Okay … the answers to “life, the universe, and everything” … I’ll take a few minutes here this morning to get all that nailed down. Then we can close down this site, lock the doors and look for other things to do.
Seriously, though; a lot of us use this space as an informal “processing space” not just within a certain community but even for ourselves. It’s a great place to kick ideas around. Some are just “thinking aloud” and are totally prepared to be persuaded otherwise while others have already given a well-read history of thought to convictions they have already spent decades kicking around and refining. I’d like to most of us are operating somewhere between those two, both humility and confidence always standing by to attend. In that spirit …
The nature of reality? I believe (and I bet nearly everyone here does, whether they claim religion or not) that there is an objective reality and that an objective truth about it (truth being everything that corresponds to that one reality) can, in principle be embraced. Scientists tend to believe this, and indeed build their careers on it. So I personally reject the premise of full-blown subjectivism that suggests that reality only exists in our heads.
That said, my epistemology does (cannot escape from) admitting a form of subjectivism in that there will be no “knowing” anything about that objective reality apart from such “knowledge” being in my head. Things like community, church, education, science, …social life in general…, help us beat back that subjectivism at least a little by requiring that our ideas be bounced off others and tried against reality itself. Those are valuable tools that help us get out of our own heads at least a little bit.
Regarding “our place in reality”? Here my response is intended to be distinctively theistic, and even more specifically yet: Christian. And as we get more and more specific in this, there is probably more and more disagreement as people (even other Christians) peel off from things peculiar to me here.
One big distinctive I see for theists is the embrasure of a principle that, not only is there a “greater power” out there that transcends myself (as even any non-religious 12-step participant might be coached into accepting), but that there is a “greater power” that transcends all of us and our cultures / civilizations [indeed all cosmic history] together. In that latter, I think it pretty safe to say we’ve lost non-theists by that point. Not that the object is to try to “lose” people here; but only to highlight some very essential premises for the theist. I embrace this premise, not as a conclusion always relying on support, but as a faith presupposition. [We will all have seasons when faith is in front of us as a conclusion we are needing to work toward, looking for warrant -I’m not saying I still don’t go through seasons of that “faith growing” now, but only that when it is manifesting as an operating faith, it is simply the way I have now learned to view the world.]
So I accept a cosmic power underlying all of existence. Venturing further on that faith, I’m willing to entertain the idea that this cosmic power has a personal interest in the universe, and in particular the development of life in it, and even more in particular the development of life that can consciously share in the enjoyment of all of creation. While all these things can, in their turn, become more and more a “presuppositional life basis” for us, it is also true that it takes more building to “get there” from mere impersonal cosmic power (such as Einstein contemplated). For me this is where the testimony of scriptures, prophets, and apostles come in.
Up until this last bit, I hadn’t gone any farther than where Romans 1:20 describes as being universally available. That reality around us that we all live in, whatever kind of believers we are, calls us to contemplation of that higher power in frequencies that we have all been gifted for sensing; hence our being “without excuse” in that regard. That is the “book of creation”, the first of the two books that Francis Bacon spoke of in a metaphor that I still embrace today. The second book (Jesus Christ, as mediated in scriptures, and by the witness of the Holy Spirit) is what gets me the rest of the way to knowing just exactly what this Cosmic Power is really like. I am taught to look nowhere else but at the cross. All understandings of creation, all understandings of scriptures, all understandings of anything at all, are all held up for scrutiny under the light emanating from the cross. That is my ideal, even though I struggle to live up to it. My spiritual self (though constantly doing battle with my flesh) always knows that my true and lasting identity is found only in Christ.
I don’t think I’ve said anything above which couldn’t mostly be affirmed by nearly any orthodox Christian. Since you mentioned how we might be distinctive from “young earth” views, I might give some answer to that.
One main different might be in a general approach to scriptures. Some want to view scriptures as a static gift plopped down from above in a sort of immutably solid and permanent gift to be properly decoded. Others are more comfortable seeing scriptures in a living and pliable sense, to be interacted with and to be a witness to us of our forebears variously rebelling against God and at other times wrestling with God (two distinct activities there – not to be confused with each other!).
One side sees a certain decoding of the early Genesis accounts as a sign or test that a person is properly submitting (or not!) to biblical authority. In contrast, others (I include myself here) critique that as an erroneous elevation of one particular modern understanding up into an unwarranted status of infallibility.
Since I am open, then, to taking into account truths and understandings from both of God’s books, that does make me at least wrestle with the implications of deep time and common ancestry and how those may or may not impact my understandings of God.
…and now that it may have just started getting interesting to you, I have run out of time and need to scuttle off! Will wait to hear more from you before I keep investing more and more time.