[Megan]

I see that Eric shall not be disappointed in his fascination with the clash of the titans. Volley ball etiquette is the least of our worries here.

I like the Dawkins quote, Angela. And in that vein, I think that, though I am a fellow Christian with dor, I can quite agree with the atheists that religion is unnecessary, at least to some people, though probably not to society as a whole.

Thomas Berry, a Catholic monk (who prefers the title "geologian" to "theologian") and who cosmologist Brian Swimme compares to Confucius, made the famous assertion that we could do well to put the Bible on the shelf for twenty years:

We all know Thomas Berry’s notorious remark that he has repeated more than once—that we should “put the Bible on a shelf for twenty years”.

This is simply a logical conclusion that we have been overdoing the book-bit in the name of revelation at least since the invention of the printing press.

Why is it that by now EVERY seminary, every school that pretends to be training spiritual leaders, does not have scientists on its faculty telling us the revelation of nature, its mysticism and the ethics to be derived from that as well as biblical theologians?

By Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox

I think that dor makes a category error assuming that spirituality can only be accessed through religion. That is an example of Christian hubris that we are long overdue to outgrow, IMO.

Much of religion has absolutely nothing to do with spirituality, and, in fact, is antithetical to spirituality, it seems to me.

By spirituality, I mean the innate sensitivity to beauty of human beings; their proclivity to creativity and seeing-things-whole, which finds expression in art and science, and in religious and contemplative pursuits.

I believe spirituality expresses through biology. Here is Antonio Damasio, head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center, and adjunct professor at the Salk Institute:

By connecting spiritual experiences to the neurobiology of feelings, my purpose is not to reduce the sublime to the mechanic and by so doing reduce its dignity.

The purpose is to suggest that the sublimity of the spiritual is embodied in the sublimity of biology, and that we can begin to understand the process in biological terms.

Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain, p. 286

That certainly echoes Dawkins and many others.

That said, I don't disagree with dor about the, ahem, perspicacity* of Edmund Burke in supporting the American Revolution and warning against the French Revolution. These are subtle issues, and do not yield themselves to blunt instruments, I think.


*I hope you liked dor's new vocab word: scurrility.