religious / symbolic / empathic / transcendent "thought" related to / outcome of / source of social bonding?
religious / symbolic / empathic / transcendent "thought" related to / outcome of / source of social bonding?
NS: Back to issues of faith and reason—your position reminds me of Stephen Jay Gould’s model of “non-overlapping magesteria.” Gould himself was not a believer, though he wrote about religion and science, and sometimes he has been accused of having a position that is only possible if you’re not really taking belief seriously.
TE: I think that Gould was right in that particular position. What is interesting is why it makes people like Dawkins so nervous. They misinterpret that position to mean that theology doesn’t have to conform to the rules and demands of reason. Then theologians can say anything they like. They don’t have to produce evidence, and they don’t have to engage in reasonable argument. They’re now released from the tenets of science. Traditionally, this is the Christian heresy known as fideism. But all kinds of rationalities, theology included, have been non-scientific for a very long time and yet still have to conform to the procedures of reason. The new atheists think this because they falsely identify the rules of reason with the rules of scientific reason. Therefore if something is outside the purview of science, it follows for them that it is outside the purview of reason itself. But that’s a false way of arguing. Dawkins won’t entertain either the idea that faith must engage reason or that the very idea of what rationality is is to be debated.
Frank Shaeffer
Have Frank Schaeffer Speak to Your Group
Frank's recent topics include:
* How the New Atheists Poison Atheism (Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and the other "fundamentalist" atheists.)
* Faith in God For People Who Don't Like Religion Or Atheism
* Only Thing Evangelicals Will Never Forgive Is Not Hating The “Other”
* Writing: Why, How, When--The Nuts and Bolts Of Actual Writing As A Successful Career
* Confessions Of A Former Fundamentalist
* The Case For Spirituality in the Age Of Doubt -- Learning to Embrace Paradox
I marshall a lot of circumstantial evidence suggesting the pineal produces DMT, a powerful hallucinogen, during meditation. It’s called DMT. The Spirit Molecule (Park Street Press, 2001).
Rick Strassman MD
University of New Mexico School of Medicine