mitchellmckain

These are probably acquired characteristics due to changes in diet, and as you should know acquired characteristics are not inherited or a matter of genetics. You need to look a little beneath such superficialities for the real evolutionary changes. This is true and it is more than just acquired characteristics because inheritance is all about information and the information we pass on to the next generation isn't just genetic any more. We can no longer ignore the impact we are having on the earth and that awareness is the first step towards the evolution (in human communication and social terms rather than genetic terms) of the self-control that we need. That is a science fiction myth. Random radiation damage is NOT what drives evolution or genetic change. It is true that more primitive organisms do make use of this as a source of genetic variation. But for more complex organisms which have evolved their own means to introduce genetic variations in their genome, such random damage when it succeed in overwhelming our rather efficient repair mechanisms, is just cancer, radiation sickness and death and not any kind of productive genetic variation.

A lot of things have changed in the minecraft world since the beginning described in the OP. A lot of things have changed very rapidly in the year that I have been playing the game. Yes it has kept my attention that long. I made a foray into online games for a while before that but I have come to despise the cheap tactic of blackmail that it uses to keep you playing. Play regularly or everything you have built just falls apart. I loved Shores of Hazeron for the open ended sci fi game of building cities, spaceships and stellar empires is any sci fi fan's greatest fantasy, and I clung to it for half a year through several devastaing changes such as when the pirates introduced into the game wiped out all my ships and space stations keeping me cowering in my cities for a long time. But in the end it became a job rather than a game to keep my empire alive.But on to the reason minecraft has kept my attention so long. The answer is a large community that is constantly developing the every kind of modification you can imagine. I do not have one minecraft game, I have hundreds and each of those is a combination of many mods that different people have made for the game. All different kinds of weird technology, magic, monsters, dimensions, friends and even alterations of the basic mechanics of the game itself. And the basic game itself has been changing rapidly as well making the multiplayer features of the game more and more accessible to people and the modders. There are bouts of hilarity also such as when one guy furious at how lame one update to the game was made his own very elaborate mod "Better than Wolves" making fun those changes to the game.In short Minecraft is so successful because it has created an outlet for the creativity of many people, both the players who can build their own house, garden and city as well as the modders who can create their own unique game on the minecraft platform.

I quite agree that any God worth believing in would not be knowable in the sense of a scientfic specimen which you can define, measure and manipulate. But I don't think that captures the totality of the meaning of the word "know". Another meaning of the word has to do with how we know another person which does not neccessarily have anything to do with defining, measuring and manipulating them though I acknowledge that this may indeed what it means to some people in that context. I would suggest that what gets closest a person's identity, more than anything else, is the choices he makes -- what he chooses to see as important and what he devotes his life and time to. It is not in the circumstantial things that have been handed to someone, that we find the real person, but rather in what he decides to do with all of that. In any case, if you can understand what I mean by knowing another person which does not require such things as measurement and manipulation, then I would propose that knowledge of God is possible in that sense. In fact I would suggest that God has a purity of choice, purpose, motivation, and integrity as well as a lack of inner conflicts, confusion that makes him in some sense more knowable than human beings are. It is why many people find Him so reliable and well worth "knowing".

Yes we have removed a lot of the natural selection that played a role in our evolution, but to think that this simply means that we stop changing is a rather naive conclusion. The fact is that the gene pool of the human race is changing more rapidly right now that it has for millions of years. Why? Because as was the whole point of the OP, we are changing the rules which govern our development. We no longer survive as individuals but as members of a community. Members of our race who would never have survived to reproduce ten thousand years ago are now doing so all the time. And this affect has accelerated as our science and technology has accelerated. None of this is speculation. It is simple fact. Now another naive conclusion is that the removal of the previous criterion of natural selection that played a role in our evolution means that we will de-evolve. But this is ONLY true if you have the bad taste to call the handicapped inferior. We have rejected this Eugenics type of thinking to reaffirm the humanity of the handicapped and work toward improving their lives and ability to contribute to society. In short we have chosen to compensate for their disabilities with the technology of the community as much as we are able to do so. The point of the OP is that an analogous thing happened in the development of multicellular organisms where the same kind of protection of its weakers members enabled comunities of cells to evolve specialized cells that cannot survive on their own anymore but which play valuable roles in the community environment which it had created and thus enabled the whole community to do things which the individual cells never could. Adapting our environment is hardly unique to human beings. It very old trick employed throughout the diversity of life on this planet. It is a well known fact that life has completely altered the composition of the atmosphere of this planet. "Natual instincts" to develop a harmony with one environment is frankly a myth that has no basis in reality. No such instinct exists. Either balances are found or things change, and both of these can be found throughout the history of this planet. The truth is that the human race is the only species on the planet that has ever been aware of and concerned itself with the ecological balance of the earth. Our survival may well depend on the development of that awareness and concern, but that just means that with our power to affect the balance of nature comes the responsibility to do it wisely for the consequences otherwise may be our own extinction. But we are allowing the for the adaptation of our own physical forms. But you are wrong to see this as so terribly important because the fact is that our survival no longer rests upon our physical form any more. Our technological capabilities far exceed such considerations. The question of whether we end destroying ourselves isn't a matter of genetic evolution any more but of how we use our technology and how well we adapt to our new reality as a world community.

You cannot edit your own posts anymore? This does not follow. Just because you cannot prove/verify something does not mean that you cannot know it. The cowardly might retreat to such safe grounds, but I have no inclination to make a virtue out of any cowardice. I repudiate the way fundamentalists make a virtue out of the cowarice of capitulating to the intellectual blackmail of a God that says "believe or else you will suffer for eternity". But I also repudiate the way that excessive skeptics make a virtue out of cowardice when they imply that they will not believe what they personally experience simply because they might be scorned by those who don't believe them when they cannot prove it. And I say the opposite. If you can verify the existence of your god, then I will no more worship it than I will worship idols or money or quarks. For within the ability to verify is the abiity to manipulate and thus such a god will be your tool. No thank you indeed. In taking to heart the truth that knowledge and proof are disjoint, I refuse the arrogant affectation that diversity of belief is a product of mental deficiency and instead assert that diversity of belief gives strength to human thought in much the same way that the diversity of species gives strength to the ecosystem and diversity of the gene pool provides strength to a species, by providing them all with greater adaptability -- a kind of group manifestation of creativity. And so in support of this view I embrace the idea that there is an irreducibly subjective aspect to reality which lends an aspect of diversity to truth itself. Yes, I am a pluralist.

This does not follow. Just because you cannot prove something does not mean that you cannot know it. The cowardly might retreat to such safe grounds, but I have no inclination to make a virtue out of any cowardice. I repudiate the way fundamentalists make a virtue out of the cowarice of capitulating to the intellectual blackmail of a God that says "believe or else you will suffer for eternity". But I also repudiate the way that excessive skeptics make a virtue out of cowardice when they imply that they will not believe what they personally experience simply because they might be scorned by those who don't believe him when he cannot prove it. And I say the opposite. If you can verify the existence of your god, then I will no more worship it that I will worship idols or money or quarks. For to within the ability to verify is the abiity to manipulate and thus such a god will be your tool. No thank you indeed. In taking to heart the truth that knowledge and proof are disjoint, I refuse the arrogant affectation that diversity of belief is a product of mental deficiency and instead assert that diversity of belief gives strength to human thought in much the same way that the diversity of species gives strength to the ecosystem and diversity of the gene pool provides strength to a species, by providing them all with greater adaptability -- a kind of group manifestation of creativity. And so in support of this view I embrace the idea that there is an irreducibly subjective aspect to reality which lends a definite aspect of diversity to truth itself.

And yet there is a sense in which science is the extension of sight. If we cannot see it with the naked eye we nevertheless have a means to tangibly verify the existence of some things. If we have knowledge of God, it does not come from even this extension of sight by the objective means used by science. I think what we must acknowledge is that life cannot be confined to objective observation, and thus in the pursuit of subjective participation in life where our desires cannot be dismissed many find personal experiences of God and find that they cannot live without the meaning and value that these experiences give to their lives.

There is a whole spectrum in science from the hard sciences to soft science, from the theoretical to the experimental to the purely observational, and from the foundational to the more complex. The most foundational is the purely theoretical science of mathematics whose assertions can actually be proven and require no experiement to verify. Then there is science of physics which is all about determining the mathematical relationship between measurable quantities, and that makes it highly ammenible to both theoretical and experimental methods, but there are areas of physics like astronomy which can be mostly observational. In chemistry we start to see how complexity can be the source of emergent phenomenon and an unending number of species to observe and study making it much more of an experimental and observational science than a theoretical one. When we get to biology, theory is very hard to come by and that is one of the reasons that the theory of evolution is so highly prized (I believe that a worlking theory of abiogenesis may be the next great theoretical break through), and before evolution and genetics, biology was almost purely an observational science of categorizing the endless species and their characteristics. By the time we get to sociology and psychology we are in the softest of sciences, where experiments are statistical and theories are highly speculative with very little means to verify them and it is here where Kuhn's paradigms and scientific revolutions are quite descriptive.

In chapter 5 "Flag of the world", I think Chesterton is very much on to something, but that he comes at it from the wrong end. His blasting of the suicide as the greatest crime is all wrong because of this approach from the negative rather than the positive -- with the stick rather than the carrot so to speak. The suicide is more of a victim rather than a criminal and deserving more of compassion than condemnation. If the suicide has sneered at life then it is only because all of the rest of us have failed to demonstrate that life is worthwhile. This problem with his approach to this topic is found from the very beginning when he looks at embracing life as a matter of patriotism and loyalty as if failing to do so were treason. But in what Chesterton is trying to communicate, I have great sympathy because in it is found the roots of my own faith in God, but from a more postive approach. For me embracing life is not a matter of patriotism and loyalty but a matter of faith. You will find on my blog that I only began to find some meaning in the word "God" when I saw an equivalence between a faith in God and a faith that life is worth living. This is something that I think goes both ways -- not only does a real faith in God give you guarantor that life worth living in the face of adversity, but I also think that having faith that life is worlth living is in some sense a faith God (the reality rather than what any religion says about God), because it means that you value what God values and embrace what God strives so dilligently to give, "that you may have life and have it more abundantly".I was not very happy with Chesterton's condmenation of the Quaker idea of the spark of the divine in every human being, and I certainly do not agree with his attempt to equate this with a worship of self. The Quakers are one of my two most favorite historical religions and the testimony of its impact on modern society, transforming us from the barbaric treatment of fellow human beings is nothing less than a manifestation of the divine in human history. It is one of my amusements in discussions with atheists to suggest that it is in Quakerism that we find the true origins of humanism, which I very much see as positive thing -- for not everything non-Christian idea/movement has to be seen as an attack on Christianity as if Christianity were about world domination rather than world transformation.On the other hand, I was very happy with Chesterton's point about Christianity dividing God from the cosmos and explaining why this was so important, for I have certainly come to the same conclusions. The fact is, that I see many strains of Christian thought straying over the line into pan(en)theism all the time, in such things as Christian mysticism, absolute predestination and divine sovereignty, and even in the pious attempt to say that without God we are nothing. An overdependence upon God and excessive control by God reduces His creation to the status of a mere dream in the mind of God, which I think is indistinguishable from pan(en)theism. A true act of creation is necessarily an act of self-limitation, and a sacrifice of absolute sovereignty is required to support the autonomy of life and free will. I in fact, believe that love itself requires such a sacrifice of absolute sovereignty and contol. The love that I see in God is not the prideful love of an artist for his work, or the indulgent love of an owner for his pet, but the self-sacrificing love of a parent for his child. So He came to us in order "to serve, not to be serve" (Matt 20:28).In chapter six, "Paradoxes of Christianity", I think Chesterton makes too much of the hypocrises and contradictions in the criticisms of Christianty. Just because ones critics are wrong does not mean that you are right. Nevertheless his basic idea about not only balancing but also embracing passionate extremes as the right way to find balance is I think right on the money. In fact I have found something very similar in the nature of the process of life itself, which is not simply a balancing between sensitivity to the environment and independence from the environment (avoiding the twin deaths of stagnation and dissolution) but a matter of finding through complexity a means to simultaneous seek both greater sensitivity and greater independence without limit.I think he takes this "Christianity as truth in paradox" a little too far at times. Not all contradictions are paradoxes that should be embraced (I am open theist and I think that absolute predestination is just wrong), and I think that the example of balancing pride and humility in Christian doctrines involving seeing man as a sinner is a little bit TOO much of a pragmatic approach to Christianity. Christianity does not look at man as a sinner in order to find some sort of psychological balance in his emotional states but because this is an unfortunate fact about our existence. That particular aspect of Christianity is about truth not technique.However, I am quite delighted that he finds that he has this idea that orthodoxy is about balancing because in this I see a lot of similarity with my own ideas that orthodoxy was always about the inclusivity of retaining all the dimensions of the Christian experience and resisting the attempts of sects to cut it down into something smaller and thus more exclusive.

I found this book delightful and intriguing. I will not defend the logic of his arguments, but I think that I am not what Chesterton would call a lunatic -- for although I am skillful in the use of reason, I am not one who is so confined by reason that they cannot see beyond its limitations. In fact, I think this connects somewhat with my usual argument that life cannot be confined to objective observation but must include subjective participation where what you want to be the case cannot be ignored. Every living thing has to pursue what it wants and this has to color its understanding and perception of itself and the world. There is nothing objective about living your life, because however great tool science may be, trying to reduce life to science is foolish.I was a bit annoyed by Chesterton's equivocation of "believing in oneself" and "believing in oneself blindly" for one can equally criticize "believing in God" on the basis of examples of those who "believe in God blindly", if you know what I mean. I know that he wants to argue that believing in God has an important advantage, but that is not something that I even believe is universally true, and I think this fact is an important part of the seperation between man and God. I also cringed at his mention of the apostles creed because I do not support this creed which had no eccumenical approval but would stick to the more minimal definition of Christianity in the Nicean creed as it was first agreed upon in the first eccumenical council. I would argue that the earliest consensual and most inclusive definition of Christianity is the most orthodox one and that heresy should indentified more by the way in which it limits and reject rather than by its deviations.Chesterton's idea about the shift of humility/modesty from ambition to conviction was quite interesting. I have often found myself in a battle with people over something quite similar, because I feel that boldness given by faith applies not only to doing good works but also to do with conviction. I quote the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) to explain to Christians that this fearful and miserly way of seeking the truth by sticking to the literal word of Scripture alone is not an example of good faith at all. However, I think Chesterton over-reacts to the admission that one can be wrong and I definitely think he overplays his hand with this idea that the role of relgious authority is the defense of reason, which continues to show such an extreme disregard of the significance of science that I am given to wonder if he is in the Flat Earth society.His criticism of materialism as stopping thought is too extreme, for I think that the most we can says is that we have some cause to see truth in the claim that materialism is to some degree self defeating -- which we must admit is a rather subjective judgement. Having heard this kind of extremism with regards to materialism, we cease to be surprized when we hear his attacks on evolution, existentialism and pragmatism as well (though in each case we can agree that these have at times been taken to absurd/distateful extremes). His argument that evolution is an attack thought itself is rather bizarre and it makes me wonder if he has made the same mistake of Aristotle to confuse the elements of language with reality itself, for thingness does not depend on arbitrary lingustic categories for a thing can be a dynamic entity whose changes cross such boundaries. To make "choice" (which is another name for free will) a central concept in ones philosphy is not to worship it, though I quite agree that Nietche has gone right off the deep end in his pursuit of will for its own sake.However Chesterton's claim that every act of will is a limitation, points to an oversight on his part. For an infinite God this would in fact be the case but for finite beings in a process of growth and learning this misses the mark, because in the latter case every act of will is also an act of self-creation. Thus we can distinguish between acts of will that narrow and destroy ones range of choices and potential for development and those which expand them. Good habits increase ones choices and opportunities and bad habits (sin) decrease ones choices and eventually destroy free will itself. I certainly reject the idea that salvation and heaven is a matter of sacrificing ones free will to become a slave to goodness. It is evil and destruction that must end in the monotony of nothingness where there are no choices left but goodness and creation is an exploration of infinite possibilities. Free will really isn't about a choice between good and evil, but about being able to get the most out of life and what goodness/creation has to offer.In the fourth chapter, Chesterton certainly has a unique and interesting view of things, but I find it to be a little extreme. However, I have learned in science of all places, just how instructive extreme cases can be. Often it is by looking at extremes that one can uncover the fundamental elements of an equation.I had come to the conclusion that one of the key difference between the religious and the non-religious is in what sort of events they are willing to see as significant. But I was still quite surprised to see such a clear example of this in Chesterton but in reverse of the usual case. The atheist cannot see any truth in relgion because he does not see any significance in the events upon which such convictions are based. Chesterton is quite right in seeing that science is based upon looking at patterns in objectively observable events and therein is what science accepts as significant. But it is the first time I have encountered someone who not only sees other types of things as significant (as all religious people do), but who also cannot see any significance in the things that science does.Thus Chesterton becomes a counter-example to the view that the religious are simply those who see significance in too much, getting false positives in an over-active capacity to see patterns in life. Thus it is proved that it really is a matter of choice about what one thinks is important and thus in what sort of things one is willing to look for patterns. Most of Chesterton's life including when Orthodoxy was written, is before the discoveries of quantum physics which would ultimately bring physical determinism crashing down. Thus it is science itself which finally brought an end to the era of materialistic fatalism that was so similiar to Calvinism in that respect. Thus perhaps today, Chesterton would not feel quite so much aversion to science as he expressed in Othodoxy.

Obviously my understanding of Genesis chapters 2&3 are far from a literal one. I would see Genesis 2:7 "formed man of dust from the ground" as representing the process of evolution and the breath of life as refering to God's parental instruction or "inspiration" (the divine breath). What I certainly DO NOT believe is that Adam and Eve were products of some kind necromancy that made them golems of dust and flesh.

This was interesting, not only because I am always interested in what the Catholic Church has to say (I bought a copy of the catechism for a reference), but because "monogenism" was a term that I had not heard before. Perhaps you will find my position interesting. You see I believe that the human mind is a living organism in its own right, with its own inheritance (transmitted via human communication) apart from the biological inheritance of our body (transmitted via DNA). Because of this I can hold the two different positions simultaneously, monogenism with regards to the human mind and polygenism with regards to the human body. With regards to the human mind, I believe not only that the human race is descended from the single human couple, the Adam and Eve in the story of Genesis, but that we are in fact descended from God Himself. But our body is just a primate, 97% the same a chimpanzees, and so biologically we are bretheren to all the other living creatures on the earth. In other words, although Adam and Eve had biological parents, it is God who raised Adam and Eve as His own children, and from God they learned what it is that makes us human. Another way to think of it is, that our first religion was our humanity itself, which was not limited to biological descent but only by human communication, and after the flood it spread over all of the earth. Biblical evidence for this view, by the way, includes the fact that Cain was afraid of other people in Genesis 4:14, and Genesis 6:1-4 which can be understood as an answer to the age old question of who did Cain and Seth marry. The sons of god refers to Cain and Seth, while the daughers of men refer to females of their species, who joined the human family by marriage. And in 6:4 it explains that their children became the leaders of human civilization, "mighty men that were of old, men of renown".

I am a scientist and a Christian. Science is not about belief but about training in a methodology. There are those with no such training with the ridiculous idea that they are the "true scientists" because they have made a life commitment to always think in empirical terms. These poor deluded people have indeed turned science into a religion. But to say that they worship science as the only God is still a rather queer thing to say. Regardless, recognizing the rather obvious fact that science is the best means that human beings have ever devised for getting at the truth about the world around them IS NOT in any way shape or form worshipping science as a god let alone the only god. Furthermore the fact the science understands when it is wrong is a great part of its power. Religion rarely even agrees on what is correct let alone recognizes when it is wrong. Now I am very much a believer in the necessary importance of religion in human life, and very much a critic of the rather aburd idea that science is the be all and end all of human life. I not only know that the objective methodology of science is incapable of determining the truth about all things, but I believe that there is an irreducibly subjective aspect to reality. But by that very belief, I am thoroughly convinced we have to accept that diversity is one of the unavoidable characteristics of religion. It may indeed get at truths that work for those that find them. But belief and desire is an essential part of it and its methods are subjective, so it is unreasonable to expect that everyone is going to accept the validity of any such approach. Personally, I do not believe in reincarnation. All of the so called "evidence" can have all sorts of other explanations both scientific and non-scientific. Creepy indeed! The spiritual posession of a child by some old creep is rather disgusting to me.

I just want to say that this nonsense is NOT a "Christian perspective", it is an ANTI-SCIENCE perspective. These WACKOS like the Flat Earthers just want their own self-righteous cult that excludes scientists. This makes me rather angry because I am a scientist who became a Christian, and I very much thing that this kind of narrow minded exclusivity that cuts Christianity down to a door which only they themselves can squeeze through is a rather nasty self-indulgent cultish behavior. It is no more possible for me to take this anti-evolution nonsense seriously than it is take this Flat Earth insanity seriously. Their behavior makes it abundantly clear that they simply don't want there to be a scientific theory for the orgins of life or the species. They want God to be the explanation for everything. That is is not faith but willfull wishful thinking.Now as a Christian I can understand a great deal of their point of view. I don't fault their priorities. Life and life everlasting is more important by far than all the activities of science. I don't expect everyone to share my interest in science any more than I expect them to share any of my other interests. Furthermore I DO see quite clearly that it is the rhetoric of aggressive atheists that is largely responsible for this anti-science cult. It is the continuous spouting of absolute nonsense that science disproves God that can ONLY have this effect of convincing Christians that science must therefore be wrong. It is complete foolishness on the part of these atheists to think that this rhetoric could really succeed in convincing people that their point of view is correct. In addition the use of evoution to justify the most horrid philosophy of social Darwinism, not only played a key role in motivating modern fundamentalism but is something that will take a rather long time to forget. God as an explanation for everything and the Bible as the source of ALL truths was fine for the middle ages perhaps, but I do not want to live in the appalling squalor of the middle ages. Frankly far from explaining everything, I don't see that God explains ANYTHING. I really don't see God offering explanations for things. I don't see God even in the business of explanations at all. I DON'T think that is what Christianity is about at all. But the activities of men are ones that are in a continual process of specialization, and the first fireside story tellers combined all the activities of science, history, philosophy, religion and entertainment. So trying to characterize anything from 2000 years ago as a failed attempt at one of these specialized activities of modern times is just absurd."Because the Bible says so" is the most absurd argument imaginable. Why should anyone take that anymore seriously than quoting Star Trek to say that faster than light travel is possible? Some people like myself come to the conclusion that the Bible is a work of God because we read in it things that change our lives for the better. But the Bible was written long ago in a setting of vastly different social conditions, and there will always be issues on which we must show a little discernment. The slaughter of people in a war by protagonists in the story does not condone such behavior to day. The practice of slavery and polygamy back then does not condone the same behavior today. Misogynistic attitudes in the Bible does not mean that we should not condemn these attitudes today. And I certainly do not think that any of the stories in the Bible should be taken as proof that the findings of science are wrong.

This is not quite correct. The quantity involved is called the cosmological constant NOT gravitational constant, and here is the correct explanation of what happened: When Einstein derived his gravitational field equations in General Relativity he realized that the solutions of these equations would not not be stable and so going with the standard scientific dogma of the day that the universe was in some kind of steady state (i.e. always existing) he added a constant to his field equations in order to make a stable solution of them possible. When it was discovered that all distant object were receding from us and thus that the universe was apparently expanding, Einstein naturally kicked himself and said that this was the biggest mistake of his career -- and so it most definitely was indeed. He accepted the assumptions of the scientific community rather than going with what his own theory was telling him straight to his face and if he had only taken this seriously he could have really counted a really big coup on the scientific community by predicting that the universe was either contracting or expanding.

I thought I would follow up the discussion of Karen's book with an explanation of how I personally came to see value in the religous perspective because there is a different kind of response to what Karen is saying in her book.I was not raised to believe in any sort of god, and as a result finding meaning in this idea of God was not an automatic thing for me. I think you can say that it is the above sentiments that first allowed me to find meaning in the word "God". For it seemed quite clear to me that this act of finding meaning in ones life is necessarily an act of faith and I came to the conclusion that the "faith in God" that the religious people talked about was their way of having faith in the value and meaningfulness of life. They see their life in terms of a relationship with this being who is perceived in the totality of their experiences. I think this perception of a personal God is a way of animating ones experience of life and thus infusing it with meaning in a way that is more flexible than any ideological philosophy. This coming to see some meainging in the word "God" is only one part of the process of thought which took me from the perspective of the scientist through the philosophy of existentialism to eventually embrace Christianity -- or my own understanding of it -- which I think is a surprisingly orthodox one -- considering the circumstances. There is no doubt that there are both atheists and Christians who find this incomprehensible. No problem. There are Christians (Calvinists paricularly) whom I find rather incomprehensible myself. The bottom line is that my understanding does not have to make sense to them -- it makes sense to me and that is what counts -- and the same goes for their understanding for them. Once you come to the realization that a purely objective (observer) approach to life is nonsensical, then you are free to embark on a more subjective examination of religion to see if any and which of the ideas of religion fit your subjective perceptions of life and that necessarily includes decisions about what sort religion you can consider worth pursuing. I find the pretentions to objectivity by both atheist and christian , with this attitude that they have to believe this or that because it is "the truth" whether they like it or not, to be fundamentally delusional if not just bluster and rhetoric. I think this kind of thinking is ultimately no different than living ones life according to how someone else thinks you should. Objective truth is found but subjective truth is created and the former is the expertise of science while the latter is the essence of life itself. I found in my studies of physics a rather unlikely concoction of complexity and indeterminacy -- a rather common experience for physicists -- that seemed to me to have a most sensible explanation that the whole was designed for the specific purpose of creating the conditions where you could have this phenomenon of spontaneous self-organization that we call life. This is of course a rather subjective perception, and one which would imply the existence of a God motivated to create life. Furthermore, I found in evolution an understand of life that was more consistent with Christianity than creationism because it provided an important part of a sensible answer to that philosophical challenge to the idea of God known as the problem of evil and suffering. In evolutionary theory we face the undeniable fact that without the suffering found in challenges to our survival on the brink of extinction there can be no evolutionary development. We in fact find obvious parallels with this in relgious thought about how the difficulties we face in life are necessary for the growth and development of our spirit and character -- and this provides a more realistic understanding of God as a good shepherd who sometimes must cull the herd to keep it healthy. Which just points to the difference between a loving God who is sappy-stupid-indulgent and a loving God who really understands what our best interest requires however uncomfortable and painful it may be.

The first thing to understand is that the title is misleading. This book does not make an argument for the existence of God -- not that I can tell. I think it would be of interest to anyone with an appreciation for an objective scientific approach and willing to consider such an approach to the study of religion. It proposes some interesting speculations from an evolutionary perspective about how various religious ideas came about. They are challenging for me as a religious person for they certainly do not agree with my religious convictions. But I am very much interested in an objective scientific approach and in expanding my awareness of what evidence is available. Of course her writing is not scientific in the strictest sense of the word. This is no article in a scientific journal. And since it is my claim that only science -- real science is really and truly objective that means that this isn't purely objective either. I think she is arguing that religion in general does have a role to play in human thought and life but her approach is not one of accepting any mythology of a religion literally or as being historical. Her book is a scientific approach in the sense that she argues from the scientific world-view alone. Indeed! It is in fact my belief that our humanity is itself a kind of religion and thus that our humanity is necessarily to be found in this religious dimension of our existence, WHICH Buddhism demonstrates is not necessarily mean having to believe in God. Indeed I would aree with Karen's sentiment that atheism is just another facet of the religious nature and development of human beings. Theologically Karen Armstrong seems to lean toward some kind of pantheism or the ideas of Tillich, and these are not something that I would really consider theistic. But her call to show recognition for the unavoidably relgious nature human beings is I think crucial to the future of mankind. I think she fails to make clear that it is the diversity human thought is the most important thing that is at stake -- it is something that I think that evolutionary science can link directly to our ability to survive. The ending paragraph of here book should give you some idea of her conclusions: Karen has her own speculative theory about the origins of the human religious impulse, though I can hardly say that I completely agree with her speculation in this regard. Her idea is that this religious nature comes from some cognative dissonance over the fact of life that their own lives depended on taking life from other creatures. So she thinks that ritual and the the addition of a religious dimensions to this was our answer to this. She sees this as becoming a part of a religious tradition that evolved into the practice of animal sacrifices and that religion in general became our way injecting meaning and value into the often arduous task of living. I think this is certainly a valid objective perspective. I have in fact made similar obserations. But I think that the whole point of the value of religion is that life cannot or should not be confined to an objective perspective. If one truly believes in the value of religion then one participates and if one participates then as part of that participation it would be absurd to confine ones speculations about the origins of religion to such an objective perspective. But this does not exclude one from doing the work of a scientist or academic to examine things from the objective perspective as much as possible. Thus in response to Karen's theory about the origins and motivation for the religious impulse of human beings, I will explain my own idea of this to contrast with hers. We all seek to find meaning in our lives. For some it is easy and for others it is more difficult. Regardless, we suceed in doing this in very different ways. Nothing could be more natural because we are all different. Our lives are different. Our talents are different. Our challenges are different. If religion represents a way of telling others what the meaning of their life should be then it is a deception -- an obstacle to meaningfulness -- an evil if you will. But if religion simply represents the part of the spectrum and diversity of the ways in which people find meaning in their lives then there is nothing more natural -- more good -- more human than this. And thus we MUST realize that religion is not the ONLY thing that can be an obstacle to meaningfulness -- it is ANY time that people participate in the rather dubious activity of telling other people what the meaning of their life should or should not be -- which is something I see atheists doing all the time. Karen does have some rather serious critiques of modern atheism which she sees as just another one of many developments in the relgious thinking of human beings -- part of a particular historical progression of relgious ideas. These are all sentiments and concerns that I share. In their reactionary response to fundamentalism, the new atheists have become very much like them. The false dichotomy that their rhetoric supports is destructive of one of mankind's most valuable assets - the diversity of human thought.

Is the title "mother of God" appropriate?I believe that the original controversy about calling Mary "the mother of God" becaome mired in the talk of the two natures of Christ and thus in the limitations of the antiquated metaphysics of the age. But we have another example to draw from in which a scientific understanding can be helpful and thus avoid the confusion of medieval metaphysics. This is the example of two kinds of parents that human beings can have: biological parents and the parents that raised them. From one set we have the biological inheritance, the DNA that makes us biologically human, and from the other we have the inheritance of mind which I believe is where our true humanity lies. It is my belief that by the first, we are bretheren to all the forms of life on this planet, and by the second we are the children of God for I believe that this inheritance of mind first comes from God.But to look at Mary's relationship to Jesus, I think we have to look deeper into these examples and understand on a theoretical level what it means to be a parent of someone. It does not mean to be their creator or designer for as living beings of free will they make their own choices and thus play a critical role in being responsible for who and what they are. But these choices only play a small role in this for living things are also radically open to their environment and many things in that environment contribute to what they become and parents are the most significant of these things. But if the parent is not the creator of their offspring, what is it that they do? They provide an inheritance of information and a nuturing environment in which this inheritance can be the basis of a process of growth.Each biological parent contributes half of a child's biological inheritance and the mother provides her womb as the nurturing environment in which the child's body can grow from a tiny seed or zygote. Between 20 and 23 weeks in this process, brain activity starts and the child begins its process of mental growth as well. The parents who raise the child provides the child's first most substantial portion of information via human communication by which that growth of the human mind of that child can make progress. They provide a safe and nurturing environment for both the childs body and mind so that the child can grow into an adult. Because both continue to grow there is no absolute clear cut way in which we can that one set of parents are exclusively responsible for the growth of just one aspect of the child, but we can say which has provided all or the vast majority of the information from which an aspect of the child has grown.Now what of Mary's relationship to Jesus? Clearly she provided the nurturing womb in which the infant Jesus grew and clearly she played the most important role in raising the child as well. The fact that Jesus was a carpenter like Joseph makes it clear that Joseph's role as a father in raising Jesus was also just as substantial as any father who raises a child. What we cannot say with too much clarity or certainty is whence came the biological inheritance for Jesus and speculation on the matter is not really worth the fights it is likely to engender because it doesn't really matter a great deal after all, for mostly it suffices to say that Jesus was biologically human. Personally I do not believe in the magical creation of human beings. I do not believe that the first chapters of Genesis is meant to be story of a necromancer god creating a golem of dust and a golem of flesh as our first human ancestors. Thus if I were to speculate, it would be most sensible in my mind to assume that the biological inheritance of Jesus had a human origin of some kind, there is even a Biblical basis for claiming this in the two geneologies attributed to Jesus.Thus we can see good reason for seeing Mary and Joseph as parents of the body and mind of Jesus, but what about Jesus as God and what about His spirit? One might be tempted to draw the conclusion from the knowlege that God is spirit, that the spirit of Jesus was only divine and not human. But this is heresy and condemned for good reason. If we as human beings are most essentially spirit then for Jesus to be fully human, Jesus must also be human in spirit, just as He was human in body and mind. Since I do not believe in a pre-existent human spirit given to human beings but in a human spirit that grows and becomes as a product of our choices, this would mean that in Jesus there is both the spirit that is God with Him from before His conception and the human spirit that grew in Him. This is not to say that the human and divine in Jesus are seperable in any ultimate sense because all that is human in Jesus in all its finitude and vulnerability is still an act of God and thus an expression of His divinity for it is by His infinitude and omnipotence that He could become fully human in this way.But does this mean that we can say that Mary is the mother of God? Well to answer that we should determine if Mary played a parental role of any kind in relationship to God? Mary may have contributed information that played a role in the growth and development of human body and mind of Jesus, but did she contribute information that played a role in the growth and development of Christ's divnity in any way. Clearly not! Chrisitians are not adoptionists that believe that Jesus became God and so since Jesus was always God then it is clear that Mary did not contribute to Christ's divinity in any way whatsoever. Thus it is absurd to call Mary the "mother of God". The relationship between Mary and God is one of Mary being the the child and God being the parent, however much Mary may have played a role of parent to Jesus in regards to His human body and mind. Thus Mary mother of Jesus remains a child of God and NEVER any kind of mother of God.There are logical difficulties here to be sure, for the following simple syllogism seems valid: Mary is the mother of Jesus.Jesus is God.Therefore Mary is the mother of God.But this is only the consequence of the deceptive simplicity of human language which makes statements that sound like absolutes when in reality they are no such thing. Mary is the mother of Jesus only in a certain sense even though this is the sense that is most typically used because the word typically refers to human relationships, but in another sense we know that Mary's father is God, and thus we see that there are different senses that make the two first statements of the syllogism incompatable so that the syllogism is not valid and its conclusion cannot be drawn.

I suppose I could get uptight about Sartre's appropriation of Kierkegaard's ideas and the humanist appropriation of Quaker ideas, but if you look at my blog you will see just how much I despise the whole "us and them" mentality. We all can and do learn from one another regardless of the things we disagree upon. Besides I like some of Sartre's writings. My effort to downplay the role of Sartre in existentialism has more to do with the fustration I have with fellow Christians who demonize existentialism because they equate it with the ideas of Sartre. This strikes me as rather silly when you consider that the father of existentialism was a Christian (Kierkegaard) and a large part of his philosophical efforts can be described as apologetical (defending the rationality of Christianity).

I agree with this in the sense that these are only steps we can use on our own "journey to the truth". There are two sides to this. On the one hand, our basis for claiming any kind of superiority over the thinkers of the past is that we read what they have written and go from there. On the other hand, those who make these writings into some kind orthodoxy of human thought are being ridiculous. Let me take two examples to illustrate. The first is in regards to my OP in this thread. This represents what I have learned from Kierkegaard and NOT the least bit any attempt to accurately or objectively represent what Kierkegaard has said. This is my attempt to breathe life and meaning into his ideas and should definitely not be considered appropriate for any kind of encyclopedia article on Kierkegaard. For my second example, I often tell people that I am fan of Aristotle. BUT that most certainly does not mean that I agree with his conclusions. Considering some of his enormous blunders in the area of physics I consider such an approach to Aristotle to be absurd. The value I see in Aristotle is in how some of his ideas can be adapted to the concepts and discoveries of modern science.

Good! That is the way it is supposed to be. Only those who are not only uneducated morons but also those who willfully refuse to learn anything actually retain the childish belief that the "experts" have all the answers. The truth is that the greatest scientists, philosopher, and scholars have more questions than anyone else. You see they have chosen the way of expanding consciousness, and becoming more and more aware of the world around them they see that much more which they can ask questions about. Just like everything else that human beings do there are those will find a way to use it for stupid, selfish, and ignorant purposes. Will you tell an infant that crying isn't they way they should go about getting what they need? LOL We are all infants. We are all growing up. We are all learning what is the right way of going about things. That is... as long as we don't indulge in the pretense that we are all grown up now and know everything already. Well everyone has their own categories. For myself, I see that there are the Christians who think it is all about Jesus and it is He who is in command of His church (and therefore not for any human person to say who is Christian and who is not) and there are the pseudo-Christian cults who put themselves in command of what they call Christianity taking it upon themselves to say what is Christian and what is not. But these are not just two boxes but a whole spectrum of human behavior and Catholicism is somewhere in that spectrum just as the previous poster named Michelle is somewhere in that spetrum. But while Michelle represents one point on that spectrum the Catholic church is an enormous body that embraces practically the whole spectrum. I certainly have encountered Catholics with a cultish attitude that being Catholic and following its teachings and programs is the only measure of ones Christianity, but I find the cultish behavior of anti-Catholic Protestants even more pronounced. Anyway, it is because everyone sees things in different ways, that we need to look at the consensus, and the largest Christian consensus is that Chrisitiantiy is defined by the decisions of the earliest Chrisitan eccumenical councils and the most inclusive of these is the Nicean council and the creed they agreed upon as the definition of Christianity. No the term "catholic" was added to the creed in the second eccumenical council of 381 AD, and it is a creed that is embraced by Catholic and Protestant alike. The word "catholic" simply means universal and so the "catholic church" is simply the church of all Christians. Catholic and Protestant interpret this differently it is true. While Protestants typically understand this to refer to the collective of all Christians organized and administered by Christ Himself quite independent of any organizations of men, the Catholics understand this to mean their organization as a visible manifestation which is guided by Christ to be of service to all mankind and not just for Catholics. Look we are all just people who find meaning and value in lots of different things. Some can find meaning in mathematics and some cannot. Some find meaning in science and some do not. Some find important meaning in the word "God" and some do not. Some find meaning in Christianity and some do not. I see great meaning in all of these things. In the case of God I will only point to my blog. In the case of Christianity the principles and dynamics of parenting is probably my best lens through which the meaning of Christianity is revealed to me (although my earliest explanation can be found here) It is my experience that parenting is one of those truly messy things that quite often requires the parent to do the most unpleasant things. This is symbolized by that first and universal mess that every parent must face, the poopy diaper. That this applies in the case of God is made absolutely clear to me in the story of the flood in Genesis 6:5-11:9. There you can see the anguish of a parent over children who have given themselves over to evil completely and then at the end God's determination to do the unpleasant things because that has proven necessary for our redemption. But is God about parenting or is He about religion? Read the beginning of Isaiah and you will find that religion doesn't interest Him. What interests Him is His children growing up and behaving in a more mature manner. All around us is the evidence that we are not equal in any actuality. So what does our equality actually consist of? We were created in the image of an infinite God. But what does that mean? Well the only way that finite beings can partake of and reflect infinity is in an infinite potentiality. But that potential is not something we can find or realize on our own. That can only happen in the eternal life that can be found in a relationship with an infinite Parent. In His love, in His care, in His instruction we can surpass all our limitations and it is in this alone that we are truly equal.

Human beings have free will and that is the freedom to choose that makes them responsible for what they have chosen. But they can and very often do choose to destroy their own free will by enslaving themselves to habits of thought and action. So yes there are indeed a great many people with very little free will remaining to them but this is a state for which they themselves are completely responsible because it is their own choices which have brought them to this . Free will is not a fixed and unchangeable attribute but it quite quantitative in nature and it can increase or decrease and because of this we are confronted with the inarguable fact that all choices are not equal. Furthermore free will is not a purely human attribute but is the essence of all life and is thus something in which all living things partake but to greatly varying degrees. Quite right addiction is indeed an excellent example of the way that free will can be destroyed, but this is only an example of a more pernicious addiction that is more ubiquitous in human life and that is an addiction to habits of thought, and these can be just as destructive of our free will by narrowing our consciousness of what choices are available to us. This is indeed what God is all about. God is the creator of life and life really is all about free will. Thus I hear the constant refrain in the words of God in the Bible... "therefore choose life!"

Interesting post... I think you are right. I am reminded of the way that Europe enthusiastically jumped into World War I. People learn through hardship and suffering unfortunately. They take the advantages they have for granted and not seeing what it is like to live without them fail to defend them or even ignorantly tear them down. I see too many Americans who no longer value the individual right and relgious freedom they have in this country and so are ready to tear them down because of some other issue that they have become obsessed with. I am reminded of the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt and how they had a pillar of fire following them by night and pillar of cloud following them by day. Asuming this is not just a distant but large and visible volcano, I can easily see how quickly human become acclimatized by the miraculous and take it for granted. I see this as being a part of this next stage of human evolution that we are in the midst of - a transition from the evolution of the individual to the evolution of the community. Perhaps the most critical part of that transition is the development of a communal identity.

I see a progressive development of the relationship that God is offering to a maturing human race, exeplified first by the words in Isaiha 1:1-11, which basically says that what God wants is obedience not sacrifice. But then in the New Testament, Jesus explains that it (all of the law and prophets) was all about love (Matt 22:36), and Paul explains throughout his epistles that Christ brought about a change in a relationship to God from one that is about legalistic formulas and rules to one of primarily about faith. Thus the message is that not only is obedience better than sacrifice, but love and faith is better than obedience. It not even really true that God's desire has changed but only our understanding of it, because even back in Isaiha 1:1-11 we even see that the obedience God longs for is all about how we treat our fellow human beings in Isaiha 1:17, "cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow." And when Jesus said, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice'", He is quoting Hosea 6:6, "For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." The knowledge of God that Jesus brings in the Beatitudes and parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son is that God's heart is for the poor and downtrodden, least and the lost, those who are suffering and without hope. If we know this heart of God then a love for Him must translate into a love for them and we cannot imagine that we are obedient to God is we overlook them. Jesus also made this clear, by telling us that our love for Him is found in how we treat children and the stranger at the door who is in need. Thus, I can somewhat appreciate a criticism of and objection to Catholicism that sees it as turning the liberty of Christ back into a religion of rules and law. I can share the criticism of those that seem to be making Christianity all about dogmas, ceremonies, and divinely appointed authority. But the criticism of George here is not like that at all. For he is also making it all about following the teachings that are in the Bible alone, and by doing so he himself is also making it all about what is the right rules and right authority to follow. Now I am a Protestant and I do agree with the 5 "solas" including "Sola Scriptura" declaring the Bible to be the only authority which God has put into our hands. BUT like all of Christianity this should be a word of liberation and grace and not of chains and judgement that George seems to be making it into. And so I quote to George the words of Jesus in John 5: 39, "You search the scripture because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life." Salvation is not found in the Bible but in a relationship with God, and how are we to judge such a thing? Well better not at all so that we are not judged with the same judgement we give, but back in that same gospel of John, how did Jesus ask us to judge Him? John 10:32, "I have shown you many good works from the Father, for which of these do you stone me?" They judged Jesus based on rules like working on the Sabath and for blasphemy and clearly it is not their example that we should follow but Jesus, who said in John 10:37, "if I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father". Most places in the world where Protestant missionaries go to serve the people and bring the gospel, there you will find that Catholic nuns and missionaries are already there first. These are the good works that speak louder than rules and dogmas and tell us that the Father and Jesus can be found there in the Catholic church moving people to do His work. Do I believe Catholics when they say that no one comes to God except through the Catholic church? No, I do not. But I do see the works of Catholics all around the world and just as Jesus said, even though I do not believe what they say, I believe in the good works and know that God works through these poor sinners just as I sincerely hope that God works through the poor sinner that is me as well.

My point is not that there is anything inherently wrong or evil in Islam itself, but that it is rightly on trial in the court of world public opinion right now where it must prove that it is compatable with the principles of tolerance and religious liberty, which is fundmentally opposed to that of theocratic government. If cannot be compatable with tolerance and religious liberty then it is inevitable that the rest of the world must ultimately refuse to tolerate it. Now I do think that Islam is no less compatable with religious liberty than many forms of Christianity. It has a fine historical tradition of tolerance, but just like these less tolerant form of Christianity there is maturity to be gained and attitudes to be changed.