Pope Affirms Big Bang and Evolution, Disavowing God as Having "Magic Wand", Yet Hold On...

In about August, 2021, the Pope declared in his position as the head of the Catholic Church that "the Big Bang theory and evolution are real, and that God is not a magician with a magic wand."

The Pope is probably talking mostly about evolution. Still, he may be actually meaning to emphasize the importance of Christian and other humanism and personal effort, rather than physics. Actually, for the Big Bang, it IS something out of nothing. Scientists explain the Big Bang because they have extrapolated back. The question, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" actually does take us to a "magic wand" moment, the instance before the Big Bang. In fact, that´s where philosophy "rears its ugly head," and blows the whistle on science. Science itself has "magical" aspirations for some number, as if the ancient Greeks and atheist humanists created it. The simple principle that modern science requires intense and sustained community and honest effort to work should make anyone "suspicious." Stan Jaki and James Hannam have done great work around that, among others. Historical sociology shows how Christians imperfectly but significantly were oriented by their religious values in creating science, including the freeing thought of an omnipotent Creator.

As for abiogenesis, it is so fascinating a subject that it deserves special attention. Science tells us that God hasn´t needed to intervene specially in physical and biological evolution because lawful regularities have unfolded. "Random mutations", BTW, are actually only random as interpreted by parameter-limited, and perhaps control hungry, scientists. In fact, it is merely complexity. Philosophically, we set that straight. Yet even with everything showing lawful regularities, a biologist named van Bertanaffly started thinking about the interrelatedness of biology, chemistry, and physics, for starters. Physics doesn´t actually map out chemistry, even though chemistry is defined as how atoms and molecules interact and react in combination processes. Biology itself is a whole complex level of complex, self-sustaining chemical activity.

So, whoa. They observe that the processes in the shift in levels involves a new whole that seems to be more than the sum of its parts. Chemistry is more than just fancy physics, and biology more than just fancy chemistry. They call that quality, "emergent properties," "emergence," and "emergentism."

Thus, science´s true nature shows through again plainly, that it is one kind of philosophy, not technical "revelation of truth." Thus, the Pope´s point is directed at anti-science fundamentalists, but it´s not a full and fair assessment. "Emergence" actually challenges many scientists who focus so much on reductionism that they even say that "mind" doesn´t exist, just "brains." Never mind the question of psychosocial and cultural experience, and of course, Transpersonal and Transcendental spiritual and religious experience and God.

Astrophysicist Reeves on the Invisible God, Leaves Out Invisible Problem´s of Science, etc

Mark R M Says the secular astrophysicist in hi-tech that drives the secular business world that descends from those who have superficially sliced off their religious and spiritual links, just retaining the hypocrisy. Religion largely submitted itself to science and business dictates. George Fox´s Quakers woke up in the 1600s as DesCartes began advancing his "mind-body(-spirit-nature)" split, despite concerns by Pascal. Artist-mystics-seekers like Blake, Wordsworth, and Emerson started raising awareness around nature in their movements. Post-Presbyterian eco-mystical John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892, and others led to the 1909 Paris Congress on the Preservation of Nature. Meanwhile, the term "science" was sliced off from"scientific philosophy" to make it align with technical mindsets in the 1800s who could control things scientifically. Bizpeople in turn took control of tech, as Edison crossed over himself, for profiteering. The 1929 Crash wasn´t the religious and non-rich messing around. Einstein represented an interesting angle, since he was a Jewish guy who could integrate as University secularism showed modernized Christian integrity, but associated it with materialism. The Universities and scientists failed to acknowledge their Christian integrity, as far as it went, and through the baby out with the bathwater.

Einstein was also very philosophical, showing what had been lost by the technical move to the term "science." He was also relatively spiritual, but disconnected from the Freud-Jung sensibility that later fostered Eco-psychology, basically. Gandhi was active, and a profound example as the automobile launched new technology. Rudolf Steiner formulated biodynamic principles along with his communitarian ideas. The US´s Social Gospel yielded mostly to liberal intellectualism, as FDR and Eleanor brought a pro-social angle.

This kind of comment grates on me more than not, since astrophysics is itself part of the unleashed Western technical mindset ravaging nature, and getting judgmental. Very doctrinally Christian, tellingly. Secularism has merely shaved off doctrinal exteriors, without the necessary spiritual transformation. Fritjof Capra has made progress in making intellectual links, while religious examples include JB Cobb´s Ecological Civilization done with biologist C Birch and economist H Daly. Union of Concerned Scientists and Physicians for Social Responsibility are also noteworthy. Reeves´ very accusation of "insane" demonstrates the very impulsive drive that underlies the problem itself. For one thing, "Man" is not just Westernized humanity, as Jared Diamond showed in his book Collapse. Ancient indigenous populations faced ecological systems with certain constraints, from the Mayans to the Anasazi Pueblo people and more, and they violated those constraints as their settlement culture demanded more resources for cultural projects.

Western society, Jesus´ legacy of Christian-based cultures, shows a special pitfall, however, and as an astrophysicist Reeves is intimately party to that. Science shot upwards in social status as DesCartes´ analytical geometry revolutionized math and science in the mechanistic direction. Yet, Giambattista Vico quickly began refuting its unadapted application to human affairs, as he pioneered constructivism in more or less, ("we invent and innovate the truth.") given human complexity and special processes. DesCartes did write about the passions as he also innovated the "I think, therefore I am" idea representing a new level of human individual awareness in Western secularizing Christianity.

Copernican, Galilean, Newtonian, and so on were practicing natural philosophy. The term "science" as the physical and life sciences came into use some time in the 1800s. It´s notable how it shifts focus and emphasizes the technical reliability and utilitarian usefulness of things using science´s new tested ideas and formulas. That is, using scientific philosophy´s new tested ideas and formulas. Except, Einstein´s insights showed that even as Jewish scholars had joined Christians historically through secularism in Universities, science really is scientific philosophy. It is humans thinking, and in a very specific legacy that believed in lawfulness because an "invisible" God had coherently gained recognition in Moses and the 45+ prophets of Jesus´ heritage, corresponding to Jesus´ 2 Commandments like no 2 "Love thy neighbor as thyself, as Jesus loved others."

Thus, humans like Einstein thinking in a psychocultural legacy meant that James Watts´ earlier invention of the steam engine around 1769 as a technological achievement was first in a part of culture in fact promoting Vico´s kind of constructivism, and DesCartes´, Newton´s, and so on´s kind of mechanicism. Blake´s "satanic mills" and Wordsworth´s nature poetry like "Tintern Abbey," and Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein appeared and captured aspects of people resisting the split from nature. They were celebrating Nature´s importance. JS Mills felt depressed in his youth, and restored by Wordsworth´s poetry. Mills also went on to innovate the term "stationary state" in economics that imagines a sustainable homeostatic state of balanced use and reuse in economics. He also saw through to employee ownership, as the co-op social biz was innovated in a sequence from R Owen´s pro-social biz to labor protests.

Environmental awareness gained scientific recognition as scientific philosophy broke creationist ideas, with Darwin´s natural selection. Yet, his mental health was challenged as he suffered in his hyper-intellectual context. He was so workaholic that he barely got relief on one trip to the countryside of Scotland, and otherwise by "hydrotherapy." Jumping in rivers by a field had its own extracted Western context! Emerson had left the Unitarians, and gained new direction writing about naturalists´ botanical work he saw in France. Wide-ranging botanist John Muir in the US founded the Sierra Club, as others founded the Audobon Society, and birding associations in the UK and elsewhere organized by 1909 and a conference in Paris. And many efforts until 1972 UN Stockholm conference on the human environment, UNCHE. Ecopsychology also emerged, reminding us that our human studies in sociology and anthropology count deeply. All natural science has effectively alienated itself from human social studies, and the work of Freud, Jung, Rogers, and so on helps understand why Marx, Durkheim and others observed devastating stress in modern society´s people.

Thanks, Mr. Reeves, but science has not been angelic, and in fact has become toxically part of the problem. Fritjof Capra has been building on van Bertanaffly´s and others´ Systems Theory to try to help restore sanity and link science to the social sciences. He doesn´t use "philosophy" to emphasize the human thinking element that I, like some or many of us, see is necessary.

Da Gr @MRM I think most of us would agree that humanity has taken the protection and responsible maintenance of our home for granted. But visceral guilt and condemnation alone falls short in empowering people to find ways of amending our former insensitivities. It also invites blame laying and finger pointing which achieves nothing purposeful. All aspects of our societies have been late in coming to this realization and it’s definitely going to take all of those groups working in tandem to make any significant progress.

M Re Mo Da Gr You sound worried about offending people of science, as if their carefree opinionating about religion doesn´t make them accountable to their own integrity. "Astrophysicists" are not masters of reality, nor is "science." As someone with a strong background in science, liberal arts, and the international affairs of eco-social sustainability, I assure you, scientists are not divine beings. In fact, anti-religious scientists talking about ecological matters in terms of an "invisible God" and "visible Nature" rather urgently need a taste of how they demonstrate a tendency to make SCIENCE´s responsibility for anti-environmentalism as "invisible" as (Christian) religion´s special role in ADVANCING science itself and environmental activism. However, that requires demystifiying science and scientists, and situating spirituality and religion adequately, which I have done naturally in balancing my education and experience. Thanks to the likes of F Capra, I´m understanding the issues in growing detail.

Astrophysicists yakking and blaming religion are demonstrating rank judgmentalism and hardly showing an integrity of character, as I rightly pointed out. R Dawkins, more than this Reeves the astrophysicist, has been so public that I learned that he does apparently drive an electric car. Yet, his views are so biased and unscholarly and clouded that he´s never relaxed enough to understand that sustainability is in Jesus´ spiritual integrity and legacy directly. Instead, he equates profiteering-funded hateful fundamentalism with religion itself, and has ridiculed religion in a way that marks him as virtually unapproachable by pro-sustainability religionists. Thus, an analysis of him, like Reeves, isn´t primarily for them, scientists and off-base, religion-blaming characters. It´s for US as people of faith, conscious of God´s love to one degree or another, in evaluating THEM primarily, and ourselves secondarily. To the degree that we are active in spiritual practice and expressing integrity in Jesus, we have the potential Gandhi talked about in "being the change you want to see in the world."

Scientists themselves will need to be dealt with, at some time or another, in terms that they understand. My own efforts have involved identifying the intellectual category errors governing prevailing discourse. Massimo Pigliucci has nailed New Atheist physicist L Krauss in a key way. It involves in part restoring science to its human nature as philosophy, not "objective truth," nor absolute truth, issues that religion, spirituality, and philosophy can address empirically and effectively. Science has made contributions, and they make fine supplements. Gandhi did talk about his approach as "experiments with truth."

As people of faith, we need to understand our very fundamental importance, and that it is us who have the solution as much as we start to advance spiritual-religious integrity. Not scientists' opinions blaming religion broadly and hypocritically. Jim Hansen of NASA has gotten arrested protesting Climate Change and titled his book, something like For Our Grandchildren. He´s not imitating Reeves. He met the maverick modern progressive Christian Congressman for environmentalism and Climate Change Al Gore, and sounds like he was inspired by the very spiritual and modern Gore. Da Gr MaRe Mo , I think the religious circles fired the first shots in the battle between religious theories and scientific discoveries. But let’s no quibble over who resents who. There are also many in both camps who do see the connections offered in both approaches to observable life. Money and power have corrupted certain parts of both endeavors just as it has every other human effort. You’re correct, I don’t see the virtue of taking sides. They both have things to offer us if we aren’t distracted by bias. Ma Re Mo DaGr Your last sentence is intimately part of my operating assumptions. However, you equate that with disqualifying the need for adequate criticism of science and its sound basis, analysis. "Analysis" soundly informs us of another basic philosophical principle that is widely neglected, Levels of Explanation. In fact, in your case you are apparently using the infamous Galileo and Darwin clashes to justify implying blaming "religion" and sustaining your mystified view of science and scientists, as if it were the Pope, Jim Wallis of Sojo . net, and F Graham riding roughshod in plastic bottle and oil companies, and by extension who forced Reagan-era admin to shut down NASA´s wind turbine research, and who fail to join the Union of Concerned Scientists and Physicians for Social Responsibility, making Jim Hansen´s getting arrested protesting a virtually unique indictment of "scientific complicity by objectivist extremism." UN and similar reports have their place, and Greenpeace and co. are hardly twisting the science. Also, here you express your minimization, and even trivialization of money and power, diluting it in the abstraction of its widespread presence.

Moreover, you are not paying attention to the precision I am getting at. I´m not actually taking sides. I´m addressing imbalances in general and in appropriate detail, understanding that people can choose to change if they are made adequately aware. I believe I may have already mentioned around here that my analysis has already uncovered a basic intellectual gap in discourse, and that is science not being the "absolute truth," but a form of philosophy, and religion addressing the need for spiritual modernization to shift from doctrinal blinders that freeze and lock in much hypocrisy to spiritual practice of individuals taking actions for integrity. Advancing Bernie-Obama and Social Europe style eco-social lifestyles, consumerism, and economic activism exemplify that. BTW, your blaming "religious circles attacking science first" as a "mea culpa" is itself an example of what might be called "passive literacy" as you take the word of complainers and accusers without question. Galileo´s conflict with the Pope/Vatican involved that church authority and individuals specifically, and the church´s institutional mechanisms, and that was already after the Protestant Reformation.

If you read about Galileo´s work, he didn´t present a neutral thesis. He used a provocative character named "Simpleton" to characterize the Pope, a former friend, and the Ptolemaic position. Luther himself avoided arrest in the previous century because he was fully respectful in all his conduct, while Galileo actually wasn´t. In that encounter for starters. DesCartes made his own moves at that time, no less. A French Catholic, he operated largely in Holland, alerted to Protestant religionists´ doctrinal displeasures by expulsion from Leiden U or so. As his writing progressed in analytical geometry (e.g. y=mx+b), he heard from Pascal complaining that mechanicism ignored God´s ways or the like. In the end, DesCartes was inconvenienced and alerted, but unresponsive to the concerns represented by Pascal and his expulsion. It was thus that the Cartesian "mind-body(-spirit-nature) split" emerged, on the side of science (i.e. scientific philosophy). You haven´t been able to grasp this point so far. Instead, you show that you do "take sides," and aren´t willing to question scientism (which is not actually science). Here, I´m using Historical Sociology, incidentally, a key philosophical Level of Explanation.

To situate how science emerged with monk-clerical talents in their spiritual mindsets, see James Hannam, who has done great historical work expanding the scope of the History of Science and Religion. UK Bishop R Grosseteste is linked to the Oxford Franciscan School for work in the 1200s as T of Aquinas was bursting with his scholarly fruits at the U of Paris. In 1277, the Bishop of Paris responded to concerns, and pronounced a prohibition on using Greek limiting assumptions, like objects can´t travel in a straight line, based on God´s omnipotence and lawfulness, the 1277 Condemnations. That particular point helps crystallize the intellectual role of Judeo-Christian thinking in taking ancient Greek efforts and making modern Christian-based scientific philosophy.

"Taking sides"? What about giving a "fair and balanced presentation." You´re accepting a superficial and biased fairy tale-tunnel vision version of history. The question is, why are you so inclined not to look at the issues, to hold people accountable and address misconceptions? You are avoiding my empirical discussion and its detail oriented nature by planting your coping mechanism ideas that are similar to mythologization: "nobody overcomes money and power corruption, not least religion that started it all against the pretty much all-powerful and all-knowing science."

It comes down to our own senses of self-worth, I´d say, negative or positive (not so much "low" or "high"). The 12 step groups for relationships offer a powerful spiritual technique to address our self-awareness and the loving power of clarity in God´s love that sleeps there, or is tangled up. As Jesus taught, "Clean the inside of the cup...." He said, "where there is wickedness," but in modernity we might expand that, "where there is a lost and wounded inner child with unmet needs in search of love lost in various forms of abuse and neglect." "Cleaning the cup" is more a question of John Bradshaw´s "loving our inner child" and achieving a "homecoming.".

Darwin´s Birthday: Humans from Murderous to Visionary

Darwin´s Birthday. In his novel Cell, Stephen King has a character say that Darwin was too polite to call humans anything but smart or mean, and that humans are really the worst kind of murderous scoundrels (mofo´s).

Yeah, that´s called "sensationalism," a la a popular fiction author known for it. Now, I got my college degree in bio anthro, at a good school, and have drawn on my thesis on the interface between biology and culture to help defuse that kind of pop pressure cooking. While I´ll agree that human murderous capacity has shown its extremes, I trace that to tool-using focus that lay behind the first stone tools up to bronze-age weaponry and modern profiteering corporate biz ideology and the status obsession syndrome that has made possible.

Yet, while there were no lack of merchants, soldiers, and monarchs, the Buddha taught about addictive desires as the problem, and Jesus about "cleaning the cup inside where there is iniquity." I´m a UU interfaith Christian because I have built up around scholars and figures like Huston Smith, Alan Watts, Lao Tzu, Mary Baker Eddy, and Buddha to learn that Darwin stated that he thought Jesus wasn´t relevant to science, except in evaluating evidence honestly. Meanwhile, he volunteered in church with Emma and treated AR Wallace with warm Christian integrity. Evangelical Richard Owen who named "dinosaurs", on the other hand, has a slightly lesser historical reputation since he tried to take credit for others' work. He also opposed evolution. Darwin´s US Harvard friend and famous biologist Asa Gray was also evangelical, but supported evolution. Darwin´s actions, and those of his colleagues, speak louder than their words for better or for worse, much like Lao Tzu taught. "The Tao that can be told is not the real Tao...." and for which Alan Watts later practiced Tai Chi.

For the record, Brit William Jones pioneered scholarship of India that began to gush through Schopenhauer, Emerson, and others, and Max Mueller at Oxford in Darwin´s day. Thank the Divine Source that UU´s own roots and heart allow for words that can revive spiritual and shamanic vision. Darwin, in fact, lived in an era when they still called his kind "parson naturalists" and "natural philosophers," while his contemporary JS Mills would have still been a "moral philosopher." The amazing slavery-ending Quakers organized their own London U, while FD Maurice brought Christian Socialism to life, later supporting the co-op social biz movement. As for getting all hot-blooded with blood, sweat, and tears of "human´s inhumanity to humans," rap artist Kool Moe Dee sang, "Knowledge is King" and Rihanna "American Oxygen." They´re killer songs, and I dedicate them to Darwin, Russell, Gray, and Schopenhauer on his birthday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H270_6WHjBY

"Religion Is Unnecessary vs the Secular World": OK, If You Say So, Why Can I Refute It In a Blaze?

Po Hi II greenpeaceRdale1844coop • blah blah blah Instead of whining that I am wrong, why not actually provide evidence? I ask AGAIN, what does religion accomplish that the secular world cannot?

• As a poster child of psychological projection, you use attack-oriented terms like "whining," and the term "wrong," without actually acknowledging any substantive issues stated, and its diverse significance. "Significance" thus brings us to a crucial issue regarding evidence, which requires being adequately literate in the first place in order to interpret said evidence. Your capital letters "again" is not literacy, but denialism.

Secular humanism´s manifestoes are in denial about the theistic origins, practices, and phenomena that underlie modern "secularism." The relevance and essential importance of Jesus´ 2 loving Commandments for Moses and God were not sustained from any other potential source, not even Moses himself who originated the saying in Judeo-Christianity.

"Rationalism" in the Greek tradition was preserved by Christian philosophers in relation to the Christian monastic system that emerged from the prayerful-meditative ascetic Anthony of the Desert around and after 300 AD/CE. As church authority emerged independent of Western Roman Emperors after 476, the interplay of groups proliferated monasteries along with churches until Charlemagne. By 1150, the fruit of monastic and other religious schools, modern Universities emerged as Christians understood God´s kind of omnipotence through Jesus avoiding Greek assumptions that had been as frozen as they were relegated to documentary existence. Yet, they had been the fruit of spiritual lifestyles themselves.

It took a monk with a doctorate to articulate and call up courage to face the powers of the church and Holy Roman Empire in around 1520 as Luther did. A transcendent God and prayerful relationship do that, with roots back at least to Elijah, as per scholar Huston Smith, leaving aside Moses, and others. Newton and Galileo, and the rest, mostly didn´t give up Christianity because it addresses the reality behind lawfulness that is explained powerfully by a loving Creator (of the Big Bang and evolution, many of us might say now).

And so on through the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and up to UN human rights, sustainability, and not least of all, Al Gore´s religious and intellectual clarity and courage in association with Christian FDR´s UN and their IPCC on Climate Change.

Your kind of petulance shows deprivation from the issues you leave unresolved and contstricted artificially. Love conquers all, but love wasn´t conveyed in that form by anyone except Jesus Christ of Nazareth. The full legacy of Jesus called "secular" has been twisted from DesCartes´ kind of approach called mechanicism and Jefferson´s insight to avoid interdenominational and other conflict. The solution is spiritual modernization and its implications, not anti-religious ideology´s fallacy´s, wrongheaded disconsolate rebelliousness, and denialism. "Let he who has ears to hear...," as that Nazareth pioneer is recorded as saying. Buddha´s Four Noble Truths and more spiritual insight can be related thanks to the efforts of two dissident Christians who organized the 1890s World Parliament of Religions. And then there are the illusions of scientism. Another time.

"All That Glitters Is Not Gold": Racial Justice, "White Privilege," The Non-Rich, and Socioeconomic Justice

greenpeaceRdale1844coop @Bis "I´m not quite sure what 'racial justice' means.".... Your question isn´t a bad one, but the issue isn´t just about reparations, ultimately. Racial justice has gotten ignited because of police brutality, but extends to the levels of incarceration of Afro-Ams, and others, and other issues that are systemic. As a social justice and human rights activist, I´ve felt annoyed by the superficial switch by BLM supporters from the local white supremacy in police brutality to calling systemic issues by the same terms. Even at the local level, white supremacy has to be analyzed more deeply than a police detective´s mindset. Forensic analysts don´t say "all that glitters is gold," because there is fool´s gold, and broken mirrors, and so on. Details matter if you want to know what you´re talking about, and not say, "All that glitters is gold." Is it?

Religious freedom helps us here because when white supremacists commit police brutality, we are called in Christianity to "love our enemy." When BLM, or its fans, goes beyond the acts of brutality and starts accusing all whites of being "white privileged" in a "white supremacist system," something´s wrong. That is, many of us need to take the plank out of our own eye as Jesus taught, and it´s not just because all white´s are privileged and abusing that privilege. Thus, if churches and concerned people are making claims, but something doesn´t add up, then having a larger picture to look at can help solve the problem. God as transcendent, and in Jesus´ legacy, University-based for all interested religious parties, we can check ourselves through multidisciplinary empirical philosophy.

We can check the saying, "All that glitters is not gold." That analogy works well here. "All that is to blame is not white, nor is all that is white to be blamed." Local white supremacist police officers are part of what group? Non-rich whites. Who has been hit hard since Reagan-era´s Big Biz friendly deregulation? Anti-labor and anti-social, the GOP has led a reactionary program, and the Dems have followed fairly spinelessly, if less willingly or more reluctantly. There are some differences. In recent years, Tenn-based VW and Miss-based Nissan, run by locals, have had union votes and lost, with ample anti-union management interference and propaganda. That´s after millions of jobs were sent abroad, as to Mexico´s maquiladora´s and most infamously, China of the suicidal workers jumping out of factories. Michael Moore´s films have been a powerful cultural informational resource and alert. If the white non-rich have been getting squeezed, that´s all socioeconomic inequality and stress. Any ideas what happens when anybody gets socioeconomically stressed? Is racism the only form of violence? How about domestic and child abuse? Ever heard of mass murder? It´s rare outside of war, and rarer everywhere than the US. Racism is one of those forms of violence.

We might go deeper. Slavery existed before Anglo-Am US slavery of Africans, etc, and Brit Empire-US use was obviously economic. It was socioeconomic injustice. However, as non-rich, high integrity Christians in the UK led the social movement to abolish slavery, the sci-tech-biz Industrial Revolution switched on. The UK and US Northern abolition movements happened as industrial factories were half-innovated, half-imposed since they were brutal wage-slavery and class war against artisanal tradespeople. By the 1790s, R Owen in the UK, inspired by a Christian doctor, already broke the mold and went pro-labor.

All the while, white men without property could not vote (in the US until 1861, UK after WWI!), not to mention white women, and in the UK labor unions were banned (until 1871). And so on and so forth until FDR´s New Deal was pro-social in the US, and UN human rights no less, that the US rejected Economic, etc Rights, Cold War or not. In fact, a Rev Fifield wormed his way up with millionaires to spur the industrialists at the NMA to link Cold War propaganda to fundie right wing religion, so that anything pro-social got smeared as communist. The rich execs of Big Biz funded right wing think tanks as M Friedman climbed on board, and Nixon and Reagan followed the JFK and RFK assassinations. And MLK, et al. Fannie Lou Hamer didn´t get assassinated, but did get snobbed by some black intellectuals at least, as she went from zero on plantations to a hero talking up civil rights and the Bible, until she started the Freedom Co-op Farm.

By Reagan´s election and deregulation for "trickle down" doubletalk, offshoring was starting for Big Biz profiteering and Wall St.´s Milken blurted out, "Greed is good." Al Gore wrote Earth in the Balance as a Senator and prez candidate, but the Dems couldn´t make the link between save the people with regulations and Corporate Social Responsibility. Dick Gephardt took a shot. Clinton and the Dems let the Glass-Steagall bank regs of FDR´s New Deal get squashed in 1999 without a squeak, however.

That´s how the rich, mostly white, have been stamping down on the non-rich. Racial justice can´t happen without socioeconomic justice, because squeezed non rich whites don´t deserve to be fingerwagged about "white privilege." (Just saw an article about non-college ed white suicides whose rates are higher than blacks etc). In fact, non-rich whites up to a certain level need help getting oriented.

Rich blacks, for their part, have glommed onto rich white culture, and echo it. "There´s no racism," says Morgan Freeman. "Don´t call me African-Am. I´m just an American," says Luther, switching to a Smokey Robinson talk. By contrast, I´ll cite Angela Davis who said, "I don´t want to be exploited by blacks or whites."

The solution is for anybody and everybody who can to get hip. Community gardens were a movement in NYC, where a few food co-ops had survived since the 1970s, as had dozens across the US. A number have low income assistance projects. Grameen Bank has arrived from Bangladesh and is up to five US branches. I haven´t heard that they promote co-op biz partnerships. SEWA in India is a co-op from the 1970s by Eli Bhatt to help street vendors, for ex. Solidarity Economics arrived from Brazil around 2007, and Jackson Rising honors Fannie Lou Hamer using it, and inviting young whites to participate. The Federation of Southern Co-ops is an Afro-Am farmer org since 1967. In 2004, a group of mostly white non-rich formed the US Fed of Worker Co-ops, although member Afro-Am Omar Freilla founded Green Worker Co-ops in NYC

That´s all a reality check.

Beyond Scientism and Progressive Secularism

This is a selection from a longer essay:

"'(Scientism´s) 800-lbs. Gorilla Having Tea With Leprechauns (Socrates, Gaia, and God)": Science and Syllogism, Jesus and Sustainability, and Integrative Multidisciplinary Philosophy

As Covid-19 lockdown progressed, references I made to "View of God" psychosomatic studies1 with results correlating to immune vigor drew ample hostility from scientism anti-religionists. Personally when I was in high school, my dad died of pneumonia at 51, weakened after radiation treatment for cancer. He never tried combining available mind-body therapy with treatment. He was an ex-Catholic atheist, but also a well-rounded political scholar who did have books on religious studies and transpersonal psychologists like Jung. Raised secularly, I opened a scholar´s religion book in high school and began appreciating the Chinese Tao, instinctively still, as a transcendent, immanent, and non-objectified experiential "creative continuum."2a An interfaith seeker, I then studied liberal arts biological anthropology in college where my foundations in psychobiology were laid. Working in Social Services after graduating, I noted the social justice concerns of ACT UP AIDS activists and their grassroots health strategies.2b New Atheist ideologues, on the other hand, have committed basic fallacies, publicly ignored basic scholarship, and trivialized the Divine,3a,b even citing leprechauns, as childishly unscientific and supernatural.4 Inflamed in part by fundamentalist anti-science attacks, overconfident anti-religionists in turn misfire by blaming all of religion instead of extremists. A review of scientism´s advocates and progessive own challenges with secular worldviews leads us to the syllogism as a helpful philosophical method. Situating philosophical analysis as primary allows us to link evaluations of science and religion, and use Gandhi as an example of the latter. A historical review of philosophy´s development allows us to survey its development by Christians into modern academics. The multidisciplinary philosophical basis of academics can be highlighted, and more comprehensively than with science or philosophy alone, spiritual-religious practice and experience can be situated for thought, meditation, prayer, inspiration, and action.. ....

People of faith opposing health policies like Covid-19 face-masks based on overconfidence in religious devotion8b can understandably be upsetting. In the mainstream, secularized views rarely acknowledge even the basic established complementary roles of spiritual-religious experience, psychosomatic-, and scientific- medicine,9a,b,,c,d,e despite leading medical initiatives at Harvard and Duke .10a,b,c We might also note that grassroots lifestyles and economic activist approaches are widely underutilized. Yet, sufficient attention given to grassroots spiritual-religious catalysts could transform and inspire people in various areas, especially around concerns left unaddressed by otherwise hopeful efforts such as those of Barack Obama, Interfaith Power and Light, Occupy Wall St., and the National Council of Churches.11a,b,c,d Transforming the biases that hamper broader support for pivotal areas like psychosomatic medicine and extended sustainability activism requires insights more soul-gripping and constructive than the power-bases and theater of politics and limits of protests.....

Spiritual-religious experience is normally relegated to the merely personal and subjective in nature. However, empirical evidence corroborating with interpretations of the transpersonal are apparent in diverse disciplines20a,b,c like historical sociology, appropriate psychosomatic research,21a,b,c,d,e,f,g and accessible spiritual-religious healing testimonies associated with medical care. For example, Marlene Klepees´ prayerful and visionary healing from cerebral palsy while at the Mayo Clinic22 is one among many.23a,b,c,d In social justice activism, Oglala-Lakota Joann Tall had prophetic dreams that motivated her anti-toxics-type protest.24 As Martin Luther King did, Fannie Lou Hamer sustained an empowering religious moral narrative in her activism, and leadership of a farm co-operative project25 based on an established social business model.26 Historically, modern science´s origins with spiritual-religious attitudes sheds interesting light on scientists when they engage in social responsibility like ex-physicist Vandana Shiva´s indigenous farmer organizing27 and ex-Greenpeace chemist Michael Braungart´s work certifying green product lifecycles.28 ....

Endnotes: 1. Gail Ironson, MD et al, “View of God as benevolent and forgiving or punishing and judgmental predicts HIV disease progression,” Journal of Behavioral Medicine 34 (2011), 414, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-011-9314-z . 2a. Huston Smith,. The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions, (HarperOne, 1958, rev. ed. 1991). 2b. Aizenmann, Nurith, "How To Demand A Medical Breakthrough: Lessons From The AIDS Fight," NPR.org, Feb 9, 2019, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/09/689924838/how-to-demand-a-medical-breakthrough-lessons-from-the-aids-fight 3a. Jha, Alok, “Peter Higgs criticises Richard Dawkins over anti-religious fundamentalism,” The Guardian, 26 December 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/dec/26/peter-higgs-richard-dawkins-fundamentalism 3b. Scruton, R at “After New Atheism: Where now for the God debate?” New Humanist Mag. event at Royal Society for Arts, Sept. 21, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7v9QL2HLlE 4 Crawley, W., “On God and Leprechauns," BBC, 17 September 2007, https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2007/09/on_god_and_leprechauns.html .

9a. Herbert Benson, MD, Timeless Healing: The Power and Biology of Belief, (Fireside, 1997). 9b. O. Carl Simonton, MD, The Healing Journey: Restoring Health and Harmony to Body, Mind, and Spirit, (Bantam, 1992) . 9c. "Autoimmune Disease and Histories of Stress," nature-nurture.org, Gail R. Berger L.M.S.W., accessed on Nov. 5, 2020, https://www.nature-nurture.org/index.php/chronic-stress/chronic-stress-human/histories-autoimmune/ 9d. David Creswell, et al., "Mindfulness meditation training effects on CD4+ T lymphocytes in HIV-1 infected adults: A small randomized controlled trial," Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 23 (2009) 184. 9e. RJ Davidson, et al., “Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation.” Psychosomatic Medicine, 65:4 (2003 Jul-Aug), 564. 9f. BB Bittman, et al, "Composite Effects of Group Drumming Music Therapy on Modulation of Neuroendocrine-Immune Parameters in Normal Subjects," Alternative Ther Health Med, 7 (2001), 38-47. 10a. “Talks and Interviews, 1995-2002 Harvard Medical School symposium: Spirituality & Healing in Medicine,” Virginia Harris, C.S.B. Resources,, accessed on Oct. 3, 2020, https://www.virginiaharris.com/resources . 10b. "Spirituality and Healing: Harvard Catalyst symposium, by Ellen Barlow, January 14, 2015,” Harvard Medical School News and Research, accessed Oct. 4, 2020, https://hms.harvard.edu/news/spirituality-healing . 10c. “Complementary, Alternative, or Integrative Health: What´s in a Name?” U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Institutes of Health, accessed on Nov. 5, 2020, https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/complementary-alternative-or-integrative-health-whats-in-a-name 11a. Ralph Nader, “Barack Obama: What´s He Waiting For?” Aug. 22, 2017, accessed on Nov. 4, 2020, Nader.org, https://nader.org/2017/08/22/barack-obama-whats-he-waiting-for/ 11b. “Interfaith Power and Light: A Religious Response to Global Warming- Annual Report 2018,” https://www.interfaithpowerandlight.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/IPL-Annual-Report-18-LRS-4.pdf 11c. Sanders, Sam, “The Surprising Legacy Of Occupy Wall Street In 2020,” NPR, January 23, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/01/23/799004281/the-surprising-legacy-of-occupy-wall-street-in-2020. 11d. National Council of Churches, “Joint Action and Advocacy for Justice and Peace,” accessed 11/20/2020, http://nationalcouncilofchurches.us/joint-action-and-advocacy-for-justice-and-peace/

20a. M. Eliade The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, (Harper Torchbooks, 1961). 20b. B. Greyson, "The psychodynamics of near-death experiences." The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 171 (1983), 376. 20c. Greyson, B. "Consciousness Without Brain Activity: Near Death Experiences," Youtube: Beyond the Mind-Body Problem: New Paradigms in the Science of Consciousness, The United Nations, New York: Nour Foundation, Sept. 11, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_qBIw7qyHU 21a. Ironson, "View of God." 21b. Christina E. Hughes, "Prayer and Healing: A Case Study, Journal of Holistic Healing, (September 1, 1997), https://doi.org/10.1177/089801019701500310 21c. Helming, Mary Blaszko PhD, FNP, AHN-BC, “Healing Through Prayer: A Qualitative Study,” Holistic Nursing Practice, 25:1 (Jan/Feb 2011), 33, doi: 10.1097/HNP.0b013e3181fe2697 21d. "Miraculous Healings: Since the apparitions, Lourdes has dealt with more than 7000 cases of unexplained cures," Lourdes Shrine Medical Bureau, accessed on Nov. 4, 2020, https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/miraculous-healings/ 21e. Rogers, C., “Ancient Secrets of a Master Healer (Pankaj Naram): Deeper Healing Solutions (Siddha Veda),” TEDxWilmington, Oct. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHul6zDPE2w&t=479s . 21f. R Jahnke, et al., “A comprehensive review of health benefits of qigong and tai chi,” Am J Health Promot , 24:6 (Jul-Aug 2010), e1, doi: 10.4278/ajhp.081013-LIT-248. 21g. Gregoire, Carolyn, Oct. 16., 2015, Scientists Put Shamanic Medicine Under The Microscope: In an unlikely collaboration with Amazonian shamans, medical researchers seek a cure for autoimmune disease,” Huffington Post, https://www.huffpostbrasil.com/entry/shaman-medicine-autoimmune-disease_n_55f8737be4b0d6492d633c23?ri18n=true 22. M. Klepees in R. Settoon, "Woman Healed of Cerebral Palsy Through Vision," CBN, undated (1980-), https://www1.cbn.com/700club/woman-healed-cerebral-palsy-through-vision . 23a. Bill Owen in C. Clements, "The Healing Ritual," It´s a Miracle, Questar Entertainment: CA. 1998-2004, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phoB7YABGMk&t=30s 23b. Jeff Markin in C. Crandall MD, Touching Heaven, (Faith Words, 2015), 97. 23c. Mehl-Medrona, Coyote Healing, 18. 23d. Keener, Craig, "Miracle Reports in the Gospels and Today," July, 2014 Special Divine Action Conference, Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion, Oxford U. , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYBnJF2P_WQ 24. "Joann Tall," 1993, Goldman Environmental Prize, accessed Oct. 3, 2020, https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/joann-tall/ 25. David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow,(University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 312. 26. J. Birchall, The International Co-operative Movement, (Manchester University Press, 1997). 27. Shiva, Vandana, "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in a Forest," YesMagazine.org,, May 3 2019, https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/nature/2019/05/03/vandana-shiva-seed-saving-forest-biodiversity/ 28. Sacks, Danielle, "Green Guru Gone Wrong: Green architect William McDonough has been hailed as a water-walking visionary. The truth is far more complicated.," fastcompany.org, 11-01-08, https://www.fastcompany.com/1042475/green-guru-gone-wrong-william-mcdonough

The Universe, the Sacred, the Transcendental, and Sustainability

"You are not IN the Universe, you ARE the Universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately, you are not a person, but a focal point where the Universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle!" ~Eckhart Tolle

UU-rltd Frst Knp "You are a function of what the whole Universe is doing in the same way that a Wave is a function of what the whole Ocean is doing." . . . ~Alan Watts

Mark Rego Monteiro I remember this kind of stuff from college. Am I, are we, the Universe experiencing itself? It sounds fun. Idolizing the Universe is tempting, because it´s so big! And beautiful! But, am I the Crab Nebula "experiencing itself"? Uh, no. And neither is Tolle, or Watts the wave. Astrophysicist Hubble wasn´t the galaxy he confirmed red-shifting, nor was he the telescope. But, as Sagan said, "We are starstuff, forged in a furnace!" Uh, well, cool, but that was a long time ago, thanks. We can be grateful for knowing about nuclear fusion and supernovae (s), because we are a specific PART of the Universe with unusual abilities, and they´re not just physical, nor just biochemical. Being "grateful," as opposed to just ecstatic, involves qualities like in Huston Smith´s saying, in books like The World´s Religions, "The purpose of (things like spiritual practice) isn´t altered states, but altered traits." That "ecstatic cosmology" has characteristics that need to be grounded to greater relevance and sustainability, and awareness of personal and transpersonal health. Joseph Campbell made interesting connections in his books like Myths We Live By, including to shamanism. I always liked linking JC to Jung.

In Jung´s vein, Karen Armstrong validates spiritual practice and a transcendental ultimate reality. The Universe came from somewhere, and confusing the Universe with us blows continuity out of proportion. It seems like a reaction against scientific reductionism, but it misplaces the Universe alone equating it to our spiritual experience, interdependence, emotional awareness, needs around empathy, and the U´s own cause. Continuity exists, but there are distinctions that reflect our emergent minds and spiritual experience that has a specific religious history, broader anthropological diversity, involving a materialistic down side of biological tendencies summed up by the Buddha as ignorance, greed, and hatred. It was Moses´ Top 10 that linked things like murder to God and prophetic history, and Jesus´ fulfillment of Moses´ 10 with 2 plus about lovingkindness that have led to telescopes, the UN, UNDP, and UNEP. Greenpeace´s slogan has been, "This Fragile Earth Needs a Voice," and Oxfam´s Make Trade Fair. Both groups included Quaker founders. Human life and Western Civ´s UN community are PARTS of the Universe, and Jesus´ commandments are key parts of Western Civ. Sustainability, too. Redemptive Panentheism truly offers hope, when all is said and done.