Articles by Friends of FOOW
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Intelligent Design --by Wayne Ferguson (posted here 16 Jan 06)
www.thefourprecepts.com
"While it seems rather obvious that the objections raised by conservative Christian groups against the theory of evolution
have less to do with scientific evidence than with what they perceive to be its moral and theological implications, their
belief in intelligent design is not at all unreasonable....in my opinion, the ultimate concern of conservative Christians is best
addressed, not by stubbornly insisting on a literal interpretation of Genesis or by doggedly attacking evolution a priori,
but by maintaining the primary ontological distinction between Reality (which is Transcendent and noumenal) and
appearances (which are empirical phenomena).



        Bringing Our World Into Focus --by Wayne Ferguson (posted here 16 Apr 06)
           www.thefourprecepts.com
     "In the words that have been attributed to Jesus, 'the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth,
    and men do not see it.' Or, as William Blake put it, 'If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing
    would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow
    chinks of his cavern.' And contra Nietzsche, it is only our intuition of that infinite and eternal Reality
    which-- at some level and to some degree --both enriches our existence and inspires us to persevere in the
    face of hardships and disappointments. This is true, however limited our intuition and whether or not we
    consciously acknowledge it. But to the extent that we are mindful of that Reality, it provides for us a
    pattern which wisely and creatively guides the course of our existence.
On Religion,Comfort Foods and Leafy Greens
If theology wakes us up from our nightmare of the mortality of the self, then metatheology
wakes us up from our dream of the immortality of the ego.  Both are illusions that cloud our
perception of the Spirit.  They are distinct maladies calling for distinct remedies, but are rooted
together as twin products of one human experience we all share without exception: the
formation of the dualistic mind during our earliest years.  Religion aims to remedy both by
addressing and reassessing this one experience, and it is the mystic path within each faith that
forms the bridge from the theology to metatheology......
A Prayer for the Sword-bearers (posted 5 Jan 06)
Brothers and sisters, we who dwell in the United Kingdom of States are all “living by the sword.”  With our
consent, our leaders have hired many thousands of our own people and sent them overseas, bearing swords in
our name.  There they confront an “enemy” made up of people just like them, fighting for people just like us.  
It is our soldiers who carry the swords into battle, but it is we on the sidelines –from the youngest infants to
the commander-in-chief—who wield them.
Almost daily we are faced with messages telling us the boundless courage of our men and women in the armed
forces is being taken for granted, that we must “support our troops.”  It is, and we should –but their sacrifice is
not only being overlooked, it is being misappropriated.  Somebody already died in your name.......
"I Just Went to Sleep" (posted 7 Feb 06)
It used to mystify me how people could so easily place their lives in grave danger, where the balance between
life and death is so fragile.  Eventually, something of the Truth got through my skull, something that told me,
“From the perspective of the ego, your limited sense of self, all life is dangerous and fragile.  No one gets out of
this mine shaft alive.” This ultimate existential conundrum –the realization that no human activity is safe, up to
and including breathing—can either drive a person to extreme paranoia and beyond the brink of insanity…or it
can make us surrender, throw up the white flag and give up this clinging to “a vapor that appeaseth and fadeth
away.”  In doing so, we learn that we never really were that vapor, that no man ever was an island; in ceasing to
identify with the temporal, we unwittingly find the Eternal.