stickman by 'intricacies and complexities' you mean there's sh*& load to study...I agree...

anyway...'If that centralized control does not reside in DNA...then where could it be?'

not to become a medical lecture...how did you understand my last post and respond?...yep...used your senses ie vision and your brain interpreted the writing finally processing to an understanding orientated in your time, place and person...right...then you responded with how that connected with your reality and or possible reality...which called intelligence...agree so far...

break down to its basic components...there is a 'sensory'...'processing'...'effecting'...parts that comes about by 'multicellular cooperative interactions'...

before we apply this to 'liver'...to some common misunderstanding 'plants have no intelligence/feelings'...remember the experiment of placing plant in sealed box with light through small hole in side...few days later plant growth has turned itself to light...now apply above...so at some level plant exhibits 'intelligence'...

now same to each liver cell as experiment...so first 'hypothesis' to test is 'does each liver cell sense its and other cells energies and respond to it'[a good starting hypothesis as we know each liver cell does'nt seem to have 'centralized brain' structure in its or among itself]...so like the plant one has to identify an 'energy sensing receptor'...then move on...and if its true then can explains how livers unique shape formed and maintained...bit like our 'eye of energies' or 'third eye'...another experiment there...

now do you see a initial commonness between 'liver cell'-'all cells to form independent body' and between 'men'-'god'...at the fundamental level of 'dealing with energies'...if so then to know god one must develop their 'skill of energy'...and you will learn more about god if such exists...

Sam

I think my son, what you may be looking for; judging by your adjective rich preamble, is the tribal ethic. A definite missing link in our individualistic western culture.

Don’t look to the aboriginal example of tribe. The west stamped that out of them beginning at the time of captain Cook and continue so to do, with its incessant meddling . The greater tribe of Muslim threatens, keep away. And the Mormon with their appearance of isolated tribalism? If left to the Hill-Billy Yankees of old, would also be extinct. Try for the Hippy clan and tug on some forbidden weed. Should get you there. Nimbin maybe, its up your way somewhere!

pelican, CJ Morgan,
I think the point of the quote was not about insights being beyond one’s ken but about deriding insights one cannot understand. I found another translation of the same part, that follows more closely the German original:

We know full well that men deride whate'er
They do not understand
And that before the Good and Fair,
Which of is hard for them, they grumble;

pelican,
Thanks for the sincere words. I for myself grew up in a Stalinist country, was “lucky enough” not to have had any RE, so the rational part of my faith was provided by my father (a lawyer, admirer of Kant and - you guessed it - Goethe), the emotional part by my mother. These early impressions were supported by personal experience - provided by marx-leninist teachers - of how stupid and dangerous is fanaticism, religious or anti-religious.

“When people are desperate they grasp onto anything that may provide strength, solace or peace (or meaning). This does not mean that God exists but than man has created something that he believes he needs.“

No, it does not, but neither does it mean that God is just a figment of the poor person’s imagination. When a patient is very ill he/she will grasp for any means that might provide relief. This could be a “real” medicine or just a placebo. You are right, you cannot imply from the fact that the person thinks he/she “feels better”, that it was a “real“ medicine” - it could have been a placebo. But neither can you conclude, that it must have been a placebo

CJ Morgan,
I can understand very well that you are annoyed by the “smug delusion that their ‘ken‘ is the right one“. There are many world views that I cannot follow. Some of them I think I can understand but disagree with their conclusions. And I also feel annoyed if somebody tries to force them on me, i.e. using terms like logic, evidence etc. when they mean simply common sense, that I know from physics how misleading it can be.

However I resist the temptation to feel smug about my own world view. I mean not only on this OLO, but also for myself. For instance, I try to separate what I can learn from Dawkins about evolution and genetics from that what I think is his delusion about faith and belief in God (not necessarily the same thing), because I could not know what was his personal experience, or lack of it, with religion. Of course, not all atheists are like Dawkins, there are many from whom I can learn nothing, so I just try to ignore them.

One thing 21st Christians are learning fast - where Muslims are still far behind - is not to get offended by anything, because offence, derision, ridicule etc. caries information about the offender not the object of the offence.

I can also share you feelings for heaven (except for cricket) that we can visualise and understand, but that does not exclude the possibility of a state of awareness that we cannot visualise and understand, so we must refer to it simply as afterlife.

Here are some key books for both: believers/probable gullibles & thinkers/questioners/reasoners out there. 1.The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors (Kersey Graves) 2.The Faith Healers (James Randi) 3.Some Mistakes of Moses (Robert G. Ingersoll) 4.Suns of God (Acharya S.)

George
Thank you for your views, it sounds like you have had an interesting life.

In regard to your comments about placebos, the thing is in the absence of any other evidence, all we can conclude is that it is a placebo effect. We should not discount the value of the placebo effect whether this be via a strong belief or just the power of positive thinking. The human brain is an amazing organ, as it controls the body it can also affect disease. Similar has been achieved with meditation, macrobiotic diets and other healthy mental or physical exercise. This is similar to an argument you made in another discussion about mathematics and computers. The thing is mathematics exists, there is tangible evidence ie. does not require faith.

One of the risks we take when discussing religion is to offend unintentionally when arguing a particular point of view. I am overtly aware that religious beliefs are very important to some people, and while I don’t intend the airing of my own views to change theirs, what we might be hearing from each other is that a set of values or beliefs don’t matter because they are not real. I guess that is the inevitable consequence of discussions of this nature but one thing is clear - belief systems do matter very much to some people.

Whether or not man needs a belief system to provide a framework for morality and behaviour is a different argument. I remember someone once telling me they went to Church but they did not believe in the existence of God or a higher power but believed in the idea of Religion as an important part of society to provide a structure to morality and a sense of community (or words to that effect). This is a whole other argument but I can see that the argument itself has merit even if I don’t proscribe to all of its components or the way in which this sense of community can be achieved.