Chapter 41 - Universal Humanity, Religious Particularity, and Scientific Reductionism

Abstract

An explanatory gap exists between human consciousness, mind, and selfhood, on the one hand, and materialist attempts to reduce all scientific explanations to physical and chemical causation, on the other hand. Within the big history of cosmic and biological evolution we can place the rise of human civilization and the nearly uncountable histories of distinct cultures. Within the context of these separate cultural histories, an overlapping insight arose during the Axial Period just prior to the common era. On the basis of this transcendental insight, seers in China, India, and the Middle East posited the existence of a transcendent moral order that defined all of us as belonging to a single universal human race. Despite the plurality of religious symbol systems, each is oriented toward an ultimate reality that surpasses its own history and attempts to grasp—or be grasped by—the unifying if not mystical power of this reality. This raises the question: can we reduce the concept of a universal humanity to brain functions bequeathed to us by our evolutionary inheritance or must we appeal to the axial insight regarding a transcendent and ultimate reality?