August 30, 2012 – Fraternized

This is the 37^th blog in a series exploring various aspects of “prayer.” The first blog is “Why Pray?” and the previous blog is Prayer as Relationship with God.

St. Silouan the Anthonite (d. 1938AD) exclaims:

“O ye peoples of the earth, fashioned by God, know your Creator and His love for us! Know the love of Christ, and live in peace and thereby rejoice the Lord, Who in His mercy waits for all men to come to Him.

Turn to Him, all ye peoples of the earth, and lift up your prayers to God; and the prayers of the whole earth shall rise to heaven like a soft and lovely cloud lit by the sun, and all the heavens will rejoice, and sing praises to the Lord for His sufferings whereby He saved us.

Know, all ye peoples, that we are created for the glory of God in the heavens. Cleave not to the earth, for God is our Father and He loves us like dear children.” (ST SILOUAN THE ATHONITE, p 358-359)

Eternal life is to know God and to know His Christ (John 17:3). Prayer does not give us knowledge about God, but rather enables us to know God. Prayer lifts us up to eternity and fulfills our highest aspirations. It is in prayer that we realize that as humans we are not limited by our biology or our genes or by our mortal condition.

“Prayer is always possible for everyone, rich or poor, noble or simple, strong and weak, healthy and suffering, righteous and sinful. Great is the power of prayer; most of all does it bring the Spirit of God and easiest of all is it to exercise.” (St. Seraphim of Sarov, Prayer Book – In Accordance with the Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church , kindle 3867-70)

The Holy Spirit prays in us and teaches us how to pray (Romans 8:26-27). The same Spirit comprehends the thoughts of God (1 Corinthians 2:11). Thus when we pray in the Spirit we become united to our God. As St. Seraphim said above, this prayer is possible for everyone because we all can humble ourselves and repent of our sins, thus opening our hearts to the movement of the Holy Spirit.

“Our prayer reflects our attitude towards God. He who is careless of salvation has a different attitude toward God from him who has abandoned sin and is zealous for virtue but has not yet entered within himself and works for the LORD only outwardly. Finally, he who has entered within and carries the LORD within himself, standing before him, has yet another attitude. The first man is negligent in prayer, just as he is negligent in life, and he prays in church and at home merely according to the established custom, without attention or feeling. The second man reads many prayers and goes often to church, trying at the same time to keep his attention from wandering and to experience feelings in accordance with the prayers which are read, although he is seldom successful. The third man, wholly concentrated within, stands with his mind before God, and prays to him in his heart without distraction, without long verbal prayers, even when standing for a long time at prayer in his home or in church…. Every prayer must come from the heart and any other prayer is no prayer at all. Prayer-book prayers, your own prayers and very short prayers, all must issue forth from the heart to God, seen before you.” (Bp. Theophan the Recluse, Prayer Book – In Accordance with the Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church , kindle Loc. 3921-30)

When we turn to God in prayer we realize our own sinfulness and simultaneously realize we do not need to fear the Holy God because He loves us and accepts our repentance. Acknowledging our sins, admitting our faults is not an impediment to being loved by God, but rather opens the door to that love. In prayer we thus learn that the shame we feel for our misdeeds is not an obstacle to God’s love for us, but rather because it humbles us it makes us all the more attractive to God’s love. God’s grace is that despite our sins and failures, He loves us anyway and invites us to admit our sins so that we can enter into His holiness.

Re Next: Prayer as Relationship with God (III)

This is the 3^rd blog in this series which is reflecting on E.O. Wilson’s book The Social Conquest of Earth. The first blog in the series is “What Does It Mean to be Human?” and the previous blog is A Few Unique Traits of Humans.

Wilson is an effective story teller and he does offer a potential history of how evolutionary history unfolded leading to the appearance of modern humans. That is the heart of his book, and I recommend you read his book because the history is fascinating. Even if you have doubts about evolution, you can still see how evolutionary theorist piece together and interpret the evidence they have before them. Certainly as Wilson describes the evidence and the history there are lots of uncertainties, possibilities and probabilities that make up the story, and while it may be the best construct of the existing evidence, one realizes some of this history is guesswork and some parts of the history no doubt are going to be overturned as new evidence is discovered. That certainly is the nature of science and the meaning of “truth” in the evolutionary context. While Wilson is committed to evolutionary theory, it does seem to me in the book he expresses in various ways that the story he is telling is possibly the story based on current evidence but some of the story is interpretation and educated guesses to fill in gaps in knowledge.

That evolutionary theory is constantly undergoing change based on new discoveries and evidence is made obvious in such news reports as as found in England’s THE INDEPENDENT, Fossil Discovery Rewrites the Story of Human Evolution. Some will argue the sensational headline’s claim that the discovery “rewrites” the story of human evolution is an exaggeration, nevertheless my read of Wilson is that he would be totally comfortable with rewriting chapters in his book if new evidence led to new theories or a new storyline. We will get back to debates between science and religion in this series in the near future.

Wilson offers an overview of what his book is about:

“LIKE ALL GREAT PROBLEMS in science, the evolutionary origin of humanity first presented itself as a tangle of partly seen and partly imagined entities and processes. Some of these elements occurred well back in geological time, and may never be understood with certainty. I have nevertheless pieced together those parts of the epic on which I believe researchers agree, and filled in the remainder with informed opinion. The sequence, given in broad strokes, is the consensus I believe to be correct, or at least most consistent with existing evidence.” (Kindle Loc. 762-67)

Before getting to the controversies between science and religion, below are a few facts from Wilson’s evolutionary timeline which I found interesting. Keep in mind Wilson’s term “eusociality” which means multiple generations of a species living together with “an altruistic division of labor.” Humans have eusociality as do some bees and ants. Very few species have actually developed this trait despite its apparent evolutionary advantage.

“The eusocial insects are almost unimaginably older than human beings. Ants, along with their wood-eating equivalents the termites, originated near the middle of the Age of Reptiles, more than 120 million years ago.” (Kindle Loc 725-26)

“The oldest known stone tools, knapped crudely to serve some function or other, date to 6–2 million years before the present.” (Kindle Loc. 677-78)

“The first hominins, with organized societies and altruistic division of labor among collateral relatives and allies, appeared at best 3 million years ago.” (Kindle Loc 7207-28)

“By two million years before the present, the favored australopithecine line had begun the transition to the still-larger-brained Homo erectus. This species had a brain smaller than that of present-day Homo sapiens, but it was able to shape crude stone tools and use controlled fire at campsites. Its populations spread out of Africa, blanketing the land up into northeastern Asia and pushing south all the way to Indonesia.” (Kindle Loc. 1378-82)

“By 200,000 years before the present, the African ancestors had come anatomically closer to contemporary humans. The populations also used more advanced stone tools and may have engaged in some form of burial practice. But their skulls were still relatively heavy in construction.” (Kindle Loc. 1426-27)

“Burials began at least 95,000 years ago, as evidenced by thirty individuals excavated at Qafzeh Cave in Israel. One of the dead, a nine-year-old child, was positioned with its legs bent and a deer antler in its arms. That arrangement alone suggests not just an abstract awareness of death but also some form of existential anxiety.” (Kindle Loc. 4502-4)

“Only around 60,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens broke out of Africa and began to spread around the world, did people acquire the complete skeletal dimensions of contemporary humanity.” (Kindle Loc. 1428-29)

The “’creative explosion’ that began approximately 35,000 years ago in Europe. From this time on until the Late Paleolithic period over 20,000 years later, cave art flourished. Thousands of figures, mostly of large game animals, have been found in more than two hundred caves distributed through southwestern France and northeastern Spain…” (Kindle Loc. 4507-9)

“’Flutes,’ technically better classified as pipes, fashioned from bird bones, have been found that date to 30,000 years or more before the present.” (Kindle 4551-2)

“In a very early time, from the Late Paleolithic period through the Mesolithic period, the cultural evolution of humanity ground forward slowly. At the beginning of the Neolithic period, 10,000 years before the present, with the invention of agriculture and villages and food surpluses, cultural evolution accelerated steeply. Then, thanks to the expansion of trade and by force of arms, cultural innovations not only increased faster but also spread much farther.” (Kindle 1619-23)

There were so many other aspects of the story that I found fascinating, but the above are a few “highlights” of the human evolutionary story according to Wilson. I value the comments for what they contribute to an understanding of what it means to be human. To be human is not simply to be the passive victim of biological determinism. To be human is to create, is to feel, is to worship and is to believe in something greater than one’s self. We’ll turn now to a more controversial aspect of Wilson’s writings: his criticism of religion.

Next: Wilson’s Critique of Religion