It means that someone didn't like it...hence the icon with the "thumbs down" thing.

I read part of an article and so far it seems interesting.

this site is full of nonsense. One especially ridiculous article (my comments unbracketed):


>>>>>>A Scientist's Thoughts about Redefining our Concept of God

by Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D.
1999

<<<<<

Scientists "redefining" God? The arrogance is mindboggling.


>>>>>A friend, who is a very open-minded Episcopalian priest, asked me, as an open-minded evolution biologist, for suggestions in regard to his efforts at redefining God in our profoundly changing times. Now, that is a subject I actually think about a great deal, and one that I love, so I sent him my thoughts as follow:

In my dialog with Willis Harman, published as Biology Revisioned (North Atlantic Publishers, Berkeley 199 , I reversed the scientific story I was taught from seeing consciousness as the end product of evolution to seeing consciousness as the source of evolution. In other words, the universe, to me, is fundamentally Consciousness -- alive, aware and intelligent. This Consciousness is non-local, i.e. everywhere, and is what different cultures variously personify as God, under many names. It is also what physicists now call "zero point energy" -- the infinite energy existing at every point in space. They are discovering that it is conscious and that it non-locally records all information ever produced in the universe. This Conscious non-timespace energy is vaster than our local universe. It can and does transmute itself into electromagnetic energy, and, in turn, matter, in the creation of universes such as ours, though it can also create itself into other pure energy patterns in a myriad ways (they include angelic realms, for example, and all the "worlds" we exist in between lives, and eternally). <<<<<

This sounds an awful lot like pantheism or with perhaps some Buddhism. At any rate, this is old stuff. There is nothing "scientific" about these ideas. There is no proof whatsoever that consciousness (as in human awareness of his own thought processes) evolved. This is just as much faith based as Christianity or Judaism.

>>>>>This All-That-Is God Source is perceived as I-Am from the perspective of the local consciousness created in beings such as you and me, when we go into meditation, expanding our little consciousness into the Great One we are all part of. In this state we not only perceive union with God, we transcend our local selves such that we recognize ourselves as God. <<<<

We are not God, the idea that we are gods or godlike simply leads to utopianism and similar schemes, nearly always with disastrous unintended (or intended) consequences. Why not since humans themselves determine what is right and wrong?

>>>>>Our universe appears to be a learning universe. I like to say its basic principle is "Anything that can happen, will happen," and so it learns what works well and what doesn't. Evolution is an improvisational dance, keeping the steps that work and changing those that don't.<<<<<<

Anthropomorphism. There is no proof the universe itself can "think". This idea is a throwback to the pagan ideas of moon-gods, sun gods, etc., it's just on a larger scale.

>>>> As I cannot separate God-as-Cosmic-Consciousness from God-transmuting-into-material-universes, I believe our learning universe implies a learning God -- God learning to know the nature of Self through exploring its possibilities and learning to reflect on that Self. <<<<<

Now that's a concept: God as navel-gazer, learning about Himself!

>>>>Exactly as we, God's human reflections, learn to do! In other words, Cosmic Consciousness begins as Unity and divides into Complexity a stage at a time -- at least from our human linear time perspective -- as it embodies itself in vast varieties of energetic and material forms. In non-timespace, which physics now knows to be the more fundamental nature of the universe, all possibilities exist together in complexity inconceivable to us humans.<<<<<<

All things are possible through God, but all things are not themselves God.

>>>>>I believe we exist as non-physical beings which incarnate intentionally, according to particular intentions for learning in each life, but that our "higher selves" are present non-physically throughout our lives. We weave our birth-to-death lifelines through the endless possibilities by the choices we make from moment to moment, each constraining the succeeding choices. From the perspective of non-timespace, all our lives together are like a kind of lotus flower, with each life one petal, one way of playing out a theme chosen by our soul entity or higher self. Some of our incarnations may be simultaneous in the linear timeframe, others are a historical sequence. Each "petal" is in soul communication with each other; thus our many lives can influence each other. Recall that early Christianity included the belief in reincarnation; I believe the Church changed that to gain more control over people's lives, just as Jesus told us we could reach God directly and the Church made priests not assistants but necessary channels to God. <<<<<

Jesus said the only way to God is through Him.

>>>>>All nature is thus conscious in my worldview, and all of it has access to non-timespace; all of it is an aspect of God. The acorn knows the oak tree it will become. Only we humans of western culture have played the game of cutting ourselves off from the Great Conversation that our very cells can still hear! Soils, waters, organisms, ecosystems, Earth, even DNA itself, all know their composition and that of the Whole as the cells of our bodies know each other and our whole bodies, behaving intelligently to maintain themselves and that whole (that's why our bodies work!).<<<<<

More pantheism. An acorn has no brain, it doesn't have cognitive capability, it can't "know", unless this "scientist" has redefined what "know" means. She can believe in the cognitive abilities of soil, water, etc. but not in God, the Creator of all things, including us "clay pots". Curious.

>>>>>Our human task now is to wake up and recognize ourselves as parts or aspects of God-as-Nature and behave accordingly. All are One, all harm harms each of us, all blessings bless each of us. What a guideline for choice! The ancients knew it and taught it. But God, through us, is trying out the most dangerous game of all -- the game of truly forgetting our nature. A great risk, but it had to be done to try all possibilities! <<<<<

Here she alludes to our nature. Is she referring to our fallen human nature? What happened to "we are all God"?

>>>>>On a recent Sunday, I gave the sermon at three services in a Unity Church, for a minister friend who needed a break. I urged the three congregations to remind themselves occasionally to see themselves as the creative edge of God (a phrase I learned from a dear friend) -- as God looking out through their eyes, acting through their hands, walking on their feet, and to observe how that changed things for them...<<<<<

Delusions of grandeur. Unless she means "WWJD?".

>>>>>I concluded my letter to my priest friend, hoping this would be of some use to him in his own deliberations. After all, I can only describe the worldview/Godview that makes sense to me at this point in my lifetime of exploration. <<<<<<

So her beliefs are evolving, subject to change, here today, gone tomorrow and apply only to her, personally. So God is constantly being redefined, recreated to suit.

>>>>We have only our stories to go by, and each must necessarily be at least somewhat, if not radically, different -- for God has become very complex, though an eternal Unity!<<<<<

Pantheism.

>>>>>> I pray that all the religions will recognize the importance of the uniqueness in each story and the unity of All That Is. I pray that scientists, who have been given the role of priesthood <<<<<<

Yikes!!!! Scientists are priests???

>>>>>>-- the right to tell us "how things are" --<<<<<

They have no such "right". True scientists seek knowledge and truth and share what they learn so other scientists can study it also.

>>>>>> will soon officially recognize<<<<<

What the heck does this mean? Scientists are supposed to endorse this feel-good bunch of hogwash so folks think it's been proven?

>>>>> that there is one alive, intelligent universe in which spirit and matter are not separable. I pray the indigenous people who never separated science and spirituality will be honored for that. It is time for the true communion which alone can save our species and all others, which alone can bring about the perfectly possible world we all dream of -- a world expressing this understanding of ourselves as the creative edge of God! <<<<<

Utopianism that inevitably follows flawed humans having the hubris to see themselves as gods. "We" don't all dream of this "perfectly possible world"; many of us remember all too well (and even now live with) the results of attempts to create it.

Our experiences of the world are different. That's cool. I've felt intimately connected to God since I was a child. I hear bits and pieces of God seeking out Human in many Songs. Some don't. I bet we could still sit down and have tea.

for wisdom. Please!

You are intimately connected to God. That doesn't mean you ARE God. You are His creation, His Spirit is there but the Spirit is not you, He is for you, distinctly separate and guiding toward the path of Truth. Some follow, some prefer to create their own truths and call them God. The lady who wrote the above article struck me as being very self-absorbed, almost narcissistic in her attempt to be the Creator. Her spirituality revolves around herself and the limitations of her own intellect and feeble spirit. I'm not trying to insult her, all humans have feeble intellects and spirits compared to God.

Tea is good.

»this site is full of nonsense. One especially ridiculous article..............Scientists "redefining" God? The arrogance is mind boggling.«

You're right js, it would seem mind boggling, ridiculous and nonsensical to a non-thinker.

Take time to think things through. Suspend your old habitual adherence to antiquated systems of superstition and perhaps you just might begin to see a glimmer of it's simplicity.

Even your own religious texts state that the wisdom of your "God" is as foolishness to the minds of some.