The author muses, supposes and postulates as he or she tells us what he or she believes and what he or she thinks others may or may not believe? But nothing about what he or she knows.

I know a couple of things.

#/1 Energy can neither be created or destroyed and what we see as our visible universe is created out of it in many altered forms.

#/2 And as mass composed of rapidly vibrating atoms with vast atomic spaces in-between.

#/3 Moreover, this visible discernable universe is but a small fraction of the mater in the universe, with dark matter representing the bulk of it.

#/4 And in the most plausible theory yet, the actual source of the energy component that was transformed to become the known universe, which includes you and I, every living breathing being, plant-animal and inanimate objects air water and the entire planet that serves as host for the latter.

As for intelligent design? We know that e.g., we can create pseudo-life in a laboratory. i.e., viruses, but only in carefully prearranged formats and under carefully controlled conditions, and even then, only ever in the presence of an overseeing intelligence.

As one gazes at a night sky resplendent with more visible stars than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the entire world!

It simply and completely beggars belief that all this and the many steps that proceeded it was the result of serendipity or fortuitous happenstance!
Alan B.

Meanwhile what about Consciousness, and Light which is The Energy of Consciousness.
http://www.consciousnessitself.org
http://www.beezone.com/da_publications/broken.html

Plus the contents of this book provide the answers to all of the points/questions that George posits - and much more too.

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/nirvanasara/index.html

Just face it George, being an atheist is totally irrational. No one is stupid enough to believe something comes from nothing and that design requires a Designer. No amount of excuses for such ignorance from educated men passes any sort of intelligence test.

To George Virsik,

I must say, philosophy is a world of wonderment. Often it will tell a story and help us understand a story from a whole different perspective, a different world view, and a different world one person lives in compared to another. At least in so much as their situations, and their experiences differ that would make them live worlds apart.

However it is easy to get lost in the world of philosophical reason. Without a foundation to ready oneself against what is real and what isn't almost anything can be believed, sometimes even spoken well in spite of it being real or not. A look at politics shows how bias judges the same events and cuts to different conclusions. One would see a failed approach and say, this failed, we should never try it again; while another will look at a failed approach and say we failed this time, but if we try harder it will work this time. With a bias against certain politics and policies, any political view can look at their own party's failures and say "we need to try harder, and this time succeed," while at the same time look at the other parties' policies and say "they fail over and over again, when will we learn to throw them away."

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My point is that it's easy to get lost in just philosophical reasoning. Without a foundation to say, "this is real," anything can be believed. Without a measure of what is real, anything can be misunderstood, exaggerated or ignored.

In this case I would wager that these philosophical musings paint a story and a landscape to tell it's tale, but it doesn't get the details right. So how can it accurately decide if either side of the argument is real or if it is just lost in thought.

Please, don't take that as an insult. I appreciate you trying to see the world from a theist's perspective. But there are details missing. And theologies that are merged or ignored from different religions united under the banner of religion and theism.

I can not speak from the details of a Muslim, nor from the scope of a Hindu. But I can give a better picture from a worldview within Christianity. If Christianity is true or holds the truth in it's different views, then understanding it based on what it actually is should be the method. Not a mixing of all religions. The same idea is true if Hinduism is true, or Islam is true. Or if anything else is true. It can only really be weighted and measured accurately if it is represented accurately and not a mix of other religions.

Since I am not from a background of other theistic religions, I can not give you a better understanding of many other religions as a whole. But if you are interested, I can give you a better picture of a Christian theistic view. If you are interested. For the sake of philosophical understanding, or for the sake of seeking what's true and measuring it from the the truths of Jesus and God being a firm part of the world we live in.

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Dear George,

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1. You wrote :

« Reality - objective, all that exists independent of whether or not thought of by humans - has aspects or features that are principally not accessible by (natural) science; these aspects one calls transcendent, (divine, spiritual, supernatural) »

[Would you kindly provide a few examples please ?]
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2. You also wrote :

« … if some properties assigned to God seem to go against common sense … so do some properties assigned to matter ... Put simply, in both physics and metaphysics, one needs to go beyond a naive common-sense approach »
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In other words, transcendence and metaphysics are one and the same phenomenon – which you refer to as God.

Much has been attributed to “God” ever since primeval man invented the concept to explain anything and everything he did not understand. Though, the list has somewhat diminished down the ages.

But let’s not jump to hasty conclusions regarding that which continues to remain “inaccessible” to our understanding today. Future generations may yet achieve that which we have not.

I, personally, am happy to go along with your default position: that “there is no need for God to explain the working of the physical world”.

As you very wisely observed, when all is said and done :

« the final arbiter is personal faith » – at least, for those who may be a little impatient and feel the need for it !

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