Why evolution doesnt matter.

[Detales]

Sair:A most interesting proposition, and one that definitely bears thinking about. Thank you.I am aware that there are some philosophers out there (though I can’t recall specific names at present) who equate god with the universe itself.The general name for that philosophy is The Perennial Philosophy, Advaita, or Non-dualism, though it ahs many names. Its proponants are anciaent and the litany of their names large. If, He indeed existed, from His words we can deduce that Jesus of Nazereth was one of that line. The idea has some very interesting implications, but seems to be rejected by traditional religions that tend to anthropomorphise god.What else would they do, Sair? The very premise of the Nature of God in the Abrahamic religions is erroneous, or applicable to a Being known in one systm as Ishwara. A quotation given in a documentary I recently saw (again, I can’t recall whose words were being quoted) was that our minds are the mechanism by which the universe becomes conscious of itself - a notion which bears a striking - and not a little eerie - analogy to the process by which a child grows up and becomes self-aware.Yes, and this is an ever-lasting Child with all of Infinity to grow in its appreciation of the infinitude of possibilities inherent in Self!

One of the defences of religious faith is the idea that people need to feel that they are part of something larger and more significant than themselves. But if we can only shuck the trappings of our anthropocentric perceptions, we’d realise that we already are part of something larger and more significant than ourselves. Excellent and pertinent point!Part of the importance of evolutionary theory is that it leads us to a greater understanding of our connectedness with the rest of the cosmos. Insofar as we are bale to comprehendi it from our speck of a planet and the speck of time we have been on it a s Man. But you are right; Consider the visual report of the deep space photos from Hubble. What an astonishing arena for Creativity to play in and as!

 

[Detales]

jd:I suppose that I am to infer that God, through the mouth of Jesus, is a liar, and a deceiver, or a trickster, or con man. Or, I suppose that after 4,000 years of being taught about God, by God, starting with Jesus through the Disciples and early Church Fathers, we have all gotten it wrong. and For 4,000 years Christian man has been duped, blindsided by his own arrogance - thinking that Jesus was talking to them I’m sorry, jd, but did I miss something last time I set my clock???

I’m not sure what you are getting at, jd, other than demonstrating your own deep belief in an anthropomorphic God. I think that is fine if it serves your needs. but that is not the complete picture by any means, and I feel that it is necessary to have deeper understandings available for those who can see their merit through experience. Ultimately, belief is insufficient, as I am quite confident you will discover. For this reason, I have neither need nor desire of converts. The idea of conversion is limited to accepting a belief system by dint of persuasion at a time of need and of lack of complete information.

What I am talking about is Self evident to anyone willing to look honestly at themselves. They will declare upon discovery that they were not deceived. This holds the door open for every Man to understand all those “4000” years of whatever in a Light that is inclusive of the Abrahamic understandings, yet transcends them. I have experienced this and it is an actual possibility, but one which I neither recommend nor ask people to believe. That is because it is inherently unbelievable, only experiencible. When that happens, a fog lifts, and the world is a radically different experience. Perhaps you will see.

 

[Detales]

jd, if you are claiming that I am espousing pantheism (Detales pauses to hold his belly to reduce laughter induced pains) you have radically misunderstood my statements; But I admire your persitent efforts. They will bear fruit.

 

[itinerant1]

jd, if you are claiming that I am espousing pantheism (Detales pauses to hold his belly to reduce laughter induced pains) you have radically misunderstood my statements; But I admire your persitent efforts. They will bear fruit.

When you are done holding your belly, you need to clarify your position. Perhaps you can explain further why you are not a pantheist? I suspect you have not articulated this matter with sufficient clarity.

 

[Detales]

Pantheism asserts that there is god or a god in everything. Non-dualism says, as you do, that God is All, but do not mean by that that the “all” refers solely to qualities, such as “all knowing,” as properties of an imagined anthropomorphic “god” such as that of popular christianism. In the case of Non-dualism, it is literally and in every sense meant that God IS ALL. God is therefore not apart from or “in” Creation, but IS the totality of the manifest and unmanifest. In Biblical words that is stated as the decree of the third aspect of God I AM THAT I AM, or **I AM WHO AM **as the second.

Since you will be attempting to comprehend this through the lens of Catholicity and a mind trained to be addictively dualistic, this perception will be opaque to you both as an intellectual assertion, which it is not, and a Self evident experience, which it can be and has been for millennia, even beyond the 4000 years of jd’s entertaining and yet understandable claim.

If you feel that I have not thoroughly explicated the inexplicable, then you are certainly free to explore the writings of the Saints and Sages of the Ages who were or are proponents of this Understanding, having for the most part arrived at it independently from culture, period. or other limitations. You might start with Jesus of Nazareth, Aquinas, and St. Theresa of Avila. If not convinced, you can go to such as Ken Wilbur, David Hawkins, Franklin Merrell-Wollf, KG Mills, Nisargadatta, Byron Katie, etc, etc, who are contemporaries and all save one who wrote in English.

So I completely agree with jd: pantheism is philosophically refutable, but I would say experientially as well.

Bindar Doondat, FZPC

 

[grannymh]

Since you will be attempting to comprehend this through the lens of Catholicity and a mind trained to be addictively dualistic …

Pardon me. While I cannot speak for all Christianity, *"*a mind trained to be addictively dualistic" is not Catholicism especially since “addictively dualistic” would imply Cartesian dualism. Descartes is not a catholic saint.

Blessings,
granny

All human life is sacred from the moment of conception.

 

[Detales]

Thanks, Grannymh, didn’t mean to put des cart before the, uh, useless to beat horse of Catholicism. But in the sense of being an exoteric, descending form of worship that is essentially materialistic, I do maintain, yea, even from my own zealously devout Catholic background, that Catholicism due to its premises is funda-mentally dualistic. It postulates God and Man besides.

 

[grannymh]

Thanks, Grannymh, didn’t mean to put des cart before the, uh, useless to beat horse of Catholicism. But in the sense of being an exoteric, descending form of worship that is essentially materialistic, I do maintain, yea, even from my own zealously devout Catholic background, that Catholicism due to its premises is funda-mentally dualistic. It postulates God and Man besides.

Actually, Detales, my whole life has been putting des cart before whatever. including walking out the door with my t-shirt on backwards.

God and man is not really dualism. Two gods were the ancient form of dualism. Imagine a world ruled by antagonistic forces of good and evil. What is worse is to try to imagine oneself as consisting of two separate natures. That is what Descartes was dealing with. One can see how following adaptations of his dualism theory morphed into the modern philosophy of materialism. The philosophy of materialism is the underpinning of the theory of evolution. This is why I think that evolution matters even if one never believes in it.

Blessings,
granny

All of creation is a joy to behold.

 

[hecd2]

Quick question. Since the work of Francisco J. Ayala is referenced so often and he is a popular spokesperson, may I use his paper “The Myth of Eve: Molecular Biology and Human Origins” as the model for all papers which reach the same conclusion?
In other words, I accept that Ayala represents the consensus of scientists.

Blessings,
granny

All humanity are a joy to behold.

Well, that paper by Ayala is relatively early in the field. It is an important paper, so we can discuss it by all means, but it does not represent the totality of the evidence or the reasoning, nor can it incorporate work that came later. Rather than representing the consensus, I would say that it contributed to it.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[JDaniel]

jd:*I suppose that I am to infer that God, through the mouth of Jesus, is a liar, and a deceiver, or a trickster, or con man. Or, I suppose that after 4,000 *years of being taught about God, by God, starting with Jesus through the Disciples and early Church Fathers, we have all gotten it wrong. and *For 4,000 *years Christian man has been duped, blindsided by his own arrogance - thinking that Jesus was talking to them I’m sorry, jd, but did I miss something last time I set my clock???

I’m not sure what you are getting at, jd, other than demonstrating your own deep belief in an anthropomorphic God. I think that is fine if it serves your needs. but that is not the complete picture by any means, and I feel that it is necessary to have deeper understandings available for those who can see their merit through experience. Ultimately, belief is insufficient, as I am quite confident you will discover. For this reason, I have neither need nor desire of converts. The idea of conversion is limited to accepting a belief system by dint of persuasion at a time of need and of lack of complete information.

What I am talking about is Self evident to anyone willing to look honestly at themselves. They will declare upon discovery that they were not deceived. This holds the door open for every Man to understand all those “4000” years of whatever in a Light that is inclusive of the Abrahamic understandings, yet transcends them. I have experienced this and it is an actual possibility, but one which I neither recommend nor ask people to believe. That is because it is inherently unbelievable, only experiencible. When that happens, a fog lifts, and the world is a radically different experience. Perhaps you will see.

Detales:

Please be assured that I am debating with you as a friend.

However, also be assured that I believe that you are wrong. (I must admit that you might have a point, but, everything you say is so jargony that no one else can understand it. Why can’t you just say things directly? You cloak everything in a veil of mystery. Neat trick to make mortal men believe you really know something we don’t. It imparts an air of superiority to you.) Anyway, getting back to our earlier conversation, I talk daily with an alien and he told me so. He told me that he has been coming to Earth from his planet for thousands of years and knows that Jesus looked like a man. He/she/it also told me that Jesus wanted us to anthropomorphise God because God actually liked the image of Man, that He created, and, that He saw fit to use for His own Son, Jesus, while He was on earth.

Furthermore, he said that anthropomorphizing is the main method used by man to learn, about the earth, mankind, God, science, philosophy, and Being. He chided me to use caution whenever I read a book with a willing suspension of disbelief that, when finished with the book, to never forget that I suspended disbelief.

Now, I don’t have time to read each and every book written. So, I am asking you, again, to please summarize the main ingredients of the book, or books, you have read - on this subject - and regurgitate, as best that you can, what they meant to you. Also, please allow me the private luxury to reject their premises, if I see fit to do so. Also, know that I will stand what you tell me next to the historical Judeo-Christian heritage of nearly 4,000 years of God Himself revealing His Being to us even through our relatively poor abilities, but with His guidance.

(Oh, and BTW, when you look up the definition of the word “jargon” know that I am referring to the last definition of the word, in most of the definitional schemes. Also, if you can find anything by Quiller-Couch you can find out how jargon is used to convolute something such that it is made difficult to understand.

Also, be further assured that you are not alone in the use of jargon, in these forums. Many herein use it. Some use it so well that the average reader may come to believe that the writer has such a superior intellect that they must be listened to.)

jd

 

[grannymh]

Well, that paper by Ayala is relatively early in the field. It is an important paper, so we can discuss it by all means, but it does not represent the totality of the evidence or the reasoning, nor can it incorporate work that came later. Rather than representing the consensus, I would say that it contributed to it.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Ayala contributing to the consensus sounds better to me. Ever since reading a transcript of his participation in a panel discussion, Ayala fascinates me. So I would like to follow his progress. Is that o.k.? Another fascinating person is John D. Hawks who is currently on leave from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

I am working on my reply to a couple of your earlier challenging posts.

 

[JDaniel]

jd, if you are claiming that I am espousing pantheism (Detales pauses to hold his belly to reduce laughter induced pains) you have radically misunderstood my statements; But I admire your persitent efforts. They will bear fruit.

Detales:

This brings us to another example of how the use of words, in a mysterious fashion, can cause others to misinterpret what you are saying. You can’t say that:

‘The idea that a God created, by whatever means, a universe in the remote, or not so remote, past, and is either maintaining or acting on it, or not, as an observer from outside it is plain balderdash. IMHO. On examination of the structure of experience, what seems to me to be the only reasonable conclusion is that God and the Universe are One.’

and have it understood as anything but pantheism! If it is not pantheism, then state it so that it doesn’t say, “…God and the Universe are One.” Say exactly what you mean. Explain why your above statement is not “pantheistic”.

jd

 

[antunesaa]

It’s difficult to have consensus on mathematics and physics? I think that can only be the statement of someone who really doesn’t follow developments in either discipline. (In maths, of course, not only can we have consensus, we can have 100% agreement because many mathematical proofs follow necessarily from the axioms).

I beg to differ and reinforce my idea: consensus in mathematics and physics is very difficult to attain. Of course I don’t mean with this that people keep insisting that a given mathematical proof or physics theory is wrong when most specialists think it’s formally right. Although this has happened many times in the past (you just have to think about the Andrew Wiles initial fiasco in the 90s to acknowledge that), my point is that the consensus is difficult to obtain in terms of the interpretation of results and their relevance for explaining open problems in the field. This is what really matters, isn’t it? For instance, there are dozens of competing theories about the unification of General Relativity and the Standard Model of particles, but the discussion rages on. Formally they should all be correct, but you can find strenuous defenders of each of them. In mathematics, in trying to prove a given conjecture, in many cases there are disputes about the way to move on. So in the end the dispute is typically not about formal things, like whether the methods were well applied to the data, or whether there are obvious flaws in reasoning. It’s about the relevance, generality, and potential of the results. In most (or perhaps all) of my paper rejections the referees mentioned relevance and generality of the results as the determinants of rejection, and not that the model was wrong or there was an error in such and such proof of a theorem. This is the meaning of my statement. Now imagine paleo-demographics…

A last curious note. I read a book called “1491” from some US author, and at some point there is an episode where a famous scholar forces younger scholars to adhere to his particular interpretation of data. The case is about a theory of initial human settlements in North America. Based on supposed human remains, this famous guy (whose name I forgot) says that such settlements happened in period X. The theory went on as the “consensus” until the man died, after which it was swiftly abandoned. The egos of many scientists are huge, and if you’re a scientist you know it, and the smaller the field the worst this problem is liable to be.

That is easily demonstrated by reference to the primary literature which unanimously agrees on this point.

Maybe you’re right here; I just mentioned someone I talked with years ago. But let me again introduce fresh evidence. After my initial post I asked a researcher (she holds a very recent phd from MIT in celular biology) who works in genetics and aging about this question. She answered that actually the precise processes are largely unknown and in her opinion a positive answer is not possible.

It is a fallacy to say that we are equally ignorant on the topic. Although not a specialist in this particular field, I am a professional scientist who closely follows (and understands) the primary literature. I am sufficiently knowledgeable to represent it correctly and can reference multiple papers (and have done so several times in the past on this forum) which all support my position on the matter.

Ok. Let’s move on.

Darwin demonstrated the truth of common descent - that living things ultimately descend from common ancestors. This does not entail the idea that there were two sole parents in the specific human line.

This is ok to me. The point doubt is whether it precludes two sole parents. My friend said she doesn’t think it’s possible to give an answer with such degree of certainty. Anyway, I really don’t care what the right answer, or rather: I only care about it out of a general interest in science.

Your fallacy here is to conflate the tentative nature of conclusions in the scientific method with an argument against a particular position. … The existence of a consensus is a fact. Whether or not that consensus is right is a different matter, but we are warranted in holding some scientific conclusions with high confidence.

I do not dispute any of this and in fact I embarked in this discussion because you seemed too sure about the conclusions on this topic of the field specialists. My experience (as an undergraduate student of telecommunications engineering and then as a phd student in economics) is much more punctuated with dissent, doubts and disputes than you seem to imply.

Economics might be different.

Actually I don’t think it’s that different. Economics today is about mathematical and statistical tools applied to economic data (I spend most of my time proving theorems and designing algorithms to calculate economic equilibria). This isn’t enough to prevent, as I said above, virulent discussions between different schools of thought. I would be surprised if the “consensus” that you mentioned were above challenge by peers as we speak.

 

[antunesaa]

I think you have a clear idea of my position now. Regarding this post, do you really think that the statement “The distance to Supernova 1987A is 51.2 +/- 3.1 kiloparsecs” and the your statement about the genome are in the same league of certainty? Come on, you have common sense, you know they can’t possibly be. Now you’re being fallacious here.

 

[hecd2]

hecd2:

It’s difficult to have consensus on mathematics and physics? I think that can only be the statement of someone who really doesn’t follow developments in either discipline. (In maths, of course, not only can we have consensus, we can have 100% agreement because many mathematical proofs follow necessarily

from the axioms).I beg to differ and reinforce my idea: consensus in mathematics and physics is very difficult to attain. Of course I don’t mean with this that people keep insisting that a given mathematical proof or physics theory is wrong when most specialists think it’s formally right. Although this has happened many times in the past (you just have to think about the Andrew Wiles initial fiasco in the 90s to acknowledge that), my point is that the consensus is difficult to obtain in terms of the interpretation of results and their relevance for explaining open problems in the field.

You are quite wrong about this, misled perhaps by the apparent impossibility of attaining consensus about anything at all in your field. Consensus in mathematics and physics is frequently attained - it is not a rare event. (That is not to say that there are not controversies that rage for years or decades - there are, but there are also many, many questions which are settled). In demonstrating your point, you would need to show the absence or rarity of cases where consensus is reached - but it will be impossible for you to do so, because cases where consensus is reached are legion. It would be tedious, but possible for me to list hundreds of cases in physics and mathematics where a consensus on the interpretation of evidence (in the case of physics) or the correctness of a proof (in the other case) has been reached. I can also do so for cases in chemistry, geology, cosmology and biology. The very example you use stands to my position, not yours: Andrew Wiles’s proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem was initially rejected because it contained an error. His corrected proof was accepted (and there has been consensus since that it is correct) within a year of its publication.

For instance, there are dozens of competing theories about the unification of General Relativity and the Standard Model of particles, but the discussion rages on. Formally they should all be correct, but you can find strenuous defenders of each of them.

I think you must mean the unification of QCD and the electroweak force. It is correct that no such satisfactory theory has been tested (because we cannot as yet observe interactions at the appropriately high energy). Nor can incompatible theories about the same thing all be formally correct. But your statement masks the fact that there *is *consensus on the accuracy of both electroweak and perturbative QCD theories which has emerged in the last 30 years. But in any case, I am not arguing that there are no open questions and controversies in physics and maths - that would be silly. But it is equally silly to claim that consensus is in all cases “very difficult to attain”.

In mathematics, in trying to prove a given conjecture, in many cases there are disputes about the way to move on.

Of course, there are - while the question is open. But when a proof is presented it is not difficult for the community to achieve consensus. How long did it take to achieve consensus on the correctness of Wiles proof (once it *was *correct) or Perelman’s proof of the Poincare conjecture? Your claim, that consensus is very difficult to attain in physics and mathematics is simply false.

But let me again introduce fresh evidence. After my initial post I asked a researcher (she holds a very recent phd from MIT in celular biology) who works in genetics and aging about this question. She answered that actually the precise processes are largely unknown and in her opinion a positive answer is not possible.

How am I supposed to argue against some anonymous person’s opinion that is presented as a bare statement without any supporting rationale. That is not evidence. What precise processes are largely unknown? A positive answer is not possible to what question? Why is it not possible? Where is the fallacy in the primary literature? Has she even read the primary literature and understood the rationale for the conclusion? There is no more value to this “evidence” than there was in your half-remembered conversation with an unnamed professor ten years ago. As I said, I can give you more than twenty references to papers from a wide range of authors published over the last twenty years that investigate this question and unanimously conclude that the minimum bottlenecks in the human lineage are way above two individuals. Isn’t that consensus? Where is the paper that shows that the evidence is compatible with a human bottleneck of two individuals?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

I think you have a clear idea of my position now. Regarding this post, do you really think that the statement “The distance to Supernova 1987A is 51.2 +/- 3.1 kiloparsecs” and the your statement about the genome are in the same league of certainty? Come on, you have common sense, you know they can’t possibly be. Now you’re being fallacious here.

You made the argument that we cannot have confidence in the conclusions about human ancestry because palaeodemography is, in your words “hardly a field where people can replicate phenomena. All they can do is interpret data not produced in controlled experiments. So your statement seems unwarranted”. I was pointing out your fallacy of equating our inability to replicate phenomena in controlled experiments with an inability to reach high-confidence conclusions about them. The fact that the phenomenon in question cannot be replicated in controlled conditions is not in and of itself a barrier to reaching confident conclusions about it. This effectively removes another brick from the wall of your argument.

You also made the argument that my statement was “too assertive to be truly scientific” but as you have seen there are many assertive statements that are made in truly scientific publications.

Furthermore, your “common sense” is leading you astray. Do you know how the distance to SN1987A was measured? Do you know on what basis the conclusion that humans did not have two sole parents was reached? Unless you know these things, I don’t see how you can reasonably assert that we can hold either one more confidently than the other.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Detales]

Hi jd,

I am certainly happy to debate in the spirit of friendship. But from my side, I am not debating. I am making assertions based on experience of states of awareness perception corroborated by the most ancient and experientially accurate teaching known to Man. And as I have said before, it is likely, IMHO, that if Jesus did actually walk the Earth, He Himself was a proponent of it by His own words. Their actual meaning has been distorted by the Church and has caused untold misunderstandings and worse. But that is to be expected, as His own did not understand Him, save perhaps John.

As for clarity of language, I assure you that my language is grammatical and precisely in tune with my intent. I submit that it is not understood by dint of lack of understanding, not only intellectually, but more importantly by experience, of the Premise on which they are based. I have to that end even supplied names of contemporary exponents of non-dualism for your education and regalement.

I even explained in post #265 how pantheism, which is impossible, is compared to Advaita or non dualism well before you asked about it. So I’m a little confused by your confusion. And I’m really not interested in gaining “converts” or whatever in the sense of convincing anyone, as that is not the point of this. I am simply of the hope that if there is someone out there like me, who has had the similar experience of the incompleteness of the Church’s explanations, or lack of them, regarding certain kinds of experiences, that they can find a door away from belief that is simple and consistent in its explications.

Those explications are immediately recognizable by those of whom I speak, as I know from experience. That they are not clear to some is an indication of their not having had the sort of experience that might give one a dispassionate viewing distance from their habituations, in this particular case, their faith. And that is fine; we are all where are by the law of our Being. And perhaps your responses triggered by my statements are in fact some glimmer of hope that the fire of curiosity might have been lit at your feet. Or not, and that is ok too.

Blessings and Best,

Bindar Doondat, FZPC

 

[Detales]

Grannymh,

Yes, all of creation is a joy to behold. My Mentor said “The purpose of Nature is to caress the senses.” I liked that.

Yes, it would be a major schizo experience to deal with two gods. I was under the impression, mistaken perhaps, that it was Zoroastrianism or a form of gnosticism that had such a contentious arrangement. But in a way, we have a similar one, it is just called opinion vs Reality. Is not the plethora of belief systems today an unsettling seethe of contrariness that defeats even the consistencies that can be had by means of physical actualities?

I have always contended that Goodness and religion are measures on two vastly dissimilar axes that only appear in some respects to intersect or overlap. I have, therefore, aways been more interested in the nature of awareness itself, seeing that the commonalities of Man are at the level of Conscious awareness, and that beliefs of any sort are outcomes of parochial, even if necessary, ad hoc arrangements that are then distributed as “reality” over the rest of the world.

That parochialism seems to work to an extent in a small village where most agree or don’t know any better. But we now, as Christopher Fry said in his wonderful poem A Sleep of Prisoners (you might read it, jd) "…Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up to face us everywhere,/ Never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took,/ Affairs are soul size; the enterprise is exploration into God./Where are you making for?/It takes many thousands of years to wake,/ but will you wake?..."

The small village mentality applies, as we see, to religion as well. And the hardest thing to do is to convince or alert someone who is asleep that that is their actual state. Even Bach’s cantata, *Wachet auf *doesn’t seem to do it!

Anyway, nice chatting with you, Granny.

 

[MindOverMatter]

Grannymh,

Yes, all of creation is a joy to behold. My Mentor said “The purpose of Nature is to caress the senses.” I liked that.

Of course you like it. The idea that reality exists merely as an opportunity to exploit the senses, makes any responsibility beyond that notion void.

Do you wish to respond to my perhaps unwarranted provocation?

 

[JDaniel]

Hi jd,

I am certainly happy to debate in the spirit of friendship. But from my side, I am not debating. I am making assertions based on experience of states of awareness perception corroborated by the most ancient and experientially accurate teaching known to Man.

Yes, yes ,yes. I’ve heard similar claims from Scientologists.

And as I have said before, it is likely, IMHO, that if Jesus did actually walk the Earth, He Himself was a proponent of it by His own words. Their actual meaning has been distorted by the Church and has caused untold misunderstandings and worse. But that is to be expected, as His own did not understand Him, save perhaps John.

I must warn you that if you wish to continue this (non-)debate/discussion you cannot disparage the Catholic Church in the manner you have just done, or you may get kicked out of here.

As for clarity of language, I assure you that my language is grammatical and precisely in tune with my intent. I submit that it is not understood by dint of lack of understanding, not only intellectually, but more importantly by experience, of the Premise on which they are based.

Again, I have been witness to very similar claims from Scientology.

I have to that end even supplied names of contemporary exponents of non-dualism for your education and regalement.

Is the immediately preceding sentence an example of “clarity of language”? Is it truly an example of not-jargon?

I even explained in post #265 how pantheism, which is impossible, is compared to Advaita or non dualism well before you asked about it. So I’m a little confused by your confusion.

I am confused by your lack of confusion.

And I’m really not interested in gaining “converts” or whatever in the sense of convincing anyone, as that is not the point of this. I am simply of the hope that if there is someone out there like me, who has had the similar experience of the incompleteness of the Church’s explanations, or lack of them, regarding certain kinds of experiences, that they can find a door away from belief that is simple and consistent in its explications.

Once again, this assertion is quite close to a disrespectful disparagement of the Church.

Those explications are immediately recognizable by those of whom I speak, as I know from experience. That they are not clear to some is an indication of their not having had the sort of experience that might give one a dispassionate viewing distance from their habituations, in this particular case, their faith. And that is fine; we are all where are by the law of our Being. And perhaps your responses triggered by my statements are in fact some glimmer of hope that the fire of curiosity might have been lit at your feet. Or not, and that is ok too.

Why is it that some people believe that they have experienced, or encountered something beyond the pale of mundane experience, that sets them apart from all others? Why is it that only you (and - perhaps - a few others) are that special person to whom some grand vision has been given? Why is it that such “visions” are wrapped in a vernacular of mystery, that the lower men of this world are excluded from participation in by virtue of their abilities, or, rather, their inabilities?

I know you’re special, but, you’re not that special.

jd