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Submit Your Reflection about "The Biology of the Spirit."

One of Those Moments (January 21, 2007)
Just a simple "thanks" from the heartland from a fellow sojourner. The kids are gone today and my wife is traveling in Asia where it's tomorrow already. It's just me and the dog with the clock softly chiming in the background. I'm looking out my kitchen picture window with the birds at the feeders against a backdrop of lightly falling snow. The coffee cup warms my hands. Life's good. One of those moments. I just shared your visit (you don't "interview," you visit) with Sherwin Nuland on "The Biology of Spirit." Wonderful program. So often, you and your guests suspend time for me — time to reacquaint me with myself and others who share this journey. Thank you very, very much.

Jim Nelson
Minnetonka, MN (KNOW, 91.1 FM)

Biology and the Brain (January 21, 2007)
Dr. Nuland, so "spirit can evolve from matter…". Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, and Descartes I'm sure would be a tad uncomfortable with this bald statement. The Jesuit anthropologist Telhard de Chardin would seem to be more sympathetic. But if you believe that human beings have a spiritual component — an immaterial "soul" (Plato) — and if the "unmoved mover" (Aristotle) is the "formal or first cause" cause of human existence (i.e., beings who have who have both a material and spiritual component), then it would certainly seem possible for the "unmoved mover," "first cause," i.e. God to bestow on our human material species/bodies another component, as you say, "spirit." The "unmoved mover" — infinite (not finite or contingent being) being is the "esse" (Jacques Maritain) which keeps our poor "essentia" (body and soul) in existence. So this "unmoved mover" could certainly create a universe that is inhabited by humans like us — with bodies and souls — beings who are part material/part spiritual.

Richard Fraser
Bowie, MD (WETA, 90.9 FM)

Spiritual Evolution (January 21, 2007)
As a member of a recovery program, I quite believe in the evolution of spirit. As the Buddhists say, the enemy is ignorance. What is the opposite? Learning and understanding. First comes the trust. When you are in a room full of people who have the same disease you have, you begin to share. You learn that your problem is a "living" problem and start believing in a power just greater than you. That power is a choice, call it a group of people, anything. This power, then, grows with you, expands like a blooming flower and virtually has no limit.

The brain only needs a direction, tolls, ways of thinking to nurture and feed the spirit. It is a process that goes hand-in-hand. The power of recovery groups is huge. If there are miracles to see, then I have seen hundreds, and know there are thousands. I was once in a stadium in San Diego, all of us holding hands, and speaking the Serenity Prayer. Awesome. Talk about faith. And yes, it is a choice. Thanks you for your book, Doc. Everything helps. Faith is so connected with being connected, being involved, helping others, all the 12 simple steps to use the power, and be the power, of love.

Blake Valin
Palm Beach Gardens, FL (Listens to SOF OnDemand)

Spirit Precedes Matter (January 21, 2007)
As I listened to Dr. Nuland, I, too, became depressed. His innate de-spiritedness seeped through his every word. I read Dr. Nuland's How We Die years ago. Dr. Nuland suffers the same malady as any physician who sees the human spirit as limited by the life of the body. In their lack of expanded vision and sensation, they are dooming themselves to depression and dooming anyone who believes their authority to a life of limitation. The universe is teeming with non-corporeal consciousness that make's itself known in the quiet of reflection or in the miracle of synchronicity.

I've heard a still small voice that's in me yet not of me. I've received messages from loved ones who've passed on. As a psychologist and trained scientist, I could say that my brain is generating these messages, yet as a spiritual seeker for 25 years, I know these messages are coming to me and through me from a far vaster reality than I can comprehend.

Dr. Nuland could shake himself from depression if he could experience the words of a Carly Simon song: "Life is eternal and love is immortal and death is only a horizon; as we move into the light we see the horizon is only limited by our sight."

Sorah Dubitsky
Pembroke Pines, FL (WLRN, 91.0 FM)

You Asked Predictable Questions (January 20, 2007)
I am a long-time listener and fan of your site, as well as the radio program, and a skeptic. The dialog you create and support is intelligent, generally even-handed, and thoughtfully probing. There is, however, a theme that runs through all of your programs about the conflict between East and West, or Christianity and Islam, or modernism and cultural stasis, or the United States and the rightful owners of their own natural resources (say oil) — any one of them represents the conflict usually discussed. That theme is created by the subtle way you doggedly defend the West. It is the inability to look at self when it comes to determining the root cause of the political turmoil that has bred the terrorism acted against the U.S.

Today's program seemed to be about to break through that resistance. But then, with an unfortunate consistency, you veered off of the trail of evidence before you. Your guest offered a simple bit of wisdom — find the root cause of the behavior behind 9/11, and you have a chance of preventing it from reoccurring. In the meantime you will learn much about yourself as well as the rest of the world. Isn't that what our efforts should be all about?

You did what most moderators have done in a dialog on this subject — you asked that tired old question — by considering a root cause for someone else's actions, aren't you implying a taciturn justification for those acts? This type of response reminds me that for all the honest inquiry you make into the whys of human behavior, you are still, like most people, unwilling to consider that we have brought upon ourselves the attacks and murderous acts played upon our citizens by having contributed directly and indirectly to the indiscriminate death of millions of innocent civilians in other countries over the past 50 years.

I don't believe I've ever heard you use the words "radical Christianity." Yet how else can one describe the willingness of the previous Christian leaders of this country to drop atomic bombs on innocent human beings, twice! And a current leader who replies to a question about innocent civilian deaths caused by a war he started, based upon what he knows are lies, by saying "thirty to forty thousand, give or take..."? How else do you account for the "God bless America" that ends almost every public address by our elected officials, noting that we are the only country that uses that phrase in public addresses?

David Vallee
West Chester, PA (WHYY, 91.0 FM)

Read the Hindu Scriptures (January 20, 2007)
If I understood correctly, Dr. Nuland has put the onus of survival on the brain which through a, shall we say "subconscious" instead of "unconscious," process-selected criteria such as love, beauty, faith for better survival of species. I am in field of biology and this idea of catering all known aspects of human qualities including its spiritual aspirations to survival (Darwin's basic idea) is a particularly parochial view. It is not any different that a beyond natural force governs all aspects of life and evolution. It predicts nothing, neither the future of next evolution, nor any why, nor even the enormous variety of life one sees teeming the Earth.

Along with fanatic dogmatism of certain religious people, we are now facing scientific dogmatism of survival as only meaning and reason. Why should the will to survive exist? Why do organic reactions show property of "survival"? If evolution is progressive, then what would be next "intelligence" that will develop? Dr. Nuland's idea does not tackle these issues (its not even a novel idea but trying to marry two disparate view points of Darwinism and religious beliefs). If nature gave us the human brain, it can give more or it can compel the present brain to go beyond its present limitation — that need not be through analytical reasoning or imagination. It's this aspect that I would suggest him to ponder about. And if he is seeking answers and "truth" I would suggest him to read the Upanishads and Vedas.

Moloy Goswami
Bethesda, MD (WETA, 90.9 FM)

Fuzzy Stuff (January 19, 2007)
I was very moved again by today's show, as usual. You do such a terrific job of making this fuzzy stuff accessible. Thank you all for all your work.

Nelson Murphy
Oakland, NJ (WNYC, 93.9 FM)

Social Constructs and Personal Belief (October 7, 2005)
I thank you for the enlightening and intriguing conversation with Dr. Nuland on the subject of biology and the spirit. I wish you would have challenged the notion that spirit, and especially the spirit of "love" somehow "evolved" from the known biological mechanistic patterns of the body and brain. This form of appeal to a nebulous elan vital presupposes that it is apparent that such a benevolent spirit actually exists and innate in the human mind in chemistry and neural sequences. Actions and even little more than casual observation negate this idea.

Human beings are well-known to revert to animalistic, selfish, biological determinisms of "survival of the fittest" in times of stress and with some cases (criminals) just as standard operating procedure. If ethics and love for our fellow man were biologically determined, this would not be the case and criminal and unethical behavior would be the exception, not the norm when external inhibitors, such as police, are absent. It is only by the tapestry of social constructs and personal belief, supported by personal conviction and faith that society is held together without chaos. Nietzsche noted that all things are possible without God. This biology of the spirit is the sort of convoluted theory that results. Thank you.

Stanley Pearson
Cobden, IL (WSIU, 91.9 FM)

The Philosopher's Soul (October 6, 2005)
I only recently discovered your show, thanks to a friend. I love your interviews and listen faithfully now. The interview with Dr. Sherwin Nuland is outstanding. Perhaps it is just a function of the times that this was produced at present, but the topic, the handling of it, all the points that were made hit my philosopher's soul at home plate! I teach meditation and breathwork for The Art of Living Foundation (founder: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar) and am basically making all of these same points to people in a very different context. But the world is "getting" it! What a joy!

Martina Straub
Durham, NC (Listens via Web Audio)

Process Theology (October 6, 2005)
Reading the transcript of Krista Tippett's interview with Dr. Nuland, I kept wishing for an interview on the same subject matter with one of the theologians called a "process theologian" (who take their key cues from the philosophers, Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne). The names that come to mind are: John B. Cobb, Jr., David Ray Griffin, Charles Birch (actually a biologist), and Marjorie Suchocki.

It's a theology with huge overlaps with some Buddhist thought. Whitehead wrote his philosophy to try to write one that included the nascent findings of quantum mechanics; it has a very different notion of the divine, or God; it's a live and lively alternative not much known (although Marcus Borg has pointed to it in a couple of his books). Keep up the super-excellent work. You and your program are simply outstanding.

Mark Hoelter
Hillsboro, OR (Listens via Web Audio)

Our Struggle to Evolve (October 5, 2005)
These programs, these investigations, are the signposts directing us to the roads of wisdom. Nothing more important can be done. Unification where division has been exploited, understanding where mystery gives way to myth, education where ignorance begets dogma. The journey we are on is as long as the path of humanity.

Dr. Nuland seems another new pathfinder, breaking into new ground with the same wonder that the ancients found when searching for God, for the good moral land. There are so many others who have done and are doing this great work as we transition and transcend toward knowledge and reconciliation. Revisit Bronowski, E.O. Wilson (who has postulated on a biological basis for good and evil), or De Chardin. The growing group of communicators has been created by natural needs of healthy social community. History will most likely look back at these times with kindness and marvel at our struggle to evolve through the chaos of reordering the building blocks of truth.

Scott Unertl
Milwaukee, WI (WUWM, 89.7 FM)

Food for Thought (October 2, 2005)
I was very impressed by your program. Lots of food for thought. I think that natural selection is not the benign force that the doctor thinks it is. At one point he seems to say that monotheism was the product of Darwinian evolution. I think most theists and theists would disagree! I look forward to your next program.

Shuan Rose
Washington, DC (WETA, 90.9 FM)

Open to the Details (October 2, 2005)
Talk about an interconnected world. I checked with the family tree keeper for my Ariewitz ancestors because the name Nuland sounded so familiar. Yup, we're definitely not related, but we do have cousins in common! I found the program fascinating and hope to soon read Dr. Nuland's books, which definitely seem to overlap with my own explorations and interests. What was it Dr. Nuland said about the more intimate one is with the details of one's life, the more universal they turn out to be? Thank you, Krista and Speaking of Faith, for being open to the details that allowed me to notice my own overlapping universal connections! Shana tova, as we say on the Jewish new year.

Judy Montel
Beit Shemesh, Israel (Listens via Web)

The Concept of Nephesh in Sufi Tradition (October 1, 2005)
The Hebrew term nephesh phonetically sounds a lot like nafs from Arabic. The Muslim Jurists as well as Mystics have had a lot to say about nafs. The meaning of the Arabic nafs is very similar to "beingness," and, in Islamic tradition, there are various kinds of nafs — some lower than the others. Lower catering to animal-like appetites, while the higher aspire to the spiritual aspects.

There is an awful lot of talk that seeks to prove that somehow Islam is very different from Judeo-Christian tradition; but those who say this forget that the words Jesus reputedly used referring to God on the cross also sounds phonetically a lot like Allah.

Towards the end of the program, Dr. Sherwin Nuland commented on the "biological" basis of human love. If I understood him right, what he said reminded me a great deal of Islamic Sufi poetic tradition. Indeed, one scholar I read went so far as to claim that Beatrice in Dante's The Divine Comedy had her antecedent not in the Greek, Roman, or even Christian tradition but in Islamic Sufi poetry of Ibn Arabi. For Christian Jurists, women were not meant to be the object of love but a temptation. Even for Roman and Greek traditions, women were more a matter of possession than the inspiration and source of love. The status of women in large parts of present-day Muslim countries seems an ironic contrast to the attitudes of Islamic mystic poets in the Middle Ages.

His remarks also gave me an additional insight regarding the Qur'anic representations of Paradise. All too often such physical representations have been misunderstood both by Muslims and non-Muslims. Such misreading goes back a long way and it is persistent. One such perception was that of the American poet, Robert Lowell. Back in the l970s, Robert Lowell wrote in one of his poems — I do not recall the exact reference, but what he said was something along the following: "the boys of jihad rush paradise on horse back/ while Pope twang the harp of chastity." Thanks for sharing wisdom. It was a wonderful program.

Athar Murtuza
Budd Lake, NJ (WNYC, 93.9 FM)

The Human Spirit (September 30, 2005)
I have a great admiration for your show. Addressing the human spirit in American culture is a challenge. Americans segregate everything so it's no surprise we think the human spirit is something distinct from the mind and body. Keep bringing on great minds that evoke us to think holistically.

Jay Edwards
Palmetto, GA (WABE, 90.1 FM)