PSYCHOLOGY--THE OFFSPRING OF THEOLOGY AND PNEUMATOLOGY
The following is a collection of thoughts and ideas. Many of them are not original with me. I got them from several sources.
The first of our ancestors--There were probably more than one--to reach the stage of evolution when they became self-aware enough to ask questions like: "who am I? Where did I come form? What am I doing, and why? was the first philosopher. He, she, they--were the first philosophers who, in my opinion, the originators what we today call theology, pneumatology and psychology, from which came the sciences and the arts.
But we need to keep in mind: The coming to self awareness, unless we use it wisely, can be a curse as well as a blessing. This is one of the points made in the creation myths--not just the one in the book of Genesis--of all cultures. Self-awareness, or consciousness is a Pandora's box. It brings with it the knowledge of evil as well as of good--of suffering and of pain as well as of beauty and joy. In effect what we call the major problems of our time have been with us since the dawn of consciousness.
Recently, I read the following quote of the eminent political historian George Catlin (1939), who, writing in his Story of the Political Philosophers, said about Plato that "The old man is dead, twenty-two centuries ago. . . (but) The old problems have all come round again. Eugenics, nudism, abortion, feminism, communism, proletarian democracy, division of labor, class war, scientific expertise -- all the problems are here (p.69)."
Make no mistake: The old problems crying for creative solutions are still with us.
Contemporary crises and problems are frequently variations on old themes--survival from destruction or escape from depression. Today's problems are neither simple nor unimportant, but they are common in many ways to those of past generations. Much of psychological research seeks answers to general questions. "General" does not mean "vague." It means "comprehensive."
These questions are frequently age-old questions simply restated in different terms. The extent to which they deal with general questions of human nature, they are the scientific side of psychology. When research or solutions address specific problems of contemporary society, psychology is an art or technology. Many, but not all questions of psychological investigations have been prompted by practical problems of human existence.
At the turn of this century, psychologists became interested in applied problems -- in the art of psychology where attempts are made to solve pressing social problems. Binet attempted to solve the problem of overcrowded school conditions in France by devising an intelligence test.
In World War I, American psychologists were asked to select and classify large numbers of military inductees; they did so by devising group intelligence tests. New diagnostic and treatment techniques were introduced during that same decade to handle the increasing numbers of delinquents in the courts and psychotics in mental hospitals. Rapid advances in technology encouraged psychologists to apply their findings to industry and education.
Psychologists studied how light, sound, noise, seating arrangements, size, shape and color of printed materials affected job or classroom learning. These are only a part of the thousands of problems to which psychologists have turned their attention.
Near the halfway mark of the twentieth century, World War II produced new social and emotional problems which required adjustment to both the war itself and the peace that followed. During the 1960's and 70's, migration to the cities increased due to automation and equal employment opportunity. The resultant urban crowding produced a loss of personal identity and an increase of personal despair. Psychology thus attacked problems of mass communication, minority groups, urban impactment, and education.
Each generation has faced its own unique problems and each group of psychologists has proposals for increasing human happiness. Two kinds of solutions have been proposed.
First, educational programs and training techniques have been developed to aid the individual and to improve national productivity; second, therapeutic programs have been devised to reduce widespread anxiety which has been generated by war, by social discrimination, and by economic hardship. A study of history offers hope because present crises are seen as not the first and perhaps as not the last human tragedy.
THE QUESTIONS ABOUND
Many questions, both general and practical, guide psychological research. To answer the question why, however, requires a viable theory, not just a description of how or when or where. To this end, philosophers and general psychologists devote much time and energy.
Why do personalities change from infancy to old age?
Why do changed feelings create new personality structures?
Why do perceptions of the world differ in darkness than in brilliant sunlight or when backgrounds are plain rather than complex?
Why do humans construct time saving devices while animals contentedly follow stable and predictable patterns of behavior?
Why do students march for social change and oldsters cling to preserve the past?
The research or scientific psychologist thus seeks to answer questions about human nature and products of experience. Some scientific explanations are too minute and are labeled irrelevancies. The psychologist does not stop with plausible generalizations. Isolating one variable might be one small scientific step. The gathering of profuse data within a systematic theoretical framework may be another scientific activity and suggests testable hypotheses for further exploration.
There is frequent controversy about psychology's goals, primarily because there is lack of agreement about definitions. How one defines psychology usually depends upon the specialization of the speaker. Definitions depend on the person who speaks. We will not progress very far by stating what we think psychology should be. We can, however, turn to a variety of persons who call themselves psychologists and examine their definitions of psychology. What psychology should be can be answered only at a later date, with insight we do not now possess. First, however, let us examine the origins of the word psychology.
ORIGIN OF THE TERM PSYCHOLOGY
Early Origins. The origin of the term psychology is tied to the origin of the Greek word psyche. The word psyche comes from the Greek, meaning both butterfly and soul. A butterfly representing the soul is an apt metaphor. As Bullfinch says:
There is no illustration of the immortality of the soul so striking and beautiful as the butterfly, bursting on brilliant wings from the tomb in which it has lain, after a dull groveling, caterpillar existence, to flutter in the blaze of day and feed on the most fragrant and delicate production of the spring. Psyche, then, is the human soul, which is purified by suffering and misfortunes, and is thus prepared for the enjoyment of true and pure happiness (Bullfinch, 1967, p. 79).
The word Psyche occurs as a mythological character in a story by Apuleius, a Roman writer of the second century, A.D., known for his work Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass (Grant, 1962). Psyche is a beautiful girl who undergoes many hardships, some of them are her own making. In the end, she marries Cupid (Eros = Love) and bears him a child. The child is named Pleasure.
Psyche, the youngest and most beautiful of three daughters, attracts wide attention. This threatens the proud queen of beauty, Venus. She asks her son to wound Psyche in such a way that Psyche will love no one but a wretched creature. Psyche searches for a husband, ventures into a strange land, strange house, and strange bed containing an invisible husband. She must never attempt to see him. Convinced, however, by her jealous sisters that he is a reptile or a dragon, she decides to kill him. She lights a candle and there, in all his glory, is Cupid! Wounded, he immediately flies away.
Venus forces Psyche to repent for her sins by enduring a series of difficult tasks. In the end, Cupid and Psyche are united in heaven.
This story frequently appears under numerous themes in literature, art, and architecture. The story of Cupid and Psyche is similar to many other national fairy tales, one of which is Cinderella. Psyche symbolizes great beauty, eternal youth, and curiosity. Cupid (Eros), on the other hand, represents love or procreative force in Greek mythology. This appears to be the first distinction made between force and matter. Originally, Cupid and Psyche shared equal status, at the time of Plato, according to M. Grant. During the Hellenistic period, however, artists depicted Cupid (Eros) in a superior position, with Psyche lying at his feet. Thus, passion was seen to control the soul, a point of view hotly debated until the present day.
Grant (1962) suggests that the concept of attraction is a principle which eventually became synonymous in literature with cosmic power. This power of love was paralleled later by another natural force, that of strife. The dual powers, love and strife, represent the binding and separating forces in the universe. One can here recognize Freud's parallel concepts of Eros and Thanatos.
The non-material or soul side of man had many different representations. But there were two major ideas: one, the spirit; the other, the mind.
The Greeks believed that, in contrast to the body, each person possessed a double, a shadowy likeness of the body (Baldwin). This likeness of the body was believed to be breath, life or soul, based on the word to blow.
Earlier, the Milesians and the atomists held that this soul was a like substance to the whole world. Since like came from like, there was a search for identities, a search still going on today in the popular theories of Erick Erickson.
This search for likeness is the search of unity and power, the atom, the basic element, the philosopher's stone. If identity exists, then there can also be transformation of one element into another. Such transformations were the basis for the early alchemists' and chemists' search for gold, the early Christians' belief that the communion wine and bread became the blood and body of Christ, and the mystics' quest for rare psychic powers.
PNEUMA
The stoics coined another term, pneuma, meaning air, a physical spirit, or soul at the bottom of life.
A second meaning of the non-material side of humans had to do with mind or the intellectual side of human nature, what is sometimes called mental life, or rational life, or the mind, and originated in the thinking of the early Greeks. Anaxagoras had originally used nous to refer to a kind of intellect or order in the universe, some activity of acting towards ends (Baldwin).
The Dionysians worshiped this "better side" of man's nature, this "superior half." Aristotle used the term entelechy, meaning organization, unity, shape, and form. This concept of a higher form was widely held in Greek philosophy; the Pythagoreans, especially, believed in a higher power more perfect than the body.
Plato, trained by Pythagoras, believed in a self-moving entity existing long after the material side of man disappeared. Plato extended the meaning of nous to include the immaterial and the Supreme Good. Aristotle limited the concept to mean the supreme end, convinced that there was something beyond or before the cause of an event, something even before what was before. This led to an infinite regress, leading nowhere but back, so he postulated an unmoved mover, a cause or a source of all motion which was, by definition, the beginning of things. This probably comes closest to whatever anyone has meant by God.
This rational side to mind was basic to the related concepts of functionalism and purposiveness. During the nineteenth century, chemists were discovering the nature of life and the psychologists, through McDougall, James, and even Freud were providing evidence that behavior was purposeful and even intelligent. Physiologists finally substituted the physical-chemical concepts of Helmholtz and Brucke for vaguer concepts of energy and thereby paralleled the theories of unity and purposiveness expressed by James and McDougall. Freud merely substituted a physical source of energy, his libido, for the vital principle.
Eventually, two concepts of the non-material side of humans were used to refer to the notion of mental life. They were pneuma (air) and nous (intelligence). Jewish thought, also expressed in Alexandrian thought, contained this dual notion of mind as both psyche (air) and nous (intelligence, mentality, both the source of life and source of reason). The search begins for these two qualities, one is represented by the nature of life (elan vital or vital principle, animal spirits, psychic energy, or specific nerve energy), the other, by the search for the organizing force (the source of unity, consciousness, purposiveness, and direction, whether within animals or humans). Darwin's evolutionary work offered some proof that man was directed toward adaptation to some end. The secret of life was somehow tied up with the two ideas -- mind and soul, both ephemeral and hidden.
There are, then, these two concepts of the idea of "mind" or "Psyche" -- rationality and purpose on the one hand and spirit or ephemeral quality (that which exists after death or expressed in extrasensory ways) on the other hand.
These two points of view have provided, perhaps, the greatest amount of controversy in the history of psychology. They are present to some degree or another in practically every division within psychology. The division finds no better illustration than in the contemporary controversy within psychology between Western and Eastern modes of thought. Western philosophy has attempted to characterize humans as "thinking, logical, goal directed animals." Eastern philosophy, on the other hand, has more frequently emphasized these intuitive, spiritual, and non-rational qualities.
THEOLOGY + PNEUMATOLOGY GAVE BIRTH TO PSYCHOLOGY
Modern Origins. Now let us turn to some modern conceptions of psychology. Where we begin depends upon the meaning of psychology we adopt. We wish to be inclusive, so we will begin broadly, narrowing our discussion as we proceed.
The long past of psychology includes the study of the unique and the highly developed mental processes in humans. An understanding of these processes begins with the Greeks, who posed both the questions and the answers about the nature of humankind and its psyche. Their understanding provided the dominant answers until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Thereafter, physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine change the course of what became the new psychology.
PHILIPP MELANCHTON & MARTIN LUTHER
Philipp Melanchthon (February 16, 1497 – April 19, 1560), born Philipp Schwartzerdt, was a German reformer and a collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic
theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems. He stands next to Luther and Calvin as a reformer, theologian, and molder of Protestantism. As much as Luther, he is the primary founder of Lutheranism.They both denounced what they claimed was the exaggerated cult of the saints, justification by works, and the coercion of the conscience in the sacrament of penance that nevertheless could not offer certainty of salvation.
Melanchthon made the distinction between law and gospel the central formula for Lutheran evangelical insight. By the "law" he meant God's requirements both in Old and New Testament; the "gospel" meant the free gift of grace.
Melanchthon first used the term "psychology" as part of a course title for some lectures he gave. Although psychology is frequently thought of as a new discipline, it should be noted that the term "psychology" occurred even before the term "biology" (1802) or of "scientist" (Scoon, 1968; Maynard, 1932).
PNEUMATOLOGY AND PSYCHOSOPHY
The terms "psychosophy" and "pneumatology" had been in common use, but it was Christian Wolff (1679-1754)--a disciple and popularizer of Leibnitz--ho contributed to the widespread use of the term "psychology" by recommending that it be a separate field of study.
He did this by dividing anthropology into somatology and psychology. He further divided psychology into empirical and rational psychology (LaPointe, p. 640). By the end of the eighteenth century, in Germany, the term psychology was commonly used.
The term was introduced in France by Charles Bonnet in his Essai de Psychologie, of 1754. In England, the term was not used until 1776, through the work of Philosophy of Rhetoric by George Campbell. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet, finally made the term a natural word in English.
The terms "psychology" and "psychologists" were widely used in writings, academic appointments, or book titles during the mid-nineteenth century. Thereafter, works known as psychology are frequently seen. Our understanding of what psychology was and is will be enhanced if we examine how psychology is defined by major writers in psychology.
DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY
But to what definitions do we turn? One way is to examine how leading theorists have used the term. Who are these major theorists? Whoever we select will lead to biases.
One way to avoid this problem is to rely on broad lists determined objectively. There are numerous lists. One list is based on an empirical study by Coan and Zagona (1962). They asked psychologists to identify prominent theorists in the decades from 1880 to 1959. We will look at this study in more detail later. Persons who were outside the scope of Coan's study, those prominent before 1880 or after 1959, or those noted for other than theoretical contributions to psychology, should also be added.
A final list of theorists and contributors might be as follows: Bain, Wundt, James, Helmholtz, Ebbinghaus, Galton, Brentano, Dewey, Titchener, Freud, Thorndike, Watson, Wertheimer, Kohler, Hull, Tolman, Lewin, McDougall, Skinner, Hebb, Harlow, Rogers, May and Piaget. We will now examine the definitions by a few of these writers.
Modern psychology, a variegated field, contains a broad spectrum of definitions, including such concepts as consciousness of the self, direct experience, drives and their mentalistic defenses, and observable behavior.
WILLIAM JAMES OF HARVARD
The core ideas are perception, motivation, and learning. Perception, always a major concept, is expressed in James' belief that feelings, desires, and cognitions were no more than perceptions of oneself. The self awareness of Dewey is a perception of one's own consciousness. And the major point of Gestalt is the perceptual field of the individual. The second core idea in modern psychology is learning, expressed prior to the late nineteenth century as the means by which simple ideas got associated together to form complex ideas.
Early in the twentieth century, the behaviorists emphasized learning by suggesting that responses are products of environmental conditions rather than innate factors. The third core idea, motivation, was introduced by psychoanalytic and social theorists. They emphasized internal physical and mental energizers of action. The primary constructs here were conative or emotional factors. Hebb, emphasizing the organizing and integrating characteristics of behavior, encompasses both the cognitive and conative.
America's first prominent psychologist, writing in his Principles of Psychology, gives the most general definition of psychology -- "The science of mental life, both of its phenomena and their conditions."
Although his definition parallels Wundt's, James prefers to think of the mental life and of consciousness as an on-going, whole, unanalyzable phenomena; not as something containing analysable elements. James' definition is the broadest of all because it includes cognitive, conative, and affective characteristics of the mind and it refers to phenomena which need be neither mentalistic nor subjective.
John Dewey, in a psychology text written four years prior to the one by James, included the concept of "self." Dewey defines psychology as the ". . . science of the facts or phenomena of self (Dewey, 1891, p. 1)." The fundamental fact of the self is consciousness. But consciousness always has knowledge which is expressed in some individual form, including action in a context of feeling. Psychology, then, is a study of knowledge, will and feeling (Dewey, 1891, p. 5-6).
Dewey's definition is more mentalistic, personalistic, and subjective than James'. The self is consciousness, awareness, and a collection of ideas. But the self exists and knows that it exists. This is self-consciousness. A stone and a stick exist; they have experiences when they are hit or burned or changed; but they neither know that they exist nor know that they have experiences. Dewey does not believe that one can ever get away from this primary characteristic of mental life -- the concept of self-consciousness.
FREUD WAS TRAINED AS A MD AND NEUROLOGIST
Perhaps because he was self-taught, Freud--technically not a psychologist--he became a good one. His focus, however, was not, generally-speaking, on the normal mind.
His biographer, Ernest Jones, believes that Freud conceived of mental development as resulting from two factors:
l) how basic biological drives may achieve satisfaction and
2) how reaction-formations protect the individual against the fear of these primitive drives (Jones, 3, p. 436).
Freud's great contribution was to emphasize motivation and to indicate how potent forces produced complex defense mechanisms. Freud began with the pathological and then showed how motivation and subsequent defences help explain the normal human mind. His first two publications, after his work in neurology, described how dreams expressed personal defences.
Although behaviorism is primarily identified with defining psychology as a study of behavior, such definitions also come from other fields. William McDougall, the great and controversial English bred American, known for his instinct doctrine, published a text in 1912 entitled, Psychology: The Study of Behavior, in which he defined psychology as the "... positive science of the behavior of living things (McDougall, 1912, p. 19)."
While consciousness is not excluded from the domain of psychological investigation, it is subordinate to the primary aim to "... increase our understanding of, and our power of guidance and control over, the behavior of men and animals... (McDougall, 1919, p. 19)."
GESTALT, WHOLENESS, PSYCHOLOGY
The whole is more than just the sum of its bits and pieces. The Gestalt psychologist, Koffka, also uses "behavior" as the central concept in any definition of psychology because ". . . if we start with behavior it is easier to find a place for consciousness and mind than it is to find a place for behavior if you start with mind or consciousness (Koffka, 1935, p. 25)."
But he makes a distinction, following Tolman, between two kinds of behavior -- molar (mass, body as a whole) and molecular (a particle of mass). Molar behavior takes place in a behavioral environment which includes the mind and may be different for each individual depending upon his perception of the geographical environment. In this sense, not all behavior need be movement. Molecular refers to more minute and specific behaviors such as discrete muscular movements.
BEHAVIORISTS
Most behaviourists write as if they have the ultimate truth: Human beings are nothing more than clever animals, they write. Those with problems simple need better training. We need to ask: Who gets to decide what is "better"? And: What's wrong with consulting the "animal"?
Among 20th century American psychologists, Watson, Hull, and Skinner have been most influential. They maintain that the proper study of psychology is behavior, that and that the major goal of psychology should be prediction.
Question: How successful is this approach?
A distinctly different definition of psychology, however, is that of Hebb. He defines psychology as "... the study of the more complex forms of integration or organization in behavior (Hebb, 1966, p. 8)." Hebb is a behaviorist but believes that the study of specific responses or reflexes is the domain of physiology. Psychology, he claimed, studies the patterns of responses, a point of view laid down by Sherrington, who sought the organized patterns of integration. The patterns emerge, Hebb thinks, through such processes as learning, emotion, and perception. The patterns are both facilitated by and stored in the black box (the brain) even though our understanding at the present time is necessarily obscure. Mind and mental phenomena are really abstractions of the central nervous system processes that organize behavior.
RESEARCH VS. APPLIED FIELDS
Our definition of psychology can be summarized by saying that there are three major processes--learning, perception, and motivation. A precise definition of psychology, therefore, can be sidestepped and we can proceed directly to the question of what psychologists do. The activities of psychologists can be divided into two major fields -- research psychology and applied psychology. Most psychologists are involved in both. Although science progresses best by answering questions of practical importance, scientists more frequently answer questions of a general nature, unrelated to specific problems.
Research and scientific activity require the use of inductive reasoning and used by scientists when formulating general statements about the universe. Inductive reasoning is a kind of thinking which begins by making observations of many specific things and ends by producing generalized statements summarizing those observations. Those resulting laws, principles, or just plain facts, then, become the starting point for the second type of activity associated with science -- application or technology.
Applied scientists, sometimes called practitioners, engineers, or technicians use scientific facts to solve specific, concrete, real life problems. Most persons mistakenly think that such technical activity is science and that the individuals so engaged are scientists. Such a point of view is precisely why many schools of science sometimes foster unhappy and disillusioned students.
Many students really wish to become practitioners rather than investigators. Thus, majors in sociology might do better in urban planning; psychology in social welfare or education; biology in medicine; physics in engineering; and chemistry students in pharmacy.
NOTE: It is this writer's--I would love to publish the name if I knew it--view--with which I, as a collector and reviser, agree--that psychology began, in 1879, as a field of science -- interested in discovering the truths of the mind, of behavior, or any human phenomena. But during the past 30 years, primarily as a result of increased government funding, psychology as perceived by the general public and the average undergraduate has moved from the state of science to that of "art."
Though this may be lamented by some scholars, it is acclaimed by most students. The student has always demanded, in any age and in any field, that what he studies should have practical application. Young people are action oriented.
And it is the doing, the immediacy of change, which intrigues them most. Young people change the world. They are also the artists. But here lies an inherent danger. And it is this.
To act is to require guiding principles but not always facts. The facts come from science. In the absence of facts, people act on the basis of belief, hope, bias, suspicion, prejudice, fantasy, intuition, or whatever. Intuition frequently produces dramatic and positive results. The history of humankind, however, is replete with examples of actions based upon commendable assumptions which lead to tragedy. And it happens frequently.
As the collector and reviser of the above notes I may I add: Don't forget psychology grew out of theology and pneumatology. Let us not be afraid to explore the spiritual (pneumatological and theological) foundations of all knowledge.
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Comments
RevLGKing
Posted on: 11/29/2011 14:07
PNEUMATOLOGY--the mother of modern psychology.
Readers of this forum will be aware of the fact that when I started this thread, I let it be known that, since my student days, I have been deeply interested in in the study of 'pneumatology'(the study of the human spirit)--the study of the human intelligence-based power to will.
Inspired by my personal experiences helping seriously ill people, including myself and my daughter, recover from life-threatening illnesses, I have also let my hope and my opinion be known: Pneumatology ought to be studied in the same way we study all science, objectively.
.A 14, Nov. 29, 2011
WILLPOWER
If what the authors of a recent book--WILLPOWER, which I quote, below--write is true, I ask: Does this mean that my opinion and hope is now a reality?
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Excerpt from THE NATIONAL POST
Roy F. Baumeister And John Tierney,
National Post · Nov. 29, 2011
RevLGKing
Posted on: 11/30/2011 23:28
MORE RESPONSES GIVEN, RECENTLY, TO ATHEISTS
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For a further comment on the book, WILLPOWER, I quote what I said a few posts back about agape-love.
Agape-love, central to the teachings of Jesus--is the kind mentioned 140 times in the New Testament. Though it can include it, it is not just philia-love--being friends only with those who respond by being friendly. It is not just Eros-love, sensuality--not mentioned at all.
Robert Wright, who wrote the book, "The Evolution of GOD" mentioned earlier, puts it this way:
Agape-love is the apotheosis of the moral imagination. It is about having compassion and sympathy for all that is, including others, regardless of how we feel.
Agape originates in the pneuma (the self, the spirit). It is about self-control, self-regulation.
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Long before I had ever heard of the Internet, I concocted the word 'pneumatology'--study of the divine and human spirit. Later, I found it was already in major dictionaries.
PNEUMATOLOGY (Wikipedia) which I write about there
Based on pneumatology, I use what I call 'pneumatherapy'--self-hypnosis without the hocus pocus--to help people--including family and self--to deal with the pains and sufferings--addictions of all kinds--of life, originating mostly in the soma (body) and the psyche (mind). Yes, at 82, in January, I will be still helping people, and without fees.
I find the following--about what agape can do for us, when we learn was it is--most interesting:
http://lifehacker.com/5216129/learn-willpower-techniques-from-the-marshmallow-test
The same is true for the following:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/thinking-about-thinking/
RevLGKing
Posted on: 02/08/2012 00:50
G-0-D & WILLPOWER--Life--Do, Delegate, Defer, Drop
---What I write here is based on the book WILLPOWER, Roy F. Baumeister, a social psychologist, and John Tierney, a science writer with the New York Times. (2011)
This thread--connected with the "philosophy of religion..." thread--Now has over 3, 400,000 hits, and growing. Threads such as this prompts me to ask:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panentheism/
PANTHEISM AND ECOLOGY
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Generally speaking, more and more of us, young and old--including children, students and workers, social leaders, philosophers, educators, scientists and artists, especially students of ecology--are beginning to agree that, in all things, we human beings are interconnected and interdependent. In life, in death, for better and for worse, as human beings, we are inseparable components of a great unity of life and being.
Failure to acknowledge this unity is the source of much that we find painful in life. It is the cause of so much existential anxiety, so much dystopia.
The good news is: Simply realizing this can be the beginning of our finding the source of joy and simple peace of mind.
http://www.spaceandmotion.com/pantheism.htm#Page
Interestingly, when Orthodox Jews today write about the god-hypothesis, in English, they write the divine name, G-d. The dash symbolizes the mystery of it all.
The challenge to those in the sciences is this: Will we be wise and moral enough to use our sciences to help us solve more and more of the mysteries that cause us so much grief? Any examples?
WILL + G-0-D = BEING, not a being--Good, Orderly & Desirable www.flfcanada.com www.unitheist.org
RevLGKing
Posted on: 05/17/2014 23:57
RevLindsayKing
Posted on: 05/18/2014 23:45
TO MAX, AN ATHEIST--who said, "The belief in God is dying off."
The belief in God is dying off?
Well Max, of course it--the 'god' of theism and atheism--is. And it is about time. In the 1930s, I also stopped believing in the fairies and the Santa Claus myth.
G~Õ~D--that which Generates Organizes & Delivers all that is Good, Optimal & Delightful--however, is not to be confused with 'God', or 'gods'.
Unless, you believe it is okay to Generate, Organize & Deliver that which is Gruesome, Odious & Diabolic, :) . Do you? Sincerely, lindsayking.ca
RevLindsayKing
Posted on: 06/08/2014 15:39
ABOUT AGAPE-love: Many times over the years, since I joined this formum, I have written about the nature and character of will-based agape-love, which, in my opinion, is an essential component to all good religions that know and sincerely make the effort to practice the Golden Rule.
In no way is agape to be confused with the emotion-based kind of love which we--generally speaking--who speak English have in mind when we talk about the "love" we have for any number of things, including our country, community, family members, friends and neighbours. We also speak of our love of material things and activities--sports (including the extreme and dangerous kind), pets (including pits bulls, exotic animals), movies, foods, apple pie and the many pleasures we all enjoy.
Obviously, there are people who admit that--even at the risk of being caught, charged and convicted of criminal behaviour--they love breaking the moral codes and criminal laws of the land.
Sure it is grammatically correct to say things like: I love taking and getting revenge on those who I feel have done harm to my country, my family, me and my friends, etc.
But, in the end, experience teaches all who pay attention to such things: This will not bring us the justice, peace of mind and prosperity we all deep down want and need.
http://www.gotquestions.org/agape-love.html#ixzz344JckuCq
KEEP IN MIND: I SOON FOUND THAT THIS SITE IS THE WORK OF WRITERS WHO ARE BASICALLY CONSERVATIVE, NOT PROGRESSIVE, IN MATTER OF FAITH AND BELIEF.
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