Human Atonement through The Internet

A recent post http://babupaul.keral.com/?p=66 deserves comment.

I feel that this post is too pessimistic about the impact of the technology described on religosity. I think its pessimism for all traditionally organised religion is well placed not least Catholicism. All thought that is happening is in fact highly catholic.

Many of us would observe that the connectivity described provides an excellent vehicle for what many perceive of as God's ultimate aim, humanities atonement, or more correctly at-one-ment, not just among itself but with God's universe and God himself. This is difficult if not impossible to approach from within the defensive boundaries set up by existing religious institutions.

In consequence people are finding their own particular ways to relate together and participate with others in what Frankl called, "Mans Search for Meaning". The organized religions are understandably not generally willing to indulge this process for they can wrongly see it as a destructive threat to their own authority and power. This maybe but to deny it may defeat God's purpose. Maybe they should be seeking to be inclusive rather than exclusive in their approach to what I sense to be a growing not declining number of believers.

Super connected humanity supported by post modern electronic distribution and storage systems has many of the attributes of a brain. It has an active conscience and values - Greenpeace, the World Wild Life Fund, Cathaid, Oxfam, the Red Cross Amnesty International, etc. Much of its activity, maybe even most, is commercial enterprise which like our own brain's functionality is devoted to providing the resources required to support its own sustainment. A brain requires a body with good access to sustenance - incomes, products, services etc. I addition a lot of it's activities are like our own brains related to reproduction (dating sites and chat rooms)or its perversions (sex sites of all kinds). Fortunately much is also devoted to creating a global consciousness encompassing not only only all human processes on our planet but to an extent those of God's wider universe. The latter making concrete the abstract conception of global consciousness of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

It is even conceivable possible that some time soon the larger sentience that seems to be so created could reach a point where it autonomously from individual human consciousness say, "I think therefore I am". In such a circumstance their would appear in God's universe a new sentient being of which we individually would only be a minute part. Such a being like our own conciousness can have within it many different contradictory views of what may be right or wrong or what it feels is clearly wrong but nevertheless allows to be. No central authority exists in such a brain. It is a consensual entity with competing visions of how it should respond to the stimuli it receives and the threats they do, or do not, give to its continued being.

In such a context organised religion has to compete for its space as effectively as it can. It can have no aspiration to ultimate total dominance. It must be restricted to responding to the stimuli proved by the environment in which it sits and strive to provide meaning that the larger consciousness within which it sits finds useful. This is no small challenge to those engaged in organizing others responses to sentience existential to human existence. One might even want to speculate as to what is the identity of such a sentience might be giving that it will emerge out of human atonement (at-one-ment).

www.theglobalsilkroad.blogspot.com