Exploring Ecumenism

Does God Change?

If the universe is being created and so changing, can the same be said of God?  Traditionally, God is seen as perfect and so unable to change.  We cannot know God in any way and so this question, like all questions about God, must ultimately be unanswerable.

Continuous Co-Creation

Most people are aware there are more than 3 dimensions.  Time is the fourth dimension, which makes sense because it is hard to imagine the universe with just the 3 dimensions - there's no motion without time.  Apparently there is a general consensus that there are ten altogether.  

God does not Design Things

I have already written about the first chapter of Genesis.  What is fascinating about these verses is the idea that God has to look to see it is good.  If God is supposed to be perfect in everything God does, why does God have to look? 

What do we mean by Design?

Let me be clear from the start: I do not believe in creationism or intelligent design.  The latter I think is a particularly deceptive doctrine and theologically both are deeply flawed.  The problem is with the concept of design.

Non-Human Conversations

In an earlier post, I mentioned in passing the possibility of conversations without human involvement.  At this stage I cannot follow this theme as far as I would like, as I have more issues to explore first, but it might be helpful to indicate something of what I mean.

Nothing Evolves on its Own

Survival of the Fittest focuses on the evolution of single species.  Competition is expressed in terms of what happens within each species.  The fittest individuals survive to breed.  Relationships with other species are of interest solely in terms of any influence they have upon natural selection within a particular species.  So if we focus on rabbits their survival might depend upon foxes and grass and a few other species but the focus is on rabbits bravely evolving away.

Survival of the Fittest

In an earlier post I introduced the formula: phenotype equals genotype plus environment.  In my last post I argued against ascribing selfishness to genes and that genes are not selected in isolation from other genes.  The same applies to species, they are not subjected to natural selection as individual species.  Nothing evolves on its own, species evolve together as ecosystems.

For some reason we tend to think of natural selection acting upon individual species (or individual genes).  If a species (or a gene) survives loads of other species (or genes) survive with it.  There is complexity and a dynamic to evolution, we do not observe isolated objects evolving.