[Archaea]

This is a fascinating expose, but it is very two-dimensional, which by nature of its inaccuracy falls flat on its face.

Restating the argument, it runs this way: there are two base camps of thought about how the world and cosmos operate (1) those based on Hebraic concept of God, and (2) secular humanists. Seattle limits these groups for the western world, and then posits that the philosophers helped us break out of the strangleholds of Hebraic concepts into a more enlightened state of secular humanism.

Well, as I am certain Seattle recognizes, his world he just created is a mythical world, not reality. We live in a more complex philosophical world, a world of differential calculus, not Euclidian geometry.

First, the Hebraic world was never one of consensus. If one examines Jewish intellectuals alone, no one agrees or agreed. If Seattle is only arguing, a one on one relationship with God was not universally accepted even by Jewish intellectuals.

Second, enlightenment was not solely are response to the Hebraic concept of God, but simply man's search for knowledge in many disciplines. And it's not true that those philosophers cited by Seattle universally rejected the Hebraic concept of God, but probably have done much to refine what areas are the responsibility of science and what the parametees of religion.

What is philosophy? It started off broader than it is today. Metaphsics, beyond physics. Descartes tried to hypthesize about some organ in the brain the linked the spiritual with the physical. Plato and Aristotle posited many things which weren't true.

It is simply a false statement that secular humanism is the advanced state of knowledge that has supplanted its predecessor. Knowledge of the physical world is not really the realm of most spiritual guidance, but rather a moral philosophy is the realm of spiritualism. We cannot ignore the physical world, but the two can live together in harmony and they are not mutually exclusive. That seems to be the basic argument of secular humanism, but since it is a vacuum, devoid any real substance, it is my view, it will die as truth continues to emerge, and a new contemporary philosophy will emerge. Meanwhile, we troglodite Hebraic concepts of God will continue to thrive and learn more of the world, inculcating all aspects of truth, evolving as it were, independent of the restraints of one secular philosophy over another.