The Third Level

From: 2001: A Space Odyssey

At its core, religion embodies a "sense" that there is "something" Beyond the world of our five physical senses.  It is Beyond our cognitive functions, Beyond thought.  This "thing" that is Beyond, however, can be detected by the human mind and heart.  Individuals and groups can feel its Presence.  The Beyond can be experienced as Presence.  This sense of a Beyond that is still Present is so real that we are able to construct quite elaborate systems of thought (many of which are "theological," that is about a deity that is presumed to be the Beyond that is Present) to explain a supernatural phenomenon that, in fact, we can't quite grasp.  There is a mystery to the Beyond that is Present.  Even the most hardened "new atheists" acknowledge that this "sense" of "something" exists and some, at least, associate it with the Universe itself.

I have avoided using the word, "God," to describe this Beyond that is Present, because theism is only one system of thought that seeks to explain the "sense" that "something" is "out there" but also very much "right here."  Animism is another.  The Buddhist understanding of the Dharma is another.

The more social scientists dig into the human mind, the more it becomes clear that this sense of something that is Beyond and yet Present is planted deep within us.  A New York Times article entitled, "Is 'Do Unto Others' Written in Our Genes?" offers further insights into how deeply rooted are these religious-like perceptions of the Beyond that is Present.  The article reports on the work of Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia.  Haidt's research into human morality suggests that our human moral faculties are divided into two parts.  One part he calls, "moral intuition," which evolved in our evolutionary ancestors long before we developed the ability to speak.  The second aspect of human morality is "moral judgment," which developed as we learned to speak.  He believes that both moral intuition and judgment are linked to the fact that we are social animals and aid us in protecting both individual and group well-being.  He has also found that religion has been the primary carrier of both aspects of morality and that without religion humanity could not have evolved beyond the stage of being small bands of hunter-gatherers.

That is, apparently, since the time we became homo sapiens we have linked our conscious and unconscious sense of morality to that other sense of the Beyond that is Present—not as a matter of intuition but of instinct.  Beyond all of the theological systems and the philosophies lies this intriguing insight that seems to be emerging from scientific research that we are constructed for religion—that is that the third level of perception, the spiritual level, is planted so deeply within us that it is as much a part of being human as is our DNA.  (The first level is sense perception and the second is cognition).

None of this proves that there is a "God," in the sense of that word as we Christians use it.  None of this proves that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God.  It doesn't prove the Trinity.  What it does do is add weight to the likelihood that our widely shared faith in a Beyond that is Present points to a reality that is as real as the one we perceive physically.  It points to the possibility that Something Out There built our "God-sense" (for want of a better term) into us.  Evolution has direction, and it just may be that the Beyond that is Present is the source of that direction—and the destination.