"In short, it is only the Church that stands against outbreaks of angelism and bestialism because only the church works with an accurate anthropology that marries the two."

Religious tactics 101: invent an imaginary problem and offer your brand of snake oil as the only solution.

We are rapidly approaching the point where people offered disastrous advice by hopelessly unqualified religious counsellors will be able to sue for compensation, queuing up behind all the sexually abused children. Do you really want to be a part of that, Peter?

"You are dust and to dust you will return,"
That just about sums up the writings of Sells.
What is it about you that you keep heaping coals of fire on the heads of scientists. We live in a real world, not some abstract universe controlled by an abstract being called God.

David

<<A person suffering from angelism may be described as, "Being like god in one's freedom and omniscience," or suffering from "abstraction of the self from the self">>

But we ARE God. The aforementioned "self" is a false notion, referring merely to one's body-mind that has nothing to do with us, which is of dust and to dust it will return - being detached from this body-mind and instead recognising our own true and divine nature, is not a mental illness but the most healthy and wonderful thing that can happen to us.

(obviously this doesn't justify going around in the world believing that our body-mind are free and omniscient - they are not)

Therefore, Yuyutsu, we are not God, regardless of the status of the self.

The whole article relies almost exclusively on regurgitated hearsay opinion, which is presented as some sort of ipso facto, evidence to support the authors beliefs?

Yes sure there is an internal battle between good and evil; but no man can tell us what it is.

No one man can assert with any authority, that the practice of responsible birth control; and or safe sex is inherently evil; albeit those supporting those harm creating opinions, may well be?

Normal sex between consenting adults and the God given sexual drive is not part of the problem, whereas abnormal celibacy and absolutism, may well be?

In the esoteric tradition i.e., the Arch Angel Lucifer was massively maligned because he always came bearing evil or bad or unwelcome tidings, and as we do now with the messenger, pilloried for being the bearer of bad news!

And as for God appearing among us as a manifested Man, all we have supporting that belief, is words written 50-100 years after the alleged event, and reliant on hearsay on hearsay (he said she said) evidence rather than so much as a single eyewitness account!

Moreover those accounts appear to have been subject to plagiarism and serious fanciful embellishment, to fill in the missing parts that would cast doubt on the entire story, or that the man was the predicted Messiah!

And brought into further serious doubt, given no religious leader can place his hands on or cure the sick, part of the alleged promise of the so called Messiah! Nor can such a man demonstrably free of the promised holy spirit, forgive sin!

Peter is free to believe what he will. However the scientists he regularly bags deal in facts, while his best is limited to fairy tales; and stories to frighten the children and the weak minded; and or like his ilk, exercise self conferred control?
Rhrosty.

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Dear Peter,

.

You wrote :

« The medical model of mental health with its focus on brain pathology has dismissed the mind (read soul) as irrelevant. »

What is mind? No matter !
What is matter? Never mind !
What is the soul? That is immaterial !

.

What a dreadful utterly pretentious and obscurantist title. The essay is also full of the usual unexamined christian presumptions and cliches.

What is the Truth of our situation?
And conversely what are the origins of the dreadful situation (or psychotic split) that we are all suffering from?
What if the dreadful situation (or psychotic split) was essentially created by all of the old-time christian "authorities" such as Augustine? And held in place and perpetuated by all of the benighted christian "priests" (meditating on fear and death)
This humorous talk provides a humorous Understanding of our situation:
1. http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/dreadedgomboo/chapter1.html

This talk provide a unique Understanding of the origins and devastating cultural consequences of the "spirit" versus "flesh" psychotic split in the consciousness of Western man. It was given in response to the Stone Buddhas incident in Afghanistan. Muslim fundamentalists suffer from the same psychotic split - and even more so.
http://www.adidamla.org/newsletters/newsletter-aprilmay2006.pdf

A paragraph on the nature of the sex-paranoid body-negative nature of the "spirit" versus "flesh" education that is taught and promulgated by conservative christians all over the world.

"The entire social and cultural game of antisexual, "spirit against flesh" education is so monstrous, so opposed to incarnate happiness and human responsibility, that it must be considered the primary social and philosophical issue of our time."

Of course the most obvious in-your-face manifestation of this game is the totally irrational opposition by "traditional" "catholics" to the possibility of women being priests in the "catholic" church.

Peter, you sometimes manage to create highly indigestible pieces that require significant exercise of the mental rumen!

I have a view that there is a specific difference between morality and ethics, which is that morality is to some extent innate within social species, while ethics is an attempt to rationally codify behaviours so as to more closely conform to that innate morality. It's an imperfect distinction, but I think an important one.

Having been inclined to this view for a couple of years now, I was very interested to come across this paper

http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/BiolTheor-Evolutionary%20Moral%20Realism-Collier-Stingl.pdf

which expresses a similar view, but much more eruditely than I could.

It seems to me that this is very close to the idea of morality as a God-given set of preceptual rules that we can only ever hope to live up to imperfectly, which in turn gives rise to the concept of original sin that you are expressing in your piece.

I agree strongly with your view that there is a role for personal public abnegation as a means of "grounding" ourselves within the social milieu. After all, every other social species has some form of dominance/subjection ritual that emphasises the preeminence of the individual's role as a member of a group over individual self-interest.

For humans, who seem to have a considerably greater power than other species to cognitively override instincts, a ritual which emphasises the importance of the instinctual morality is undoubtedly a functionally useful social component.

I don't agree that the eucharist has an exclusive mortgage on that function, although for some it is undoubtedly important.

Perhaps we need to think about how we might usefully implement a secular equivalent to the eucharist that doesn't, as so many of our secular rituals seem to manage, focus on sacrifice in conflict as the highest exemplar of human morality?