“Resonance" as a Key to Interpreting the Universe


Hisayoshi Watanabe, Japan


To my memory the word "resonance" is not used or given any special attention in Essentials of Unification Thought (2000). But Rev. Sun Myung Moon's basic idea from the beginning to the present plays around the concept "resonance (realm of resonance)" or "sympathetic motion." So it is possible to comprehend every topic in this book-creation, epistemology, art, education, ethics, etc.-as the ヤtheory of resonance.' For instance, the Eastern metaphor for ideal education "(口へんに卒)啄同時" (sottaku doji, parent bird and chick pecking at the egg at the same time), or appreciation of art (the state of being moved) cannot be discussed without the concept of "resonance. "

Love and 'Give-and-Receive Action' are also instances of "resonance." Moreover, this is a concept used both by scientists and people of religion, and I think this is the time a view of the world is sorely demanded in which physical resonance and spiritual resonance are united in resonance.

In discussing this topic, I would like to give attention to the phrase "to be guided by sincerity and rectify one's thought" which our new Premier Yoshihiko Noda cited in his inaugural speech. This is a part of the famous maxim found in Daigaku, one of old Chinese Confucian books-"格物, 致知, 誠意, 正心, 修身, 斉家, 治国, 平天下.”The part Mr. Noda cited is "誠意, 正心" (seii, seishin). The whole maxim (which is given in Essentials, p.146) purports some such idea: First investigate the principle of things and extend your knowledge, then be guided by sincerity, then rectify your thought, then cultivate your personality, then regulate your own family, then govern your country well, and finally bring peace to the world.

I don't know what Mr. Noda meant by picking out this part. It only caught my ear while half listening to his replayed speech. But it caught my ear because I myself am interested in this part of the dictum. It has been my growing idea for several years that in our age of serious cultural crisis this particular phrase should be highlighted as a warning.

The point of this maxim lies in the order of what you do if you want to bring peace to the world. Trying to bring peace to the world (平天下) or, to properly govern the world, is bound to fail, unless you first cultivate your personality (修身) and regulate your own family (斉家). Therefore, "be guided by sincerity (誠意) and rectify your thought (正心)" should not be reversed in order.

"Be guided by sincerity" refers to the working of the deeper level of your mind, the realm of your intuition or conscience, while "rectify your thought" occurs on a comparatively upper level of your mind where you are mindful of your behavior or orderly thinking. So the former is the basis for the latter to work. Once this deeper level of your mind is warped, your conscious thinking is warped, your personality is warped, then you get your family warped, your community and country warped, and finally the world itself warped.

So everything depends on the working of the deeper level of your mind. Take, for instance, love, which is most basic to mankind. The basic personality of man, whether you are a scientist, an artist, a statesman, a teacher, or anything, is divided in two parts depending on how love works in the deeper level of your mind-whether it works in the direction of your own self or in the direction of others, the world, and ultimately God.

Our culture, our habitat, is predominantly an atheistic (or materialist) culture. It can also be called an arrogant or self-centered culture. This culture works like despotism though its constituent members are largely unaware of it, and even though there are some, even a great many, people who are not self-centered and live for others, the culture itself teaches them they are wrong. This happens because a culture dominates and dictates the very seat of "sincerity," or honesty, or conscience of the people.

How is this possible? It all comes from the unfortunate fact that, in our culture, what is most respected and trusted is materialist science, which works as a dictator in the absence of God. So most people are deceived into thinking that religion and science are at variance, while the truth is that antagonism is really between theistic science and atheistic science. There is a pseudo-principle propagated by Stephen J. Gould, the Darwinian evolutionist, called NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria) which proposes that science and religion are entirely different disciplines which should respect each other, but actually implying religion should be subjugated by science.

In fact, we have had unclear notions about it until recently, believing or half-believing what atheist scientists tried to have us believe. It was ID (intelligent design) movement and our Unification Thought movement that made us aware of this deception. It seems these innovative movements appeared as they were destined to appear at such a critical moment, a turning point in history. The real distinction, distinction between theistic science and atheistic science, is becoming clearer with time. Just as the biblical fable (Matthew 13: 24-43) says, good wheat and poisonous wheat are indistinguishable while they are young, but when reaping time (transitional time in history) comes, the difference is clearly visible, and the poisonous wheat is cut and thrown into fire. This is what is actually happening now.

Atheistic science actually is banishing God, usurping the world from His hand. It asserts the ownership of this world, and essentially considers that the universe and the natural world are something to fight for and subjugate. At its basis is Darwinism. Cosmologist Leonard Susskind, for instance, says, however Darwinian evolution is hard to believe, "biologists are armed with a very powerful tool-the Principle of Natural Selection"1 which means that for him science is a fight against the natural world. What a dreary notion! This can parallel with the Communist China whose atheism inevitably drives it to the overpowering of the world by force. Yet, however shocking it is, this represents the established scientific community today. What happens when such an idea occupies the seat of "sincerity"?

This spirit is apparent in Stephen Hawking's latest (co-authored) book, The Grand Design. Since this is a book that asserts the position of an extreme materialism hardened against "design," its title is puzzling-puzzling even if meant for irony. But apart from it, the wild assertions of this book are bewildering. It says our universe came out of "nothing,"- "because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing." (p.180) Also it asserts that "philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern development in science, particularly physics." (p.5) Also it says there is no intrinsic distinction between the real life and a life game on the computer, there being no free will.

How can these crazy conclusions come out of one of the most excellent brains in the world? Whether with Hawking or with Susskind, such a picture of the world must have come from extremely clever, correct working of their brains. Yet, apparently, because the deeper level of their minds, the seat of "sincerity," was warped against human nature, their God-given talent in mathematics and logical reasoning was wasted to draw such crazy conclusions, ultimately helping destruction of mankind and the world. These are exemplary cases of how poisonous wheat has come to be conspicuous enough to be divided from good wheat.

Far from their dismal vision of the world, it is evident that the essence of the universe and the natural world is "resonance" or "sympathetic motion." And since such is the property of life, it can be said the universe is life in essence. The world of life is not something constructed by adding some life element on to the material basis.

Why are there so many scientists who are unable to accommodate to ID, in spite of the fact that the existence of "design" is scientifically testable and demonstrable, so that it naturally demands some intelligent agent? The reason obviously is not to be sought in logical reasoning or anywhere but in the location of "sincerity" of the mind. The materialist is the kind of person who is unable to be sincere or honest or humble in the deepest area of his mind. Does ヤhumbleness' have anything to do with science? It has everything to do with science. Indeed, it seems to me whether one is humble or not makes all the difference in science.

Just have a look at the following sentences which are cited as the "standard" type of invective against ID:

My main gripe with the ID proponents is that they never seem to give up. How many times do you need to be told that something is wrong before you'll admit it? How many times does ID need to be refuted in the peer reviewed media before you'll give it up as a lost cause? The bacterial flagellum irreducible complexity story is completely and utterly dead. It's wrong. Get over it.2

We wonder how a (respectable) scholar could write like this. But at the same time this is a good example to show what is happening on the poisonous wheat side of scientists at this reaping time of history. (Susskind, Hawking, and Richard Dawkins, though I don't cite the last here, are all material for study.) Something unusual is happening to the materialist scientists, who otherwise must have been thoughtful with a high IQ and sensibility.

From a fair position, it seems to be difficult to refute the arguments of ID proponents who have enough logical power ready against the expected opponents. Take just for example Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell or Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box. But as seen in the above invective, the problem is not logical argument but something more fundamental, some deep-seated resistance, more akin to devil-possessed condition.
As before Christ evil spirits begin to be restless, so when the materialist culture begins to be exposed to criticism, it reveals its hidden nature as an arrogant and self-righteous beast. No logic avails, only threat and denouncing are used to silence the opponents. To me who have been watching ID movement from its earliest time, such an image is overwhelming and revealing as well. I grew aware how we had been living in a perverted, unsound cultural environment without knowing it.

We all live by passion or will before we live by logic. Logic is the problem of right or wrong, but passion or will is the problem of sound or unsound. There are sound and unsound interpretations of the world. There are sound and unsound attitudes toward the world. And these two kinds of mindset are unaccommodating to each other. But while the sound can sympathize with the unsound, the unsound regard the sound as unpardonable enemy of science and their own being.

Religious people often say, "The rich and the learned are difficult to save," meaning the arrogant are unable to see truths confining themselves in a small world. There is no time more appropriate than this time for us to cry out this truth. Even from this point of view alone, we are entering into an age for religion and science to be unified. Religion and science should have a common attitude to the world rather than share their knowledge. The real intellectual development of mankind will then be made possible.

What, then, will be an attitude toward the world which is honest, humble and sound, freed from arrogance? I would like to discuss it by taking for teaching material a recently released DVD, Metamorphosis: the Beauty and Design of Butterflies, produced for promoting ID.

This is a story about the wonderful life of a kind of butterfly called Monarch. First, attention is paid to the very beauty of butterflies, which, it is explained, is intended for the sake of beauty itself, "gratuitous artistry." It apparently exists for humans to appreciate, and is not explainable in terms of Darwinian "survival" or use. My impression is that "resonance" is the keyword for every aspect of mystery about the butterfly.

Then we are introduced to the process of growth of this butterfly. As everybody knows a butterfly starts as a caterpillar, then forms a chrysalis and emerges as a beautiful full-formed butterfly not at all resembling the caterpillar. So it follows that in the case of butterfly one genome can produce two kinds of organism, doubling the mystery. To redouble the mystery, the content inside the chrysalis is "soup" or "butter" utterly without form, so a butterfly can be said to die for once and then resurrect in the middle of its life. Still more wonderful is that the completed butterfly appears in several days. All these will be unexplainable without assuming a "designer" far surpassing man, rejecting explanation by chance and natural selection.

Still greater wonder is the migration of Monarch butterflies. These butterflies travel, repeating generation change in the way, therefore without one guide among them with the memory of the previous year, exactly between North Canada and Mexico-the very trees their ancestors alighted on in a very small area of the volcanic middle Mexico.
How can such navigation be possible? Even though they have some precise built-in measuring devices (for instance, it is said they can feel magnetic attraction of the Mexican volcano), that cannot explain everything. How could they acquire them in the first place?

This can only be explained in terms of "resonance" or sympathy between the butterflies and their environment. That is to say, the butterflies and the earth are not separate things but form one organism, just as the parts composing a butterfly form one organic unity. In that respect, every life form (including human) is connected with its environment and other life forms and form one organism (even though the environments contain lifeless matter like rock or magnetism). All organisms on earth and the earth must be considered to form one "realm of resonance" centering on man (because man is special, as I explain later).

The point to make is that everything must be created that way, not evolved that way, and that there must be a creator, a "super intellect" (Fred Hoyle) that created the natural world with some purpose or intention, though not clearly knowable.

Since materialists cannot think of life except as an extension of physical phenomena, they close their minds hard and show enmity toward such a way of thinking. In this connection there is this eye-opening episode reported:

On the occasion of the premiere of this DVD Metamorphosis at Butterfly World, Florida, since the audience was almost all lovers of butterfly, the response was somewhat different from other places. When the introducer made an opening speech, there was a big applause at the mere mention of "intelligent design,'" and the reporter says, "South Floridians seem starved for ID." After the screening there remained a passionate atmosphere, and from the lingering audience someone was heard saying, "Take even the most hardened scientist to see the butterflies in Mexico, and they will be moved to tears." The reporter adds, "Which sounds about right."3

This clinches the story of "resonance" starting with Monarch butterfly. That "even the most hardened scientist" should be "moved to tears" at the overwhelming beauty and design of the natural world-this is certainly the ultimate "resonance" of this world. The "resonance" between nature and us humans is the most significant resonance designed by God to occur. This occurs at the deeper level of the human mind, where some go in the perverted way of arrogance while others let themselves "be guided by sincerity" toward unity with nature. And it is the latter, not the former, that can be favored with the revelation of nature as a whole.

Until recently we have been unable to get used to the concept "teleology." And that is because we were trained thoroughly in materialist science. But as the fact of cosmic "fine tuning" has come to be recognized as scientific fact settling in our mind, (and probably, as the "multiverse" hypothesis to escape it by Darwinian explanation has come to be distrusted), the concept of teleology or final causation seems to be escaping the one-time taboo. Our universe is physically unbelievably fine-tuned to produce humans (not merely life) and our habitat, the earth. Viewed differently, our universe as a whole is a vast "resonant" body with us in the center, designed as one vast organism.

Life is different from matter in that its elements are spatio-temporally harmonized, or "resonant." Life and purpose are inseparable concepts. Butterflies know their environment and the environment knows butterflies. In the beginning of the butterfly (plan, purpose, design, DNA) resides the completed butterfly, and in the completed butterfly resides the beginning.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
・・・・
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.
----T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, "Little Gidding"4

As Monarch butterflies and the earth form a "realm of resonance," life's beginning and life's end form a "realm of resonance." What is created presupposes a creator. In what is created is contained the motive or intention of its creation. "We shall not cease from (scientific or philosophical) exploration." The mystery of Monarch butterfly is an object of our eternal investigation, and it will be solved little by little. But the end of our investigation is to know the origin of the butterfly, and the origin of the "resonance" between the butterfly and ourselves who are endlessly attracted by it. We keep traveling and finally "arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Referring to the history of scientific exploration, Rev. Moon recently explained5 there are three stages of human concern: first, "matter-centered (物情)," then "human-centered (人情)," and finally "heaven-centered (天情)." The first is the stage of materialism where man is exclusively concerned about the objects themselves, whether animate or inanimate. The second is the stage where man is interested in his own self, what is man who is so related with the outer world, the age of psychology, cerebral physiology, psychoanalysis, etc. And now finally, man is beginning to be interested in the place where all these originated, how was the mind of God who designed the world in this particular way. This is the stage of "heaven-centered concern," most probably represented by ID and its likes.

Rev. Moon also proposes the word "進化" (evolution) be abolished and replaced by "進和" (develop to harmony).6 He says those who use the term ヤevolution' are "out of their senses." When the whole universe is apparently advancing toward greater harmony, those who try to explain it on the principle of rejection or struggle are certainly "out of their senses." Why did South Floridians "seem starved for ID" and give a big applause at the mere mention of it? Because they have been given a viper when they craved for bread.

Essentials explains the essence of creation in such terms as "円和性" or "円満性" (rotative harmony?). Unless you envisage the universe as interpenetrating in time or anticipating the future, it is hard to imagine how it was possible, as in the Cambrian explosion, to create every variety of full-formed animals abruptly, "out of nowhere" as it is said. Creation must be "進和" (develop to harmony) where give-and-receive action or "resonance" occurs between mind (Sungsang) and material (Hyungsag) to produce a new product.

Give-and-receive action between Sungsang and Hyungsang is possible because each side partakes something of the other, not entirely different as is envisaged in the Western (Aristotelian) tradition. I think God's creation can be likened to give-and-receive of radio waves in broadcasting where your act of tuning can suddenly (not gradually) produce full-formed sounds or images.

By the way, the latter four lines of the above quotation from T. S. Eliot are used and recited in the opening part of the ID-related DVD, The Privileged Planet. The original is the book with the same title co-authored by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards. As the subtitle "How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery" shows, this book explores how our earth is fine-tuned not only for us to live in but, strangely, to investigate the universe, being most probably the only place in the universe fit for astronomers as well as other scientists to work. (Note: Gonzalez was expelled from his university for supporting ID!)

The following is one of such strange astronomical facts mentioned in this book:

In fact, stars are very much like their representation in a computer. Like the virtual tag each virtual star carries with it, a real star contains and transmits information about its age, mass, position, and velocity. To put it in a topsy-turvy sort of way, the Milky Way galaxy is so weirdly accommodating to our efforts to measure its gravitational properties that it's like a gigantic simulation...(my italics)7

What is this "weirdly accommodating to our efforts"? Astronomers' objects are not animate but inanimate matter. And yet they have the impression that it is collaborating with them, answering their will to know it. This seems to be parallel with the "resonant" relation between Monarch butterfly and the earth. It seems to be an instance of organic connection of man and inorganic object as representing the universal "resonance." Such a strange impression seems to be common among astronomers or astrophysicists. This is an instance of cosmic "fine tuning," but this is a fine tuning that cannot be expressed in numerical values.

Let's see another such remark cited in this book:

We can...be thankful that the Solar System in which we live has been unreasonably kind throughout the long history of human efforts to understand its dynamics and to extend that knowledge to the rest of the universe. At each step along the way, it has served as a perspicacious teacher, posing questions just difficult enough to prompt new observations and calculations that have led to fresh insights, but not so difficult that any further study become mired in a morass of confusing detail. (my italics)8

We all know that the sun provides all energy we need and comfortable environments for living, but that is not all. Here it is pointed out that the Solar System has been an "unreasonably kind" teacher who has responded to our questions according to our growth, but neither too kind nor too unkind, as excellent teachers are. The universe and humans are designed to "resonate" so that we may be led to higher levels of knowledge. Whose will is it? There is no better way to describe it than "universe-scaleそっ啄同時" (parent bird and chick pecking at the egg at the same time). Note that it is pointed out in A Meaningful World (co-authored by Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt, and translated into Japanese by our group) that a very similar thing happened in the laborious process of perfecting the Periodic Table in chemistry.

In other words, we (scientists) and the natural world are so designed as to be able to have a dialog, though with difficulty and perseverance on our part. What we call the development of science is raising the level of this dialog, i.e. "resonance." Materialists cannot think of it as anything but the result of their cleverness (especially in mathematics) and chance (serendipity). And it naturally leads to the perverted idea that the universe is something to be subjugated by man.

This arrogance is due to the fact that our intellectual level remains at the stages "matter-centered" and "human-centered." When we outgrow those stages and begin to wonder what it is at all that makes our scientific inquiry possible, we enter the "heaven-centered" stage. We feel ashamed of our one-time arrogance and become aware of the immeasurable value of humility. This is the time when science and religion truly become unified. The very concepts of science and religion have to change. Education in science grows equal to education in religion. This is what Rev. Moon calls the "post-religious" era. He says, "Religion exists for us to outgrow it."

In The Privileged Planet we read:

Most scientists presuppose the measurability of the physical realm: it's measurable because scientists have found ways to measure it. Read any book on the history of scientific discovery and you'll find magnificent tales of human ingenuity, persistence, and dumb luck. What you probably won't see is any discussion of the conditions necessary for such feats, conditions so improbably fine-tuned to allow scientific discoveries that they beg for a better explanation than mere chance.
........
Even more mysterious than the fact that our location is so congenial to diverse measurement and discovery is that these same conditions appear to correlate with habitability. This is strange, because there's no obvious reason to assume that the very same rare properties that allow for our existence would also provide the best overall setting to make discoveries about the world around us. We don't think this is merely coincidental. It cries out for another explanation, an explanation that suggests there's more to the cosmos than we have been willing to entertain or even imagine.9

That most scientists today present a ヤblank face' to these facts can be likened to the following fiction:

There was a young man who was unwilling to work after finishing his college and living idle. But there was more than enough money paid into his bank account every month, and whenever he comes back to his rooms from idling outdoors, he found everything cleaned and washing done. But this fellow is indifferent to all these and thinks such is the way things are done in this world. One day his friend said to him, "But there must be someone doing it all for you." But he looks blank not seeing the meaning. One day, however, it was known all these were done by his parents. But still he was neither surprised nor thankful at all, and says to his astounded friend, "It is quite natural that parents do such things for their children. It is nothing but a natural phenomenon. What reason do I have to be thankful to a natural phenomenon?" To crown it, he began to sneer at his friend for being a poor scientist.

I think this parable is a fairly faithful picture of the scientific community today. Probably the greater part of scientists takes the position of this idle fellow. Why? The reason is that materialist-atheist culture distorts the seat of "sincerity," paralyzes it, and leads them to suppose that such a thing as thankfulness or love is an obstacle to the scientist, and that science should be something cold. This is completely mistaken, because it is in scientific demonstration that we should be cold and free from emotion, not in scientific motivation.

How are we to interpret this strange fact that, viewed cosmologically, we are inordinately favored not only for our existence but also favored and guided in scientific discovery? How are we to understand this mysterious collaborative relationship between us and the natural world? Is it a problem that can be solved by our "matter-centered" or "human-centered" sciences? It no doubt needs what Rev. Moon calls "heaven-centered" science.

It takes us further into the more fundamental problem. Why are we (at least, part of us) so much blessed with mathematic ability? Physicist Eugene Wigner once called our attention to it by his essay on the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural science." (my italics) Albert Einstein in the same vein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." The answer is that the universe and our minds (minds of a selected few) are designed to "resonate."

We should not think we can do science so well because we are clever. That is like thinking Monarch butterflies can travel so well because they are clever. That is an absurdity. As Monarch butterflies and the earth form one "resonant" whole, so the structure of our thought and the structure of the universe form one "resonant" whole, designed by God to be legible to man, the center of the universe.

This is not something we hear in the classroom. It is a revelation to inspire us with awe. It is a revelation to strike our arrogance to dust.

We cannot but conceive the universe as a vast "realm of resonance" with man at the center. Why is there such a mysterious relationship between man and the universe? The only system of thought that can answer this question seems to be Unification Thought. Unification Thought envisages man as the goal of creation. So in the beginning there was the image of man in the Creator's mind and the history of the universe is the process of realizing that purpose. The reason for the miraculous cosmic fine tuning, the privileged place of man in the universe (it is almost concluded there is no such another place in it), and man's particular endowments in science and reasoning cannot be explained except from the point of view given in UT.

The UT epistemology is called the ヤtheory of collation.' This comes from the view of man as the microcosm to the macrocosm (universe), the view that the structure of the universe is embedded in man, so that the two may form a "resonant" whole. Cognition is possible by tuning on both sides, as it were. So UT epistemology may also be called the "theory of resonance." Even a high level of cognition like scientific discovery can be explained by this epistemology. It is not that there is the basis on this side (our inner self)-Kantian epistemology-nor that there is the basis on the other side (outer world)-Marxian reflection theory. Cognition is possible by "resonance." This view is a revolution brought into the history of epistemology.

Materialists will sneer at such a notion as ヤcommunicative power of prayer.' But viewed from UT epistemology this will become less ヤridiculous.' Won't it, you materialist? You can move the world by your prayer-only if you are no longer arrogant! No longer stupid, in another word.

"Resonance" is a term used in physics, too. The most significant discovery of resonance in the natural world seems to me Fred Hoyle's. As far as I understand, he predicted that, in order for carbon to be made by nuclear fusion in stars, there must be a strictly fine-tuned nuclear energy resonance, which later was confirmed by experiment. If this discovery was not made, it would have been impossible to explain how we were made, for carbon is the central element in building organisms.

The following is his often cited words:

A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.10

Though Fred Hoyle recognized a "super intellect" as responsible for fine tuning, most scientists do not, though they recognize fine tuning. But as long as some "super intellect" or designing agent is not assumed in or beyond (we don't know which, nor does it matter) our universe, physics cannot be incorporated in the whole body of human knowledge and therefore cannot hope for further development.

That Hoyle discovered the phenomenon of "resonance" in carbon, the most important element of life, is of special significance, because the universe itself is a vast phenomenon of life, and life itself is a vast phenomenon of "resonance" both in space and time. Life itself existed from the very beginning, though invisibly. If the microcosm, man, is a being designed to be an organic whole, it follows the macrocosm is designed to be an organic whole, too. There must be such a thing as backward causation. Does anyone believe a human fetus grows to be a man by mechanical causation alone? Also, has anyone ever heard of a pain in the foot unknown to the brain?

If such is true of man and the universe, we ought naturally to be able to feel pain and pleasure of remote unseen people. Thus ethics should be one area of "natural" science based on the universal principle of "resonance." Materialism, in contrast, is a principle of repulsion or rejection. If our culture is (unconsciously) dominated by such a principle, it is more than obvious that discord will prevail and bring us to destruction.

To prevent such a doom, there must first be awareness that we are created beings, and that we were created not incidentally but as the very objective of creation, so that we are entrusted by the Creator to govern everything in this world. We have been trained since Copernicus till today to think just the opposite, to think we are insignificant beings in the universe, incidental products produced by natural causes. This has long worked to breed in us fake humility. I would call this illusion of our worthlessness Satan's strategy. What we need is real humility. It was this fake humility that nurtured its friend: arrogance. This cannot be overstressed.

The Privileged Planet reminds us of this overlooked fact using the term ヤCopernican Principle':

We not only occupy an exceptional location within the universe, we also occupy a special moment in cosmic history. While we and our environs are not literally the physical center of the universe, we are special in other, much more significant ways. In a sense we are nestled snugly in the "center" of the universe not in a trivial spatial sense but with respect to habitability and measurability. This fact stands in a stark contrast to expectations nurtured by the Copernican Principle.

We are placed essentially at the center of the universe, so we have to assume we are given a privilege and responsibility at the same time. Noblesse oblige! I think before long this will be recognized as a scientific fact, not merely a speculation. Is this not a fact before which we should be struck with awe? What does it mean to try to distract people's attention from this fact, as some scientists do? It means to poison the seat of "sincerity" of our minds and lead people and the world to destruction.

That our universe was created with us in mind, that we are the microcosm conceived prior to the macrocosm, means that we are the center of the cosmic "resonance." On this principle, as the old Confucian dictum says, we should be guided by sincerity, rectify our thought, cultivate our personality, regulate our own family, govern the country well, and bring peace to the world.

Materialism is a principle of self-destruction. All human activities based on that principle are doomed to fail. We must outgrow our materialist culture as soon as possible, which has now revealed itself as "poisonous wheat" though we have long been deluded as to its real nature.

Notes
1. Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2006), p.6.
2. See www.evolutionnews.org March 15, 2011, "Michael Behe Hasn't Been Refuted on the Flagellum."
3. See www.evolutionnews.org October 12, 2011, "Metamorphosis Debus at Butterfly World, Florida."
4. The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot (London: Faber & Faber, 1969), p.197.
5. Rev. Moon's speech at the Oct. 26, 2011 Hoon Dok Hwe (at the Cheon Jeong Gung, Cheong Pyeong)
6. Rev. Moon's speech at the Oct. 13, 2011 Hoon Dok Hwe (at the Cheon Jeong Gung, Cheong Pyeong)
7. Guillermo Gonzalez & Jay Richard, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Universe Is Designed for Discovery (Washington, DC.: Regnery Publishing, 2004), p.126.
8. Ibid., p.103.
9. Ibid., pp.xiii-xv.
10. Cited in Denyse O'Leary, By Design or by Chance? p.4.
11. The Privileged Planet, p.271.


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