Rowan Williams studied theology at the University of Cambridge. He then went to the University of Oxford, where he received his Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in 1975.
Superbly intelligent man...my personal belief is that consciousness is fundamental and not merely the product of the brain. I like the quote "Trying to find consciousness in the brain is like trying to find music in the radio"... Namely it is not irreducible to any kind of biological or physical level and it is not a result of complexity. It is something entirely unique and was there from the beginning. In other words, brain does not equal consciousness...more that consciousness equals matter.
I believe that God is consciousness and consciousness is God. When we die we are reabsorbed into God's great consciousness of everything that He has created.
Sadly, the focus is entirely on Anglo personages & ideas. Don't these Christian things extend to other non-Euro people? Isn't their world entirely different? Can there be common ground between Anglos & the Other?
Hi Eddie, very good remark! Thanks for sharing, I know far from the ammount Rowan do, but the tradition he partakes in is both diverse and global. Rowan often spends time telling about how the first monastic communities lived, often in parts we today know as Asia. We most definetely should not neglect the wisdom other parts of the world has brought, again thanks for sharing, and God bless!
All that the miracle of consciousness boils down to at its most profound level is the random firing and colliding of atoms in the brain. As soon as the neurons in the brain stop firing and colliding, there is just no conscious realization of anything. I sometimes think that, not believing in God myself, that a possible reason to believe in God is that we do die, and are therefore spared the obvious inevitable hell that eternal life would bring us all.
Mike Fuller that is a good description of the mechanics underlying consciousness, but consciousness itself is an emergent property not reducible to that which it could not do without. In addition, there is no one to one correspondence between the neurons firing and the consciousness created. Whether a person looks at a blue color or red color, the same neurons are triggered, yet the experience is different.
