Cosmic Freedom

David Molineaux
Santiago, Chile

At first sight, to talk about cosmic freedom could appear strange, as if the phrase made no sense, or had an internal contradiction. This is because we are modern. And in the modern world when we talk of freedom we refer to the human field or maybe to the divine-. We think about economic or politicalsocial freedom, or maybe in philosophies which consider human capacities such as freewill. However, it is rare to talk about freedom with reference to the natural world, and less still when we refer to cosmic phenomena. Modern common sense usually considers the natural world just as a collection of somehow inert objects, mechanically related to each other. Ren Descartes, French philosopher and mathematician, contemporary to Galileo and one of the great architects of the modern vision of the cosmos, said that not even animals were able to feel. He acknowledged the obvious: if we hit them they produce shrieks. But he said these sounds are comparable to the screeches made by a machine that is lacking oil. Intelligence, feelings and freedom were limited to the human world.

cies in 1859. Another one was the acceptance in the XX Century despite the initial resistance by prominent scientists such as Albert Einstein- of conclusive evidence that the universe itself was born at a certain time and has been expanding and transforming for thousands of millions of years. It would be impossible to exaggerate the transcendence of these discoveries. Previous visions of the cosmos had been strictly spatial: some said the Universe was eternal, others that it had been created once and for ever. But presently it is accepted that the cosmos has an essential component, the time dimension: everything changes, everything evolves. To say it in other words: we realise that we live in an emerging universe. At all levels and in all fields, two and two amount to more than four. Examples are abundant. Shortly after the big bang, some 137 thousand million years ago, huge clouds of hydrogen emerged, mixed with a smaller quantity of helium. And within those clouds stars emerged. Thanks to the nuclear fusion in their centres, these stars and their descendants produced heavier elements: oxygen, phosphorous, carbon even iron, which would be essential in the formation of planets, moons and At the beginning of the XIX Century, the wellcomets, and eventually living beings. known mathematician and astronomer Pierre Simon Another example of this creative, new, and totally de Laplace declared that if a demon gave him a unpredictable emergence, was the evolution of the perfect knowledge of all the nuances of the universe Earth, which was born as a huge radioactive sphere in a certain moment, he could forecast, with absolute on whose surface flowed melted lava. No seas, no certainty all details of his future. continents, no breathable air: an inferno permanently This deterministic perspective is still valid among endangered by big and small meteorites. But during many scientists and non-scientists. However, is has 4.000 million years this world, totally inhospitable, been crumbling down slowly under the light of preshas been transformed in a beautiful blue planet which ent investigations. Actually, during the last two houses a countless diversity of living beings intercenturies, science has experimented a change in its twined in ecosystems of immeasurable complexity. vision of the cosmos as radical as the Copernican The French-Canadian astronomer Hubert Reeves stated revolution of the XVI and XVII centuries. it clearly: The Universe is the history of matter orgaThe first element in this change was the discovery nising itself. of an evolutionary time. The process was gradual, and Science is faced with the challenge of abandoning lasted centuries. Its most dramatic milestone was the its deterministic perspective and recognise in fields appearance of the book by Darwin, The Origin of Spe- of investigation which go from quarks to galaxies78

Translation by Alice Mndez

mysterious spontaneous phenomena in the heart of the material world, which open doors to the appearance of new and absolutely unpredictable realities. At all levels, we find what could be called cosmic freedom. The Chemistry Nobel Prize Ilya Prigogine established that even in physics, lineal phenomena (in which the effect is proportional to the cause) are mostly exceptions: We are amazed at the world we are discovering. Matter, at the most fundamental level, is not static. It is permanently fluctuating: creates new structures, tries one thing and then another. Reeves goes one step further. The Universe she says- is the history of matter that awakes. This awakening is perceived, in a privileged way, in the terrestrial evolution: in microbes that look for food and avoid toxic environments, in the archaic marine worm with emerging eyes, and in the incipient mammal emotionality, the Cosmos is awakening, gaining conscience. And its most dramatic awakening is, without doubt, the human self-conscience. For our species, this evolutionary perspective is a total novelty. Teilhard de Chardin called it the biggest jump in two million years of human conscience. Lets remember that not even Plato nor Aristotle nor Buda nor Jesus, not even any of our grandparents, had the faintest notion of the process of cosmic evolution. We could compare this transformation of our vision of the cosmos to the acquisition of binocular vision in some species: an image of the world in two dimensions makes possible the perception of depth. Scientists are becoming used to talking about the emerging properties: complex phenomena that arise from relatively simple interactions. Who has not heard of the butterfly effect, about which the chaos theory states that the wing movement of an insect in Hong Kong could produce a hurricane in the Caribbean? Inevitably, this transformation of our cosmovision has implications for theology. As we know, there are biblical fundamentalists who reject all notion of biological evolution, fearing that the concept is a menace for faith. And undoubtedly, the evolutionary vision takes us to reject all fundamentalisms. But at the same time, the acknowledgement of a dynamic universe, restless, radically unpredictable allows us to explore theological and spiritual perspectives that are exciting and fruitful.

Recent Latinamerican theology, properly concerned by human and social topics, has done relatively little to explore this so promising vein. An urgent matter, for example, is the postponed task of working the divine image. How many times have we talked as if the propeller and guarantor of our fights for social and economic justice were the Old Testament patriarch dominating the ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel? It is understandable, of course, that in a monarchic and pre-scientific world it was inevitable to represent that divinity as masculine and all-powerful, omniscient and coercive. Today, nevertheless, many ask if this traditional theism limits our maturation of faith and prevents the construction of a spirituality capable of being integrated in our daily life and emerging cosmovision. We have talked, for example, of a plan of God But this plan, does it not correspond to the concept of a controlling divinity who has already determined the configuration of the future and throws lines in the lives and destinies of his human subjects? Teilhard de Chardin dared propose that under the light of modernity and evolutionary science, we would need a new God. Could we allow radically different images of the divinity? Far away from the monarchic and controlling image, why not an inspiring presence of dreams and fascinations? Of enchantments that seduce, that invite the world with subtle gestures to accomplish its potentialities, to reach his promise, to reach what it can reach. It would be a divinity not of domination but of persuasive love. And, if we reflect upon it a little, much closer to the teachings of the New Testament and the Gospels, than the eternal and all powerful God to whom the official ecclesiastical books address their prayers. John Haught, Theology professor of the Georgetown University, USA, offers a provocative suggestion: imagine the divinity as a creative Eros that excites the world to life, conscience and a continuous transformation. It would be a divinity that does not talk to us from an established past: he whispers more from our future, from a horizon that is not clear but imprecise, nebulous, intriguing. That promising future would be the solid foundation for our walking. And, inconceivable? A divinity that would evolve together q with the Universe in its irrevocable freedom!

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