Friday, January 27, 2012

Back and forth ...

... Faith that is known first in the body | Mark Vernon | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

... The modern believer is not suspicious enough.

A persistent pain is a pretty good indicator of the presence of bodily damage; the feeling that you have been touched by the Holy Spirit is only a good indicator that you have had a generic religious experience, shared by many the world over, and you have interpreted it according to the narratives and belief systems familiar to you.

Really? I should think "feeling that you have been touched by the Holy Spirit" would be rather an overwhelming experience. And experience trumps all theories. I would suggest that modern skeptics are not suspicious enough of pure reason.

More here: The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake - review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

We need a new mind-body paradigm, a map that acknowledges the many kinds of things there are in the world and the continuity of evolution. We must somehow find different, more realistic ways of understanding human beings – and indeed other animals – as the active wholes that they are, rather than pretending to see them as meaningless consignments of chemicals.

No comments:

Post a Comment