Dogmas, Idols and the Edge of Chaos

This essay, published in Human Ecology Review in 2000, received a John Templeton Foundation Exemplary Award in the "Expanding Humanity's Vision of God" essay competition. It was written in part as a response to studies in theoretical biology under the direction of Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute and experiences at the Institute's first Complex Systems Summer School in 1990. An earlier version was presented at the Xth International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology in Montreal in 1999.