Why Do Some, or Many, Christians Believe that God Never Causes Harm and Suffering?

Je G Ro 9 hrs · Note that my purpose of this post is only to ask questions and not criticizing. It’s not clear to me why some progressive Christians believe that God never causes harm and suffering. Also, do you believe that God is incapable of it and incapable of preventing it? Mark Rego Monteiro It´s not a bad question. Here´s how my approach has developed. The physical Universe is what science has been studying, and is such a popular force in commercialized technology. I got my degree in Biological Anthropology, studying the evolution of human symbolic behavior, in fact, so that as my spiritual seeking continued, I got really interested. I also got a masters degree in International Relations, which got me up on key kinds of social theory. As I encountered the anti-theists in recent years, I began to sort it all out, and it sorts out very nicely, actually. "Science" turns out to actually be a modern name that hides what was originally called scientific "natural" philosophy. Darwin was still called a natural philosopher, just like Newton a century and a half earlier, and really, all the way back to Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas actually gave "science", ie scientific philosophy, its modern, Christian foundations in the Christianized First Cause. A lawful, loving Creator God created a lawful creation that could be studied for those laws. Darwin and Wallace´s evolution came just after new understanding of geology. The understanding of electricity gave us understanding of lightning, and thunder. That´s when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, at the very beginning of the knowledge of electricity, just after Ben Franklin and then Galvani´s jumping frog legs. And that was just part of the whole adventure in University-based philosophical scholarship with empiricism. Hugo Grotius isn´t much talked about, but he came before John Locke, and is credited with advancing "natural law ideas." Descartes, for his part, is really well known for his initiating modern philosophy with his "I think, therefore I am." He was a French (Roman ?) Catholic living in Protestant Holland, to be clear. If it wasn´t clear, Thomas Aquinas was a Christian monk. Christians turned monastic schools into Universities. Petrarch is usually credited as a pioneering humanist before Galileo and Copernicus. He was, however, Christian. Back to Descartes, he is usually credited with the "Cartesian mind-body (and spirit) split" Pascal protested against his mechanicist language. That was all already after Luther´s inspired Reformation. But, then came Jefferson et al´s Civil Rights Freedom of Religion, the separation of church and state, and secular education. Social movements arose at the same time. God, however, didn´t part the Atlantic Ocean for the Quaker-Friends, including Quaker son Thomas Paine, agitating in the UK and North American colonies against slavery. The University people got inspired, holding things like essay contests, and one winner, Thomas Clarkson, a young graduate dissident Anglican of the establishment social circles, got sparked. He joined with the Quaker Friends in a Society and led the pioneering social movement of abolition in the 1780s. It moved, along with the North American movement with Lucretia Mott, and banned slavery by 1840 in the British Empire, along with the North American states also completing their diverse bans. The natural world has its lawful behavior, as God´s creation, the created physical Universe studied by scientific philosophy. That has been an amazing advance in Jesus´ legacy, actually, I have found myself in agreement with people like historian J Hannam in recognizing. Therefore, the importance of supporting eco-social justice, as Jesus demonstrated when gathering grain with the disciples on the Sabbath (Matt 12:1) is a key aspect of high Christian integrity, not actually "church piety." That has also pushed me to articulate more clearly than I´ve found the reality of spiritual-religious phenomena. I began finding spiritual psychosomatic healing material just out of college as an interfaith spiritual seeker interested in Unitarian Universalism. I found Bernie Siegel MD´s book Love, Medicine, and Miracles and OC Simonton MD´s The Healing Journey fairly early on, along with Louise Hay, a church of Religious Science innovative minister and her testimony of healing her cancer with a modern spiritual holistic approach. It involved a big dose of bodywork psychotherapy. Then I found a healing denomination with Reading Rooms for informal study, Christian Science. It´s called a "cult" in some circles, although it´s no worse than most groups of any kind and has plenty of healing and other miracles in written testimonies. That´s an exceptional example of pro-active and literate recordkeeping, as far as it goes. William James´ classic book actually includes CS material, as does a detailed book by journalist BO Flowers. Craig Keener, I found out in the last two years, wrote Miracles in 2011, a massive academic work that identifies medically attested, medically impossible healings with spiritual-religious testimony. There are more specific details to consider, but that gives my progressive empirical theism as an independent interfaith UU Christian. Many progressive Christians don´t have that much understanding of the reality of spiritual-religious phenomena, since science has been overemphasized and religion has been disproportionately influenced by profiteering businesspeople who fund anti-modernist Fundamentalism. That explains the modern progressive position, however. A lawful, loving God created the challenges of the physical Universe, and people have been presented with Free Will, especially in Jesus´ legacy. God can prevent harm, and southern Africa presents two compelling contexts. The farmer of the Film Faith Like Potatoes prayed for potatoes during a drought, I think it was. And Lord be praised, it happened. Spiritual healings also happened in his experience. Then came FW de Klerk in South Africa with apartheid. He evaluated the international context of protests, and paved the way to end apartheid. The South Africans also dismantled their nuclear program. A modern miracle, in its way. Another example might be Gandhi, who began his efforts in South Africa, before moving to India. Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity took ancient Greek philosophy at two points, as early as Paul and John the Apostles, and then again as Christians turned the monasteries into Universities with Thomas Aquinas. Christianized philosophy has become a powerful tool for developing Jesus´ legacy. It began as a spiritual practice, in fact, and can easily be resacralized by anyone interested in spiritual modernization. My interfaith Christian spiritual practice may have facilitated that for me. Thus, prayer is not usually enough for preventing harm in many contexts. However, it never hurts if it is done in combination with appropriate practical and lifestyle efforts. Social Europe´s advanced sustainability and social markets are an interesting context to consider, as is the US´s own corporate profiteering businesspeople dominated culture. God helps those who help themselves. That´s a modern expression with important import. Also important was the 1893 Chicago Parliament of World Religions, reflecting Jesus´ teachings of the Good Samaritan itself, which raises the meaning of loving thy neighbor as thyself to "love thy enemy." Similarly, if Jesus taught the importance of prayer as in "faith can move mountains," that also needs to be remembered and talked up in its ways.

A Historian on Evangelical Zionism at a Spiritual Site: He Doesn´t See Any "Overwhelmingly Peaceful Religion." Ahem.

A post about evangelical Zionism at a spiritual site. La RoAuthor Martin Wainstein These evangelical Zionists are far more destructive to my nation than yours. They misrepresent my religion more than yours. You may think they are good allies, but such an alliance has implications far beyond Judaism and Israel. I… See more Reply Share 7hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro La Ro This is a Contemplative Mystics site. I´m fully multidisciplinary as the result of my spiritual path, and have no problem integrating this subject matter at this site. Your view, however, demonstrates a kind of prevailing scapegoa… See more Reply Share 5h La Ro Author Mark Rego Monteiro I regret the political turn away from the spiritual significance of the issue. Fundamentalists are attacking mystical schools of thought all over the world, often with violence. Understanding that violence and the worldviews behind it is significant to this page. Reply Share 4h Mark Rego Monteiro La Ro Sure, absolutely, but this site provides a special responsibility, as well as opportunity, to make sure to express spiritual awareness and make it an exercise of that. Is Israeli Zionist racism characteristic of all Israelis? No. Is such an attitude unprovoked? No. What inflames any and all attitudes, there and elsewhere, in Islamic countries? How does it related to Saudi apparent genocide in Yemen? US corporate business profiteering since Reagan´s deregulatory coup, and its basis in ideological rich businesspeople? A good Buddhist review of the Eightfold Path of Right Thinking and Meditation helps! My recalling my discovery of the Native healers Black Elk and Sganyadiyo (Handsome Lake), and Native prophetic activist and Goldman Environmental Prize winner Joann Tall, all helps! Reply Share 3h La Ro Author Mark Rego Monteiro I don't think Rabbi Singer is characterizing Israeli Zionists as racist as he very obviously is one. He is specifically talking about fake Jews pretending to be Jews to subvert Judaism. And I would never make broad characterizations of all Buddhists, of all Christians, of all Israelis, of all Muslims, etc.etc. I have not done so here. Nobody has suffered more from those using deceit in religion than those of us, of all faiths, with a worldview of non-dual transcendence Reply Share 3hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro La Ro More clearly stated, I´d say that the founders of a spiritual-religious tradition left a certain portrayal. In the case of Christianity and Buddhism, it was overwhelmingly peaceful, as in the case of Rumi´s Sufi Islam. Yet, Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity in philosophical scholarship gives us the tools to evaluate integrity. Hypocrisy can also be evaluated in relation to a founder, and whether peace or aggression is indicated either way can be assessed. Was Mohammed peaceful? If not, then peaceful Sufis like Rumi may be "Islamic hypocrites." Reply Share 2h La Ro Author Mark Rego Monteiro Sadly, as a historian, I find no examples where "overwhelming peaceful" faiths have been put into operation. Neither, Burma, Israel, Afghanistan or the United States. I can no more make broad positive characterizations of entire peoples than I can make negative ones. I would never challenge the authenticity of another human being no matter how much I disagree with their words and actions. With one exception, those who intentionally to be a member of a faith when they practice another. That is the subject of my post, a post whose content that those who have so far commented, are aware of. Reply Share 2hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro Lawrence Rockwood Your post is a video. As an independent scholar activist spiritual practitioner with one degree in Bio Anthropology, and another in International Relations, and diverse experience including social services with substance abusers and financial services, I have justified my college interest in individually based biological anthropology to learn how individuals in groups learn symbolic behavior based on nothing more than Pavlov´s mechanism of conditioning. My spiritual practice and personal growth work naturally converged, and confirmed those same dynamics in the context of personal and self-development in community. That was also confirmed and deepened by my studies in International Relations, in which overly broad concepts with misnomers like "Realism" and "Liberalism" that mean "state militaristic" and "institutionally aware", with both underlaid by the third and most recent, Alex Wendt´s social constructivism. It combines insights from subdisciplines like symbolic interactionism in sociology and social psychology. How do individuals interact, and how do they develop symbolic expressions such that a social consensus can get misled by reifying concepts? Or, as I prefer to focus on in activist fashion, develop social movements to engage social reform? In fact, I also turned up social constructionism with that very kind of focus. As such, my approach to evaluating "faiths" requires understanding historical sociology, the multidisciplinary issues involving psychosocial and cultural components. It is thus that we can take your concept of "overwhelmingly peaceful" and apply it where it belongs. High integrity Buddhists deserve first recognition because of the clarity of Buddha´s Four Noble Truths with such points of focus as Right Livelihood and Right Meditation, along with the spread of his religion. Yet, my ability to appreciate the Buddha´s clarity actually derives from University-based philosophical scholarship, the heritage of which pivots around the monk Thomas Aquinas at the U of Paris. He, of course, stands as a key nexus in the psychosocial and historical development of Jesus´ living legacy of loving integrity. The monk Luther´ s later courage and clarity then led to the British Puritans from whom emerged George Fox who led the co-founding of the Quaker-Friends. With little formal education in the UK, his spiritual brilliance led him to stop bowing to aristocrats, value women, and protest unfair criminal sentences. He inspired the high born Marj Fell intensely and she was an even earlier writer of women´s rights than Mary Wollstonecraft, Frankenstein´s Mary Shelley´s mother (nice phrasing!). That was the 1600s, in fact, as Newton, Locke, and co. were all gearing up. It was, however, Fox et al´s Quaker-Friend proteges who agitated against slavery that inspired University activity like an essay contest that sparked young dissenting Anglican T Clarkson to join up with the Quakers and others in a Society, as he led the grassroots social movement organizing that pioneered such campaigns. That is, Civil Society. The Quaker-Friends, no less, were parents to Thomas Paine, Susan B Anthony, and Walt Whitman, and Emerson admired them intensely. As many dissenters took the lead of the Quaker-Friends in Civil Society activism, that led to the Swedenborgian CC Bonney and dissenting Presbyterian J Barrows organizing the 1893 Parliament of World Religions. That followed University-based developments in comparative religious study, like Max Mueller in Darwin and Russell´s day. In addition, the notable phenomenon that I´ve named resurgent integrity in Christianity appeared in the form of W Gladden´s inspiring the Social Gospel movement in 1877 that then influenced FD Roosevelt. Normally ignored, FDR was not merely a good guy, he was, "not a communist or capitalist, but a Christian and a democrat." It was he who prompted the pro-social New Deal after the go-go years of Coolidge and Hoover popped with rich misdeeds and carelessness. It was FDR who pioneered the unprecedented peacetime draft in the face of conservative business isolationists. What would have happened if such early preparation had been delayed? And the cherry on top is FDR´s vision and legacy of the United Nations and human rights. His legacy proposed it to the world after the demonstration of the new destructive power of the advanced countries and knowledge. The rest of the world negotiated with the proposal as Eleanor shepherded the human rights declaration negotiations. I find your failure to identify the specific nature of Christian integrity in relation to human tendencies to indulge in the abuse of power, privilege, and pleasure unsurprising. In fact, that´s why I´ve found myself drawing on my particular background to develop these historical psychosocial terms and expressions of dynamics. You can be sure that your own freedom of expression, and the consciousness of responsibility that I am sharing with you, is indeed not random for a species inclined to brawls, civil wars, and political infighting. The beauty continues, since Christianity´s role in developing Civil Society social movements and UN human rights-sustainability-pro-social-co-op business with structured pluralism requires the complementary skills of other traditions as much as it provides the structure of organized learning for individuals in the full range of communities. History is not enough. Sociology takes it further. However, I´ve developed the expression Multidisciplinary Philosophy, because efforts like Fritjof Capra´s Systems Theory of Life, JB Cobb´s transdisciplinary studies, and Karen Armstrong´s religious history for interfaith practice are all clearly inadequate for the needs of academic philosophical scholarship.

Is It "Science" That Documents Miracles? In Reality, No, Although It Provides Supportive Evidence

My Ri 21 hrs · I see what human beings have done, which is move from biological to psychological and there they have invented this idea that eventually you will come to God. When a human being sees the falseness of it, actually, not theoretically, then it’s finished. Th Go So says the atheist Reply Share 20h JoMcN Th Go That’s interesting you say that. If a person doesn’t believe in life after death, does that make them an atheist? The reason I ask that is because of the 4,000 active religions currently practiced world wide, and the 10’s of thousands of documented ancient, they all have the exact thing in common. Life after death. So does an atheist not believe in God, or do they not believe in life after death? Because it appears believing in God is merely a mechanism to offer us immortality. Reply Share 18h Mark Rego Monteiro Jo Mc Your making non-sequitors. Having "Life after death" in common is one detail, belief in God is another, no matter how much you want to reduce them on impulse, and to a physicalist mechanism related to some angle of "immortality." I´ve noticed how it is important to lay the intellectual groundwork to illuminate the necessary and suffiient assumptions that go around in this discussion. And often in circles. Ah, but I did that in my comment above, addressing the post´s own unfounded assertions that God is merely a psychological construct. I cited one scientific fact, and one empirical fact that straddles "science," i.e. scientific philosophy, and the psychosocial symbol-related studies (that actually accounts for "science" itself). The multidisciplinary empirical fact is that of medically attested, medically impossible healings with spiritual religious testimony. And that in an overwhelming number of cases involves reference to God, or its equivalent. Reply Share 18h J Mc Mark Rego Monteiro I really have no choice but to notice the fact that every organized religious belief in God, current or past, also offers a mechanism for immortality in the bargain. One has to question then if we worship God, or a mechanism for immortality that calms our primordial fears suggesting a psychological phenomenon. The consistency of immortality in the belief systems betrays the psychological need driving it. There are also testimonies of UFO abductions and Bigfoot sightings, I’m not sure either can be called empirical or scientific evidence supporting either. Reply Share 18hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro Jo Mc It´s important for a person to notice what they want, in general or in specifics. They can pose any philosophical questions that they want. A belief in God, and its association with immortality, and any "mechanism" of that association, are different conceptual labels. "One" doesn´t "have to do" anything. If someone is interested in studying such conceptual entities and their interrelatedness, including a notion of "primordial fears", they can feel free to investigate, or even to speculate, as philosophical tools, like truth being academically agreed to be defined as logical coherence and correspondence to reality, operate. Fear is psychological, however it is not a psychological need, nor can a person leap to the conclusion that any psychological need is "betrayed." Ideological antagonisms don´t reign outside anti-theist clubhouses. Fear, however, is not an isolated human psychological phenomenon. It is an emotion. We might reflect, before checking with specialists, what various emotions and psychological needs exist. Love is at least in part an emotion, or perhaps a psychological need. That´s a good example of one reason how ideological blinders limit someone´s philosophical reasoning. Yet, in any event, that said, a person can move ahead, as Freud did in his reductionist empirical way. He interpreted God reductionistically by thinking that God was limited to a projection of a person´s Father figure. As if people could never differentiate among and between each specific relationship. They can. That´s one thing psychotherapy, now incredibly diverse, offers brilliantly after Freud´s proteges developed a wide range of alternative frameworks. Jung advanced by acknowledging additional orientations, including the Higher Self that he later based on Jesus Christ. Transpersonal psychology was formulated, perhaps by the non-theist Abe Maslow. Otto Rank identified emotional activity very dynamically, which influenced Carl Rogers, who rejected theism until later in his life and career. Rogers´ did groundbreaking work with his person-centered approach, and he mentored M Rosenberg, who applied his psychotherapeutic training to developing Non-Violent Communication. In his groundbreaking book, Rosenberg lists "intrigue" as one of a variety of human emotions. Among the needs, he suggests one category as spiritual communion, including the need of "harmony." Suddenly, the unwavering tunnel vision of immortality encompassing all of the God concept and "betraying" psychological primal fear is actually still reductionist and false equivalency without having shown any knowledge of actual empirical psychological, and anthropological, and comparative religious, for that matter, material at all on your part. And then you comment about "testimonies." Does your comment actual address the issue? You attempt to cite two phenomena, Bigfoot and UFOs that have specific contexts, associated with skepticism by materialist ideologues. That´s an associative "smear" fallacy, that you show no sense of awareness of. God, religion, and immortality are hardly even limited in context as phenomena. In fact, the overemphasis on legitimate "science" studying material reality makes that kind of ideological presumption and philosophical fallacy understandable. Medically attested, medically impossible healing accompanied by spiritual-religious testimony doesn´t get thrown in the atheist clubhouse file marked "Bigfoot" and "UFOs." It gets associated with Comparative Religious Studies that is multidisciplinary in nature. Actually, Harvard´s psychiatrist John Mack picked up the UFO file and studied it that I know of. He observed that environmental awareness, or the lack thereof, is a major feature. Meanwhile, ideological materialists deserve a dressing down, a deconstruction, that is in fact a demystification. "Science" itself, the reference base for ideological materialism, is in fact actually scientific philosophy, having originally been called scientific "natural philosophy." Scientific philosophy is itself a philosophical subdiscipline, with philosophy itself the reference to the criteria for multidisciplinary truth in logical coherence and correspondence to reality. Thus, medically attested, medically impossible healings, like Marlene Klepees at the Mayo Clinic, healing from cerebral palsy at age 20 in a prayer-vision-church visit sequence, is one. Bill Owens healing from liver failure at a Florida hospital the day after a prayer circle, is another. Ryan Hare´s healing from chicken pox complications (have to check the testimony again for hospital info). And that body of testimonies supplements the grouped records of the Catholic Lourdes and Beatification Medical examiners, and Christian Sciences wealth of testimonies. That, no less has been supplemented by Craig Keener´s 2011 academic work Miracles, and others. The distinction between psychosomatic healing, and transpersonal/transcendental healing is also clear in a more detailed presentation. That has been a dragging issue for spiritual-religious phenomena. So, along with the issue of deconstructing scientific materialism, you are now getting served notice that the abuse of science for ideology was the result of a certain momentum, and that is getting more balanced all the time. Jo McN Mark Rego Monteiro It’s interesting how any references to these cases I can find are all of religious origins such as healing and revival com etc. It would be beneficial to the argument if such cases could be scientifically documented but even spontaneous healing doesn’t necessarily prove it was a divine miracle as it Possible to Recover from Acquired Cerebral Palsy. While damage to the brain is irreversible, it does not mean individuals with acquired cerebral palsy cannot improve. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to reorganize its neural circuitry, which can help the brain recover functions affected by injury for example. Testimonies from prayer recoveries from cancer as another example do not exceed normal rates of spontaneous recovery. There are no scientifically documented miracles and when they were studied using scientific methodology, ...no significant differences were found among twenty various health categories, including mortality, despite explicit prayers "for prevention of death or healing." Quite frankly, it’s based on a logical fallacy called an appeal to ignorance meaning if we can’t explain something, it must mean God did it. Honestly, any perceived evidence supporting creation with design and intent is based on logical fallacies. Reply Share 15hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro Jo McN "Logical fallacies" are philosophical tools, and require understanding the operation of modern knowledge domains and how they have been studying different phenomena domains, i.e. epistemological and epistemic issues in the philosophical subdiscipline of epistemology. Thus, it is necessary to deconstruct the heavily distorted field now called "science" that was originally called scientific "natural philosophy," which is in agreement with the point of biologist turned philosopher M Pigliucci and his focus on the Limits of Science. Pigliucci was an anti-theist, it is worth noting. Thus, "science" is in fact scientific philosophy. One of the definitions of scientific philosophy is the study of physical objects and processes. That includes methodological naturalism. That certainly has been justified in starting the disciplines of scientific philosophy. However, it is necessary to grasp the limits of scientific philosophy, and situate it in its larger multidisciplinary philosophical context. Thus, scientific methodology doesn´t invoke agent design and intent. Yet, modern scientific philosophy, originally scientific natural philosophy, was invented by Christians taking ancient Greek component philosophy and revamping it. Notably at the U of Paris, the monk Thomas of Aquinas took Aristotle´s esoteric First Cause and applied Jesus´ heritage and innovated loving, lawful, parental Creator God in an argument that made the Universe created, not co-eternal with God. In fact, it´s funny to note that physicists like Einstein had actually returned to a view of a static Universe, while the Catholic priest and physicist G Lemaitre actually developed the original Big Bang Theory. Hubbell actually only confirmed Lemaitre´s original data, and himself couldn´t accept the empiricial implications. That even represents the transpersonal, metaphysical, psychosocial, and cultural dynamics in play in a microcosm. Methodological naturalism doesn´t rule. It is embedded. (see next) Reply Share 7m Mark Rego Monteiro Jo McN About your “noticing” that detail of “religious origins,” you´ll note that the Mayo Clinic was trying to treat Marlene Klepees medically, and took no note of the non-medical nature of her cure experience. Moreover, the subject of miracles have been left behind in all the excitement about modern scientific advances. A formal and systematic treatment of responding to the problem of scientific materialism´s misguided forays, like Dawkins´ kind of ideological atheism, only developed in response to ideological atheism´s losing its wits in popular media circles by around 2000. Craig Keener´s massive 2011 work Miracles is groundbreaking in that respect. Medical disinterest is reflected in medical practitioners using the term “spontaneous remission”, because religious “mechanisms”, or better human-related transpersonal transcendent processes, aren´t in the framework of scientific philosophical study, which studies physical objects and processes. Note I emphasize “science´s” actual nature as philosophical, deconstructing the conceit of scientific materialism that “science´s facts” are the “truth”, and not actually human constructed philosophy, no matter how fun the tech. Yet, a number of doctors and scholars have begun writing on the subject, including Harvard´s J Rediger MD and Lissa Rankin MD. Moreover, I notice you didn´t actually research the specific case to discipline your comments with its empirical data. Or by “religious origins” are you accusing CBN in one case of conspiracy to fraudulent presentation that includes the Mayo Clinic report. Ms. Klepees weighed less than 2 lbs at birth. Klepees couldn´t play with kids much as she grew up, and as a teenager had muscular surgery, the prevailing treatment. However, she suffered terribly. The attacks were só violent that they even left attendants with broken bones. Or are you accusing a report citing the Mayo Clinic as fraudulent because its presented by a religious source. Because the medical community hasn´t been geared to handle such testimonies and report them themselves? In fact, Larry Dossey MD introduces L Mehl-Madrona MD, PhD´s book Coyote Medicine with extensive presentation of various Lourdes´ Medical Clinic miracles, and comments directly about the ideological opposition of the medical community to publishing such reports. Actually, your phraseology communicates the overspecialization of someone limited to sci-tech interests, used to handling objects instead of studying human beings, inadequate awareness of science´s and technology´s being overvalued by society in general. Your very attitude is apparently fairly typical of the scientific field. Late psychiatrist and ecopsychologist John Mack noted similar issues simply in terms of eco-psychology. New Atheists try to argue that the high percentage of atheists in the sciences disproves God, or the like. In fact, it is a fundamental issue argued since Cartesian geometric-scientific types prompted G Vico´s response in the early 1700s with insight that human behavior is complex, including “verum factum,” the truth is what you make (formalized by Piaget as “constructivism” in the 1900s). Your assertion, “it would be beneficial to the argument if such cases could be scientifically documented....” Medical attestations are in fact scientific documentation. Your response demonstrates not the failure of the evidence, but the manner of how it is interpreted. Your comment tries to deny medical impossibility and assert medical possibility. Your reference to neuroplasticity is a conditional physical phenomenal mechanism, but not a self-generating process. People don´t just snap their fingers and heal. That´s where functional literacy in psychosocial and cultural assessments, ie, just listening to spiritual-religious testimony and understanding its logical coherence at various Levels of Explanation. That includes transpersonal psychosomatic testimonies appearing in medical doctors´ books themselves, as with C Crandall MD and L Mehl-Madrona, and Larry Dossey MD´s citing the Lourdes´ Medical Clinic. Those are a selection amongst many current, modern, and historical cases, all the way back to Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and shamanic healing. You say, “Testimonies of prayer recoveries from cancer do not exceeed normal rates of spontaneous recovery.” Here, you are creating categories that you are interpreting, and it seems that you are trying to interpret it to mean that prayer doesn´t work, it´s actually just spontaneous recovery. Thus, you would treat “prayer recoveries” and “spontaneous recovery” as if it´s a pattern of, say, geyser eruptions. Again, “prayer recovery” means what, exactly? And please recall the definition of “interpretivism”, and for that matter, I suggest the significance of therapeutic psychological school diversity. However, as for prayer itself, a simple overview of Catholic Lourdes and beatification miracles certified by Medical Clinics and professionals and comparison with Christian Science will demonstrate differences in the meaning of “prayer”. In fact, Christian Science was founded around 1880, and grew because of member experience of spiritual-religious benefits, with many experiences of healing long before modern medicine. The issue of the elements of practice in prayer itself are an issue. Shift to the Simonton Cancer Clinic and the two books written by their founder OC Simonton MD. We observe that the first one, Getting Well Again from 1978 was psychosomatic and did not include transpersonal issues. His second book The Healing Journey a few years later was fully concerned with the combination of spiritual-religious transpersonal phenomena and practice along with psychosomatic issues. (see next) Reply Share 5m Mark Rego Monteiro Jo Mc “...No scientifically documented miracles....” Scientific philosophical research doesn´t document miracles, another basic fallacy on your part. It does provide rigorous supportive evidence of the broader empirical occurence, however, recorded in transpersonal psychological, social, historical, religious, and cultural details, including symbolic-energetic mind-consciousness elements captured in a comprehensive multidisciplinary case history. The identification of the miracle in the case of Ms. Klepees´ healed cerebral palsy involves the Mayo Clinic´s unexplained sequence of a suffering patient leaving the clinic one day and returning without any more symptoms of a devastating condition for which she had actually had invasive and reconstructive surgery performed in the past with no lasting relief. Religious people, and someone like myself with one degree in Biological Anthropology and another in International Relations has competence in the necessary range of disciplines to interpret the information literately and without denial and fallacies. Ms. Klepees´ healing followed her prayer-vision-church visit sequence in a causal process. She didn´t take up her religion overnight, nor did she find a substitute unknown medical surgical technique to perpetrate a pro-religious fraud. As for science, it studies physical phenomena and seeks physical mechanisms. Scientists are not trained in the psychosocial studies disciplines and their empiricism, much less transpersonal and theological disciplines. Thus, you are in fact demonstrating the larger problems of overspecialization and ideological scientific materialism. You don´t know the limits of science. Biologist turned philosopher M Pigliucci went from anti-theist to discussing the limits of science, including his making the key point, “science is a kind of philosophy. Darwin was still called a natural philosopher.” As for your last comment, it´s called the “god of the gaps” fallacy, not the “appeal to ignorance” as you might say in some atheist lab clubhouse. That would apply if the issue were physical objects or processes. In this case, however, no claims are being made about an unknown physical mechanism. It is at least a transpersonal psychosomatic activitated healing with reference to a transcendental referent. It is the reverse of a “god of the gaps” fallacy, a kind of “gap in the God” spiritual-religious fallacy, since you are visibly overspecialized, ideologically scientific materialist, and not functionally literate in comparative religious studies, and the psychosocial and cultural components that extend to transpersonal psychology, the philosophy of religion, and theology. Minor placebo affect healings, and even more extensive ones, demonstrate a number of psychoneuroimmunological type of mechanisms that reflect psychosocial action. Ms. Klepees´ longitudinal case history reveals details that reflect the spiritual-religious transpersonal factors that at the very least activate psychosomatic mechanisms, and reflect a transcendental factor, with historical sociological dimensions back in time all the way to Jesus. All together, that combination of mechanisms and processes creates what might be called a transcendental nexus, called divine intervention. Incidentally, I studied the evolution of speech, symbolic behavior, and religious ritual, and só know what I´m talking about with all these issues. Understanding the distinction of the empirical human symbolic-energetic system of mind and consciousness involves an immaterial quality, close to wave-like and rhythmic resonance in nature, but involving subjective and transpersonal, and transcendent components. &&& Mark Rego Monteiro John McNeely My phrasing was adequate to convey the concept. Your conclusions, however, are ideologically inclined to ridicule and negation, not philosophical and accurate. If a region of the brain is activated by watching sports or reading great literature, while listening to pop music or listining to spiritual-religious music, that is a scientific kind of classification that establishes a relationship between a person´s brain and certain kinds of activity. Your crass use of porn reflects your antagonistic ideological mentality on this subject, associated with "confirmation bias" and non sequitors, as you demonstrated. Nevertheless, observation of sexually stimulating material will activate certain brain regions. One philosophical conclusion is that that region, or zone as I termed it, is related to that activity. It is a scientific register associated with that activity. Thus, since the researchers are specifying that since the MRI´s in such cases are in relation to spiritual-religious activity, you might want to research if it is the same as listening to pop music, say, or Harry Potter, or thinking about unicorns and Santa Claus. That would at least allow you to attempt a more imaginative and less profligate kind of comment that might extend your cognition instead of your mind-numbing ideological skeptical extremism. And as case in point, it´s noteworthy that you ignored the implications of medically attested, medically impossible healings with spiritual-religious testimony. Reply Share 20h John McNeely Mark Rego Monteiro To quote your own words: “you are making an assertion without citation” Give me one example with citation of a medically impossible healing. Make sure you take note of the source when doing so and predetermine if it’s legitimate. Such as a non biased source such as the Harvard institute of medicine vs a biased religious source. In other words, if you want to use science to legitimize your claim, please use a legitimate scientific source. Reply Share 20hEdited John McNeely Mark Rego Monteiro My point with the porn reference was to dramatically show that every activity of the brain regardless of its source activates regions of the brain. That’s what thinking does, it activates the brain. Prayer activates the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex — the mid-front and back portions, The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) mediates decision making, is selectively involved in the retrieval of remote long-term memory and supports memory and consolidation on time-scales. The Posterior cingulate cortex is strongly inter-connected both with brain areas known to be involved in learning and motivation and with those that are sensitive to reinforcement contingencies. There is no argumentative relevance to brain function associated with prayer and meditation other than what is activated when doing so. Reply Share 19hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro John McNeely Bias begins with a person themselves. The issue is empiricism and philosophical analysis, since any personal interested viewpoints can be accounted for appropriately by a self-aware scholar. Thus, I´m afraid your expressed view suggests that you´ve just disqualified yourself from an empirical dialogue, since Harvard medical school merely provides one source of views, not a supreme judgment of truth. And in fact, their context at Harvard University is a multidisciplinary one along with Harvard Divinity School, and so on. As for your conduct and pretense of trying to frame the scientific community as the only source of truthful philosophical scholarship, is a simple fallacy. Barack Obama a Christian, his spiritual path and its story, and his biography are not pronounced by Harvard medical school studies, and have only begun to be mentioned in scholarly papers. Craig Keener, PhD has written a groundbreaking 2011 book on Miracles, and one of his tasks was to contribute to making prominent the fallacies of anti-miracle anti-testimony rationalism with a focus on David Hume. Hume himself was careless enough to dismiss a current case of Pascal´s daughter having a publicly known persistently infected wound, being healed by touching a religious "relic" (despite even being a likely fraud itself), and being healed. Modern rational knowledge making clearer the fraudulence of the relic merely creates a more rigorous standard of focus for spiritual-religious practice of legitimate transpersonal and transcendental seeking of healing. Philosophical truth itself, meanwhile, the actual framework of scientific philosophy itself, is determined by logical coherence and correspondence with reality, a larger scope than the philosophical subdiscipline of "science," which studies merely physical phenomena and is limited to that. Philosophy makes up "science" and composes the basis of modern diversified knowledge of reality through University scholarship. Sorry to inform you. Meanwhile, I mentioned three names of healings with testimony in my other dialogue with you in this thread, with Marlene Klepees one worthy of focus and the Mayo Clinic as the medical source. The Mayo Clinic´s medical records are included by salient mention in the docu-drama video by CBN. If you feel mistrust of the reported information in the video, then it is incumbent upon you to learn to identify your own inner issues. It is important to develop a broader base of knowledge resources, and Bernie Siegel MD´s Love, Medicine, and Miracles, L Mehl-Madrona MD, PhD´s books like Coyote Medicine, C Crandall MD´s books like Touching Heaven. Anyone is free to follow up and seek such references and more. Reply Share 12m Mark Rego Monteiro John McNeely Your getting more specific about the brain´s neurological areas and their associated functional activity has you absorbed in one component of the issue. The conclusion beyond that is the issue of the identity of the activity. That is a class of brain activity MRI pattern that establishes a scientific reference to the reality of the activity. In fact, that is all that particular detail means. It is a foundation for additional scientific philosophical reasoning linked to psychosocial issues of the interface from neuronal brain activity to the symbolic-energetic systems that people demonstrate by expressing their thoughts in words, and engaging in verbal expression of subjective experience. That enters into the nature and meaning of mind and consciousness, and its relevance to spiritual-religious phenomena and experience, but that is another subject in fact. MRI brainscans indicate the identity of spiritual-religious states, as a specific scientific referent. Your difficulty in recognizing that classification process is noteworthy. You appear to be assuming that someone is arguing that a characteristic brain activation proves God´s existence. No, the proof of God isn´t in the brain state itself. The proof of God is in the combination of the spiritual-religious phenomena and its full range of component phenomena and knowledge that is a multidisciplinary argument. WL Craig´s arguments are a good start, although I want to adjust his moral argument a bit. John McNeely Mark Rego Monteiro I think your use of the word “proof” is unwarranted. Indirect evidence drawing assumptuous conclusions at best. Reply Share 1hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro John McNeely You´re free to think what you want. However, the demands of empirical reality, logical coherence and correspondence to that empirical reality are simply bigger than your demonstrated basis in the ideology of physicalist scientific materialism, based on metaphysical naturalism. "Science," ie scientific philosophy is about studying physical phenomena and developing concepts around that for knowledge of the physical world. Not for learning how to love a romantic partner, nor make friends, nor understand art and creativity, nor how Freud´s term "ego" relates to Jung´s term "Higher Self," nor what the Buddhist Four Noble Truths mean, nor Ralph Nader´s contributions to citizenship. Much less spiritual-religious phenomena, even in relation to scientific material, and evaluating the evidence for the existence of God. Technically, the latter is considered the philosophy of religion, or metaphysics, but closely relates to comparative religious studies. Modern University-based philosophical scholarship has developed a full range of disciplines through observation, but that´s called the liberal arts and sciences with empiricism, along with other methods like introspection and multidisciplinary studies. In a metaphorical sense, you stand at a lab door ignoring the hallway at your back that leads to the larger building with door outside. That larger building alone operates with an administration and its disciplinary concerns, and all embedded within the larger society. The significance of University-based philosophical scholarship, with empiricism even more fundamental than its driving case subdiscipline(s) of scientific philosophy, is simply central to "science", i.e. scientific philosophy, and the coherent discussion of globalized society itself. Your use of terms is restricted to verbal contradiction, asserting details about detailed technical physical conditions, and making unsound conclusions and assertions, without acknowledging the basic questions and issues involved with the limits of science. Again, as if you are in a lab standing with your back to the hallway door and saying about any non-scientific subject like God, spiritual-religious phenomena, business administration, or democracy, "There is no scientific paper saying 'business administration' or 'democracy' exists. So, it´s unwarranted and "assumptuous"," by which I think you mean, "presumptuous", or "based on unexamined assumptions." The proof of God, however, like spiritual-religious phenomena, business administration, and democracy, is warranted, and based on the key acknowledgement of spiritual-religious phenomena itself. Your manner of making assertions based on speculative skepticism is simply like unsophisticated contradiction. "No, I don´t think it is." That´s not a functionally literate argument. Thus, in sum, Marlene Klepees´ healing of cerebral palsy from being born with 2 lbs to her suffering from attempted surgical treatment, and visit to the Mayo Clinic provides medical attestation. Ms. Klepees suffered terrible pain there no less than before, and continued her spiritual-religious practice. The Clinic´s medical staff then recorded first her absence, and then her return with no more continuing medical problem. A materialist ideologue might attempt to posit a scenario that Ms. Klepees actually found a surgeon with unbelievable skill outside the Mayo Clinic without reporting him who fixed her up in hours with no recovery necessary. Or a hypnotherapist with incredible skill who did his own spectacular therapeutic magic. Both of which may have interesting areas of information of their own in relevant ways. However, not here. The reported testimony by Ms. Klepees is that her prayers since her embrace of Christianity at 12 or so were finally rewarded. She gave testimony that she had a prayer-vision-church visit sequence, a report of empirical transpersonal psychosocial significance with transcendent content. Her testimony with medical attestation joins numerous others in media records, but also more organized church records like Christian Science and Catholic Lourdes and beatification Medical examinations and miracle evaluations. That extends back in time to the historical sociological heritage including Quaker Friends like founder George Fox´s healing accounts, church spiritual practitioners like Julian of Norwich´s healing, Benedict of Nursia´s earlier reports, Anthony of the Desert the Father of Christian monks, and back to the early Christians and the NT reports of Jesus and the Apostles, with their OT heritage. Cross-cultural shamanic healings have also been represented by L Mehl-Madrona MD, PhD and the legacy of anthropologist Michael Harner, and in records like that of Sganyadiyo (Handsome Lake), a prophet at the time of Thomas Jefferson. All these elements are consistent with WL Craig´s arguments for God based around the updated First Cause argument, the Kalam Cosmological argument, and that includes the Resurrection of Jesus. &&& John McNeely Mark Rego Monteiro The first cause argument: The universe must have had a cause. If the universe had a cause, that cause was God. So God exists. Please tell me your not serious. Reply Share 31mEdited Mark Rego Monteiro John McNeely In fact, you´re projecting how you´re not serious. Psychological projection, a phenomenon understood in psychology, and in philosophy, a fallacy. See how that works? Your conduct is subject to analysis for what is called "integrity." It is a form of philosophical analysis, derived from valuing University-based scholarship, a secularized Christian spiritual practice. You present the Kalam´s basic syllogism, with "syllogism" an example of a powerful logical philosophical method. People who don´t use philosophical investigation to understand, still can use its appearance to distort the truth, as you do here. However, by neglecting the quality of philosophical discipline in the search of truth, you misrepresent the syllogism, and bend it to make it appear circular. It goes like this: - Anything that exists has a cause. - The Universe exists - Therefore, the Universe has a cause. That´s the first component to appreciate in seeking to understand the role of philosophical logic, in the search for truth. What could have caused the Universe, using modern philosophical, scientific philosophical, and empirical philosophical concepts? Our scientific philosophical concepts of the physical Universe define it as matter and energy in spacetime. Thus, on this 4D physical plane, matter, energy, and spacetime did not exist when the First Cause created the Universe. What, then, are the properties of the First Cause of the Universe? - The Universe has a cause. - The Universe defines our current existence in spacetime, matter-energy, so that the Universe has a Cause that is not limited to them/is beyond their constraints, and is therefore spaceless, timeless, immaterial, extremely powerful. What is immaterial and can Cause anything? Abstractions or Minds (Abstractions don´t cause anything, like the number 9/ we know human minds that design tools, baby-cribs, and ecological buildings, but here we are talking about an immaterial transcendent Mind). - So, the Universe has a Cause that is spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and extremely powerful, apparently a Mind. That First Cause, then, is what we can call God, a Divine Mind. And we are doing it not in Aristotle´s day and age, but in the psychosocial historical legacy community of Thomas Aquinas at the U of Paris, who, and we along with him, stands stands in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity for God and Moses. &&& John McNeely Mark Rego Monteiro I’m going to give you an A+ for pontificating in irrelevance but this is all based on logical fallacies. 1. The universe does not require a cause, it requires a catalyst. 2. We know that catalyst is energy and understand the conversion of energy to matter down to the first one billionth of a second in experimentation in the cern particle collider. The origins of this energy is currently unknown and I agree it could very well be timeless and infinitely powerful which corresponds with Einstein’s theory of a cyclical universe with infinite energy causing endless expansions and contractions in endless variations of the same universe. So if that potentially infinite energy source we can call God, we must do so without the unfounded assumption of any conscious design or intent. Reply Share 1h Mark Rego Monteiro John McNeely Thanks to the Freedom of Religion and Expression in University-based, UN human rights society in Jesus´ legacy, you can mix and match, or rather, remain oblivious to the embedded context of scientific philosophy as much as you want. Based on my points situating scientific philosophy appropriately as a philosophical subdiscipline, someone like me is able to identify the Levels of Explanation and Analysis, and knowledge domains (ie epistemology) that distinguishes a "cause" and a "catalyst." The physics attempts to track the meaning of time to the past include the Verenkin et al theory that an infinite past Universe is impossible. That is consistent with the notion of the Big Bang, and the "white hole" hypothesis material, and the metaphysical philosophical analysis. Your sustained focus on a scientific physicalist concept like "catalyst" has potential applicability as far as it might go in scientific philosophizing. It doesn´t have the same range of explanatory power that is necessary to integrate spiritual-religious phenomena and the need for spiritual modernization to address related phenomena expressed by FD Roosevelt´s Social Gospel New Deal, and vision and legacy in UN human rights-sustainability-pro-social-co-op biz and overcome the problems of the three forms of materialist ideology: secular, scientific, and economic (linked to businesspeople´s profiteering) $$$ John McNeely Mark Rego Monteiro It’s very entertaining debating you, that is when I can figure out exactly what the point is you’re trying to make. 😬 When you consider integrity, take note of your evasiveness when making a counterpoint. Reply Share 12hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro John McNeely My "evasiveness"? Hardly. Your own psychological projection, the philosophical fallacy that it is, is instructive in a textbook fashion. I´ve situated scientific philosophy´s nature as knowledge studying limited kinds of phenomena, and how it´s situated in philosophical scholarship performed originally as Christian spiritual practice taken from the ancient Greek and eclectics. Meanwhile, you throw around words, and avoid tying them to any specific words and content, which allows you to posture dishonestly to your heart´s content. I have pointed out the box you live in, the "lab at which you stand, ignoring the larger world at your back." And all you do is try to posture like I´m in some lab with you. Sorry. The worst case scenarios for scientific materialists were Bill Ivin the anthrax killer and Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber. I´m the eco-social justice activist and interfaith UU Christian spiritual practitioner, who understands richly why this site of Contemplative Mystics is "trans-scientific," and represented coherently and congruently by the University-based liberal arts and sciences, and their fulfillment in a method, Multidisciplinary Philosophy. Less extreme in the case of your kind of scientific materialism, depending, is the unscholarly conduct of scientific materialists like R. Dawkins "God Delusion" equating the Inquisition with Christianity and all religion in fact, and even S Hawking´s buying into that view by stating rather imprudently, "Philosophy is dead," to soften the blow a bit that it was in fact the height of foolishness. I´ve made a range of comparable perspective issues that help situate your scientific materialism. You don´t look in scientific journals for understanding romantic love, making friends, business administration, Ralph Nader´s consumer advocacy and citizenship, no less than the historical sociology of transpersonal psychosomatic healing as a spiritual-religious phenomenon, and understanding the transcendental nature of God. Incidentally, your comment about a physics phenomena "catalyst" being the First Cause can be assessed philosophically. A material factor, some aspect of the Higgs Field or quantum vacuum field, is still a physical phenomonon. The issue of the existence of "eternity" and an "infinite temporal field" is what scientific philosophy can only study under physical assumptions. Systems Theory and complex systems, advanced significantly by biologist L v Bertalanaffy and physicist Fritjof Capra´s eco-psycho-social sustainability efforts, has given a powerful context for emergentism, epistemics, and epistemology. That is, layering of systems of reality occur, and in fact the human mind´s symbolic-psychologico-energetic systems distinct from bio-neuro-chemo-electric brain systems, in a dualist interactionism, involve "mind over matter" no less. Thus, the issue of the First Cause representing a distinct separate system, related to a Supervenient phenomenon as in "mind over matter", and transcendent in its power as Source of the Universe can be philosophically understood. A physical catalyst as you are trying to suggest, ignores the fact that the "white hole singularity" itself in terms of physics´ phenomena, is itself simply not understood. It represents unknown conditions, in a phrase, "the universe did not collapse into a multitude of black holes." Given, moreover, "science´s" actual nature as scientific philosophy, that term better represents the very activity of thinking philosophically and symbolically, involving the human symbolic mind. That very "thing" is part not of a "thing," but people, aka human beings, conscious agents (to varying degrees). The recognition of spiritual-religious phenomena, then, assumes its natural place in modern University-based philosophical scholarship, including scientific philosophy, empiricism, psychosocial studies, and comparative religious studies. The analysis, moving to the phenomenon of symbolic, psychologico-energetic mind, then is in the philosophy of religion and comparative religious studies (itself a multidisiciplinary approach), drawing on scientific philosophy and empirical psychosocial studies. Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, Hebrew-Judaic bible writing, like Chinese, Indian, and other variant forms, developed and proceeded to develop. Jesus´ legacy drew on the ancient Greek, Islamic, and eclectics to develop modern philosophical scholarship. "Mind over matter" reflects the ability of human symbols to sustain not just a mind´s symbolic content, not just about physical objects, but about psychosocial realities. Alexander the Great is recorded by some source as having encountered the Cynic philosopher Diogenes, and having a dialogue, Alexander asked, "What does Diogenes want from Alexander?" Diogenes responded, "You can take a step to the side. You are blocking the sun." Alexander responded, "If Alexander could be anyone else, it would be Diogenes." The human mind, then, is itself a phenomenon. Spiritual-religious phenomena also include the story of Socrates´ origins as a philosopher, with the Oracle of Delphi answering Chaerophon´s question, "Who is the wisest man of Athens?" with "Socrates," although at the time Socrates (d. 399 BC/E) had no special reputation. Alexander the Great also went on, two generations later in Aristotle´s time, to conquer his way to the Phrygian city of Gordium with the Gordian knot and prophecy of conquest to the untier of the famous knot in prophetic context. Similarly, then, the burning bush of God with Moses back in ca 1500 BC. Interrelating such information, then, a timeless source of temporal- physical existence is the First Cause philosophical context of its reality. Is it a sea of infinite energy surrounding the physical Universe? Is it a powerful dimension embedded within existing physical reality? The question is, does it act by a physical mechanism/necessity? Random chance? Or design/intention? 1) A mechanism requires time. We observe that the First Cause or its physical white hole singularity is not something we can experience directly, but must infer from evidence through instruments like Cosmic Background Radiation. That is in fact symbolic in nature, along with the scientific philosophical extrapolation back in time and conditions. Something that is beyond our notion of "time" and "space" is thus timeless, or trans-temporal, and the resolution of the physical-logical paradox of "infinite regress." An eternal foundation and source, an infinitude. A physical catalyst involves matter-energy combinations in time, but the First Cause precedes spacetime, and matter-energy. So, your concerns about a physical "catalyst" only apply where known laws of physics operate. 2) Without "time" and "mechanism" being a "necessity", is it chance? "Chance," as a human term, is normally meant to mean "random" and "unpredictable." Yet, that is a human interpretation of events. Scientific laws are in operation for "chance" events like DNA mutations. Humans just don´t track all the details, and some forget about all the lawful complexity in some interactions. 3) Then that seems to leave Design/Intention. That is in general a biological phenomenon that reflects biological goals in biological organismic systems, in their ecosystems that sustain them. Human minds have achieved symbolic-bio-psychologico-energetic functioning. That is a phenomenon. In understanding the way empirical symbolic philosophical interpretation supersedes merely scientific philosophy, we understand the explanatory power of this option. An eternal immaterial Mind, a Divine Mind, can act with intention. That explanation is consistent with spiritual-religious phenomena, practice, experience, and knowledge in multidisciplinary comparative religious studies, with empiricism, and its subdiscipline scientific philosophy. Surprise.

Is Ideology Philosophy? Is Material Reality Materialism? The Next Frontier of Interpretivism, Symbolic Mind, Spirituality, and Consciousness

A comment about Jesus not being religious led to an interesting string of comments: E A 📷 Seems clear to me from all I know Jesus was a practicing Jew who knew his scripture well. He was faithful to the heart of it in his revolutionary spirit that turned the patriarchal dominant elite’s and the culture’s beliefs and practices on their collective head. He distilled the true essence of Judaism in the commandment to love your God with all of your life force and your neighbor as yourself in a single life of love. He was the most religious of all. We need this religion. If you define religion as inherently oppressive and bad because of the history of it I feel like we are missing something fundamental about the necessity of it to give our lives shape and meaning. We are still in a process of overcoming the oppressive character of patriarchal religion with a mystical religion of loving connection that liberates us to pursue compassion, justice, and peace in the knowledge that all is one Reply Share 8h Edited Mark Rego Monteiro E A Wonderfully said. I´ll add on the terms that I actually had to invent, despite all the wonderful people and minds at work on these issues. "We live in Jesus´ living legacy of loving integrity for Moses and God in University-based, UN human rights-sustainability-pro-social business society with structured pluralism, and the problem of indulgence in hypocrisy and materialism." Multidisciplinary Philosophy, that includes scientific philosophy and empirical methodology, is the perspective that values University-based philosophical scholarship adequately, not "science," or "economic science," or "democratic politics," which all link to forms of materialism and ideology. Reply Share 7h R C Mark Rego Monteiro materialism - I take matter very seriously. So do the scientists that invented, from matter already present in the universe, the material stuff that saved my life. They also followed the ideology of the materialistic scientific method, rather than on, say, Ayurvedic or Hippocratic medicine. Indeed, ideology itself is the study of ideas. We use and misuse words that have many meanings and shadings. Words, are, after all, symbols - not the thing itself. As symbols, they are both multivalent and vulnerable to being ham-handed manipulated. It would be easy to see what I am writing to being beside the point. It may be, but it is also the point on which any rational discussion depends. Reply Share6h Mark Rego Monteiro R C Well, I would recommend that considering the value of the terms "empirical" and "philosophical." Christian fundamentalism, incidentally, seems artificially inflated by economic materialists, with corporate executives having funded Billy Graham evangelicals in conjunction with Cold War anti-communism against FD Roosevelt´s pro-social Social Gospel New Deal. Meanwhile, "material reality" is one thing, "ideological materialism" is another. No, "ideology" is not the study of ideas. Philosophy is. Ideology is the a non-philosophical, and even anti-philosophical position in which unexamined assumptions are used to drive logical formulations that can use and appear philosophical. They systematically exclude antithetical, oppositional ideas and issues. "The God Delusion", by R Dawkins, for example, ignores such basic philosophical issues as identifying the appropriate phenomena and knowledge domains, the epistemic and epistemological domains, of the issues in question. When asked if he has studied any theology, he responded, "I wouldn´t study Leprochology to study Leprechauns." Actually, that would involve Anthropology and Folkore, at least. It´s an unscholarly response, and what is called in philosophy, a fallacy. Dawkins has even said about such crucial component disciplines as, "Psychologists and sociologists deal with certain ideas" while showing no literacy nor understanding that they also inform Comparative Religious Studies, not to mention Theology, and the Philosophy of Religion. He has avoided actual scholarship, mocked and ignored what is in fact not just unscholarly fashion, but unphilosophical and, to come back to it, ideological. Meanwhile, "Science" doesn´t impose metaphysical ideological materialism, but operates according to methodological naturalism. In fact, an adequate multidisciplinary philosophical assessment of the metaphysics of "science" deconstructs it to its historical and philosophical symbolic nature, that originated in Christian spiritual-religious practice. That in turn was adjusted from ancient Greek spiritual-religious practice. The monk Thomas of Aquinas took Aristotle´s esoteric First Cause argument, and Christianized it in relation to an active and effective Creator God, lawful, loving parent of the empirical Jesus of Nazareth. Newton´s comments, about God, no less for example, actually fit well into the strong Kalam Cosmological argument version of the First Cause argument. His contemporary Quaker-Friend lead co-founder George Fox, however, took actions that help discern the non-rationalist aspects of spiritual-religious experience that have been widely disadvantaged by materialist ideologies. Meanwhile, the material world is a basic part of our human experience, and our human spiritual experience. I have expressed in a few comments across the threads some particularly rich pieces that draw on my own college background degree of Biological Anthropology, even after working in social services with substance abusers, financial services customer service, and getting a masters in International Relations grasping social constructivism based on symbolic interactionism quite concretely based on my background, and more. The problem here is confusing material reality with materialistic ideology. "Science" is not in fact "science," it is scientific philosophy, a difference that underlies the simplistic confusion of anti-theist materialists mistaking Christian fundamentalism, literalism, and related sociological issues with religion and God themselves. By recalling that "science" is scientific philosophy focused on the study of physical matter and material processes, the vast and enriching wealth of University-based philosophical knowledge with empiricism can be adequately respected and communicated accurately. Including not requiring an independent scholar activist and practitioner like myself to have to innovate the necessary terminology, i.e. spiritual-religious phenomena. That is the phenomena that scientists need to defer to when they show the minimum philosophical literacy about the relevant disciplines. That´s the kind of deferral that leaves, for example, doctors facing medically attested, medically impossible healings with spiritual-religious testimony with their compartmentalized terms like "spontaneous remissions." For the switch in philosophical epistemology to a psychosocial empirical assessment, however, the role of a person´s spiritual-religious life gets coordinated literately in a transpersonal psychosocial kind of assessment, with awareness of transcendental reality. OC Simonton MD´s Cancer Clinic for combination or pure psychosomatic treatment, with transpersonal spiritual encouragement. It is such clarity of distinctions that are in fact necessary to overcome not just scientific materialism, but two other prevailing, and ultimately widely toxic forms, secular and economic materialism. Profiteering businesspeople have had two major classes of opportunities to assert their preferred of power and control in corporate-consumer culture: public relations/advertising as Ed Bernays´ consulted and conceived the cigarette "Torches of Freedom" campaign to get women smoking in the 1920s, and the anti-Social Gospel New Deal theology funded by the executives of the National Manufacturers Assoc. My Biological Anthropology degree complimented my upbringing by a father with a doctorate who valued Noam Chomsky, and my work as an activist with Ralph Nader´s legacy PIRG not for profits, that taught be about the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, for starters. My interfaith path was also informed by the important post-Christian interfaith perspective of Unitarian Universalism. That is why I refer to my interfaith UU Christianity as empirical theism. It´s important to get clear about the distinctions between material reality, scientific philosophical phenomena and knowledge, ideological materialism, and spiritual-religious phenomena and knowledge. Radiation therapy can cure cancer, but, my atheist humanist dad had a massive heart attack after his biopsy, so they had to wait. The radiation therapy was then a devastating success. He took a few months to recover, then rushed back to work for a few months at his hi-powered UN offical´s job, and then died of pneumonia. Meanwhile, there are all kinds of testimonies by people with spiritual-religious practice, including Louise Hay´s Religious Science-based work, Catholic Lourdes and Beatification miracles and Christian Science, which has massive records. Louise Hay used a heavily holistic, bodywork psychotherapy approach to cure her cancer in six months. Along with medically attested testimonies by other sources like Marlene Klepees´ recovery from cerebral palsy, Bill Owens´ recovery from liver failure, and Ryan Hare´s recovery from chickenpox complications. C. Crandall MD, a Christian doctor, has become renowned for his testimonies, while L Mehl-Madrona MD does multicultural work full of testimonies. Again, material reality relates to human symbolic reality, methodological naturalism is not metaphysical ideological naturalism, and multidisciplinary philosophy includes scientific philosophy and empiricism, along with social studies disciplines and more. Most of all, ideology is reactionary and unphilosophical (or anti-philosophical) not philosophical. R C Mark Rego Monteiro one of the definitions of ideology is "study of ideas". You are invested in its modern use as a diss, rather than a word with a distinguished history. "philosophy of the mind which derives knowledge from the senses" (as opposed to metaphysics), from French idéologie "study or science of ideas," coined by French philosopher Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) https://www.etymonline.com/word/ideology ideology | Etymology, origin and meaning of ideology by etymonline ETYMONLINE.COM ideology | Etymology, origin and meaning of ideology by etymonline ideology | Etymology, origin and meaning of ideology by etymonline Reply Share 3h Regina Christianson I did not say "materialistic ideology", I said materialism " 1748, "philosophy that nothing exists except matter" (which is the sine qua non for the scientific method) https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=materialism materialism | Search Online Etymology Dictionary ETYMONLINE.COM materialism | Search Online Etymology Dictionary materialism | Search Online Etymology Dictionary Reply Share 3h Mark Rego Monteiro Regina Christianson You may consider my use of "ideology" as a "diss" if you project your own idealization of the term, and ignore the empirical issues I raise, not least of all the distinction between philosophy and ideology. In fact, your own link shows your using an etymological origin instead of the current meaning, "a systematic set of ideas...", part of what I mentioned, and the current usual meaning, " is usually taken to mean, 'a prescriptive doctrine that is not supported by rational argument.' " You have not understood the definition link you provided, and have misrepresented it. That all works together at this site, "contemplative mystics," for which identifying ideology, ideological materialism, scientific philosophy (aka "science"), empiricism, philosophy, and spiritual-religious knowledge, and more, is not a small matter. Reply Share 2hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro Regina Christianson As for materialistic ideology, and materialism, you don´t seem to understand the equivalence you just demonstrated, and mistaking of categories. Materialism as a philosophy that "nothing exists except matter" is an ideology, since it does not apply outside of "the scientific method" and the forms of scientific philosophy. That´s why I used the term "methodological naturalism," which would be the equivalent to "methodological materialism." That only applies as "philosophical" within its legitimate philosophical discipline, where the phenomena and knowledge operate. And that is why its common use has led to it commonly being called scientific materialism, and scientism. It clearly has spread and influenced other disciplines along with a related viewpoint called "positivism." However, philosophy is the actual and current term for the study of ideas and knowledge and applied in diverse disciplines, with philosophical truth being defined essentially as logical coherence and correspondence to reality. It is the basis of discussing whether your assertion about "ideology" using a definition from the 1790s is current or not. Any assertion by you that that idea is current is not logically coherent, nor does it correspond to reality. That is how philosophy establishes truth. That is defined clearly by M-W in one of the various definitions, according to context, "2b: a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means", although that gets broadened when reconciled with the more common use, " 1b: the sciences and liberal arts exclusive of medicine, law, and theology," and "1a: all learning exclusive of technical precepts and practical arts" Combining 2b into 1a and 1b, it gets even clearer, "a search for understanding reality in all learning, as in the sciences and liberal arts." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/philosophy Not ideology. That´s why deconstructing, and clarifying the meaning of the term "science" is so important. In fact, what you did personally for "ideology" works well for the term "science" in reestablishing its philosophical nature, and ending much confusion by people being mislead by using "science" to assert ideological materialism. "Science" used to be called "natural philosophy." In fact, that is what it is, or in more current terms, scientific philosophy. That applies to physical and material objects and processes. That´s why empiricism is an important alternative and foundational concept that underlies the scientific method. Thus, when Freud the neurologist had patients suffering pain with no identifable organic physical wounds, he had to listen to their words. His first therapeutic psychological treatment wasn´t technical "psychoanalysis." It was empirical psychoanalysis as he listened to patients´ words as they reflected on their pain. As they remembered and shared, they went from one event to another and the pain got better. They eventually remembered painful childhood events now called traumas. All this was human symbolic communication, not nerves signals themselves. Thus, it is empirical, not scientific. Sociologists and philosophers like Max Weber developed the term "antipositivism" and "interpretivism" to differentiate the method used in the social studies disciplines from the scientific method. It is, however, philosophical and empirical. It involves the use of symbolic systems that are energetic, and psychosocial, and so non-material, but immaterial. That´s a good sound empirical and philosophical basis for what we call mind and consciousness, and "spiritual" and "transpersonal" as it relates to spiritual-religious knowledge. The very term "science" relates to how these issues have modernized. JF Ferrier got at a key angle as he introduced the term "epistemology" into English. His work is actually extremely piercing on these very issues, and he says, "This leads Ferrier to suggest a change of focus for philosophy; instead of the empirical endeavor of a “science of human nature,” he prefers a more metaphysical approach, which is the development of a “philosophy of consciousness.”" https://iep.utm.edu/ferrier/ Material reality studied by scientific philosophy, not merely "science", then is part of these various issues that acknowledge spiritual-religious phenomena and knowledge, along with the other facets like philosophy, psychosocial levels, and so on. Re Ch Mark Rego Monteiro nonsense. You make up what you want to be true and say it is true, cherry picking bits and pieces of what is true. You ignore the historic meanings of the words because they do not conform to your requirements. That is sloppy scholarship; that is ahsitorical. But rant away. Nothing you write has anything to do with the contemplative masters listed in the group's title and their wisdom. Reply Share 2h Mark Rego Monteiro Re Ch Ah, nothing that sloppy about what I´ve done. That´s all you, although it goes beyond carelessness. "Nonsense", accusations of "making things up", and unsupported accusational characterizations are ad hom and projection, not logical argument about the subject matter. It seems like you´re not paying attention, or rather, you are clinging to untenable distorted assumptions that you don´t want to question for unacknowledged reasons, and want to cover up my argument that "Ideology doesn´t mean 'philosophy of mind...' anymore, but has come to mean a 'set of ideas about human life that rejects logical argument.' It is philosophy that provides the framework for multidisciplinary logical reasoning and discussion of positions and issues. Your calling it a "rant" is ad hom and projection, it´s own kind of "rant," not actual logical, rational argument. You are demonstrating why University-based academic scholarship functions in community and with empiricism at a higher level as I have demonstrated. Given the specific points I´ve made, what you are expressing is demonstrably your own projection, and attempt to manipulate information egotistically. Your words merely apply to you yourself, sadly. "Ahistorical", no less, doesn´t mean that the past origin persists imposed over what has developed and changed. Ahistorical in this case means how you rather conscientiously are rejecting clear information about how your preferred meaning is no longer current. In fact, your conduct is anachronistic. As I´ve explained in some detail, even using your own links in part, the term "philosophy" is the study of phenomena in generating knowledge and the study of ideas both. A comparative effort that I make is the meaning of the term "science." Historical etymological analysis does inform an analysis of how the shift from scientific "natural philosophy" has corresponded to people indulging in materialistic ideology, meaning a system of ideas about culture and human life that resists logically coherent discussion. In fact, a simple reflection on cause and effect, a philosophical reflection with similarities to Buddhist practice, suggests that overexposure to and overspecialization in scientific materialistic practice leads to indulgence, or even a kind of intoxication. Whether from insufficient literacy in therapeutic interactional psychosocial studies, or spiritual-religious practice itself, past spiritual practice such as the monk Thomas Aquinas´ helps understand the current options for spiritual modernization. As a result, the use of psychological and spiritual knowledge to detach from current ideological materialism with spiritual-religious practice, experience, study, and knowledge, all permit an individual to avoid the trap you have embraced and try to project in anger elsewhere. Ideology is not philosophy, and usually is anti-philosophical in resisting rational argument, as you do here. Spirituality, as in contemplative practice, is an activity that supersedes material reality, that corresponds to such popular perceptions as "mind over matter" and "love conquers all," along with the insight of psychosocial and cultural disciplines. That is where the understanding, expressed in part, of modern society being in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity in University-based philosophical scholarship with structured pluralism, provides insight and tools. Your expressing yourself around accusations and ad hom, and failing to respond clearly to rigourous points, is evidence of your own issues, no one else´s.

Ro: Who Created God? Where is He (Don´t Say Heaven)? Me? Contemplative Historical Sociology

Ro: I’m a free thinker and I don’t want generic answers. I want something I can really think on. Question for believers: If god created the earth and people and animals then who created god? Where exactly does he reside? (Don’t say heaven) Non believers: who created the earth and people and animals? (Don’t say evolution or aliens unless you can tell me where they evolved from) General question: certain things like germs and lice need a host to live on. Where did they originate? Please don’t laugh at me or mock me. I’m trying to understand things and get different points of view. Mark Rego Monteiro I want to acknowledge C Mis (see below) for his response´s extensive thoughtfulness. I want to emphasize that thinking about the Creator isn´t originally merely a logical question. We don´t know about the transcendental primarily because of logical reasoning. Christians took the First Cause argument of Aristotle, but even he came from a culture with spiritual-religious practices and knowledge, like the Eleusian Mysteries, besides the Oracles, like Delphi´s in the Apollo Temple. Socrates had his own spiritual understanding, as did Plato. Yet, all that died in its indigenous form. Christians at least as early as the NT Gospel Book of John were syncretizing Greek philosophical thinking. There were the generation after the Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers. Then came the Christian philosophers, the "apologists" like Justin Martyr, a pioneer of sorts I understand. Their philosophizing perhaps was more neo-platonic, although I recall hearing additional details, up to Augustine of Hippo, and beyond. Anthony of the Desert appeared in mature form around 300 AD as the pioneering Christian ascetic who inspired monasticism. By 1250, it was the Christians like the monk Thomas of Aquinas who Christianized Aristotle´s First Cause argument, notably. Yet, as a Christian monk, he was in the legacy of Anthony of the Desert, who was of course in Jesus´ legacy. That is, all that followed Jesus in that context of building culture was in reference to Jesus´ standard of loving integrity, as Christians turned monastic schools into Universities. Jesus´ heritage refers back to Moses and his experience with God and the Burning Bush, and leading the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt to freedom. None of that is optional, but part of a logically coherent account based on prophetic culture. In Jesus´ legacy of University-based philosophical scholarship we have reference to studies of shamanism and comparative religious studies to understand spiritual-religious phenomena, practice, experience, and knowledge. All that involves the base of philosophical inquiry, orientation to a lawful Creator and Creation, and diversified observational empiricism, the empirical method that in fact underlies the scientific method for physical objects and processes. John Locke´s moral philosophy, like Descartes´ and Spinoza, sought to identify even psychological phenomena and processes like the self and identity, and posited the "clean slate" "open book" of child development psychology, the "tabula rasa." Ideally, the love of learning about God´s lawful creation. In Jesus´ legacy. Thus, if we are aware of details like Thomas of Aquinas taking Aristotle´s esoteric First Cause god who is co-eternal with the Universe, and applying Jesus´ heritage of the Creator God, which linked the lawful parental God of Jesus to make Christianized modern philosophy with empiricism in studying a lawful Creation. That´s why we can identify God as the Cause of the Universe, transcendentally. Since we are actually not made Masters of the Universe by "science", but instead, are creating symbolic representations of the Universe with scientific philosophy, we are using our minds. As humans, we are doing it still in the full context of that University-based scientific philosophy, all the disciplines that have been developed, including psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, etc. All directly in Jesus´ legacy according to his underlying standard of loving integrity for Moses and God, and spiritual-religious practice to be clear. They had syncretized ancient Greek philosophy, and drawn on other influences like the Hindu invention of "zero" absorbed in Muslim-related Arabic numerals, and other Muslim-related scholarship for a limited period. Al-Isidri was a Muslim cartographer who fled Islamic in-fighting for Christian Sicily, for one. Christian culture was controlled by one Church for some time, but that control began to broken and reoriented after Luther´s successful inspiration, reaching Jefferson et al´s Civil Rights with Freedom of Religion and Expression. Meanwhile, the Quaker-Friend Christians in George Fox legacy for Jesus acknowledged spiritual-religious practice in a new, or revived, streamlined way, leading to their high integrity leading role in sparking modern social movements. That includes Marg Fell´s work writing about women, and Olaudah Equiano, a liberated ex-enslaved African given achievable terms by a Quaker, who joined the abolition movement. All Fox´s and Jefferson´s, and Fell´s and Equiano´s efforts were innovated, in Jesus´ long term legacy for Moses et al and God, by people using their minds. Not just in churches, but in church-related society. Thus, the human mind, on top of a biological substrate the symbolic-energetic psychosocial systems that make it what it is in the amazing spectacles of co-existing subcultures now in globalized civilization, and at its best, the UN human rights community. That human mind then gives us an idea of the kind of entity that we are talking about, the immaterial First Cause. What is immaterial and can cause anything? Abstractions, like numbers? Or a mind, an Immaterial Transcendental Mind of some kind, extremely powerful, and capable of intentional action. That is, not just humans have symbolic capability of minds. JF Ferrier innovated the word "epistemology" and the view that the human mind is predicated on a Universe that already has mental phenomena, or a Divine Mind. That´s what the miracles helped Jesus communicate, like his heritage, and that we can corroborate with all kinds of other examples of. Modern medically attested, medically impossible healings with spiritual-religious testimony are all part of that. Ro Author Mark Rego Monteiro ok…thank you C Mis We live in a dimensional world within a linear timeframe so we think within that framework, it’s very hard for us to conceive of anything outside of that framework. God is outside that framework, God is pre-existing, that is God exists both before time and outside of time and space but also inside time and space, God has always been, there is no beginning and no end to God because God is not defined by time or space. So when folk say who created God, they are thinking within the space time dynamic, not their fault because it’s all we’ve ever known. Where does God reside? God resides in and outside all space and time, God is omnipresent, that is, in all places all the time, this is why the psalmist asks “where can I go from God”, and his answer is, If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!(Psalm 139:8 ESVi)In other words you are everywhere God. As far as I know, nobody knows what heaven is, our best guess is it’s a reality that exist in another dimension but is interconnected to our dimension this is why we can have experiences of heaven on earth. God resides both in heaven and in earth and in us and in all that is. So God can be experienced in all people, in animals, in trees, in oceans and in the rain. The presence of God fills the whole earth says the prophet, Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the LORD.(Jeremiah 23:24 ESVi) As a follower of Christ I am panentheist, meaning I believe God is in all things, but not a pantheist, who believes all things are God. I believe God created the right environment for evolution to occur and that God is intimately involved in the process of evolution, shaping creation as the ongoing work of creation. I don’t believe creation has stopped as I don’t believe evolution has stopped. I hope that gives you some ideas to think about as you ponder these deep questions.)

Why Does Bertrand Russell Blame God for Evil?

Why does God allow evil?

Bertrand Russell comments below. "The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both omnibenevolent (all-loving) and omnipotent (all-powerful). Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument. Bertrand Russell, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Russell worked with his mentor, another famous mathematician and philosopher AN Whitehead, on a well-known work in mathematics as part of his fame. In this argument, Russell shows that he is clearly no biologist, evolutionary or otherwise. Is "pain" from "sin" due mostly to rivers? Do children randomly develop into homicidal maniacs? Should parents automatically "responsible for a child who grows into an adult homicidal maniac"? Serial killers like the German Jurgen Bartsch, and the infamous Adolf Hitler, suffered abuse. In some tyrannical contexts, cross culturally like China´s Hongwu Emperor that I´m thinking of, leaders executed the unfaithful and their whole families. One was an orphan raised in chaotic times. Yet, we have psychological and legal contexts to address specific issues of legal culpability for specific crimes and who committed them.

Faulty premises, faulty conclusions. Russell, however, was on a roll. Russell then presents the "Christian" argument about the suffering in the world as purification for sin, and therefore good. That isn´t the Christian position that motivated George Fox and the Quaker Friends to stop bowing to aristocrats in the 1600s, treat women as worthwhile human beings, protest unjust criminal sentences, and in a hundred years, agitate for the end of slavery.

OK. So, Russell was an atheist, so that this might be his kind of philosophical argumentation. The problem with the purely unempirical philosophical method is that it gets entranced by its own logic. If God is not one thing according to some attenpted logical formulation, and an entity with certain kinds of qualities doesn´t seem possible to exist, that doesn´t settle the question. That begs the question, what kind of entity DOES exist. The presuppositions of the terms are all key. Scientific and mathematical philosophy accompanied the attempts at precise reasoning of this sort, and so we reach the question, what do we observe about material reality and its implications for the Creator?

We observe that Jesus didn´t create pink juggling elephants. His simplest miracles had practical import, especially healing. His parables didn´t talk about such fantasies, either. They did get hyperbolic in invoking the moving of mountains, which we can begin to discern in Jesus´ legacy processes like Christianity gaining legitimacy with Constantine because no one less than his mother had bridged a gap by being "low-born" and still fathering a son with a Roman pagan who became a talented commander. Along with Christianity´s having spread widely amongst the low born and miltiary soldiers because of its qualities, in a Savior who identified humbly enough as the Son of God and inspired a turnaround exclamation, "He is Risen!"

Thus, distinctions of what is "logically possible" become important in assessing the meaning of God. Not merely rejecting God on the basis of one logical formulation attempt. Concepts like "Free Will" had already emerged. The question "Could God create a rock so heavy he couldn´t lift it?" is another angle showing the nature of the unempirical logical problem. And its presuppositions. First basic detail. What is God like? God created the material Universe. We could extract qualities from the Bible and metaphysics, but the First Cause Kalam argument of WL Craig is well-done. The Cause of the Universe is immaterial. His/Her/Its power, no less, is demonstrated in creating the Universe, in the Abrahamic and other spiritual-religious traditions. God doesn´t just do tricks for logical imagination. Thus, we do have to understand God´s limitations, or rather, God´s all-important role, all interfaith inputs considered, which have already been centered the Christian development of University-based philosophy itself. In that, we see the structure of spiritual-religious reality. Formal western European slavery didn´t end because God parted the Atlantic Ocean for W. Wilberforce. Quaker-Friends were agitating in the UK, that spurred a University essay contest that sparked young divinity grad T Clarkson, who hooked up with the Quaker Friends who anchored him. Quaker Friends, for their part, had had a spectacularly Gandhi-like start in George Fox et al. God´s love through Jesus in spiritual-religious intelligene and practice. Quaker-Friend sitting in silence meditating on the inner light of Christ? Well, the first part was just like Buddhism and yoga, anyway.

Philosophy, especially as developed by the full range of Christian derived University-based philosophical scholarship, has diversified into multiple disciplines, and involves concrete and abstract categories, not least of all. God´s omnipotence and omniscience, with prophecies for example, can represent worst case scenarios as warnings. Jesus clearly demonstrated a flexible kind of message in the Commandments to "love thy neighbor as thyself." "Love" is possibly not an unlimited term, but its pretty extensively flexible, in the "spirit of the letter." In modern times, we have amazing accounts of the Quaker Friends spurring the pioneering social movement to end slavery and much more through Gandhi, FD and Eleanor Roosevelt, Rev MLK, and Fannie Lou Hamer, not least of all. Sierra Club and Greenpeace, and Oxfam, no less, in interesting ways, secular as they have become. The rise of Comparative Religious Studies in the wake of Critical Bible Studies, no less, with the likes of Max Mueller in Darwin´s day, up through the 1893 Chicago Parliament of World Religions. The Buddha, no less, didn´t leave the Law of Dharma as a "nice coincidence." "Whew, lucky us!" Buddha, when asked what reality is, answered, "Perceptive mind and the sense-perceived world." "So, there are two things?" he was asked. "No," he said, "Both are spiritual. The Spirit dominates existence through the Law that changes crude nature into mind, and then guides sentient beings to enlightenment."

That´s what we find if we trace back our own philosophical roots surrounding and preceding Bertrand Russell. Just look at Newton. He had access by hook and by crook (European Christian University-based scholars, and Cambridge´s libraries networks weren´t yet that formalized! They were all immersed in Christian and church conscious networks, however. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" percolating like the French Catholic Descartes in Protestant Holland). Take a look at George Fox´s spiritual-religious experience mostly OUTSIDE the educational system, and his impact AT THAT SAME TIME as Newton et al. It´s a fascinating detail reflecting the intensity of Quaker-Friend spiritual-religious resurgent integrity, and its implications of the accumulating embedded spiritual-religious features in the established system and prevailing spiritual-religious levels of consciousness. Look at the distributed complexity that was accumulating. Bertrand Russell´s main mentor was AN Whitehead. He came up with an electromagnetic version of gravity that challenged Einstein´s. He entered into metaphysics, the philosophy of religious issues, and interrelated Jesus, Christianity literately with his situating science, along with other religious cultures. He came up with Process Philosophy, and the notion used in Process Theology of God as dipolar- having an eternal/atemporal side, and a temporal one. Yet, he rejected spiritual-religious experience as uninformative. Meanwhile, he drew on William James, who had begun to identify very relevant issues in religious experience. Einstein for his part, is actually quoted so much for Spinoza´s God, that we don´t hear much about Einstein affirming Jesus´ reality, and Einstein´s intense admiration for Gandhi, who himself affirmed his regular study of the Bible for Jesus. Nor do we hear much about FD Roosevelt and Eleanor´s Social Gospel Christianity. We might focus on Gandhi and see the association between a high integrity like his correlating with his equally intense references to perceiving God´s reality. We know that Indian gurus and holy men do all manner of things dressed in simple clothes. Gandhi was trained as a western lawyer in his balance of orientations. His activism was ultimately a brilliant alignment of Eastern influences structured by Christian integrity, empowered by his relating to God, and Jesus as importantly as his Hindu and interfaith interests. Not just intellectually. But in his lifestyle identified by the specifially Judeo-Christian tradition of activism, for which he cited Thoreau, etc.. In this day and age, it reaches the point where we have to consider the issues of spiritual-religious intelligence, since some people clearly do have greater insight and appropriate orientation that others simply reject. Einstein is interesting as a cross-over figure from science to spirituality. Yet, spirituality in FD Roosevelt and Gandhi demonstrate how science requires deconstructing into empiricism. Einstein was spiritual enough that he´s known for playing the violence and advocating first the atomic bomb, then controlling it. To his credit, he was outspoken in his admiration for Gandhi, whose complexity makes a reminder that it´s not science itself that made Einstein spiritual. It was philosophy and the issues of the transcendental and conduct/morality. As for evil, we need to note that the Quaker-Friend anchored anti-slavery abolition movement faced the resistance of the profiteering businesspeople. The accomplishment is incredible to appreciate, because the UK had extremely limited and highly aristocratic voting. The US North may have given non-propertied males the vote already, along with their alternative economic options. In the US South, , it came to war. We benefit from understanding how human beings are not just like peaceful bonobo chimps, but like massacre capable Jane Goodall Pan troglodytes chimps in Tanzania. Humans have trans-animal character that allows indulgence in the abuse of power, privilege, and pleasure. That´s why the Christian accomplishment of turning monastic schools into Universities became a two-edged sword with Descartes´ "mind-body (spirit) split". German scientific-tech and discipline didn´t turn off when Nazis took over. They did face the mass attempted exodus, and that the US elected the Social Gospel FD and Eleanor Roosevelt at the same time as the 1929 Crash reflected rich investor game-playing. While the pro-rich businesspeople then took advantage of Christianity´s complexity and funded Billy Graham pro-rich, subtly anti-social fundamentalism shrouded in anti-communism. Progressives were knocked off-balance, which explains prevailing secular and other materialism. I like the Buddha´s transcendental views as the road back to grasping a spiritually modernized, Quaker-Friend and Gandhi informed Social Gospel. Blaming God for evil in the world is a belief that human beings aren´t prone to indulge in the abuse of power, privilege, and pleasure and materialistic forms of power and control. My dad left Catholicism for its violent history, staying an atheist humanist and emphasizing education. Emphasizing education, I love learning, including biology, psychology, and the rest. Does Nazi hate, for example, reflect God? No, it reflects a Christian culture´s complexity, going from Anthony of the Desert´s spiritual ascetic Christian practice to monastic schools to Universities to ending Roman church autocracy to scientific and multiple forms of philosophy and constitutional democracy. Scientific objective thinking and natural law opened up some Pandora´s boxes, and economic ideology has intensified "freedom" instead of responsibility. Evil doesn´t prove that a good God doesn´t exist. It proves that people are willing to blame God, let people off the hook, and ignore the reality of spiritual-religious phenomena and the meaning of spiritual-religious practice.