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The Traveling Sanctuary: A Spiritual Approach to Unplugging and Recharging

2010-08-24 00:00:00.0

There is always enough time for spiritual practice in a life if we'll make time for it. Yes, spiritual practice requires time -- not always a lot, but some to be sure. Of all the things I know that will affect your health for the better, spiritual practice is the one that works consistently well and to good effect.

I recently saw a client in my home office. She, like so many of us, spent a lot of time telling me that she doesn't have time to do spiritual work. She works full time. She's got a husband and a daughter, friends, three ongoing lawsuits, the usual goings-on of a busy life.

I listened and then countered with, "How can you not do spiritual work with all that going on?!"

There are two major kinds of time in life. They are kairos, or holy time and chronos, or clock time. Chronos runs our lives. It's what allows us to be on time, in time, timely. Soccer practice is five days a week at four. Drum lessons are on Tuesdays at five. Karate is on Saturday mornings. Despite the fact that it is a strictly human construct -- real time isn't linear -- we need chronos in order to make and fulfill our agreements.

Co-existent with chronos is kairos -- holy time, eternal time, the present moment, only the present moment. Now. It does well for our health when we make a commitment to touching into holy time over and over again during each daily round of activity.

Holy time is about Being. Clock time is about doing.

We were fashioned as human beings, not human doings. Spiritual practice is the easiest way I know to stay in touch with eternal time. Consider it checking in with Heaven whilst on Earth. Or, being in the world but not of it. In the beginning of a practice, everything is new and can feel effortful. No worries -- it will get easier, uh, with time.

Truly, the busier you are, the more prayertime you need. Have you ever thought of your life that way? That the more you do, the more guidance you need? The more people you know, the more blessing you need to be doing? The more you hurry, the more you need the slowing of everyday time into holy time?

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Please click on "external source" to access the complete article, including the author's easy suggestions for establishing "holy time" throughout your day.

From The Urantia Book:

"Jesus was never in a hurry. He had time to comfort his fellow men 'as he passed by.' " 171:7.5

"...it behooves the Master's followers in all ages to learn to minister as 'they pass by'�to do unselfish good as they go about their daily duties."171:7.10

Finding God After Leaving Religion

2010-08-13 00:00:00.0

Thirty-four million Americans have given up on organized religion, according to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey. Yet for many of these dropouts -- from churches, synagogues, temples and so on -- spirituality is still a vital part of their lives.

How else would you explain the phenomenal success of Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love (soon a major motion picture), or the writings of the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, and others like them? Just because people are fed up with organized religion doesn't mean their appetite for spiritual things has been swallowed up, too.

I know because I was one of these millions who dropped out of active involvement in organized religion. But unlike the majority of the other 33,999,999 dropouts, I was a religious leader when I did.

I grew up in the church, the son of a Southern Baptist minister. When I graduated from college, I went to seminary, and after several years of study, I began my career as a professional minister. It wasn't long, however, before I discovered that the church was more lost than the world it was trying to save.

Go into many churches today, and instead of finding an institution interested in saving the world, what you may find is an institution vastly more interested in saving itself. For example, people go to church to find God. Instead of finding God, however, followers are often saddled with a catalogue of "do's" and "don'ts" as onerous as the US tax code. They are told what to think, how to believe, as well as how they're supposed to live.

In many places, the church is still the most segregated place in America. Where I grew up, some 40 or so years ago, many of my neighbors attended the Baptist church my father served. That is, if they were white Baptists; the black Baptists had a church of their own. Or they attended one of the other three mostly-segregated churches that occupied one of the four corners of Main Street. Today, however, your neighbor is just as likely to be black as white, or Muslim as Christian. Maybe people are leaving the church because they'd prefer to live in the real world -- the desegregated one.

Then, there are those church leaders who seem obsessed with having the biggest church, the largest crowds and the most expensive campuses. While 40 million people died of starvation in the last decade, churches spent $10 billion on campuses.

Perhaps some churchgoers departed because they'd rather their charity actually make a difference in the world.

If you went to church looking for relief from the stress and burdens of living, you might have found more of the same, only dressed as beliefs and dogmas, rules and expectations Then, there's the debating, disagreement, and division that goes on between churches, as well as between people in the same church. I call it the "We're right! You're Wrong!" syndrome: each group insisting that their beliefs are right, which by implication means that everyone else's beliefs are wrong. "We're in; you're out!" "We're the chosen ones; you're not!" Maybe those who came looking for some sanity in life are leaving the church to preserve what little remains.

What about the seemingly endless clergy scandals? It may be several years yet before we know the full impact of this demonic debacle. I suspect that scores of people are just plain fed up with an institution that would "condemn gays and lesbians for coming out of their closets," as someone characterized it, "while hiding clergy pedophiles in its own."

Some 15 or so years ago I, like millions of others, dropped out of active involvement in the church. Soon thereafter, I began wondering where to go to find God. For a few years, I went nowhere. I just wandered around in a kind of spiritual wilderness. Then, one Sunday afternoon, completely unexpectedly as well as outside the church, I had a deeply profound spiritual awakening. I describe it in my book, The Enoch Factor.

Among the many realizations to which I awakened was this: "You don't have to go to church to know God." For reasons too obvious to mention, this isn't the kind of message the church, or any religion, wants spread around. But it's true nonetheless. There is no religion, not even the Christian religion, holding the title deed to God. God's grace is not limited to a select few. The moment any religion believes it is, you can be sure that religion knows nothing of God.

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Please click on "external source" to access the entire article...

And, for some Urantia Book perspective on finding God, please go HERE to Truthbook's page of the same name.

From The Urantia Book:

100:1.7 Religion cannot be bestowed, received, loaned, learned, or lost. It is a personal experience which grows proportionally to the growing quest for final values. Cosmic growth thus attends on the accumulation of meanings and the ever-expanding elevation of values.

Keeping faith, losing religion

2010-08-06 00:00:00.0

`Today, I quit being a Christian.''

With those words last week on Facebook, Anne Rice delivered a wake-up call for organized religion. The question is whether it will be recognized as such.

``I remain committed to Christ as always,'' she wrote, ``but not to being `Christian' or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to `belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious and deservedly infamous group. For 10 years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.''

You will recall that the author, famed for her vampire novels, made a much-publicized return to the Catholicism of her youth after years of calling herself an atheist. Now, years later, she says she hasn't lost her faith, but she's had it up to here with organized religion.

``In the name of Christ,'' she wrote, ``I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life.''

But Rice is hardly the only one who feels as she does.

According to a 2008 study by Trinity College, religiosity is trending down sharply in this country. The American Religious Identification Survey, which polled more than 54,000 American adults, found that the percentage who call themselves Christian has fallen by 10 since 1990 (from 86.2 percent to 76 percent) while the percentage of those who claim no religious affiliation has almost doubled (from 8.2 to 15) in the same span.

Organized religion, Christianity in particular, is on the decline, and it has no one to blame but itself: It traded moral authority for political power.

Consider that, after the election of 2004, a church in North Carolina made news for kicking out nine congregants because they committed the un-Christian act of . . . voting for Democrat John Kerry.

Who can blame people for saying, If that's faith, count me out. Has atheism ever had a better salesman than Jerry Falwell blaming the Sept. 11 attacks on the ACLU or Pat Robertson laying Haiti's earthquake off on an ancient curse?

...it might behoove keepers of the faith to keep in mind the distinction Anne Rice drew in her farewell:

Christ didn't fail her, she said. Christianity did.

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Please click on "external source" to access the entire article.

Here's a pertinent quote from The Urantia Book:

Christianity suffers under a great handicap because it has become identified in the minds of all the world as a part of the social system, the industrial life, and the moral standards of Western civilization; and thus has Christianity unwittingly seemed to sponsor a society which staggers under the guilt of tolerating science without idealism, politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without restraint, knowledge without character, power without conscience, and industry without morality. 195:10.20

By clicking on the highlighted links, you can go to some of our topical studies on Truthbook.com.

The End of Hyperconsumerism

2010-08-06 00:00:00.0

What was the last thing you did that really, truly mattered? What was the last conversation you had about something more meaningful than a project at work, plans for the weekend, a novel you read or film you watched? We work a lot, play a little, and marvel at how quickly time passes. What we don't do is spend much time pondering why we're doing the things we do or whether there might be a better way to live. For a long while, this surface-level existence was enough; but now our priorities are changing. The Great Recession has yielded much hardship, but we also must credit it for yanking us out of our ruts and routines and making us reconsider what is really important - and how satisfying our lives truly have been.

At the tail end of 2009, Euro RSCG Worldwide undertook a seven-market study to better understand an emerging shift toward what we refer to as mindful consumption. Whereas in recent decades our spending had been quick and unthinking (I see, therefore I buy), now it is becoming more conscious and considered. Our examination of these patterns forms the basis of our new book, Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending. What we discovered in our research is that this change in consumption reflects far more than a desire for savings or anxiety over an uncertain future; people are experiencing a deep-seated discontent and desire for change. Among the 1,500 Americans we surveyed, for example, two-thirds said society is moving in the wrong direction, while eight in ten complained that people have become too shallow, focusing too much on things that don't really matter. Three-quarters worry that people have grown intellectually lazy. More surprising, two-thirds actually see an upside to the recession, saying it has served to remind people of what is really important in life. What the survey respondents were expressing is unhappiness with life as we have come to know it and a hunger for more. Not more "stuff," but more substance and meaning. More purpose and fulfillment. A more satisfying way of living.

Why the sudden urge for more? While the economic skies were bright, most of us were kept busy by our day-to-day affairs as consumers and the eternal quest to accumulate. Begun in earnest in the years following World War II (an automatic washer! a percolating coffeepot!), our hyperconsumerist tendencies accelerated in the 1970s and 80s, when we suddenly realized just how many things we couldn't bear to live without, whether it be the fad of the day (Pet Rock, anyone?) or the latest in electronics. As Mad Magazine astutely noted years ago: "The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments."

The problem with our obsessive consumption--even overlooking such pesky considerations as the plundering of our natural resources--is that it managed, in the last half century, to become our culture...

In much of the developed world and in particular in the United States, many of us have experienced a decades-long journey marked by mindless excess, increasing artificiality, and alienation. Now we are looking for the sorts of satisfactions that don't come with a price tag and three easy payments.

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Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

From The Urantia Book:

When the materialistic-secular panic is over, the religion of Jesus will not be found bankrupt. The spiritual bank of the kingdom of heaven will be paying out faith, hope, and moral security to all who draw upon it �in His name.� 195.6.1

The teachings of Jesus, even though greatly modified, survived the mystery cults of their birthtime, the ignorance and superstition of the dark ages, and are even now slowly triumphing over the materialism, mechanism, and secularism of the twentieth century. And such times of great testing and threatened defeat are always times of great revelation. 195.9.3

Religion's Invisible Women

2010-07-27 00:00:00.0

Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, a courageous woman from the arid north of Kenya, devotes her life to building peace. She compares this work to an egg. "An egg is delicate and fragile. But if given the right conditions, it gives life." Likewise, the potential for peace is fragile, and it needs careful nurturing if that potential is to be fulfilled.

Only a tiny number of those who sign peace agreements are women (one count puts the share at 2 percent). Likewise, photographs of interfaith gatherings constitute unmistakable evidence that religious leadership is one of the last places where the glass ceiling survives intact. But women, of course -- as victims of war, citizens, and nurturers of values that are transmitted from generation to generation -- are obviously deeply engaged in peace and religion. So where are they?

This was the question underlying a symposium at Georgetown University last week held by the United States Institute for Peace out of concern that both religion and women were too rarely at the center of its work. The symposium revealed an extraordinary array of activity that involves women, peace, and religion.

Stories of creativity, persistence and heroism tumbled out in a series of interviews and at the symposium. Dekha Ibrahim Abdi quoted the Koran to shame the groups fighting each other in her country into addressing their differences. Nuns in Uganda, Colombia and the Philippines stand as witnesses, hide those in danger, and demand action where rape is used as a weapon of war. Ashima Kaul returns again and again to Kashmir to document a past where different communities lived peacefully side by side. Bilkisu Yussuf demands action from Muslim and Christian leaders alike in the tense north of Nigeria and Amina Rasul-Bernardo helps Muslim women religious leaders (the Aleemat) in the Philippines to break out of traditional supporting roles into action to transform the community. Elana Rozenman hosts women from all Israeli communities at her house in "pajama parties" that offer a tiny glimpse of her vision of peaceful diversity.

So a first puzzle is why so much of this work is simply invisible. Security and peace have continued to be male bastions, despite Security Council Resolution 1325 that calls unequivocally for more women in peace processes. Some women claim that they need to be invisible to do their work well, to protect them from threats and to make sure that credit and responsibility are shared.

But invisibility has a cost. It means that heroines are rarely recognized and celebrated. There are fewer role models to inspire young leaders. And support and funding rarely go to invisible efforts.

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Please click on "external source" to access this entire article. And, you may be interested to have a look at Truthbook's topical study on Women HERE. The Urantia Book has a lot to say on this subject...and HERE is the link to our study on Peace

House Church: Skip the sermon, worship at home

2010-07-23 00:00:00.0

DALLAS � To get to church on a recent Sunday morning, the Yeldell family walked no farther than their own living room to greet fellow worshippers.

The members of this "house church" are part of what experts say is a fundamental shift in the way U.S. Christians think about church. Skip the sermons, costly church buildings and large, faceless crowds, they say. House church is about relationships forged in small faith communities.

In general, house churches consist of 12 to 15 people who share what's going on in their lives, often turning to Scriptures for guidance. They rely on the Holy Spirit or spontaneity to lead the direction of their weekly gatherings.

"I think part of the appeal for some in the house church movement is the desire to return to a simpler expression of church," said Ed Stetzer, a seminary professor and president of Lifeway Research, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. "For many, church has become too much (like a) business while they just want to live like the Bible."

House church proponents claim their small groups are sort of a throwback to the early Christian church in that they have no clergy and everyone is expected to contribute to the teaching, singing and praying.

They are more commonly seen in countries where Christianity is not the dominant religion. Organizers say they're just starting to take off in the U.S.

A study by the Barna Group, a firm specializing in data on religion and society, estimates that 6 million to 12 million Americans attend house churches. A survey last year by the Pew Forum found that 9 percent of American Protestants only attended home services.

"The only consistent thing about house church is that each one is different," said Robin Yeldell, who, in 2006, left a traditional church where he was a missions committee chairman.

The gathering at the Yeldell's home is a lively, sometimes chaotic event, with noisy and mostly happy young children flitting about.

After a time of fellowship, everyone gravitates to the kitchen table to observe the Eucharist with prayer, pinched-off pieces of sourdough bread and red wine in plastic cups. There's grape juice for the kids.

The celebration continues with a potluck meal. When they return to the living room, one member picks up a guitar to strum praise-and-worship songs that others softly sing.

Sparked by a previous discussion about whether they should start collecting an offering for the needy, Yeldell shares a Power Point presentation he created about "corporate giving" on his big screen TV.

The majority seems averse to a regular offering, preferring to take up a collection only when a need or charitable cause arises.

As if on cue, Sean Allen, a laid-off welder who is now homeless with health issues, joined their gathering late. The soft-spoken 39-year-old said he had been sick and struggling to pay some bills.

"I'm just here," Allen told fellow worshippers. "Do what you want. Let the Lord lead your heart."

Allen, who recently converted to Christianity from Islam, said a friend at a traditional church introduced him to the house church, which he prefers and occasionally attends because "they're more down to earth."

A few people agreed to write checks directly to the companies Allen owes while some debated whether money is the best way to help the man. A couple with five young children told him they couldn't afford to assist financially but he was always welcome to join them in their home for meals.

"I'd say the vast majority of house churches we know are Christians honestly trying to live 24-7 for Jesus," said Tony Dale of Austin. He and his wife, Felicity, are pioneers in the American house church movement which is also referred to as home church, organic church or simple church.

There aren't any signs out front so house churches are difficult to find. Prospective worshippers usually locate them by searching the Internet or through word of mouth.

Members rotate the services from house to house and take turns facilitating the gatherings. Anything more than about 15 people and the small group loses its ability to interact with each person, churchgoers say.

When they get too large, they divide and multiply.

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Please click on "external source article" to access this whole piece. I really like this idea - especially for Urantia Book readers who may want to attract the people who have found it difficult to practice the religion of personal experience in institutionalized churches. With a "non-denominational" approach, it might be possible to really be the leaven for a whole new movement. Something to think about...

"The security of a religious group depends on spiritual unity, not on theological uniformity. A religious group should be able to enjoy the liberty of freethinking without having to become "freethinkers." There is great hope for any church that worships the living God, validates the brotherhood of man, and dares to remove all creedal pressure from its members." (103:5.12)

Dallas and the 2014 Parliament of World Religions

2010-07-23 00:00:00.0

Dallas, Brussels and Guadalajara are the finalists to host the 2014 Parliament of the World's Religions.

If Dallas is chosen to host the meeting, what themes would you suggest the international forum focus on?

This question seems pertinent to our weekly discussion because we have concentrated the last few months on how to create a genuine religious dialogue. By genuine, I mean one where differences are acknowledged, debated and understood, not treated as if they don't exist.

The question also gives you a chance to step back and envision what issues may be most challenging to the world in another four years. Journalists are very good at looking backward, but I would love to hear from each of you what themes you think we are likely to be dealing with in another four years.

AMY MARTIN, Executive Director, Earth Rhythms; Writer/editor, Moonlady Media:

...judging by the extensive survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, the most pressing issue faced by established religion itself are the fast rising numbers of those who claim no religion at all, though many maintain an active spiritual life. Now comprising 16% of the general population, among those below 30 years of age it is over 30%.

How will this meteoric rise of the agnostic/spiritual not religious/unaffiliated impact society? How will churches and other spiritual centers adapt? If this trend reduces their number, what will source the vital community and charitable works they previously provided? Without sanctioned leaders, how will the agnostic/spiritual not religious/unaffiliated make their voices known?

LARRY BETHUNE, Senior Pastor, University Baptist Church, Austin:

I would like to see more honest and direct dialogue about violence at the Parliament of World Religions, including especially violence in the name of religion. While most religions prize peace and reject violence as a means of achieving spiritual goals, most have also betrayed those values at different points in their history by perpetrating violence in the name of the Divine for purposes of expansion, conquering enemies, and internal control.

GEORGE MASON, Senior Pastor, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas:

We have been concentrating on the question of how to live respectfully with one another by acknowledging our religious differences and not pretending that every religion is fundamentally the same, thus minimizing the particular truth claims made by each.

But we also need to acknowledge that one common value or teaching in all our traditions is some version of the Golden Rule -- "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

KATIE SHERROD, Progressive Episcopalian activist, independent writer/film producer, Fort Worth:

Wherever this conference is held, I hope it will address an issue of vital, even life and death importance to more than half of all humanity, and that is "Are women created in the image of God?"

This question is THE core question, because out of it arises issues of education, poverty, violence, access to medical care, the spread of AIDS, the treatment of indigenous people, infant mortality, even peace and justice.

If the answer is "Yes, women are created in the image of God," then what does that mean to those religions that insist on treating women as somehow less human than men?

WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Dean and Professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University:

The Parliament of the World's Religions has offered a fascinating forum for interfaith conversation, according to one faculty member at Perkins School of Theology who has attended the last two parliaments. Dallas would be blessed to host such a significant international event.

My thematic suggestion is "The Languages of Religious Life." By 2014, if we have not either killed one another or become captives of some tyranny for the sheer sake of survival, human beings may be ready to take a fresh look at the resources of religion for a way to live.

DARRELL BOCK, Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary:

Three or four issues stand out. Cooperation in dealing with violence, hunger, poverty and the care of global resources would be on my list.

MATTHEW WILSON, Associate Professor of Political Science, Southern Methodist University:

One major theme that would be appropriate in any venue, but especially in Dallas, would be the moral issues surrounding migration.

All of the nations of the developed world are likely to face heavy flows of incoming migrants from poorer countries in years to come, and these new arrivals will face both cultural and economic backlash. Rather than simply dismissing or condemning those who are troubled by large-scale immigration, the world's religions would be well advised to engage thoughtfully the economic, cultural, and security implications of human migration, and to develop a framework for moral response.

CYNTHIA RIGBY, W.C. Brown Professor of Theology, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary:

Global capitalism and poverty.

Violence against women and children.

Technology and spirituality.

Identity and Dialogue.

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Each of these comments is but a small snippet, so please click on "external source article" for the complete article.

The Spiritual Backbone

2010-07-16 00:00:00.0

For some people the stock market is akin to the Day of Judgment, offering condemnation or redemption. Such judgment, if you allow it to, can break your spiritual backbone: you begin relating to other people (and even to yourself) as a commodity. If you lose the "I-Thou" relationship, converting to "I-It," you simply will manipulate others and use every available instrument to dominate and shape friends, family, and coworkers into becoming whom you desire them to be. This perversion may even convince some people to give up their identities and accept the roles assigned by the manipulator.

The Bible says, Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless. (Eccles. 5:10) This meaninglessness takes the form of a frantic existence in which unholy people pursue their goals by every means available (including ethically and legally questionable ones). They consider cheating, lying, and deceiving as legitimate means of pursuing their goals. They will betray friends, colleagues, and even members of their own families. For them there are no permanent friends, only permanent interests-their own. But sooner or later their deceptive practices are revealed, and such unholy people become abhorred. No one "delights" in their works, no matter how impressive their accomplishments or how generous the use of their wealth.
The Bible says, Dishonest scales are disgusting to the Lord, but accurate weights are pleasing to him. (Prov. 11:1)

Those with unholy purposes are relatively free from anxiety because they feel no sense of guilt and shame. They become anxious only if threatened, such as when found guilty in a legal sense. As soon as the threat dissipates, they continue the questionable behavior. They believe only in the impersonal imperatives of profit. This nihilism generates self-corrupting aimlessness and an inner lawlessness. The best-known of these people are featured regularly in scandals reported in the business section of newspapers. One unscrupulous man had the audacity to misuse a biblical quotation as an explanation for his predatory business behavior: Be as cunning as snakes. (Matt. 10:16)

Unholy purposes are devotions without virtue: they are fueled by furious passions, vile excesses, and frenzied pursuits. Those who pursue unholy purposes experience (at best) a counterfeit ecstasy in the worship of their goals and themselves. What they experience is a perversion of the soul, an uneasiness of mind, a privation of good, all of which culminate in the stagnancy of the spirit. Acquiring anything near their goal, which is itself a moving target, does not bring gratification to those with unholy purposes, but only echoes their core unhappiness.

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Please click on "external source" to access the complete article.

And, you might enjoy reading what the Master had to say about wealth, and its proper usage HERE and HERE. You can also go to our convenient search feature to find even more Urantia Book wisdom about wealth.

Forgotten Man Sought Origin of Kindness - Book Review

2010-07-16 00:00:00.0

At exactly the point where religion, history and science intersect, we find the great besetting question of whether humankind is good or evil by nature. Why, for example, did a few Righteous Gentiles put themselves at risk to assist the victims of the Holocaust while so many others served as �Hitler�s willing executioners�?

The struggle to answer what is essentially a moral question through the scientific method is described in fascinating detail in �The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness� by Oren Harman (Norton, $27.95), a remarkable account of the scientific study of selflessness and, at the same time, a biography of a wholly overlooked figure in the history of science.

Harman points out that the hard questions of good and evil begin in the Bible: �Am I my brother�s keeper?� Cain asks. The same questions were still being asked when Darwin first suggested that �survival of the fittest� was a matter of natural law. Yet it is also true that some amoebas sacrifice themselves for the benefit of their fellow creatures, vampire bats share blood, and �sentry� gazelles warn the flock by leaping when a lion is spotted, thus putting themselves at risk of death.

�Is there, in fact, a natural origin to our acts of kindness?� asks Harman. �Does the virtue of amoebas and bats and gazelles and humans come from the very same place?�

Harman, a professor at Bar- Ilan University in Israel, chose an unlikely focal point for his ambitious work � the strange life and tragic death of a man named George Price (1922-1975), a �forgotten American genius� who �caught a glimpse of the great canvas of natural selection,� reduced the workings of altruism to an �elegant equation� and �literally came off the street, anonymous, to present it to the world.� Yet Price ended up as a forgotten eccentric buried in a pauper�s grave in London.

Some famous figures populate �The Price of Altruism� � �from nineteenth-century czars to mid-twentieth century telepathists to biological mathematicians and brain imagers,� as the author himself sums it up � but Price�s life story provides �a precious and original counterpoint.�
Raised in New York City during the Depression, Price was though to be �strange, mechanical, even perhaps slightly autistic,� but also undeniably gifted, even if �his genius was baffling, even a little unsettling.� He dropped out of Harvard because of poor grades, ended up at the University of Chicago, joined the Manhattan Project in 1943 and later worked at IBM. But even as his articles and inventions were beginning to attract attention, Price was unemployed, estranged from his wife and family, and ever more baffling to those who encountered him.

�Was he a cocky chemist? A restless engineer? A prophet?� asks Harman. �Somehow George Price was simultaneously all of these � and none.�

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This review of a virtually-forgotten man looks quite interesting...if only George Price had been able to read The Urantia Book! In our never-ending quest to achieve "God-likeness," we are mandated to emulate the kindness of God. It is not necessarily an inborn feature of humanity, but we can surely cultivate it in our daily lives, as Jesus advised, and as he demonstrated for us. Please see our topical study on kindness HERE.

And, to access the entire book review, please click on "external source article."

Reconciling Science and Religion: How Did These Great Minds Do It?

2010-07-09 00:00:00.0

In the beginning, I sought out people with an overt passion to reconcile science and religion in their discipline and in their person. Sir John Polkinghorne is one of the most prominent of these globally--a Cambridge quantum physicist who also became a Cambridge theologian in midlife and has written eloquently about finding both science and religion necessary to interpret the "rich, varied and surprising way the world actually is." I found his approach revelatory as I was cautiously finding my own way back to religion after Berlin. As a physicist, Polkinghorne sees a universe that is "supple" and "subtle"--a mix of determinism and of freedom--and this informs his imagination about the nature of God, what happens when we die, and what happens when he prays.

But as the years progressed I've been equally intrigued, and driven to new places in my own thinking, by scientists like the theoretical physicist and novelist Janna Levin. She is exploring the shape and finitude of the universe. She is fascinated by mathematical insights into how we can know what is real and true and how free we really might be. She is not a religious person in any sense, but her scientific inquiry is philosophically and spiritually evocative, rich in the raw materials of theology. Albert Einstein was more like Janna Levin than John Polkinghorne. His famous quip that "God does not play dice with the universe" is often wrongly imagined as a statement of faith, when in fact it was a clever barb tossed in a strictly scientific argument. Focusing as he did on the evolution of stars and galaxies and on intangible substances of light, time, and gravity, Einstein seemed to present little to offend religion. But as much as or more than Darwin's natural laws of evolution, Einstein's laws of physics could not tolerate a meddling divine hand.

Einstein approached science itself with a religious awe, as the physicist Freeman Dyson tells us. Yet as a young colleague of Einstein at Princeton, Dyson saw him become more philosophical as he grew older, leaving behind a rich body of reflection on the "mind" and "superior spirit" behind the cosmos. And as the astrophysicist Paul Davies describes in these pages, modern imaginations have yet to catch up to the potential spiritual implications of the way Einstein reframed our understanding of space and time. Einstein's dismissal of a "personal God" might have struck some in his time as heretical, but his self-described "cosmic religious sense" is intriguingly resonant with twenty-first century sensibilities. There has simply been too little space in our public life up to now to hear such echoes.

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