Invitation Why? Preview Resources
Foreword
The preview suggests an ambitious outline to start the first year’s session. An alternative approach would be to discuss where the line of inquiry about science ends in the context of religion. Then from there, work backwards to the course topics that seem appropriate to ground the ideas for the participants.
Five Liminal Subjects in Natural Philosophy i.e. Science.
The plan is we explore new ideas at the frontier of understanding. Behind the frontier, scientific teaching is backed by considerable evidence and confirmation. On the frontier however, everyone is still learning – even the experts. You don’t have to be an expert to explore. Pretend it is the Victorian Age before overspecialization. For now, I’ve selected five areas to consider. The list below may change with your feedback.
- The origin story.
There is a surprising amount of information about the first moment in time. We should consider the very beginning to the extent that it helps us understand the idea of The Multiverse – a conjectured theory where science becomes a religion – an explanation that depends on faith. Depending on the interests of the group, we might investigate related questions like the origin of life and of civilization.
Religious issue: Was the first moment intentional? - What is a Thing?
Advocates of traditional science do not like to consider certain things when those things do not have representation in mathematics. Yet the latest evidence and latest reasoning extends knowledge past any available mathematics. It is necessary to have an up-to-date understanding of what can be a thing before you can appreciate science on the frontier.
This topic entails the objective, the subjective, and in between. We will examine text and information in any form. There are multiple definitions of information, and we consider three: Shannon’s, quantum, and functional. The treatment is very light; nevertheless, the kinds of information help us understand other subjects.
Religious issues: Is our soul a thing? Do we have free will? - Becoming Alive and Conscious
This section is intended to cover the deep history of the Earth and the development of life here. The scope of the section may vary from nothing to quite detailed. It will depend on the interest of the group. The point to be made however is that life as we know it is very improbable. That point can be debated of course because many authors adopt the opposite opinion that biological life is inevitable.
Religious issue: Knowing where we come from, what do we owe the future? - Emergence or Complexity Theory
A remarkable achievement of 20th century science was the demonstration of a connection between Shannon’s kind of information and the entropy known in the fields of thermodynamics and statistical physics. Don’t be scared of the big words, what you need to know is no more than a few pictures in Powerpoint. Then we will briefly consider the well-known observation that living things violate the law of entropy locally while accelerating entropy production globally. The result is the proliferation of repetitive local order with a concomitant global evolution of forms. More controversially, we will debate whether information can be a thing and whether the creativity of nature is – as it may appear – a fundamental attribute of the world.
Recent speculation proposes that we need to new laws to explain why complexity increases. We will not visit any of the attempts to frame new laws in mathematics, but we will consider principles that operate, for example, on the level of natural selection.
Religious issues:
Can we have faith in the creativity evident in reality?
What might a conjectured god of creation expect to gain by having a universe? - A Religion of Creative Change
Our world – yours and mine – emerged over deep time, billions of years, and, more relevantly, over recent historical time – roughly 5000 years. Science has documented during this time the creative evolution of new forms and new ways in which those forms interact. We may hope our scientific understanding continues to grow. But science finds itself in a familiar place hearing echoes of the intuition and revelation pronounced by many past religious leaders. Scientific ideas correspond to elements Progressive Judaism, Buddhism and the fictional but compelling Earthseed religion. In this closing segment, we explore these connections between religion and science.
Religious issue: Does moral fiber matter?
Paul Baker 9/2025