Quotes from Seligman’s “The First Coming”
In his Edge article on The First Coming, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman defends the notion of a natural (as opposed to supernatural) God evolving with and within the universe. He bases his ideas on the general principle that evolution always favors complexity (described in Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright).
Excerpts:
I am optimistic that God may come at the end. I’ve never been able to choke down the idea of a supernatural God who stands outside of time, a God who designs and creates the Universe. There is, however, an alternate notion of God relevant to the secular community, the skeptical, evidence-minded community that believes only in nature.
The invisible hand of biological and cultural evolution ineluctably select for the complex over the simple because positive sum games have the survival and reproductive edge over zero sum games. A process that selects for more complexity is ultimately aimed at nothing less than omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness.
A God who is not supernatural, but who ultimately acquires omnipotence, omniscience and goodness. Perhaps, just perhaps, God comes at the end.
So I am optimistic that there may be in the fullness of time a First Coming. I am optimistic that this is the door through which meaning may enter our lives. A meaningful life is a life that joins with something larger than the self and the larger that something is, the more meaning. I am optimistic that as individuals we can choose to be a tiny part of this process. Partaking of a process that has as it ultimate end the bringing of a God, who is endowed with omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness joins our tiny, accidental lives to something enormously larger.
Posted by G.P. on 01/06 at 08:17 AM