Human Faith Within a Conscious Biosphere

Description

"Human Faith Within a Conscious Biosphere" describes consciousness as the system that operates the biosphere. As readers will discover, consciousness is not a single essence. Consciousness came with creation; humans and other sentient beings just participate in it. Individual participation in consciousness enables individuals' needs by engaging the biosphere. Faith is what we think we know for sure, and it is not limited to religion. It supports essential social systems. Evolution of language was humanity's greatest advance in participation in consciousness. Human language is the basis for human thought; words are abstractions that individuals internalize for abstract thinking. Language empowered the collection of knowledge into what the book describes as consensus reality. Consensus reality grows as it passes from generation to generation, and human participation in consciousness grows along with it. This book explains all of that, and much more! Throughout his impactful book, author Dale Segrest offers the enlightening reminder that the purpose of consciousness is to enable humans to function in the biosphere. The biosphere is the environment that produces human faith. Individual faith develops in stages; the biosphere is the environment that provides the sources of faith. Humans are observers in the biosphere. The nagging philosophical problem of dualism is a semblance, a mistaken conceptualization that results from the misleading perception of internal/external by all observers.

Dale Segrest was born in rural Macon County, Alabama, in 1942. After completing a small, rural public school at Shorter, Alabama in 1960, he attended Huntingdon College, a Methodist Church-related liberal arts college, in Montgomery, Alabama, where he majored in chemistry and minored in mathematics. Core curriculum courses in religion and philosophy instilled his lifelong love of philosophy. Dale studied law at The University of Alabama, completing a degree with academic honors in 1967. He practiced law in Montgomery until 1983, although he, his wife, Betty, and their sons Philip and Mike had moved back to Macon County in 1970. Dale became an Alabama Circuit Court Judge in 1983 and continued in that office until 2001. While serving as judge, he completed a masters degree in judicial studies at the University of Nevada at Reno. He resumed law practice in 2001. Dale's first book, Conscience and Command, dealing with legal philosophy, was published in 1994. Writing that book, Dale realized that law is a social system that depends on the faith of the culture for its power. After its publication, Dale began a study of faith and consciousness, and has worked continuously on that project to produce the present volume.