Subject: Surprises
Date: 23 July 2007
From: Flash Light
To: Dr. Sophronius
Dear Dr. Sophronius,
Speaking of surprises, perhaps the biggest surprise of my life was finding Lord Anubis, whom I revere not because of faith, but because of doubt. As most people, I doubted the ancient Egyptian beliefs up until 1985, when the story appeared in the NY Science Times that a group of genetic engineers had tested the ancient Egyptian beliefs in resurrection of mummies, and astonishingly, verified them.
From my early Zen studies I had learned not just to believe in psychic power but to attempt to master it. The early Duke U. studies seemed to confirm the existence of ESP. You yourself witnessed a demonstration of psychic power by a Christian practitioner. Given your limited experience in the various kingdoms of the spiritual realm you and the practitioner attributed that psychic power to the deity you were both most familiar with, Jehovah.
I believe the spiritual realm is more wondrous than you've imagined. Logical Pantheism proposes to show how doubt and science can lead to an appreciation of the godhead wherein one can see Jehovah, Jesus, Ganesh, Vishnu, Zeus, Anubis, et al. as various manifestations of the Holy Ghost whom you have only recently come to accept.
This, as Daniel C. Dennett puts it in Breaking the Spell, involves trying to understand religion and spirit as natural phenomena rather than supernatural phenomena.
As I put it previously (June 16, 2006), I believe such phenomena are not beyond nature, merely beyond science's current ability to understand nature.