as a non-local foamy cloud of mere “tendencies to exist.”

String theory takes us back to a multidimensional state where nothing exists but energetic strings, membranes and blobs (of something or other).

Religion teaches that fundamental reality takes us to an Infinite God.

Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg supported the latter, but applied scientific reasoning to his theistic position. Like some of today’s cutting edge thinkers he anticipated that the concept of causality could have its basis in a reality freed-up from involvement with time and locality. Swedenborg’s model of reality embraced a dynamical nexus between Divine (God’s) order and temporal order. In this model, various states of God’s love flow into (descend) into boundary conditions with increased constraints until finally finding expression in the spatio-temporal arena.

This means that the physical universe and its laws must be expressions or analogs of spiritual laws and God’s essential character. Swedenborg called these causal links between God and physical nature the science of correspondences.

To give you a simple example of this top-down causal relationship between spiritual (non-local) and physical terms, we can look at our mundane everyday expressions and language. The word “seeing” has its mental analog in the word “understanding” which in turn has its Divine analog in God’s Infinite “foresight” and “providence.” In each case the expression is self-similar (corresponds) but becomes less local and physical and more universal as it moves up the hierarchical ladder. This self-similarity allows linkage for God to act in the world. In a top-down causal scheme of reality, all God’s qualities represent first principles—and that which is responsible for the patterning principles and dynamics of the whole multi-tiered system that follows.

Heaven’s angels live in a non-physical realm and are cognitive of the first principles that are contained within all human expression. Every idea or concept that comes to an angelic being’s perception is immediately transformed into its “higher” equivalent or corresponding mental and spiritual quality.

The significance of this is that angels (and specially enlightened humans) perceive deeper levels of meaning within the narratives of Holy Scripture. According to Swedenborg, not only were angels able to apply new degrees of freedom to language but from this loftier viewpoint they could also identify patterns of lawful process and order within the sacred scaffolding and architecture of Scripture. In other words, God’s Holy Word could be studied as a multidimensional and scientific document with the potential of leading physicists to formulate a causal theory from a non-physical (pre-geometric but holy) matrix.

This is a game-changer!

In order to explain these ideas in greater detail, I have just completed a book entitled Proving God. It is now available on Amazon.

Posted on May 23, 2010by
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http://www.provinggod.com/

A daring work that unifies Science and Theology
by challenging many of the world’s current beliefs about both

Proving God

The “Spiritual” Origin of Species!

Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg would blow the doors off of Charles Darwin’s foundational book on evolutionary biology The Origin of Species. Rather than approaching evolution from a materialist or naturalist position, Swedenborg’s model was both theological and scientific.

Everything in nature has order and orientation. That is why life can be classified into coherent genera and species (general and specific categories). That all life is rationally organized into orders with orientation is evidenced by the fact that life evolved towards interconnectedness, interrelatedness and interdependence. The biosphere is organized into a unified ecosystem consisting of profound relationships.

The ecosystem supports each of its species just as each species supports the whole ecosystem. This organic template is continued within each species’ internal bio-structure, where each organ and cell support the bodily system and the bodily system supports each organ and cell. In fact, all organic function is a harmonious orchestration of tasks and utility (division of labor).

Swedenborg would not only challenge the notion of natural selection, but the notion of anything physical as being foundational. He claimed that the special harmonious arrangement and endless complexity in nature was a physical analog or mirror image of a deeper reality—of God’s infinite goodness (the essence of love is to unify through cooperation and reciprocity).

God’s goodness, being infinite, comes in many, many non-material forms—all of which can be classified into real genera and species with order and orientation. Because God is ultimate life, these spiritual forms are living forms of utility seeking realization as outcomes of measurement in time and space. Nothing is created in nature unless it can represent some measurement and quantification of goodness and usefulness. God can lawfully act in the finite world because divine qualities of love can flow into and maintain forms of goodness that are oriented to an eternal plan (God can even flow into and allow evil if it can serve the divine eternal plan—but that is another topic).

According to Swedenborg, the different species of God’s goodness find and create their physical equivalence and analog in the different relationships of nature’s various and orchestrated genera and species. The appearance of the human race in nature was to serve God’s evolutionary purpose of creating a spiritual biosphere (called heaven). When an individual embraces God’s tenets and spiritual values, he or she takes the process of evolution into a non-physical realm by organizing their feelings and ideas into a nobler order (genera and species) and orientation (a heaven-bound life).

After the death of the physical body, individuals find themselves in the spiritual environment and ecosystem that they fashioned—an environment perfectly reflecting all the qualities of their heart and mind (which is one’s spiritual reality)!

If you don’t believe that there can be living organization in a non-material realm, simply contemplate the fact that human understanding is dependent on the real organization, order and orientation of one’s ideas and knowledge—this is non-physical structure and complexity! The human mind and first-person experience (consciousness) certainly is not under the same constraints as physical matter, and human memory is not limited like physical water in a certain size bottle.

This topic needs a whole book to explain. So I have done just that. I have written a new book entitled Proving God. It is just days away from being available on Amazon.

Posted onMay 12, 2010by

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A daring work that unifies Science and Theology
by challenging many of the world’s current beliefs about both

Proving God

LOVE

We all experience love. We all acknowledge the importance of love in our lives. According to scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, the essence of love is to unite. When we love our children, our spouse, our neighbor, our country, our planet, we seek to be more intimately unified with other things in the world—things outside of our biological selves, that beckon us to transcend our otherwise self-absorbed way of life.

Love does seek to bring people together and plays a central role in religion and spiritual evolution. Religion, properly understood, challenges us to make our love more inclusive and universal.

But, as the title for this blog site suggests, can the topic of love have anything to do with actual science, order and law? If the operation and function of love does follow orderly laws, then we would have a way of rationally understanding this most mysterious and potent force. Love certainly acts as a force, with the real kinetics (energy) to affect our actions in the world.

Unlike other forces identified by physical scientists, love is consciously purposeful—it intends something. It even seems to act like gravity, because love, once set in motion, finds its equilibrium in reaching a goal.

According to astrophysicist Paul Davies, one of the biggest cosmological mysteries is the concept of gravitational order and the thermodynamics of gravitating systems. This mystery in nature involves the tendency of gravitating systems to grow coherent structure spontaneously. In other words, star clusters (galaxies), and solar systems find their equilibrium in orderly structure—with orientation!

Hmmm?

On smaller scales, ruled by quantum physics, a similar mystery occurs—how does the quantum foam, which consists of mere  “tendencies to exist” generate coherent matter?  Does one tendency or potentiality prevail from mere chance or do all the tendencies within a cloud of quantum froth find their equilibrium in a unified outcome of measurement? Swedenborg would answer “yes” to the latter (otherwise quantum theory will never be a theory of principles). One thing is certain to today’s scientists—it seems that after nature “jumps” out of this froth of possibilities, she heads incessantly towards self-organization and complexity. This complexity in nature is continued through evolution, whereby complexity creates bio-structure with ever-increasing intelligence and consciousness (like the human brain). Increased intelligence in the human brain continues this evolutionary drive by bringing mental concepts into organized and coherent structure called belief systems and worldviews.

Interestingly, religion offers principles and tenets to make the human heart and mind self-organize into nobler belief-systems (human understanding and coherent thought depends on how well we can organize our knowledge, which is determined by our chosen values). And, if we believe that the human mind operates beyond space and time, then such a non-material organization, based on spiritual principles, would represent a true heavenly kingdom of mutual love.

My new book Proving God will offer many more insights into how LOVE can be put into scientific language, and gain its rightful place of importance as the fundamental principle and force ruling the created universe.

Posted on May 5, 2010by
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http://www.provinggod.com/

A daring work that unifies Science and Theology
by challenging many of the world’s current beliefs about both

Proving God

 

You have a Soul, a Physical Body, but everything in between is up to you!

Religion is simply about how to live a heaven-bound life. And, if one humbly and sincerely loves God and the neighbor, reaching God’s heavenly kingdom of mutual love does not require one to be a neuroscientist.

So why did Emanuel Swedenborg provide so many extra details on the process of spiritual salvation? The average person who lives a life of goodness from spiritual principles does not really need such doctrinal “overkill.”

A hint comes from a statement once made by George Gurdjieff that “the more one knows, the more effective one’s efforts can be.” The purpose of religion is to change our lives to become better people. Therefore, Swedenborg offered the extra information for those who wanted to understand the actual “science” behind salvation (all process proceeds according to the laws of order).

Religion basically informs us that we have a soul and a physical body. Because we have souls, the human race can survive death and live in a spiritual realm. But what Swedenborg (and Gurdjieff) brings to the theological table is that the human soul still needs to be embodied in a way that allows an individual’s personal identity to be put into a non-physical structure and organically transferred to a different realm.

According to Swedenborg, God’s living force flows into our souls—through heaven—and down into the hearts and minds of us people living on earth. But this divine influence flows through us like water through a sieve—unless a person makes the effort to allow God’s love and truth to become “fixed” and permanent in his or her life.

Swedenborg discovered that the true human soul is even beyond the consciousness of angels. So we cannot live in such a rarified sphere after death. What happens is that the Soul creates a spiritual body inside the physical body—based on the things we LOVE and seek! In other words, instead of being the mere result of our parents’ genes (which is a genetic “crapshoot”), the spiritual body is who we really are and deserve to be!

Swedenborg claimed that a person’s blood is a physical analog of an individual’s loves, affections and passions. Not only do people have different appetites, the human digestive system extracts nutrients that bring the chemical makeup of a person’s blood into concord with their affections. He claimed individuals even extract different qualities from the atmosphere (atmospheric and ethereal salts) in our respiratory systems to further promote this concord. And finally we all draw in different kinds of knowledge from the world (including religious doctrine). From these multi-sourced “foods” the soul fashions our real spiritual body using the substances that correspond to our life choices and values (loves).

We tend to view the human mental faculty of understanding and reasoning as a cognitive function. But Swedenborg claimed that the human understanding is an organized body of knowledge that forms one’s innermost bio-complexity. In the same way the physical body consists of organs that digest and prepare food, the human understanding contains non-physical analogs of these same organs by which the spirit can digest and prepare information. Angels, and those who live in heaven, have developed spiritual bodies that can receive and digest an even nobler food or quality of information—God’s teachings and tenets.

The spiritual body develops (crystallizes) within our physical bodies as we live out and act on our chosen principles of life. When individuals leave their physical bodies behind after death, they find themselves living in the environment that most suits their spiritual bio-complexity. Those who gravitate toward heaven or toward hell have differently organized spiritual bodies. Again, the soul can only create our inner reality and spiritual body from the things we hold dearest in our hearts and minds. (If the soul did not comply with our strongest wishes our very bio-fabric would rip apart!)

I am sharing these ideas with you so that you can have a more visceral notion of the consequences of one’s behavior. My new book Proving God contains a chapter entitled “The Science of Salvation” which puts the discussion of human salvation into clear scientific language!

Posted onMay 3, 2010by

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http://www.provinggod.com/

 

A daring work that unifies Science and Theology
by challenging many of the world’s current beliefs about both

Proving God

Spiritual Technology

The human brain is often compared to a computer. Yet as much as the computer has improved over the years it still cannot match the complexity of the human brain.

While computer technology is jumping by leaps and bounds, can we also say that the human brain is making equal progress?

The human brain, unlike the computer, is a self-perfecting bio-machine. When individuals learn new things or intend new things, the brain can actually change its wiring and make new connections between neurons (brain cells) to accommodate these psychical changes.

But can the human brain advance by leaps and bounds like the computer? One of the important ways computers are advancing is that they can store more and more information on smaller and smaller materials. Brain design shows this same principle—that the most complex information takes form on the smallest scales of structure (like protein folding which is so fast and precise that it lies beyond any known classical process). Also, some neuroscientists are starting to embrace the idea that the neuron has its own nervous system and that the higher functions of human reasoning and abstract ideas takes place within these deeper neural structures (substrates).

Information does not seem to be restricted by physical size and measurement. In fact, some serious physicists suspect that all information and process (active information) has its fundamental abode in a pre-spatial and pre-geometric realm.

Scientist/theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg has already beat modern scientists to the punch. He not only created a multi-level model of human cognition, he also devised a hierarchical system of information and structure that lawfully reached all the way into the non-local and non-temporal spiritual world!

In scientific language, religion is God’s strategy to help humans tap into these deeper realms of active information. How?  The answer is LOVE!

Swedenborg claimed that love, affection and intention occupy the cockpit of human intelligence and consciousness. However, each level or substrate of human cognition is under the operational control of a different and distinct species of love. On the lowest level is corporeal love, which embraces worldly pleasure and acquires memory-data. Above this level is the love and desire to understand what the lower level knows. Higher up, is the love for reasoning about the things one understands. Above this is the love to become wise, which is the essence of spiritual love.

Religion is God’s guide and roadmap for humans to choose the better, and finally, the best values to live by. Scientifically speaking, this allows an individual to embrace a higher and more inclusive form of love that operates on deeper levels of the brain and neuron. The process of spiritual growth not only leads to new connections between neurons, but new connections between deeper and deeper substrates of the neuron, until one’s inner bio-structure evolves into a non-physical and coherent spiritual body, capable of functioning in heaven’s ecosystem.

God’s commandments are for the advancing of spiritual technology. The human heart and mind was purposely designed for these divine upgrades.

If this topic interests you, I offer further explanation and details in my soon-to-be-released book Proving God.

Posted on April 29, 2010by

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A daring work that unifies Science and Theology
by challenging many of the world’s current beliefs about both

Proving God

Love and thought are non-physical substances

Scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg provides the best rational evidence that love (human affection) and human thought are real substances and forms. However, these substances and forms are not bound by space and time. In fact, Swedenborg called love and thought (ideas) spiritual substances.

Even modern science understands that without a real substance as a subject, there cannot be any mode, or any modification, or any quality that can actively manifest itself. Thoughts and feelings must be real substances because they can take on modes, be modified, have trajectories and even produce real effects in the world.

Natural science, which is based on a materialistic ideology, believes that “thought” is an outcome or by-product (epiphenomenon) of events taking place on the micro-level of matter or subatomic world. Swedenborg believed the human mind operated first (a priori) and flowed into the material or physical forms of the brain (called top-down causality).

But how would we determine that psychical “stuff” (intelligent substance) operates beyond the constraints of physical time and space? One clue is that the ideas of our mind are not under the same physical laws that rule and govern matter. For instance, if you cut an apple pie in half and share it with a friend you retain half of the pie. But if you share half of your knowledge with a friend you still get to keep all your knowledge! Also, when we see a physical event happening we can retain the memory of that event long after its duration in time. So the mental images of our ideas are not under the same laws of physical time or physical space.

It is true that when we manifest strong feelings or rationally think things through, precise areas of the physical brain are activated, but according to Swedenborg, this actually represents the operation of spirit (intelligent substance) flowing into a more restricted boundary condition.

Thoughts and feelings are under a different metric (standard of measurement) than physical quantities. A person’s physical stature is determined and measured by feet or centimeters, but a person’s inner spiritual qualities are measured by wisdom and goodness. Each of these metrics is distinctly different and represents measurement in distinct realms of reality—but each realm consists of its own ratios and proportions.

Swedenborg discovered that while these two metrics were distinct, they could find relationship through principles of harmony. That is, the ratios, proportions and equations represented by modifications of thought could correspond to, and correlate with, the ratios, proportions and equations produced by the modes and modifications of physical forms in the brain.

The significance of this is that non-physical and physical processes can be unified, thus offering a possible nexus for ultimately unifying science and religion!

These promising concepts have unfortunately not been pursued, because Swedenborg’s importance has been almost completely overlooked when it comes to the history of human ideas. It is the hope of my upcoming book Proving God to renew interest in both his amazing scientific and theological works.

Posted onApril 28, 2010by
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http://www.provinggod.com

A daring work that unifies Science and Theology
by challenging many of the world’s current beliefs about both

Proving God

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The Great Swedenborgian Debate!

Once upon a time a denomination of the Swedenborgian Church hosted a debate between two Swedenborgian experts on various spiritual topics. The first panelist had suggested that hell was eternal, that the human will was totally corrupt and the kingdom of heaven was not easy to obtain.

The second panelist eventually agreed, reluctantly, that “hell,” at least as theologian Emanuel Swedenborg described it, is an eternal outcome. The reason why this agreement was not immediate was because it seemingly challenged the idea of God’s Infinite love and mercy—which is what gets church pews to fill up.

We now cut to the live and continuing discussion over the other two highly contested remarks made by the first panelist:

“Swedenborg states in many places in his theological writings that the human will has complete control over the human intellect and makes it conform to its own disposition,” said the second panelist. “Therefore, something in the human will must be good in order for individuals to discern and make the best moral choices. So the human will cannot be totally corrupt.”

The second panelist notices the first panelist is shaking his head and immediately begins to provide more supportive ideas for his belief that the human will is not totally corrupt.

“The human understanding is capable of learning and considering nobler ideas, like God’s Ten Commandments, which challenge us to transcend the flawed proclivities of our worldly will. These higher principles of living can last long enough in the brain so that one’s earth-bound will, little by little, gets used to heaven-bound thinking and begin to make better choices,” said panelist number two.

“Nope,” said the first panelist. “The will that we are born with, including all its inclinations and compulsions, is put off during one’s spiritual evolution and salvation. An entirely new ‘heavenly will’ must be created by the Lord God to set the process of salvation in motion. God does not make the old will better.”

Clinging to some residual effect of his earth-born will, the second panelist reacted as if this statement were a personal attack. “Read Swedenborg’s statement in his work Heaven and Hell, number 533. It suggests to me, at least, that the process of salvation is continuous and commences from the old will as it gets better information,” said the visibly irritated second panelist.

“You cannot simply pick a quote by Swedenborg to get the big picture,” replied the first panelist. “My statement that the human will is totally corrupt comes from a synthesis of many of his writings. If we are attentive and look further into this matter we learn that it is not from our native will that God conducts His work of salvation. The Lord works from what Swedenborg called ‘remains.’ These are affections and bits of information that a child experiences in life and the Lord secretly stores away for safekeeping within the unconscious or involuntary mind.  The remains keep the child inwardly connected to heaven and its angels. When the process of spiritual regeneration begins, the Lord activates a person’s remains so that it can become a matrix or plane by which a new will and intellect is generated. This can also be understood as the formation of both a new conscience and a spiritual body, capable of living in heaven’s unique ecosystem.”

“Well, even if you are correct, that doesn’t mean it is difficult to get to heaven,” said the second panelist as he sat back in his seat and folded his arms over his chest.

“Proper humility is the hurdle,” replied the first panelist. “Unfortunately, the human race is allowed to sensate on earth that life and goodness flows out from the person—rather than flow into the person from God and heaven. Even when novice spirits are being prepared for a heavenly life after their departure from this terrestrial orb, they can unexpectedly be put into a situation whereby they experience a most unflattering revelation. Spirits communicate their affections and thoughts with others of their spiritual community. Swedenborg observed an experiment where spirits were temporarily removed from the spiritual community their hearts and minds were intimately conjoined with. This separation caused these particular spirits to enter into a diminished cognitive state whereby they falsely perceived that all goodness and truth proceeded from themselves and was their own. When their error was pointed out to them they became indignant. (Angels have no such illusion.) Accepting such a reality is anti-intuitive to human experience from living on earth, and creates a real challenge to one’s worldview and self-esteem. Acquiring this kind of humility, which is angelic, is not as ‘easy as pie.’”

Dear readers, please comment on which debater you believe made the most convincing points.

Posted on April 26, 2010by
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Can God play a governing role in a universe maintained by scientific laws?

 

The quick answer is “yes.”

But the problem with such a question is that it assumes that scientists have got it right. According to scientist/theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg, God is law and order itself. Therefore, God does not violate scientific laws (even with miracles) when acting in the world. Swedenborg proposed a different model of scientific law that included many of the elements found in relativity theory, quantum physics and multi-dimensional string theory but were more in tune with God’s Holy nature.

Swedenborg’s approach to the physics ruling the universe on a fundamental level is based on spiritual laws operating in a non-physical realm. The closest thing modern science has to this idea of causal process is the notion of pre-geometry.

While scientists have a big problem grasping how dynamics and action can take place in a realm whose laws are stripped of their normal involvement with time and space, Swedenborg had no such difficulties.

Swedenborg stated that the future (God’s eternal goal) is present in all finite and temporal events. All finite events refer to a universal trajectory—so God’s Infinite and eternal activity can be involved completely at every point in space and sequence in time to promote this continuity of law and process.

Differential and integral calculus offers mathematical support for such laws of continuity within a universe in process. An action (real-valued function) converges to a limit. In mathematics, numbers do the tending. But in God’s scheme, endeavor or spirit seeks to become fixed within spacetime constraints. The nature of continuity is that action results from the endeavor (force) of a function adapting trajectory and finite form precisely to the endeavor’s disposition and quality. Each recovers the other as a correspondence or similitude. Just as there is a reciprocal relationship between action and its derivative form, there is reciprocal relationship between a particular (which commands the function) and a holistic event. Even in quantum physics, all action comes in wholes (Quanta or parcels). But in quantum physics the particulars become fuzzy and unobservable.

The current measurement problem in quantum physics is due to scientists finding no causal kinship by which quantum tendencies (probability distributions) could generate actual results through the principle of resemblance and affinity. In other words, the outcomes of measurement in quantum physics are not seen as represented through any form of self-similarity from this indeterminate substrate and microscopic scale. Some physicists have speculated that a principle of correspondence is involved by which quantum physics gives way to, and transforms into classical physics on the larger scales we can directly experience. On this larger scale, it is profoundly obvious that nature is on an incessant course towards self-organization. If there is self-consistency and continuity working in the laws of nature (as scientists believe) then this endeavor towards increased complexity in the universe must be inherent in first principles (and thus also apply to quantum physics).

From everything discussed so far, this means that if God is ruling things, all process, coherent structure and complexity in the manifest universe must recover a spiritual and unifying first principle. The universe is indeed unified.

Swedenborg claimed this spiritual first principle and primal (a piori) creative substance is LOVE. The essence of love is to unite through reciprocation and cooperation. All coherent organization consists of reciprocal functions in both the orderly motions of star systems and in the evolved and orderly processes of bio-complexity. So all orderly things in the universe are an analog and expression of God’s infinite love.

God can therefore lawfully act in the world by focusing infinite action at every point in space and sequence in time to recover spiritual love as an ultimate goal through an evolutionary trajectory. This is why religion has been given to the human race—which has the intelligence and psychical capacity for promoting sincere mutual love.

These are some of the topics my upcoming book “Proving God” addresses.

Posted on April 12, 2010by
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Make everyone in your household an enemy!

What makes the title of this post even stranger is that it is taken from the New Testament (Matthew 10:34-36 and Luke 12:53). Passages like this are why religion often gets a bad rap from those who point out these biblical absurdities and consider themselves more “enlightened.”

Why would a God of love instruct us to hate our closest relatives? Isn’t this a contradiction to the spirit of “loving the neighbor”—one of the two prime commandments upon which all the laws of the prophets hang?

The reason for the apparent contradiction comes from the fact that the true wisdom of this “odd” biblical passage lies much deeper than the literal meaning of its message. The path to becoming more spiritual includes the challenge of reading Scripture not just with one’s worldly eyes, but interpreting its passages with the eyes of one’s inner spirit.

When we switch from one set of “eyes” to another, an amazing transformation can take place in our understanding of the Lord God’s revealed wisdom. As an experiment, let’s see how this applies to the biblical passage of “making everyone in your household an enemy.” How can we see this biblical phrase through the eyes of our spirit?

The trick is to take any worldly term or physical object and find its psycho-spiritual equivalence (correspondence). God has created the physical world in such a way that all things in it represent some spiritual idea.

For instance, we entertain certain thoughts and feelings in the same way we invite special friends and guests into our home. Even more intimate to us are the ideas that make us feel the most at home. One’s belief system or worldview, and all its related values, constitutes one’s spiritual household. Our ideas and personal beliefs are the habitation of our soul.

This inner abode is where each of us really lives. We are what we think and love. And that is exactly where God takes aim when He wants to bring about spiritual change in out lives.

When the Lord came into the world, His ministry involved changing people’s value systems. He challenged us to make the many selfish and worldly ideas that we entertain in our hearts and minds, our real enemy. This requires us to make an inner inventory and a follow-up housecleaning. So we must kick these bad influences out of our house (spiritual abode).

Scientists and non-believers have often ridiculed religion because having a strong faith meant putting all the power of belief in ignorance alone. But true faith leads one out of ignorance. The Lord’s Holy Word is designed to lead us out of ignorance because its lessons are inexhaustible and contain layers of meaning.

I hope my example of “making one’s household an enemy” shows how the Holy Word can be easily misinterpreted by a culture which no longer is sensitized to these higher meanings and teachings.

Posted on March 18, 2010

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Involution, Evolution and Influx (a new doctrinal challenge)

Those who are familiar with scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg’s idea of spiritual causality understand that God’s influx moves as an orderly process from non-physical beginnings to physical results in the spacetime arena. This theistic model of purposeful causal process starting from higher or innermost things to lower or external things is formulated within a triune order as ends, mediate causes and effects.

This top-down order is fine when contemplating God’s order in the process of creation—from spirit to matter. However, when considering the process of evolution and the emergence of bio-complexity there is a change in the order of action and influx—because effects more closely resemble ends or first principles.

For instance, when Swedenborg describes the growth of a human fetus the process is from innermost things to outermost things—then to mediate things! So instead of the top-down order of 1-2-3, we get 1-3-2! This “switcheroo” even happens between the relationships of the three essentials in the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Scripture first offers us the 1-2-3 order of divine process. God the Father is first. God the Son (Jesus) is second. And the Holy Spirit acts last—that is, the Holy Spirit manifests last. This sequential order is confirmed by the fact that in John 7:39 the “Holy Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” But when we consider Swedenborg’s statement that the Holy Spirit is the Divine Proceeding it becomes the mediating force and causal link between Divine Love (innermost essence) and Truth (form finding existence in externals). In other words, when all three elements are in their proper cosmic arrangement (simultaneous order) they manifest a different relationship.

So the order of action, once the Holy Spirit enters the equation, is 1-3-2. This is because although it acts last in time, it has a greater (higher) degree of holiness than the “lower” flesh and blood of Jesus, which consists only of physical matter (externals).

Glorification is the evolutionary process by which Jesus perfected and unified His human nature and human form with His Divine Nature. Through humiliation and acts of service the Holy Spirit transformed Jesus’ physical body into a perfect conductor of heavenly order and Love—until all its operations were purely holy. This is why Jesus ascended into heaven with His body because it became the Holy Spirit in the fullness of time!

We see this change of order in the operation between the human soul, the human body, and the resulting action, which proceeds from the conjunction and mediation of the two. Here, the spirit (and its aim) first flows into the body through mediate causes and structures (1-2-3) but when the body produces a useful action (corresponding to the wishes of the spirit) the proceeding or mediate cause which harmonizes the two takes the third or outward position (1-3-2) because usefulness comes forth from the body’s actions and therefore becomes the new external or outermost effect.

The direction of God’s influx is not simply from heaven into physical forms but into forms of dynamic uses. It is usefulness that first mediates between inner and outer realities (1-2-3) and later manifests (1-3-2) in the outer.

It is through the order 1-3-2 that utility and usefulness ascends back to heaven and evolves. But I will stop here for now.

Posted on February 26, 2010by

http://www.provinggod.com

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The Importance Of Obstacles

One of the flaws in much of modern religious thought is to approach God as someone who can make our lives easier. Therefore, the ecclesiastical crowd makes every effort to offer comfort to those individuals experiencing a bumpy road—as if God is to be petitioned and expected to remove any discomfort, suffering or personal tragedy we face.

While I do not demean empathy and kindness, much of my experience with organized religion shows a prevailing attitude to overlook the holiness and spiritual necessity of “bad crap” in our lives. Yes, holiness!

Actually, “bad crap” plays a sacred role in the Trinitarian doctrine of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To understand this we need the help of scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg because this topic embraces both physics and theology.

In physics, all energy and action is under law. Laws in the universe provide the constraints (resistance), which define the parameters and the quality of a particular force. Without constraints and obstacles the quality and measurement of an action cannot be known. There are three essentials to manifestation: 1) initiating force, 2) resisting force and 3) reconciling force (which gives us an observable and measured outcome).

This universal law in nature has its origins in the dynamical relationships of the Holy Trinity. God the “Father” represents initiating force. The “Son” represents resistance. And, the Holy Spirit is the kinetic outcome of the two.

It is beyond the scope of this short blog to prove Swedenborg’s theology that Jesus was Jehovah in the flesh, however, the prevailing idea that God is three Persons can still offer us valuable insights into the holiness and importance that “s_ _t happens.” (See my blog post titled “Three Gods or One God?”).

The purpose of Jesus coming into the world was to “do the will of the Father.” So Jehovah God represents the initiating force. Because Jesus was given a human body of flesh (with all its hereditary compulsions) and the inertia of physical matter, He had to overcome real “earthly” resistance to divine and heavenly dictates. That Jesus felt abandoned at times and showed fear were clear indications of His real battle with a finite and flawed human nature. By overcoming His human nature He conquered all human sin (resistance) and made His material body perfectly Divine and Holy—that is why there was an empty tomb.

The Lord conquered all sin but did not remove it. We must (on our own finite scale) go through a similar process by imploring the Lord’s help in identifying our own personal flaws and the power to overcome them. Swedenborg insisted that salvation could not lawfully take place without overcoming resistance, which in spiritual jargon is called temptation and misfortune.

The process of salvation is not the enhancement of a positive state—it simply leads us to a positive state. Affliction and temptation are the holy means by which God helps us to arrive at innocence and sincere goodness. Our negative side must be exposed and dealt with first. This determines the quality of our goodness.

Even those who have studied Swedenborg might argue that in his three-fold description of the Divine Trinity, the Father represented Divine Love, the Son represented the Divine Truth (He came into the world as the Truth) and the Holy Spirit represented the Divine Love coming forth through the Divine Truth.

How then does Truth serve as resistance to Love?

The answer is that Truth gives law and quality to Love. Truth is the form, constraint and parameter by which Love’s quality is put on display and measured. The Lord Jesus Christ put on display the quality of Divine Love towards the human race through His selfless sacrifice and servitude.

Jesus was Divine Truth because He gave form to Divine Love and made it visible and knowable.

Posted on February 22, 2010by

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Should Science Be Unified with Theology?

Most definitely yes! There is way too much divisiveness in the world to allow the human race to adequately solve its many profound conflicts and problems. Anything that would bring minds together would certainly represent a move in the right direction.

Science currently seeks to describe everything in the universe from physical models, while religion addresses reality from a metaphysical principle (God). I have even heard a scientist state that if the world was somehow actually governed by a metaphysical principle it could not be a part of true science. This suggests that science is more interested in creating physical models of reality rather than finding truth.

Therefore, how could science ever be married to spiritual faith? Perhaps I should rephrase the question: Should Science Be Unified with Goodness?

While science embraces data and religion embraces values, a scientist is inwardly driven to discover something useful to society. In fact, the “greatness” of a particular scientific discovery is measured according to its helpfulness and serviceability to humanity.

What goes unnoticed is that serviceability is a derivative of love. Religion teaches us to love the neighbor as ourselves.

Therefore, the pursuit of knowledge must also be the pursuit of goodness. Knowledge that does not lead to goodness has a destructive and poisonous element lurking within it.

According to scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, Holy Scripture actually addresses the issue of unifying worldly knowledge with theological knowledge. He states that the biblical themes of Moses setting a serpent of brass on a staff, the birth of Leah’s two sons, Reuben and Simeon, and the Lord’s miracles of turning water into wine and walking on water symbolize the advancement of worldly knowledge to the more interior realm of the human heart.

The “Fall” of man in Genesis was actually the story of how humankind favored its own pursuit of reality rather than basing it on instruction from God. The “talking serpent” in the Garden of Eden represented the desire to learn things entirely from the world of the senses at the expense of goodness. This cognitive predicament is symbolized by the serpent being forced to crawl on the ground and therefore fully occupied from head to tail in worldly and empirical data. This is why Moses put the serpent of brass up on a staff—to get it off its belly and oriented upwards towards God’s heaven.

Essentially, true religion and spiritual growth deals with the reorganization of our worldly knowledge to be oriented upwards to heaven—toward greater goodness. Such a heavenly orientation protects us from the poisonous bite of worldly knowledge (empiricism) that is removed from goodness of the heart. This is the deeper spiritual lesson embedded and enfolded within the story of Moses protecting his people from snakebites in the desert!

My upcoming book Proving God offers more details about unifying science and religion. In fact, I address Bible interpretation, the dynamics of salvation and eternal life from a scientifically plausible model.

Posted on February 17, 2010by

http://www.provinggod.com

https://thegodguy.wordpress.com/

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Biblical Science vs. Reductionism

Traditional science has worked under the assumption that reality can be reduced to smaller and simpler elementary parts. This is called reductionism.

However, some pioneering thinkers have taken the view that nature is complex even on its most fundamental levels. Physicist David Bohm believed that quantum entities contained subtle and complex inner structure.

Theologically speaking, if the universe was created by an Infinite God, then it must have had its beginning in unfathomable complexity.

This raises an interesting question. If the Word, which existed before creation was God, and all things in the created world came from the Word (John 1:1-3), does Scripture contain a pre-space and non-physical substrate that is infinitely complex?

Like science, traditional theology believes that the biblical stories are reducible to the simple meaning of its words. But, if the Holy Word was communicated to the human race from God in heaven, shouldn’t its stories contain deeper and more complex ideas?

This is exactly what scientist/theologian Emanuel Swedenborg actually discovered. The Holy Word, like the physical world it generated, contained a similar patterning principle and template, whereby the deeper one probes, the more wonderful the spiritual message becomes – gaining new powers of abstraction until its message finally transcends the comprehension of mortal men and women.

Angels can grasp these more intricately beautiful teachings woven into Scripture, but its deeper levels of God’s truth and divine wisdom ultimately transcend angelic comprehension as well. Angels call the Holy Word “the great deep.”

Swedenborg suggested, that because all earthly men and women are interiorly spiritual beings, they too possess the higher levels of mind that angels enjoy. But these higher cognitive functions only represent latent powers, which need to be opened up through a willingness to learn deeper spiritual truths and a commitment to spend some effort on training the mind to think in new ways.

Swedenborg labored nearly thirty years of his life to help people acquire this deeper knowledge through extraordinary books that challenge and exercise the mind to distill higher meaning from mundane language. If this interests you I recommend that you contact the Swedenborg Foundation and order Vol.1 of Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia (Secrets of Heaven).

It is a wonderful opportunity to make your life more valuable to the Lord God in heaven and to humanity on earth.

Posted on January 8, 2009by thegodguy

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Scripture and the structure of reality

Those who have a faith-based worldview believe that God created the manifest universe. In fact, John 1:1-3 informs us that everything in the created world has its origins in the Holy Word.

If we contemplate John’s words rationally, rather than simply as a faith requirement, Scripture seems to be implying that the structure of the universe is patterned after the structure of God’s revealed wisdom.

Many physicists now believe that we live in a multi-dimensional or multi-leveled universe. As you move up this hierarchical ontological ladder, things are not only becoming more fundamental, they are becoming more abstract, expanded, non-local and non-physical.

In my upcoming book, Proving God, I argue that God’s Holy Word—which existed from eternity, was sent down from heaven, where its message found embodiment in the terrestrial words of human language. This divine order was the template for the multi-dimensional structure of the universe. Scientists call this order top-down causality.

Few theologians have considered the fact that if God’s Word came down from heaven, its original dynamics could not have been worldly, terrestrial, or physical. In other words, Scripture, on its most fundamental level, could not have described spatial qualities or physical events.

Heaven is certainly a non-spatial and non-physical realm. Therefore, for the Holy Word to exist in such a rarefied pre-space realm, before creation, it must have contained more abstract, expanded narratives with non-physical meanings. In fact, these higher meanings could ONLY treat of things referring to God’s holy qualities and the holy qualities of the Lord’s heavenly kingdom.

In the same way that energy and process can transition downwards into forms of stabilized matter, God’s Holy Word is a multi-dimensional document by which its primal sacred meaning descends into the constraints of time, space and matter, and its message takes on the appearance of a book containing literal history.

Reversing this top-down divine process through the human mind’s ability of symbolic abstraction while reading Scripture is what leads to spiritual enlightenment.

In other words, in the same way that matter and energy become more dynamic as the constraints of physical law are removed in higher levels of activity, the meanings of the stories in Scripture also become more dynamic when the constraints of the literal meanings of its words are removed.

That God intended for us to distill higher levels of meaning from the Holy Word is evidenced by the fact that Jesus spoke in parables only!

The Book of Revelation informs us that we will see the Lord in all His glory when He returns in the midst of clouds. If we remove the constraints of the literal meaning of the words “coming with the clouds” to its higher, psycho-spiritual equivalent, we will understand something deeper. Clouds symbolize mental obscurity.  God’s “return” will involve His breaking through our mental obscurity and doctrinal fog by revealing these higher levels of meaning to the human race.

The process of revealing these higher meanings is happening right now in the world. These higher meanings will shake things up for both scientists and theologians. The Second Coming is going to be an earth-shaking paradigm change.

Posted on December 6, 2008by thegodguy

https://thegodguy.wordpress.com/

http://www.provinggod.com

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Science, Religion and Enchantment

I belong to a growing group of individuals who are seriously interested in trying to unify science and theology. Certainly, if God created the world, He knows what quantum physics is.

I am attempting to show in my next book, Proving God, that the scientific laws of the universe have their origins in God’s laws of Divine LOVE.

It will be beneficial to describe to you the current state of affairs, as simply as possible.

Physicists now believe that fundamental reality consists not of physical “stuff,” but of pure potentials, called quantum possibilities. These possibilities, or tendencies to exist, represent dynamics that do not fit into classical descriptions of motion. A quantum entity can be in many places at once, almost as though it were a non-physical wave representing a range of possibilities striving to find tangible physical existence.

So nature, at its fundamental level, is a world of striving and pure endeavor. The wonderment in all this is that when quantum potentials become real events in time and space, they create coherent and stable structures. These structures gain in complexity over ages and ages until nature has brought forth the human brain with all its intelligent functions and profound self-awareness.

Science refuses to see this process of moving from potentiality to actuality, from actuality to stable structure, from stable structure to complexity, from complexity to consciousness as purposeful. At the quantum level, they believe reality consists of irreducible chance. This is because science feels it must describe reality from physical principles only (naturalism). Scientists will even concede that if reality has emerged from a metaphysical principle, then the mystery of agency in the universe will not be considered a real scientific topic.

So science is not necessarily as concerned with truth as it is with finding materialistic models that will offer predictable and testable explanations.

Traditional religion, while believing that the universe has its origins in a metaphysical principle, still offers us little help here. Religion concerns itself with God’s laws of salvation and God’s covenant with humanity. Current theology offers few rational insights as to how the laws of salvation or spiritual evolution might be connected to physics. God simply creates one set of laws to run the physical universe and another set of laws to save our souls. This thinking is as equally wrong as scientific thinking.

The only way to unify science and religion is to find a similarity between physical nature and God’s nature. Dissimilarity points to imperfection. But if God is Infinite Love and Infinite wisdom, no imperfection can be predicated of God. Besides, the ubiquitous law that nature always proceeds in the most economical way requires a top-down causal link between God’s nature and physical nature. (Unless you favor deism and believe in an impersonal Creator.)

Since we have been discussing fundamental reality from both a scientific and theological perspective I would now like to jump into the mind of a child who sees reality as enchanted. We often see children drawing pictures where they put a “smile” on the face of the sun. Children see everything in the world as being “alive.” That is why children respond to stories where animals, trees, and even rocks can talk.

As Jesus pointed out, we must become more like little children. While this refers to the spiritual challenge of adults returning to a state of innocence, the Lord is not implying that we should also abandon intellectual pursuits. Getting to heaven is not a move away from an intellectual grasp of the ultimate reality, but to be enlightened by it.

A scientist sees fundamental reality as being dead. A child sees reality as fundamentally alive. Who is more enlightened?

If a living God is at the center of the universe then the universe must, at its very heart, be alive! This is why the laws of the universe are so bio-friendly. The laws of nature have emerged from, and are analogous to, God’s Divine Nature. This Divine Nature is Infinite LOVE!

Can the dynamics of LOVE represent an exact science? Yes!

As I stated above, physicists see fundamental reality as a striving, or propensity. Love is also a propensity and endeavor, but it is a conscious, living endeavor. Scientists also say that quantum possibilities “collapse” into stable forms of matter, which lead to greater complexity and ultimately to larger scales of organized systems (unities). Love also seeks to unify things in the same way nature pursues a course of self-organization.

In this century, humanity will come to understand that LOVE is the creative psychical force and ultimate formative substance of the world, and the reason why everything in the universe is non-spatially and non-temporally interconnected.

This is just a small taste of what I will be covering in my soon to be published book, Proving God.

Posted on December 3, 2008by thegodguy

http://www.provinggod.com

Posted in god, love, metaphysics, Reality, religion, science, spirituality, symbolism, unity | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments
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