Teaching of "No Self"; church accepts Evolution; social isolation is literally Cold

"No-Self" (Anatta) is one of the most distinguishing features of Buddhism (t-p.org)

QUESTION

I have been trying to understand what is meant by "no I" in Buddhist literature, and I am hoping you can help me. If I dropped all my acquired attitudes, and beliefs, and didn’t identify with my job, status, position, power, accomplishments, clothes, body, thoughts, or anything else (false I’s), would what is left be just pure conscious awareness? Is this what the Buddhists call the "no I" state of awareness? Does each one of us have a separate, distinqiushing, yet evolving changing pure conscious awareness? If this separate pure consciousness is not the "true I," what is it? I am trying my best to understand this on the intellectual level, am I on the right [track]?

ANSWER

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Charles Darwin in an undated photo. The Vatican said on Tuesday the theory of evolution was compatible with the Bible but planned no posthumous apology to Charles Darwin for the cold reception it gave him 150 years ago (Reuters).

Evolution fine but no apology to Darwin: Vatican
By Philip Pullella (9/16/2008)

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -- The Vatican said on Tuesday the theory of evolution was compatible with the Bible but planned no posthumous apology to Charles Darwin for the cold reception it gave him 150 years ago.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's culture minister, was speaking at the announcement of a Rome conference of scientists, theologians and philosophers to be held next March marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's "The Origin of Species." Christian churches were long hostile to Darwin because his theory conflicted with the literal biblical account of creation. More>>

Social Isolation makes people Cold, literally
Clara Moskowitz (LiveScience.com, 9/16/08)

The cold shoulder is more than just a metaphor. A new study found that social isolation can actually make people feel cold. Researchers wanted to learn just how icy loneliness can get. So two University of Toronto psychologists, Chen-Bo Zhong, and Geoffrey Leonardelli, asked some subjects to remember a time when they felt socially excluded, such as being rejected from a club, while others recalled memories of being accepted into a group.

Afterward, the researchers asked all the participants to estimate the temperature of the room, telling them this task was unrelated to the previous activity and that the building's maintenance staff simply wanted to know. While estimates ranged from 54 degrees Fahrenheit to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, in general, those who had been remembering emotionally chilly times also literally felt chillier, even though the room's temperature remained constant during the experiment.

People who had recalled feeling ostracized estimated the temperature to be about 71 degrees Fahrenheit, on average. Participants who were remembering the warm, fuzzy feeling of social inclusion felt the room to be a balmy 75 degrees Fahrenheit, on average. The discrepancy is a statistically significant difference, Zhong said. "We found that the experience of social exclusion literally feels cold," Zhong said. "This may be why people use temperature-related metaphors to describe social inclusion and exclusion."

LONELINESS IS CHILLY

In a second experiment, Zhong and Leonardelli had participants play a computer-simulated ball-tossing game in which some people were passed the ball more often than others, so some volunteers felt included and others felt excluded. Afterward, the participants had to rate the appeal of various foods and beverages, such as hot coffee, crackers, an ice-cold Coke, an apple and hot soup.

The unpopular players were much more likely to hanker for warm items such as soup and coffee than those who had just felt socially accepted. The findings imply that participants who had been feeling left out were also literally feeling left out in the cold, and wanted the warm foods to heat them up. "It's striking that people preferred hot coffee and soup more when socially excluded," Leonardelli said. "Our research suggests that warm chicken soup may be a literal coping mechanism for social isolation." The study is detailed in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Why the connection?

The researchers speculate that this link between temperature and social inclusion might arise when people are babies. "For an infant, being closer to a caretaker brings warmth," Zhong said. "When you're a kid, being held by your mother means warmth, and being distant means coldness."

This connection continues throughout life, since when a person is in a room with 10 other people, the ambient temperature is warmer than when in a room alone. "When we talk about metaphors, they're not just language; they're literally the way we experience the world," Zhong told LiveScience. This finding fits well with a previous study of Zhong's, in which he asked people to recall a time when they were morally challenged and did something they feel guilty about.

Afterward, those people felt a greater need for physical cleansing, such as washing their hands. "Social experience and physical experience actually overlap to a great extent," Zhong said. Our social perceptions are not always abstract, but include other information such as bodily perception."

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CHURCH NOW ACCEPTS EVOLUTION

Earlier this week a leading Anglican churchman, Rev. Malcolm Brown, said the Church of England owed Darwin an apology for the way his ideas were received by Anglicans in Britain.

Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans in 1950 and Pope John Paul reiterated that in 1996. But Ravasi said the Vatican had no intention of apologizing for earlier negative views.

"Maybe we should abandon the idea of issuing apologies as if history was a court eternally in session," he said, adding that Darwin's theories were "never condemned by the Catholic Church nor was his book ever banned."

Creationism is the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible. The Catholic Church does not read the Genesis account of creation literally, saying it is an allegory for the way God created the world.

Some other Christians, mostly conservative Protestants in the United States, read Genesis literally and object to evolution being taught in biology class in public high schools.

Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for the U.S. vice presidency, said in 2006 that she supported teaching both creationism and evolution in schools but has subsequently said creationism does not have to be part of curriculum.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION

The Catholic Church teaches "theistic evolution," a stand that accepts evolution as a scientific theory and sees no reason why God could not have used a natural evolutionary process in the forming of the human species.

It objects to using evolution as the basis for an atheist philosophy that denies God's existence or any divine role in creation. It also objects to using Genesis as a scientific text.

As Ravasi put it, creationism belongs to the "strictly theological sphere" and could not be used "ideologically in science."

Professor Philip Sloan of Notre Dame University, which is jointly holding next year's conference with Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, said the gathering would be an important contribution to explaining the Catholic stand on evolution.

"In the United States, and now elsewhere, we have an ongoing public debate over evolution that has social, political and religious dimensions," he said.

"Most of this debate has been taking place without a strong Catholic theological presence, and the discussion has suffered accordingly," he said.

Pope Benedict discussed these issues with his former doctoral students at their annual meeting in 2006. In a speech in Paris last week, he spoke out against biblical literalism.

(Additional reporting by Tom Heneghan in Paris and Patsy Wilson in Washington; editing by Robert Hart)