“Thank you so much for your kind response!”

….More below:

Oh. My. G-D. Dear Mr Browning. I would like to say thank you for taking me on a wondrous journey at 6:30am on a Thursday in 2009.

…I must see my solicitor…the will clearly needs updating…

This article and its sister, “How Hubble Killed God” have sat here for a few years now, attracting comments in…

… a massive spurt up-front, then trickles ever since.

….(vigorous slapping of the hands, and initial response deleted)…

But no reader comment has ever kept me as intrigued and awestruck as yours.

…As they say….”Thank you for the flowers!”

Your use of extended ellipses (four dots instead of three) gave me the image that you were clearly pausing to think about what to say as you were composing the response, all the time causing the reader (myself in this case),

….how is it put….”Engage-brain-before-opening-mouth”….

to pause to reflect on what was just stated….to very powerful effect.

…Quite the nicest compliment I’ve been paid in a long time…

The care you took in crafting your response is also most appreciated. I swear I could not spot a single typo.

….Well…..a “Small College in (the former District of) Maine(U.S.A.)”…

…..wherein our late President….the “Jolly” Roger Howell….a Rhodes Scholar, naturally…was the only American ever to teach English Literature at Oxford….some of this may have rubbed off….I sincerely hope it is not overly contagious…

I even Googled some of the text to see if this was not some cut-and-paste-job,

…No, I come by my hyperbole honestly….

….”Raised and trained for a world which no longer exists”…

but lamentably, Google, with its bill-yuns and bill-yuns of references could not find a match. I feel honored that your contribution was composed just for me (and every other fortunate visitor who visits this article in the future).

…Well….I….may just have too much time on my hands….

In response to what you actually had to say, you are right.

…Well….what I wrote made sense to me….and if we test our point of view publicly, sometimes we are lucky enough to have it tempered by those wiser-than-us….

….Suffice it to say that it is like when one reads a great book….It leaves one with that comforting feeling that “one is not entirely alone in one’s thoughts”….

Odds are, there ARE powers greater than our own out there in the glorious magnitude of the universe. And while they may not actually be listening to our wall-of-sound prayers, they may well be planning a visit.

…Or may already have been here.

(…Or may already be here now.)

…As I say….I don’t go running about worrying about “where the little green men are”, but I do follow with interest what happens in space, and this at least, to the extent that I may run into people who have a more direct experience of these things…..

….and no, I am not privy to any special information about any of this….just regular news reports and published sources….

…..but it just makes sense…..that….you-know….

Thank you Mr Browning.

…Well….thank you! I’ve enjoyed it…..and if you care to forward your direct e-mail address, I can send you under separate cover my response to your initial article.

Amities,

Your use of extended ellipses (four dots instead of three) gave me the image that you were clearly pausing to think about what to say as you were composing the response, all the time causing the reader (myself in this case), to pause to reflect on what was just stated….to very powerful effect. The care you took in crafting your response is also most appreciated. I swear I could not spot a single typo. I even Googled some of the text to see if this was not some cut-and-paste-job, but lamentably, Google, with its bill-yuns and bill-yuns of references could not find a match. I feel honored that your contribution was composed just for me (and every other fortunate visitor who visits this article in the future).

In response to what you actually had to say, you are right. Odds are, there ARE powers greater than our own out there in the glorious magnitude of the universe. And while they may not actually be listening to our wall-of-sound prayers, they may well be planning a visit.

Thank you Mr Browning.

It’s one thing….to “play” with what first seem like abstractions like “parallel universes” and “black holes” and “changes in the space-time continuum”….and it’s quite another thing…for those of us under I.Q. 160, to be able to “image”, without a little photographic help….what all that might look like….and the Hubble has done that, for me anyway….while looking at “deep space”, for example, I can just hear Carl Sagan’s voice from PBS broadcasts: “Mill-yuns….and-mill-yuns….and-mill-yuns….” (only he needs to juice the figures up a little, as in “bill-yuns…and-bill-yuns….and-bill-yuns…) If realizing that each of those at-first-glance “stars”, is actually a galaxy, itself containing-billions-of-stars, doesn’t give us a “Za-Zen” into a limitless….if not “primitive humanoid-bound”…sense of the Infinite…I don’t know what will…. Wow! It takes a good university to hear about Martin Buber’s “Ich-Du versus Ich-Sie”, and Rudy Otto’s “Mysterium Tremendum Et Fascinans”, much less Aquinus’s “That-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought”….(I think what the Hubble stimulates in us humans even-goes-beyond-thinking….but I digress)…

…and after four years of bathing in this in academic splendor, so many years ago, of “decent and scholastically-grounded” Comparitive Religious Studies(Religionswissenschaft), and Philosophy and Psychology, (yes, this included Jung), both in the U.S., and abroad, I have yet to hear anything but a paucity of this from any so-called “Christian” pulpit in the U.S. Well….the Inquisition forced Galileo to “recant”….d’ye suppose some “fundamentalist”idiots will declare Hubble itself “a work of the Dark Side”? I can just hear-it-in-my “mind’s-ear”….”Don’t-confuse-us-with-the-facts, Barry”….

….Now…..and again, this from looking at pictures from the Hubble….how can we….doubt the possibility, given the permutations of billions of billions of stars, and the infinite number of planets that presupposes…..the Europeans of late have done a good job of “proving” from Hubble and other sources, the existence of a specific number of observed faraway planets, which is growing….

….How can we doubt the possibility of other beings?

…And if we don’t doubt this, why, why, WHY…..do we insist, that if-they-exist, they-must-be…..anthropomorphic, bifurcated….humanoids? This is one of the “bastard children” of bad theology….we aren’t aware enough of what goes on inside ourselves psychologically, to recognize a spiritual projection of ourselves on any outside phenomenon when we experience it…..300 hours of good psychological training BEFORE candidates get to go to seminary would fix this….fat chance of that…..

…We are in the process of….”having-the-doors-blown-off”….of what we experience as “real”, and this has not substantially happened in the West, give-or-take-a-few-exceptions, since the Greeks-Presocratics….(but perhaps in the East has been available conceptually ever since the Brahman-Atman Union was described in Sanskrit)….

…and in the midst of this experience…of these discoveries…..

…How are we going to handle the discovery of “intelligent life in the Universe, other-than-our-own”, when on our own Earth, we can neither collectively fathom nor accept the universality of our own encounter with the Infinite in its various and long-established permutations of the world religions, at least one of which is, as this blog’s author has informed us, is more populous in believers than Christianity, and several of which pre-date Christianity by any number of years? How can we HOPE to handle….”intelligent life”, which in all probability, WILL NOT be anthropomorphic, (but may well have the intelligence to appear to us in anthropomorphic form, to save us all from an initial heart attack), when, on earth, and in as “progressive” a country as the U.S.A., we cannot even UNDERSTAND, much less TOLERATE….other world religions…..and when within the revelatory religion of Christianity…..we have a multiplicity of sects, if not of rules, (in direct proportion, apparently, to the lack both of direct experience, and/or paucity of I.Q.)….and where we….can’t….even…..on Sunday mornings….deal with someone next to us with a slight difference in SKIN PIGMENTATION?

…I, for one, suspect that Science has taken us FAR BEYOND the hypocrisies of U.S. religious “fundamentalism”, and that we-have-been-necessarily-lied-to, about what Science and our government actually knows, from EXPERIENCE, about the Universe…..

….but for now am willing to live with Sir William of Occum’s famous Razor…..until-the-little-green-men-come-knocking-at-my-door….I don’t need to modify my life style just yet….

…..and I think this began in the late ’30s, when my mom was leaving Brown University for the weekend, and got caught up in a four hour traffic jam while traveling to East Providence, as the Mercury Theater’s War of the Worlds was being broadcast…

…I’m suspecting that it was decided then, that “we could not handle the truth”, and I must admit, having read the mass psychology studies arising out of that U.S. broadcast event….and its subsequent application in such subsequent world events as Hitler’s Blitzkreig….that they were, and perhaps still are, right…..

….but….a few fun details since then….such as…..rumors of “reverse engineering”….and….perhaps an ulterior motive behind Regan’s “Star Wars” weaponry….and certain observations made by our own and other countrys’ astronauts….and, of late, a suggested other reason for the Hubble’s soon-to-be-engaged, if-not-already-engaged, competitor….the Keppler…..

…Occum’s Razor notwithstanding…..if any of this takes us in the direction which I think it is taking us…..

….then how can the way many, if not most of us, practice Man’s Religions, handle what we next discover, (if we have not already discovered it and are-sitting-on-it)?

…I think……that Man’s Religions….are due for some massive revisions…..

….I think…..that it is well past the time when we….perhaps need a “Religions Race”, to catch up with the results of the “Space Race”….

….I think…..we need a “Weltanschuuang”(World-view)…which admits not only of the existence of other of Man’s world religions, but of their discoveries and unique contributions, collectively, to-what-we-can-claim-to-know-about-ourselves…..

….and I think….it is well past the time for us to accept, much less give lip service to, one unique theology to the exclusion of all others….

…..when there is enough evidence over the centuries, that the Infinite can be experienced by humans, in a multiplicity of ways….and when….for those not “intellectually challenged”, the much overtouted and supposed “differences” between man’s religions, are more a sign of the limited outlook of some individuals….of limited vision….

….and I think…..that if we are to survive spiritually and psychologically in the universe to come, with its implied expansion of intelligent life forms and life-connections…..we need to

…..know ourselves inside more profoundly than we already do…or already accept, is more like it, because the tools to self-discovery have been around for years, and-or are available to us through a variety of introspections and processes…..

….and we need to……expand…..and this greatly…..our SOCIAL model of “what is existentially real”, so that we can HANDLE what we are about to discover, or what we have ALREADY discovered….

….and “not go mad”, as the Greek Tragedies would have instructed us…..

…..”You cannot see G-d and live”……

….We are about to test that statement……can we handle it?

….I suspect….that if what I’ve been suggesting is out there, and is currently happening for us…..

….that we flip ourselves into the category of “meta-cognition”…..(that is, “thinking-about-thinking”), and…..

….ask ourselves, what with the bill-yuns-upon-bill-yuns… of stars-and-planets….”out there”…..

….whether…..any…..

…..culture of primitive intelligence which is trying to expand, such as ours…..

….has ever….encountered….or ever will…..

….intelligence(s) of greater knowing……

….and has survived the experience…..and this, perhaps, under the guidance of the superior intelligences…..(let us, at least, hope so…)

More than any of you may have wanted to deal with on a Wednesday in 2009?

I enjoyed your post about the Hajj & Islam. I agree that misinterpretations by leaders often mislead the followers of religions but sometimes it just happens that a quote from the scriptures is taken out of context and sensationalised. Like with christianity, you could say “Jesus compared the syrophonecian woman to a dog!” and then label him as a male chauvinist, but if you read it in context and also see his attitude to other women you might have a different opinion. There are women I know who say that Muhammed lived a noble life by equalist principles while Jesus was dominating and chauvinistic, and it’s kind of obvious when a person’s thoughts are based on the texts themselves and when they are based on other people’s interpretations of them.

I love questioning everything like I said before, and that helps me in two ways- firstly when someone else wants to prove a point I’m totally willing to go into their scriptures to look with them, and when they want to know my side of it I already know why I believe whatever the point in question is (most of the times!) so it’s easier to answer. It makes for very pleasant debate when both sides are well informed about their own beliefs, and for equally disastrous results when all that either side can come up with is “uhhh.. I don’t know but if you don’t believe this, you will go to hell! aaah”
lol

About your Hubble post I want to tell you that as I read through it I felt a little shiver through my heart and I felt excited at the awesomeness of God. It totally drew me closer to God because of all the wonderful things he has created in all the universe. Btw the Bible doesn’t say that God created everything for man, it says he created everything for himself, for his glory. That is logical. If God is the one point where the highest love, joy and power combine, what higher purpose can there be for anything, except God himself?

Manfluence teaches that God created everything for man, Godfluence teaches that God created everything for God. The one who seeks the glory of him who sent him- in him there is no falsehood.

The Bible also does not say that the universe is 6000 years old. The problem again is interpretations. The post I want to write, where I want to link to your Hubble post, is based on what the Bible says vs what people want to read. How unnecessary quarelling comes out of things that the Bible never said. And instead of being in awe of this wonderful universe which God has created, we find ourselves warring against it. It’s such a waste of the glorious resources we have.

This comment got long, and not a bit off-topic, sorry about that. I’m just really glad to have stumbled upon your blog and I wish you all the best.

Diana

The “Hubble” article is clearly one that can be taken two ways. Some readers chose to be ignorant of the whole article and based comments solely on the “sensationalist” title. I’m pleased you saw a very positive message behind it. I did too when I put it together. Fundamentalists and extremists are the real problem of the world, regardless of the religion.

As for linking to my blog, absolutely! But only if I can blogroll yours. I’ve always wanted to find out more about the second most populous nation on Earth. Take care.

I have always believed that questioning is good for your conscience. It’s always great to ask questions because you can only get answers if you ask questions. Although some religious groups teach people to blindly accept teachings “or be subject to the fires of hell”, I believe Jesus himself said “ask”. And an apostle later confirmed “you do not have, because you do not ask.” Here neither of them referred to asking for material wealth but both referred to wisdom and the holy spirit and love and other godly gifts.

I find it fascinating how two people reading the same texts can draw such vastly different conclusions from the same words. I guess it is not upto one to judge another, but only express personal conviction. And in my opinion closeness to God is best judged by how much “God” you can see in everything.

But you have one fewer god than I do, lol. That is a cool quote. Very cleverly worded. So how did you get interested in religion, or are you interested in it? Religious debates fascinate me where there are open minds and logical reasoning. I just read your post about Hubble and I found it fascinating. I might link to it soon… it closely relates to something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. Not the scientific bit but the spiritual bit.

Blessed to have found your blog. May I link to you?

Diana

As for me, I’ve followed a similar path, with a scientific education that forces me to question. Stephen F. Roberts once said: “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

Peace.

I was born in India to Indian parents and I followed hinduism very rigidly when I wasn’t being an atheist. I became Christian only a year and some months ago after reading a Bible someone gave me. And there are others I know like me, even in my own class at university who are Christian apart from their families.

In my walk with Christ, there has been no manfluence cos while I was reading the Bible I had no help through it and I knew no local christians. My parents are conservative and I’m forbidden from going to church, so I’ve never attended a church service. I testify that Godfluence can be very powerful, and that Godfluence is not the power that leads the world. Like we agreed before, if Godfluence was the most powerful thing in the world there would also be more godliness.

So you’re an atheist, right?

Stand up and fight for your religion against the enemy within. It will make a huge difference with external perceptions.

Diana, the verse does refer to “Manfluence vs Godfluence”, but I’m not sure that it refers to “the one who speaks” about God. I believe it refers to anyone who has ambitions of power – on any basis. This verse is against any heirarchy of power among Man. Strangely enough all churches seem to be working against that verse.

I’m assuming you weren’t born in India, Diana. If you were born there to Indian parents, what would be the chance of you being a Christian now?

Lets just Love, and Let Love.

Peace, man…
Hazel.

(Relevent Excerpts below)

(Norenzavan) and fellow researchers have been conducting experiments to test how and if belief in God can promote religious hatred or apparently irrational behaviour.

There’s a growing need for an understanding of fundamentalist movements based on observation, rather than on intuition or faith, because of fundamentalism’s apparent link with violence, Norenzayan said.

From Norenzayan’s research, he found faith in God does not make people less tolerant of those who don’t share their beliefs.

Rather, so-called “boundary-setting” tendencies, or dogmatism, seem to be the culprits, he said.

Research participants who agreed with the statement: “My God or belief is the only true one,” were more likely to support violence.

“Here, it becomes really critical to break down religion to its components — what aspect of it, if any, leads to violent behaviours,” he said.

“Are we better off in a world where people believe in God less? I don’t think so,” Norenzayan said.

He added that in other experiments on altruistic behaviour, reminders of the presence of God increased people’s generosity toward strangers.

Christianity fulfills those conditions and the reason why its so convincing for me is contained in John 7.18:
“The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.”

which is precisely what your post is about, manfluence vs Godfluence. But this verse talks about Godfluence at a personal and relational level.

“The one who speaks” btw refers I think to the one who speaks about God. Do you think that connects to your post in any way?

Cheers
Diana

I agree with your last paragraph.

Anyway comment 5 in this thread was your response to an anonymous comment 4,

“You refer to the Bible, so I’ll assume some form of Christianity on your part. But which form?? Why are there so many different off-shoots when you say “religion” in the singular sense? Why does the world have so many religions? Have you studied any of the others to verify that your chosen religion is right? What if it’s actually wrong, heaven forbid?”

I’m curious to know the real answer to his question, as to whether you have read the Bible. Not to test you but to learn about your experience with the religions you’ve read about… I practiced 2 religions devotedly and one curiously before I landed into the Bible. I know why it’s right for me, and you probably know why it’s not right for you. Curious to hear your experience…

As for manfluence vs Godfluence (interesting words), I believe that in this world manfluence is stronger. If Godfluence really was stronger then this world wouldn’t be a fallen world, and there wouldn’t be so much suffering and hatred. Yes manfluence would for me also include misuseofgodsnamefluence which tries to blind people and take them away from the path of reason, to accept a faith because the only other way is hell, to capture by fear and dominance rather than love- all these sound like manfluences. Godfluence is when the influence of God wins a person over by the methods prescribed by a certain concept of God. That happens, but its not the 2.1 + 1.3 billion statistic.

Diana