Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 00:52 (5505 days ago) @ David Turell

This is the first reply to a reply I&apos;ve received on this forum. Sorry about the delay, but I&apos;ve been &quot;head over heals,&quot; as they say.-> > The physical world &quot;goes all the way down&quot; to the divine, or the physical world arises out of the divine, is &quot;made out of&quot; the divine. Science examines what &quot;oozes&quot; out of the divine. It&apos;s all one continuous process.&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> I need to understand what you mean by &apos;divine&apos;-I don&apos;t think it&apos;s possible to talk about God in objective terms. Theology ain&apos;t science and we should never make the mistake of ever dreaming it is or can be. We can only speak mythologically, in terms that point beyond themselves. &quot;Beyond to what?&quot; I hear you asking, just as you asked what I meant by &quot;the divine.&quot; Well, beyond to the divine. To the ineffable. To what is behind the sense of the sacred in our experience. -Religious beliefs and theology to my mind are nothing more than &quot;theories&quot; about what is behind the sense of the sacred. These theories are good and useful to the extent that they &quot;rationalize&quot; religious experience in terms that are are not inconsistent with the findings of modern science and which are coherent, that is, terms and statements that all hang together without self-contradiction and give due regard for one&apos;s personal religious experience, i.e. one&apos;s sense of the sacred.-If you have to ask what I mean by &quot;the sense of the sacred,&quot; and in your own experience you&apos;ve never had anything you can call that, then not much of anything I am likely to post up on this forum is going to be of interest to you. That&apos;s about all I can say.-&#13;&#10;<snip>&#13;&#10; &#13;&#10;> > > He quotes Dawkins: &quot;An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is someone who believes there is nothing beyond the natural physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body, and no miracles.&quot; Amazing how close Dawkins&apos; atheism is to process theology, yet process theology is anything but atheism. The process theologian can accept everything in that quotation, yet still find the divine in all of it.&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> I&apos;m still confused-What I mean is process theology has essential formulations that are in effect mythological statements that point to the origins of the sense of the sacred. If that doesn&apos;t &quot;ring any bells,&quot; there&apos;s not much else I can say.->>> I think there is a divine universal intelligence which created this universe and exists both within and without this universe.-I also think &quot;there is a divine universal intelligence...[that] exists both within and without this universe&quot; but I have to be careful in going along with the &quot;created this universe&quot; part. In a sense I can agree with it, but not in any conventional sense. In that regard, I have to ask you a question: what do you mean by &quot;created&quot;? I&apos;m with Dawkins in claiming that science has utterly refuted the notion of some kind of being &quot;out there&quot; or even &quot;within&quot; that has a mind that can conceive complex forms and somehow &quot;force&quot; them into existence according to his will, even if that takes billions of years. None of that is needed! The laws of nature by themselves are sufficient to effect the myriad of forms that we see in the natural world. In my theology however, the laws of nature proceed from the very essence of God. For that very reason, &quot;miracles&quot; are impossible for God, because they would contradict God&apos;s own nature.-<snip>-> What then is &apos;God-stuff&apos;? Do you mean it is natural and material?-Fundamentally, yes. Everything is &quot;made out of&quot; God. When God &quot;pulverizes&quot; himself, the most fundamental &quot;pieces&quot; of himself are the fundamental particles of nature, whatever they are (strings? who knows!). Since the fundamental particles are little pieces of God, supremely unconscious pieces of God because they are so simple, it stands to reason that when they collect together into higher and higher forms, following their own nature and coming to a focus in a &quot;higher&quot; being, they become more and more conscious, eventually reaching the point where they can turn right around and look inside themselves and &quot;see&quot; God in his fullness down deep inside, in what we call mystical experience.-More later.