Panentheism: ... clarifying ... Man made in the Image of God As certainly as science has brought society to a new level of sterility, it has just as certainly brought us, as individuals and as a species, to a potentially higher level of self-perception. This self-perception is so dazzling that even a reversal of the big bag, the implosion of reality itself, could not reduce our individual contributions to eternity. Science is not at fault for our lack of progress in the field of self-perception. Science has accomplished its purpose magnificently. we are the ones that have fallen behind in our willingness to reevaluate who we are. Violence and conflict abound in our daily lives because we do not understand our true nature. We are all a part of God. Our souls are sparks of God. How would our world be different if the realization of our being a part of God fueled each interaction? How would we, ourselves, be different? Journey through the third millennium to the year three thousand AD and glimpse what might be if we insist on remaining as we are. examine an alternative. We have free will and the ability, the power, to alter the course of our future - all we have to do is choose to do so.
About the Author: Mathematics/Science Undergraduate degree - University of Michigan Master's degree in Physical Science - Eastern Michigan University 30 years teaching mathematics & science 20 years science and/or mathematics department chair I'm not sure if I became a philosophical thinker because I was a depressant or if I became a depressant because I was a philosophical thinker. Whichever the case, I am both. To make matters even stranger I am an optimistic depressant philosophical thinker. Actually it might be more accurate of me to state that I am an optimistic depressant philosophical thinking metaphysicist. But how did metaphysics enter the picture? During my early teens I began questioning what was 'out there beyond ...' Over time this thinking sequentially lead to 'beyond the stars', 'beyond the galaxy', 'beyond time and space' until I came to the end of the physical universe itself. Once I had reached this 'outer wall' of the physical universe. I could not help but mentally poke a hole in this wall. Having created a hole in the outer wall of the physical, I peered through the hole only to see nothing. At this point I was mesmerized with questions that forever haunted me: What is this nothingness on the 'outside' of the physical universe? What is the physical universe immersed within? What is out there? What are the characteristics of this existence outside the universe? What does this outside of the universe have to do with us, with myself, with God Itself? The questions became cruelly unrelenting and overpoweringly dominating of my very psyche. With time and the use of humanity's four perceptual tools (observation - science, universal teachings - religions, rational dialectics - philosophy and universal language - mathematics) the answers began to reveal themselves. The answers came not in terms of a bias on the part of one tool as opposed to another but in terms of all four tools agreeing with each other. The biggest hurdles to the work came in the form of cynicism, skepticism, closed minds and most of all in the form of the words, 'can't', 'its impossible to know', 'humankind is not intended to understand', 'prove it'. In all good conscience, it must be stated, 'We cannot prove anything beyond all doubt ...' Having stated the obvious, we can then move on to state: '... but we can 'prove beyond a reasonable doubt.' So it is a new model of reality emerged capable of leading our species into the new age of the third millennium.