Peter

When the religious knock on my door flogging reams of literature on the magical powers of a deaf, blind, sadistic and invisible mute, I usually answer the door accompanied by my very sensible and instinctively superior canine.

"Woof woof.......Grrrrrrrrrrrr...grrrrrrr...snarl......!"

Peter Sellick- <FOR PAGANISM, WIVES WERE INCUBATORS, IT IS THE MOVE BROUGHT ABOUT BY CHRISTIANITY AND ISRAEL BEFORE IT THAT SAW THE IMAGE OF GOD IN EACH HUMAN BEING THAT PRODCUED THE KIND OF SOCIETY THAT WE ALL NOW ENJOY>

No, it was actually women going to court to argue against the religious male hierarchy for contraception, that saved women from being incubators for the church to produce as many new followers as possible. Even to this day the Christian church refuses to accept modern contraception even though it cannot refuse to let the majority of its followers men and women who use contraception, admittance to its congregations for the simple reason that the churchs would be empty. The people have overridden the church on women being used as incubators and the church has been forced to acquiesce.

Jesus the sacrificial lamb, Who has not heard Jesus referred to on oaccasion as the lamb? That sure seems like a pagan way of appeasing the Gods, the sacrificing of humans and animals. Does Peter Sellick and other Chrisians not see the irony in saying this is enlightened nonpaganism?

Dear csteele,

You asked: "To be fair we would probably have to ask davidf how interchangeable he sees the terms pagans and gentiles?"

Since Sellick has used the word it is relevant how he defines it. He wrote. “For paganism, individual human beings had no faces, they were resources, wives were incubators, slaves were non human, soldiers were fodder for battle.”

I think Sellick has defined his own bigotry. Love, hate, humanity and empathy have never been correlated with any particular religious belief. A number of years ago I visited Delphi in Greece. It was in a beautiful setting ringed with mountains one of which I climbed. On the walls there were a number of inscriptions by the ancients telling what they wished to be remembered by. The most common inscriptions concerned freeing a slave. Although slavery was an accepted practice in ancient Greece many pagan Greeks were clearly uneasy about it and did something to assuage their guilt. However, the New Testament no place condemns slavery. In spite of that and the Inquisition, the Crusades, the wars of the Reformation, the Holocaust, the settling of the Americas with the destruction of the Indian civilisations and the importation of slaves from Africa I refuse to believe that Christians are all evil. There are many instances where Christians have departed from the pattern I outlined above and behaved quite decently. I firmly believe that Christians have the same capacity for love, hate, humanity and empathy that other humans have.

I don’t see the words gentile and pagan as interchangeable although they are related. To me gentile means non-Jewish, and pagan means free-spirited among other things.

The word, gentile, comes from the noun, gens, the group of all those descending from a free male ancestor. The Jews had the idea that all gentiles would eventually see the light and become Jewish. Fortunately, the Jews saw the light and stopped missionising.

Pagan derives from pagus, a villager – someone remote from the city. The meaning, heathen, derived from the fact the villager was remote from the ‘civilising’ aspects of religion.

Wise words Fractelle.

Intuition is part of our human biology and in rational terms (hard or otherwise) is 'naturally' within us and starts probably with our first sucking instinct. Intuition not only derives from the senses but works sub-consciously making best use of previous experiences and is necessary for cognitive development.

Science does not deny intuition and in fact uses it to form hypotheses and in the pursuit of knowledge.

I am pleased that my Christian friends are not so harsh upon their species.

As for howling wastelands or moral emptiness - well one need not look any further than religious fundamentalism.

Thanks Pelican

People who hold beliefs as inflexible as Sellick's, deny you, me and everyone else our basic humanity.

Interestingly, none of my Christian friends share Sellick's view, nor would my other friends, from a mosaic of beliefs and lifestyles, even think to denigrate my innate humanity because I happen to be female, or (mostly) heterosexual, atheist or fair haired & blue-eyed. What is important to them is the measure of who I am, just as I value them for who they are, what they mean to me and my good fortune just to know them.

Many of the forum participants continually decry Peter Sellick’s so-called irrational or unscientific approach to religious or spiritual topics. Scientism, like religionism, is a curse to humanity. Effective ways of knowing are various among and within humans, and all deserve equal respect. There is much more to be said on this, but it must wait for another time.

For the moment let me say what many others have said on innumerable occasions: if we are to be fully human, the scientific method is not appropriate to every aspect of living. I cannot be in a purely logical-empirical way. The ground of my being lies in my examined relationship to both objective and subjective events. The trees outside my study window and the trees I dream about are both part of my experience. I derive value and meaning from both. In other words, I experience my being as a human in both subjective and objective cognition -- and most importantly in trying to reconcile the two. For me, this is spiritual work and Christian practice facilitates it.

I think Peter Sellick is probably doing this too, being a successful scientist and a theologian at the same time