Since no one has answered Eric's question, I'll give it a shot...not sure whether you are asking the question personally or are addressing "the great anonymous THEY", so I'll address it from the (mostly) orthodox Christian viewpoint which (mostly) coincides with my own.
The universe is a strange, mysterious, wondrous, mind-boggling place. The fact that we can go out on a clear night (away from city lights, of course) and see stars as they existed thousands or millions of years ago with their mysterious predictable and non-predictable attributes is, I believe, actually intended to evoke our sense of awe. There is so much that we don't know, but there is a little bit that we can know...primarily we can know that there is some kind of love and care in the universe...evidenced by the love and care that can exist between people, but also by the awesome beauty of nature, the animal world, and the conditions of life (anthropic principle?) that seem to be miraculously fine-tuned to support life on earth. I don't believe it is all just chance...although evolution may play a part, it is not the whole story.
So, I think there is an intelligent mind behind the universe that we can have some contact with in a miniscule but significant way. Of course there is the existence of evil which can be discussed later...but will have to stop for now! xoxo Ruth
On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 5:55 PM, Eric Purdy epurdy@uchicago.edu wrote:
I found it interesting that James considers everyone to have some sort of characteristic relationship to the universe. What do people think their relationship to the universe is?
-- -Eric _______________________________________________ WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames