The National Academies consist of four organizations: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. It was created in 1863 by a congressional charter approved by President Abraham Lincoln.
According to Wikipedia conceptions of God vary widely. Theologians and philosophers have studied God since the dawn of civilization. The Abrahamic conceptions of God include the trinitarian view of Christians, the Kabbalistic definition of Jewish mysticism, and the Islamic concept of God.
“Most people of the Jewish faith believe in a God who was somewhat of an arse,” said Doctor Aloysius DeJardin, one of the Senior Fellows at the NAS. Christians believe in a more compassionate God.
The Asian religions differ in their view of the divine: views of God in Hinduism vary by region, sect, and caste, ranging from monotheistic to polytheistic to atheistic; the view of God in Buddhism is almost non-theist.
Views of God held by individual believers vary so widely that there is no clear consensus on the nature of God. The contemporaneous French philosopher Michel Henry proposed a phenomenological approach and definition of God as the essence of Life.
Dr. DeJardin, one of the senior scientists, indicated they used SI Haykawa's abstraction ladder described in Language in Thought and Action to determine if God was concrete or abstract. After 5 minutes we determined that God was at the very top of the abstraction ladder.
In philosophical terminology, abstraction is the thought process wherein ideas are distanced from objects.
Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification, wherein formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient.
The National Academy of Sciences chastised both theologians and politicians for being evasively abstract on a variety of religious and political issues. Terms like God, the Trinity, immaculate conception, and family values are abstract and mean different things to different people.
“Theologians and some politicians, primarily the conservative ones, need to talk in more concrete terms,” Dr. DeJardin said. “theologians and politicians need to stop weasel wording and get to the point.“
Science is starting to make breakthroughs on God. The Spitzer telescope recently discovered a God Blob 12.9 billion light years from Earth, nearly at the time of creation. He also noted that CERN was looking for the God particle of Higgs's boson that stirred up a hornet's nest in the Vatican. The Vatican is opposed to the idea that God is made up of particles and believe the CERN testing could open up a black hole that will unleash the Anti-Christ on Earth.
“All I want to say at this time about the Vatican view is 'wow, '” laughed DeJardin.
Dr. DeJardin also wondered how people have been able to pray to an abstract object for all of these years.
Language in Thought and Action: Fifth Edition (Paperback) by S.I. Hayakawa
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God
Contact Rightardia: eelder1@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment