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Evolutionary Faith: Rediscovering God in Our Great Story

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I had long ago left the Christian faith because of its incongruity with science, the environment and the cosmos. O'Murchu has clarified in writing what I have instinctively, intuitively felt for decades but could not express as eloquently as he. Quantum Theology has resurrected what I thought was my spiritually dead self.

It is difficult reading, but well worth the effort. I find myself looking at the universe and life from a new and refreshing perspective.

Randy Herring's review must have been written by an intellectual show-off. One of the major premises of the book is not how one deals with the world, but rather, how the world deals with us. Our control is imaginary and our understanding ridiculously lacking, and that was one of O'Murchu's major points.

This is a very informative book, since the author spreads his net far and wide as is obvious from the biliography. His views are novel and interesting, but definitely part company with Teilhard de Chardin and traditional theism. Pere Teilhard's vision is convergent; O'Murchu's is divergent. He presents us with a universe having no beginning and no end. Also, God exists within this universe, but not outside it. These two concepts are consistent with pantheism. A more traditional and more awe-inspiring view is that the universe exists within God.

Pere Teilhard's system focuses on the Omega point as the point of convergence for all evolution and all space-time. This is really missing from O'Murchu, since his universe never really gets to Omega.

This is an excellent wedding of science and theology. Far too long have we seen the struggle between the two for gaining real insights to understand more clearly our lifelong responsibilities to ourselves and our environment. The author clearly puts this before us giving us a more complete story that is both current and credible. As he states "it is time to embrace the cosmic and planetary context within which our life story and the story of all life unfolds. We belong to a reality greater than ourselves, and it is within that enlarged context that we will rediscover the benign mystery within which everything is endowed with purpose and meaning." This book will give you the satisfaction that comes with understanding how everything is connected. This is a short book that is worth more than many volumes.

O'Murchu's 'Evolutionary Faith' is not an easy read in that it requires a fully attentive mind to assimilate the full extent and depth of its message. And that message, conveyed through the medium of unfolding story, is that we belong and can only authentically live out our lives, in the context of our planetary and cosmic home. Unless or until we make a spiritual homecoming to this mystical 'place' of belonging at the heart of creation, and learn to listen, love and grow in congruence with its meaning for our lives (God's primary and ultimate revelation), we will forever flounder in our misguided will to power, arrogance, control and domination. From his seminal work, "Quantum Theology" to his most recent, "Christianity's Dangerous Memory", O'Murchu's writing has the quality of a profound quest . . and what this cutting-edge thinker has to say, he says exquisitely, compellingly and prophetically. Highly recommended for the discerning reader who has an interest in evolutionary theology's interface with science.

This is just a note to acknowledge that the review entitled "Non-Teilhardian and pantheistic" was submitted by me before I became Amazon's Maltese Falcon.

This book reads more like Thus Spoke O'Murchu with a flavor of a romantic Hegelian collective Spirit of optimism. O'Murchu is his own sage with a message addressed to the mystics of a "new cosmology" who are sufferers in this crisis of nihilism that "globalization" has created. O'Murchu's greatest trouble is his "relational matrix" and his greatest weight his "powerful archetypes." The ideas of "relational matrix" and "powerful archetypes" complicate the "great story" turning it upside down by not being able to reconcile this contradiction he advances as "evolutionary faith."

O'Murchu fails to define what he means by 'matrix.' Thus, arises O'Murchu's three gravest flaws: 1) failing to define 'matrix,' 2) failing by assuming one knows what the conventional definition of 'matrix' entails, and 3) failing to clarify his meaning of intentionality, except within his symbolism of "Divine relationality." O'Murchu stupidly leaves the definition of 'matrix' open-ended, which allows the reader to pursue for further investigation. A 'matrix,' to this reviewer, is a system and a closure that "out of the womb within" encircles the relationality of the development of a "stereotype!" Words develop with a purpose: for use and relationality. It is out of the womb that one sees things from within one's own perimeters, i.e., a system, a closure of how one "deals" with the world.

O'Murchu's "relational matrix" adds to the "great deal of baggage" that he admonishes we ought "to shed!" If evolutionary faith is faith directed by the drive of evolutionary process of 'becoming' then a matrix makes evolutionary faith incapable of possessing that drive of intoxicating energy for becoming. Without a matrix, one's consciousness is strong because it is free from any kind of relational comparison, and thus, extols one's capacity and need for communication relating with others! The weakness of consciousness vis-à-vis a matrix only increases the greatest weight of nihilistic "globalization" that O'Murchu opposes. Thus, the "archetype" (below) of a "new cosmology" to thwart the furtherance of "globalization" is of no consequence.

O'Murchu carries more baggage (his greatest trouble) than he can handle (his greatest weight). Contrary to his own intentions O'Murchu posits his antithesis: another form of "globalization" masked by "evolutionary faith." The "relational matrix" is "globalization" because both are systems of oppression of adding to the baggage O'Murchu admits he does not want. O'Murchu's relational matrix does not come full circle of embracing the mysticism of a "new cosmology" and thus, does not toss "globalization" to the wayside.

O'Murchu crushes under his own weight trying to convince us he seeks to eradicate the dualistic religion and science futuristic tendencies of "gloom and doom." It is in fact the same tendencies he embraces by introducing his "new cosmology" of light as an "archetype" that opposes the "globalization" of darkness, that is, the recurrence of the same dualistic notion of good versus evil! O'Murchu is more religious and Christian he gives himself credit for. Thus Spoke O'Murchu!

O'Murchu digs his own crevasse, falls into it and becomes wedged in his story of evolutionary faith. O'Murchu brings man down with his own god and goes under himself! This 'O'Murchu event' triggers a cataclysmic recurrence of the same yet to be reconciled under its own crushing weight (the "great story"). O'Murchu leaves us confronted with a yet undiscovered country whose boundaries nobody has surveyed. It is an undiscovered country beyond all the lands and nooks of Thus Spoke O'Murchu. It is a world so overrich in what is beautiful, strange, questionable, terrible, and divine.

The "new cosmology" is more daring perhaps than is prudent. Thus, O'Murchu's greatest weight of recurrence is turned upside down repeatedly in the same succession and sequence. O'Murchu desires nothing new but every pain and every joy and every thought to add to the greatest trouble in reconciling the greatest weight with the "great story" he calls evolutionary faith. Thus Spoke O'Murchu!