Cosmodeism - Bisk Tsvi

Not "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth", but rather "In the end an Evolutionary Cosmos will have created God" is the singular message of this book. Tsvi Bisk asserts that evolution is the very essence of existence: an infinite process that has created consciousness throughout the Cosmos. Human beings are not the end of this process; consciousness will continue to evolve into ever higher levels of consciousness ad infinitum until a consciousness will have been created that might appear to us as if it were a God. Bisk details how this has been a discreet converging theme throughout the history of human thought. Debunking the "non-overlapping magisteria" thesis, he elucidates how religions, philosophies, and the sciences throughout the ages have intimated this fundamental process of existence. In religion, we have the Jewish "being a partner with God" (in the ongoing act of creation), the Buddhist Buddhahood, the Christian "Holy Spirit" working its "will" in history, and the concept of Nirvana. In philosophy, we have Hegel's 'God' as a process inherent in existence as such, Samuel Alexander's 'Deity as a spacetime emergent', Emerson's 'Oversoul' and Nietzsche's 'Übermensch'. In science we have the various theories of evolution (i.e., evolution as the preeminent fact of existence), as well as the quasi-theological speculations of thinkers as distinct as Einstein, Schrödinger, and Carl Sagan.

Bisk suggests that understanding our place in this cosmic 'godding' process will go a long way in assuaging that sense of meaninglessness of it all that is the cause of so much civilizational pessimism and angst. A subsequent rebirth of optimism might also stimulate the creative energies required to solve the material and environmental problems of 21st-century humanity.