[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for including me in your reply to betty boop!

Look, I'd love to be convinced that there's another universe out there from which this universe sprang, even if its laws of nature look utterly magical to us at first. It would save me from having to wrap my mind around Physicist's Big-Bang-singularity-as-temporal-South-Pole model (which while helpful still makes me break out into a cold sweat when my mind's eye drifts from the balloon to "wherever" the balloon is floating). It's just that there's no evidence that there is (or even has to be) some person out there who had to fashion that balloon, etc. IMO the only thing that impels people to place a person out there is that impulse to anthropomorphism (or at least reification). After all these threads, I've still not found one good reason to suspect there's anything else going on.

I'd like to make two points in response to the above:

1. Some of those who believe in a spiritual realm see it as a collective consciousness rather than a being. In that view, life directs the evolution of "nature" to some something greater.

2. There is good reason to suspect something else is going on. What that something is - to you - becomes a matter of belief, but the "something" is proposed by science. PatrickHenry, betty boop and I have been bouncing this around on this thread beginning about post 70 and culminating about post 210.

[Alamo-Girl]

My apologies for the sloppy wording!

1. Some of those who believe in a spiritual realm see it as a collective consciousness rather than a being. In that view, life directs the evolution of "nature" to some something greater.

ought to have been worded this way:

1. Some of those who believe in a spiritual realm see the force of creating as a collective consciousness rather than a being. In that view, the sum of life directs the evolution of "nature" to something greater.

[PatrickHenry]

PatrickHenry, betty boop and I have been bouncing this around ...

And look what we have to show for it ... an appreciation of Raphael's work. Here's an even bigger, more complete view of the School of Athens.