More New Age heresy...

It's staggering how much of this is in our midst and we don't realize it.

So back in the first week of March, we had our annual faculty retreat. Before then, we had chosen one of three different sessions to experience during the course of the day. I chose "Chasing the Divine in the Evolution of the Cosmos" (or something like that).

The presentation was basically a synthesis of cosmology and spirituality. The presenter showed some videos, but mostly just gave us one tidbit of insight about the spiritual nature of the universe after another. I'll spare you the details; it amounted to more feel-good New Age pantheism.

She advocated a new way of thinking about cosmology and spirituality (or one might substitute "science" and "religion") as not mutually exclusive, but coextensive enterprises. While I'd agree with her in regards to dismissing claims of religion and science's incompatibility (such that a religious scientist would be akin to a round triangle), I do think science and religion need to keep to their own purviews. Certainly there is some overlap; empirical evidence from cosmology can be used in arguments for God's existence (for example, the cosmological and teleological arguments) and a few mathematical and scientific facts can be derived from Scripture (the use of pi in Solomon's building projects... I Kings, maybe?). Ultimately however, each must recognize where its purview ends and the other begins. The best example of this is the evidence for the beginning of the universe. Science can take us back to the singularity, but no further. To ask, "What came before the singularity?" or "What caused the singularity?" is not to a scientific question, but a metaphysical one. This is the arena of philosophy and theology, not physics and cosmology.

Back to this speaker. I discerned a couple of strategies she employed when I pressed her on specific aspects of the view she was propounding:

1. Decry the limits of language. At one point she said, "What if 'God' isn't a noun? What if 'God' was an adjective? Or a verb?" By undermining our confidence in language's ability to correspond to reality, New Agers can easily side-step tough questions. The problem with this is immediately obvious, though: if language is so limited, how does the New Age position have any more claim to truth than the traditional one?

2. This leads to the second strategy. The presentation was not advertised as a worldview, but that's what it is. As much as New Agers tout that their views are about personal experience and validation, it also comes with serious metaphysical contentions. Is God distinct from, or one and the same as, the physical universe? How you answer is not simply a matter of looking at things in a different way, it represents a truth-claim. And personal experience can only take us so far in terms of evidence for that truth-claim.

These lead to New Agers being quite slippery when pressed on the particulars of their worldview. Call 'em like you see 'em! That's what I'm trying to do.

In other news, my wife never ceases to amaze me. She is no less the superhero I thought of her as when we were just acquaintances. Creativity just bursts forth from her; I don't think she can control it (like Phoenix... remember her?).

Also she can edit HTML. Jaw-floor.