the great thing about sells threads is that you can be absent for days, and the discussion hasn't advanced an inch. (pretty much a definition of theology).

no time to really address anything, but:

george:

the underlying problem was the passage you were quoting was silly, even on its own terms. sorry, but it's true. but i was very amused by your catalyst analogy.

reida:

the image of sellick causing "angst" was the humour highlight of my year. he creates all the angst of an unswattable march fly.

everyone:

i think jayb is winning. "simian with an opposable thumb" is a damn good place to start

bushbasher,
>> the passage you were quoting was silly ... sorry, but it's true.<<
No problem, after all e.g. runner also likes to promote his personal opinions as true.

Relda,
"Faith actually enables one to escape a deeply rooted paradigm."
(?)
I'm sorry, should I regard this as an argument, or an axiom?

David, very much so. My mate is both a very practical and very spiritual person, who believes Koori spiritual beliefs are just as valid as European ones. His problem with Christianity was, growing up in the Wilcannia district, he heard a lot of preaching but didn't experience much of it in practice.
Let's face it:
Christians going to war?
Military chaplains?
Love thy neighbour, much less love thy enemy?
I sympathised with my children, because I remember my own scripture classes as being largely about Biblical history, with very little on morality or ethics. I remember my scripture teacher as being a most uncharitable, unforgiving martinet.
JayB and Bushbasher, I thought all simians have opposable thumbs.

Jayb, Bushbasher, Grim

As you have pointed out so succintly, science has a simple, useful definition which unambiguously identifies humans. Theology has no such definition which is why so-called Christians could regard other races as sub-human, subject people to slavery and condone the extermination of 'heathens'.

We are also learning through science how dependent we are on each other and on the maintenance of our environment. We are learning that everything is connected to everything and as humans we are deeply involved in the interconnectedness of things in a way that Christian theology has rarely approached.

What Sells is calling the 'deeply human' is the experience of being vulnerable and dependent. Religion, however, identifies dependence on God as the ultimate dependence. Science is exposing our vulnerability and drawing our attention back to more immediate concerns such as whether we are destroying the environment on which we depend so much. Science is revealing the urgency of the situation and making it obvious that we need to cooperate on a global scale. Cooperation has never been a Christian strength.

Sell's assertion that Christianity is to be thanked for our current understanding of what it is to be human is partly true but 'embellished' to mythical and absolute proportions. It is true that science cannot tell us how to love, cannot explain the aesthetic dimensions of art and music and so on. But these are things that pre-date Christianity by a long way and are not limited to the Judaeo-Christian world.

There may be a place for Christianity in the world of the future but only if it loses its dominant culture mentality and develops into the inclusive community that I believe Jesus envisaged.

It's difficult not to sometimes, relda.

>>You take offence far too easily.<<

I have noticed that in order for a religionist to feel good about their own beliefs, they frequently find it necessary to i) decry the religious beliefs of others or ii) ascribe unfavourable characteristics to non-believers.

In this case, it is the "atheists are emotional cripples" riff that I objected to.

>>“The argument that imagination, and emotions, and feelings, and dreams, are all the sole prerogative of Christians does not hold water, I'm afraid.” It is certainly not my argument (perhaps tell me where I may have said or inferred it in a previous post), and if anyone on this forum is to argue it, I’d agree, it doesn’t hold water.<<

The inference, as I pointed out in some detail, was in your support for Sells' cadenza...

"How can [atheists] understand a poem? Or be deeply moved by an opera? Or understand the complexity and contradiction of characters in the great novels? How can they fall in love and rear a family?"

...via your claim that atheists suffer from a "imagination deficit syndrome".

You accuse me of "a rather dogmatic but incorrect inference", but fail to provide an adequate alternative interpretation.

>>[the phrase] merely suggests that we might imagine God, whether he ‘exists’ or not<<

I fully accept that it is possible to imagine God, whether he 'exists' or not. You are yourself living proof of this.

But by positing a world in which imagination does not exist - your "imagination deficit syndrome" - and which is peopled entirely by atheists, there are only two possible conclusions.

One, as I pointed out, is that you are suggesting that without imagination, there is no God. "No Imagination. No God"

The other, that I also offered, is that you choose to believe that atheists are without imagination, in that the disappearance of "God" is the result of a world in which imagination does not exist.

Is there a third possibility that I have missed?

Pericles

My understanding of Sells’ argument is not that atheists can’t appreciate poetry or opera, but that science and scientific study is not adequate to equip us to appreciate them.

In other words, there are different types of knowledge, and different ways of understanding and experiencing what it is to be human. Scientific method serves us extremely well in progressing understanding of some things, but not everything. Faith, along with poetry and opera, belongs to that category of human knowledge and experience that are true or valuable in ways that are not adequately described or explained by science or rationalism.

The conflict between science and religion arises when either strays into the domain of the other – for example, when religious fundamentalists argue that evolution must be wrong because the bible says the world was created by God in seven days; or when rationalists argue that the absence of material proof of God demonstrates that he doesn’t exist.

Our culture holds scientific method and the benefits it has produced in high esteem, and for very good reason. The risks I think Sells is pointing to are twofold – that we see science and rationalism as the only sources of knowledge, and hence discount or disregard those things that can’t be properly understood through them; or that we look to science and rationalism to solve problems that are beyond their competence.