We are still the same critters we were ten thousand years ago. We still make clever things and howl at the moon. There is no religious resurgence because there was no religious waning. Religion focused on a deity is thankfully losing the ability to project power in the secular lives of people, but that doesn't mean the impulse toward faith is waning or should wane. The explosion of activities and organizations that depend on faith indicates that rather than waning the religious impulse is growing. It's just not growing in churches.

The article interested me more in terms of the arguments for embracing diversity and looking at what makes us the same, as opposed to what makes us different.

the underlying basis of our use of mind is oneupmanship. That's it.

What is called "spiritual", particularly under the guise of dogmatic religion, (across the spectrum) to me, can be seen as rather elaborate, and actually brilliant, diversion from the nature of intellect itself, which is about abstraction of reality.

Even the word "concrete" or describing something more "concretely" is an abstraction, in this case. All along, the intellect as a tool, (this works, that doesn't) has become a mode of being and a way of life, to the point where pointing that out to intellectuals or those who are religious is not only ludicrous, it can be damning and unsafe.

What we may be dealing with are underlying, conceptual structures that create, support, shape and mold the experience of a self, (or ego, as a superficial, internalized social structure) and we are living out the results of reality as a contrived manipulation, though letting-on to that understanding can be a modern equivalent of blasphemy.

Even the methods and nomenclature of science, (especially the physical sciences) has transcended the tight, binary compartmentalization of Aristotelian logic and moved towards a more Cartesian-style of comprehension and communication. The same can be had for non-dual approaches from the "spiritual" or philosophical side, e.g., gnosticism, Dzogchen, etc.

I am not, in any way, anti-intellectual, nor am I a theist or an atheist. In my current understanding they all fit into the same compartment of the mind dealing with reality in a subject/object, largely manipulative approach based on survival and thriving based on a basic template of cultural fabrications.

My point is that the nature of self itself and its true relationship to everything else is a matter of careful investigation into our conditioning and our capacity to easily substitute, (and even inhabit) worlds of worlds for what actually is. We may only ever be able to experience reality that way, but when it comes down to insight, suffering and our common plight as a species, self-serving interests can be found from academia to theology and finding the common ground and seeing into its nature could reveal something bright and clear for our future as a species.

Thanks!

parts of it. Particularly your last paragraph, where you seem to be taking the same position the Dalai Lama has recently voiced.

We *are* a diverse world. Interesting that the author notes increased technology and communication as a factor in that awareness.

(Side note) I read a good piece in the Monitor that looked at statistical analysis of religious, social, cultural customs done in western universities. In many instances the studies were done by sampling the most readily available cohort - the university's' own grad students. So results were dependent on the diversity of the student body. And at times limited by level of diversity.

It was an "Aha!" type article that made the case of a much more diverse and tolerant world than assumed. If I drag up the article, I'll post it here (CSM doesn't always include their in-print pieces on the website).

that is unprecedented. It's so much harder to dismiss or hold prejudices against people once you have actually talked with them.

Half of the time you end up looking foolish, the other half of the time you are seen to be predicting the obvious.