INTEGRAL WORLD MAILING LIST http://www.integralworld.net Newsletter Nr. 690 Amsterdam, November 25, 2017 THE CREATIONIST CONFUSION - Conflating Patterns with Codes - DAVID LANE Carl Sagan, the late professor of Astronomy at Cornell University and the author of such highly readable books as Broca's Brain and A Demon Haunted World deeply understood the difference between a universe that was consciously designed and one that “appeared” to be such. In his novel, Contact, Sagan weaves an intriguing narrative around how a highly advanced intelligence first makes “contact” with human civilization by sending out a series of prime numbers in sequential order. The twist (which, sadly, is not shown in the film version of the book) comes at the very end where it is revealed that the number Pi has embedded within it a source code indicating the cosmos is not the product of chance but of intelligent design. Carl Sagan, ever the skeptic, wanted to show how an agnostic-atheist could potentially change his mind if and when there was extraordinary evidence sufficient to do so. The difficulty is that as human beings we have an inherent tendency towards finding patterns and meanings in things that have neither. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/lane133.html LOTUS-FEET OF CLAY - A Reluctant Mystic Looks At Spiritual Movements - JOHN WREN-LEWIS Some, if we believe what they tell us, are born with spiritual consciousness. Others appear to achieve it by prolonged practice of meditation and other disciplines or by attachment to a guru. I had spiritual consciousness thrust upon me in my sixtieth year without working for it, desiring it, or even believing in it. As a result, I have been presented, amongst other things, with a somewhat original perspective on understanding cults and spiritual movements, which is the occasion for this article. The crucial event was a shattering, out-of-the-blue mystical experience in 1983 which, to the astonishment of everyone who knew me, and most of all myself, left me with a permanently changed consciousness, describable only in the kind of spiritual terms I had hitherto vehemently discounted as neurotic fantasy-language. Not that I would have called myself an atheist or materialist--indeed I had published extensively on the need for a religious world-view appropriate to this scientific age. But I was emphatic that such a faith would have to be essentially humanist in orientation, focused on creative action in the physical/social realm. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/wren-lewis1.html