Maybe our spiritual detractors look only at the surface level of literalism because they are simply intellectually unable to grasp any deeper level of understanding. This would explain why their posts that attempt to denigrate Spirit and declare themselves more intelligent, or more scientific, seem to be such stupid posts, I have never understood why some people think if they say something really stupid about religion, that it makes the religion look stupid, it doesn't, saying something stupid makes the person saying it look stupid, no matter what the stupid statement is about.
If true intelligence is mental expansion, which is to say, it involves the ability to view and understanding widely different things from multiple different perspectives, an aptitude for grasping a wide range of truths, relationships, and meanings, and the capacity for abstract and symbolic thought, then it follows logically that the contention that one can reduce reality to only one of its modes, to know it in only one of its forms, to deny that different perspectives even exist, is an unintelligent claim.
Science does not contend that reality can be reduced to a single ontological level, on the contrary, science asserts that reality is in fact, multileveled, it asserts that the four dimensions of existence that we call reality, are contingent and relative to a greater reality of more dimensions, of which we cannot have certain knowledge, and which can only be expressed metaphorically. Because this is a function of abstract and symbolic thought, perhaps it simply cannot be grasped by less intelligent people.
All knowledge begins with experience, we are human beings having an experience of reality, and when we do philosophy, religion, science, or art, what we are doing is trying to comprehend and understand, and then to express and relate that experience. It logically follows that a person of less intellectual capacity will have a different experience of reality than someone with a greater intellectual capacity.
Perhaps the lesser intellect just doesn’t have the ability to grasp who we are in the larger framework of meaning and significance. Maybe it has nothing to do with religion or dogma; maybe it is simply a matter of possessing the faculties that allows one to conceive of self in more expansive terms.
In possessing a greater range of mental capacities and consequently being capable of a greater range of possible responses, can bring about a fuller state of being. Perhaps reconciling a richer inner life with outer reality, can render an outcome that can be characterized as “a life of abundance”.
