God the Geometer — Gothic frontispiece of the Bible moralisée, representing God’s act of Creation. France, mid-13th century

Religion, in particular traditional theism, appears to be in full retreat in the broader culture. In my experience, the attacks on theism seem to be growing in the nature of their viciousness, ridicule and derision, spreading beyond the traditional intellectual class and moving down through all levels of society. The antagonism is fueled by disgust at the whole sale murder, tyranny, corruption and the celebration of ignorance which is and has been done in the name of religion. At times the rejection of theism is so dogmatic and unthinking that it reminds me a lot of the mindset of the ultra-religious literalist. Any hint of theism is cast as some sort of anti-science, tyrannical delusion and rejected without any consideration.

On the other side are those who still hold to literalist traditional beliefs, while dwindling, they are now more trenchant in their rejection of science and intellectualism than ever. This tendency to dismiss scientific consensus on the part of large segments of the population represents a profound challenge for the very viability of our species on this planet and is why I believe this break between science and religion must be addressed.

To be sure there are also many traditional theists who do accept rationality and the authority of modern science, yet their voices seem dimmer and arguments for belief vaguer and at times the science appears to strain against their stance. This is primarily due to their implicit insistence on what really amounts to a materialistic philosophy of religion. That is that the clear idealism presented in scripture should be understood in gross material terms.

Idealism is a very ancient philosophy with both western and eastern forms. Its history is lost in the haze of mythology. The core premise is that the material existence is ultimately founded upon mind or consciousness. The most popular and clearest expression of idealism in the West and Near Eastern traditions originated with Plato’s Theory of Forms. The theory of forms claims that non-physical idealized forms or ideas represent the most accurate reality and that physical objects represent a ‘shadow’ of these forms. These forms are often described as models or templates from which imperfect copies or projections are made in the physical world.

If we go back to the origins of the major religions, we can see the idealism at their core and that the literalistic-materialistic understanding of theology may not reflect the intent or meaning of the founders of these great faiths. Indeed, if both religion and science are understood through the lens of idealism, they become not only easily reconcilable but complementary. That this is not widely understood is in large part why many of those who have rejected religion yet still recognize the idealism inherent in modern science have constructed a new sort of metaphysics which in the end are really a reconstruction of the ancient idealism which has inhabited religion for ages. For example, the popular simulation hypothesis or the techno-utopianism of Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity have offered up their own form of millennialism and eternal life served up on the platform of digital information and technology.

Yet it doesn’t take that much discernment to recognize that these are just a modern retelling of the ancient idealism like those found in Plato’s writings. If thought through somewhat they lead to identical conclusions and is in some cases are really a primitive form of theism. What many don’t seem to realize is that all these questions were worked out many millennia ago and if we look carefully, we can see that they still inhabit the bones of the major world religions even though their bodies have been ravaged by literalist and materialistic philosophies.

By the time that Christianity was gaining ascendancy in late antiquity (around 200 A.D) Neoplatonism was emerging. Perhaps the most important Neoplatonist was Plotinus a Hellenized Egyptian student of Ammonius. A reading of the opening passage from the Gospel of John shows that it is almost purposely making use of the concepts of Neoplatonism. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Here the term Word was translated from the Greek word Logos which had a definite and clear Neoplatonic meaning. In Plotinus’ view Logos was the first emanation of the ‘One’ the Demiurge in Plato’s Timaeus which creates the world. Further if one reads the letters of Paul the influence of Platonism is discernible for example how he deals with “substances” and “shadows” in “These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” Colossians 2:16–23 and later in his description of the afterlife in 1 Corinthians 15 which in my opinion was later grossly misunderstood.

Christian philosophers such as St. Augustine re-affirmed the importance of Platonism “The utterance of Plato, the most pure and bright in all philosophy, scattering the clouds of error” and in another place “I found that whatever truth I had read [in the Platonists] was [in the writings of Paul] combined with the exaltation of thy grace.” However, despite St. Augustine’s reverence of Plato, his misunderstanding of physicality of the resurrection in context of true idealism, introduced a materialistic understanding of ‘spiritual bodies’ and its distinction from Paul’s “flesh and blood”. I think this was in part due to his eagerness to refute the duality of Gnosticism and of Manichaeism that viewed the material world as evil. The result of St. Augustine’s view was that, the idealized ‘Logos’ which properly exists not as a physical thing became the physical ‘spiritual’ body of Christ that went into a physical Heaven. Later this physical understanding would help tear the Church apart over the question of ‘transubstantiation’ or the belief that the bread and wine taken during communion would actually transform into the physical body and blood of Christ.

These misunderstandings essentially transformed idealized Christianity into a quasi-materialistic philosophy irreconcilable with rational logic and science. They somehow forgot or couldn’t comprehend the central concept which places consciousness, abstract forms or relational-information as the true foundation of all reality. In their struggles against the dualism of the Gnostics and Manichaeism they turned the ‘spiritual body’ into and actual physical body.

In the 18th century, George Berkeley was one of the few Christian theologians who recognized this problem and its solution: “Take away this material substance, about the identity whereof all the dispute is, and mean by body what every plain ordinary person means by that word, to wit, that which is immediately seen and felt, which is only a combination of sensible qualities or ideas: and then their most unanswerable objections come to nothing.” Unfortunately, his insight was largely ignored in favor of materialistic theology.

The misconstruction of the concepts concerning resurrection in Christianity are important enough and had such far-reaching impact that they are worth delving into more. Returning to Paul discussion in 1 Corinthians 15:

“Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.”

Here we see that he is placing the resurrection of the dead as a central component of Christian belief, so to misunderstand this concept would have serious consequences. He goes on to ask “But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:”

So he makes it clear that the body which rises is not same as the physical body which dies. He also makes an interesting comparison of that body to a ‘seed’ which if we follow the analogy we will see that a seed’s relationship to its final form is ultimately contained in the genetic information content it carries. Thus it is a relationship based on information and not ‘physicalism’ . He then goes on to explain:

“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body” and as if to make this understanding explicit he says, “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”. And yet despite this clear explanation the church ‘physicalized’ and ‘materialized’ this spiritual body and with it everything else in Heaven. This physicalized Heaven and Hell became so absurdly concrete that when Yuri Gagarin went into space, Nikita Khrushchev the Soviet premier felt obliged to announce during a speech, “Gagarin flew into space, but didn’t see any god there.”

Likewise, in Islam it can be argued that divorced of Idealism the Quran is un-intelligible. Here as in the gospel of John the creativity and mysticism of the Word is central. In fact, the Quran repeats the description of Jesus as the “Word of God” used in John. Early on Islamic philosophers translated, studied and adapted Hellenistic Neoplatonism. Despite this orthodox Islamic theology like in Christianity take the concept of resurrection as a physical bodily reality, especially as it applies to the day of Judgment. As in Christianity this materialistic understand also leads them to take heaven and hell as literal. All the beautiful literary and allegorical descriptions of paradise are taken as physical facts. For example:

“But announce to those who believe and do the things that are right, that for them are gardens ‘neath which the rivers flow! So oft as they are fed therefrom with fruit for sustenance, they shall say, “This same was our sustenance of old:” And they shall have its like given to them. Therein shall they have wives of perfect purity, and therein shall they abide for ever.” ( Al-Baqarah 2:24)

These verses and many others like it are commonly accepted by the orthodox believers to describe a physical state of being in heaven, full of physical pleasures. This despite the fact that in the very next verse it warns:

“but as to the unbelievers, they will say, “What meaneth God by this comparison?” Many will He mislead by such parables and many guide: but none will He mislead thereby except the wicked,” (Al-Baqarah 2:26)

The Quran time and again explicitly warns that many of the verses should be understood figuratively.

“He it is Who hath sent down to Thee the Book (the Qur’án). Some of its verses are of themselves perspicuous; — these are the basis of the Book — — and others are figurative. But they whose hearts are given to err, follow its figures, craving discord, craving an interpretation; yet none knoweth its interpretation but God. “(Al-Imran-3:5)

Or later:

“And now have We brought them the Book: with knowledge have we explained it; n guidance and a mercy to them that believe. What have they to wait for now but its interpretation? When its interpretation shall come, they who aforetime were oblivious of it shall say, ‘The Prophets of our Lord did indeed bring the -truth. “(A’raf-7:51–52)

The prophet founder of the Baha’i faith, Baha’u’llah in “The Book of Certitude” elaborates on the symbolism of both the Quran and Bible in terms of the question of resurrection, the day of Judgement, heaven, stars, clouds and various terms. These terms were commonly understood to represent actual physical things, yet he elaborates how these words must have symbolic and metaphorical meaning for them to make any sense.

Returning to the Gospel of John we can see that it presents a version of creation in a much more abstract manner than what we see in Genesis. One that can be understood as very complimentary to modern understandings on the nature of the rise of order and origins. When one considers the origin of order in the universe or the primal creative act, there exist two modes of thinking on this topic. The first is to consider the proper universe or cosmos (by this I mean everything including any idea of a Multiverse) as having a beginning point and thus a ‘first’ cause in the classical creationist sense. The second is to consider the cosmos to have no beginning, to exist eternally. In this view order might be the natural result of probabilistic physics operating over enormous time scales. So while the formation of spontaneous order has a vanishingly low probability, over eternal time scales it “almost surely” will occur an infinite number of times. While traditional theists tend to prefer a more directly active deity, as is expressed in the first case, either viewpoint requires the operation of ‘creative’ information that might be considered definitional for the term “Logos” or “Word of God”. This information exists potentially and eternally just as the number 3 or the geometry of a circle.