I know that this thread seemed to die last week, but I haven't had a chance to reply until now, plus I wanted to re-read my reply before sending it.
To add another dimension, How does God, or maybe more correctly the Holy Spirit, make us aware that we are in the presence of God? >From my experience it is through feelings, states of mind & emotions. To walk into many an old church building, I can 'sense' the sacredness of the space, and sure there are many factors to produce that 'sense', certain forms and images that I have been culturally programmed to understand, evoke the feelings or emotional state required to achieve that 'sense' When I enter into worship I 'sense' the presence of God in the form of the Holy Spirit, and I know, particularly since I'm a regular worship leader at my church, that the way we use songs, prayers and bible readings can 'induce' a feeling of being in the presence of God. All these experience's can be scientifically reduced to chemical changes that occur in the brain, so does that mean that they are not really experiences of God? How is God meant to make us aware of his/hers/it's presence if not through using the chemical make up of the brain? I have started to read Philip Yancey's "Rumours of another World" in which he talks about humans being reductionist's, that is we seek to understand by reducing the object of our attention to its constituent parts, thus removing the wonder and mystery, but does that remove the 'miracle' nature of many of the things that occur in our experience? As an architect, I can look at a building that I have been involved in with through construction and understand the ups and downs of the design, documentation and construction processes involved, I can see the constituant parts involved in producing the building and yet I can still stand and admire the miracle that is that building. Yet even as creator of a building I can not relate to that building outside of the designed intent. I must move through, be sustained by, react to the building using the systems's through which the building was designed and constructed. Or I could look at a building like the Sydney Opera House and no matter how much research I do into the creation of that structure, understanding for instance the policitcal interference etc that marred the original concept, I still can not deny the granduer of the building. For an addition to be constructed to the Opera House, the designer's and builders must approach or relate their work from the starting point of the original design otherwise they will be destroying what has been previously created. So how does a super-natural being interact with the natural system that he/she/it created, without destroying the balance of what he/she/it created? My answer is that surely such a super-natural being could limit themselves to working from within the confines of the system, but that is not to discount the fact that they could interact in a super-natural way yet because we are talking about the spiritual or super-natural realm we will always have difficulties understanding because we can only experience the super-natural realm through this natural one and we can only reduce it using the apparatus we have available to us. I'm sure you've grasped where I am coming from, but one final example before I sign off, does a scientific description of 2 people passionately kissing, that is the transfer of bodily fluids, the mingling of multitudes of bacteria, germs etc, the number of muscle's used to make the mouth & tongue move in such ways etc, the chemical changes that occur in the brain etc, really change the desire and the enjoyment derived from kissing? Does it make a kiss any less special? In my limited experience, the answer is no it doesn't. Cya Andrew Swenson -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of robert dummermuth Sent: Friday, 30 July 2004 11:13 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Religion and Psychobiology >To put more specifically what I think Clare was implying - Do we *need* >to distinguish 'chemically-induced states' from 'genuine experiences of >divinity'? Or might experiences sometimes be both chemically induced >(externally or internally) and at the same time genuine experiences of >divinity. Why posit the question as either/or when it may (at least in >some cases) be both/and? Throwing in another link (or kink). What do we do when our theology of "sacrament" says that we have a real experience /encounter with the divine whether we feel anything - chemically induced or transcendentally inspired, or feel (experience) nothing at all except a "cold, impersonal" rite. Peace, Rob -- Robert & Barbara Dummermuth Uniting Church in Australia Esperance / West Nullarbor Patrol 18 Hicks Street, Esperance, 6450 tel 08 9071 1184 fax 08 9071 5814 mobile 0428 532 304 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
