Sermon notes 11/15/09
Job 12:7-10
Community Discussion on
Science and Spirituality

A human being is a part of the whole called by us "the universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures

and the whole of nature in its beauty.

- Albert Einstein

Today we are invited into a community discussion about Faith and Reason, spirituality and science: connections, contradictions, and complications.

How must our spiritual communities change in order to stay relevant and speak intelligently to the issues of our time?

Our worldview has changed radically due, in part, to new scientific discoveries and understandings.

Evolution

Physics

Astronomy

Genetics

How has our understanding of God and creation changed and grown?

"We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of matter and the unpredictability of God."

Freeman Dyson, INFINITE IN ALL DIRECTIONS, p. 8

Pastor Rick facilitated a discussion on Science and Religion. . . .

The discussion ended and the final word was given to H. G. Wells who, in 1920, published a book titled OUTLINE OF HISTORY in which he wrote the following:

Though much has been written foolishly about the antagonism of science and religion, there is indeed no such antagonism. What all these world religions declare by inspiration and insight, history as it grows clearer and science as its range extends display, as a reasonable and demonstrable fact, that humanity forms one universal family, that we spring from one common origin, that our individual lives, our nations and races, interbreed and blend and go on to merge again at last in one common human destiny upon this little planet amidst the stars. And the psychologist can now stand beside the preacher and assure us that there is no reasoned peace of heart, no balance and no safety in the soul, until a person in losing their life has found it, and has schooled and disciplined their interests and will beyond greeds, rivalries, fears, instincts and narrow affections. The history of our race and personal religious experience run so closely parallel as to seem to a modern observer almost the same thing; both tell of a being at first scattered and blind and utterly confused, feeling its way slowly to the serenity and salvation of an ordered and coherent purpose. That, in the simplest, is the outline of history; whether one have a religious purpose or disavow a religious purpose altogether the lines of the outline remain the same.

As found in Freeman Dyson, INFINTIE IN ALL DIRECTIONS, p. 9f


Job 12:7-10

But ask the animals, and they will teach you;

The birds of the air, and they will tell you;

Ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you;

And the fish of the sea will declare to you.

Who among all these does not know

That the hand of Yahweh has done this?

In God's hand is the life of every living thing

And the breath of every human being.


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