Review of Hawkings Latest God Knocking Book
This latest offering by Hawking is unfortunately another example of the modern tendency of scientific writers to make money out of God. But what is it about this primitive notion of deity that is so threatening, that Hawking (and his twin Dawkins) feels compelled to stray across the boundaries of the material sciences into the area of belief to make a point. Surely it must be clear that no one with even a fraction of material insight believes that a conscious godlike entity was responsible for evolutionary creation. It is a simply preposterous notion.
By attacking the sources of belief, should one presume that the author’s hope is for wholesale change in the orientation of the masses and particularly those susceptible to religious radicalism? However complete and exclusive the scientific view of reality seems, as represented by this book and others both men have written, surely they cannot think that their sideswipes at religion and the conventional notion of God, will in any way affect more than a fraction of the six billion subjective humans on this planet. That is a simply preposterous notion.
In that case the scientists are overlooking the social sciences, that would inform of their impossible task and that social programming, as practiced by Mao and other powerful totalitarian leaders in the East has formerly demonstrated a much greater facility for non-religious change in large populations. The fact, that Western state mechanisms have now turned away from science as a mantra for control in the face of an uncertain environmental future, and instead now practice the dissemination of fear of an internal minority, merely demonstrates the panic that has set in over the prospect of social meltdown. This profound condition is unlikely to yield to anything this book has to say on God or science. It is a simply preposterous notion.
In the face of such uncertainty, it has often been the case that people will turn to faith. The fact that Christianity is now growing in China at a remarkable rate, for whatever other reasons, simply demonstrates how easily humans will change a material philosophy for a faith, based ideology. Emotionally, there is actually no contradiction between these alternatives - they both offer the prospect of an all-embracing father figure, whereas the science of Hawkins (and Dawkins), simply offers, cold hard facts.
It is therefore understandable to me that these latest offerings on the completeness of science, are delivered with a dogmatic tone. One suspects that the twin pillars, of what might be a new religion of the sciences, are in fear of being swept away by a rise in what they see as their antithesis - blind unquestioning faith in an unseen, non material phenomenon, i.e. God. The drift away from the certainty of science, towards creationism and a faith, based world-view by the masses, must particularly frustrate the scientists, because it comes just at a time when their own scientific viewpoint is reaching what they feel is near to complete clarity. The rejection of science by so many, or the indifference towards it, is directly commensurate with the intolerance shown by science to faith and belief.
If the modern resources of science, had once cared to treat belief as real, which it undoubtedly is — despite what appears to be an irrational basis, science might have begun to make progress in the right direction, which is towards a more embracing view of reality. Science veers away from religion, because it regards a religious orientation and its objects as being not testable by the scientific method. It is true, that certain researchers have worked with subjects professing belief and other more obscure subjective states, through the application of neural science, but their approach is to try to understand the process in relation to the brain. The idea that there might be a phenomenal entity of mind seems never to have crossed their minds. This ignorance is unforgivable, because it obviates the very science that was designed to deal with it, namely depth psychology.
My suspicions are, that there is a real threat to the scientific orientation of mind as represented by Hawking and Dawkins, but it does not come from conventional religion, (or any of the airy, fairy modern derivatives), but from a completely new order, or state of being. However, even in psychology a blanket of silence has descended, which I believe, partly comes from a quite natural fear of its proponents towards ridicule by the general community of science, but also, a more general fear of the numinous seduction that inevitably derives from the objects of the deep unconscious.
It is ironic, that a freak like Hawking should not have been the preoccupation of psychological analysis. It would certainly have been the case if Freud and Jung were alive —they feared no hallowed ground and political correctness. The one sided approach of science, in clinging on to a material philosophy and explanation of reality, seems to me to be more than wrapped up in the symbol of the illness and being of the poor unfortunate Hawking. One cannot, but be overwhelmed with sympathy and pity for a man, who has had his prospects for a normal life, based upon our evolution from primates, thwarted by such a terrible illness, and as a result, or as synchronicity, turned his mind outwards to wrestle with the complexities of Cosmology - it all seems too symbolic, too mythic and from a realm of symmetry that science still eschews.
This realm is not undiscovered, on the contrary it is well documented, representing itself in almost everything we see and hear, but it simply stands outside of science. It is wrapped in the materiality of our modern age, but it is a fiction that is only capable of pointing to something it is dimly aware of, but cannot clothe appropriately at this time, (though films like the matrix come very close) and the religious seem determined to pin upon Jesus. It is the conditioning that humanity needs to accept the next step in evolution. This advance in evolution will involve a similar, though perhaps not so extreme degree of deprivation to that which hawking himself suffers. This evolution is not Darwinian, or proto-mechanical, as in Hawking’s case, but is internal and derives from the very aspect of reality that science continually overlooks, namely God, or more correctly, the Pneumatic Matrix (Jung: Collective Psyche or Unconscious).
Here, it might be obvious to any psychologist that takes the unconscious seriously, that any extensive involvement with the objects of the unconscious at the collective level will take a heavy toll on the natural instincts. It is nevertheless my understanding, that the teleological function of the central component, or archetype, of the Collective Psyche, is the development of a specialised form of expanded human consciousness. This evolutionary development will necessarily involve very extensive erosion and modification to those instincts supporting subjectivity and an evolution of morphology towards a more cerebral based entity. The final object or being will look like us, but will have a much more optimised mind and body that runs on minimal resources.
This leap forward in evolution will create an entity that is as rational to the objects of science, as it is to the objects of the psyche. It will derive benefit from this unity and it will also put it in communication with the system of psychical phenomenology that is to be found in every aspect of the material world we inhabit as well as the unconscious of every one of the six billion subjective humans on this planet.
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