OUR TWO WORLDS, SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL Sections 2 and 3 have been added to "Futile Confrontations" at: http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/theo/atheist.html Comments will be appreciated, Thank you in advance, Ludwik
Well, it's certainly a well-written piece, and I can't find fault with it's conciliatory message in general. I do like the quote towards the end about prayer and action - if only more people took it to heart! However, I almost stopped reading early on, when you called for "recognition that most people on Earth live in two different worlds: material and spiritual." Assuming that by 'spiritual' you are referring to a supernatural spirit (rather than using the word 'spirit' as in 'get into the spirit of things'), then I have to completely disagree on that point. If we are going to accept that things are definitely true without evidence, then we have little reason to reject the concept of god in the first place. Luckily I read on, and the rest of the piece actually relies very little on spirituality, which surprised me due to the title of the thread. The only other notable issue I had was that it seemed to imply pure logic was entirely the domain of theology. This probably wasn't your intention but it's what I took away from what you said about 'non-overlapping magisteria'. As the good folks at xkcd pointed out, everything can ultimately be reduced to maths, including science, and there are many things in maths that rest entirely on pure logic.
