Re: [asa] Evolution of the Soul

In a message dated 9/25/2006 12:04:36 PM Eastern Standard Time,
alexanian@uncw.edu writes:
If by evolution one understands a truly physical (material) theory, then how
to understand concepts like soul, spiritual, rationality, consciousness,
life, etc. seems to me to become insurmountable problems in such scientific
theories of the physical aspect of Nature.

Moorad
The concept you need to explore is SELF consciousness, not simply
consciousness and that exploration is possible because only man is SELF conscious, a
state that arose in the last 4 millions years as man abandoned instinctive
behavior in favor of learned behavior. Before SELF consciousness, there was no
thinking ABOUT the world, there was only REACTION to the world that arises from
instinctive behavior. Once there was SELF consciousness, man mistakenly assumed
all manifestations of nature were SELF conscious like himself and attributed god
like qualities to all natural phenomena resulting in many gods.

According to ALL the formal religions, man is returned to God when he returns
the SELF consciousness that arose with the eating of the apple, the awareness
of self has to be surrendered to be in the presence of God.
Now, even though the self sacrifice is first seen in the Vedic hymns and
traveled both East and West, (East via Buddhism and West to Christianity) in the
East all supernatural issues are addressed by teaching the religious adept to
make the self sacrifice (don't doubt, have complete faith) without any
transcendental questioning at all which is forbidden. In the West, this basic
discipline has been suppressed and so the questions that are forbidden in the East
because they express doubt and preclude the self sacrifice, are the primary
questions in the West where the self sacrifice has been diluted by transcendental
concerns that make its pursuit impossible.

My paper True Religion discusses these matters and my paper Race and
Religion: A Catholic View expands on the "core of personal religion."

rich faussette
   

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Received on Mon Sep 25 12:28:29 2006