Sophisticated theology: why God is hidden

August 19, 2011 • 11:55 am

Sophisticated theologians need to explain why we don’t see much of God these days.  But, as always, they’re superb at making virtues from necesssities.  Here’s Catholic theologian and evolution-accommodationist John Haught with some answers:

  • “Theology may at least point out that that hiddenness of God to conscious beings here and now is consistent with the fact that the universe is still coming into being . . . If our universe were completely finalized here and now we could justifiably insist on absolute clarity.  However, as long as the world is still being created, and as long as the drama of life has yet to be concluded, we cannot reasonably expect here and now to make out clearly what it is all about, or what lies beyond, behind, and within it. We have to wait.

For this reason it is not unexpected that what Whitehead calls the greatness of present facts—in other words, God—must remain beyond our grasp. “  (Making Sense of Evolution, p. 108).

  • “It is essential to religious experience, after all, that ultimate reality be beyond our grasp. If we could grasp it, it would not be ultimate.”  (Deeper Than Darwin, p. 68).

We have to wait!  I like this explanation better:

  • “The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.” (Delos McKown)

117 thoughts on “Sophisticated theology: why God is hidden”

  2. Well, if the universe is still evolving that doesn’t explain why god got out and about a lot more in the past.

    Maybe she’s washing her hair.

    1. Read Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by the neuroscientist David Eagleman. One of the vignette’s has something very much like that…

      /@

        1. Apostrophes are very wayward creatures and cannot be trusted at all! There is a movement in the places which discuss these things to abandon them altogether, which I sometimes think may have some merit, especially when reading signs outside shops!

          1. Well, I wouldnt object to that. Im much, much less bothered by missing apostrophes (which stand for missing letters, even in the possessive) than by apostrophe’s that should’nt be there or are in the wrong place.

            /@

  3. Gotta love how Jesus thought his message was so important that he had himself publicly tortured to death so he could resurrect himself…and yet he can’t even manage to tweet, say, his position on pending legislation.

    Such a lazy bum!

    Cheers,

    b&

        1. Ah, yes — but that’s Jesus M Christ. We’re looking for Jesus H Christ. They often get confused — kinda like Jimmy and Billy Carter.

          b&

    1. Didn’t you read the man? NO questions yet: the Lord is still working on it; the world is a work in process, and until it’s all done, you cannot justifiably insist on ANY clarity whatsoever.

    2. That was just a limited-run preview to get audience feedback.

      I have to say that this theory is consistent with the Universe as it exists today. The Universe might be good enough to impress some hicks from 1st Century Jerusalem, but it needs a lot more polish before it’ll be ready to play Carnegie Hall.

    1. God likes poverty and poor people remember? So I guess he’s trying to make as many poor people as possible.

  6. This is how you make theology compatible with science: by gerrymandering it to avoid any possible falsification.
    Some of us find the exercise pointless enough to just ignore the whole thing and consign these “sophisiticated” gods to the same intellectual rubbish heap as space aliens, fairies and crypto-zooids, who also somehow never seem to show up and be studied in any reliable way.

  7. “It is essential to religious experience, after all, that ultimate reality be beyond our grasp. If we could grasp it, it would not be ultimate.”What is really being said of course is that ignorance is essential to religion, and I’m not inclined to disagree.

        1. Some do. They just don’t tell you which ones. Rather like sophisticated theology, really. And once you’ve hit “Reply” you can’t change anything. Rather like the religious view of death/salvation.

  8. Um…well…er…

    I could be mistaken, but I’m reasonably certain Haught misunderstands modern cosmology.

    We know the mass, density, and size of the visible and non-visible universe. The universe is expanding, not creating more of itself.

    All of the mass-energy of the universe was there right at the beginning. You know…the Big Bang?

    He’s proposing god as star-maker, galaxy-spinner, supernova-exploder, and all the rest, who is somehow too busy in his interstellar workshop to deal with Earth. Which is … what then? A tinkertoy experiment? A terrarium where he keeps his pets?

    How does this jibe with the theological concept of human exceptionalism? Doesn’t. Eviscerates it, in fact.

    Plus, if god isn’t present because he’s still “creating” stuff … well, there goes the whole omnipotent thingy. Which is kinda central to Catholic dogma. You know, outside of time yet still able to deal with us in our relativistic framework?

    Does he really have a job doing this? Someone pays him to come up with this stuff?

    Man, I am soooo in the wrong profession.

    1. Not only does he get paid for it, he even gets AWARDS for it! (2004 Sophia Award for Theological Excellence) <- If the above is 'Theological Excellence' then I would hate to see Theological Sloppiness!

        1. Only if you are willing to check your reason, intelligence, logic and self-respect at the door.

          2. You could keep your reason, logic, and intelligence. Con artists, after all, get to use them, and theology amounts to a highly educated con job – often perpetrated on oneself first.

            Self-respect – yeah, that one’s going to have to take it in the neck.

          3. Actually, con artists usually have a huge amount of self-respect. The first one conned is always the self.

    3. The universe is expanding, not creating more of itself.

      So that must be what Haught’s god is so busy doing: making more empty space. That sounds like an appropriate task for a non-existent being.

  9. “It is essential to religious experience, after all, that ultimate reality be beyond our grasp. If we could grasp it, it would not be ultimate.”

    How does Haught know that “ultimate reality” is “beyond our grasp”? Isn’t claiming that a thing is beyond anybody’s grasp actually claiming full and complete knowledge of that thing?

    What other characteristics or properties does “ultimate reality” have? It has exactly ONE property, according to Haught, and that is, by his own definition, that it cannot be grasped. So how can Haught grasp what cannot be grasped?

    Haught clearly stands in direct violation of his own principle. He’s grasping the ungraspable.

    He’s a liar, in other words.

    1. (One more time, without yelling):

      “It is essential to religious experience, after all, that ultimate reality be beyond our grasp. If we could grasp it, it would not be ultimate.”

      How does Haught know that “ultimate reality” is “beyond our grasp”? Isn’t claiming that a thing is beyond anybody’s grasp actually claiming full and complete knowledge of that thing?

      What other characteristics or properties does “ultimate reality” have? It has exactly ONE property, according to Haught, and that is, by his own definition, that it cannot be grasped. So how can Haught grasp what cannot be grasped?

      Haught clearly stands in direct violation of his own principle. He’s grasping the ungraspable.

      He’s a liar, in other words.

    2. I’m reminded of the popular fundamentalist agnostic claim that you can’t prove a negative. The proper first response, of course, is to ask the claimant to prove the claim. You can then go on to prove the nonexistence of the largest prime number and of the herd of angry bison stampeding through the room.

      It always fascinates me how so many people can proclaim with such utter conviction about that which they’re certain nothing can be known. Doublethink at its utmost!

      Cheers,

      b&

      1. Or put a little differently, One should not have to prove a negative. One should *assume* the negative.
        And as you say Ben, ask the theist to prove the claim in the first instance.

  10. I see he’s returned to the School of Making Things Up again.

    Also, I vote we pass a plate around so we can club together and buy him a dictionary so as he can look up the word “ultimate”.

    Spoiler Alert: ultimate is not equal to unobtainable.

    1. No no, you have it all wrong. It’s you who doesn’t understand theist code words.

      Gotta remember that words like “ultimate” are always theist code for “my personal after-death experience”.

      Haught fully expects the nice apartment with the kitchen upgrade and a powerful telescope he can use to scope out hell and laugh at all those nasty Protestants.

      1. “my personal after-death experience”

        So he’s precogniscient or back from the dead or possibly both?

        As they say in the classics: Pull the other one, it has got bells on.

        1. That’s the whole POINT of Christianity (and Islam, Hinduism, and probably a bunch of other religions I’m too lazy to look up). Your own personal after-death experience.

          Believe/behave in manner X in this world and you get a better deal in the after-death. Don’t believe/behave in manner X and you will be treated rudely in the after-death. (The difference between those who give you a preferred after-death based on belief only versus those who require different behavior is the source of a major schism in Christianity.)

        2. Oh my FSM, we now have both the question AND the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The universe will collapse!

  11. God has gone to a great deal of trouble to be completely undetectable — clearly in the hope of being ignored.

    I honor her wishes.

  13. Theology may at least point out that that hiddenness of God to conscious beings here and now is consistent with the fact that the universe is still coming into being . . .

    Actually, no that’s two separate thingies. 1) Universe coming into being, and 2) Hiddenness of God, are two different thingamabobs.

    “It is essential to religious experience, after all, that ultimate reality be beyond our grasp. If we could grasp it, it would not be ultimate.”

    Yeah but that’s not the same thing as the hiddenness of God. In fact they appear to be completely unrelated. Somebody is smoking something, and it ain’t smoked salmon.

    1. Well, you’ll need something to support that salmon. Try this:

      Dump in the bread machine in the order recommended by the
      manufacturer:

      1 TABLESPOON yeast
      3 cups bread (high-gluten) flour
      4 teaspoons sugar
      2 teaspoons salt
      1 cup water

      Let the machine do the dough cycle only. When it beeps to add
      mix-in ingredients, add:

      1/4 cup dried chopped onions
      2 TABLESPOONS poppy seeds

      When the cycle is over, remove the dough from the machine and
      divide it into eight parts. Roll each into a six-inch rope. Mosten
      the ends, wrap around three fingers, and press the ends together
      to form the dough into a ring. Let rise at least 15 minutes.

      Boil a few quarts of water and a tablespoon of salt in the largest
      pot you have–a wok works great. (This will probably take about
      fifteen minutes, so start the water going after you’re done
      shaping the dough.) Drop in as many bagels at a time as won’t
      crowd each other and boil for three minutes, turning often. You
      might have to cover the pot to keep it boiling. Remove the bagels
      to a greased baking sheet.

      Bake in a pre-heated 425 oF oven (turn it on the same time you
      start the water boiling) for about 25 minutes, until crust is
      browned.

      Even better, invest about $10 in a stone baking brick, like what
      you can get for pizzas from many boutique grocery stores. Have it
      in the oven when you turn on the heat; in this case, about 375 oF
      for about ten minutes will do the trick. Remove the boiled bagels
      directly to the stone, or to a plate and then the stone if there’s
      not enough room to boil them all at once.

      Let the bagels cool on a wire rack just enough to handle before
      serving.

      If you really want to do it right, serve the bagels open-faced,
      spread with cream cheese and topped with lox and fresh onions.

      Leftovers are best kept frozen. Defrost (only) in the microwave,
      and then bake for about 10 minutes at about 300 oF to freshen.

      Cheers,

      b&

        1. I like — thanks!

          To bring it somewhat back on topic…were I the Pope (as opposed to merely being a pope), I’d order teacup-sized versions of those, probably with an egg wash, be used instead of crackers. Fill the bread cup with good wine, drink the wine, eat the cup.

          And then, of course, we’d get on to the sacred meal of cheeses fried in lard with lamb and cod…though I’m not sure exactly how that recipe is supposed to work out….

          Cheers,

          b&

      3. > Even better, invest about $10 in a stone baking brick, like what you can get for pizzas from many boutique grocery stores.

        Or use an unglazed terra cotta paving stone. Even cheaper!

        I keep mine in the oven all the time. Helps regulate the heat.

        Totally off topic.

  14. “It is essential to religious experience, after all, that ultimate reality be beyond our grasp. If we could grasp it, it would not be ultimate.”

    Wow, circular reasoning much?

    Or, put another way, if you could grasp the religious experience, you could expose it to the scientific method, thereby dwindling your gawd-o-gaps down to nothing but “ultimate reality”.

  15. Someone find out what drugs Haught is taking. It is the only way he could spew that nonsense without hurting himself from laughing so hard.

    1. No, it answers questions like “what is the difference between cooking, eating and the number 5”

      1. The worst kind of thinker is one who shares ideas with others to show them that they can’t be understood.

  16. the invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.

    hmmm..7 dimensions curled up so small comes to mind.. 🙂

    1. Ah, but we know they exist because of their effects in the world: electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces, … and maybe gravity.

      😉

      /@

  17. Haught should go back to being a Creationist, then he could say everything is completed and then tell us if he sees god. Now I know why so many creationists commit heinious crimes, they have seen god and he told them to do it.

  18. So the stories in that book where this god character makes frequent personal appearances (at a time when the universe was younger -and less complete- than it it is now) were just metaphorical thingies then? Does that mean that this god was actually hidden then, too? If so,then what was it that all these people in this book are supposed to have encountered? If not then what the hell is he using the “incompleteness of the universe” as an excuse for this god’s absence now?

    They must teach a mean game of Calvinball at Haught’s seminary. He’s certainly an expert player.

    By the way; does either the bible or torah even actually contain the phrase “ultimate reality”?

    1. Not only frequent personal appearances but gave frequent exact instructions – mainly of the “Build a temple!” “Circumcise!” “Kill!” variety.

    2. Not only does the King James Version not contain the phrase “ultimate reality,” it contains neither the word “ultimate” nor the word “reality.”

      Nor the word “trinity,” but that’s another conversation.

  20. “Theology may at least point out that that hiddeness of God to conscious beings…”

    This comment has a fascinating structure in relation to the below cases reported by Dr. Lloyd Rudy, cardiac surgery expert.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL1oDuvQR08

    In the first case Rudy says, “he was up there!” (above the operating table). “He described the scene, things that there is no way he knew…what does that tell you…was that his soul up there?”

    But especially in the second case where a “presence” was felt by staff followed by an unexplained immediate healing of bleeding.

    This seems to confirm not just a “hiddeness” but an action as well. “Something” acted when needed, an apparent nonphysical intelligence.

      1. Sarcasm – lowest form of wit.
        And you did not answer at all the cases I gave here on UFO sightings by pilots and other professionals and their subsequent analysis by scientists:

        http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/does-evolutionary-convergence-prove-god/

        You also cannot answer the doctor or his colleagues above – why don’t you mail him instead of side-swiping him? For some bizarre reason you do not whack the doctor, who considers it very important, but myself. Why?

        And there is a psychology here. Internet videos of doctors saying this cannot be seen as having a reality because you can’t fit it in to your world view. They are just “internet videos of doctors saying this”. Dump it all in the “woo bin” and it may go away! 😉

        1. Sarcasm – lowest form of wit.

          Um, no, it wasn’t. Sarcasm would be something like, “ Spirits, NDEs, UFOs, … and now OBEs! You are clearly so very erudite in many kinds of esoteric knowledge, Alan!”

          See? There’s a contradiction between what is meant and what is expressed.

          My original statement was just unadorned ridicule.

          /@

          1. But you cannot explain the patient’s detailed observations of the operating theatre as detailed by the surgeon or his colleagues similar accounts.

            And your “unadorned ridicule” is directed at the doctor of course because he reported this.

            How do you view work like this?

            http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/?home_eng

            and this:

            http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1955636,00.html

            “Is there life after death? Theologians can debate all they want, but radiation oncologist Dr. Jeffrey Long says if you look at the scientific evidence, the answer is unequivocally yes.”

          2. Hmmm. At the beginning of the article we find “…Dr. Jeffrey Long says if you look at the scientific evidence, the answer is unequivocally yes.”

            At the end of the article he retreats from such an absolute stance: “But by the time you look at [the] evidence, the amount of faith you need to have [to believe in] life after death is substantially reduced.”

            Why am I less than impressed with the good Dr. Long? In the middle of the article he says no skeptical explanations are any good because there are so many of them. Gosh, we don’t know the answer to something, therefore woo. An afterlife explanation of the gaps.

          3. And your “unadorned ridicule” is directed at the doctor of course because he reported this.

            No, not because he reported it.

            But I’d direct my ridicule at anyone who jumps to ridiculous conclusions for such phenomena just because a naturalistic explanation eludes them. As someone once said of von Däniken, “could it possibly be?” too quickly becomes, “it could only be!”

            Really, it’s a “paranormal [or space aliens] of the gaps” argument.

            /@

    2. “things that there is no way he knew”

      who says?

      him?

      the anesthesiologist?

      who?

      surely you are aware of the many, MANY things that debunk the notion of “detached spirits” during these experiences, right?

      right?

      1. Ok – then give a few “things that debunk”, that can explain Lloyd Rudy’s interview.

        He seems open to the possibility of a “soul”, as he says in the first case, and a “presence” somehow involved in the healing of the patient, who they had given up on from unstoppable bleeding.
        Pointers at least towards a soul and also some form of intelligence, “hidden” yet intervening.
        Whatever the second case was, it was a specific directed action.

          1. do also note the copious references at the bottom, which contain numerous summaries of the work done on this phenomenon.

            suffice it to say… there is no need to invoke anything other than purely naturalistic explanations to fully explain and predict this behavior.

        2. I have to agree with Ant Allan, you’re one credulous cracker there, Alan.

          a little more time researching and a little more skepticism on your part would do you a world of good.

        3. When I was 20 and a christian, my older brother had a heart condition that required risky surgery. My girlfriend and I decided to fast and pray that he would be healed rather than have to go through the surgery and possibly make his wife a widow and leave his kids without a father. The day of the surgery I called to find out the results and was told that the doctors had decided against surgery because they couldn’t hear the heart problem – it was completely gone. Of course, we credited our prayers and fasting with having gotten god to intervene.

          At age 35 (for various reasons) I became an atheist. One of my wife’s arguments against loosing my faith was “what about what happened to your brother? How can you say you don’t believe in god?” I told her that there had to be some other explanation for that, although I didn’t know what it was.

          Fast forward to age 45. My brother went in for surgery to correct multiple heart problems, including the one from 25 years earlier. It turns out that the doctors hadn’t decided, all those years ago, that the heart problem had gone away. Rather, my brother decided then that the risk of surgery was greater than the risk of living with the problem until his children grew up. He told the family that he didn’t need surgery.

          I’ve told this long story to illustrate what Hume said (paraphrasing here): “What’s more likely? That Nature would go out of her course, or that men would lie?”

          P.S. the surgery went well and my brother has been fine these last 10 years. Praise be to the skill of his doctors.

        4. Ok – then give a few “things that debunk”, that can explain Lloyd Rudy’s interview.

          1 He lied.

          2) He didn’t perform even a bare minimum of experimental controls, so that his anecdotes do not meet the standard of evidence. The emergency room crew was too busy trying to save a life to waste time and attention attempting to control experiments they weren’t even aware would be used later as evidence for spooky things.

          3) Almost all such stories of NDEs and OOBEs are reported later, what with the patient being apparently unconscious or sedated. This allows for a multitude of errors to creep in: Maybe ER crew members gave them details about what happened. Maybe someone corrected mistakes in their story, whereupon they dropped those details from the account, making it seem more accurate than it was. Maybe they were wrong about what happened when.

          1. The problem is documented cases where the sufferer and carer alike see quite extraordinary things. This from Dr Peter B C Fenwick, FRCPsych., consultant neuropsychiatrist/neurophysiologist.

            http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/PDF/PFenwickNearDeath.pdf

            “Carers also occasionally report other phenomena just prior to death. They sometimes describe a radiant white light, which envelops the dying person and may spread through the room and involve the carers as well. The quality of the light is described as surrounding those who experience it with love.”

            Such accounts are not easily dismissed because they are shared experiences.

            Not difficult then to see other NDEs, which are not shared, as having value.

            You also discounted Rudy’s colleagues who had similar experiences with their patients.

          2. “Such accounts are not easily dismissed because they are shared experiences.”

            wrong.

            it’s not like we can’t share many, many, MANY different types of sensory illusions as a species.

            would you like a list of the fun ones?

          3. How do you account for a “radiant white light, which envelops the dying person and may spread through the room and involve the carers as well” ?

          4. I’m not going to bother.

            why?

            that should be YOUR job.

            The very first thing YOU should be doing is looking for ways to reject your hypothesis that it IS something not explainable by other means.

            do you really feel you have done so?

            I sure hope you don’t.

          5. …otherwise, I’d have to conclude you’re nothing but a lazy ass who expects the rest of us to debunk this crap FOR you.

            I for one, don’t have the time to do your work for you.

    3. “He described the scene, things that there is no way he knew…what does that tell you…was that his soul up there?”

      We know how people see, and which sense organs are involved. Were his _eyes_ up there?

          1. This was witnessed at Scole by an academic psychologist. How do you account for this:

            “The first phenomena that I saw were small points of golden light dancing in the corner of the room…They danced animatedly upwards and downwards…Shortly following this, there appeared a ball of diffused light, which I estimated to have a diameter of about 20 cm, close to the ceiling in the same corner…as the lights. The ball had no physical boundary: it was simply a three-dimensional orb of diffused golden light. It hung suspended for a moment in the corner about 30 cm beneath the ceiling. Slowly the orb moved toward the centre of the room, pausing above the centre of the table round which we were all sitting. It lowered itself by about 17 cm, remained still, then retreated slowly upwards and backwards into the corner…There were no beams of light to the orb, and the light was not reflected onto a surface; it moved independently in space. This occurred twice in succession, and I became aware of an overwhelming feeling of gentleness and love which seemed to accompany this phenomenon or, more accurately, which this phenomenon seemed to embody.”

            All this occured in a bare stone cellar with other witnessess.

          2. Without commenting directly on the case you cite, I will mention that I have myself experienced on two or three occasions a phenomenon I would describe with remarkably similar (though certainly not identical) language.

            In my case, it was a migraine with aura — but, fortunately, without the pain.

            You describe the witness as an “academic psychologist.” In the witness’s report, was there any comparison of the observed phenomenon to academic descriptions of hallucinations of a similar nature? If not, we can safely dismiss the report; the psychologist would clearly be incompetent. If so, it would be interesting to know how the psychologist distinguished these observations from an hallucination.

            Cheers,

            b&

          3. There were several other witnesses so hallucinations are out. But this phenomenon is one of many and varied light phenomena seen at Scole.

    4. In the first case Rudy says, “he was up there!” (above the operating table). “He described the scene, things that there is no way he knew…what does that tell you…was that his soul up there?”

      After having watched the entire video:

      What’s to explain? When they gave up on the patient, they turned off the anesthesia. So when the patient revived, he saw things in the operating room. Nothing described by Dr. Rudy requires that a seeing entity left the body. The monitor with Post-It notes would have been visible to the patient.

      The patient reported floating around, but there is no evidence to back it up; it could easily have been a perceptual illusion.

      Here is an article about the best OOBE experiment ever performed:
      Brain probe triggers out-of-body experiences
      from 2002.

      Doctors were mapping a woman’s brain with an electrical probe in preparation for surgery to treat her epilepsy. When they stimulated her right angular gyrus, she reported leaving her body and seeing it from above.

      I state that this is superior in experimental value to Dr. Rudy’s quaint anecdote because the patient was fully conscious and reporting in real time. This means the experimenters could perform a few controlled experiments.

      For example, although the woman claimed to be seeing her legs from above, the doctors placed a card or sign near her legs where it would be visible from above, but not from the position of her eyes. She could not see it. It seems pretty clear from such experiments that the woman was experiencing perceptual illusion, not actually leaving her body.

      1. “when the patient revived, he saw things in the operating room”

        – Rudy said he was “out” on leaving the OT and at least for a day or so.

        “The monitor with Post-It notes would have been visible to the patient”.

        – The Post-It notes appeared during the operation and the patient was “out” during this, Rudy said.

        “The patient reported floating around, but there is no evidence to back it up; it could easily have been a perceptual illusion.”

        – As Rudy said, the patient described the doctors standing with arms folded, no anesthesiologist present and the Post-It notes. Quite accurate.

        Your example above has no verified data from the woman but the Rudy case has. A “qualitatively different” case.

        The Pam Reynolds case is interesting too. Note the timeline.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pam_Reynolds_(singer)

        Finally if you combine this with the above cases of other multiply witnessed phenomena, you move away from any “perceptual illusion” explanation.

        http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/PDF/PFenwickNearDeath.pdf

      2. Actually, on looking again at your comment it has an interesting structure in that you speak of “having watched the entire video” yet report it inaccurately.
        And remember Rudy said, “He described the scene, things that there is no way he knew..” because the patient was unconscious, according to Rudy, “he didn’t wake up…he was out.”

        I suggest another viewing.

  21. Oh, so even though the world was still in creation when this god appeared numerous times in the past, he’s now gone and you won’t see him again until you’re long dead? That’s funny because the “not there god” certainly isn’t the god which most christians worship.

    1. or send their intercessionary prayers to…

      OTOH, it’s been demonstrated repeatedly, even by the Templeton Foundation itself, that intercessionary prayer does not work.

      so… maybe the “not there god” is the right god after all…

  22. Is the heat death of the universe its complete finalisation? Will we see God only then?

    Oh! There might be a small problem with that…

    /@

    1. Starting perhaps with the fact that our solar system will be destroyed and perhaps form anew (as a different system) long before any end (assuming there is one) comes to the universe? I don’t expect any life to survive the end of the sun; as the star expands, the hot gas will ensure that no trace remains of lifeforms or their byproducts. If a new habitable planet forms with the new star (assuming a star forms again) one thing we can be sure of is that any lifeforms which may evolve will only resemble what will only superficially resemble what we currently have on a chemical level: life must be carbon based and make use of water – aside from that there are no guarantees.

  23. “The important thing is that you are kept being heard on current issues – whatever you said.”

    This is the creed for shamans and viziers, the exact role the theologians do now.

    The logic, explanations even grammar are not important (remember Yoda) … and you’re a winner when you’re heard. These explanations are evolving in accordance the what’s necessary for current environment, memetic evolutionary fashion.

  24. Taken in total with all the other reports of veridical OBE’s it demonstrates that there is something else going on other than standard reductionist fayre.
    Closed minded sceptics, excepted.

  26. God is hiding because the poorest child in the kingdom pointed out that God is naked.

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