<div>On 10/24/06, joanna <<a href="mailto:123hop@comcast.net">123hop@comcast.net</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> I fail to understand how a story about human small-mindedness becomes a story about how there is nothing other than a material universe. Joanna </blockquote></div> 1) All organized religions are double edged, just like all ideologies.  At times they can broaden our way of thinking, bringing us to see patterns we didn't previously see, that may be true (unfortunately they are often false) and at other times they can make us small minded.  (I except Maoism-Avakianism which always lowers the IQ of the believer.  No double edge there!)  All organized religions and ideologies usually produce a way of thinking that brings about confirmation bias and a tendency to search for causal explanations that fit into one's world-view. Narrow-mindedness is a correct term here, but in my opinion "smart" people are as likely, if not more likely, to fall into this way of thinking as "dumb" people.  I do not exempt myself here.  I do it all the time.  ("Ah but I was so much older then, I am younger than that now.")  Jeffrey's example is just one illustration of this process. 2)  I haven't jumped into this conversation because frankly I find the whole thing beside the point.  I have always considered myself an "atheist" (since about age 13) but this was mostly a political-cultural reaction to the Catholic Church and later a cultural-political attraction to secular socialism and anarchism.  But frankly, this is all that I can say because: a: I don't know what either atheism or theism means.  I have never been able to figure it out.  So I would rather call myself, like Erich Fromm, a non-theist.  But I have read Spinoza's Ethics several times since my teenage years,  and I have to say he is a theist who is so consistent and monist that he could also either be a pantheist or as (Spinoza himself affirms) a monotheist.  b:  If you define god or gods by any historical or current organized religion then I would say that I am an atheist.  The great religious books interpreted literally seem the equivalent of fairy tales to me.  But many believers I know interpret the great religions "historically."  In other words, as human beings grow, individually and socially so does their notions of god or gods. Meister Eckhart once said that any set conception of "God" was a form of idolatry.  His mysticism sometimes seems equivalent to atheism.  3) Which brings me to your point about a "material universe".  If there is something beyond a "material universe" then as far as I am concerned it is also a material universe.  If you want to believe in an non- material universe that is fine.  Which ever way that universe-multiverse is our universe multi-verse.  It is possible, through some interpretations of QM to imagine this universe as nothing but bits of energy-information that has seemingly reached a certain state of "stability."  There may be other "universes" where this stability did not occur.  I don't know.  Except in mathematical computations this is beyond the horizon of my sight and always will be.  What ever is in "other" dimensions or universes or the multiple infinity of universes I don't know but I fail to see how this can ever be a "personal" God as practically all religions suppose.  4) I think that, for the most part, but not always, organized religion has been detrimental and pro-status quo.  But every so often religion does provide for solace, and access to emotional interpersonal "truths" (I use the word guardedly), and provide for occasions for solidarity. Peasants in El Salvador and people living in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro opened my eyes to much of this.  They were all "uneducated" and often smarter than me.  Jerry