2 Comments

  1. ExSDAChemist
    July 18, 2021 @ 6:04 pm

    I like this site very much. But I’m not sure of how you step into religion as art. As a scientist, in Chemistry we search to understand how chemical processes initiated life. We attempt to recreate the foundational components and conditions to see if we can capture evidence of how chemical reactions produced the building blocks of life.
    We recognize that life is cellular. One simple definition of life. Getting to that simplicity, you come down to the basic aspects of what is life, this makes it difficult to accept more traditional notions of god and religion.
    Where I think the SDA Church fails is by not seeing that spiritual life and connections are warranted in our society. So much so that moving away from traditional thinking will preserve the church. I don’t miss religion as such but at times I miss fellowship. Which right now is impossible although many of my long time friends and my family on both sides are all SDA. So technically the only thing worth preserving from my old way of religious life would be those close ties which I find I’m having to let go.

    But I wonder is seeing religion as art and metaphor to difficult for most to gasp? How could these ideas be presented in more manageable pieces?

    I’m willing to explore a more metaphorical approach to religious life. After all, as you said a religion of the future has to look at what matters to most to us. To look at how we live and be inclusive of science.

  2. Joe Greig
    July 23, 2021 @ 4:31 pm

    Thanks. I’ll address life first. I don’t think life itself means much without what makes it meaningful to us. As to its origin, I am familiar with two important books: A World Beyond Physics, but Stuart Kauffman, and Every Life is on Fire, by Jeremy England. Kauffman’s approach is by autocatalytic sets, England looks to thermodynamics and develops the theory of dissipative adaption. I wish them well because both their works seem to be aimed at recapturing a sense of the sacred. As you have discovered I argue that metaphoric language is best suited to address the unknown, in fact the only way. I understand metaphor and art in a broad inclusive sense. Religion as metaphor and art, avoids the the problem of falsification. The idea that metaphors are neither true or false, rather evocative, directs attention to how they function in giving meaning to human living. We must recapture the subjective pole while accepting science, but not scientism, as a legitimate approach to the world. A religion of the future and an Adventism of the future suggests, if not demands, that we move away from traditional thinking to creativity, expressing what subjective human strata underlie doctrinal expression. This creativity maximally addresses a worship of the future. The altar informs the pulpit. By that I mean that worship addresses the unknown to inform the known. Adventists are generally reluctant to credit emotive expressions as having anything to do with doctrinal knowledge. Worship is an art form, the worshiping church of the future is one that grasps the meaning of life in time and space artistically. Worship is where we experience an epiphany, a flash of insight, a conversion, a sense of being Woke. Fellowship emerges viewing each other as art forms, motivated by love, itself an artistic creation of relationships. I’m presently talking to artists of all kinds about the place and content of worship.

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