Review (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, April 15, 2008, 14:17 (6066 days ago)

The forum has been operating for just over three months now, and to a certain extent I feel that so far it has fulfilled its purpose of generating discussion on this most controversial of topics. Personally, I've benefited enormously from the wide-ranging contributions especially from George Jelliss, whitecraw and David Turell, and have also learned a great deal from the (sometimes heated) exchanges with Mark, Clayto, John Clinch, Peter P. and various others who have flitted in and out of the scene. - A disappointment, however, has been the fact that the discussions have been limited virtually to the first five sections of the "brief guide", and have hinged almost exclusively on the battle between science and religion. With the exception of our one panentheist, this battle has been waged only by atheists and agnostics, which excludes vast areas of the subject. Neil White and Clare Rooney, who between them have set up and administered the site with admirable efficiency, initially approached numerous groups of all faiths and non-faiths inviting them to contribute. The total absence of participation by any of the religious organizations speaks for itself, and is perhaps symptomatic of the precarious situation in which religion finds itself in current western society. - Does it matter? For those who have made up their minds that nothing else is out there, we got here by accident, and we are top dogs in the universe, maybe it doesn't. There is no further argument. But for anyone who is prepared to consider the possibility of an intelligence beyond our own that created life in the first place, there are countless questions to be asked. What might be its nature, why did it create life, what do the various religions have to say about it? The argument has been put forward that you can be a "Christian theist" and a "Hindu atheist", because you believe in the Christian God but not in the Hindu gods. That misses the point. No-one can "know" for sure, and all our religions are a common human attempt to get to grips with the ungraspable. We should focus on the shared quest rather than on the differences, and we should consider what accounts are on offer. In the "brief guide" I have tried to do so, have pointed out what seem to me to be major inconsistencies in their underlying concepts, and have speculated on alternatives. But I would welcome other views on this subject too. - For those of us stuck in the middle, there are further unsolved mysteries that seem to stretch beyond the parameters of science, and these are by no means confined to the problems of the origin of life and the workings of evolution. Most of us accept that evolution happened, and that all forms of life sprang from earlier, comparatively primitive forms such as bacteria. But if you go back to those beginnings and then make the comparison with what has evolved so far, how do you account for the extraordinary complexities not just of our physical being but also of consciousness, emotions, art and music, spirituality? While atheist scientists will continue to seek "natural" answers (which in themselves would certainly be of great interest), theists and agnostics may well find rich fields of exploration beyond the physical. These too are areas we have not touched on so far, with the swiftly diffused exception of near-death experiences. - Of course the scientific argument is not by any means exhausted, and so I hope the forum will continue to develop parallel threads, both scientific and non-scientific. In the meantime, I'd like to thank all those who have contributed so far, and to invite others to join in. We may never reach a consensus, but we can go on learning from each other and, if nothing else, that may at least help to promote the "open-mindedness and tolerance" that Peter P has called for.