Application #2 from
A Succinct Summary of
the Theology of Gary Marvin Davison and
Extended Thoughts
Thereon
Because humanity is such an
infant in time, and the dialectic leading to the major scientific advances of
the very late 15th century to the 18th century took so
long to transpire, humankind in the year 2024 is now grappling with two major
oppositional forces, that seeking to move toward a religio-spirituality
compatible with scientific truth and that which seeks in vain but with great
ferocity to cling to the mythical explanations of the prescientific age.
Humanity is also working through
a related struggle, between a force represented by people who understand that
if humanity is to create Life that supports the best possible Existence of all
people during this one earthly sojourn, then we must turn to cooperative
endeavors and wise policy that constructs the best possible environment for
sustaining maximally good health, the accumulation of strong knowledge bases,
and common ethical values across nation and globe; and that competing force, similar to that which
clings to religious explanations of the past, seeking to retreat in defense of old
orders of cultural exclusivity and the protection of the interests of the few
rather than the many, an approach that certainly for the many but often also
for the few in power, leads to lives of ill health, abject ignorance, and
inadequately developed ethical values.
There is, then, an enormous problem
for humanity in not understanding humankind in the context of prehistory and
history.
And there is also a daunting
problem for humanity in not understanding the foundations of human behavior.
Ironically, she and he who
grasps that free will is an illusion and therefore seeks to understand as fully
as possible the circumstances of environment that drive human behavior, will
come much closer to that which we call agency, free will, volition than will
those people who cling to those notions as conventionally understood.
The most common path of
existence proceeds in ignorance of those environmental forces that determine
human behavior. In any life, the
environmental forces of family, religious institution, community, peer group, gender,
economic condition, political system, and culturally promoted goals are determinative. The question becomes, then, how well one
understands the way in which the environmental circumstances of one’s life
have, do, and will continue to shape the course of her or his one earthly
sojourn.
Those who have no understanding
of determinative environmental forces live as passengers on a rudderless ship
on an ocean the current of which determines fate.
Those who have masterful
understanding of determinative environmental forces live as captains of ships
with rudders, unable to change the circumstances of temperature, wind, and
current but able to make the best possible response in the moment that will have
the best consequences over time; and
among such captains, those who embrace values seeking the best interests of all
humanity will chart a course leading to the best possible future of all those
aboard.
In charting our own best future,
humankind must be as the knowledgeable ship captain, aware of all environmental
factors determining Existence and interacting with those forces in charting a
course ahead leading to the best possible lives for all humanity on this one
earthly sojourn, clinging not to the illusion of independently exercised free
will, but rather according to a close approximation of agency exercised in
astute decision-making upon the best information available, upon ethical values
promotive of the best outcomes for all of those in the human family.
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