We have a pretty good record of how man has thought about himself, life, other people, nature, God, and his existence and purposes--for several thousand years. The history of Western culture, philosophy, thought, and religions has been preserved in writing since before the Classical Greek civilization.

I have recently read a good book on Western philosophy by a Spanish writer, Julian Marias called "History of Philosophy" Dover, Inc. 1966 (Ref. 1.) This book analyzes perspicaciously Greek, Medieval and Modern thought. Earlier I read Georg Hegel's "The Philosophy of History" Prometheus Books, 1991 (Ref. 2) and a more contemporary treatment of current scientific thinking by John Hogan titled "The End of Science" Addison-Wesley 1996 (Ref 3.) From these and other sources I hope to say something worthwhile regarding today's dilemmas. (See other references at end of this essay.)

Man must have a philosophy no matter how crude, ignorant and provisional it may be. We grasp for some explanations of nature, our lives and their purposes. Unfortunately today in the American culture there is not an established or prevailing philosophical system that answers fundamental questions. Our colleges and universities fashion the "intellectual" life of our society. The departments of philosophy are mainly concerned with linguistics and deconstructionalism resulting in prevailing nihilism and cynicism. People turn to religion for answers to how to live and for what purpose. Earlier philosophers incorporated religion in their ontology and metaphysical views. But now religion is denounced by most all modern philosophers, and religions must stand alone without the rational and scientific support given by early philosophers. Thus, human concepts of the world and cosmology are now bifurcated, divide into two: University thought and religious interpretations. The University views do endorse psychology and the teachings of John Dewey, William James, Sigmund Freud and others. And this modern psychology has produced disastrous results in shaping American culture today. Most modern religious communities try to include science in their world views although the fundamentalists have trouble with questions about the origins of life. But the University professors mostly disparage religious views.

We can only glimpse briefly the vast panorama of human history, cultures, and beliefs in these few pages. My purpose in writing is to select and connect some ideas philosophers and historians have understood that could be applied to modern social problems.

Early civilizations flourished that were quite unlike modern Western cultures of Europe and America. All these had governments, economies, religions, and world views or philosophies that molded their thinking. Egyptian dynasties had written records and left evidence of their lives in their tombs and pyramids. Often their religion and government were intertwined with kings as high priests and immortal beings. Gods were numerous and included the sun and the Nile river. Animals were worshipped as sacred and embalmed. Inanimate things--storms, volcanos and even rocks--had spirits and power. Similar customs and religions prevailed in South American civilizations of the Aztecs and other American Indians. Clearly religions and superstitions have been a dominating factor in human thought since the earliest history of mankind.

The thinking of Western peoples has been influenced much by Ancient Greek philosophers and by Jewish religious prophets and law givers. Streams of ideas from these two primary sources merge in the Christian cultures of the West. Early Greek culture had an elaborate religion with many gods often relating to natural phenomena such as fire, the sea, and storms. We have good records of the lives of these people in the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer and Greek drama, generally tragedies depicting life as it was (and is.) But it was the Philosophy taught and written by Socrates, (he did not write books), Plato, and Aristotle that shaped Western ideas and vocabulary about reality, being, essence, logic, and ethics that still guide us today. Many of the notions and definitions of Aristotle, especially, are incorporated by Roman Catholic writers into Christian doctrine. Jewish thought was established in the West by the Torah or Old Testament Bible and by the Jew, Jesus, whose disciples and followers wrote the New Testament Bible. Most of Christian theology derives from the merging of Hebrew and Greek ideas recorded in Greek and Jewish writings. However the Greeks did not employ some important concepts prominent in Judeo-Christian views of the universe such as Creation, Salvation, and Judgment regarding eternal life in Heaven or Hell. Greek and Roman wisdom was incorporated in the East and Roman branches of the Catholic Christian churches by St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and many others.

Philosophy is composed of two major themes, (1) what is reality?, (2) and how best to live in this real world? For part (1) the Greeks set about defining: time, space, object, beings, essence, life, God, etc. as one might attack a problem in mathematics. They found answers that satisfied themselves and convinced other people. However these basic questions have been pondered and redefined by philosophers ever since. The second important theme, How to Live, often got separated from the profound definitions derived for Reality and more legal, political, and psychological solutions were conceived and concocted for how to live. This second theme bears on how to organize and govern societies justly and productively.

The achievements of theme (1) gave us words and tools for thinking. Ideas, sophistry, politics (polis), pragmatics, and much of the notions and vocabulary for discussing the world came from Greek thinkers. But it is the theme (2) on living that instructs us about morality, courage, and tragedy. We will be most interested in discovering forgotten concepts for living hidden in the histories of human triumphs in thought.

So what recipes for the "good life" were developed and lived out based on the Greek philosophers' views of the world and ethic? Yes, Greek cities had democratic governments but this egalitarian principle for ruling cities or states was not advocated by the great Greek philosophers who believed that an especially educated class should govern and philosophers should be kings. There were, however, systems of community living that were influenced by Greek thinking. In our English language today we have the words; Cynics, Stoic, and Epicurean, which were names given to important schools or sets of rules for living that emerged from the Academy of Athens in which Plato and Aristotle taught. But modern definitions of these words do not adequately describe the way of life of the people devoted to these disciplines.

Cynicism Here I will quote some lines from Marias' book, History of Philosophy about Cynics of pre-Christian Greece: (One should always read the authors and sources because all systems of philosophy comprised many diverse teachings.) In Cynicism, "The good of man consists merely in living in society with oneself. Everything else--comfort, riches, honors and their opposites--doesn't count. The pleasures of the senses and love are the worst things of all and are most to be shunned. Work, exercise, ascetic practices: these are the only things desirable."

Stoicism Here again taking views from Mar¡as: "The center of Stoic concern is once again man, the wise man. Stoic philosophy is divided into three parts--logic, physics, and ethics--but the true interest of Stoicism is only in questions of morality. In epistemology, the Stoics are sensationalists. For them, it is sensory perceptions that leave their trace in the human soul and form its ideas..... Stoic philosophy was perhaps the most influential of all the ancient systems that were rediscovered."

Seneca, born in Cordoba (Spain), was a Stoic and influenced Roman thinking. Some of his writings are very much like Christian teachings. "Stoicism identifies God with the world.... The wise man achieves independence and bears up under all events, like a rock that defies all the assaults of the waves."

For the student of philosophy there are other movements derived from Greek ideas: Epicureanism. Epicurus (the founder) "considers pleasure to be the true good"... (but he) "makes very definite demands of pleasure...it must leave man master of himself. This eliminates sensual pleasures almost completely, and opens the way for other, more subtle and spiritual pleasures- -above all, for friendship and the joys of human companionship."

Skepticism is a doctrine that "affirms the impossibility of knowing truth". Eclecticism as the name suggests is built on many sources. In history, the Roman Cicero was a proponent of these ideas. A final Greek system was Neoplatonism ("Man is a beautiful creature... and earlier teachings of Plato.") which prevailed until the sixth century AD and greatly influenced Christian doctrines.

Greek philosophy was both the cradle and forge of Western thought. The little snippets presented above can only give hints about the pillars upon which our thinking patterns are structured. Rather than pursue chronologically the modifications and new ideas introduced later by other philosophers I will extract more snippets to illustrate points I wish to make.

Jeremiah. (A Jewish prophet of approximately the Greek era of great philosophers.) "...this is the (new) covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts: and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Now longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more."

Jesus of Nazareth. "Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming and he answered, 'The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, "Look, here it is!" or "There it is!" For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within (among) you.'" (Luke 17: 21-21) "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." John 4:24

St. Augustine. "There are only two themes in St. Augustine's philosophy: God and the Soul.... God : This element of St. Augustine's thought has weighty consequences. One of them is placing of love, charity, in the forefront of man's intellectual life. Knowledge is not to be had without love. The Soul: The soul is spiritual. The character of the spiritual is not merely negative, that is, not mere immateriality, but something positive, to wit, the faculty of entering within oneself. St. Augustine bases his philosphy on the inner man. He asks man to enter the interior of his own soul in order to find himself, and with himself, God."

St. Thomas Aquinas. "He was a man of singularly simple and kindly ways, devoted heart and soul to the great intellectual task.... In cases where rational understanding is possible, this is preferable to pure belief. The application of reason to themes which are also topics for faith and theology is the so- called natural theology... (It) is what St. Thomas considers philosophy."

St. Anselm. "Scholasticism is...Faith seeking understanding.

Giordano Bruno. "For Bruno, the transcendent God is only a object of prayer and worship, but the philosophic God is the immanent cause and harmony of the universe....This Universe is infinite, even spatially. It is full of life and beauty, since everything is a factor in the divine life."

Rene Descartes. "'I think, therefore I am.'..."Strictly speaking, the point of departure for Descartes' demonstration is the reality of the ego, taken together with a clear and distinct concept of the Deity....Man has within him the image of God, which permits him to arrive at the knowledge of God."

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. "Since God is omnipotent and good we can rest assured that the world is the best of all possible worlds..."

Thomas Hobbes. (The next two philosophers are British and Scottish and their ideas called empiricism. Writing in the 1600s, they expressed points of view different from those on the continent. British philosophy has a tendency to become psychology...)

"Hobbes' theory of the State presupposes the equality of all men. He believes that all men aspire toward the same goal and that when they fail to achieve it, enmity and hate spring up....The three motives of discord among human beings are competition, which provokes aggression with gain as an object; mistrust, which makes men attack each other in order to achieve security; and vanity, which creates enmity between rivals for fame."

David Hume. "In Hume, empiricism reaches its ultimate consequences and becomes skepticism. Knowledge cannot achieve metaphysical truth. The intimate and immediate convictions by which man lives cannot be proved or refuted."

Immanuel Kant. (We return to Germany with Kant and his famous CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE.) "Immanuel Kant wished to create an ethics that will state how man ought to be. Since the highest good is a good will, the moral evaluation of an action is based on the will that motivated the action, not on the action itself. 'Act in such a way that you will what you are doing to be a universal law of nature.'"

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. (Perhaps the last great Christian philosopher..a Swabian German and Protestant.) "For Hegel, reality is the absolute, which exists in a dialectic evolution that is logical and rational in character. According to his famous statement, everything that is real is rational and everything that is rational is real....Hegel's God, the absolute, exists only in a state of becoming. Logic is the exposition of God as He is in His eternal essence, before the Creation..."

Johann Gottlieb Fichte. "Reality is thus pure activity, liveliness, not substance or a thing. This is decisive, and constitutes the most profound and original aspect of Fichte's metaphysics."

Vincenzo Gioberti. "...the human intellect possesses essentially a direct knowledge of God, without which it cannot know anything. Something divine appears directly to the mind in the created things; it is thus not necessary to prove the existence of God."

Arthur Schopenhauer. "The moral emotions are compassion and the desire to alleviate the pain which other beings feel. The only permanent salvation consists in conquering the will to live...one enters nirvana..."

Auguste Comte, "Positivism seeks only facts and their laws. Not causes or origins of essences or substances---all this is inaccessible. Positivism relies on the positive, on that which is set forth or given...The basis for positive knowledge is the existence of a sufficient social authority. And this reinforces the historical character of positivism... Order and progress. ...to live for one's fellow man... A religion of Humanity but not of God.

Friedrich Nietzsche. "He values only the strong, healthy, impulsive life which has the will to dominate."

Wilhelm Dilthey. "Metaphysics is impossible, and only the positive sciences are a matter of concern. 'All men live within history, but many men do not know this. Others know that their period will be historical, but they do not live it as such.' Each 'thing' is no more than an ingredient of our life, and acquires its meaning within our life. 'A person's friend is a force which exalts his own existence...' Human life is an original and transcendent unity:..."

Edmund Husserl. (His)..."Phenomenology is a descriptive science of the essence of pure consciousness."

Most all the above quotes are opinions of Julian Marias (Ref. 1) about the works of these great Western philosophers. Marias wrote this book in the early 1940's just after the Spanish Civil War. He studied under the famous Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset before the Civil War. He writes clearly, but he is really an apologist for the Roman Catholic Church. He does not describe the brutal burning of Giordano Bruno by the Inquisition. He omits the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who was publishing but censored by the Church. His treatment of Jean-Paul Sartre and atheistic Existentialism is perhaps not conclusive. He is a Christian and his book sold 22 editions. I liked his book.

This essay focuses on thought, thinking, and the MIND, the generator of the ideas I am using to play on this keyboard. The Mind, Consciousness, Thinking still remain a mystery to science. If you read Rediscovery of the Mind (Ref. 6 ) by John Searle or buy his Video called The Philosophy of the Mind (Ref. 7 ) you will see that he rejects most all earlier theories of consciousness and cognition and substitutes his own ideas.

Philosophy has treated human understanding and perception much like physics solves problems in mechanics, electromagnetics or particle physics. Great philosophers have generated descriptions of reality and being. Many have also defined systems for optimum living embracing morality and goals. But unlike mathematics and the physical sciences, human knowledge of the mind has not grown by adding a sequence of discoveries that augment each other. Often philosophers tend to disparage and dispute earlier "solutions" and present a brilliant new system of interpretation of the world, man, life, and reality. The new system is then displaced by a subsequent philosophical theory. However the early Greek philosopher Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle still tower over later thinkers. And the later contradictory philosophies always leave a residue of truth and really do build on earlier thinking.

I would like to make three (3) points that I think follow from the views of the great philosophers quoted above. This is an obvious impertinence on my part and the connections of their wisdom to my conclusions may seem nebulous at times.

Three Points

(1) The lack of an adequate modern philosophy has placed our culture in great peril.

(2) Religious and ideological courts are the wrong places to establish a suitable philosophy and ethics.

(3) How religions can best contribute to solving world problems.

Even though the word "philosophy" is seldom used and is sometimes deprecated by many Americans, all cultures have a common view of life and its purposes. Our schools and colleges dispense the knowledge and values they approve. Philosophy is now called psychology and it teaches our children they don't have to do hard work, manual or mental, or take orders from anyone. The results are that we have generations of pampered, useless children, badly educated and unwilling to work unless they are well paid. The "golden rule" of our educators is get the maximum "gold", maximize the bottom line. Our children are unable to perform well in agricultural and industrial jobs or in military service.

Modern psychology emphasizes benefits of resting, leisure and avoiding stress. Youngsters sit in front of television sets or computers and go to the beach or mountains. Their teachers ignore Fichte who declared life to be ACTION, doing things. Young people become spectators of sports and lectures; they do not participate. Epicurus believed the highest good was friendship and companionship. Today children are sullen and uncommunicative.

Money can be made without working--the stock markets and the lotteries dominate the society. The lottery robs the poor people. But the stock markets are a greater evil for they funnel money to the people with money at the expense of the productive workers. Managers worry most about the stockholders and resort to ruthless down-sizing of employees and mergers to maximize profits and dividends. Their greed causes convulsive gyrations in the stock prices that can ruin the economies of nations. Capitalism is a religion and its inequities are unquestioned.

We can look in vain to famous scientists to discover meanings in life and guidance for living. In a well written book, THE END OF SCIENCE, John Horgan (Ref. 3) interviews many of the best known scientists and Pulitzer Prize winners. He discloses the utter bankruptcy of the best modern scientists to propose philosophies for living.

If the scientists fail perhaps the historians can come to our rescue. They have studied the events of all time; and a very distinguished group of college professors at Columbia University published a giant book of 1200 pages entitled THE COLUMBIA HISTORY OF THE WORLD (Ref. 5). It is well written and interesting indeed. But the last Chapter called The State of Culture Today paints the most pessimistic picture of despair for society. "As the last third of the century (published in 1981) opens we find both the social and the political impulses are at one in urging flight or destruction... The observer feels himself carried back among the prophets and the thaumaturgists of St. Augustine's day, with no better guide than dumb instinct to find the way out. If these are not the signs of an emphatic ending they look uncommonly like it."

Where in today's thinking are Plato's Republic, Jesus' Kingdom of God or St. Augustine's City of God? The Marias quote that perhaps best characterizes American culture today is the one from Hobbes. Perhaps British psychology was or is the root cause of our predicaments? Is religion the answer? Let us continue.

Socrates was given hemlock to kill him because he "was corrupting the youth" according to the religious authorities of his day. Jesus was tried by a religious court and crucified for breaking Jewish laws of the Torah. Giordano Bruno was brutally burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Inquisition because his views disagreed with the Pope's doctrines. (Ref. 4, Durant, gives us a sensationalist picture of his execution. Ref. 1, Marias, doesn't!) Pierre Teihard de Chardin was forbidden by the Catholic Church in this century to publish his ideas that society is young, is moving, and God's purposes ar to make earth more just through friendships and social collectivism. More recently Hans Kueng has been censored for suggesting women might be priests and advocating other reforms in Catholic practices.

President Bill Clinton is threatened now by impeachment for the sin of adultery for which he has publicly repented. But the smear and scandal campaign conducted by his political adversaries has the support of religious fundamentalists who would make abortion a criminal offense along with homosexual acts. (Republicans have introduced a bill in congress that would make transporting a woman to have an abortion a crime.) Because the Republicans have ample money given to them by big business and big tobacco interests, they may be able to control the US congress and to impeach the President on a religious issue. Forgiveness is not recognized as one of Jesus's teachings by these Christian fundamentalists.

We need only remember the burning of witches in Salem, Massachusetts by Christian courts and the ideological tortures inflicted by Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s based on anti-communist doctrines. Theocracies govern in Moslem countries today, with fundamentalists in charge, who are preventing women from working outside the home or farm. Religious authorities often seek power to punish others. They use interpretations of ancient scriptures as their tools for character (and literal) assassination. Religion in the hands of politicians is a dangerous weapon. But- -read on--I think that religion can help cure the errors mentioned in Points 1 and 2.

The concept of God has been a prime topic of most of the great philosophers of Western civilization. In the quotes given above, most of these thinkers acknowledged and sensed the presence of God in the world. God is a spirit. He interacts with our minds. Shafts of communication and light direct human life. We need to listen to the wise men of past ages and understand their definitions of God and religion. Listen to their wisdom.

Greek ideas of divinity were later introduced into Christianity. (from Marias) "Socrates claimed to be accompanied by a "genius" or familiar spirit whose voice counseled him at critical moments of his life." (and for Plato) "The Good appears...in such a way we are led to understand it as God." The words of Jeremiah are revealing. "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts: and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more." Jer. 31: 34, Heb. 8: 8-12

Jesus makes God more intimate and spiritual. " For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within (among) you.'" (Luke 17: 21-21) "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." John 4:24

God exists in our hearts and minds on scriptural and secular authority. Let's hear what other sages have to say. "St. Augustine bases his philosophy on the inner man. He asks man to enter the interior of his own soul in order to find himself, and with himself, God." St. Thomas Aquinas. "In cases where rational understanding is possible, this is preferable to pure belief. The application of reason to themes which are also topics for faith and theology is the so-called natural theology... (It) is what St. Thomas considers philosophy." St. Anselm. "Scholasticism is...Faith seeking understanding. Giordano Bruno. "For Bruno, "This Universe is infinite, even spatially. It is full of life and beauty, since everything is a factor in the divine life." Rene Descartes. "'I think, therefore I am.' Man has within him the image of God, which permits him to arrive at the knowledge of God." Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. "Since God is omnipotent and good we can rest assured that the world in the best of all possible worlds..." Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.. "According to his famous statement, everything that is real is rational and everything that is rational is real....Hegel's God, the absolute, exists only in a state of becoming." Vincenzo Gioberti. "...the human intellect possesses essentially a direct knowledge of God, without which it cannot know anything. Something divine appears directly to the mind in the created things; it is thus not necessary to prove the existence of God."

These men all make firm assertions about how God communicates with us directly through our minds. Accepting such views makes priests and preachers, creeds and scriptures, less essential for our religious life with God. (In fact the Catholic Church rejected Gioberti's insights pertaining to the direct knowledge of God.)

My point is that secular leaders in universities might accept such ideas of God, especially when God speaks to their minds and consciences! Then ethical teachings of philosophers could be taught and they closely parallel those of the Christian religion.

The task of the organized churches would be to awaken the population to the inner voice of God and teach men and women to live lives of friendship, social cooperation, and productive work and science using the supreme gifts of the mind. Judgment and punishment are divine prerogatives, not for church VIPs seeking power and fame. The enormous chasm separating secular (university) and moral and religious teachings might be bridged.

Are the churches interested in "making the world a better place"? Many Christian churches fail to work toward "Thy Kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven." Earth is abandoned as evil. The churches primary mission for many is to save souls. If the end of the world is near, why worry about the wretched human conditions? The Christian churches consist of many denominations with different messages, but all seem to like to build church buildings and collect money. Many churches do provide aid to poor third world countries and to help poor blacks in the USA. But many churches are more segregated than the public schools. Collaboration and mutual respect among the branches of Christendom have not been well accomplished. Open warfare exists between Moslem, Jewish, and Christian religions. Socialism or collectivism is usually declared sacrilegious. The United Nations is not supported. The point here is that when church activities, programs and charities match their rhetoric the secular educators will take them more seriously as organizations that are engaged in making earth a better place to live.

Religions are not appropriate for ruling. Their purpose is to convert the mind of mankind to the gentle, loving convictions that result in caring actions and cooperation among all peoples on the earth. Conscience is the working instrument used by God to shape the behavior and hearts (attitudes) of those in His kingdom.

What is needed is a big change in the national philosophy (psychology) which is taught in our colleges and universities. Our educators aand college professors are the leading shapers of thought in our culture and their ideas are brought to the primary/secondary schools by college graduates. Religions must become respectable and reconciled by rational thought. The dangerous consequences of the selfish egotism approved by educators and the doctrines that wealth and leisure are the primary goals in life must be changed. When respected professors teach that religious goals of selflessness, giving, hard work, and prayer are valid objectives then religion will combat the evils described in Points 1 and 2.

Prayer is common to all religions. It implies communication with God as inferred by the religious philosophers I have quoted. If the divine is not in-dwelling in the mentality of man then prayer is only a soliloquy. The reality of conscience in our conscious life is experienced by most people. If college educators would incorporate these notions in their teachings and world views a bridge for incorporating morality into the educational systems would be established. Most all religions assert that they have all the metaphysical truths and all other beliefs are erroneous. But most faiths would accept a prevailing view that prayer and conscience are valuable. Our society can operate effectively with a diversity of cooperating religions, and when the national (academic) philosophy will endorse prayer and individual consciences as the keys to ethical behavior.

The other options are to continue to endorse atheism as the national norm for our national psychology=philosophy which we have received from Comte and his Positivism, and the atheistic ideas of most modern philosophers. Or to return to a theocracy as existed in Massachusetts in the 1600 to 1700 years, now administered by the Southern Baptist Church perhaps. If the religions want to improve life on earth they must use reason and God's workings in the national conscience with the united prayers of all faiths to influence and reform the goals and actions of our national life and economy. This attitude must find congenial support in our institutes of higher learning.

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." Rev. 3:20