Review

Book reviewed in this article:
David Ray Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts     

Facing the third millennium: An evolutionary crisis

We are witnessing the birth of the first global civilization on our planet earth due to the accelerative progress of science and technology. This is also accompanied by a crisis in health care, pollution and other environmental disasters, a rising wave of violence and crime, stresses due to globalization, and so on. Recently, we formulated “An Action Plan for Human Survival” (Reference 24).

This article explores in depth the challenges in bringing about a peaceful transition to a global civilization. It explores global civilization, environmental crisis and population. It reveals that the stresses generated by globalization and environmental crisis cannot be resolved by dualistic thought, or concepts, or ideals, or intellectual constructions; as these are sterile in bringing mutation in the human psyche. We see that the emergence of global consciousness is not keeping pace with the globalization, and it is feared that globalization may turn out to be abortive and ultimately self‐destructive.

The crisis is not political, or economic, or social. It is evolutionary in character. We have to explore nature's evolutionary impulse. The challenge is to resolve the “crisis of perception,” or to allow the mutation to happen in the mind‐brain system. The only technology for radical transformation or mutation of human psyche is purification or deconditioning of the human psyche. This leads to new relationship between man and man, and between man and environment. It ends all pain, sorrow and travails and ushers a new era of freedom, peace and bliss. This is the key to human survival, progress and fulfillment.     

Worlds within Worlds: Kabbalah and the New Scientific Paradigm

Beginning with relativity and quantum theory, the deterministic view that has dominated and shaped Western culture for more than 2,500 years has begun to unravel, leading to the emergence of a new paradigm. This new paradigm effectively reformulates the project of science, conceiving of existence as an interpenetrating web of coevolving, cocreative relationships. By exploring Kabbalah and the new scientific paradigm within the context of shared evolutionary principles, I seek to demonstrate a viable alternative to the prevailing deterministic worldview. By going beyond the limits of determinism and re–visioning existence as an evolutionary, emergent phenomenon, we can establish a new basis for an authentic dialogue between science and religion.