been thoroughly explored, especially by Kant ([1993] 2000:412427). Such thinking, in a more sophisticated form, is still prevalent today among such religious philosophers as Plantinga (Plantinga & Tooley 2008), Mackie (1982), and even Swinburne (2004). Since the origin of the ecological debate in the 1970s, speaking of a theologia naturae has become increasingly popular. The challenge, therefore, has shifted to answering the question as to whether our knowledge of God holds for our knowledge of nature. A theology of nature interprets the natural world as God's Creation (Peters 2005:2). Such a theology, rather than being a reflection upon nature, of which we are part and parcel, consists of a movement away from an epistemic fact towards a hermeneutical observance. Such a hermeneutics assumes an interaction between subject and object, with the object encompassing both the Creator and Creation (Newlands 1994:77).9While wanting to understand a theology of nature in terms of the voice of God to which there is a response, De Stem van de Roepende (Dingemans 2005), I have to emphasise the role of religious experience. A dialogue between the neuroscientist, Jean-Pierre Changeaux and the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, is described in the book titled, What makes us Think?. The thesis of the dialogue is that an understanding of the brain helps us to understand our consciousness (minds). Changeaux (Changeux & Ricoeur 2000:110125) presents a model linking external and internal experience. The model follows the Darwinian assumption that variability exists on every level: as a generator of pre-representations; then as a process of selection; and then as an amplifying mechanism, which is connected with the storage of memory traces for later reutilisation. The brain acquires knowledge through a process of selection, according to a cerebral architecture which is peculiar to the human species (Changeux & Ricoeur 2000:111). Eleven leading German neuroscientists conducted a sober and balanced assessment of brain research, titled the Manifesto on the present and future of brain research. Of the middle level of the brain, we know 'terrifying(ly) little' (Kung 2007:181). Knowing where we think is different to knowing how we think, never mind what the content of such thinking is (Kung 2007:189).William Alston's (1993) approach is equally exciting. The putative direct awareness of God and the reaction to such an awareness is, in the derivative sense of the word, also an indication that God exists (Alston 1993:9). Only in a 'doxastic' practice (which is characterised by the forming and evaluating of belief, in comparison with George Lindbeck's 'socio-linguistic' niche) is it first possible to determine whether a subject really experiences a given object, so that 'epistemic justification' exists for the witnessing of faith. For this reason, 'religious experience' is not a purely subjective phenomenon either, but has to be interpreted within a larger framework. The 'cloud of witnesses', as described in Hebrews 12, as well as the 'heavens and the firmament' of Psalm 19, exercise a particular 'mystical' persuasive power on the individual within his or her bio-cultural sphere. Human beings respond to the presence of such a power by constructing a symbolic universe. In such an interaction of