The Fallout

Photo by Bgrace*

It was the end of 2008. Matt was reading a book called Cosmos and Psychology by Richard Tarnas. I think he bought it at the Library Book Sale. Every once in a while he would draw my attention to something he was reading. Mostly books like this are so outside of my sphere of understanding and interest that it’s a bit painful to give a good effort at listening. But something Matt read connected to some things I had been reading (posted Oct. 2008) so I paid attention.
The author was talking about Copernicus. Wikepedia explains that Copernicus is the man responsible for heliocentrism—the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around a stationary sun at the center of the universe. Copernicus published his theories on his deathbed. Thus he didn’t have to face most of the upheaval his theories against geocentrism (the earth at the center of the universe) brought about.
Galileo was one of his converts, but the Catholic Church condemned heliocentrism as false and contrary to Scripture. The Roman Inquisition tried and found Galileo “vehemently suspect of heresy” and forced Galileo to recant his support of it. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
The following is a long and tedious 2 page excerpt from Cosmos and Psyche. I thought about trying to condense and summarize it and felt I couldn’t do it justice—I’m not smart enough. (Have I ever mentioned how much I don’t like math and science?) But really, it is very insightful. So I’m going to post the excerpt and then try to explain why I connected so much with it.

“It was not primarily empirical considerations nor, in the narrow modern sense, “rational” factors that were decisive in persuading the early Copernican revolutionaries to pursue and elaborate the heliocentric hypothesis. These were necessary but not sufficient conditions for such a radical change. It was, above all, powerful spiritual and even aesthetic intellectual predispositions that made the crucial difference. And it was these predispositions…all supporting a mystical-mathematical cosmology that effectively transformed the significance of the rational and empirical factors.

…To adopt the Copernican idea in those first decades took above all an overriding passion for a certain kind of intellectual beauty and precision, a sensibility that so valued elegance, harmony, simplicity, and coherence as intrinsic qualities of the divine heavens that one would be willing to ignore both the evidence of the senses and the arguments from contemporary physics against the movement of the Earth, confident that in time adequate explanations could be found.

The first Copernicans had experienced a kind of inner conversion. Their epiphany was at once intellectual and spiritual, psychological and cosmological, and all their research and thinking served the new vision by which they were happily possessed. Their intuition ran ahead far in advance of all the theoretical and empirical work that had to be done before the new theory could be fully justified and grounded.

Tarnas quotes Galileo, “Nor can I have ever sufficiently admired the outstanding acumen of those who have taken hold of this opinion and accepted it as true: they have, through sheer force of intellect done such violence to their own senses as to prefer what reason told them over that which sensible experience showed them to be the contrary.”

For the Copernican hypothesis to be made reasonable, an entirely new conception of reason itself had to be forged: new ways of deciding what counts as truth, new ways of recognizing patterns, new forms of evidence, new categories of interpretation, a new understanding of causality. Long-established rules of scientific methodology had to be overturned. An entirely new epistemology (theory of knowledge) and ontology (theory of existence) had to be formulated. The nature of the Copernican revolution was so fundamental that what had to be rethought was not only all the conventional scientific theories but the entire established hierarchy of humanities place in the universal scheme of things: its relation to the rest of nature and to the cosmos, its relation to the divine, the basis for its morality, its capacity for certain knowledge, its historical self-understanding. Such a radical transformation could not happen overnight. For the cultural mind and psyche to support that transformation, the passage of entire generations was required, including the deaths of the many intellectual authorities who were incapable of escaping the hold of the reigning paradigm. The required change was not just physical but metaphysical: The entire world needed to be revisioned. In the end, the implications of the great shift—cosmological, religious, moral, epistemological, psychological, existential—were so far-reaching that it would take centuries to work them out, even to become conscious of them.

Gradually, the passage of time, and heroic efforts against powerful opponents and entrenched assumptions, brought about the complete triumph of the Copernican shift.”

OK, so if you are still with me, let me first clarify that I am not trying to say that I am some sort of genius that has come up with a new way of seeing the universe and am now trying to find some way of getting everyone to receive my enlightenment.
What I found incredibly helpful in these few paragraphs was the description of what happens when we have looked at the universe through a particular paradigm—and then that paradigm collapses. The author is so insightful about how something we may take for granted has so much influence on how we have constructed our world view. The fall out—if we care to notice and find cohesiveness and take stock of the implication--is inexplicably overwhelming. Yet, for these “believers” there was an intuition—a “knowing” you could say, that was more compelling than the evidence they had in hand. They possessed a faith that as they continued to study and learn, the evidence would eventually line up with their theories.
There was so much opposition to this heliocentric theory.  Theologians alone had great reason to reject it. If the sun did not revolve around the earth, than didn’t that imply that Joshua was erroneous when he said God made the sun stand still? This would require a faith that was able to understand the truth of Scripture in a new way. And let’s face it. Is it really necessary that we know that? I mean, how many Godly people of that day were able to fulfill their call to follow Jesus without knowing that the planets really revolved around the sun? If it were that important for us to know and understand, why didn’t God tell us…or Joshua for that matter?
Except that for some reason, God did, at that time, decide to use a few men to see the universe differently—in truth. Wouldn’t our world be different today in ways we cannot even fathom, had they not the courage to follow what they could see and not yet fully understand? But the violence they themselves had to do to their own minds, to see the possibilities in a different light were unimaginable. My guess is, in comparison, the violence done to them by others was probably near insignificant. But do I believe God gave them divine insight and strength and courage to do their work even if at times they questioned if they were losing their mind or even their own soul? Yes, I do.
Personally, Dad, this is what I feel I want to communicate to you from this about my journey:
I did not choose to destroy the paradigm through which I was raised to see the world and understand God. In that paradigm, I too would have believed that experiences like mine come from the imagination. When circumstances would occur that I could not explain, I would have reveled in the luxury of dismissal because finding coherence would not have been necessary for my survival. I believe God, not Satan, nor an overactive imagination was responsible for the demolition of my paradigm. I could give you story after story about why, but in the end belief requires so much more than circumstances.
What I did choose was to follow God down this path. I experienced an enormous amount of dissonance because at some level I understood it was a foundational change that would effect everything in my paradigm--how I perceived and interacted with God and His world, myself, my history and my future.  It was too much for me to process at once.  It was extraordinarily painful--actually I will use the term traumatic because I experienced text-book post traumatic syndrome.  I read somewhere that the trauma you experience is more intense depending on how closely it violates your most deeply held convictions.  You couldn't get any deeper than this--I felt like my God killed me (though I don't look at it exactly that way now) or that my God died.  And every time that my new attempts at understanding were called into question by the circumstances around me, the authorities over me, or my inability to defend myself I went through the trauma all over again--but worse because I didn't know how to believe I wasn't mistaken.  I didn't have any proof...only the same voice calling me to follow.
Why would God demolish my paradigm? I’m not sure I know the answer yet. But though there have been many times that I have doubted His goodness, I do believe He is truly good.
You may be right—you may not have needed the gifts of the Spirit (as I understand them) or foreknowledge or the ability to hear God speak words into your mind to do the will and work of God as He has revealed to you and called you. And the thought that keeps coming to me as I read your writings is that I’m not sure I would even want your paradigm to collapse as mine did. That is not a prayer I have or will at this point pray. I know what it cost me and honestly, I think it would cost you even more.
I do think that it would be helpful for you to understand the deepest source of my pain and I think this is a start.  I will explain further, as well as I can while still protecting what needs to be protected. A few months ago I wrote about Good Friday and wasn’t sure when the Lord would release me to post it. I think that now is time and I’ll try to put it up soon.
I hope this helps you to understand a bit more where I am coming from.
By the way—at the top of this post where Oct. 2008 is a different color—that is a link to an older post. If you click on it, it will take you there.  I found much comfort in those thoughts during that time in my life.
Love you,
B

*The picture at the top is one I took at Mt. St. Helens. 

 It is a type of flora that grows in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. 

 It grows out of the ashes.  I keep this photo on my desk.