From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Aug 14 2003 - 10:10:53 EDT
--- Dawsonzhu@aol.com wrote:
>
> Blake Nelson within a long outpouring of frustration
> wrote:
I wouldn't charaterize it as that, and I hope that is
not how it came across. I do, as I noted, grow weary
of hyperbole, but that was less than 30% of the post.
;) The rest dealt with the problem of data
interpretation re religious experience.
> > BTW, what evidence is there or on what basis would
> one
> > say that God has hard-wired only humans to
> perceive
> > Him? I wouldn't presume that to be the case, and
> the
> > pan-experientialists and process theologians
> certainly
> > wouldn't either (although I do not fall into those
> > categories).
> >
>
> I'm not quite sure what you are asking here? Are
> you thinking
> that animals can have faith too. Or intelligent
> life on other
> planets (if there is any)?
(SNIP)
What I was getting at is that a) we have no experience
of what it is to be other animals or things so I don't
know how we can say whether they in some way perceive
God (which may be entirely different than having
"faith"). Panpsychism/panexperientialism on which
much process thought is built starts from the
assumption that God can lure *everything* to greater
and lesser extents and that everything (not just
sentient, much less self-conscious, creatures) in some
sense has an ability to perceive and respond to the
lure. I don't have any frame of reference to say
whether that is correct or not. I would not presume
that position is incorrect either as the post seemed
to do.
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