I enjoy your research and conclusions, which I also agree with. With respect to naysaying scholars, I believe their rejection of your premises have nothing to do with science but with fear of the supernatural. Paul encountered their kind in the market place:
“Paul was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present. And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What would this idle babbler wish to say?” Others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,” – because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming?“(Acts 17:18-19)
Stoics and Epicureans were the two most prominent schools of nature philosophy, nature science and nature religion of that time. Theirs was a humanist, animist, monist, evolutionary, and scientific worldview predicated upon a one-dimensional universe of animated (evolving) physical matter or divine psychic energy (spiritualized matter). They were the physicists of their age.
The Greek Atomist Epicurus (341-270 BC) is the father of contemporary scientific materialism. The principle tenet of Atomism teaches that the world was not created by any deity, or with any design, but came about by a chance movement of physical atoms of various sizes and magnitude that cemented together and so formed the world.
“An age of science is necessarily an age of materialism,” declared Hugh Elliot early last century, “Ours is a scientific age, and it may be said with truth that we are all materialists now.” (Darwin Day in America, John G. West, xiv)
Modern materialists such as Julien de la Mettrie (1709-51), Paul Henri Thiery, and Baron D’Holbach (1723-89) all agreed that the human mind is the property of physical matter and man nothing but a bio-machine. La Mettrie speculated that machine-mans rational life is entirely determined by physical causes that run the gamut from raw meat, to climate, blood circulation, and gender. Genetic inheritance, said la Mettrie, causes machine-man to commit crime. This view casts parents into the role of “first cause” and would later manifest itself in the belief that State ‘experts,’ or Hillary’s “village” experts should have control of children. (Ibid, pp. 16-18)
Unlike their modern Stoic counterparts (New Age) who accept spirits, spirit guides, contact with spirits and so on, modern Atomists are Scrooges who adamantly maintain their position of no spirits, souls, consciousness, supernatural dimension, and so on.
Keep up the good work and don't let naysaying Scrooges get you down.
I remember that in Trevor Ravencroft's "Spear of Destiny", Rudolf Steiner is quoted that the use of psychotropic drugs to access hidden knowledge and gain occult powers was considered to be the original or true definition of black magic in esoteric lore (as opposed to achieving this through decades of mental discipline, meditation etc). Quite revealing that even the practitioners of so-called white magic understood that "psychonautism" had an even greater level of wickedness to it than their own techniques.
I enjoy your research and conclusions, which I also agree with. With respect to naysaying scholars, I believe their rejection of your premises have nothing to do with science but with fear of the supernatural. Paul encountered their kind in the market place:
“Paul was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present. And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What would this idle babbler wish to say?” Others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,” – because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming?“(Acts 17:18-19)
Stoics and Epicureans were the two most prominent schools of nature philosophy, nature science and nature religion of that time. Theirs was a humanist, animist, monist, evolutionary, and scientific worldview predicated upon a one-dimensional universe of animated (evolving) physical matter or divine psychic energy (spiritualized matter). They were the physicists of their age.
The Greek Atomist Epicurus (341-270 BC) is the father of contemporary scientific materialism. The principle tenet of Atomism teaches that the world was not created by any deity, or with any design, but came about by a chance movement of physical atoms of various sizes and magnitude that cemented together and so formed the world.
“An age of science is necessarily an age of materialism,” declared Hugh Elliot early last century, “Ours is a scientific age, and it may be said with truth that we are all materialists now.” (Darwin Day in America, John G. West, xiv)
Modern materialists such as Julien de la Mettrie (1709-51), Paul Henri Thiery, and Baron D’Holbach (1723-89) all agreed that the human mind is the property of physical matter and man nothing but a bio-machine. La Mettrie speculated that machine-mans rational life is entirely determined by physical causes that run the gamut from raw meat, to climate, blood circulation, and gender. Genetic inheritance, said la Mettrie, causes machine-man to commit crime. This view casts parents into the role of “first cause” and would later manifest itself in the belief that State ‘experts,’ or Hillary’s “village” experts should have control of children. (Ibid, pp. 16-18)
Unlike their modern Stoic counterparts (New Age) who accept spirits, spirit guides, contact with spirits and so on, modern Atomists are Scrooges who adamantly maintain their position of no spirits, souls, consciousness, supernatural dimension, and so on.
Keep up the good work and don't let naysaying Scrooges get you down.
I remember that in Trevor Ravencroft's "Spear of Destiny", Rudolf Steiner is quoted that the use of psychotropic drugs to access hidden knowledge and gain occult powers was considered to be the original or true definition of black magic in esoteric lore (as opposed to achieving this through decades of mental discipline, meditation etc). Quite revealing that even the practitioners of so-called white magic understood that "psychonautism" had an even greater level of wickedness to it than their own techniques.
Great info! Thanks. Reminds me of the song Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac.
another wonderful article. thank you