Sells:

Yes U did misjudge me but credit to U for admitting the mistake.

Maybe U R right about Descartes being the source of our divergences: cogito ergo sum always impressed me, for all that strict logicians point out the argument is circular... the alternative is solipsism which is the great grandfather of relativism.

The Chinese, it must be noted, have a sense of history at least as deep as do the Jews...and a far greater body of material fleshing it out, too.

Consider if U will (not necessarily on these pages) some of the wierdness emerging from mod physics - esp quantum physics, which asserts the necessity of an OBSERVER for some phenomena to have validity. I myself am unsure just what implications such a conclusion might have: it (almost) harks back to the old chestnut about whether there is a sound when there's nobody there to hear it...

As to whether there R theologians worth reading, I'm unqualified to say. But I do wonder how one makes such a judgement independent of one's religious affiliation (eg, how cd I, an atheist, make such a judgement if I read up in the field?). Good science, we know, is strictly testable. Good history, whatever else, must rely on all available source material - incl archaeology, etc - and avoid the imposition of a writer's prejudices (that's why there's less of it than there shd be). Good theology relies on...?

Alchemist,
Note most of history is recorded by events that change societies, and that is how you have read history. Most history goes unreported, it is the daily lives of ordinary people living happily together.

This is evidenced by the news reports we receive every day, example Iraq, it is only the very local events of terror or death that gets reported, while most of Iraq goes on quietly and achieves a days work. Who reports the well achieved days work? It is obvious you study history by the wars. Most of life goes on not involved in wars. Most of the developments in science over 400 years have come from men and women of faith. Their faith enhanced their work, and their work did not destroy their faith.

Quote, "Whatever you try to say, the outcome is according to the veracity of the faiths applications. That veracity is within its factual history."

'Ancient Greece is history, but we still study what their philosophers had to say. Ancient Israel is history, but we don't kill our neighbours anymore for working on the sabbath, as they suggested. They are history too. '

Well said Yabby. The irrational behaviour in the name of the monotheistic religions has a long history of using terrorism to get conformity within society.

We also see this example in Islam. This statement is taken from the Hadith;

SAHIR BUKHARI

Volume 8, Book 82, Number 806:
Narrated Abu Huraira:

'A man came to Allah's Apostle while he was in the mosque, and he called him, saying, "O Allah's Apostle! I have committed illegal sexual intercourse.'" The Prophet turned his face to the other side, but that man repeated his statement four times, and after he bore witness against himself four times, the Prophet called him, saying, "Are you mad?" The man said, "No." The Prophet said, "Are you married?" The man said, "Yes." Then the Prophet said, 'Take him away and stone him to death." Jabir bin 'Abdullah said: I was among the ones who participated in stoning him and we stoned him at the Musalla. When the stones troubled him, he fled, but we over took him at Al-Harra and stoned him to death.'

Fortunately, whenever the idealology of science, humanism and rationalism break through into monotheistic societies we see this sort of reprehensible behaviour modified and moderated. It simply becomes unacceptable to a more enlightened and compassionate society

Sells, “Jesus could not have been for or against something that only happened in the 16th century.”

Philo, “Most of the developments in science over 400 years have come from men and women of faith.”

Again we have the deluded monotheists trying to change history regarding science. Christian Europe may've only started to drag itself out of its despotic superstitious practises in the 16th century, but china had malleable cast iron, gunpowder and many other scientific techniques in common use as early as the 3rd century BC.

Read the "Katha Upanishad", (1700BC) for more scientific beginnings in India.

In the 5th century, Zu Gengzhi published the formula for the volume of a sphere from Li Chunfeng's lost book, "Jiu zhang suanshu" (Arithmetic in nine chapters), written before the 1st century. Liu Hui, third century A.D, the volume of a pyramid:

Iron artifacts have been found in Chinese graves dating before 500BC. Agriculture, shipping, astronomical observatories, decimal mathematics, paper money, umbrellas, wheelbarrows, multi-stage rockets, brandy and whiskey, the game of chess, compasses and navigation. The sciences of astronomy, physics, chemistry, meteorology, seismology,technology, engineering, and mathematics can trace their early origins to China.

Archaeological facts, are far superior to historical illusion.

Philo, trying to support your fallacy by again changing the goal posts to gain an advantage, always fails when everyone sees you doing it. Ordinary people have always suffered under the wings of monotheism, even of not involved in war. The suppression of free thought by religion is well documented throughout every society, in its laws, courts, churches and enslavement. The churches were very involved in slavery.

If the monotheists had their way, we'd all be bowing down to god by force. They still force their children to go to church, bible study or religious instruction. No fee choice for kids there, just forced delusion.

Sells wrote: "The gulf between us was begun by Descartes, the father of the modern age. His project was to produce a philosophy of undisputable argument. When you talk about “rationally testable arguments” you reveal yourself as his heir. The problem is that we do not live our lives that way. The ideology of rationally testable arguments has been found to be an abstraction outside of natural science in which the object under investigation is just that, an object. The reason that psychology has been driven into neuroscience is that conscious beings are far more complex and it is difficult to understand what kind of rationality may be applied to them. Theology is relational and does not fit into the mold of natural science."

Sells, I appreciated your article and agree that we need more than "narrow rationalism" to live meaningful lives. A shared knowledge of the ancient stories - embodying our culture - provides us with a framework within which to communicate complex psychological ideas to each other in relatively few words - ideas which would be difficult or impossible to express in purely rational terms. However, there must always be a clearly understood division between mythological space and everyday reality. It should not, for example, be accepted that salvation, enlightenment or other religious concepts be discussed in the same context as the natural or social sciences. The "rationally testable arguments" Descartes insisted upon force us to acknowledge reality and in so doing, interact more successfully with it.

Alchemist,
It had become evident you are a bitter and twisted mind brainwashed by your atheistic father. You are totally dishonest and cannot accept that persons who do not hold your obsessive and primitive views of human behaviour cannot achieve any worthwile contribution to society. Your imagined perceptions that persons of faith are destructive indicates you know nothing of the lives of people of faith.

The greatest contributions to modern society have been the mechanical printing press, mechenical weaving, electricity, the combustion engine, the electrical wheel, penicillian and many other medicines that have been developed by persons in Western Christian educated societies who believed in a better world.