In Their Own Words

The main argument of the book is that if one is willing to admit that (1) something called the Big Bang booted our universe into existence and keeps it moving yet, and (2) that the Standard Model of particle physics shows a regularity of character and identity and even what is called a family order among the smallest units of matter--energy that make up protons and neutrons, then we have two of the most fundamental and significant findings in cosmological physics, the power and the constructivity or the fundamental goodness of the universe, suggesting without much room for doubt that the mysterious Power that lies behind and beyond our ability to reach conceptually, may also be called constructive, or good (vs. evil or even random), and may therefore be called 'god,' and may with perfect intellectual respectability be worshiped in whatever way seems convenient to various peoples.

The book goes beyond this and argues that our sense of goodness or values is meta-conceptual, something we learn from our thoroughly physical neural sensations of pleasure, but cannot and need not express conceptually, and that our sense of conscience is not innate, or a priori, or any such thing, but is based upon the hardwiring in our bodies called specific pain neurons. Thus the whole value system that every person develops is neurally based. And the evolution of that system argues harder and explains far more precisely and wonderfully the involvement of the constructive power that one may call god in that process of the evolution of a brain and spinal cord and neural system, than any ictic creation story could possibly ever do. All it will take to get to the better story is some serious reading of molecular physiology by lazy theologians.

And all this has tremendous implications in the so-called history of salvation, not only in a couple of sacred testaments, but in all religious literature and traditions, and not just for the salvation of human souls but for an entirely new and fresh approach to a society no longer based on enforcement and its entail, destruction, alone, but uponwise Kindness, leading finally, for we are only a step away from it, to the full Coming of the Kingdom of God on earth.

Never was a more empirical theology written with richer implications for all aspects of human life and the ecosystem.