Interestingly, there is another Kauf(f)man, the Harvard theologian Gordon D. Kaufman, who says much the same thing in his books "In the Beginning...Creativity" (2004) and "In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology" (2006). There is a lot more divinity-talk in these books than hardened atheists would be comfortable with, but from a fundamentalist/theist's point of view, Kaufman (Gordon) is an atheist.

It's true that Kauffman (Stuart)'s thinking has a history, as others in this forum have noted. His colleague Harold Morowitz's "The Emergence of Everything" (2004) comes to mind. But Kaufman's is a form of science-based deism that, in the twentieth century, in the hands of Alfred North Whitehead and Samuel Alexander did, in fact, become quite evolutionary and emergentist under the moniker "process theology." The more humanist face of this theology emerged in Henry N. Wieman ("The Source of Human Good," Wieman was MLK's muse), Lewis Mumford's "The Conduct of Life" (1960), in the recent writings of Rabbi Harold Schulweis (as 'predicate theology', the best statement of which is at http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/skirball/schulweis-predicatetheology.shtml), and my own efforts: "God Is the Good We Do: Theology of Theopraxy," and "God, Creativity, and Evolution: The Argument From Design(ers)" (2007 and 2008).

Bottom line: both God-is-a-crutch-(that-I-don't-need) atheists as well as I've-seen-God-(and-you-haven't) theists will need to change their ideas about what "God" could and should mean *in this day* if they are to stop wrangling over what are in fact long out-of-date and cartoon renditions of God in the minds of both parties.

... your bottomline comment said it all: Unless a concrete discussion on looking at the definition of God and updating that definition is broached (and why God was defined in supposed "fairy-tale" ways in religious texts to begin with), these arguments back-and-forth will be the same-old, same-old, with no new levels of understanding reached by both sides, each one instead staunchly defending their "territory" as always.

My apologies to Mr. KaufFman! My wife's name is Kaufman and my fingers refused to type it his way. As a Greg suffering from Greggs all my life I should have known better...

does an insect have consciousness? doubtful. agency? maybe. does a fly make a decision as to which crumb to land on, or is it all programmed? or is the question meaningless? a computer presumably doesn't make a decision, it's all predictable from programming; even so-called "random number generators" running in programs are in fact predictable programs. but everybody knows that their PC is less predictable than it ought to be. what's the first thing the help desk tells you when you have a problem? reboot and maybe it won't happen again.

so how far up or down the line does it go? is the computer a person because although it ought to be predictable, it doesn't seem so? a fly? a frog? a dog? george bush?

anyway, next topic, kauffman's argument seems less that we should believe in God, than a weakish form of pagan nature worship. his jewish ancestors would be abashed. but in fact, he seems to be calling for nothing more than a little humility on behalf of the human race, which is something more in tune with atheism than with all the beliefs which insist that God made us in his own image, to be the crown of creation and rule over the universe, etc. etc. etc.

"A universe devoid of anything ugly, painful, tough would not allow for us to see and appreciate those moments of beauty and kindness when they appear. An intelligent Creator knew this all along."

You're theologically positioned by privilege. How many "moments of beauty and kindness" are bequeathed to an African child born into hunger, disease, and war? You've seen the photos of the those swollen-bellied children with flies and scabs on their faces. Do you think that they "see and appreciate those moments of beauty and kindness when they appear"? They don't because they don't appear.

Religion? Grow up! I hate to break it to you, but your mind is nothing more than the working of your brain. Your brain is a physical object. Like all physical objects, it obeys the laws of physics. Its working can be understood. (The fact that our understanding of these laws is today insufficient is beside the point.) If you think technology, which is accelerating its level of complexity and power while the brain stands nearly still, will not reach and then surpass human intelligence as embodied in that hunk of gray stuff (excepting some civilization ending catastrophe that stops technology's advance) then that just means you don't understand information technology. I can picture the look of shock and dismay on your face as your future robot superiors laugh at you for your naive self regard.

Why is that people cling to religion, even when they know better? Just can't kick it, can you? Back to the needle...

I can not believe that anyone takes Stu Kaufman seriously. He throws out the most nebulous thoughts, makes up meaningless words for his empty ideas, and people flock to him like he was some kind of new-age guru. He is interested in important questions- he just is not offering any coherent thoughts about them. Quantum involvement in brain consciousness? How absurd- he should be drummed out of the sciences. If you really want to learn something about the brain and consciousness, read Buszaki: Rhythms of the brain.

"You're theologically positioned by privilege. How many "moments of beauty and kindness" are bequeathed to an African child born into hunger, disease, and war? You've seen the photos of the those swollen-bellied children with flies and scabs on their faces. Do you think that they "see and appreciate those moments of beauty and kindness when they appear"? They don't because they don't appear."

Your definition of beauty is pretty limited then to superficial definitions. In that "picture" you described of African children I see a greater beauty beyond "swollen-bellied children with flies and scabs on their faces." Think about it. These children who are in far worse conditions than you and I can even imagine, still choose to live another day, and have hope that maybe, just maybe life will get better. They could just as easily decide "yep, life for me will never get better than this, think I'll end it now." Yet I haven't heard of mass suicides happening there because of their chronic famine situation. They could sit still and do nothing. They don't. They try and play and do normal happy things that their counterparts in Western nations do, albeit at an energy level they can sustain due to their malnutrition. They may not appreciate beauty and kindness the way we see it sitting on our comfy couches in the West, but by getting up every day and going about their lives they certainly appreciate the beauty of life they were given, no matter how grim and tragic. That right there is beauty of the human spirit we can never even try and capture in our privileged societies in North America.