Keith Ward's big questions

June 17, 8:37 AMSacramento Spirituality ExaminerSteve Curless

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"We're now being challenged to create a theology which would use the findings of modern science and eastern mysticism which, as you know, coincide so much, and to evolve from that a new theology which would be much more adequate." (Bede Griffiths)

Keith Ward is a British cleric, philosopher, and theologian who has authored over 20 books on religion including "The Big Questions in Science and Religion." "EnlightenNext" magazine features an audio interview with Ward about the "Big Questions," and it can be heard here with a free trial subscription to "EnlightenmentUnbound." Below are some key points discussed during the 32 minute interview:

1. Consciousness and the brain. Ward believes that one of the most vexing questions confronting neuroscientists and philosophers is the relationship between the mind and the brain. He says that there "is no scientific view as such" among neurophysiologists but lots of different views of which there are two main categories or camps consisting of materialists who believe that consciousness or mind is simply the operations of the nervous system, and dualists who believe that mind and brain are substantially different types of reality even though they appear to be interconnected. Ward himself is sympathetic to what he calls an "emergent monism" that sees consciousness emerging from the brain to have a "distinct reality" and a "causal effect on the brain, the body, and the environment." Furthermore, he believes that consciousness isn't just the product of sufficiently complex organisms and their nervous systems but is in some way fundamental to the universe as a whole. In other words, consciousness doesn't just arise in the universe but is somehow necessary for the universe to even exist.

2. Science and religion. Ward sees a "strange split" between science and religion in which scientists acknowledge the existence of such religious experience as meditation and prayer and its effects on the brain and personality, but they still won't acknowledge the existence of any God or ultimate reality revealed by these religious experiences. He also says that quantum physics seems to be leading us to something beyond hardcore materialism. With his commitment to theism, he'd like to think that quantum physics is leading us toward God, but he concedes that many quantum physicists reject this notion when they argue that even if quantum physics admits the possibility of intelligence or consciousness of some kind, it doesn't have to be a divine intelligence or consciousness.

Still, Ward contends that many physicists are talking about something very much like a "Cosmic Mind" or intelligence even though they don't want to associate it with any God, and there's a "gap" between scientists and non-scientists alike who see this cosmic intelligence as a "personal" or "impersonal" reality. For Ward, God is a "personal" intelligence, not in the limiting sense of being an actual person of some kind, but in the sense of having aspects of personality. "Human beings need finite images which are beyond the finite." Christ can fill this role for Christians. Other "images of an infinite, conscious reality" can fill it for people of other religions. God can't be less than we are as conscious persons. Findings from the Hadron Collider are "just going to reinforce perhaps the sense that the ultimate questions about space and time can't even be stated by human beings..."

However, Ward cautions that some religiously or spiritually oriented people who don't really understand quantum physics and its limitations misuse it to make dubious assertions about its support for religious or spiritual concepts and that it's difficult to impossible for those of us who haven't trained in quantum physics to evaluate these assertions.

3. Natural vs supernatural. Ward believes that it's wrong to summarily reject religious or spiritual experience as "supernatural," because if "natural" means what's in space and time, many quantum physical--e.g., quantum fluctuations in a vacuum "before" space-time arose--and cosmological phenomena are supernatural in the sense of being outside space and time, yet they're still real and can even be studied scientifically. The same could well be true, now or in the future, of so-called supernatural spiritual experience or phenomena.

4. Where will we be in the next 50 to 100 years? Ward believes that it's all but impossible to predict the future accurately, but we can be fairly certain that science will be very different from what we know now. For one thing, it's likely to be even more "mathematically based" than it is now. He also hopes that it will also be more "holistic," "integrative," and "concerned with personal consciousness issues."

So far as religion/spirituality is concerned, Ward believes that there's likely to be a growing convergence between people of different religions unless it's prevented by "violence and hatred." In other words, we can expect an "evolutionary spirituality of the likes forecasted by Teilhard de Chardin. This "global spirituality," as Ward calls it, will be marked, in part, by people rooted in one religious tradition exploring deeply one or more other traditions in the manner of Bede Griffiths. Ward is particularly partial to the "Indra's Net" metaphor in which "each [religious] jewel only shines with its own light when it reflects all the others from its own point of view." Then the differences that will still exist between different faiths can be "sympathetic and companionable rather than antipathetic."

Below is a video of another interview with Keith Ward that covers some of the same ground included in the interview summarized above.