flowperson

You're not being depressing, just realistic !

flow....

Curlytop:

Thanks for the breakdown that you provided. It allows me to make more sense out of the label that is now pasted to my forehead since I took the test, and which is, by the way, the same as yours. But I don't notice it very often since, at my age, I avoid looking in the mirror as much as possible.

By the way, my usual sleep time is from 5:pm to 1:00 am. Sometimes we must ignore the obvious in order to keep our lives on a safe and sane level. Do not be intimidated by what others may observe regarding your habits and their effects in the world.

Creative people are valued for their eccentricties ! Relish the notion !!

flow....

The Michaelson-Morley thing was about measuring a precise value for the speed of llght I beleive.

The tinkering with holographic phenomena was not possible until quite recently in scientific terms ( just after WW II ) since the laser was not invented until 1947 by a Hungarian named Gabor if I recollect correctly.

And thank you my leige for the acknowlegement of my humble contributiions to the discussions here. Lots of white vans with protruding antennae are cruising by as we write and read !

flow....

I tend to agree that Ecclesiastes is the OT's attempt to integrate the relativistic, dualistic, eastern viewpoint into the western versions of the world in which we live. I do not know that I would describe it to be pessimistic, but rather more realistic.

While the reductionist, power-driven, optomistic slant of western thought and action provides the impetus for the progressive jumps in civilized development that such western thought and action have brought to us all, we must also be ever mindful of the roadblocks that the natural world throws up to slow or reverse such "progress" if nature deems it to be incompatable with the long-term viability of the whole of creation. A sense of "balance" in the process is what is critical to be maintained, and that tends to be rapidly lost in a world whose development actiivities are principally profit-driven.

I have mentioned that Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching is one of my favorite books in describing an understanding of this physical side of reality. It is a good source of materials for productive meditation, and I compare its " doing-not doing " mode of understanding to that which is metaphorically described in Ecclesiastes. The picture of the whole that we live inside of has to be understood in both ways to have real value IMO.

flow....

This post is further to the above NY Times article regarding the difficulty in determining time and space realities and our perceptions and beliefs that may grow out of these things. IMO these things are the happenings that are usually considered to be the mystical roots of religious belief.

On other threads here it has been mentioned that the possibilty of a holographic paradigm for understanding the interconnectedness of the all is floating around out there. I have also mentioned the book, The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot as a resource. I've recently purchased another copy and plan to reread it because I believe the concept to be even more important these days than it was when I first learned of it and read Talbot's book fifteen years ago or so.

It will also be recalled that contemporary theorists in cosmological and physics research, such as Harvard's Lisa Randall, are now seriously looking at these ideas because they seem to draw together the disparate threads of the picture into a comprehensible whole that has the attributes of both meshing with ancient cultural beliefs and current observations.

I ran across this abbreviated explanation of the overall principle as explained by Michael Talbot on the web the other day and thought I would share it here. It makes a realistic amount of sense to me. See what you think.

flow....

The Amazing

Holographic Universe

By Michael Talbot

 12-23-5

In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser.

To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film.

When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose.

Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.

The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.

A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.

This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration.

Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side.

As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them.

When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in Aspect's experiment.

According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.

Such particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these "eidolons", the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.

In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected.

The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky.

Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.

In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order.

At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that given the proper tools it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-forgotten past.

What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question. Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the matrix that has given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or will be -- every configuration of matter and energy that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from bluü whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse of "All That Is."

Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might lie hidden in the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no reason to assume it does not contain more. Or as he puts it, perhaps the superholographic level of reality is a "mere stage" beyond which lies "an infinity of further development".

Bohm is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a hologram. Working independently in the field of brain research, Standford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also become persuaded of the holographic nature of reality.

Pribram was drawn to the holographic model by the puzzle of how and where memories are stored in the brain. For decades numerous studies have shown that rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are dispersed throughout the brain.

In a series of landmark experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of a rat's brain he removed he was unable to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was that no one was able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious "whole in every part" nature of memory storage.

Then in the 1960s Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for. Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram.

Pribram's theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain has the capacity to memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of information during the average human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of information contained in five sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Similarly, it has been discovered that in addition to their other capabilities, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information storage--simply by changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many different images on the same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic centimeter of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information.

Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the brain functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to tell him what comes to mind when he says the word "zebra", you do not have to clumsily sort back through ome gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to arrive at an answer. Instead, associations like "striped", "horselike", and "animal native to Africa" all pop into your head instantly.

Indeed, one of the most amazing things about the human thinking process is that every piece of information seems instantly cross- correlated with every other piece of information--another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with evey other portion, it is perhaps nature's supreme example of a cross-correlated system.

The storage of memory is not the only neurophysiological puzzle that becomes more tractable in light of Pribram's holographic model of the brain. Another is how the brain is able to translate the avalanche of frequencies it receives via the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, and so on) into the concrete world of our perceptions. Encoding and decoding frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a sort of lens, a translating device able to convert an apparently meaningless blur of frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram believes the brain also comprises a lens and uses holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through the senses into the inner world of our perceptions.

An impressive body of evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic principles to perform its operations. Pribram's theory, in fact, has gained increasing support among neurophysiologists.

Argentinian-Italian researcher Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic model into the world of acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by the fact that humans can locate the source of sounds without moving their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one ear, Zucarelli discovered that holographic principles can explain this ability.

Zucarelli has also developed the technology of holophonic sound, a recording technique able to reproduce acoustic situations with an almost uncanny realism.

Pribram's belief that our brains mathematically construct "hard" reality by relying on input from a frequency domain has also received a good deal of experimental support.

It has been found that each of our senses is sensitive to a much broader range of frequencies than was previously suspected.

Researchers have discovered, for instance, that our visual systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smell is in part dependent on what are now called "osmic frequencies", and that even the cells in our bodies are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such findings suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional perceptions.

But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram's holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm's theory. For if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is "there" is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality?

Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too is an illusion.

We are really "receivers" floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram.

This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram's views, has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and although many scientists have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others. A small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far. More than that, some believe it may solve some mysteries that have never before been explainable by science and even establish the paranormal as a part of nature.

Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribram, have noted that many para-psychological phenomena become much more understandable in terms of the holographic paradigm.

In a universe in which individual brains are actually indivisible portions of the greater hologram and everything is infinitely interconnected, telepathy may merely be the accessing of the holographic level.

It is obviously much easier to understand how information can travel from the mind of individual 'A' to that of individual 'B' at a far distance point and helps to understand a number of unsolved puzzles in psychology. In particular, Grof feels the holographic paradigm offers a model for understanding many of the baffling phenomena experienced by individuals during altered states of consciousness.

Creation - Holographic Universe - 2

In the 1950s, while conducting research into the beliefs of LSD as a psychotherapeutic tool, Grof had one female patient who suddenly became convinced she had assumed the identity of a female of a species of prehistoric reptile. During the course of her hallucination, she not only gave a richly detailed description of what it felt like to be encapsuled in such a form, but noted that the portion of the male of the species's anatomy was a patch of colored scales on the side of its head.

What was startling to Grof was that although the woman had no prior knowledge about such things, a conversation with a zoologist later confirmed that in certain species of reptiles colored areas on the head do indeed play an important role as triggers of sexual arousal.

The woman's experience was not unique. During the course of his research, Grof encountered examples of patients regressing and identifying with virtually every species on the evolutionary tree (research findings which helped influence the man-into-ape scene in the movie Altered States). Moreover, he found that such experiences frequently contained obscure zoological details which turned out to be accurate.

Regressions into the animal kingdom were not the only puzzling psychological phenomena Grof encountered. He also had patients who appeared to tap into some sort of collective or racial unconscious. Individuals with little or no education suddenly gave detailed descriptions of Zoroastrian funerary practices and scenes from Hindu mythology. In other categories of experience, individuals gave persuasive accounts of out-of-body journeys, of precognitive glimpses of the future, of regressions into apparent past-life incarnations.

In later research, Grof found the same range of phenomena manifested in therapy sessions which did not involve the use of drugs. Because the common element in such experiences appeared to be the transcending of an individual's consciousness beyond the usual boundaries of ego and/or limitations of space and time, Grof called such manifestations "transpersonal experiences", and in the late '60s he helped found a branch of psychology called "transpersonal psychology" devoted entirely to their study.

Although Grof's newly founded Association of Transpersonal Psychology garnered a rapidly growing group of like-minded professionals and has become a respected branch of psychology, for years neither Grof or any of his colleagues were able to offer a mechanism for explaining the bizarre psychological phenomena they were witnessing. But that has changed with the advent of the holographic paradigm.

As Grof recently noted, if the mind is actually part of a continuum, a labyrinth that is connected not only to every other mind that exists or has existed, but to every atom, organism, and region in the vastness of space and time itself, the fact that it is able to occasionally make forays into the labyrinth and have transpersonal experiences no longer seems so strange.

The holographic prardigm also has implications for so-called hard sciences like biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont College, has pointed out that if the concreteness of reality is but a holographic illusion, it would no longer be true to say the brain produces consciousness. Rather, it is consciousness that creates the appearance of the brain -- as well as the body and everything else around us we interpret as physical.

Such a turnabout in the way we view biological structures has caused researchers to point out that medicine and our understanding of the healing process could also be transformed by the holographic paradigm. If the apparent physical structure of the body is but a holographic projection of consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is much more responsible for our health than current medical wisdom allows. What we now view as miraculous remissions of disease may actually be due to changes in consciousness which in turn effect changes in the hologram of the body.

Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization may work so well because in the holographic domain of thought images are ultimately as real as "reality".

Even visions and experiences involving "non-ordinary" reality become explainable under the holographic paradigm. In his book "Gifts of Unknown Things," biologist Lyall Watson discribes his encounter with an Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a ritual dance, was able to make an entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin air. Watson relates that as he and another astonished onlooker continued to watch the woman, she caused the trees to reappear, then "click" off again and on again several times in succession.

Although current scientific understanding is incapable of explaining such events, experiences like this become more tenable if "hard" reality is only a holographic projection.

Perhaps we agree on what is "there" or "not there" because what we call consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the level of the human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely interconnected.

If this is true, it is the most profound implication of the holographic paradigm of all, for it means that experiences such as Watson's are not commonplace only because we have not programmed our minds with the beliefs that would make them so. In a holographic universe there are no limits to the extent to which we can alter the fabric of reality.

What we perceive as reality is only a canvas waiting for us to draw upon it any picture we want. Anything is possible, from bending spoons with the power of the mind to the phantasmagoric events experienced by Castaneda during his encounters with the Yaqui brujo don Juan, for magic is our birthright, no more or less miraculous than our ability to compute the reality we want when we are in our dreams.

Indeed, even our most fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, as Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to be seen as based on holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly makes sense, and everything in reality would have to be seen as a metaphor, for even the most haphazard events would express some underlying symmetry.

Whether Bohm and Pribram's holographic paradigm becomes accepted in science or dies an ignoble death remains to be seen, but it is safe to say that it has already had an influence on the thinking of many scientists. And even if it is found that the holographic model does not provide the best explanation for the instantaneous communications that seem to be passing back and forth between subatomic particles, at the very least, as noted by Basil Hiley, a physicist at Birbeck College in London, Aspect's findings "indicate that we must be prepared to consider radically new views of reality".

Sheeshhh !

You have to lose weight too ? I'm old enough to know I'm going to fluctuate about 5-10 lbs. over the year's passage. Heavier in the winter and a little lighter in the summer. But then I joke with people that my mom had to buy husky diapers for me when I was little.

You know me, I don't like making choices of the millenial sort because that automatically labels one, but probably I'd go your way and consider the thing metaphorical in most ways. However, there is also my belief that God is the author of history and the master manipulator of events in time to make His/Her historical truth unfold according to His/Her will. I believe that this article demonstrates how easy it is to fool all of us mortals regarding His/Her immortal and eternal intent.

flow....

As I've said elsewhere here before, I believe that it is all about time and space effects and how we deal with their inherent ability to confuse our minds and feelings which are conditioned from birth to seek out and adhere to order so that we may prosper and survive ( how Vulcan !!)

Yes, Fred, I also believe that Christ is the person meant to preside over eternity in our reality, and that He will call the temporal shots on G-d's behalf. People always seek out specific times and places in order to "order" processes that have significance to their realities, hence the proliferation of millenial theories. But as this article in today's New York Times points out, it is not all that easy to determine what reality really is in our realities.

Whew!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/27eins.html

flow....

OK test-meisters!!

What better way to end the year than with another test ? Actually the questions here were pretty revealing to the self, as opposed to the ones we did on theology elsewhere on the board. The results did not surprise me much though.Your Type is

INFP

Introverted

Intuitive

Feeling

Perceiving

Strength of the preferences %

33

88

50

33

INFP type description by D.Keirsey

INFP type description by J. Butt

Qualitative analysis of your type formula

 You are:

• moderately expressed introvert

• very expressed intuitive personality

• moderately expressed feeling personality

• moderately expressed perceiving personality

I guess these results officially make me a dangerous potential emotionally-driven thinking terrorist threat. Maybe that's why I see white vans laden with protruding antennas driving up and down the avenue in front of my complex all the time.

A fun test though !!

flow...

My daughter is visiting from LA and son and his wife from Chitown. Her parents bought a place north of town to escape Michigan winters and plan to retire here eventually.

I worked Sun am until noon and came home and made clam chowder and warmed up some turkey-organic bean chili I had in the freezer. Also made choc chip cookies and a pumpkin pie. The kids ( they're all in their 30's) showed up about 4:00 pm and we had the soup and some homemade rolls and raspberry preserve along with some cheese stuffed celery and whole-spiced cranberries. Champagne also. Mmmmmmmm good !

Opened presents with the kids and then went over to my parents and did the same there. Daughter and I got to bed about 9:00 pm exhausted while son and his wife went to a casino and proceeded to support the local economy.

Today we met the new in-laws so my mom and dad could meet them for the first time, and we all plus the kids stuffed at a casino buffet. Mmmmmmm good! No supper tonight ! A really nice Christmas for all and I'm taking the weekdays off this week to spend time with my kids, which is a rare occasion for us all.

Peace and love to all.

flow....

I know that I started another thread about this book just before it came out, but I could not for the life of me find it in the past listings.

Anyway this article that appears in today's Los Angeles Times expands upon Rice's life experiences and her arrival at what seems to me to be a progressive viewpoint. It is clear that her latest bestseller about the early boyhood of Jesus in Egypt grew out of that journey, and I thought it would be beneficial for us to read the article.

No, I haven't bought and read the book yet, but someday. Maybe someone should invite her to the board. Now wouldn't that be interesting?

http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/...2987,full.story?

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Wonderful Cynthia !!! Thank You !!!

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Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my !

The founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus (don't know if he was an uncle or not !) were abandoned twins and were nursed through childhood by a she-wolf.

God has the best time-space travel device and capabilities.

GOD IS DOG spelled backwards.

That's my take on it all !

Felice Navidad Amigos !

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des

This a cultural and historical aspect of Christianity and it goes way back to the beginning.

When Jesus became enraged at the money changers at the Jerusalem Temple, it was because they changed money for worshippers who were buying small animals and birds for burnt sacrifice at the brazier altar which was always in the forecourt of the Temple.

This was also an ancient thing among the Jews and the tabernacle in the desert featured a bronze or iron brazier-altar in the courtyard before the tent of the tabernacle in which sacrfices were burned, and which had upward curving horns at the four corners of the altar. This was a throwback to the pagan custom of offering burnt sacrifices to the animal spirits to assure future bounty after animals were sacrificed for nourishment in ancient times. Native American tribes had similar ritualistic practices that were an integral part of hunting activities.

At the founding of Christianity the faithful substituted "word" offerings for the animistic offerings of the past and thereby broke a mostly unbroken cultural chain of living offerings that went back to the dawn of humanity.

So this is where we all are today in our prayer activities whether they are ritualistic group prayers or personal and silent prayers. We believe that they are a medium of direct communication with God; and, it is the most important thing that we may offer Him/Her because they come from our minds and hearts.

flow....

jb

I believe that literally there is a little bit of God in each of us, and that we were/are made in His/Her image and likeness. With that in mind and to heart, when we enter new territory in interpersonal relations, we automatically use these gifts unconsciously to navigate our way through the interpersonal labyrinths of the world.

Of course deception exisits, so cumulative experience must increasingly inform our actions along the way. Trusting in God means everything in our making the appropriate choices.

flow....

I forgot to tell you how welcome you are here. I trust that you will have as good a time as the rest of us writing nuts are having. Wonderful therapy for life in a world that gets a little crazier each day.

Again, welcome !

Oh. I found Pierre in Wiki and it turns out he was one of the founders of modern psychotherapy. But he's French so not as well known as that Austrian dude. Janet's Disease is also named after him. We know it as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Really a genius !

flow....

I would say that it gives me a peace of mind that allows the core of my being to transcend the temporal limits of my flesh from time to time. And, it gives me an assurance that I will always be accepted as a significant, yet tiny, portion of a greater whole that is God's essence, whether I am living in this body or not.

flow....

I'm fond of the Heffalump, myself.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Don't know that one. Pretty please? Is it about a smaller portion of sugar?

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jasn

Martin Buber is one of my favorite writers, especially his book on good and evil in which he analogizes evil as the yeast in the dough that makes the whole rise.

He tends to look at his subject matter as whole pictures and then tries to make sense of them, which, IMO, is a very contemporary approach to looking at realities.

flow....

I believe that Pierre Janet was a true genius, even though I've not heard of him. Of course most people on this board would likely agree with that assessment. I'd like to know more about him. Any recommendations?

flow....

Ahhhhhhhh ! Yes, transparency, the essence of creation.

flow....

Ahhhhh ! What's in a name my sweet ?

flow....

You scored as Friedrich Schleiermacher.

I think you make a pretty good Schleiermacher, as you always emphasize the emotive and experiential as central to your spirituality and notion of God. I can't comment on your winsome looks, and how they may or may not have affected this identification.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

My comment regarding "winsome looks " could be categorized as self-deprecating, although it could be that some thought otherwise back in the day. But It appears that Friedrich was a handsome lad as I said.

flow....

OK, I give.

Please don't jump down my throat just yet, at least not before I have my ritual cinnamon toast and coffee.

You scored as Friedrich Schleiermacher.

You seek to make inner feeling and awareness of God the centre of your theology, which is the foundation of liberalism. Unfortunately, atheists are quick to accuse you of simply projecting humanity onto 'God' and liberalism never really recovers.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

73%

Charles Finney

67%

Jrgen Moltmann

53%

John Calvin

47%

Augustine

40%

Anselm

33%

Karl Barth

33%

Paul Tillich

33%

Jonathan Edwards

27%

Martin Luther

27%

See? The top three guys on my list I've never heard of ! Although I must say that Friedrich was a good looking devil. Does that count for my identification with what he believed?

Now Finney, that's a different matter. My two favorite time-travel novels were written by Walter Braden Finney, aka Jack Finney. Think they were related? Try the books. Great stories ! You'll like them. Simon Morely, along with Travis McGhee, is one of my life role models.

The rest of the bunch I've heard of, but not read in depth. But then you can see the fish better when you wade in shallow water.

By the way, Freidrich's name is literally meant to indentify something that is veiled, mysterious, and fast. Of course you know how literal our German friends are/were, especially in their naming conventions, so I guess Schleiermacher, besides being a good looking dude, identifies, at least in name, with some of my basic perceptions regarding reality.

Thanks Fred for your gentle persuasions.

flow....

Thanks MOW and Cynthia for clarifying the stuff about HIPPA.

I thought it might have been a quite large, lumbering, and voracious wild animal that dwelled in dark, swampy regions of the old world. Glad to know it's just another nameles, faceless, bureauracracy that was invented to minimize our importance as individuals in a "free" world.

flow....

I'm not taking this test.

I don't even know who half of these people are, not to mention what they believed. Besides, if we are indeed in an emergent church situation, I'm not sure I want to know what theologians of the past advocated in much detail.

I'd rather remain being what I am for now, a pleasure-seeking, materialistic, conformist Luddite.

America is such a great country !!

flow....