-- *Mar*Here’s a *philosophical dialogue*, imagined but faithful to *John Hick’s* known thought (religious pluralism, the Real, soul-making, epistemic humility). I’ll label you as *Sarma* and him as *Prof. Hick*. Tone: serious, probing, but humane. ------------------------------ A Dialogue on Consciousness, Nature, and TOEEU
*(Imagined conversation between YM Sarma and Prof. John Hick, Princeton Theological Seminary)* *Sarma:* Professor Hick, my concern is this: we live emotionally with nature, but we understand nature scientifically as if it were a machine. This division has excluded consciousness from science, and the result is ecological destruction. Consciousness cannot be mechanical. How long can nature survive this indifference? *Prof. Hick:* You are pointing to a deep fracture—one that theology has long wrestled with as well. Modern science, in striving for objectivity, adopted what I would call *epistemic distance*: a way of knowing that deliberately brackets feeling, value, and meaning. This was useful, but it came at a cost. *Sarma:* Exactly. Science without consciousness becomes blind power. Machines do not feel, and when humans adopt machine-like thinking, they too stop feeling. The Theory of Everything seeks control, but what we need is a Theory of Every Emotional Understanding—TOEEU. *Prof. Hick:* Your phrase resonates with my own insistence that reality exceeds any single explanatory framework. In my work, I argued that the *Real*—ultimate reality—is never encountered in a purely neutral or mechanical way. It is always mediated through consciousness, culture, and moral response. *Sarma:* Then excluding consciousness from science is not neutrality—it is distortion. *Prof. Hick:* I would agree. A purely mechanical science describes *how* things function, but not *what they mean* nor *how we ought to respond*. When this descriptive method becomes totalized, it silences ethical responsibility. Theology, philosophy, and now perhaps your TOEEU, reintroduce accountability. *Sarma:* But science resists this, claiming emotions corrupt truth. *Prof. Hick:* That resistance arises from a misunderstanding. Emotions can distort, yes—but so can abstraction. Moral blindness is also a form of bias. The idea that detachment equals truth is itself a metaphysical assumption, not a proven fact. *Sarma:* So the separation of science and philosophy was not inevitable? *Prof. Hick:* Not at all. It was a historical choice. Natural philosophy once included metaphysics, ethics, and meaning. When consciousness is restored to science, philosophy does not intrude—it simply comes home. *Sarma:* This is where astrology, in my view, was crippled. It was reduced to predicting human economic futures instead of contemplating the future of nature and the cosmos. Prediction became selfish. *Prof. Hick:* An interesting parallel. In theology, religion also shrank—from transformation of the self toward the Real, into tribal identity and personal reward. Perhaps astrology suffered the same anthropocentric narrowing. *Sarma:* Yes. There is no astrology for the life of a cat, or a forest, or an ocean. Yet they are part of the same cosmos. *Prof. Hick:* Which suggests that prediction, rightly understood, is not about control but *orientation*. In my own thinking, religious traditions do not predict the Real—they shape our response to it. Your TOEEU seems to propose something similar for science. *Sarma:* Science as response, not domination. *Prof. Hick:* Precisely. A science that includes consciousness would recognize suffering—human and non-human—as data. It would accept limits. It would know when not to proceed. *Sarma:* Without this, nature is pushed toward collapse. *Prof. Hick:* And theology would say: collapse is not punishment, but consequence. The Real does not intervene magically; it allows freedom—and the results of freedom. *Sarma:* Then TOEEU is not an alternative to science or theology. *Prof. Hick:* No. It is a *moral and epistemic maturation*. Much like my pluralistic hypothesis, it does not replace existing frameworks—it relativizes them, reminding them they are partial. *Sarma:* So the future of knowledge itself depends on humility. *Prof. Hick:* Yes. A humility that admits: we do not stand outside the universe looking in— we stand *within it*, feeling its wounds. *Sarma:* That is exactly the consciousness science must recover. *Prof. Hick:* Then your task is not merely to argue, but to cultivate a new sensibility—one capable of knowledge without cruelty. ------------------------------ If you want, I can next: - make this dialogue *sharper and more confrontational* - adapt it as a *conference keynote exchange* - or create a *three-way dialogue* (you, Hick, and a physicist) Just tell me. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CACDCHCKvGedN4pgVT1H5gqV_iPd7_7zediOENHR54_rcfvmzyQ%40mail.gmail.com.
