The sacred is being invented again... And this time it is Stuart A. Kauffman's article "Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred", in Edge web magazine Read it here.  Kauffman, as many prominent scientists and thinkers do lately, voices a need to respond to what seems to be the latest chapter of the religious wars afflicting humanity for a few millennia. Kauffman starts with pointing the state of affairs regarding the great divide between the scientific and religious world views. He writes:

 "A great divide splits contemporary society between those who believe in a transcendent God, and those, including myself, who do not. In the West, and now throughout the world, the massive advances of science since Galileo and Newton have given birth to secular society. In the Christian and Jewish segments of the Abrahamic religions, the theistic God who intervened in the affairs of the world gave way in the Enlightenment to a Deistic God who wound up the universe, set the initial conditions, and allowed Newton's laws to carry on. This God no longer entered into the affairs of man. In the theistic tradition, God became either the God of the gaps, where science had yet to hold sway, or, contrary to science, God intervened in the running of the cosmos."

At the conclusion of his introduction note, Kauffman summarizes his response:

"Thus, beyond the new science that glimmers a new world view, we have a new view of God, not as transcendent, not as an agent, but as the very creativity of the universe itself. This God brings with it a sense of oneness, unity, with all of life, and our planet - it expands our consciousness and naturally seems to lead to an enhanced potential global ethic of wonder, awe, responsibility within the bounded limits of our capacity, for all of life and its home, the Earth, and beyond as we explore the Solar System."

Kauffman's article left me with a few big question marks. Not that these question marks were not there before, but they grew quite a bit together with an inevitable brow raising while I read Kauffman's proposition for an alternative religion based on the new science of emergence. I like most of Kauffmann's views, and I do think that indeed a great revolution in scientific thinking is taking place right in front of our eyes. I do agree even that the nature of this revolution has everything to do with the realization that reductionism is a too narrow paradigm to understand the universe and ourselves in the universe. I do accept that emergence (when we come to understand it) is the new frontier of scientific investigation, yet I categorically do not agree that the sacred has anything to do with it.

Moreover, I do not think the sacred should be reinvented. The sacred is there in our minds and our heart all along, always was and always will be. The sacred is free and accessible. Mr. Kauffman has fallen into a trap like many other bright and wise thinkers; The trap of believing or accepting that God and his believers have a rightful claim and monopoly on the sacred, and us the so called self proclaimed "non believers" are by definition banished from it and must if so reclaim the sacred or perhaps reinvent it so we can establish meaning value and independent ethics.

I must confess (what a brilliant concept!) I do not want to become a believer of a new religion even if it is based on science. I do not feel the need to, and even if I did, the sense of wonderment and awe described by Kauffman and which I definitely share with him should not become the foundation of an alternative religion for it is a bad habit of us humans to politicize our most precious emotions and perceptions and by that we eventually lose contact with them.

I am a free human, and the only affirmation I need for being a moral responsible human is the affirmation of my own freedom, and this needs neither confirmation nor proof from science, or the authorization of a God I did not choose to be intimate with.  I understand freedom as an emergent property of the human mind coming along with reflective consciousness. But as it is with emergent phenomena, the consequences of this conscious freedom cannot and do not derive from the processes and intelligent patterns that give rise to it. In other words this freedom is irreducible to cognitive or biological constituents, thus its validity is not derived from such constituents. Using Kauffman's own words metaphorically: Freedom is an autocatalytic emergence in the human mind.

It is this freedom, I believe, that can be the basis for respect first and foremost, and then to an independent humanistic ethical platform upon which all kinds of belief systems and worldviews can coexist with mutual tolerance understanding and cross fertilization. I do not feel the need to explain the autonomy of my ethical thinking, or fend for my profound sense of dignity arising from me being a free human. Yet unlike a religious conviction, my self proclaimed freedom is a conscious choice, thus always open to challenge and scrutiny for it is alive and evolving.

Gods are emergent phenomena within the human mind. They belong to the human dimension of reality and they are there to stay at least until humanity will embark on its next evolutionary phase. Thinking that we can prove them out of existence by the rigor of scientific methods is ridiculous. Thinking that we can (or need) answer religion with science is a wrong track on its onset, but it is not as dangerous as proposing a new scientifically based spirituality.

The issue if so is not whether or not God exists. The issue worth investigation is what kind of actions, what thoughts and emotions are the eventual consequences of the belief in God. We are all believers of this kind or another. Question is what kind of believers are we? I see a profound difference between a narrow minded conviction and a consciously chosen belief. The first is a monument of ignorance, while the other is a door to the sacred. This distinction applies to all kinds of belief not only religious ones.

It is however a sad historical fact that organized religion promotes mostly religious conviction rather than conscious belief becoming by that a prominent cause of non tolerance and violence throughout human history. It is this observation we should focus upon and try to understand. I do not believe in God, yet my issue with those who do is not the validity of their beliefs but rather what these beliefs drive them to be and to do.

The scientific understanding of religion as a natural phenomenon of the human mind should not aim to explain it away, and by that to replace it. Science as a discipline is perhaps the greatest intellectual achievement of humanity but we should not make it into something it is not. Scientific understanding cannot become the basis for value and meaning and by that claim to become the new alternative religion.

In the quest to understand the nature of our own mind, science can help us but not entirely. We have to realize the possibility of individual conscious freedom and we have to realize it as an emergent irreducible state self consistent, self affirming, yet open. To my mind this is the only viable and valid alternative to the belief in God as a basis to ethical being and meaning. A free human is a creator of meaning, and through conscious reflection she realizes the intelligent ethical codes of coexisting with fellow humans, fellow living creatures and the universe at large. This is my answer to religion based moral convictions.

We do not need to reinvent the sacred. Sacredness is the conscious distinction of what is worth living for. True sacredness is not something that can be given by others or bestowed by a God, neither it is something reinvented in books and articles. Sacredness emerges as a human realizes his place within the infinite fabric of life. It is not a scientific fact it is an emotional quality that must be realized in the context of one's life and than perhaps shared with fellow conscious beings. Sacredness can be experienced in many forms and depths. I accept and respect Kauffman's expression of his experience of sacredness, yet no man can claim a monopoly on that neither in the name of God nor in the name of science. Amen!

This article was first published in the Blog-e-Zine: The Fast Turtle