Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Imagining Miracles and A Brotherhood of Man




The word "miracle" seems to me to be a term that is both dissembling and ambiguous.... It seems to give a false impression or misleading appearance to the real reality or truth of an event or circumstance. Used by many, it is meant to put on the appearance of a truth, resembling something that normally wouldn't happen, and occurring in a fashion that is abnormal or non-normative. And by ambiguous is meant to also give a false or misleading appearance to something concealing the real nature of motives, thoughts, presence, or pretense, of a speech or act. One that contains several meanings or interpretations but is difficult to comprehend, perhaps distinguish, or lacking the necessary clarity to the observers around, many times passing unnoticed to the general public. A public that is at all times skeptical and unbelieving.

In common parlance, it refers to an observation of a non-normative event into a distinctly meaningful interpretation for an individual, or group of individuals, who awaken to a truth or reality previously unseen through an unusual occurrence that gives spiritual definition and meaning to further acts and speech. To spiritually enliven one's life giving to it shape and definition that previously wasn't there before. Sometimes to one's error and regret, and more often to one's benefit as well as those about.

So then, in this postmodern age of science and skepticism how are we to think of the word miracle in connection to the biblical miracles of the Bible? At once the term "miracle" seems to be immediately at odds with the scientific method's pursuit for verifiability, evidentiary examination, and confirmatory proof. Without the ability to replicate a "miraculous" event or occurrence the claimed "miracle" is considered doubtful and held in disregard until proven true. Thus, it is considered suspect and non-normative of the everyday "facts" of life as we think we understand them. On the opposing side, those wishing to see a miracle will, whether it is there or not, driven as they are by the delusion to believe or interpret an event that is seems unexplainable (see "Criticisms" in the Wiki article at the end of this post):


In psychology and cognitive scienceconfirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret
new information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, and avoids information and
interpretations that contradict prior beliefs. It is a type of  cognitive bias and represents an error
of inductive inferenceor is a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under
study, or disconfirmation of an alternative hypothesis. Confirmation bias is of interest in the
teaching of critical thinking, as the skill is misused if rigorous critical scrutiny is applied only
to evidence that challenges  a preconceived idea, but not to evidence that supports it.[18] 

As example, I think of a woman's medical discussion on NPR who was considered become demonic until later discovering her brain's physiology was deficient a specific chemistry balance (A Young Reporter Chronicles her 'Brain on Fire.' November 14, 2012, NPR).

And in theological terms - especially in light of the truths of evolutionary creationism and relational process theology as discussed here on this blog - the term miracle may give the false impression of a God who is set wholly apart from us. Who is outside of our sphere of reality but then comes to engage our world on an intermittent, temporary basis to interrupt this world's natural processes, flow, and rhythm, as He had previous set them. Who does something unusual that we notice before leaving us again to suffer the affects of our sin and evil alone.

At once we misunderstand the idea of miracle by forcing it into the molds of both scientific rationalism and theological deism. Which should indicate that it is we, ourselves, who are the problem here, and not the idea in itself. We have forced a good biblical concept into the modes of our overly-rationalistic worldviews to become false interpreters, or witnesses, to the every day, extremely normative, God-centered events in our everyday lives. Perhaps we interpret these too literally. Perhaps too casually or indiscriminately. Perhaps demanding it be read as we think the Bible portrays it (I think of the 2014 film of Noah as popularly envisaged by Russell Crowe's latest film). Disconnecting the theme or concept to the extant biblical movement surrounding a passage within its covenantal time, while on the other hand neglecting to do the hard work of interpretation in preference to our imaginations of what we think the Bible says or doesn't say.

For example, the era of the church gives witness to two biblical constructions that were present in the older covenantal times periods of the Bible but not yet enacted historically - that of Jesus' incarnation and resurrection. As a flesh-and-blood event that was unexpected in Adam and Eve's day. And Abraham's. And  Moses. And even in Israel's day (which is why Jesus was such a surprise to Israel's astute religious establishment). But upon the backwards glance becomes readily apparent when seen through each covenantal period's redemptive typologies and parallelisms. Meaning, that God was purposely at work effecting salvation to His people, and to the world of man at large (think Melchizedek, among others). So that when Christ's incarnation and resurrection actually did happen historically it launched the new ecclesiastical Age of the Church (better thought of as the Age of the Spirit). And with it the beginning of the end of the old creation, and the start of a new creation, that would usurp all predecessors like yeast to leaven, or a gnat-sized mustard seed to a mighty tree, or new fermenting wine to old wine skins bursting them asunder. Even as God's heavenly kingdom broke out upon man's many kingdoms through the incarnate/resurrected gospel of His Son. Things that were non-normative then would now become normative, unhidden, noticeable and seen.

Which brings us to the idea of biblical miracles. In essence, however they are understood, they are pointers to the larger idea that God is with us. That He is present with us. That His mighty hand of redemption is there to redeem and save. As can be seen in each of its telling in the Bible through the many lives of His people - both wicked and professing. None are beyond the hand of God, nor outside His boundless compassion and mercy. God is the God of every man, and not just that of Israel's, or the church's, or the elect and predestined as misunderstood by Calvinism's derelict doctrine. Nay He is the God to all peoples. Both to the wicked and to the righteous. For good or for ill as we respond to His goodness and love in denial or acclaim.

So then, what is meant by this? Should we expect to see a God who is intimately present and involved in the processes of this world? Even through its creation is nowadays regarded scientifically as formed by random chance and chaotic evolution eventuating into the birthing of the homo sapien race? The backwards glance tells us yes. That God has worked His will upon His creation over all things seen and unseen by the power of His Spirit however it has occurred. Whether we understand it or not. That through His Son - which the theologian would describe as the midpoint of redemptive history - all things move and have their being to the formation of this godly event of creation. And that it is at this spiritual midpoint of history that we even now are moving towards an expansion of God's spiritual kingdom across all nations and lives, events and acts. That through His church will come the works of His Spirit into the hearts of desperate people without hope or love, truth or justice. That this Spirit of God will warp all time and space into the furthering of God's will upon this earth. And that with His rejection shall also come the harsher realities of sin's evil and evil's sin should we deny its presence in our lives - a presence of love, mercy, forgiveness, and peace with all men.

Hence, by the word miracle is not meant - at least in my mind - that God comes into our desperate lives to resurrect them willy-nilly.... Nay, He has been in our lives all along enacting this very thing. We just haven't noticed it. Nor have we recognized His hand at work in the many daily things that have protected our spirits, if not our very lives, against the sin and evil we suffer under. Perhaps we have been given hardship to humble us. To cause us to look away from ourselves, or from others, as fleshly saviours to the One who would be our Sovereign and Saviour. Perhaps we have suffered because of our sin and must look to the One who has taken our sin upon Himself and has given to us freedom and release that we thought wasn't there until beholding Jesus in His incarnated glory.

The miracle of God is the one that releases us from our sin, and from the hands of sinful man - if not by death, than by freedom from those who would harm our spirits and inner man to the lamentation of soul and mind, heart and body. To see in the life about us that we have been empowered by a God who loves us to defeat the sin and evil we experience or see in ourselves and in the lives of others. To bring justice where no justice is. To bring hope and salvation where none existed. To resurrect the lives of those dead about us to the Living Waters at the Well of the Lord. To speak peace and love and mercy in the strength and power of the Holy Spirit.

These alone are greater miracles than any miracle of the Bible. Did not Jesus say the same, "...which is easier to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise up and walk'?"
  1. Matthew 9:5
    For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?
    Matthew 9:4-6 (in Context) Matthew 9 (Whole Chapter) Other Translations
  2. Mark 2:9
    Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?
    Mark 2:8-10 (in Context) Mark 2 (Whole Chapter) Other Translations
  3. Luke 5:23
    Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?
    Luke 5:22-24 (in Context) Luke 5 (Whole Chapter) Other Translations
Let not the word "miracle" confound us in the popular banter of its remit or surmise but allow it to breathe into us God's peace and redemptive work. This is the fuller meaning of the term. Not how it occurred. Or by what method, time, or space. It is miraculous no less and doesn't require us to effect the seeming impossible to experience or prove the power of the Spirit of the Lord. God's power is everywhere about. It is a sublime power known only to those who live in its streams and mighty waters. It cannot be proven by mere occurrence and happenstance because it is there already. We just haven't seen it because we haven't thought to see it. To take the backwards glance in our lives. To use it. Believe it. Or move within it. Until now. Until this day. This hour. Through every word spoken from our hearts, minds, and mouths. To every act committed by our hands, feet, and will. Like John Lennon once said, "Let it be." Or better yet, "Imagine" a world of possibilities and opportunities. A world of miracles. A world where a new kingdom creation is spreading out and overtaking an older world of fleshly desire and sin.

R.E. Slater
February 6, 2014

John Lennon - Imagine HD


imagine, "a brotherhood of man"



* * * * * * * * *

Surmise:

We cannot fit the resurrection of Jesus into a modern materialist
worldview of 18th century rationalism and enlightenment;

Nor can we not the incarnation and life of Jesus into this
modern materialist worldview either.


"Let’s give up the world miracle because the word "miracle" comes to us now in our culture from that Epicurean or deist worldview which envisages a God who is outside the process and occasionally reaches in and does something funny and then pushes off again.

Now, that is not what the New Testament is talking about. So when people say can we believe in miracles I say no, because the word miracle gives us this sense of a normally absent God sometimes reaching in, that’s not the God of the Bible.

What we have, and I talk about this in Simply Jesus, is the launching of space, time, and matter in a new mode. And it’s not discontinuous with our present space, time, and matter, but this is God’s new creation.

And the thing about what we call the miracles, is not… "Wow! there seem to be radical abnormalities within the old world." No... the point is that these are the things that are starting to be normal in the new world which we see close up and personal with Jesus and then which, through the ministry of the gospel thereafter, start to happen in different ways in the wider world.

It’s about the launching of new creation. Not about an invasion [backwards] into the old creation."

- N.T. Wright, Simply Jesus

* * * * * * * * *

- Wikipedia: Miracle

A miracle is an event not ascribable to human power or the laws of nature and consequently attributed to a supernatural, especially divine, agency.[1] Such an event may be attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that God may work with the laws of nature to perform what are considered miracles.[2] Theologians say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through created nature yet is free to work without, above, or against it as well.[3]

The word "miracle" is often used to characterise any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other miracles might be: survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or 'beating the odds'. Some coincidences may be seen as miracles.[4]

A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that God may work with the laws of nature to perform what people see as miracles.[2] Some theologians say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through created nature yet is free to work without, above, or against it as well.[3]






* * * * * * * * *


Divine Synchronicity:
What Does It Mean for Christianity?

The Concept of Synchronicity
Part 2 of 2

Continued from the article, LOST in Purgatory, Part 1 of 2
August 16, 2011


A significant concept that was not readily apparent on the TV show LOST until the flash forwards and flash sideways episodes began appearing in the third and fourth seasons was the concept of synchronicity. When reviewing my notes from several years back I believe that some of what was being implied through the concept of purgatory discussed in part one above, could easily fall into this metaphysical idea here, where, during our lifetimes, and quite unknown to us (if at all), coincidences based upon a-causal events may interlope (or intersect) within our lives in phenomenal ways. Some Christians call these events miracles, others an "intervention of grace," where non-normative events, ideas or people may enter into our lives in either profound or non-significant ways.

Most philosophers, psychologists and physicists, regard synchronicity as an extremely rare event (as initially conceived), but I am more or less of the opinion that synchronicity is a very common, normative event at work at all times in everyone's lives and that we are simply unaware of it, just like we are unaware of the act of breathing, or thinking, or behaving, or acting, or passing through time for most of our lives. It is an all-pervasive fact that we only may rarely glimpse like the tip of an iceberg. This has become known as joined collective dynamic very similar to the physics term of quantum mechanics, but operative on a metaphysical level that occasionally intersects with our physical, symbolic world, and with others who cross-sect our daily routines sometime in life.

Taking this concept one step farther, I would entertain the idea that the operating mechanism behind the concept of synchronicity is that of the Holy Spirit infilling (or, infusing) all creation to bring it into the very plans and purposes of the Godhead. And it is through this metaphysical idea of joined collective dynamic that God interweaves the lives of people with one another through the work of His Spirit to bring about both His purposes as well as our spiritual well being. Not our physical well being, but our spiritual well being (some would call it blessedness to our lives). So that, regardless of our experiences in this life under the reign of sin, death, hatred, evil, wickedness, brokenness, abandonment, dissertion, betrayal, and dysfunctionalism and so on; but through all of this, God is weaving a redemptive tapestry predicated upon His purposes of redemption, reconciliation, wholeness, and healing. Whether we understand this or not. Whether we see this or not. Whether we acknowledge this or not. It is synchronous.


So then, we are given this time to make amends, to recover, to process our existence into a meaningful existence at one with the union of God's purposes. To allow what order can be made of it before we are removed from this life. And in a sense, this life of ours is our time of purgatory (one which emergent Christians have lately been calling our "heaven on earth" or a "hell on earth": sic, Rob Bell's book, Love Wins). Now I'm sure this is not what Bell had in mind, but as long as we're thinking through the concept of purgatory, we could very easily align it into this life rather than into a future expectation that is un-discovered (or, un-stated) in the Bible, just like Bell is aligning acts of heaven and hell into this life (otherwise known as Inaugural Kingdom Eschatology).

Consequently, though there may be a purgatory-like existence into heaven's entrance, (or in fact, into hell's entrance) - if we wish to allow for a type of universalism into this discussion - but I am not of the opinion that it is either necessary or biblical. For me, this meager life that we live will contain all those facets of purgatory, heaven and hell, to be sufficient for the redemptive purposes of God of establishing a creative order of blessedness. He does not need to extend our agonies nor our pains yet another second beyond this, our lifetimes. He will have worked out his purposes in our lives sufficiently despite evil, the devil, this sinful world, and ourselves, to be satisfied with its culminating end (which is a good working definition of Sovereignty). And the true fact is - one that should cause fear and trembling in our souls - is that we must not allow even one more breath or life-event to pass living separate from God's grace, love, and care in our lives!

For like the survivors on the mythical island of LOST we may be indeterminately and immediately snatched away by death once our purpose of existence has been completed. Should those purposes have striven towards wickedness and sin, towards striving against God, towards hatred and creating a hell for those around us, than we should not expect anything less than what we have brought into the lives of those whom we have harmed. And if, as Christians believers, we continue to seek ungodly and wicked demonstrations of harsh judgments upon both innocents and the true seekers of God alike, we too should expect nothing less than a judgment upon our hearts (known as the bema seat of God in Scriptures). There will be tears and agonies, vexations and the gnashing of teeth, on both sides of heaven and hell, but in the end God shall rule as He now rules in a broken, mis-shapened world. So then repent and be at peace.

RE Slater
August 17, 2011

  



* * * * * * * * *


Diagram illustrating concept of synchronicity by CG Jung


"The temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events."
- Carl Jung

Synchronicity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related. The subject sees it as a meaningful coincidence, although the events need not be exactly simultaneous in time. The concept of synchronicity was first described by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s.[1]

The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be connected by a causal line, they may also be connected by meaning. A grouping of events by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of cause and effect.

In addition to Jung, Arthur Koestler wrote extensively on synchronicity in The Roots of Coincidence.[2

Description

The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as occurrences that are meaningfully related.

Synchronistic events reveal an underlying pattern, a conceptual framework that encompasses, but is larger than, any of the systems that display the synchronicity. The suggestion of a larger framework is essential to satisfy the definition of synchronicity as originally developed by Carl Gustav Jung.[3]

Jung coined the word to describe what he called "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." Jung variously described synchronicity as an "acausal connecting principle", "meaningful coincidence" and "acausal parallelism". Jung introduced the concept as early as the 1920s, but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture[4] and in 1952, published a paper, Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge (Synchronicity – An Acausal Connecting Principle),[5] in a volume with a related study by the physicist (and Nobel laureate) Wolfgang Pauli.[6]

It was a principle that Jung felt gave conclusive evidence for his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious,[7] in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlies the whole of human experience and history – social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. Concurrent events that first appear to be coincidental but later turn out to be causally related are termed incoincident.

Jung believed that many experiences that are coincidences due to chance in terms of causality suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances in terms of meaning, reflecting this governing dynamic.[8]

Even at Jung's presentation of his work on synchronicity in 1951 at an Eranos lecture, his ideas on synchronicity were evolving. Following discussions with both Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli, Jung believed that there were parallels between synchronicity and aspects of relativity theory and quantum mechanics.[9] Jung was transfixed by the idea that life was not a series of random events but rather an expression of a deeper order, which he and Pauli referred to as Unus mundus. This deeper order led to the insights that a person was both embedded in an orderly framework and was the focus of that orderly framework and that the realisation of this was more than just an intellectual exercise, but also having elements of a spiritual awakening. From the religious perspective, synchronicity shares similar characteristics of an "intervention of grace". Jung also believed that in a person's life, synchronicity served a role similar to that of dreams, with the purpose of shifting a person's egocentric conscious thinking to greater wholeness.

A close associate of Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, stated towards the end of her life that the concept of synchronicity must now be worked on by a new generation of researchers.[10] For example, in the years since the publication of Jung’s work on synchronicity, some writers largely sympathetic to Jung's approach have taken issue with certain aspects of his theory, including the question of how frequently synchronicity occurs.

One of Jung's favourite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards".[11][12]'The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.'
'It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"' Alice objected.
'No, it can't,' said the Queen. 'It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't any OTHER day, you know.'
'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!'
'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it always makes one a little giddy at first--'
'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard of such a thing!'
'--but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.'
'I'm sure MINE only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember things before they happen.'
'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked.
Examples

The French writer Émile Deschamps claims in his memoirs that, in 1805, he was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger named Monsieur de Fontgibu. Ten years later, the writer encountered plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him that the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to be de Fontgibu. Many years later, in 1832, Deschamps was at a dinner and once again ordered plum pudding. He recalled the earlier incident and told his friends that only de Fontgibu was missing to make the setting complete – and in the same instant, the now senile de Fontgibu entered the room.[13]

In his book Synchronicity (1952), Jung tells the following story as an example of a synchronistic event:
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream, I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which, contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since.[14]
Jung wrote, after describing some examples, "When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them – for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes."[15]

In the book Thirty Years That Shook Physics – The Story of Quantum Theory (1966), George Gamow writes about Wolfgang Pauli, who was apparently considered a person particularly associated to Synchronicity Events. Gamow whimsically refers to 'The "Pauli effect", a mysterious phenomenon which is not, and probably never will, be understood on a purely materialistic basis. The following anecdote is told:
It is well known that theoretical physicists cannot handle experimental equipment; it breaks whenever they touch it. Pauli was such a good theoretical physicist that something usually broke in the lab whenever he merely stepped across the threshold. A mysterious event that did not seem at first to be connected with Pauli's presence once occurred in Professor J. Franck's laboratory in Göttingen. Early one afternoon, without apparent cause, a complicated apparatus for the study of atomic phenomena collapsed. Franck wrote humorously about this to Pauli at his Zürich address and, after some delay, received an answer in an envelope with a Danish stamp. Pauli wrote that he had gone to visit Bohr and at the time of the mishap in Franck's laboratory his train was stopped for a few minutes at the Göttingen railroad station. You may believe this anecdote or not, but there are many other observations concerning the reality of the Pauli Effect! [16]
Criticisms

Among some psychologists, Jung's works, such as The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, were received as problematic. Fritz Levi, in his 1952 review in Neue Schweizer Rundschau (New Swiss Observations), critiqued Jung's theory of synchronicity as vague in determinability of synchronistic events, saying that Jung never specifically explained his rejection of "magic causality" to which such an acausal principle as synchronicity would be related. He also questioned the theory's usefulness.[17]

In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, and avoids information and interpretations that contradict prior beliefs. It is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference, or is a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study, or disconfirmation of an alternative hypothesis. Confirmation bias is of interest in the teaching of critical thinking, as the skill is misused if rigorous critical scrutiny is applied only to evidence that challenges a preconceived idea, but not to evidence that supports it.[18]

Likewise, in psychology and sociology, the term apophenia is used for the apparent detection of a pattern or meaning, in what is actually random or meaningless data.[19] Skeptics, such as Robert Todd Carroll of the Skeptic's Dictionary, argue that the perception of synchronicity is better explained as apophenia. Primates use pattern detection in their form of intelligence,[20] and this can lead to erroneous identification of non-existent patterns. A famous example of this is the fact that human face recognition is so robust, and based on such a basic archetype (essentially two dots and a line contained in a circle), that human beings are very prone to identify faces in random data all through their environment, like the "man in the moon", or faces in wood grain, an example of the visual form of apophenia known as pareidolia.[21]

It has been asserted that Jung's analytical psychological theory of synchronicity is equal to intellectual intuition.[22]

Although some scientists[who?] see potential evidence of synchronicity in areas of research such as quantum theory, chaos theory, and fractal geometry, the concept is not testable by any current scientific method.

The concept of synchronicity is somewhat related to the concept of serendipity.

See also






Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Why Calvinism's "Divine Determinism" Doesn't Satisfy an Arminian Theologian


Does God Foreordain and Render Certain Sins?
(And Why Some Questions Annoy Me)

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Textual Composition of the Testaments - Charts and Diagrams (including Linguistic Sample Study)


SAMPLE CHART AND DIAGRAM ON THE
TRANSMISSION OF ANCIENT LANGUAGES

Ancient Alphabets



SAMPLE CHART AND DIAGRAM ON THE
TRANSMISSION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TEXT

The interrelationship between various significant ancient manuscripts of the Old Testament, according to the Encyclopaedia Biblica (1903) Some manuscripts are identified by their siglum. LXX here denotes the original Septuagint. - Source: Wikipedia article on the Old Testament



SAMPLE CHARTS AND DIAGRAMS ON
THE COMPOSITION OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT










Gospel Source Theories



SAMPLE RECONSTRUCTION OF
TEXTUAL VARIANTS

How Textual Variations Arise



Variation of Manuscripts from Hypothetical "Original" Text



Source: See link here



Transmission Timelines of a New Testament text - Source: See link here



... JUST FOR FUN ...

THE STUDY OF
LINGUISTICS TRANSMISSION


Network analysis of Genesis 1:3

This idea was stolen blatantly from the Laboratory Exercises in Evolution at the  Biology Department, University of Virginia (Janis Antonovics, Joanna Vondrasek, Doug Taylor), where it is set as a class exercise for learning phylogenetic analysis. In turn, these people credit a similar idea to Barbrook et al. (1998. The phylogeny of the Canterbury Tales. Nature 394: 839), although the originators appear to be Robinson and O'Hara (1996. Cladistic analysis of an Old Norse manuscript tradition. Research in Humanities Computing 4: 115-137). It is an exercise in stemmatology, which can be a lot more tricky than you might think.

Stemmatology is the discipline that attempts to reconstruct the transmission history of a written text on the basis of relationships between the various extant versions (eg. manuscripts or printings). These relationships can be revealed using phylogenetic networks, which is the approach that I present here. A network is more appropriate than a phylogenetic tree, for reasons that will become obvious — the evolution of books is not a simple thing.

Genesis

The original text of the christian Bible was written mostly in Hebrew and Aramaic for the Old Testament, and in Greek for the New Testament. It was later translated into Latin, which was then standardized as the "Vulgate", and this was then almost the only version used in churches for the best part of a millennium. The only texts in Old English consisted usually of either the Gospels or the Psalms only.

This situation was challenged in the late 14th century, when the first Middle English translations of the whole Bible appeared. There was active resistance to this by the formal Church, and so the idea of an English translation was dropped until the mid 16th century, when the Reformation inspired attempts to translate the books into Modern English as part of a new Protestant religion. These moves were sanctioned by the government, with first the Great Bible (1539) and then the King James Version (1611). Various revisions of the latter have appeared, especially since the late 19th century. These days, there is a veritable cottage industry producing new versions of the Bible for various purposes, usually based on the original texts rather than on earlier translations, with various translation principles being employed (eg. Formal Equivalence, Dynamic Equivalence, Closest Natural Equivalence, etc).

You can consult the various versions of the English-language Bible at one or more of several online sites:
The data used below were all obtained from these sites. These sites suggest that the most famous English-language versions of the Bible are: the Geneva Bible (1560), as used throughout the Reformation, and by William Shakespeare as well as by the "Pilgrim Fathers" in America, and the King James Version (1611), which was the standard English text for a quarter of a millennium. The most widespread current Bible is apparently the New International Version, which has been updated several times since its first appearance in 1973.

Stemmatology

The text that I use is the third sentence of the Bible — Genesis 1:3. (The biblical text was first numbered in the Geneva Bible of 1560.) Here is a dated listing of that sentence in all of the early English translations, plus most of the revisions up to the mid-20th century, and a sample of the many recent versions: 

1382 Wycliffe Bible  And God seide, Be maad li3t; and maad is li3t.
1395 Later Wycliffe  And God seide, li3t be maad; and li3t was maad.
1530 Tyndale Bible  Then God sayd: let there be lyghte and there was lyghte.
1535 Coverdale Bible  Than God sayd: let there be light: & there was lyght.
1537 Matthew Bible  And God sayde: let there be light, and there was light.
1539 Great Bible  And God sayde: let there be made lyght, and there was light made.
1560 Geneva Bible  Then God saide, Let there be light: And there was light.
1568 Bishop's Bible  And God sayde, let there be light: and there was light.
1609 Douay-Rheims Bible  And God said: Be light made And light was made.
1611 King James Version  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1750 Challoner Revision  And God said: Be light made. And light was made.
1769 Blayney Revision  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1833 Webster's Bible  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1862 Young's Literal Translation  and God saith, 'Let light be;' and light is.
1885 English Revised Version  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1890 Darby Bible  And God said, Let there be light. And there was light.
1901 American Standard Version  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1950 Knox Bible  Then God said, Let there be light; and the light began.
1952 Revised Standard Version  And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
1971 New American Standard Bible  Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
1973 New International Version  And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
1976 Good News Bible  Then God commanded, "Let there be light" — and light appeared.
1982 New King James Version  Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
1995 God's Word Translation  Then God said, "Let there be light!" So there was light.
1996 New Living Version  Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
2011 Common English Bible  God said, "Let there be light." And so light appeared.

The first thing we need to do is align the text of these 26 versions, including both words and punctuation. This allows us to directly compare each of the elements of the sentence, comparing like with like as far as their features are concerned.

This is not as easy as it sounds. In this alignment I have separated words when they seem to have a different intent — for example, "was made" is not equivalent to "appeared". I can see endless arguments about the alignment of any text; and, indeed, disagreements about the intent of the original text is what has lead to so many different versions of the Bible being created in English.


This alignment then needs to be coded as a set of characters, which define the hypothesized homology between the various elements of the text. In this case I ended up with 50 additive binary characters for analysis. In general, I used Young's Literal Translation to determine the ancestral state for each character, as this translation was an explicit attempt to emulate the Hebrew original. A nexus-formatted version of the dataset is available here.

Various network methods could be used to summarize the character data. First, I have used a NeighborNet based on hamming distances, as I usually do (see my earlier analyses). As you can see from the graph, there is no simple tree-like relationships among these texts, which calls into question any simplistic attempt at stemmatology. (Note that in two cases there are multiple texts that have identical sentences, and thus they appear at the same location in the graph.)


It is worth pointing out here that Barbrook et al. (1998) produced a bush-like graph from their data for the Canterbury Tales, but only after deleting 14 of their 58 manuscripts, "as they were likely to have been copied from more than one exemplar, either by deliberate conflation of readings or by changing the exemplar during the course of copying." A similar explanation is likely to apply for some of the texts for Genesis 1:3, although many of them were translated directly from the original Hebrew rather than from later translations (eg. the Latin "Vulgate").

Nevertheless, there is a general separation of the older Genesis texts on the right of the graph and the more recent texts on the left. This might be easier to assess if we simplify the graph.

As a simpler summary of the same relationships, I have used a Reduced Median Network, based on r = 2 (the program default). Note that the time order is reversed in this graph, with the older texts on the left and the more recent texts on the right. The only major discrepancy between the two graphs is the relative placement of the Bishop's Bible. (Also, I have not labelled the two cases where there are several texts that have identical sentences.)


Historically, we would expect the Tyndale BibleCoverdale BibleMatthew Bible and Great Bible texts to be closely related, but the Great Bible seems not to fit this expectation. Similarly, we would expect a similarity between the Geneva Bible and the Bishop's Bible, which is also not reflected in the study sentence; nor is the acknowledged debt of the King James Version to the Tyndale Bible.

However, the fact that the Wycliffe Bible and Later Wycliffe are written in Middle English rather than Modern English is clear from their distant relationship to the other texts; and the close historical relationship of the Challoner Revision and the Douay-Rheims Bible is also clear.

Several texts show isolated relationships. The Knox Bible, for example, is unique among the modern texts in being taken from the Latin rather than the original Hebrew, while the Common English Bible is unusual in trying to balance two translation principles (Dynamic Equivalence and Formal Equivalence) rather than using only one.

On the other hand, the New International Version is clearly a very traditional version of the text, given its relationships as shown in the two graphs, which perhaps explains its popularity.

The close association of the Good News Bible with Young's Literal Translation is interesting, given that the former is an (often criticized) free paraphrase of the original Hebrew text while the latter is a literal translation of that same text — you can't get more different translation principles.

Conclusion

The lack of any simple tree-like relationship among these biblical texts makes any attempt to study their phylogeny difficult. My own look at the business of stemmatology suggests that the results here are quite typical of any study of written texts. Part of the problem seems to be that ideas developed in one historical lineage can be transferred to other lineages, and even transferred to earlier parts of those lineages (see my previous post: Time inconsistency in evolutionary networks).  So, even though there is a general historical trend through time, that trend is not consistent enough for a tree-based historical analysis to be effective.


* * * * * * * * * *


Time inconsistency in evolutionary networks
http://phylonetworks.blogspot.com/2012/07/time-inconsistency-in-evolutionary.html

The temporal ordering of the nodes (and branches) is usually treated as an important feature in an evolutionary network of biological organisms, because the order must be time consistent (Baroni et al. 2004, 2006; Moret et al. 2004). That is, for reticulation events the "horizontal" gene flow can only occur between species that are contemporaries. So, speciation events occur successively but reticulation events occur instantaneously (Sang and Zhong 2000).

For example, it would be unrealistic to hypothesize either a hybridization or a horizontal gene transfer event between a species and one of its own ancestors. Furthermore, each reticulation event must not only be consistent on its own but must be consistent in relation to all of the other events.

Mathematically, inconsistency creates directed pseudo-cycles in the network graph, so that it is not acyclic, as required for an evolutionary history (see previous blog post). Time consistency is thus seen as a useful means of validating a network as a potential biological history, and can even be used as a criterion for choosing among otherwise equally optimal networks.

However, evolutionary analysis is not applied only to biological organisms. It has also been applied to the study of languages (Atkinson & Gray 2005) and to cultural objects (Collard et al. 2006). Indeed, Darwin himself recognized early on that it would be important to show that language (a characteristic solely of humans) had a natural origin and that it develops in a genealogical fashion (ie. it has a pedigree).

Thus, both language and cultural objects have an historical component that can be studied, and both can fit into an evolutionary framework of variation + transmission + selection (Dagg 2011). Moreover, the evolutionary history also consists of both vertical and horizontal transmission. This means that the same data-analysis techniques can potentially be applied to biology, language and culture (Heggarty et al. 2010; Gray et al. 2010).

The issue that I wish to raise here is that time consistency is not a requirement of the evolution of either language or cultural objects, the way that it is for biological organisms. Organisms store the information (that is vertically and horizontally transmitted) in genes that they carry with them, which is what restricts reticulation to occurring only between contemporaries. However, language and culture store their "information" externally, either in the minds of people or in permanent or semi-permanent records (either written or pictorial). Thus, the information available for horizontal transmission can come from the distant past, as well as from the present.*

It is important to note that for language and culture the biological ideas of vertical and horizontal transmission of genetic information need modification (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981). Vertical (or descending) transmission still involves faithful copying of the information (with perhaps some losses or minor modifications). Lateral transfer, however, can be either horizontal transmission (between contemporary generations) or oblique transmission (between different generations), and it is the latter that allows time-travel of information.

Lateral transfer in this context may be a form of hybridization, in which new concepts are added from elsewhere (eg. synonymous words), but is likely to be a form of HGT in which concepts are simply replaced with something from elsewhere (eg. a new word effectively replaces an old word). Recombination, in which concepts are mutually exchanged, may be rather rare.

As an illustration, Dagg (2011) provides some interesting examples of lateral transfer in the parts of mouse traps. For example, he notes that: "Torsion power may have been transmitted laterally from Egyptian torsion traps to prefabricated dead-fall traps." These traps need not be contemporaneous, because the ideas being transferred may be from pictures or descriptions of old traps rather than from concurrently existing traps. (Joachim Dagg also has a couple of blog posts where he further discusses the evolution of mouse traps: post 1 —  post 2.)

As an alternative example, Johnson et al. (1989) provide an evolutionary network showing the history of the various software (mostly) and hardware components of the revolutionary Xerox 8010 "Star" Information System (ie. computer), introduced in April 1981. Note that almost all of the lateral transfer events (single arrows; mostly hybridization) are time inconsistent. To quote the authors: "Although Star was conceived as a product in 1975 and was released in 1981, many of the ideas that went into it were born in projects dating back over three decades."


Fig. 8 – How systems influenced later systems.
This graph summarizes how various systems related to Star have influenced one another over the years. Time progresses downwards. Double arrows indicate direct successors (i.e., follow-on versions). Many "influence arrows" are due to key designers changing jobs or applying concepts from their graduate research to products.

The implications of time-travelling laterally transferred information for network construction methods may be unfortunate, in the sense that evolutionary networks in biology may be quite different from those for language and culture, with the latter pair requiring somewhat different methods. At a minimum, the requirements for choosing among alternative networks will be different.

A quick look at the current literature involving network analysis of languages and cultural artifacts shows an almost universal use of unrooted graphs, most often a Neighbor-Net, Reduced-Median or Median-Joining network. Such networks cannot directly represent evolutionary history because there is no time direction in the graph. This type of analysis thus neatly side-steps the issue of representing time-travelling information in an evolutionary diagram; and it suggests that social scientists have not yet considered the consequences of the potential lack of time consistency in their data.

*Footnote: I suppose that I should be precise, and note that a modern gene bank does allow genetic information to time travel, as well.


References

Atkinson QD, Gray RD (2005) Curious parallels and curious connections — phylogenetic thinking in biology and historical linguistics. Systematic Biology 54: 513-526.

Baroni M, Semple C, Steel M (2004) A framework for representing reticulate evolution. Annals of Combinatorics 8: 391–408.

Baroni M, Semple C, Steel M (2006) Hybrids in real time. Systematic Biology 55: 46–56.

Cavalli-Sforza LL, Feldman MW (1981) Cultural Transmission and Evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Collard M, Shennan SJ, Tehrani JJ (2006) Branching, blending, and the evolution of cultural similarities and differences among human populations. Evolution and Human Behavior 27: 169–184.

Dagg JL (2011) Exploring mouse trap history. Evoluton: Education and Outreach 4: 397–414.

Gray RD, Bryant D, Greenhill SJ (2010) On the shape and fabric of human history. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London series B 365: 3923-3933.

Heggarty P, Maguire W, McMahon A (2010) Splits or waves? Trees or webs? How divergence measures and network analysis can unravel language histories. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London series B 365: 3829-3843.

Johnson J, Roberts TL, Verplank W, Smith DC, Irby C, Beard M, Mackey K (1989) The Xerox "Star": a retrospective. IEEE Computer 22: 11-29.

Moret BME, Nakhleh L, Warnow T, Linder CR, Tholse A, Padolina A, Sun J, Timme R (2004) Phylogenetic networks: modeling, reconstructibility, and accuracy. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics 1: 13–23.

Sang T, Zhong Y (2000) Testing hybridization hypotheses based on incongruent gene trees. Systematic Biology 49: 422–434.

Comments 1 - Nice post. I'd add one comment: It is important to distinguish between the true evolutionary history, which has to be time consistent, and the reconstructed one, which may have a reticulation edge from an ancestor to descendant, simply due to incomplete taxon sampling (or extinction). In other words, except for ensuring acyclicity, I don't think one needs impose time consistency constraints during inference.

Reply by Author -Thanks. You are right that it is important to make the distinction; and it is always possible to add "ghost" lineages to account for apparent time inconsistency in a reconstructed network. However, consistency can be a valuable criterion for choosing among reconstructions, as Leo van Iersel and I discussed in an earlier post (May 8, 2012).