The Orthodox Web Site for information about the faith, life and worship of the Orthodox Church

	Well, you know me. I am your Web Master. That sounds awful! OK, I'm Fr. Gregory Hallam, parish priest of St. Aidan's Orthodox Church in Manchester. David Darling (below) is an old school friend of mine and is far better equipped to explain the science bits than I am. However, I do like to keep my hand in!

	David Darling runs an excellent news site, "The Worlds of David Darling" for matters concerning Astronomy, Cosmology, Spaceflight and Astrobiology. He has a PhD in Astronomy from Manchester University and is a prolific author and science journalist. More here ...

This exchange is open to anyone who wants to contribute, (moderation rights for the discussion vest in the Webmaster). Please contact Fr. Gregory if you have a contribution to make.

There is another page on this site that looks at Cosmology from an Orthodox Christian point of view.

Personal experience counts for so much in our perception of the cosmos, doesn't it? For some reason, when I was young I missed Christ and you found Him everywhere you turned. Why should this be? Does it have to do with being "open" - allowing ourselves to be sensitive to the true meaning of things? Does it have something to do with how badly we need to find a deep answer to the great cosmic questions? Like you, I've always been astounded by the universe - awestruck by its size, age, complexity. I still find it terrifying and thrilling to look up at the night sky and realise that there's (virtually) nothing between me and those pinpricks of light but trillions of miles of void. But my response, in youth, to the great cosmic mysteries was to turn almost exclusively to science for the answers. Perhaps this was because, in those schoolboy days, I saw religion as being parochial and, frankly, dull. It meant occasionally going to Catholic Mass on Sunday mornings and being bored to tears by Latin incantations (not to mention being frightened because unknowingly I suffered from claustrophobia - a fear of being trapped in church for an hour or more). It meant RE lessons in school delivered by kind but uninspiring teachers. By contrast I found astronomy books fascinating. Then I matured and became a writer and found, gradually, that although science is very good at answering some things, it is absolutely abject at responding to the kind of questions that mean the most to us personally. So, it was for an intellectual reason - what I saw as the ultimate inadequacy and insufficiency of objective science - that I began a spiritual quest. And so here we are. You have always interpreted the universe in Christian terms. I initially saw it as an agnostic - and very occasionally almost as an atheist - but have now begun to see the paucity of that perception. Yet still I wonder about our choice of faith. If we had been born in India, it seems to me there's a good chance we'd both be Hindus. We might easily, by chance of birth/upbringing, have been set in our ways as Jews, or Muslims, or Buddhists. I always feel guilty - the Catholic factor, again, perhaps - when I give credence to religions other than Christianity. Perhaps we could address in a different thread how we come to believe what we do and how those of us wondering through the great Tesco of faiths, without a strong background in theology or an early-gained conviction in a particular religious truth, can choose between the bewildering variety of goods - or gods - on offer.

I think that these questions do constitute a new thread David so I'm archiving the first thread on the above link.

First allow me to clarify something important David. My exposure to the Cosmos and my passion for astronomy led to me to suppose that there was a "higher power" or "mind" behind it all, a Creator if you will, but that did not as yet at that time constitute a Christian response. I could have ended up in any religion from that point on, theoretically at least. I do take the force of your argument, however, that culture and geography have a big part to play in the profile of a believer's faith. This may be a less significant factor than it used to be in the pluralistic religious situation we have now in the west but I agree that when I was young in the 50's and 60's, the default position would have been Christianity. I don't think that faith is necessarily less significant or worthy if it is imparted by a monoculture, but, clearly, much will be taken for granted rather than worked out. I opted in as it were in my early twenties and then it was on the basis of what I took Christ had done for me. It was a little while before I returned to the issue of the Cosmos; this time from a religious perspective changed by my Christian discipleship. From now on the Creator was personal, not a deist architect who had withdrawn to enjoy the "light show." This I know raises all sorts of issues if that personal dimension of the Creator remains infantile and self preoccupied as if everything was made pre-Copernican style "just for me," ... which is ridiculous. Nonetheless, I do believe that I "matter" even in the context of this vast, violent, beautiful, awe inspiring Cosmos where, truly, we are as the mayflies. There are many things we can talk about here. Over to you!

Ultimately, I know, you and I want to apprehend the truth about life, the universe, and everything, whether that truth is what we'd hoped for or not. But for many people I'm not sure that's the case. Many people, I suspect, inherit the religion of their families, or adopt their own, because it's comforting and gives them a sense of belonging. It offers them a neatly packaged set of answers to the big issues of life and death without putting them in the awkward position of having to come up with their own solutions to where they came from, what it all means, and what's going to happen after they breathe their last. In other words, for most people, religions serve as extended families that take care of their needs when we they're insecure or in distress. It's also the case that many people become deeply religious, or are "born again," after some personal trauma. But is this because God has been able to reach them at a time of vulnerability or because they've become more susceptible to conditioning by a faith system that purports to take away their cares?

The difficulty of knowing what spiritual path to follow to most closely approach ultimate truth is made more difficult by the extraordinary diversity on offer. This is very different than in conventional science where, although there are always many different ideas and hypotheses to choose from, overall there's consensus on the big issues. To give some obvious examples, the vast majority of scientists don't doubt that general relativity and quantum mechanics are two of the best physical theories we have, even if they accept that these are likely to be subject to revision in years to come. In religion, the situation is quite different. Hinduism teaches that there's a panoply of gods, major and minor. Buddhism doesn't talk about God at all but does believe in reincarnation. In Islam, Jesus is not the son of God. In Christianity, Jesus is central. These are not just differences of opinion, but downright contradictions. How is a truly open-minded, truth-seeker, conscious of the power of conditioning due to personal circumstances and upbringing, to find his way in this noisy bazaar of faiths to the genuine articles? There really is only one way, I think, and that is by plunging in - in the case of Christianity, having faith in Jesus. But how can we know that it making that leap of faith we have not taken the first step to toward self-delusion?

Taking things for granted as received isn't limited to religions and philosophies of course David. Most people will unquestioningly affirm the proposition: "black holes exist," simply because that is what astronomers are able to confirm. For most of us in fact, first hand knowledge is rare. We tend to trust what the "experts" tell us in many realms of human knowledge and practice, more especially in this age where specialisms have multiplied exponentially. I am not saying that this is a "good thing." It's just a fact.

Your strongest point and most pressing question concerns knowing the "truth" in the great Supermarket of Faiths. Clearly different truths require different criteria and methodologies of discernment in order to assess their claims. The scientific method exists alongside other protocols. In the arts we have literary criticism, artistic appreciation and the like. In economics and sociology we have theories but these are not equivalent to theories in the realm of "hard" science. Only positivists would admit of only scientific truth. It would be absurd for example to dismiss Beethoven (and all music) as ear candy and a category error to insist that Beethoven be appreciated and interpreted uniformly and consistently across the musical spectrum. Religion is no different, nor, in my opinion, no less important to the human spirit.

Some modification needs to be made to your characterisation of confusing and contradictory religious plurality. There are huge areas of agreement. Even monotheism qualifies across the board. In Hinduism, all the deities are manifestations of Brahman (a single divine principle) and although Brahman is not "God" in the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic sense, it nonetheless shares a unitary principle common to all faiths (including the agnostic traditions such as Buddhism). Once beyond these fundamental agreements, however, we do hit the more turbulent waters of conflicting truth claims. Was Mohammed the last and greatest prophet or not? Is Jesus God or not? Must the Torah be observed for a Jew to lead a godly life? Is the soul and illusion of fickle consciousness or not? The only way to resolve these issues, (as those with different appreciations of music might assess the significance musically of Mozart, say), is by dialogue. Within this dialogue certain protocols need to be observed:-

(1) No religion may say of another:- "You are wrong" unless it concerns the same statement being made in the other direction, (in other words, "You are wrong to say that I am wrong" is OK).

(2) Each religion must speak exclusively positively concerning the reasons for its own stance on any pertinent issue of faith or life.

(3) The other religion(s) may then say FIRST what they value in the other religion(s). Any critical comments may only THEN be made with the permission of the faith to which this is addressed.

Clearly there is much work to be done on inter-religious dialogue but in the meantime, what is the interested but uncommitted enquirer to make of all of this? How might he or she proceed in his / her search?

Only distinctives actually drive people to a particular faith. Some of these distinctives are not incompatible with other faiths ... they just are not represented there. Other distinctives are incompatible with faith positions of other religions and if this incompatibility concerns the enquirer then research and dialogue must proceed until the matter is resolved; at least as far as the enquirer is concerned.

Allow me to explain the significance of one of the distinctives that has traditionally applied in Christianity .... "Jesus is God Incarnate." For a Christian this means that God took upon himself our human nature in the conception / coming of Jesus Christ. If it could be shown that he had indeed done this many times in the history of humanity then that enquirer might drift towards Hinduism or perhaps the Bahai faith. If the nature of the Christian claim concerning the Incarnation is that he had to do this definitively once (on other criteria, eg., redemption) then the enquirer will drift towards Christianity. That's the process. It has to be worked out by every individual who makes this search.

Finally, there is a very strong tradition common to most religions (maybe not Islam except perhaps Sufism) that the fullness of truth is "not yet." It will only be revealed fully at the End of Time. This, in many ways corresponds to the open future perspective of science. It is certainly true that many believers of many faiths need to be better acquainted with this precept. Nonetheless, its existence and commonality amongst all religions is a sign of hope I think. In the meantime, in the "now" we all need to make some choices and live by them even bearing in mind this provisionality.

"What does Orthodoxy have to say about the nature of who "we" are and what happens to us after our last breath?"

The sense of "self" in Orthodoxy is not given and complete ... it is something inchoate or even lost that must be recovered. This comes from outside of ourselves (how else can this happen if "I" is ill-formed?); we cannot "do" it ourselves. Nonetheless and paradoxically there are things that we can and must do, God being our helper, that helps us to reassemble, integrate and strengthen this "true self."

These exercises constitute ascesis or self mastery and the object of this ascesis is apatheia ... a state of ordered harmonious human life uncompromised by distorting passions.

The precise form of this ascesis is a 'death.' .First, we must kill, (or allow to be killed), be it ever so slowly, the "Old Adam" that is, the false self, alienated from God. Then, by the grace of God, the new and true self can be born, which is the indwelling Christ, the "New Adam." This is what St. Paul meant by:-

²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. [Galatians 2:20]

Consciousness can only be built upon this true "Christ-self." Consciousness built upon the old disassociating fractured self will wither and disappear with it into the maws of hell, destructive none-being, (only God being the Source of the truly Real). Yet, who can say? Must not the Unreal (hell) flee before the Real (God)? Maybe Love will lose nothing by encompassing all. For this we must pray and work, but as ones who hope rather than know.

What is the "Christ-self?" Well, in Orthodox Christian terms it is an embodied consciousness 'centre' ... a body-symbolised place, the "heart" where the soul and God are one, commune and where the human person is deified as the Christ-self strengthens. In Orthodox Christians terms this is a life, a true-self, an embodied consciousness stronger even than death in the resurrection of Christ, a New Creation. In this paschal reality the embodied consciousness of the human person achieves its full dignity and potential in union with that greatest and Transcendent Consciousness which is God ... not the God of the dead, but the God of the living, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

One of the unifying themes of the great religions, it's always seemed to me, is the notion that the right way forward is to lose one's self, i.e. to become non-selfish. But I must approach this problem of self - of who "I" am - from both scientific and a religio-philosophical angles if I'm to find the answer satisfying. The fact is that the self is a product of evolution. Only a selfish being can survive in the wild. It starts with the single-celled organism that can only come into existence when it has set up a barrier - a wall or membrane - between itself and the outside world. There is then a distinction between the self and the non-self. When the barrier breaks, the creature dies and the self with it. It returns to the greater unity beyond, like a drop of water returning to the sea.

We humans not only have a cellular self - a skin that marks our physical boundary with the external world - but a mental self that is constructed largely of our accumulated life experiences. I don't think I would be - or have - the same self if my circumstances had been different. Of course, there's a problem with semantics here. What I mean is, if the infant me had been given to different parents at birth and raised in a totally different environment there would be a different person in existence now than who I am. So, to a large extent, our selves are artificial and accidental constructs.

To take another example, my mother, who has Alzheimer's, is in the process of losing her self through the destruction of memory. Once your personal narrative is destroyed, "you" no longer exist in any meaningful sense. The barrier of self is breached and you return to the sea.

I have a problem with the notion of the preservation of the self in any form after death because it is precisely the self that is bad about us. When we are at our least self-ish - when our thoughts turn to others or we live our lives exclusively with others in mind - we are most good. Perhaps this is what the Galations quote "[I]t is no longer I who live..." means. Only when the self dies can "we" (problem with language here!) be united with the greater consciousness that exists beyond. In Buddhism this is nirvana. In Christianity it is the Christ-self. Is there any real difference? Is it not just an ideal place beyond death where we no longer exist as selfish individuals but there is, instead, a unified cosmic consciousness?

Your characterisation of the self as an evolutionary construct determined in content by experience, upbringing, the environment and so on is not controversial from a Christian point of view. However, the "losing of the self" (which Christianity following St. Paul describes as "bring crucified with Christ") is a radically different concept from that which applies in Buddhism.

The "self" (for all its emergent and fluid content) is the notion in the great monotheisms of a personal centre with a much more positive ontology than mere adaptive self-ishness or more positively, an artifice of memory and mental functioning. At the level of being, for example, WHO is it that loves when selfishness is vanquished? This is more than a problem with semantics; this is an existential dilemma for all religions or philosophies that would kill the "self." Who is it that acts when the self is gone?

Those without a clear notion of self, not against the other but FOR the other, cannot love freely but only react, like a new born infant to the other (the Mother) at a primordial, even "id" level or perhaps descend into the unknowing of the hive mind. The self is not to be identified with an attitude or a biological defence mechanism but with the seat of volitional moral action. Its ontology, therefore, is not snuffed out with the coming of selflessness, rather it is even enhanced by that transformation.

In that great hymn of praise to Love in 1 Corinthians 13, St. Paul describes the teleology of that great day when the God of Love will be all in all as a state in which we shall "understand fully even as (we) have been fully understood." This is not at all a state of undifferentiated absorption (the drop in the ocean) but rather a coming to be, more real and more solid than anything we have known hereunto. The self in love is stronger, not weaker; fulfilled by sacrifice and not emptied by and into the void where all individuality dissolves. In this sense (for all their similarities) Buddhism and Christianity are radically incompatible. Sorry, but there it is. The Christ-self is not at all analagous to nibbana.