Originally Posted by
Eric the Green
Good, and thanks for watching the videos. I think one of the hallmarks of a Christian, religious, or spiritual worldview, is that we are souls, and that we are created by, or a part of, a greater spiritual being. That means we are conscious beings, and that this consciousness can't be swept under the rug and ignored, even if science can't explain it. Our consciousness or the soul is divine, so materialism cannot explain it.
I understand why you would not agree that the Sun is conscious. I think Sheldrake does not mean self-conscious and deliberate like a human being, but consciousness or mind on a lower level or of a different kind, as in the pan-psychism which he promotes. An important point that evolutionary philosophers like Teilhard de Chardin have made, is that whatever we come from, and are a part of, must have what we have on some level. Conscious souls don't come from unconscious matter. Whatever consciousness we experience in ourselves, must be extended in our worldview to all beings. I agree with that point of view that these philosophers express.
I think his point that we perceive things as they are, where they are, and not just virtually in our brains, is an important corrective. The result of belief in the traditional materialist model of perception is alienation. We think we're separate from what we see and feel. We think it's not part of who we are. Thus we feel entitled to use it or destroy it for our own ends, since it's not part of us. But we are not separate, and the world that we perceive is connected to us and we are a part of it. There is no intermediate process, even if something is happening in the brain that accompanies sensation; we are just here, and conscious.
