JESUS, THE BIG BANG, AND THE PROCESS OF EMERGENCE

Copyright, Dr. A. B. Kelly, 16.12.2004

Cosmology, the study of the Cosmos, did not become a science until the Twentieth Century. Until that time it was simply speculation. Much of this speculation was incorporated in ancient Religious views of the world. It affected the way people in the past thought about God.

We now have evidence about the way the Cosmos, and particularly our part of it, has developed since the Big Bang, through the process of Emergence. This new evidence may well challenge earlier conceptions of God. We can now take into account the evidence that we have about the Big Bang, and about the subsequent process of Emergence.

The Big Bang did not just happen. It required a cause. Such a cause had to be both powerful and intelligent. The Big Bang was the beginning of Time, it provided all the Energy and all the Information that was needed for the operation of the Process of Emergence. This Process has resulted in all the Emergent Stages that have developed to date. It has resulted in the Emergent Stages of Matter, of Life and of Human Moral-cultural life. Each Emergent Stage has its own sphere of natural law.

Matter was the first Emergent. Life emerged when matter had developed a life-friendly environment. Life evolved on Earth, eventually producing Homo sapiens. The third Emergent stage, Human moral-cultural life, only emerged around 3,000 years ago. There were human cultures prior to that, but no human moral cultures. Homo sapiens took a long time to become human, and even longer to begin to become moral.

Each new Emergent Stage is built upon the previous stage. It incorporates the previous stage, but transcends it, introducing a new sphere of natural law. The law of the new stage transcends the law of the previous stage. It is this new sphere of law that distinguishes each new Emergent Stage from the earlier Emergent stage upon which it is built. The laws of Physics are associated with the Emergent Stage of Matter, the Genetic laws of life with the Emergent Stage of Life and the Moral Law is associated with the Human Moral-cultural Emergent Stage.

Time and Energy are important to the process of Emergence, but Information is even more important. It is Information that makes each new Emergent stage different from the previous stage, and that provides the law of the new stage.

New Emergent stages do not come into being as a result of some pre-existing Law of Nature. Laws of Nature are simply statements of the regularities that are to be found at the Emergent Stages of Matter and Life, and of the moral activity that emerges at the Human Moral-cultural Stage.

The laws of Physics and the laws of Life are embedded in the first two Emergent stages. The moral law, however, is not embedded in the Human moral-cultural stage. The moral law only comes into effect through the activities of individual humans, as it is perceived by those individuals.

The Emergent stages of Matter and Life become more complex through the process of Emergent Probability. In this process simple components form higher integrations by self-organisation, in accordance with the Information embedded within the stage. The formation of these higher integrations is not pre-determined, nor is it a matter of chance. It is a freely operating process, as shown by Bernard Lonergan in “Insight” (1958).

New Emergent stages are not simply the result of higher integrations of existing components. They require different Information in order to operate in a new way. A new Emergent Stage only emerges when the Information needed to initiate it, and its new sphere of law, becomes effective.

THE EMERGENT STAGES

Physical Matter is the first Emergent stage. Life is the second Emergent stage. We are now into the third emergent stage, the Human Moral-cultural Stage. Each Emergent stage to date is built on the previous stage. Life is built upon the Physical stage. The Human Moral-cultural stage is built on the stage of Life.

In the first step of the cosmic process, Energy and Information combine to provide the Emergent stage of Physical Matter. The laws of Physics and Chemistry express the Information that forms, or in-forms, this first Emergent stage. Matter is informed Energy. We know a lot about the processes by which matter develops from very simple to more complex forms, but we do not yet know how energy is informed to produce matter.

Life is the next Emergent Stage. Just as energy is informed to produce Matter, Matter is further informed to produce Life. The laws of Genetics express the Information that forms, or in-forms Life. Again we know a lot about the processes by which Life develops from simple to more complex forms, but we do not yet know how matter is informed to produce life.

Life evolves through a number of distinct sub-stages, including Bacterial life, Vegetative life, Instinctive Animal life and finally Conscious Animal Life. However each sub-stage is subject to the same sphere of law, the Genetic laws of life.

The laws of the Physical Emergent stage are deterministic, but the interactions of various physical laws make for a diversity of physical outcomes. At some time, in some part of the material Cosmos, at least one planet that is capable of supporting life will develop through Emergent Probability.

Earth, a complex life-friendly planet, eventually develops. Life emerges on Earth. Life exercises greater freedom in its self-organisation than does Physical Matter. Life is opportunistic rather than deterministic. Life on Earth freely evolves new forms in order to fill every available environmental niche. More complex life-forms develop by the self-organisation of existing Genetic elements.

Conscious Animal Life enjoys more freedom in its range of possible activities than does Instinctive Animal life. Homo sapiens originally evolve as a new species of Conscious Animal life. At some stage Homo sapiens begins to develop cultures. This development of culture is the beginning of self-creation, as distinct from earlier forms of self-organisation.

The early Emergent stages, Matter and Life, both develop through self-organization. Self-organisation is the re-organisation of already existing elements. Self-creation goes further and initiates a new element, such as culture, rather than simply re-organising existing elements. Humans create their own human-ness, both culturally and existentially, as they develop themselves and their cultures.

Homo sapiens have been around for some 160,000 years. Our species has changed slowly, but significantly, since it first evolved. The first members of this new species were not people, as we now understand ourselves. They were highly evolved animals, but they were simply animals, nothing more.

The gradual development of Homo sapiens, from an animal species to humans, took a long time. This development was mankind’s own doing. As Bernard Lonergan points out in his ‘Second Collection’: ‘Man’s development is a matter of getting beyond himself, of transcending himself, of ceasing to be an animal in a habitat and of becoming a genuine person in a community’. (1974,144)

We are still engaged in this process of becoming more human. As a species, Homo sapiens began the long process of self-creation, from animal to human, by forming and developing cultures, as some other Hominids had also begun to do.

Self-creation begins with the Hominids. It begins while they are simply conscious animals. Every Hominid culture is a potential process of self-creation. Cultures are made by the ‘people’ of the culture, and cultures, to a significant extent, make the ‘people’ of the culture.

Homo sapiens gradually develop the capacity to access information from the environment, to a greater extent than had other hominid species. The new species develops a knowledge base, and individuals develop their intellectual ability in the construction of knowledge and in the pursuit of understanding.

Prior to Homo sapiens, a significant change in the natural environment could only be met by the evolution of a new species with a new pattern of instinctive behaviour. With Homo sapiens a new way of thinking, and the development of a new form of activity, could meet the challenge of change.

Human intellectual development was painfully slow. Apart from the development of speech, the first significant cultural change after the evolution of the species occurred in the Palaeolithic revolution of 40,000 years ago, with the construction of symbolic representations of concepts. That was 120,000 years after the species first evolved. An even more significant change, the beginning of critical thought and of moral sensibility, took a further 37,000 years to develop. As Kohlberg has shown, the capacity for principled moral thought is still in the process of development. The majority of people today still lack this capacity.

HUMAN MORAL-CULTURAL SELF-CREATION

When the intellectual abilities of some cultural groups had become well developed, some of the people of those cultures began to perceive that human situations had a moral dimension. Having first developed the capacity to access and apply information from the natural environment, some individuals began to access moral Information directly. They also sought to apply moral concepts within their cultures. This was the beginning of the Human Moral-cultural revolution.

The transition from pre-moral human cultures to morally influenced cultures is necessarily a slow and irregular process. It appears to be dependent upon the intellectual self-development and the level of critical rationality achieved by the people of each culture.

It is only in the millennium before Jesus that significant intellectual and moral development becomes evident in any human culture. Before that time most people appear to have lacked both critical rationality and moral sensibility. All cultures had Laws, but these were simply mores, or cultural rules. They did not stem from a moral sensibility. In his ‘The Discovery of the Mind’ (1953) Bruno Snell traces the gradual development of both critical rationality and morality, particularly in Greece.

Snell shows how Greek literature provides evidence of the gradual development of a moral perspective in Greece. Homer’s stories are ancient and are pre-moral. In Homer, what is declared good is what is successful, not what is moral. ‘Good’ does not signify a moral dimension in Homer. 

Some time after Homer, Hesiod (c.750 BC) rationalises the genealogies of the Olympian gods, but he does not concern himself with their lack of morality. Two Centuries after Hesiod, Xenophanes (c.570 BC) one of the pre-Socratics, declares that the Olympian Deities cannot be Gods, because of their immorality. Moral sensibility has finally emerged in Greece.

The Hebrew developed a moral perspective earlier than the Greeks. The Hebrew focus was primarily on moral action. Amos and Hosea, Hebrew Prophets who were vitally concerned with moral action, were approximate contemporaries of the Greek writer, Hesiod. But Hesiod had failed to exhibit any moral concern when he rationally recast the genealogies of the Olympian Gods. 

INFORMATION AND LAWS

In the Cosmic process each Emergent stage makes use of different aspects of the Information provided in the Big Bang. The Information that informs the Physical stage constitutes the laws of Physics and Chemistry. The Information that informs the stage of Life is located in the Genetic code. In each case the Information is embedded in the structure of the Emergent stage. At the human Moral-cultural stage the access to Information is different. The Moral Law is not embedded in Humans.  However, truly moral individuals, those capable of Kohlberg’s “principled morality”, appear to have some direct access to moral Information. This access enables them to perceive the moral aspect of a situation.

Such direct access to moral Information is still rare. As Kohlberg has shown, at the present time only a very small percentage of people are capable of making principled moral decisions. The development of moral cultures appears to be primarily dependent upon the influence that people with a principled moral perception are able to have on the culture. The “morality” of the vast majority of people does not rely on principled moral perceptions. It is simply the adoption of the normal practices of their contemporaries.

SO WHAT IS GOING ON?

We have considered the evidence about the way the Cosmos, and particularly our part of it, has developed through the process of Emergence. This Process has resulted in the Emergent stages that have developed to date. These are the Emergent stages of Matter, of Life, and of Human Moral-cultural life.

Each Emergent stage operates according to its own sphere of law. Each successive stage permits greater freedom than the previous stage. The laws of Matter are deterministic, but they freely interact to produce a variety of outcomes. The laws of life exercise greater freedom, opportunistically taking advantage of environmental circumstances. Humans remain totally free in their response to the moral law.

The Information in each Emergent stage is different. In the first Emergent stage Energy is informed to produce the material Cosmos. In the next Emergent stage, Matter is informed to produce Life. Life develops through Vegetative, Instinctive and Conscious Animal sub-stages. Homo sapiens evolve in this last stage and begin a process of cultural self-creation. The species develops itself intellectually and morally, to different degrees in different cultures.

There are two distinct Emergent processes operating. There is the Cosmic process of Emergence, by which new Stages emerge, each with its own sphere of law. Within the first two Emergent stages there is a form of self-organisation, utilising the processes of Emergent Probability, (the emergence of higher integrations from earlier, simpler components). With the evolution of Homo sapiens and the beginning of culture, self-creation replaces self-organisation. Humans create their own humanity, culturally and existentially. The Human Moral-cultural stage also depends upon self-creation.

The Human Moral-cultural Emergent Stage is anomalous in two ways. It depends upon self-creation rather than the self-organisation of the stages of Matter and Life. Secondly, the law of the Moral-cultural Stage, the Moral Law, is not embedded in the stage, as is the appropriate law in the two earlier Emergent Stages.

There appears to be a link between these two anomalies. The next Emergent Stage may be based on the Moral Law being embedded in the Stage, just as the Physical Law is embedded in the stage of Matter and the Genetic Code is embedded in the stage of Life. But this could only be the result of extensive individual and communal Moral self-creation.

Great moral teachers appear to be products of both communal and individual moral self-creation. Some individuals may even have initiated the next Emergent Stage. If we consider the case of Jesus, we can see that moral action had been the focus of the Jewish culture for a millennium before Jesus was born. He can be understood as a product of this unique and extended moral-cultural process, and of his own existential self-creation. Jesus could well be a proleptic exemplar of the next Emergent Stage.

The present explanation of the Christ-event was derived in a world that was permeated by Myth rather than Science. Those myths had the world created by God in its completed form, with mankind being a special creation. It had God constantly intervening in the world on behalf of a particular tribe. Jesus was originally understood from within this mythic perspective. This perspective prevailed until the Scientific Revolution. It is no longer convincing.

Jesus’ miracles have tended to be dismissed as myth. But as we have seen, each new Emergent Stage is accompanied by new laws of nature. Jesus’ miracles could be normal in the new sphere of law that would accompany the next Emergent Stage.

The problem with the present myth-based explanation of the Christ event is the cognitive dissonance it generates in the scientifically oriented minds of the present generation. Every culture has to be based on a meaningful story. An explanation of the Christ-event in terms of the process of emergence could dissipate current cognitive dissonance.