--IF WE ADOPT A PHYSICAL POLE--

The correct state of affairs leaves rationalists on the front-foot searching for more complete explanations. Religionists are on the back-foot.

Sells- like Vatican astronomers refuse look through Galileo’s telescope... I can't look for what I might see, they think. Like, Sells, best stay in the cave. Forget about seeing the mountain! (Confucius).

The problem for Vatican astronomers was NOT simply seeing the moons orbiting Jupiter. Rather, acknowledging Jupiter has moons, creates a "physical" system, having Jupiter NOT Earth at its centre. Thus, challenging theism at its very core. Today, theocrasia under anthropology, civilisational studies and history challenges theism by exposing religion, as a human contrivance. History repeats. Sells can’t look.

Today, we have a good idea of the architecture of a physically created solar system AND have a good idea of the architecture human created religions. Herein, humans created all knowledge about God, moons DO orbit Jupiter, dinosaurs DID lived millions of years before humans. Believe systems are tilled. Scientific secularism provides a brave, questioning world.

--IF WE ADOPT A SUPERNATURAL POLE--

BEFORE one can argue that Gods, Holy Ghosts and Angels exist, one first must accept the supernatural.

But, the rub is, if the physical world is contact with the supernatural, how do we know we are in contact with God? Or, indeed, the supernatural has a God? Could be a deceptive entity, a mischievous elf, of sorts.

Can the religions PROVE contact with God over a mischievous elf; even, if there is a supernatural realm? Hmmm?

-- The prophets retort, “they [spirits] said so”! My bush, cloud, wall or tongue, said, “I am”. But, how do we KNOW so? My bush, cloud, wall or tongue, said, “I am”.

-- The churches cite the Holy Scriptures! Holy? Did you say, Holy? How do we know these scriptures are Holy? The churches, retort, The Holy Scriptures say so! But, how do we know, what the Holy Scriptures say IS holy? The Holy Scriptures say so!

-- “Like a circle within a circle. Like a wheel within a wheel…” – Windmills of the Mind

Oliver,
Your questions barely scratch the surface. Perhaps dig a little deeper. Look at the fundamental dichotomy as reflected in the philosophies of Kant, Blake, Hegel, Tillich, Schopenhauer, Buber, and Sartre.

Modern science suggests that the conscious and unconscious each possess the very characteristics necessary for them to perfectly reproduce the millennia-old afterlife scenarios of Eastern and Western traditions, but only if they divided apart at death. The ‘truth’ as expressed by the ancients is as relevant as ever. The Gnostics viewed man's inner being as bipartite in nature, differentiated into two entirely different elements - soul and spirit.

A "Reunion of the Two" is a common theme in the Gnostic scriptures. But instead of always calling them "soul and spirit" or "Adam and Eve", we can portray the two in terms very reminiscent of science's "conscious and unconscious". Yahweh Elohim forms us from the dust of the ground and breathes the breath of life into us, and we become living souls (Genesis 2:7).

Remember the dichtomony..."The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and cuts so deeply it divides the soul from the spirit." - Hebrews 4:12

Relda,

"Modern science suggests that the conscious and unconscious each possess the very characteristics necessary for them to perfectly reproduce the millennia-old afterlife scenarios of Eastern and Western traditions, but only if they divided apart at death."

Sounds interesting. Would you please elaborate? The Brain is very complex, of course, and, runs a multitude of systems. People like the Hopi indians use drugs to induce transcendental states in life.

Have read Kant, Blake, Hegel and Satre. Not Tillich and Schopenhauer.

Valid investigation into the creation its subsequents, I posit, involves several dichonomies, and synthises too. Something like a decision tree on its side, with branches and convergenences over time. Will don't start with gods, but, maybe we consider divinities along the way [Accept/Reject]. Even a creator need not be a god [universe in a laboratory]

Feel the physical/nature versus supernatural poles need to be addressed early on.

Religionism and the scientific leagacies of Newtonian mechanics, don't/won't see the full picture. Herein, the thought processes, which permit religion are interesting in themselves and are too slowly be adopted by science.

Otherwise put, there maybe no gods but one should visit systems and gestalts, and, see the limitations of reductionism. New approaches mathematics hopefully will be developed, e.g. Mandelbrot sets. Indian religions perhaps have some interesting concepts related to continuity, differernt to the Western and Byzantine traditions.

All,

We should all be fairly fluid in our mindsets, I suggest. There is value in apportioning probabilties to several posits at the same time, rather than being entrenched and overtly defensive to contrary evidence. Catch is, too often careers and identities are involved, and, the past commitment cannot readily be overturned. Herein, give me an open system to a closed system (Sells and Boxgum)anytime. Some might write an article each month, but not be prepared to discuss it.

Sells,

Surely, it is valid to address the achitecture of religion in the context of "How does God exit?" and "The rise of secularism religion". Your silence, is a puzzlement to me. But, if you can't you can't.

-- Best wishes for 2007,

O.

“Religionism and the scientific leagacies of Newtonian mechanics, don't/won't see the full picture.” – I agree. Heisenberg and Schrödinger have, in their revelation of the quantum realm, undermined a materialistic determinism that was once the basis for the Newtonian universe. As one crosses the border into the quantum realm, materialism evaporates.

Any ‘religion’ inclusive of this reality pierces the Newtonian world, a world veiled beneath the apparent reality of matter, determinism, naive objectivity, and separation.

On the consciousness/ subconsciousness dualism: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung first introduced psychology's binary-mind hypothesis in the early 1900's. Whilst it was reluctantly accepted as valid by the scientific community for many decades, it was increasingly dismissed by later theorists, until, by the end of the 1970's, it was on the verge of being unceremoniously discarded altogether by modern scholarship. But then neuropsychology came along and provided substantiating objective evidence for what had previously been a purely subjective hypothesis. After applying the most rigorous tests possible, modern man has again arrived at the conclusion that we are indeed two-part creatures - that two entirely separate and distinct minds do indeed co-exist in the brain, one residing in the right hemisphere, and one in the left. This conclusion was first made public in the 1981 split-brain study Right Brain Left Brain, by Sally Springer and Georg Deutsch.

Considering science discovered the existence of the unconscious about 100 years ago and has been building temples to it ever since, this is pretty amazing evidence of the strength of the division in the human mind. Even after a whole century of confirming research, the average person still goes around in his life totally ignoring, discounting, or overlooking the fact that half of his own mind is AWOL, mistakenly assuming he is the uncompromised master of his own psychological domain. In reality, the average person is still hopelessly divided, half of his own being is utterly foreign to him.

The ancient religious concept that we all possess both 'head' and 'heart', soul and spirit has been reintroduced once by science the past century (Freud and Jung - analytical psychology)

Have always admired Freud, as a brilliant model builder. Given his era, he probably could do no more than than produce models. Freud's psychoanytical interpretations (e.g., Little Hans)seem to fall short against Skinner (operant conditioning) and Wolpe (systematic desentitisation, the latter two having experiment support. But the scientific backlash may have been too strong. Some good Freudian models were thrown out with the dirty bathwater. (Freud reminds me of the girl with the curl...)

In the 70s, Jung presented an all too mystical image, too much for the scientific community; A few fans in San Franscisco, perhaps. Even if Jung can be debunked, the notion in QM that not all the waveform is normalised, some outside the barriers (Penrose), loosely suggests collective quantum interconnectiveness. Albeit, personally I can't see it at a macro scale. Just the same, QM does have a pinch of Jung.

In physics, including QM and relativity,using time(t)as an operant is problemic. Time is a continuous. Integers are not. Work needsto happen here. Something less mechanical and maybe not fully formed?

Even though spirituality and mysticism may tend to be a bit iffy, the cognitive antecendents seem genuine and worthy of serious investigation. Relately, science should not dismiss the "processes" of religionism, when rejecting the actual religions.

If we had to process everything our brain does consciously, there would be gridlock, especially, if language needed to be reduced from thoughts.

We are only 6,000 years into a pattern of civilization, which might last a million years, herein, it is early days. Religion, as superstition, will hopefully wane, but, the processes underlying religion thought and the fundamental operants of the spirital mind might be captured by science, as QM and sunrise sciences develop non-mechanical, even non-reality-based approaches.

It's encouraging to read so many calls for proof.

Christianity claims to be an historical religion so it, quite rightly, lives or dies by its historicity.

Science is a wonderful tool of ours and to read demands for Christianity to scrutinised by such tools, strikes me as a completely rational and urgent one.

Those who aren't aware of the latest fruits of Biblical Criticism (Analysis) might be surprised to learn that the sceptical position regarding the historicity of the Bible is everywhere on the defensive.

The civilisation we all have roots in hasn't been one big pile of mistakes based on superstition. Our inheritance really is a treasure that’s been kept from us.

I hope the majority of us who know little about it can, like St Paul, let our fellow Aussies know what hope exists that really does belong to them.

Have listen
Dr. William Lane Craig California State University 2005

'Resurrection: Fact or Fiction'
http://www.veritas.org/3.0_media/talks/146

Also I think most of you will welcome

Dr. Ben Witherington's talk: Ohio State University 2005

Breaking the DaVinci Code: The Question of Jesus and Historical Truth
http://www.veritas.org/3.0_media/talks/412

about the historical claims of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code".

The spirit I pick up from reading the posts is one of a refusal to be deceived. So in that spirit I offer the links above and hope they provide some delightful food for thought.

Regards,

Martin