Hi again, Duke..

Hi Dook....

Good to hear from you.
Atheism? Wow! The easy ones first, eh!

My Grand Oeuvre will be about how Science and Religion might be quite easily reconciled; but guess what? I'm having a terrible time in getting it started. I've made six different attempts so far.
This is not because I don't know what I want to say, but because it matters terribly which order I say it in... and that's giving me endless headaches, because there are six different things that all need saying FIRST.
Well.. having said that, let's have a bash...

The first thing I would suggest, if you are seriously interested in the whole God/no God business, is to please re-read 'The Tale of the Kale'.. the last chapter of 'Scenes from a Smallholding'. I spent longer on writing that chapter than on the whole of the rest of the book (and that's the chapter the publisher most wanted to cut out, naturally!). The chapter has been called various things by various readers, all the way from 'brilliant and incisive', to 'pointless philosophical ramblings'.
'Incisive' or not, it is written as clearly as I am able. What it is NOT is 'philosophical ramblings'. In the first place, it is not philosophical (ie, 'extended opinion'), but logical (ie, based upon simple premises, leading to a rational conclusion). And it doesn't 'ramble'. It follows a clear consistent path.

Having said all that.. what is the essence of my argument in 'Kale'?

Deep breath........
First of all, forget any dispute about evolution. Nobody seriously doubts that some form of evolution may have or could have taken place. (If you do dispute evolution, please don't write and tell me. I'm not interested.)
The REAL issue is 'origin of life', and NOT 'evolution'.

Dawkins and co are Materialists, which means they believe that Matter/Energy came first in the universe and everything else came from out of Matter/Energy. This includes Life, which, they say, spontaneously arose from chemicals and lightning (Matter/Energy), and maybe cosmic rays (Matter/Energy) or similar. They have no proof of this, despite having tried to synthesise Life from inert chemicals etc for over fifty years. Millions of dollars spent have produced NO Life from base Matter/Energy.

So.. no proof, or even evidence.
What is more, there is no reasonable theoretical backing for their assumption that Life developed spontaneously from Matter/Energy alone (note the essential word 'alone' here.) Here's the problem:
If Life arose spontaneously from un-alive chemicals (Matter/Energy), where did the Life in the living form come from? It MUST have been present (as some form of potential) within those un-alive chemicals, must it not? Because, if there is ONLY chemicals (Matter/Energy), there can be nowhere else for it to have come from. Do you see the logic of this?
What's more, the Materialists claim that not just Life, but Mind and eventually Consciousness (and Self-Consciousness, the mark of Man) in turn arose spontaneously (and by random accident) from... well.. just from chemicals (Matter/Energy). Thus, if the universe is made up only of Matter/Energy/chemicals, these entities must all or severally contain the potential for Life, Mind and Consciousness within themselves (as there is nowhere else for them to have come from). See the logic?

What's more... if there is nowhere else except M/E/c for L,M,C to have come from, it stands to reason that every atom of Matter, and every pulse of Energy must contain ALL Life patterns (from an oak leaf to an elephant), because, again, there is nowhere else for these patterns to have come from, and as Materialists tell us that the universe is all one big accident, there can be no way of knowing in advance which little drop of Matter/Energy is going to become a giraffe and which will become a microbe. Thus, every quantum of Matter/Energy must contain ALL the plans and patterns of ALL living things, if more than one form is to arise by spontaneous accident, as they claim. Do you see the logic of this?

Thus the Materialist argument contains a huge paradox: that un-alive Matter, which supposedly gave rise spontaneously to Life, Mind, and Consciousness, must itself be alive, mindful and conscious (in some potential way) as there is absolutely nowhere else for LMC to have derived from.
In other words, Matter/Energy is both un-alive and alive at the same time, thus breaking the first rule of logic, that a thing can not be both A and not-A at the same time.

This is why I find Materialism to be literally a non-sense: it is irrational, and there is no supporting evidence for it either. Why people who call themselves 'scientists' still give it house room is a mystery to me. (Well, actually, it's no longer a mystery to me at all, but that's another tragic story altogether. Again, please re-read 'The Tale of the Kale' for starters).

So what is the alternative to Materialism? Philosophically speaking, it is 'Idealism'. 'Idealism' is the technical term for believing that Mind came first, and Matter came later, somehow created by Mind.
All religions are idealist philosophies of one kind or another. They all disagree in detail for various reasons. The two main reasons are firstly, that people have a tiresome gift for misunderstanding and messing up simple helpful ideas like basic 'Christianity' (be nice to each other), for example, or 'Communism' (why not share things?), or, I would say, even 'Science' itself (build your theories according to all available evidence) (see my argument re Materialism above).
'The Life of Brian' showed this gift for messing things up magnificently, both on the religious front ('Follow the shoe!' 'No... follow the gourd!') and politically (The People's Liberation Front of Judea vs The Liberation Front for the People of Judea etc etc etc....).

Secondly, if we propose, as Idealists do, that Big Mind somehow created what we think of as Life, Lesser Mind, Consciousness, and for an encore, the physical universe, then it's only reasonable to assume that this Big Mind is considerably more powerful than yours and mine, and that therefore its motives and methods must necessarily be beyond our comprehension. As a parallel, try explaining why you're doing a crossword to a dog. Better still, to a flea. There ARE layers of Mind. We all know this. Thus it's no big deal to assume that there might be layers above us to the degree that we are above a virus or a daffodil.

Is there any evidence for the Idealist view? It all depends on what you call evidence.
For a Materialist, such things as ghosts, psychokinesis, telepathy, visions, etc must all be unthinkable nonsense. Therefore, he says, as they are all nonsense by definition, there can be no such thing as evidence for them, so it is a waste of my valuable scientific time to even look at this so-called 'evidence'.
This is the standard 'scientific' position, believe it or not. 'Unless events fit into my pre-conceived notion of Reality, (ie, the Materialist doctrine), then they simply don't exist.' Lunacy.. and bad science, of course.

As I hope I've shown above, the Materialist doctrine is fatally flawed according to the two scientific pillars any theory needs to sustain it (theory and evidence), therefore this 'It CAN'T exist, therefore it DOESN'T exist' nonsense is.. well... non-sense.

The Idealist view (that Mind is superior to and preceded Matter) may be harder to understand, but it does not contain the same gross paradox that Materialism does, and thus DOES allow for such things as ghosts and telepathy etc to occur: it allows a framework for non-material essences to exist and operate in, in other words.
If you need some examples of the non-physical oddities that occur from time to time, (actually, far more often than people brain-washed by Materialism think) try reading Lyall Watson's 'Supernature' and 'The Romeo Error'; Colin Wilson's 'Mysteries'; Matthew Manning's 'The Link'; and JG Fuller's 'Arigo: Surgeon of the Rusty Knife'.

I will go into all this in more detail in my book (if I ever get it finished!), but I hope this might give you some food for thought, Duke.
Please note that to accept that Idealism is a more rational philosophy than Materialism does NOT mean that you then have to accept any dogma whatsoever along with this. All the world's religions are Idealist-based, but they are all confections to various degrees, and have accumulated all sorts of rubbish down the centuries. I look into this issue in a little greater depth in 'More Scenes from a Smallholding' .. why not re-read that passage too, Duke?
Meanwhile.. don't believe any of these religions! Read.. think... and always follow the path of logic. Don't follow the gourd! Look deeper. Logic will take you a very long way, and keep you from being brainwashed into the bargain.

Please note too that the issue of 'First Cause' remains a problem for both philosophies. For the Materialists, it's presented as 'What came before the Big Bang?', and 'What came before whatever it was that came before the Big Bang?' etc etc. ad infinitum.
For the Idealist it presents as 'What came before God, or whatever you want to call It?'
It's 'a constant', as scientists say: a common issue to both sides and can thus not be used as an argument for or against either of them.

But you might like to ponder on which philosophy (Materialism or Idealism) has the better answer to this one, however unsatisfactory!

Is this any use to you, Duke?
There's obviously a whole lot more to it. My book will look at how we've come to the sorry state of having Religion and Science stand on opposite sides of a great big fence, glaring and snorting at each other, and show how the two might logically be reconciled. It just requires a bit of clear thinking.

I make a couple of predictions, based upon my own thinking and analyses:
* In 20 years' time Richard Dawkins will be seen for the dinosaur he is, over-stating, as he does, his irrational and unproven theories as Scientific Truth. (OK.. 50 years... but it will come one day.)
* Life will never be synthesised from base Matter/Energy ALONE. (Current DNA/cloning technology depends upon the genes being transferred into an already living cell. Nobody will ever make a living cell from base Matter/Energy.) Wanna bet? Feeling lucky?!
* And while we're at it: Materialist science can never come up with their Holy Grail of 'a Theory of Everything', primarily because the Materialist paradigm chooses to ignore whole libraries full of evidence for events that are usually called 'paranormal' (ie, not explicable in Materialist terms). If you miss thousands of effects out of your calculations, you can't possibly come up with anything even faintly approaching a Theory of Everything, can you?

If anyone other than Duke should read this, and finds it interesting, I do urge you to read 'The Tale of the Kale', to be found in my book 'Scenes from a Smallholding'. There are plenty of used copies out there on the net, but if you're feeling generous you can buy your very own Fairtrade first edition direct from the author at www.thirdleafbooks.co.uk . Mention the word 'Kale' in your PayPal order and I'll be happy to give you a 10% (£1) discount. Oh.. and I'll be happy to sign or dedicate your copy too if that's of any interest.

Whew!
That's enough for today. My brain hurts. Time to go and saw a bit of wood I think.

All best wishes to all out there...