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Ray: You're way over-crediting (or over simplifying) the brain, here. For the brain to play any role at all, it must be empowered to both control and respond to information received or transmitted, through and to our sense organs. The cognitive revolution of the 60's has downgraded the brain a bit into being much like the hardware of a computer, powered by software applications.

‘empowered’? Em[powered by what? Software is made outside the computer and put into it to function. The only way any information can enter our brains is bvia our senses.

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Exactly what these applications might be, where they come from, and how they're powered are all up for discussion. Descartes allowed spiritual information to enter the mind through the sens-es, but was unaware of the role of genetics in human ontogeny. We now have the possibility of dna providing an architecture of design, with sensory modifications even while the infant is in the womb. The hardware is designed into the body; the software becomes the mind. Cogito, et sum is alive and well in the 21st century.

However, many and different words you use, the fact remains, does it not, that the evolutionary process functions naturally. Medical science can prod a bit here and there, but not to dramatically change the process. What Descartes thought and wrote is important and interesting, but knowledge has been much added to since then.

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I got into trouble with the Arch Deacon by raising the issue of reincarnation for discussion.

What a pity he wasn’t able to discuss this rationally.

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…countless personal discussions of Religion with friends and family. Although a considera-ble number of such discussions were with secularists and agnostics, I can't remember discussions during that undergraduate time with atheist students:

You are quite a bit younger than I am, but even then, such discussions were taboo, and of course even more so when I was a child.

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I do remember one outspoken atheist professor that I worked with. He made a point of his atheism.

Good for him!! Seriously, though, can you say, from any kind of detached point of view, why you think atheism is quite wrong?

Susan