mitchellmckain

What I think is important to understand is that the challenges presented by the diversity of human thought is in no way trivial and should not be avoided because the maturity of the human race is the fruit of this struggle. The interaction between diverse points of view is the fertile ground for development and creativity much like a diverse gene pool provides fertile ground for evolutionary development. And just as the latter is the best insurance against species extinction, so also is the former the only hope for the survival of human civilization. The last thing we need is suppression of conflict in either a forced uniformity or in a prohibition by something like political correctness or an attitude that such beliefs just don't matter. Tolerance and religious liberty are neither of these things. It must be understood however that tolerance and religious liberty are self-limited for not all religions/philosophies are going to be compatable with this. Obviously religions of human sacrifice cannot be tolerated, and atheist agendas calling for the prohibition of religion must likewise be opposed. But this does NOT mean as many of the new fascist-like thinkers have been arguing, that tolernace and religious freedom are inherently contradictory or nonsensical. Every ideal has natural limits in its opposite. An ideal of love does not mean that we must love hatred and cruelty. And so likewise it is only logical that tolerance does NOT include a tolerance of intolerance, AND religious liberty does not include the freedom to trample on the religious liberty and rights of others. AS A RESULT, one of the fruits of the interaction between the diverse points of view is that all the various religions and philosophies MUST learn to conform to the principles of tolerance and religious liberty because those that do not are NOT an advantage to the human race and civiliation but a blemish.

Well that is a worthy cause. No Islam most certainly is not terrorism. Yet it is clear that the Islamic world view IS more conducive to terrorism and I think the main reason is that its support for a theocratic forms of goverment makes Islam a more useful tool for power than world views that do not support theocratic forms of government. I have exterminated no one, and I have explained that I highly suspect collusion between these terrorists and those who have initiated this so called "war on terrorism". And that is the thing to notice - that terrorism can never serve the interest of people and freedom but will only server the interests of those who want to wield power through fear for the purpose of oppression. Terrorism can only provoke an atmosphere of less trust, less freedom and more violence. The point is that it is not a legitimate tactic in the accomplishment of any worthwhile goal it is the evil means of people who pursue evil ends. To talk of damage you have to presume that there was something better before it to be damaged. Guantanamo happened because the instinct to think that uncivilized behavior on the part of others justifies uncivilized behavior in response. But public opinion has now examined that instinct and decided that it is wrong. That is improvement not damage, and it suggest that in the end the terrorists will fail. You are defending terrorism when you make this ridiculous equivalence that says that fighting against terrorism is no difference that terrorism itself.

I would see this as an example of my maxim that people can and will believe just about anything, and most especially that they will find a reason to believe what they want to believe.This of course logically must be just as true of myself as anyone else.Now I think the majority of Christians would certainly object to the idea that Christianity does not depend on the veracity of historical claims. But I am not one of them. I have always considered the past to be as nearly as unknowable, in any absolute sense, as the future. That is, any assertion that one does know what has happened in the past alway requires some act of faith that what is recorded and reported is done so truthfully and without deception. But this does not bother me a great deal beause I very much believe in the power of stories to change and develop human nature for the better. I frankly find quite sufficient justification for belief in Christianity, in the power and effect of the story alone.However, regardless of this, it IS my plain and sincere judgment that the evidence very much supports that Jesus was not ony a real person but that the accounts of his life are fairly accurate, if somewhat subject to a bit of interpretation. It is also my honest judgement that efforts to argue that there was no such person are as motivated by an ideological agenda, just as are all that nonsense which calls itself "Creation science" and "Intellegent Design".But if this new indulgence in imaginative historical revisionism makes people feel more free to make up their own minds about what to believe in and what values to pursue in their life then I wish them well in their indulgence, with no condemnation at all. One more choice on the road where we search for the truth is only a challenge to make that adventure that much more interesting. This search for the truth is our adventure to experience for ourselves just as our life is our own to live, and both are meaningless if we let someone else do it for us.

Before we take a look at other implications of this suggestion I am making that the beginning of human life be associated with the human mind and the start of brain function, I will first consider the religious ideas of spirit and soul, because since objections are usually religiously motivated we would do well to take a look at these concept in order to address these considerations. After this I will look at the implications of the mind definition of human life and then address the issues and concerns of the abortion controversy. Religious people and even non-religious philosophies often believe that human beings have a non-physical imperishable aspect to their being. Curiously enough, Christianity is not united by a consensus on this, but there is quite a diversity of opinions. The majority do seem to believe in some sort of doctrine of the immortality of the soul. But not only does opposition to this represent a rather large minority, but of those that do believe in this doctrine, their idea of what this actually means is quite diverse. Now I certainly do not agree with those who oppose the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and I certainly dispute that the Bible supports their claims. However the word "soul" is not only a rather abiguous term but is only found in a few translations of the Bible. The word that is commonly used in the bible is "spirit", capitalized "Spirit" refers to the Holy Spirit or Spirit of God and with small letters it refers to a person's true self which is essential to being alive, but can exist apart from the body. Proverbs 20:27 "The lamp of the LORD searches the spirit of a man ; it searches out his inmost being." Luke 8:55 "And they laughed at Him knowing that she was dead. But taking her by the hand he called saying, 'Child arise.' And her spirit returned, and at once she stood up." John 6:63 "The spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing." Romans 8:10 "But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness." Romans 8:16 "The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children." James 2:26 "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." 1 Cor 2:11 "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." But where does this spirit come from? And when is it part of the life of a growing human being? Well this is largely answered in 1 Cor 15. 1 Cor 15:35-50 "But someone will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?' You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, 'The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." This makes it quite clear that what survives death (is imperishable)is a spirit or spiritual body that grows from the physical just as a tree grows from a seed. It also makes it very clear that the physical comes first and then the spiritual. The view that this agrees with best is not that of a fertilized zygote suddenly having a soul that makes it a person, but that first the zygote grows into a physical body of a human being and then with a functioning brain the infant begins to absorb this inheritance of the mind that was first given to our ancestors by God and in this way the spirit or spiritual body of the person grows from the physical. In agreement with this I believe that the spirit is something that grows from the process of physical life itself and by every choice that a living organism makes. This means that everything living has a spirit - every plant, every animal, every cell. But just as living things form communal organisms so does the spirit of these organisms, and so the cells of our body do not have a spirit which is separate and independent of our own. So for me the question is thus not when does the embryo acquire a spirit for it always has one (just as did the egg and the sperm before fertilization), but rather when does this spirit become seperate and independent of the spirit of the mother and when does it become the spirit of a human being. The most logical answer to the first question would be when the embryo's life becomes independent of the mother and that is the question of viability which Roe vs. Wade is based upon. The answer to the second question then goes back to the nature of the physical, and it is only when the physical becomes a human being, that the spirit becomes the spirit of a human being. Since all living things have spirit, with birth of new life comes the birth of new spirit as well. So although the embryo has a spirit, without a mind it neither independent of the spirit of the mother nor is it a spirit of a human individual. Only with the birth of a human mind starting sometime after the 20-22 week of life when brain function begins, can the spirit of the fetus be said to be a human spirit.

LOL Yes this is typical terrorist propaganda. They murder the innocence to provoke fear, disgust and anger and then call anything done about them terrorism. The extermination of terrorists is not terrorism, it is vermin control. Not that what George W. Bush can be justified. I am highly suspicious of what he did and question whether he might actually have been involved in the terrorist attacks especially because of the blatant opportunism in what was done afterwards. I further suspect that he has no desire to destroy Al-Qaeda because they are too useful a tool for justifying armed intervention by which billions of dollars can be made by friends in the Oil and Weapons Industry. I am sure that all victims of terrorists and their families would certainly wish that they were at Gwantoanamo rather than where they are now. So yes indeed I think we would trade something that was so much more civilized by comparison. There were for example no children at Gwantanamo. The realization that Gwantanamo was not acceptable is a demonstration of how a democracy like the US regulates and impoves its own behavior. There is simply no comparison of this to what was done by Sadam Hussein or Al-Qaeda. Is that what your religion teaches you? Some people think that murder is a tactic for getting what they want, but these murders should be executed. Some people think that kidnapping is a tactic for earning money, but such human refuse needs to be disposed of. Terrorism is not a legitimate tactic for any purpose. It is pure evil and a society which does not understand this, does not deserve to exist. Obviously. But we must give no credit to the ridiculous propaganda that anyone is doing any such thing. But of course since you think terrorism is just a tactic for getting what you want then you think that those people flew planes full of civilians into buildings full of civilians because they were particularly clever. No you are just defending terrorism which I cannot honestly say is any better.

Yes many people like to redefine words for the purpose of propaganda and propose ludicrous equivalences to justify themselves. The rapist and serial killer calls what he does "love". And the the criminals in the prisons call themselve victimized. But whatever lies that people might wish to tell themselves for their own self delusion, a rational society cannot believe such nonsense. Terrorism is the attack on the innocent public in order to create fear for a political purpose, often to blackmail the governments responsible for the safety of these people. It is akin to kidnapping someones child and demanding ransom if they want to see their child alive again. These are the action of the lowest scum of the earth and pure evil. It does not speak well of your religion that you would rationalize this with such propaganda for it calls into question whether your religion is capable of intilling a proper distinction between good and evil in its believers. The examples you give are examples of injustices due to disrespect and fear, but terrorism encourage these things because how should we respond to terrorism except with contempt and fear. The truth is that these terrorists want such events to ocurr and if others don't actually persecute the people they parasitically feed upon then they will do such things to their own people themselves to maintain the level of fear and disrespect in society (blaming it on their enemies of course) because that is the environment in which this disease thrives.

Yes unlike most people here I am quite well aware that there was a time when it was Islam that was the more tolerant religion than Christianity. But that golden age of Islam is long in the past and for whatever reason Islam turned against the enlightened ideas of that time toward a more closed-minded fundamentalist view of their religion. Perhaps there is a potential for a more peaceful and tolerant religion in Islam still, but not if there isn't a message in Islam that can be seperated from the cultural baggage so that Islam can allow the culture can change for the better. But you cannot expect us to believe that it is a coincidence that all these terrorists are muslim. It is not. It is in fact directly linked with the fact that the only theocratic societies in the world (since Tibet was conqured) are Muslim. I think that this proves two things. One is that Muslims prove themselves more willing to force their religion on everyone in their community and the second is that people can see quite clearly that Islam is a more useful tool for power and the domination of people than other religions. In the west we have a adopted a secularist philosophy that no religion should be used as a tool of power in that way. We have done so unanimously in the west because everyone really benefits, both the religious who can pursue their religious efforts with more honesty and less corruption and the government who can answer the needs of people less clouded by dubious religious sentiments.

So lets continue my examination of this question.Life is a continuous process, in which organisms grow from lesser to greater and thus making a dividing line between life and non-life difficult to do in an absolute sense. Perhaps 3 billion years ago life came from non-life but generally what we are talking about is life that comes from life. So the line that we are really drawing here is not between non-life and life but between old life and new life. So what are the significant events when we can say that there is a beginning of new life? The most obvious answer is fertilization. But why? What happens in this an event that brings about a birth of new life? The sperm is joined to the egg but both of these are alive, so what is the significance? The egg infact has 20 times the diameter of the sperm and thus 8000 times the mass, so in such term the sperm contributes very little. But what the sperm contributes is information - an inheritance of information from the other parent. So the significance is found in information.In terms of information the sperm contributes nearly half what is needed for the growth of a human being. Without the addition of this information the egg is disposed of by the body as worthless, because its potential for becoming a human being will not be realized. With the addition of this information the egg becomes a zygote and begins to divide and grow into a multicellular organism called an embryo. Up to day 14 there is a possibility that this mass of cells will seperate into two or more independent organisms giving rise to identical siblings. After 20 weeks the brain has developed sufficiently that we can start to detect brain activity. This activity becomes sustained by the 22nd week.I have suggested that we should only consider fertilization the beginning of human life if our humanity is to be found in our genetic code as a biological organism. As I explained in the previous post, we also have an inheritance of the mind, information that is passed from one generation to the next quite seperate and apart from the information in the genetic code. Furthermore unlike the genetic code there is an inheritance of acquired characteristics for anything that one generation learns can be passed to the next generation, and as modern science and technology is demonstrating we can learn new things at a far faster rate than information is accumulated by any process of evolution. So where significant changes in the genome requires millions of years, we can see significant changes in human understanding in a single generation.But then, what event shall we look to as the beginning of human life, that would reflect a belief that our humanity is to be found in the human mind. Well this beginning is not quite so simple, for the inheritance of the mind that we have talked about, is not passed to the next generation is anything so compact as the genetic code, it is passed by means of human to human communication and a great deal of it is in language and through language. These are things that are absorbed especially in childhood but often continuing through a persons whole life. As a result we cannot look to any completion of this inheritance as a beginning of human life and that suggest that we look instead at the beginning of this.A connected question that I think can help just a little bit is a look at the opposite transition from life to non-life. That is, when is it, that we say that a human being is dead? Well there are a lot of issues and controversies over the question of when death really occurs. Most states and the medical community recognize that this occurs with brain death but the definition of this is difficult requiring a 24 hour observation period and assurances that the body is drug free. This is because drugs can suppress brain function. But regardless of all this, I think that there is one thing that is abundantly clear, and that is that, where there is no brain function, there is certainly no possibility that any learning process or assimilation of information can occur in that brain.So the suggestion I am making here is that the information passed from parent to child through human communication represents the same kind of process as fertilization. The information of our mental inheritance entering the functioning brain is a process by which the new life of the human mind is given birth, but since this is an ongoing process the only line we can draw in regards to it is where this process begins and the earliest we can suppose that such a process begins is when the brain has sufficiently developed for brain function to begin.

There is nothing politically neutral being offered here and that the suggestion that this is a scientific question is nothing but propaganda is confirmed by the nonsensical bluster about ducking and dodging facts. My conclusion is that this is an advertisement of a special interest group and not any kind of meaningful contribution to the question I am discussing. This paper is produced by a group called the Westchester Institute and here is their mission statement: In short this is an organization devoted to pushing the Catholic sentiment against abortion and the belief that human life begins at conception, and so the last thing you can expect from such a group is any kind of objectivity. This is not science but paying people with scientific credential to construct pseudo-scientific justification for their theocratic political agenda to turn back the clock and force their peculiar moral ideology on other people. I should think we have all learned from history what letting the Catholic church dictate right and wrong, and life and death to the world can lead to.

Now for myself. I am a Christian as well as a scientist, but not only was I not raised a Christian but I was a scientist before I was a Christian. This made me rather immune to all the anti-scientific trends within religion, because it could never have been a choice for me between science and religion. The question was always one of whether there was any value for religion or a belief in God when the value and truth of science is a given. Modern science has become a fundamental part of my perceptual process by which I see the universe which I inhabit for what it is and so I could no sooner disregard or reject it than I could choose not to see or hear.But perhaps you can see why the important question for me was never "whether God exists" but "what is God", because it made no sense to ask whether something exists when you do not know what it is. Or more importantly, the idea that people spent so much time talking about something that did not exist seemed a bit absurd to me. The question was thus always one of understanding what they were talking about. Is God a myth, a person, a fairy tale, the creator, a story book character, a ruler, a delusion, a parent, or what? I had no answer to this handed to me on a platter, certainly no answer that was very coherent, and definitely not an answer which I found acceptable. I remember comparing the ideas of many different religions on the topic. But what finally gave the word meaning to me was a decision that a "faith in God" was somehow equivalent to a faith that life was worth living. What this means is, that you cannot have a faith in God without a faith that life is worth living and more importantly that if you have a faith that life is worth living, then in some sense, no matter what words you might use for it, or what you might call the object of your faith, you essentially have a faith in God. You see part of the problem is that the word "God" has a history of use and abuse and thus this gives rise to situations where an individual may be forced to repudiate "God" with all the life-denying baggage it has been loaded down with in their life, in order that they can make a real and effective affirmation of life - but a true affirmation of life is an affirmation of the true God, for as I have now come to believe, life is God's creation and you might say His "obsession". It is for life that God created the physical universe and it is for life that God has always worked and acted, encouraging living things to reach out for the potentiality that is within them and for life in general to reach out for the infinite potential that it is ultimately capable of. And so what are my conclusions now about what God is? Is God a myth? yes. Is God a person? yes. Is God a fairy tale? yes. Is God the creator? yes. Is God a story book character? yes. Is God a ruler? yes. Is God a delusion? yes. Is God a parent? A big yes. Yes for some people God is a delusion and a part of their psychopathology. Yes God is a fairy tale to the simple minded of both the believers and the non-believers. But for me God is the creator and parent of life, for life is by its very nature is not something that a moral (or rational) being would create as a tool (because living things do not make good tools), but would only create life with the interests of a parent as an end in itself. Thus I have come to see God as the infinite being whose perfection and lack of limitation provides Him with only one rational motivation and that is to give of His abundance to others in perfect self-less love.

Many people have not believed in a god at all times in history, and whether they have or not is of little significance. Other things are of much greater importance. "God" is after all a word and so of far more significance is what this word signifies to them when we say that they do or do not believe that what it represents exists. Thus in some ways this comparison of "those that do" and "those that don't" is a somewhat meaningless comparison. This juxtapostion with science and the theory of evolution is also very "interesting". Those who actually work in real science rather than merely paying lip service to it (whether to claim it proves their god or gods exist or do not exist) have a dedication to discovering the truth about things. That is something I certainly think is more important than this "God" pretend-issue. I certainly know that people other than scientists can also have a dedication to discovering the truth about things, however those that put themselves in opposition to science cause me to seriously doubt whether this is true in their case. For in their case, I suspect that what they are doing is fighting for their "truth" -- willfully trying to impose what they have accepted or decided is the truth on the world rather than honestly or humbly seeking to discover the truth. But the same is quite often true of those that uphold science as a source of truth, for paying lipservice to science, they often see it as a means to push what they have accepted or decided is the truth on others. Thus a far more significant distinction than that between "those that do believe in God" and "those that don't believe in God" is between the seekers after truth and the pushers of truth. I suspect that one of the main differences between many of "those that do" and "those that don't" is whether the truth and the search for truth has any part of the meaning they give to this word "God". Many differ in they type of experiences they have had with "believers in God", such as whether the believers in God that they have encountered were "seekers" or "pushers". Another big part of this question, however, is methodology. How do we discover the truth? Experiment and observation? Reading old texts? Prayer? Staring at ones belly button and proper breathing? Babbling over drinks in a bar? Debating with others over the internet? Using your imagination? Working in a creative endeavor like art, writing a book or making a movie? Well the effectiveness of a methodology depends very much on what one is seeking the truth about. For all that people of today have become enamoured of science because of its effectiveness in discovering the truth, the fact is, and I tell you this as scientist myself, the method of modern science is based on premises and assumptions which the scientists themselves can clearly see limit the kind of things that it can discover the truth about. One of the most fundamental priciples of modern science is an objectivity that is obtained by making itself oberserver independent by requiring that its data be obtainable by anyone following a certain proceedure. This is one of its most important techniques for getting past the beliefs and assumptions of individuals to the actual truth about things. However this method has a fundamental flaw in that it makes itself blind to any aspect of reality where the observer necessarily has an impact on what he observes -- such is most clearly the case when the subject of discussion is the observer himself and the nature of his own existence. The point here is that we use different methodologies because we are interested in different things, and it is my conclusion, from my observation of the discussion between people that a vast portion of the differences between peoples beliefs about things is a difference in the sort of things they are interested in. I have seen so many arguments/debates on the internet where when you look at it carefully they are mostly just ignoring each other in order to continue talking about what they are most interested in.

Well the array indices in c++ usually start at 0 not at 1, so it looks to me like you are referencing a nonexistent member of the array. This is one of the biggest troubles with c++ that you have to do all your own checking to make sure you don't reference nonexistent members of an array, for doing so will trigger no errors, you just get unpredicable results. I think that is it, but if not then it would nice to see what the output looks like, but my guess would be that you have found a bug in your compiler, because they did not quite anticipate how you are using this feature. In that case, what happens without using an array at all or a longer array?

Yep. And this is the nature of living things in general. This self-programing nature that living things have is the essence of free will. People confuse free will with freedom which involves some control over events, but if we think that we have such control then we are in one part lucky and in another part deluded. Free will is the freedom to make choices among those alternatives that we are aware of and be doing so to decide what we are (in the ways that really matter). Then our notion of God is not really that different, even though we end up calling it different things. And it seems to me that a lot of people have the notion at their core and that the rituals and the terminology are just the layers. At least, that's the impression that I get by talking to people lately, particularly those of my age group here in Egypt (where I live). By faith creating its object, I should clarify that I do not mean that faith in God creates God, but rather that our faith that life is worth living does tend to make life worth living. Another example is that a shared faith in love creates that love. These are examples of how the belief effects reality because they are well within the realm of the things of the mind where belief has power to alter reality. But God cannot by definition be any such thing, for the very idea of God is that He is something beyond all limitations - particularly our own limitations and therefore to identify God with and reduce God to the concept we create of Him would render the concept meaningless. No the identification I am making is between these two types of faith: the faith in God and the faith that life is worth living. What this means is, that you cannot have a faith in God without a faith that life is worth living and the more radical claim is that if you have a faith that life is worth living, then in some sense, no matter what words you might use for it, or what you might call the object of your faith, you essentially have a faith in God. You see part of the problem is the that word "God" has a history of use and abuse and thus comes with a whole lot of baggage and thus this gives rise to situations where an individual may be forced to repudiate "God" with all the life-denying baggage it has been loaded down with in their life, in order that they can make a real and effective affirmation of life - but a true affirmation of life is a affirmation of the true God, for life is His creation and you might say His "obsession". It is for life that God created the physical universe and it is for life that God has always worked and acted, encouraging living things to reach out for the potentiality that is within them and for life in general to reach out for the infinite potential that it is ultimately capable of. It is the repeated plea of God in scripture, "I have set before you life (blessing) and death (curse), therefore choose life." Thus Jesus says, "I came that you might have life, and have it more abundantly."

Then let me apologize ahead of time for when we have a real knock down disagreement for it is bound to happen sooner or later. If I get too heavy handed with the arguments against your point of view, you can simply say, I don't know how to answer you argument or even if I understand it fully, but what I said is nevertheless what I believe and that is my choice, right? That or something like it should shut me up pretty quick, for I very much believe that what we believe is primarily a matter of choice and that we mainly use reason to justify those choices.

You should not be so surprised. Communication is a lot of work and misunderstandings are just things you have to deal with. In my case, your clarification is sufficient, for I think arguing about what you said is silly because you are right here to say what you mean anyway. If you have read enough of my stuff then you know that I will adopt postures as part of a technique for getting a point across. For example I can come down on Christianity pretty ruthlessly, but I am a Christian, so the anti-Christian posture is just a technique for communicating what I think Christianity is really about. So the point is that I am not going to get too bent out of shape if someone else is using a similar technique. But when you do that, you have to expect misunderstandings, and anticipating them you can actually use them to further emphasize your message. You use the rhetoric of revolution and that is a powerful one for change. It really moves people, especially young people because they can see that things are wrong and they want change, so if you can give them a vision for how that change can ocur they will want to be a part of it. But it also has great potential for destruction. The French and communist revolutions paid an enormous price in human life for little gain. The American revolution was the opposite of these for it was all about preserving what they had from British interference. Christianity uses this same type of rhetoric of revolution all the time because Christianity has a strong tendency to calcify into an institutional structure and loses the life giving message it has. In Christianity there is a very strong need for each generation to rediscover the life giving revolutionary message of Christianity apart from the dead institutions around them. I still don't see it. And the new analogy isn't helping. Since I see society/culture as an organic self-inventing structure...... AAAHHHHHH maybe I get it. Perhaps I am using the word "intitutional" in the way that you intended the word "culture" to convey. I will even use the word "culture" in a similarly negative sense when see conservative elements of Christianity unable to distinguish Christianity from the culture they have welded it to. OK I was going to suggest sticking to the analogy with a living organism and see where this thing you call "culture' fits into that, so let me see if I can help. The word "institutional" in the framework of this analogy conveys something dead, and so I would compare it to the shell of a crustation, a dead product of the living organism. It best serves a purpose in a hostile world to protect the organism, but an impregnable shell has its price in taking away mobility and limiting growth, so many organisms have learned to shed their shell and grow a new one. For the human body, what is comparable is our skin, which we completely replace every 14 days. My church organization has learned this lesson very well, understanding that the church organization serves a purpose but it is only a dead shell and we need to be ready and willing to cast it away if we want to be a part of something that is alive. So we see our church simply as a temporary entity whose purpose is simply to help the next generation to reinvent Christianity for themselves in a church of their own. But where I have applied this to the church, perhaps you can find a way to apply it to a broader context, for there is a sense in which modern culture is very much like a skin that replaces itself completely every generation. But now I would like to consider the last part of your OP that I did not get to in my first post. Hmmmmm.... I don't know if this will help but it is just the point of contact that I can make with this topic. When I was in my first four years of college I remember that there was a time when I was trying to figure out what this word "God", that religion was talking about, could possibly mean. The connection that finally gave this word meaning to me was the following: I decided that a faith in God was some how equivalent to a faith that life was worth living. It is a faith that every experience of life is a gift to learn and grow from. That life is worthwhile is not something that can be proven to you, it necessarily must be taken on faith, and like many things where faith has indispensible role, your faith actually creates its object. For example, love between two people cannot exist without an act of faith that this love between them exists. Likewise, life itself requires some faith or you can never find that it is worthwhile. Nothing will kill love faster than expecting it to be proven to you, and I think the worthwhile nature of life is the same. Life is not something that happens to you, it is something you do -- it is what you do in response to all the thing that happen.

I don't see anywhere near so many unsatisfied people it seems, but the one thing that is clear to me is that these unsatisfied people you are talking about are not the ones saying these things you call "cliches". The message behind all of these are really just saying that you should live your life - find something worth doing and do it and not just sit around complaining. Because, frankly that is why these unsatisfied people never change, for complaining will get you nothing. One root causes of this habit of complaining is another destructive habit: envy. This is one that I find particularly pathetic. Looking at other people and wanting what they have. Well frankly more than 90 of wealth is something that people have created themselves. This was the flaw in the whole Marxist ideology that the captalists have all this wealth and is keeping it from others. Now there is no doubt that those who accumulate wealth are quite often going to do their best to keep it. But again since it was originally created by them or their family they are the ones who deserve it. And by the way, I am way below the poverty line, so don't think that I think this way because I am one of the have's, because except in the sense that I live in the US which means that relative to much of the world I can relatively speaking be called wealthy. But that is not really what counts here, because the point is that I don't look at the people around me with envy thinking that the things they work for and create should be mine. But you want to know where the greatest source of joy in my life is found? And this is important because I believe it is directly connected with all those out there who are satisfied with life regardless how they are financially. It is in the creation of things. For me it is in computer programming that I found my art medium so to speak. Once you have created something whether it is writing a book or making music or some accomplishment in sports or building a small business or even making a difference in regards to some social issue, that is when you know that you have found the purpose of life and this whole envy-complaining thing is revealed for the complete nonsense that it really is. But the key to this is finding your joy in the work of creation for its own sake for if you are looking for rewards and fame then you are defeating yourself because most of the time these rewards only come to people because your passion, love and investment in the thing itself is what causes others to see value in what you have created. I don't get this delusional part. If you enjoy being alive then how in the world could that be a delusion? Just because the enjoyment they find in life is not what turns you on, does not make it delusional! Yes but the fatal flaw in your analogy with VR is that these societies were not designed at all. These rules were not all laid out in some kind of blueprint for some over-arching purpose, they evolved because they fulfill a need. Thus a much better analogy is to compare a society to a living organism, and in the case of a multi-cellular organism this is more than an analogy it is an actuality. These organims have also made all kinds of choices in their evolutionary development, some quite arbitrary and some critical to their survival. And do I even need to point out the mind boggling diversity of the forms of life that have resulted from this process. What is fundamentally wrong is not the arbitrary character of some of the rules that societies and organisms live by. What is completely and utterly wrong is not seeing that this is a perfectly natural feature of life. Diversity is something to admire and rejoice in for even the arbitrarily chosen results in the foundation of our identity. So what if there is nothing particularly advantageous for a particular species of bird to have a blue feather on its head, it is part of what makes that bird what it is and by which these bird recognize themselves. Ah I guess it was inevitable that this pervasive habit of envy would eventually make its appearance. But frankly it is this that is the real culprit in the disatisfaction of the people who frankly choose to live like drones and robots. Yes well you could say that this means that democracy is not going to be much of a success for a lazy people, but the only problem is, neither is anything else. That's right, I certainly do not. This thinking partakes of that laziest of all justifications for envy and complaining - the blaiming of all ones disastisfactions upon some mysterious "they" who are supposedly victimizing you. The problem is that when this thinking takes root, ceases power, and eliminates all the satisfied people, who "must be" the mysterious "they" because they are the ones who disagree with you, the immediate and obvious consequence is complete and utter poverty due the fact that you have just eliminated all the people who were actually creating things. This tragic story has replayed itself over and over again in country after country throughout the world in the last century. WELL I am certainly NOT one of those people who would criticize for doing things unorthodoxically. I am going to be even more "insulting" and say that instead you are one of these creative people that I have been talking about who can see the real meaning of life and is actively pursuing it. LOL But maybe what you are seeking to create is a new language and way of expressing the truths that are in these so called cliches so that they will more successfully communicate to all these disatisfied people what it is that they really need to hear. Which is kind of the calling of a preacher, if you will forgive my use of a term that is so orthodox, mundane and culturally accommodating. LOL But the real thing to be decided however, is whether you will create something for positive change or something which is destructive and I think the key to that cleansing this aspect of envy and complaining from the rhetoric you are using.

When does human life begin?There has a arisen among modern Christianity this newly found conviction that human life begins with conception. If we probe the history of Christianity we find a difference of opinions and Thomas Aquinas, for example, followed Aristotle's developmental view of the soul which concluded that the soul of the embryo could only be called human 40 days after conception. This only changed after the advent of modern genetics and the discovery that our unique genetic pattern begins at conception (sort of). What is new and peculiar is this sudden conviction that humanity is to be equated with a genetic code. What is terribly embarassing is the obvious logical connection to the extreme racists like the Nazis who held that there was a pure and perfect human genetic code that required a defense from corruption by inferior pseudo-human examples. Can this new conviction be seperated from that other? If we identify humanity with the possession of a particular genetic code can we avoid taking the next logical step and measuring the humanity of a person by the purity and completeness of that genetic code? There are other unsettling connections here. There are interpretations of Genesis that see the corruption of man as a corruption of the human seed by demons. They interpret the phrase "sons of God" in Genesis 6 as angels and claim that these bred with human women to give birth to inhuman giants called "Nephilim". I think this is an effort to resist the obvious interpretation of Genesis 6 in agreement with the rest of the Old Testament where the phrase "sons of God" always refers to God's chosen people. The logical interpretation here is this gives the answer to that age old question of who did sons of Adam and Eve marry and the answer of Genesis 6 is that these "sons of God" took wives from the "daughters of men" and gave birth not to inhuman giants but to "men of renown" - leaders of human civilization. But that would mean that there was other members of the human species on the earth in complete agreement with science, so even though this fits with other things like Cain's fear in Genesis 4:14 of all these nonexistent people, these anti-science reactionarys would rather believe in fairy tale giants and sex between angels and human beings. But again the real tragedy is this belief that human evil is some kind of corruption of the human genetic code tying this reactionary thought inseperably to racism and the idea of fighting evil through ethnic cleansing.But let us now examine this question frankly, when does human life begin? Well this cannot be answered unless we first answer the quesion of what is human life. The answer that human life begins at conception only makes sense if we answer this other question by saying that the human being is just another biological species trying to preserve the survival of its own genetic code. How does this fit with any kind of Christian world view? Well this particular type of "Christian" world view is one that sees God's creative involvement with the world as something that ended milenia ago with the creation of Adam and Eve. The rest of us are thus not a creation of God but a creation of biology. This is perhaps connected with a medieval view that the human race is in decline as our inheritance from our ancestors is corrupted over time and thus it is to the great thinkers of the past that we must look to for truth. In any case, in this worldview it becomes clear why our genetic code must be identified with our humanity, because apparently this is our only connection with God.Well now that we have explored this rather deplorable understanding of humanity held by some Christians, perhaps it is time to consider an alternative. Instead of seeing the human being as just another biological organism, some believe in something called the human mind. Many will insist that this is nothing more than a function of the human brain, but there are significant reasons to suggest that this is nothing of the kind. It is certainly clear then when examining the nature of life, inheritance is an important key to understanding it, for it is only by means of an inheritance that complex life is possible. But then what of the human mind? Do we find any inheritance other than this same genetic code by which all biological organisms are defined? We do indeed. In fact, if we can seperate out those things we call mental abilities, which are really a matter of brain function, from those beliefs, concepts, and methods of thought which are taught to us and have nothing whatsoever to do with our genetic code then it becomes quite obvious that we do indeed have an inheritance of the mind that is quite seperate and different from our biological inheritance in the genetic code.If as I have suggested, complex life revolves around and is defined by an inheritance, then this suggests that the human mind is a living organism. Clearly this living organism depends upon the human brain for its existence and can in fact be said to live in the brain. But does this mean that other animals which have a brain also have a mind? Again we have to look at the question of inheritance and we do see some examples of where information is passed from parents to offspring apart from their genetic code. Geese teaching their offspring where to fly south is just one such example. But the important thing to notice is that nowhere in the animal kingdom does this kind of inheritance play a role of importance comparable to that found in human beings. The informational inheritiance found in animals all serves the purpose of survival of their biological existence. Only in human beings do we find the contents of the mind defining our identity to such a degree that we give our lives for the sake these ideas. To be sure it is debatable but where in the animals it is clear that all serves their biological existence, in the human being there are clear examples and much sense to the idea that this is reversed and it is our biological existence which serves the interests of the mind.In a continuation of this discussion I will get back to this question of how this identification of humanity with the human mind changes the answer to this question of when life begins.

Chapter 10 continued and conclusion.Next JP considers the question, "what will Jesus be like in this resurrected kingdom of God in the future?" Here perhaps JP is forced to depart from his side by side view of the new and old creations as is evident by his phrasing of this question in the future tense. This is another indication that JP is on the wrong track, for if we believe in the kingdom of God as a spiritual kingdom we would not need to ask this of the future for it would be equally valid for the present, experienced by those who are in the spirit already and by those to whom Jesus has visited. Furthermore, JP's answer that Jesus would be in human form would be quite obvious for there is no reason to think that Jesus would appear in any different form than that which He has already appeared to His disciples after the resurrection. JP's appears to be concerned about how a vast human throng could all have access to a Jesus in human form but where JP must resort to magical ideas in a physical setting these difficulties naturally vanish in the spiritual setting outside the limitations of time and space. I would however add that I really do not expect Jesus sitting on some throne or as a constant companion in the way that some have envisioned and this is because I do not see the kingdom as and end to personal growth but only beginning. In such growth I would not expect Jesus to constantly hold our hand but only to come to us as an unexpected visitor to turn our world upside down and thereby give us what we need just and exactly when we need it, much like in the film named "Joshua". But this is another part of the fundamental differences between our views of heaven. For JP heaven seems to be an end of growth, strife, free will and thus equivalently and end of life which I see as a fundamental contradiction to the promise of eternal life. Apparently for JP, eternal life is little more than eternal existence.Next JP considers the concept of the corporate Christ as described by Paul where Christians form a single body with Christ as the head. JP says that the best sense that he can make of this is simply that our encounter with the human Jesus will not be a sequential affair but partaking of something like the simultaneous individuation and unity of the Trinity. I see something quite different in this concept of the body of Christ. I see the next stage in human evolution in the formation of a communal organism, where individuals can cooperate with the same kind of productivity, exceeding the capacities of the individual, that is found in the community of cells making up the physical body. Perhaps one of the industries where we can see such cooperation at its peak is in the production of a major motion picture, where the creativity of many individuals results in the creation of new worlds for people to see and explore. I see this as part of both the future of mankind on the earth and the future in the spirit as well. I think this reveals another flaw in JP's view as, ironically enough, too other-worldly and so far from the hopes, dreams and expectations of non-Christians or even other Christians that they could not relate to it. This, of course, does not mean that JP is wrong but I think that the fact of the diversity of religion and human thought does suggest that JP probably is wrong. Furthermore, I think it makes more sense to base ones speculations upon the clues that are all around us in this world.Finally JP extends his speculative inquiries to their most daring by considering the possibility of other intellegent beings elsewhere in the universe with their own awareness of God. JP asks the naive question of whether Christ died for these beings as well. I think this presumes too much similarity between these beings and ourselves such that they would even need anything like the salvation that we do. JP draws on the thinking of Gregory of Nazianus that Jesus assumption of humanity is essential to His work of saving humanity. With this I certainly agree and would add the very simple obervation that Jesus being the salvation for non-human beings makes no more sense than supposing that these beings also fell into sin as a result of the actions of Adam and Eve. But more importantly I think we cannot make any assumptions that there are any similarities in regards to the needs of these beings or the nature of their relationship to God. I imagine exploring the enormous differences in a very large number of such different beings may be one of the neverending vistas that we can look forward to as a part of eternal life and our discovery of the infinite nature of God. So JP asks how this fits into the idea of encountering Christ in human form and imagining these aliens as a part of the corportate Christ suggests that Christ must take different forms appropriate to whatever species He encounters according to similar incarnation events on their worlds. I do not even imagine these alien beings as a part of the body of Christ at all, but expecting far more vast differences between us and them (which requires no imagining of any analogy to Christ in their lives) would suggest that a unity with such beings would most likely represent a completely different stage in the process of evolution, where the human community is just one individual in a greater communal organism. In Christian rather than scientific imagery this would represent another stage in our discovery, relationhsip and union with God.ConclusionI have certainly found enormous similarities in our approch to many things in Christianity and especially concerning the relationship between science and religion. Furthermore I have encountered many interesting ideas that are new to me, but as you can see, I also have many ideas that I would share with him as well. The differences in our thinking are primarily rooted in two things: one is a very different metaphysical conception of reality and the second is our position on the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Clearly our disagreement on these two issues are fundamental and important to the way we think affecting many different considerations. But hopefully our differences can ultimately be seen as just one of those things that make life interesting.

Chapter 10 continued I would like to begin by mentioning a book by N. T. Wright called "Surprised by Hope" in which you will find many of the same ideas regarding an eschatological hope in a future physical resurrection rather than a spiritual hope founded on a belief in the immortality of the soul. The point being that JP is far from being alone in his ideas and convictions in this regard. Also I can say that it was from reading that book by Wright that I formulated a lot of the objections I am expressing in response to this idea as it is expressed by JP in his book as well. To continue, the thrust of JP's reasoning about an interchange of material with the risen Jesus is to lead us to his conclusion that our personal destiny, human destiny and the desiny of all material creation is one and the same: a recreation by God. However, I feel that this has some serious theological flaws. A need for God to recreate the world impies that either God's original work of creation is flawed or that mankind has managed to contaminate God's creation and make it evil and in need of redemption. Together with JP denial of a spiritual reality apart from the physical, this implies that this contaminatation is of a physical nature for why else would it require a physical transformation. The more common Christian view is that the evil in the world is purely spiritual both root and effect and the only transformation of the world that is required is a transformation of the human spirit. I suppose that one of the reasons why people are brought to JP's way of thinking is the existence of what they call natural evil: things like physical death, disease and natural disaster. But it seems to me that this is a remnant of thinking from before the theory of evolution and an imperfect absorbtion of its implications because the scientific theory of evolution necessarily implies that all these are a perfectly natural part of God's creation, for you cannot have evolution without physical death and even the challenges of disease and natural disasters are spurs for evolutionary development. If one understands evolutionary development to be an objective manifestation of God participatory role in the creation of living things then these "natural evils" are no different from the other challenges in life by which God helps us to grow in spirit, mind and responsibility for our own existence. The plain fact is that just as stable populations cannot evolve, so also does comfort and security lull us into apathy, atrophy, and stagnation. JP continues his spectulation with the question of "how will that transformation come about for the great bulk of matter still remaining in the old creation, untouched so far by the resurrection?" He answers saying that "God will continue to hold this present world in being while its processes are still capable of fruitful development." The part in italics raises a common belief by many Christians that I do not agree with, and this is the idea that the continuing existence of the universe requires exertion of God's will. The problem is that this implies that God is incapable of creating anything truly apart from himself, and that this world is more like a dream in the mind of God that will vanish when God's attention is elsewhere. I have a difficulty distinguishing this view from panentheism, and I don't believe that it makes any sense, for either you limit God's power to create things apart from Himself or you contradict His obvious intention to create things with free will an thus acting independent of His own will, which could never be complete or real if we did not even exist independent of His will. It is my suspision that this belief is a logically inconsistent product of misplaced piety, but our dependence on God must be derived from an acknoweledged need for His guidance and not from some philosophical rational for why we really have no choice. In any case, JP suggests that the fact that the universe cannot go on forever, because the second law of thermodynamics makes this universe a wind up affair that is inevitably running down, supports his idea of God transforming it into a new creation. But I do not think that the finite span of the universe is in any way relevant to what JP would have us believe. My own expectation is that in the spirit we will be free to admire and enjoy the the universe in its entirety as a beautiful creation of God, including our own very small contribution from when we were a part of it. The rather common belief that the spiritual exists outside of time and space, strongly supported by the implications of modern physics, means that the finitude of the universe's temporal expanse is no different from the finitude of its spatial expanse. Furthermore this adds an additional absurdity in seeing the development of God's kingdom as somehow dependent on the passage of time in the progress of human history. The idea that God requires this universe as raw materials for a new creation sheds a very different light on JP's comment regarding God creating "continua" rather than the traditional idea of creation ex-nihilo. As far as creating living things I certainly agree that God created living things by stimulating the process of evolution just as God stimulates our own spiritual developement as Christians. But this is entirely due to nature of living things and not any limitation on God's power of creation and so although I envision God creating this universe out of knowledge rather than magic, I would certainly not think that God creation of this universe required some pre-existing material. But that means that I also would therefore not think that God's creation of a new heaven and earth would require God to use this universe as raw materials for it. The most natural conclusion to draw from scriptures implying that the kingdom of Heaven is both now and in the future, is to take Jesus at His word when He says that His kingdom is not of this world. Yet when we understand this, like most Christians, as a spiritual kingdom, then as God who is spirit, not only interacts with this world but can dwell within us, so also can Jesus' spiritual kingdom transform this world until it finally resides within and inhabits this world as well. This is not only rather naturally suggested by numerous scriptures in the Bible but it is far more natural resolution of this problem than resorting to intersecting branes and subspaces.

Chapter 10 Imaginative PostscriptJP starts this chapter with an attempt to justify going beyond firmly based knowledge to use imaginative speculation in the investigation of theological truth comparing it to the use of thought experiements in physics. For me there is no need for such a justification, for more than JP's tentative endeavors I see this sort of speculative exploration as a central part of my own systematic methodology for discovering the truth. To do this requires adding a selective process so that you can plumb such a speculative explorations for something with actual truth value. This is done by matching the logical implications of such speculations to ones experience of reality and human existence. The reason for JP greater hesitation is probably found in the use that JP makes of his speculative exploration which is in the subject of eschatology. Since this is an opinion about future events this is not something can be pragmatically verified by anything but waiting to see. This can also explain, why I have not had much interest in the subject of eschatology at all.What is peculiar in JP's view (not to imply that others do not share it) is that it is to eschatology that they look for fulfillment of the Christian's hope after death. And so to pursue this with a speculative investigation, JP considers the question, "how are the old creation and the new creation related?" This is of particular interest to JP because it is directly related to JP's theology of there being two stages in God's creative work: first at a distance to allow for free will and then acheiving the ideal when we freely choose to abandon that free will. Since I cannot even look forward to the heaven He envisions as something of any promise at all, I cannot see any merit in his thinking. I do see a promise for the development of humanity in the historical context but not as something which all our hopes rest upon and not as the kind of physical transformation that JP envisions. Again I think that JP fails to think through all the implications of evolutionary theory and how it can bring new meaning to Christianity, for this gives us reason to see unfulfilled stages in the evoloutionary development of mankind as part of the natural course of human history which is quite apart and different from the natural stages in individual human life, which is where the hopes individual must be found. In any case, JP pursues his speculation based on the implications of New Testament scriptures that indicates that the kingdom of God is not something only in the future but something already begun with Christ's resurrection and concludes that this means that the old creation and the new are not simply sequential but also exists side by side. His speculation in this regard becomes extremely fantastic (not credible) when he envisions these as two subspaces within the multidimensional vector space of total created reality or as being located on separate branes of M-theory, which he thinks may intersect in our experience of the sacraments. I think that the answer to the question of how JP could be brought to such wild and incredulous ideas is found in the fact that he does not believe in a spiritual reality apart from the physical and this distort every aspect of his theology.This is brought into sharp focus with his question, "Did the risen Christ breathe?" He suggests that this represents and interchange of matter between these two intersecting worlds. I find it quite puzzling that JP ignores the words of 1 Corinthians 15, answering the question of "with what kind of bodies are we raised", with the words "spiritual body". I think the implication is quite simply that there is a spiritual aspect of reality including spiritual beings like God and the angels which are capable of interacting with the physical. JP's refusal to believe in a separate spiritual reality interacting with the physical explains why his views seem to me to fall somewhere between Panentheism or Deism, for it seems that he must be forced to conclude that either physical reality is a part of God or there is no way for God to interact with it.JP laments the way opposing theological positions that seem to dismiss scriptures talking of Jesus eating and touching or the stories of the empty tomb which he sees as implying this interchange between two worlds and denying the critical significance of Jesus resurrection. But the other ways is to see Jesus' resurrection is as an affirmation of the tangible reality of the spiritual and with it the undeniable reality of the subjective aspect of our experiences. The point is that although the experiences of the risen Jesus may have been fully spiritual and subjective, this does not mean that they were not absolutely real. The undeniable significance of the resurrection can be found in the fact that the spiritual IS REAL, just as God who is spirit IS REAL, no matter how subjective our experience of Him may be. I think calling this point of view "dismissive" is just plain prejudicial. To show just how non-dismissive this can be, I ask you to consider my metaphysical position that spiritual things are composed of energy just as are physical things, but that these are simply a very different form of energy and is not a part of the space-time plus (11 dimensions in all) structure of the physical universe, and more importantly not subject to the laws of physics which is the basis of objective experiences.

Chapter 9 Ethical Consideration One of the things that has become obvious as science has enabled us to do new things is the need for ethical guidance. We must observe that just because we can do a thing does not mean that we should. Science itself cannot answer such questions but although it would not be wise to simply hand such questions over to religion nevertheless ethics is something which religion has always studied and had a stake in. But although JP argues that science must accept that religion has something to contribute on these questions as a possible reservoir of ethical experience, JP also makes the excellent point that religion must also recognize that science brings about competely new ethical challenges that religion cannot ever have considered before. JP takes this to mean that these must be a matter of public dialogue. I would add that although religious principles may well play a role in the discussion, it is not productive to pretend that scriptures make a definitive stand on these issues.As an example JP considers the possibility of human cloning raised by the successful cloning of sheep. Because the high falure rate, negative health impacts, and potential for the manipulative invasion of human personhood, the use of cloning for actually producing human beings is plagued with ethical red flags. But the issue of theraputic cloning for stem cell research is quite a different matter. However, remembering Kant's injunction that human beings must always be an end and never a means to something, we are faced with the same question that is fundamental to the controversy over abortion: when does human life begin such that it should be protected by this ethical mandate laid down by Kant?Theology brings into this discussion questions about the spirit and soul. If the joining of the soul to the body happens at conception then the implication is that embryonic stem cell research should not be allowed. However JP points out a very interesting flaw in this point of view and this is the fact that the separation of the embryo into identical twins can occur up to 14 days after conception. JP also points to a older theological tradition by Thomas Aquinas (no doubt influenced by the opinion of Aristotle) that the soul becomes attached to the infant in the womb between 40 and 80 days after conception. However I think that JP's idea that dualist philosophy is somehow logically connected to the idea of human life begining at conception with the gift of the spirit is completely without foundation. I certainly do agree with JP that a developmental view of the human spirit is certainly more compatable with the scientific facts and the belief that human life begins somewhat later than conception, however I don't think that there is any necessary connection between the developmental view and JP's psychosomatic view. I hold to a developmental view that is a dual aspect monism like JP's view but which is much more highly dualistic than his psychosomatic view. I would argue that we can see very clear distinctions between the spirit, mind and body which makes JP's reduction of the spirit to some information bearing pattern of the body quite inadequate.In fact I think JP's view maintains the identification of humanity with genetics and biology which I think is seriously flawed philosophy. If genetics defines humanity and human value then this is not only more supportive of this idea of human life beginning at conception, but this is only one small step away from ideological justifications for racism, sexism and prejudice against the handicapped. Therefore I think our intuition or instinct to see our humanity as something quite apart genetics and biology -- which really amounts to no more than appearances, is well founded. Deviation from biological norms and differences in appearance do not subtract from our humanity, and likewise I submit that we can very well retain our superficial "human" appearance while losing everything that makes us human.Therefore since I see NO connection between our genetics and our humanity, I would find all these ethical concerns regarding the human genetic code to be a little misplaced. Our genome is certainly very important but all it really amounts to is a repository of information which is our heritage from our biological roots. I can very well see the ethical problems with tampering with that heritage in its abusive potential for a manipulative invasion of a person's life. However I see absolutely no reason to consider the human genetic code as sacred in any other context.

I believe that the answer to this question goes right to the heart of the difference between science and religion. By restricting itself to seeing the world through this filter of objective (observer independent) observation, you basically force the world to fit into this activity of the observer studying that which is apart from himself. This is unavoidable because if the observer interacts with what he observes then the nature and character of the observer becomes relelvant in what is observed and that means it is no longer observer independent - it means that the observation proceedure will obtain different results depending on who does it, and when that happens science does not recognize any evidence upon which it can draw conclusions. This does not mean that science does not recognize these limitations, or even that it does not draw conclusions from it. Quantum physics is certainly one of the most familiar examples to me, where it is recognized that the act of measurement not only alters what is being measured but tends to even create the very thing being measured. Examples of how science has to navigate around this limitation in many fields of science shows just how unavoidably real it is. And I think this is how a scientist can perceive a serious flaw in the naturalist presumption that what science describes is all that is real. Certainly psychologists have come to realize how belief affects perception, and this is one of the things that shows just how important this objectifying technique of science can be in understanding the world, for it allows us to go beyond the limitations of our belief to discover things about the world that we could never have imagined. Modern medical science has to constantly confront and navigate around the placebo effect by using control groups in the test of a possible cure for disease. Thus there is absolutely no denying that belief effects what we observe - it is scientific fact, thus my question is not whether belief affects reality, but how? Simple logic suggest that what this limitation of the methodology of science is going to affect most is when the subject of our observation is closer to the observer himself. So it is no accident that the two examples above are medicine and psychology. But what I want to do is to look at is the serious flaw involved in trying to force self-examination to fit into the scientifc activity of the observer studying that which is apart from himself. The apparent contradiction is quite obvious. But just try to imagine what this says about some of the typical situations in life where we are forced to examine ourselves. For example, consider the question of love. Do you love this person? The question is not avoidable because it involves some rather important decisions about how you will live your life? But can you answer such a question by examining yourself as if you were a bug under a microscope. When people do try this, they usually fail - it is a senario examined by quite a number of books and films. The critical element that this approach usually misses is the answer to the question, do you want to love this person? There is dissonance between answering such a question and the usual standard of scientific objectification, where what what you observe should not depend on what you want to be the case. To avoid misunderstanding let me make a clarification about what topic this thread is addressing. If we consider the question "Does the belief about a particular thing have an effect on the reality of that particular thing?" It should be clear that the answer in general is no. However what my topic here is getting at is that this is not true for all things because that we must distinguish those things that we have no control over from those which are very much subject to your own decisions. Now I am not saying that everything can be neatly categorized in one or the other, our health for example is one of the things where the two intimately interact. On the other hand, even within the question of health the distinction is there. The body requires the function of the heart and kidneys in order to continue living. If these fail and are not replaced then you will die, and all the wanting it to be otherwise will not change this. On the other hand, doctors see all the time, how the desire to live plays a critical role in whether their patients survive. The reason I believe that all this ties into the nature of religion, is because religion very much imposes upon our perception of reality, beliefs about the way things should be. It constantly confronts us with the question what we want to be case, particularly what kind of person we want to be? It studies the question of how our choices and our beliefs effect the living of our lives - not only the choices of the individual but the choices of society. And thus I believe that within religion, in addition its arbitrary cultural baggage, there is a reservour of experience about the answers to such questions. It is fustration about the difficulty in distinguishing between these two that often causes people to abandon it altogether. The point here is that for all its usefulness and truthfulness, science is not the be all and end all of human life. It is not simply enough to understand the world around us. We have to decide what to do with that understanding. We have to decide how we are going to live our lives. And that is not something that science can answer because it is not simply a question of what is, but also a question of what we want to be the case. We are not just observers looking at life as if it were something apart from ourselves. We are participants and what we decide to do (and to believe) has an enormous impact on the kind of life we are going to experience. Indeed there are some new age religions which have tried throw out all the cultural and doctrinal baggage in order to focus on this role of religion exclusively (such as the church of religious science). However one thing that should be clear, is that not everyone is going to answer the question of, what we want to be the case, in same way, and the result is that diversity in the area of religion is just going to be a reality that we have to accept and one that I hope we can learn to embrace.

The second answer that JP discusses is the denial of the reality of evil as a kind of deprivation of good in the same way that darkness is the lack of light. JP suggest that this idea loses much of its credibility in the face of things like the Holocaust and I quite agree. Saying that the problem doesn't exist has more of the flavor of pretending and delusion than of a rational solution. HOWEVER as JP mentions later in the chapter, the problem of evil and suffering is largely one of scale and what JP fails to notice is the fact that scale is something that alters with perspective. The child denied a piece of candy often acts like it is the end of the world, and similar changes of perspective happen throughout life. What then can we say from the perspective of eternal life in which God promises the realization of perfect justice and eternal happiness and which are difficult for us to even imagine.The third answer that JP discusses is the idea that evil and suffering are the neccessary price for some greater good that can be obtained in no other way. This is certainly an improvement on an older idea that evil is necessary for good, but there is still something troubling in JP's explanation, for although this may work for suffering or natural evil (such as the pain that is endured for the sake of great accomplishments like in ballet), we would not want to say that there is anything that could justify moral evil. But the solution to this is found in the connection that JP makes to the "free will defense". For then it is not evil itself that is justified but only the possibility of evil that is inherent in free will. I, in fact, believe that free will is the essence of life and so I claim that the possibility for evil is inherent in the idea of life itself. But in this case, is the creation of life really justified? I believe this depends entirely upon the motivation for doing it. Surely to create life just in order to bring this possibility for evil into fruition, is itself evil. On the other hand, to create life to care for and love, means that any suffering caused by this possibility for evil is empathetically shared by the creator, and thus I believe is morally justified when done for that motivation.However this is not explained by JP who simply suggests that there is a greater good that requires a two step process where God first creates at a distance to allow for free will but then allows us to abandon that free will by our own choice in order to experience heaven. But I find this solution of JPs to be quite attrocious, both for conceiving of a need for a Deist sort of God and for believing that an abandonment of the responsibility of free will (an abandonment of life itself in my view) is the nature of heaven. I think both of these are sterile and very short sighted. I see no reason to abandon the idea of God's involvement in our lives to the degree that JP does, for I think the logical problems are adequately addressed by simply limiting the nature of that involvement from a designing or controling role to that of a stimulating participant in the lives of His creatures as one part of their environment. Furthermore I believe that heaven is not found in an abandonment of life but by fully embracing it, but that life is only most fully engaged in a functional relationship with an infinite God. The illusion is not free will itself but our perception of it, like the imagination of child that the acceptance of rules is stifling their creativity, when the truth is that the structure that rules provide can actually liberate the hidden potential of our creativity. This truth is obvious in the arts but is also true in social interactions and in every other aspect of life.There are some other rather natural answers which JP does not discuss: that God lacks the power to prevent or stop evil, or that God is Himself a being of both good and evil. On can argue that these options are not seriously considered by Christian theologians, yet on the other hand there are elements in Christian thought that get very close to these and so I think indentifying them as such can help to show why they are wrong or at least distorted. Some versions of open theism make the future inaccessible to God, so that instead of being a choice to sacrifice absolute control, God is simply incapable preventing evil. The kenosis conception of God sacrificing power and knowledge for the sake of love is far richer and more inspiring. Much more common are attempts to justify apparently immoral behavior on the part of God by defending God's right to do as he pleases, which is a might makes right sort of philosophy that is morally vacuous and indefensible. This conception of God is closely associated with the intellectual blackmail approach to evangelism - believe or else, but putting God into the role of a gunman getting His way by waving a big gun around is a device suitable for religion as a means of manipulating people rather than bringing about spiritual awarenss and growth in a relationship with God. In conclusion I must say that JPs theodicy is greatly complicated by his idea of locating the hope of the Christian in some future act of God. In fact I think that this is a bandaid on a flawed theodicy. Furthermore, any formulation of Christianity which postpones its effectiveness to a future event makes it into a vacuous promise of a manipulative religion rather than a viable answer to life's challenges. This is why I think the immortality of the soul has always been the more universally accepted basis for religious thought, for then the issues of religion are immediate rather than promisory. There is only the need to understand this idea of the "immortality of the soul" properly by making the clear distinction between eternal existence and eternal life, knowing that it is having the second which makes the first an experience of heaven rather than hell.

Where is the last post I made?Ah... I see there is a rather odd quirk in the system where post 11 was invisible because page 2 was not displayed until this post was made.

This is unbearably dumb. The only thing that breeds hatred of Communism is Communism itself. I certainly was not bred to fear Communism. I was raised walking in peace marches and visiting Black Panther headquarters because my father was a communist - a Maoist to be precise. Then I read Marx's Communist Manifesto and Lenin's What is to be done and what I found was the pure evil of a rigid and irrational ideology built from hatred and deception. This was the creation of ignorance and hatred very much like that of Nazism to tear down and destroy leaving devastation, misery and poverty in its wake, turning whole countries into killing grounds and prison camps. Where Nazism was built from one kind of irrational hatred found in racism, Communism was build from another kind - the hatred of relgion and capitalism. Theirs was the imbecility of the gunman that thinks that problems can be solved with a gun when the truth is that this will only bring self-destruction. This is what the great Communist experiment has proven to the world -- that the tremendous destruction of human life that it perpetrated was no sacrifice for a better world but just murder plain and simple.