Sellick wrote:

"This underlines the almost universal divide between the materialist (scientific) view of nature and that held by the Church that includes an immaterial or spiritual dimension. In this context "spiritual" refers to the existence of a supernatural realm within the material realm. These two realities are thought to both exclude each other (material/immaterial) and paradoxically, include each other since the supernatural may act on the natural and vice versus."

Dear Peter,

There is no divide if one doesn't recognise a spiritual dimension. There is no evidence for the existence of such a dimension. Like God and other entities recognised by various religions it only exists in the human mind. To speak of a spiritual dimension as a kind of reality is playing fast and loose with reason. There is some sort of evidence for the existence of any sort of reality. A concept that only exists in the human mind is not reality. Mere belief in the existence of a spiritual dimension does not make it reality.

Belief in a supernatural certainly may act on the natural since belief is real and exists. However, there is no evidence for the existence of any sort of supernatural. Belief in the existence of unicorns does not make unicorns real.

I don't need to read words penned by men claiming to be channeling God to know what I believe!

And I don't need nut jobs with sets of unlikely, unchallenged (bone pointing) beliefs to tell me what to think!

Which has been the role of most religions and belief systems since the dawn of time!

Even so, I find it impossible to look at the wonderment of the night sky, filled with more stars than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world and not believe there was/is a creator.

My difficulty is with the notion that this unimaginably powerful entity would have some close personal interest in some microbes, living in their microscopic billions as alleged humans, on this, relatively speaking, speck of dust we call planet earth.

Is there a life after this one? I believe there is and as an eyewitness.

And because I believe this is so and as the returned eyewitness, believe we are never truly parted from those we truly love, be they family, friends of fondly held companion animals/pets, held with mutual repore/love.
Alan B.

The Uniting Church is a hot bed of socialism.

Speaking of the "authority" of the church I wonder which specific church or group of churches Sells is referring to? And the kinds of books that some of the leaders and "theologians" of these churches write - many examples of which can be found by doing a search on the topic GOD AND DONALD TRUMP.

By contrast to the psychotic madness on full display via these various books give me the "socialist" Uniting Church any and every day - thank you very much.

Meanwhile Aristotle had a profound affect on Thomas Aquinas who in turn had and still has a profound affect on the "catholic" church.
Thomism ( tomb-ism) is very influential in right-wing "catholic" circles. Although they like to pretend otherwise, and contrary to their fanciful entirely speculative lets-pretend left-brained spirit-killing "metaphysics" Thomists are deeply dualistic all the way down.

' The role of the Church in this confusion is to locate itself within the anthropology of the bible and the early Church in understanding human beings as ensouled bodies, i.e. we are bodies with psyches that cannot be distinguished'

really Peter. Since when did you have the authority to decide the role of the church. My understanding is that Jesus is the Head. He said something about preaching the gospel and making disciples not waffling on about bodies and psches.

Discussing the views of Christianity regarding body versus soul in terms of either materialism or duality, is over-simplistic.

Spirits/ghosts and the like, are not truly spiritual, but should rather be classified as merely layers of the material world and as such, material science could quite possibly detect them one day.

It is only in this sense that we can classify the bible as materialistic. The old testament DOES acknowledge the "unseen"/psychic/supernatural, but it clearly (and rightly so) instructs the Jews to keep away from these things. King Saul, for example, disobeyed the Law by seeking the advice of a psychic medium and was punished by death the next day.

The Jewish tradition speaks not of one, but of five different levels of "spirit":
1. Nefesh (now understood to be the electromagnetic field surrounding organisms, which is clearly material and even observable by scientific methods)
2. Ruach (ghost; emotional field)
3. Neshamah (soul, mind)
4. Chayah (the "life particle")
5. Yechidah ("singularity", the point of contact with God)

The role of the church, if it is to function as a religion, is to direct people away from the temptations of ALL the layers of the physical, never stopping short of God.