George,
I'm in my late 40's so not as young as all that.
Snow's two cultures phenomena has been reversed, I'd argue; now it's the humanities that are on the nose and science in the ascendency, hence my mention above of "modern censorship of religious experience—tantamount to religious censorship of reason",
Postmodernism seems to be nearly universally condemned, but like most isms it's not all bad. Unfortunately, the word has been so abused it's now more or less meaningless.
I do remember the "science wars", in fact they're still underway. Indeed there's been a history of such contention since the Enlightenment, Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" perhaps being the most seminal work. In English Lit., "realism" is still a dirty word among many.
Science continues being stunningly successful, but it relies on the patronage of liberal humanism (as does the church), indeed rides on its back. Scientific objectivity is in a symbiotic relationship with capitalism, as is the church; a vast hegemon, indeed an unholy trinity, each feeding off the other, yet each ideologically exclusive.
George: "I did not understand what you meant by a world-view holding sway". "Surely you don’t want a prevalent world-view against which others are appraised". The whole point Taylor is pushing is that we do need such a view. And Is this not precisely the position of organised religion?
The view I've argued is that no such ethical foundation holds sway, that individuality transcends "ultimate" world views, yet stands in need of valid ethics. Such validity, whether in an existential or religious context, can only be maintained via its being scrupulously instanced at the level of authority--religious or secular.
Relda,
shall give some thought to your post. But surely the "organised" church is a worldly business (like English Lit.) whose theology is purely academic?

Oliver,
To clear things up, I was referring to,and within a Christian context, panentheism and not pantheism, and as I’ve previously explained, the two are readily distinguished. The German philosopher Friedrich Krause(1781–1832)sought to reconcile monotheism and pantheism and acatually coined the term panentheism("all in God")in 1828.

Panentheism is inherent in Judaism(one of the “big players” you mention),since the ‘Lord of Israel’ has no body and is both transcendent and immanent. Islam, another “big player” you mention, is unfortunately divorced somewhat from its Sufi thinkers who hold beliefs that are somewhat panentheistic. Your third “big player” has a strong connection with Hellenistic, Egyptian writings, to form the basis of Neo-Platonism and Hermeticism, and have elements that are polytheistic and panentheistic. Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent "God" (The One) of which subsequent realities were emanations. From the One emanates the Divine Mind (Nous) and the Cosmic Soul (Psyche).These beliefs have heavily influenced the Western Esoteric Tradition (often Christian).

To diverge further from the ‘big three’, we have the North American Native Peoples (e.g. the Cree, Iroquois, Huron, Navaho, and others) who were and still are largely panentheistic i.e., conceiving of God as both immanent in Creation and transcendent from it. Also, we have Brahman i.e., the transcendent and immanent Ultimate Reality of Hinduism. So, as you can see, there is a considerable convergence and an integral basis amongst the so called ‘competing religions’. What divides them, at some dark and deep level, I’d contend, is purely our own doing.

Dawkins defined the meme as a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation, definitions, however,do vary. The lack of a consistent, rigorous, and precise understanding of what typically makes up one unit of cultural transmission remains a problem in debates about ‘memetics’. A significant question arises where the 'memeticist' reduces a highly complex body of ideas (such as religion, politics, war, justice, and science itself) to a putatively one-dimensional series of memes. Reducing ideas down to a"meme-substance"introduces a bias toward scientism and abandons the very essence of what makes ideas interesting, richly available, and worth studying.

Relda, Oliver, Squeers et al.

Since panentheism has entered the discussion I would suggest that it is a fundamental component in the growing groundswell to completely renew the world-wide church. For instance Matthew Fox, excommunicated from the Roman church years ago for his “heresy”, has nailed his 95 theses to the computer screens of the world.

In particular Fox’s Thesis No. 6 states:
Theism (the idea that God is ‘out there’ or above and beyond the universe) is false. All things are in God and God is in all things (panentheism).
[See http://www.matthewfox.org/sys-tmpl/theaweproject/ ]

John Spong, formerly an Episcopalian Bishop, writes in a newsletter:
I join the mystics in saying that I think I am part of what God is.

More and more thinkers, writers and activists are putting forth similar messages embracing panentheistic notions in various movements. They are attracting a very large following. I believe what Fox calls the New Reformation and the approach Spong has recently exemplified in his Manifesto will eventually lead to a radically renewed global Christianity.

Relda et al,

“ Pantheism is clearly incompatible with the Great Tradition of Christian thought. Pantheism is the claim that God is all there is or that all is God. It is a radical immanentism that denies the transcendence of God. Although there is some dispute about his teaching, it would seem that Spinoza, for example, equated God with the systematic perfection of the world order. In pantheism, God engulfs all, which theoretically results in negating what is not God. The practical result, somewhat paradoxically, is the negation of God as an unnecessary hypothesis. When all is God, there is no need for God… Krause posited God as the primordial being who contains the universe but is apart from it and superior to it, with human consciousness being a participation in the mind of God toward which nature is evolving.” – Neuhaus 1997

Were Christians to accept panentheism, it would be a radical departure from the path Christianity has taken to date, yet (Judaism and) Christianity have changed many times over the centuries.

If, in a sense, all that is in the Universe, is a manifestation of one facet of God (who also has other higher transcendental characteristics), then human thoughts and deeds are an expression of God, including the thoughts of Richard Dawkins and the deeds of Stalin.

Any idea of evolving towards God's perfection would on the surface seem mimic Plato forms, wherein a subtype desires imitation of the perfect achetype.

The lack of demarcation between the spiritual, the earthly and the human, I guess would be known to Australian aboriginal clans, wherein, the aboriginals never owned land in the Western interpretation, rather they were an intergral part of the spiritual land.

I have modelled cultures, mathematically. I see Dawkins would risk error were he to be too literal in digitizing (if that is an appropriate word) memes as units. However, it is possible to create usable constructs from culturally-based factor analyses. Residual error is often present in the tested model, as might be expected.

Crabsy,

Thanks for the Matthew Fox link.

Oliver,
Your reply to relda makes more sense to me than the other part about Sells, and I appreciate it. It gave rise to a very interesiting mini-essay by relda about the panentheist (not pantheist which is in fact atheist), understanding of Goid, who is thus seen as BOTH transcendent and immanent (conceptually reminding me of wave/particle duality).

As to Sells, I thought we already agreed he should be more respectful when expressing disagreement with other views, and we also agreed to disagree on whether he should be prescribed the perspective from which to write. (By the way, Lorenz transformations preserve the Minkowski metric of Special Relativity, and you probably meant inertial, not inferential, frames of reference. This, however, is unrelated to “staying within one frame, say Newtonian Mechanics”. Frame in mathematics refers merely to the choice of a system of coordinates.)

>> it must balance preservation of its kernel to survive and change to survive: A dynamic oxymoron. <<
You do not need to change the symbols when adjusting their interpretation or application, or the name of the concepts when expanding their meaning. Also in science, progress usually goes via expanding knowledge or explaining phenomena, not denying what has been based on millennia of experience. We still experience that unsupported objects fall down, although today we know there is no absolute “down”, and you need a lot of “artificial” (mathematical) symbolism to understand how physicists view gravity.

Maybe the idea of the “Christian Trinity” would be foreign to Jesus, I don’t know, but surely there are many concepts that humanity arrived at - for whatever reason, for instance to clarify some previous understanding - that would have been foreign also to those who centuries ago gave rise to the direction in thinking that led to these concepts (e.g. the concept of wave-particle duality would have been foreign to Newton).

crasby,
“Panentheism ... posits that God exists and interpenetrates every part of nature, AND timelessly extends beyond as well” (Wikipedia). The classical term would be “immanence“ or “omnipresence“ instead of interpenetration.

Squeers,
Thanks for clarifying some things for me. Well, I am in the early 70s. What you call “modern censorship of religious experience” etc, resonates with my earlier saying that “There were times when the role of religion as ersatz-science was needed and justified. Those times are (or should be) over; and ... I believe that the role of science as ersatz-religion ... is also temporary.”

My approach to philosophy (and my Christian world-view) is through philosophy of science, and my favourite philosophers, even theologians, are those with at least some background in mathematics, because I can understand them better, irrespective of whether I agree with them or not. So I shall probably not probe more deeper into Taylor, although I am thankful for calling my attention to him.

I do not think one can that easily correlate “liberal humanism” (a world-view or approach to arts and literature?), science (a field of enquiry into the structure of nature), and church (an institution). The two cultures of C.P. Snow cut across the theist-athiest divide. For instance, I am on one side of the first divide with Dawkins but not Taylor, whereas in relation to the second it is the other way around.

As to “needing a world-view against which others are appraised" I think one has to distinguish between the individual (where the need can be explained also in psychological terms) and societal level (where Christendom provided a fitting example, but, I agree, it cannot and should not be replicated). Recognition of a common denominator of available ethical norms - e.g. Küng’s World-ethos - does not mean its enforceability. However, I agree that such a globalised state of ethical affairs based on consensus of participating systems, rather than on enforcement, is still illusory. For years Europeans have been arguing with each other what to base their Union on, what should be their nations’ and cultures’ common denominator, politically but also ethically. Although a satisfactory European solution is closer on the horizon than a global one, I think both are perspectively inevitable lest humanity self-destructs.