Continued on...

But when it all is said and done, people will choose what they will whether it be dancing around a totem pole or kneeling in front of a wooden cross and one thing we can be sure of is every group will believe that their version of Religion is the right one.

For some to argue that evolution is a Religion is cowardly. Evolution is a scientific theory based on evidence and which might change over time depending on new available evidence. Unlike Religion, science does not claim to be all-knowing only all-seeking. The science is only as good as the current evidence allows but at least it is honest and does not seek to deceive. Science has given us medical, engineering and other wonders - that is the real stuff of human spirituality and endeavour.

'Church schools should ignore science and instead teach Christian dogma along the lines of the Islamic Madrassa '

State schools do teach earth worshiping religion along with dogmas that deny the unborn being a person. No wonder they are being deserted even by those who claim not to believe in a Creator.

THAT'S NOT IT....the value of any experience is in the inTENsity of the charge that you get from it"

David! People who are addicted to drugs gets the same high.

Why do you need it? Has anything anybody said make no sense to you? (evolution)

I would still recommend warning labels to anything that is uncertain.

especially CHILDREN> I think telling one side of the "story" is not enough.

But seriously! although mankind still needs to believe in something, this is a clear case of evolved and not so evolved,(if I can be so bold) and with religions tainted past, the popularity of the sect is going to draw the wedge even deeper. its time to keep god where it belongs!

In the mind or heart, and not banging peoples ears with it.

Some see right though it!

EVO

I was thinking that now I have more time I would could put aside my neurotic preoccupation with my newly found faith in Harry Potter (blessed be His name) and address Peter's article:-

Where do I start? Perhaps the beginning?

Paragraph 1:-
"There is no doubt in my mind that the replacement of the Christian story with that of natural science has been a disaster. Not, of course, a disaster for our physical well being but a disaster for the spiritual, the existential. This displacement has meant that we have exchanged a story that told us who we were and where we were headed for one that leaves us rootless and directionless."

This is only the first paragraph and I know I will run out of my allotted 350 words before I get to paragraph 2.
Maybe Peter might resolve this by using his allotted words to answer a few questions regarding paragraph 1.

1. What makes you think science has "replaced" the Christian story? I can't even see a connection. Do you mean that the "Christian story" has diminished in its importance in Western society and that other ways of thinking are on the rise?

2. Sorry, call me ignorant, but how come you have thrown "spiritual" in with "existential"? Are not these two opposing ideas? or do you have a different definition of existential than I do?

3. Are you suggesting that everybody who exists or ever existed or is ever going to exist is "rootless and directionless" unless they embrace(d ) the "Christian story"? or is this simply directed at your perceived enemies The atheists/humanists/rationalists/relativists. Do other religions provide any kind of direction or is it simply the wrong direction. (you are not, I trust, suggesting that my new faith in Harry Potter could possibly be the wrong direction to take)

May I also thank Peter for the untold hours of fun we have with his articles. Certainly my life would not be as rich without reading his theological ponderings.

Keep it up mate we need people like you.

A silly myth ? :) Obviously not Polycarp. It remains the greatest of myths and it continues on... an allegory of love that makes love and its purification the very heart of the Christian understanding of God where “wholeness" is ultimately reached. The 'mysterium coniunctionis' or connection of opposites is where Jung reveals a union. Symbolic of this is the Yin-Yang bound in a circle; Leonardo's drawing of the naked human being outstretched within a circle; or Ezekiel's vision of four living creatures, each with four faces and represented by a wheel within a wheel (Ezekiel 1)...

Bemusing it is that that Peter continues to attract such a response – Jung, no doubt, would see a repression of the religious instinct. The power of the primordial, finding the usual idolatries - money, work, food, drugs, a complex of inferiority , an identity crisis, family, and love relationship. We can fall into identification with this power and perhaps see ourselves as gurus, wise beyond telling, inflated beyond our small human size. We can always spot an idol because it apes the way of God. We can also dodge the religious instinct by substituting our map of it for the territory it describes and puff up instead, in the wake of unreceived primordial power, to become instead fanatical-and boring.

It can be argued, with great persuasive power, we live in a post mythological age and in this age 'God is dead'. The myth of a God 'out there', in space somewhere, of a personified parent-figure seems gone with its potential for ontological truth also lost. But, as with the alchemy of old, a belief persists in the unity of the universe. Ironically so, Christian/ alchemist, Isaac Newton with his literalistic theological and prophetic thought helped shape the elements of his natural philosophy in a profound way.

As strange as it may sound, science will forever be in the debt of millenarians and biblical literalists. Today’s ‘creationist’, however, is no match for Newton for he was never considered “obnoxious” but more, a heretic, for being ‘un-triune’.

I'm not entirely sure how you will ever live this down, Boaz, when Sells tells us that:

>>By the way, I thought Polycarp’s first post in this thread one of the best I have read, thank you.<<

I'm sure you'll find a way to bounce back though.

>>PERICLES.. I blame myself.. your tone has radicalized more in your last post..and seems to hold distinct echo's of our conversational transactions in the Song from the 60 thread<<

You flatter yourself, of course. No-one is to blame for my observations on Sells' self-flagellation but myself. And you must be the only person on the planet to find a link between this post and Lydia the Tattooed Lady.

But you leave no stone unturned in your attempts to warp reality to fit your dreamy musings, do you?

>>you won't find dear Pericles admitting this, but the obvious outcome of his newly firmed up personal philosophy are cleary demonstrated in this clip which I've posted in another thread.<<

I have told you before, Boaz, that I rarely open your YouTube clips these days. However, today I made an exception.

Quite frankly, you are occupying space on an entirely different planet if you believe this piece of schlock-horror to represent anything more real than the Teletubbies.

It is a work of imagination, Boaz. Nothing more, nothing less.

(Imagination, as Sells explains to us, is also "the necessary ingredient when reading biblical texts")

>>It doesn't matter whether helping an old lady across the road or raping her daughter fits the [maximize my pleasure] bill<<

Your assumption has always been that relying upon one's own ability to separate right from wrong must inevitably lead to depravity. According to you, unless we believe in your particular version of religious dogma, we are all but a casual whim away from becoming an axe murderer.

This is, of course, arrant nonsense.

As Sells himself is now aware, "mankind is nothing but itself".

All I was doing was agreeing with him.