INTEGRAL WORLD MAILING LIST http://www.integralworld.net Newsletter Nr. 746 Amsterdam, December 6th, 2018 KEN WILBER'S NATURAL THEOLOGY - On ‘Enchanted Evolutionary Perspectives’ and ‘Mysterious Incalculable Forces’ - FRANK VISSER We should be on guard against a false romanticism, which places all quality of life in a spiritual dimension, and see the material realm as dull, meaningless and dead. On the contrary, the material realm itself is magical and fascinating, if properly understood, in all its micro- and macroscopic dimensions. A good example is the rainbow. One can wax poetic about the colors of the rainbow, and how it is a sign of God's promise to preserve the earth (mind you: this promise was made after He destroyed almost all life forms in the Flood), or one can study the light-spectrum itself and how it can be used to tell us how stars and planets are composed, by electroscopic measurements. Even the expansion of the universe can be measured this way! That is the real adventure! Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/visser131.html THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR OF MATTER - It is Never "Just" Stuff - DAVID LANE The underlying thesis of both the film and the essay was that matter is a term that is too often misunderstood and because of this has led far too many religionists to assume that it is one-dimensional, flat, grey, and completely devoid of mystery. Our argument is that matter is the complete opposite of that misleading caricature. Rather, matter (etymologically speaking the word has various originations, but my favorite is from the Latin “mater: origin, source, mother.”), though understood hierarchically and in multifarious ways, is ultimately a profound mystery at its base which invites us on a magnificent adventure to explore its almost infinite array of complex and intersecting components. I think a pun I often used in my upper division Science and Religion courses at California State University, Long Beach captures the essence of why we shouldn't be scared or dismissive of the physicalist quest: “If we are just matter, what then is the matter?” Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/lane152.html