All, especially Sells,

The following is the newspaper article suggesting to me the relationship between the historical Jesus' life(the boy's drawing/outline)and the Nicaean/Christian Church's creed/doctrine ("YOU PUT IN OTHER DETAILS")

http://www.watoday.com.au/technology/sci-tech/rocket-man-gets-reply-after-52-years-20091028-hk22.html

Even non-theists can have relevations ;-).

george, happy to play the logic games, but i'd say the pertinent question is whether anything reasonably satisfies the definition of "religious knowledge". i think spindoc's question was problematic but fair, and remains unanswered.

i enjoyed the DSW essay. thanks for the link. the question of the prevalence of religion is definitely an interesting one. However, while reading the essay, I was puzzled by the tone, the suggestion that somehow it was a response to Dawkins' "God Delusion". I did not remember the question of the evolutionary origins of religion as playing a major role in Dawkins' book.

And it seems my memory was correct. Here is part of Dawkins' response to DSW, available on Dawkins' website:

"The central theme of the book is the question of whether God exists. I agree that it is also interesting to ask whether religion has some kind of Darwinian survival value. But whatever the answer to that might turn out to be, it will make no difference to the central question of whether God exists."

That's o.k., and is not to take away the point of DSW's essay. but it is important to be clear upon exactly the (possible) disagreement between DSW and Dawkins.

Oliver

The web page says 'WA Today', but that story was on the 7.30 report months ago.

Does this confirm what we in the East have always suspected?

That WA is behind the times (in the time zone zone) and most other things too.

George, being "a Christian disqualifies somebody from practising anthropology (or other disciplines)"; excuse me for buying into this question. I met a respected geologist the other day who believed in the resurrection. I was bewildered; someone well versed in the antiquity of the planet, and geological time-spans, who accepted this supernatural event and its significance, which occurred a relative millisecond ago. I also know other Christian academics, including a historian and an anthropologist. Should their faith disqualify them? No, if they can put their faith to one side. But I don't see how they can. Indeed, I don't see how they can fully engage or, "indwell", with these academic discourses and retain their faith. Higher learning is just that; one's presuppositions are invariably put to the test. Are these people really subjecting themselves to the learning at hand, or do they have fingers crossed behind their backs?
On the other hand, I don't believe in belief, but of course this does not mean that I'm without prejudice; indeed I profess my belief in my unbelief with telling sincerity. The very act of unbelief implies naive subscription to a certain reality, where belief and unbelief are each significant discourses.
I'm tempted to concede that religious faith is at least some kind of anchor, whereas a spurious objectivity is like being lost in the desert (I'm fond of imagining the French thinkers, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes et al plodding around dialectically like the comic
Lost Patrol). But in the end I have more respect for the ascetic impoverishment of the true theorist, who scorns the mirage of a cosy belief system and scrupulously enters every new confounding data, ad nauseam, into his emerging thesis. Mystical experience, whatever that is, is very common indeed, but the scientist doesn't even take that for granted. William James, having encountered tons of it, among brutes and Brahmin alike, even experiencing it himself, hypothesised it's origins as "organic"--a dysfunction of the liver or pancreas etc--rather than being seduced by the more flattering explanation.
Anthropologists should leave their beliefs at the door!

Squeers, and George...

This column is losing momentum, it should be put to bed, and we need Sells to fire up his Holy Trinity Gizmo Gaggia Espresso Machine once again to churn out another smoke n' mirrors dirge for us all so we can rush out, caffeine refreshed, to repeat all our same lines.... again, and again... all caught on the OLO Hampster Java Bean wheel of belief and belief in unbelief, or no belief in belief at all...if yers know wot I mean?

I was sent an email the other day, I am sure this is not 'original', how can it be since it was sent to me and I am now passing it on?, with one of those irritating postscripts stuck to its backside.

It said, 'Atheism is a belief.... like not collecting stamps is a hobby'.

Aha, how precise is that?

While Sells and Spong agonise over their beliefs, assuming that atheists do too, well, Spong probably doesn't but I suspect Sells does, I bet they are not stamp collectors too.

But should they be?

Pondering the Lost Patrol, gazing at deep-night stars, watching for Sputnik as Procul Harum plays 'whiter shade of pale' while wondering where A for Andromenda really is in the night sky, or sniffing the sea when you live in the depths of the WBL and never get down to the sample the brine, is always a gobsmacking experience, but only because of the rarity of the event, not because the holy smoke has touched a brain cell (and planted the first seeds of some form of smoke related cancer) in The Noggin, and shoved you down the path to Backwoods Enlightenment, or even a Squeersish Sailor Sam Anchor.

Why are we here? Irrelevant panicky question.

We live, we die. Some die early, some late, some in between. Easily, badly, unpleasantly, effortlessly.

Ah, the uncertainty of it all... within the certainty of it all. How unsettling is that?

hey squeers, I've had a few moderately serious accidents over the years, and personally I think that's as close as I'll ever get to a 'mystical experience'. Shock.
Not quite OOB, but somehow divorced from the painful reality. Quite peaceful really.
Many of the 'techniques' of mystics to achieve their enlightened state, hunger, physical abuse and hardship etc., all seem to be an attempt to force the body into a state of shock.
I always think "next time I almost kill myself, I must try to make the most of it, and explore the higher planes..."
For some reason, I have always forgotten. Maybe next time...