The Blissful Opiate of the Masses
The iconic image of the “self-righteous” religious believer is a cliché of postmodernism. Dogmatic clerics in the Middle East smile with satisfaction while they denounce the infidels. Cable TV preachers wince ecstatic eyes to heaven, praising God all the way.
The famously self-righteous Jerry Falwell smirked with conviction that the 9/11 atrocities were “divine retribution” for America’s sins.
It’s a notable mien among true believers of any faith: a self-contented look of homemade rapture that stinks suspiciously of George Clooney’s Southparkian smug.
But now I get it. Smug actors and smiling preachers are brainsoothing.
In a new book called God’s Brain, anthropologist Lionel Tiger and co-author Michael McGuire provide the evolutionary and neurochemical narrative that may explain something of Rev. Falwell’s bliss.
The story goes like this: About one hundred and fifty thousand ago, some unwashed human sat at the mouth of a cave on a moonless night and peered for a long time into the uncertain darkness. Listening intently, and no doubt worn from the mortal losses of everyday living, he (or perhaps she) made a profound realization.
Death — that took your mother, your father, your children, your mate, and everyone else in the whole hard world — would someday come for you, too.
The thought unfolded in a wave of neurochemical changes passing through the posterior medial frontal cortex, where decision-making and cognitive uncertainty are managed by the human brain.
A depressing thought, to be sure. And, as this was the first person ever to consider it, it made him quite lonely and sad.
In fact, the thought might have killed him much sooner than if he had just not had it in the first place. If it lingered, such a hopeless and depressing idea might actually cause harm. The neurotransmitter norepinephrine would be effected. Brain serotonin levels would drop. There is a good likelihood that concomitant loss of social status would reinforce the depressive state.
It’s easy to imagine how this sort of phenomenological realization might actually lead to personal extinction. The dimmed prospects for reproduction alone suggest nature would select against such a cognitive insight.
But, as the authors point out, the brain is unhappy with ambiguities and uncertainties. It likes to know what lurks in the tall grass. And also beneath the still waters of death.
The assumption that there is no evidence for “God” is just that: an assumption. If one takes the time to examine the evidence for, say, the survival of death, it is there. Certainly, some of the best minds of the modern age were convinced after examining the evidence. This would include William James, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The evidence for the phenomenon of non-local consciousness, as exhibited in Remote Viewing is overwhelming. For all intents and purposes, it is empirically proven.
Thus people who act as if all these “beliefs” are irrational are themselves guilty of precisely the sorts of acts of faith they accuse others of. Why they would place their faith in the most pessimistic interpretations of life is a matter for psychology, but any impartial observer can readily see such an assumption is unwarranted and unscientific.
When you refer to “the survival of death” what exactly do you mean? If you are referring to the qualities that make us who we are (some call this a soul, consciousness, etc.), then you need to demonstrate how those qualities will be manifested in another way. And by that I mean via empirical methods not scriptural reference (which means nothing). If you are to believe that a person survives death, we must believe that the memories and habits which constitute the person will continue to be exhibited in a new set of occurrences.
Our memories and habits are bound up with the structure of the brain, in much the same way a river is connected with the riverbed. Thus both the hereditary and the acquired parts of a personality are, so far as our experience goes, are bound up within certain bodily structures. As Bertrand Russell wrote, “we all know that memory may be obliterated by an injury to the brain, that a virtuous person may be rendered vicious by encephalitis lethargica, and that a clever child can be turned into an idiot by lack of iodine. In view of such familiar facts, it seems scarcely probable that the mind survives the total destruction of brain structure which occurs at death.”
It is not rational arguments but emotions that cause belief in a future life. If you believe that something survives physical death what is it and how can we verify it through empirical methods (knowledge obtained via sensory perception)?
Interview the dying in their final hours, and interview those who have survived cardiac arrest. They will tell you what they see and what they have seen.
Could just be a chemical reaction in the brain due to lack of oxygen. Occam’s razor: “do not multiply entities beyond necessity.” In other words, the simpler of two explanation is probably the one that is the most reasonable. Why would you make the leap that people who see things at the moment of clinical death (only to be brought back) are witnessing some sort of realm beyond our own?
Do you believe that numbers [1,2,3...], the theory of all numbers, exists forever? Or is independent of matter? That is to say, do you believe that, even theoretically, there is a universe that could exist where 1,2,3… was invalid? It is a yes or no question and is necessarily, at the end of the day, your opinion, is it not? So, applied to faith it is the old, Is The Glass Half Empty or Half Full question. You are simply making the choice to not believe (if you do not believe), because if you study theology there is absolutely an order to it. Now, the Bible does stand head and shoulders above the rest in this regard. It speaks of the beginning of all matter, and the end of the matter.
It also seems that if a person were to properly refute the Bible, for example, it would be necessary to find it in error according to it’s own terms. For this is the standard of all entities, including the Evolutionary paradigm. Evolutionists obviously do not allow the Bible to tell them how it is. So, if one is to take the Creation week, Noah’s flood, and the dispersion at Babel as true accounts, and comes to the conclusion that these events explain the present world in a concise and unconflicting way it is as rational as any other thinking.
(If it seems simple to you to answer that of course 1,2,3… will always be theoretically relevant before and after matter, or that numbers are independent, theoretically, of matter then maybe you can see how belief in God comes naturally to some people, though they may be hard-pressed to explain themselves. There inability should not be regarded as irrationality, because such thinking is not common, even among the religious. -Also, about nothingness, there exists a paradox, which is that there can never be nothing because it cannot be actually comprehended. When you imagine a nothingness there is always your mind perceiving it.)
Self delusion. Some of the most terrible people claim experiences of welcome into an eternal realm of luxurious amenities.
Why does he need to do this?
If a person’s selfhood, including memories, are transferred to a different reality upon death, a reality indetectable from the one we exist in now, how would you ‘empirically’ demonstrate it? If it is not so demonstrable, how would it follow that it could not exist?
Some things are beyond science. Quantum mechanics is a theory in which the timing of the clicks of a Geiger counter is random so that the timing cannot be predicted in advance, even in theory.
Imagine a world existing in software on a computer, with cybernetic beings doing experiments in their world, determining the rules that its ‘god’ the programmer, has given them. Running on another computer beside the first and in no way in communication with it, is another world with its own cybernetic beings. How would the beings in the first computer be able to determine whether or not this second world and its beings existed (let alone determine the existence of the all powerful programmer)? If the programmer pulled an interrupt on the first world and changed the state of the computer memory corresponding to the mind of a ‘prophet’ in that world, so that he had knowledge of the existence of the second world, would the inability of the beings of that world to ‘empirically’ demonstrate the truth of the prophet’s claims of the existence of the second world mean that his claims were actually false (or meaningless)?
I do not at all understand your assertion that religious claims ‘need’ to be ‘empirically’ demonstrated. You are only expressing a certain faith of your own when you make that claim – a claim that is not itself ‘empirically’ demonstrable.
Bertrand Russell is overrated. His difficulties mentioned by you really aren’t, but here is not the place for that demonstration.
One thing at a time.
Religious claims do not need to be empirically demonstrated. Indeed, they can’t. If you are to believe them you must make, what Kierkergaard called, “a leap of faith” because there is no other way one can justify such an irrational belief. But saying there is life after death (which just happens to also be a religious tenet) is not the same thing. What is it that survives? Where does it go? The only methods, we as humans have at our disposal for understanding the world around us are our senses, so empirical methods are the only game in town.
You go on to write: “If a person’s selfhood, including memories, are transferred to a different reality upon death, a reality indetectable from the one we exist in now, how would you ‘empirically’ demonstrate it? If it is not so demonstrable, how would it follow that it could not exist?”
That’s like saying Leprechauns exist but because I never found one I couldn’t demonstrate that they don’t. I could spend my life looking for a Leprechaun without success, but you could always say, “the Leprechauns are there you just didn’t find them.” I’m not opposed to life after death, it’d be kinda neat, but I have no reason to believe it any more that I have for believing in the existence of Leprechauns. In order for a hypothesis to be valid it must first be testable. A hypothesis is a statement (in this case “there is life after death”) about the world that might be true and is testable. A testable hypothesis is one that at least potentially can be proven false. No hypothesis (at least in science) can be proven to be true. Instead, hypotheses are accepted for as long as they are supported by the available evidence. Therefore, the statement, “there is life after death” is an invalid hypothesis. What you are referring to are preconceived human ideas or beliefs not evidence based on observation.
I have nothing against people believing in life after death. If it makes them feel good that’s fine by me. However, such beliefs are irrational because they cannot be supported.
Too bad you have such a sour opinion about Russell. His ideas are having a Renaissance of sorts because they really make a lot of sense and are more than relevant for the topic at hand.
It is irrational to believe that there is life after death. It is also irrational to believe that there is not life after death.
You ask, where does it go? I already suggested to you a metaphysical counterexample to the idea that “where does it go?” is a devastating question. I will put it together a little more for you.
If our reality was a program running on a computer substrate, and there was another computer sitting next to it and isolated from it, after death, our subroutine could go to the next computer, transferred through the programmer’s intervention. The subroutines running as beings on the first computer would have no way to test a hypothesis that this either was happening or was not, since the second computer would not exist as part of the program running on the first computer.
I used this particular example because many people think we can be transferred or uploaded onto a computer (followers of Kurzweil and the ‘Singularity’) and I suspect that many of them feel that they are sufficiently sophisticated to be beyond the ‘god’ idea, yet their model for future possibility is singularly easy to use to illustrate the ideas of god and life after death – in fact, many of them believe in life after death because they believe that they will be able to store ‘copies’ of themselves for ‘activation’ in case the currently ‘active’ copy is somehow destroyed.
If this computer substrate existence is possible, then it is a very simple step to speculate that our current existence could similarly be activity on a computer (and here it would be standard to add the words “meta to our reality”).
I do not propose this model as the truth. I merely offer it as a counterexample, as I said. However, if you wish to scoff at this, you will have to show that ‘uploading’ to a cyberworld is not possible. You will have to show that the function of our brains is something more than a Turing machine, and go against what a lot of atheists of ‘superior intellect’ believe. The only possibility, if the human brain cannot be modelled on a Turing machine, that falls within the realm of current science, that I know of, is that the brain is, in some way that is essential, a quantum computer. However, if we get into modelling the brain as something that depends essentially on quantum states, we are already stepping into the mystical realm, because quantum states model only possible future states and it is in theory not possible to predict these future states.
It does not somehow fail to be possible or meaningful if I cannot supply you with a testable hypothesis here. It is a matter of faith, either that God and the afterlife exist or that they do not exist. You just choose, but Hitchens, Dawkins, et al notwithstanding, there is nothing whatsoever intellectually superior in choosing that they do not exist.
Socalled “scientific” claims sometimes cannot be clinically validated. Can one replicate the creation? Or, if you prefer, the “Big Bang”? Scientifically validate life from nonlife, intelligence from the nonorganic, etc. Can’t do it? Well, then, just postulate an endless chain of fossil evidence, which you can’t produce because it never existed, draw up a few scammed
“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” posters, and lie up a storm.
Science tells us that matter is not eternal.But, if at some point, nothing existed; nothing could ever have come to be. Ergo, Something has always existed, and that Something cannot be matter/material. We have not always existed. So we have a cause, and are an effect. Ulyimately, that Something must be our cause, and we its effect. No effect may possess a quality not found in its cause. We are personally conscious, living, intelligent beings, capable of love and selfsacrifice. Our cause must, necessarily ,possess these same qualities, plus the capacity to create, ex nihilo, and order and maintain, all of creation. We call Him, “God”.
Your turn. Prove a universal negative, “There is no God”. Can’t do it, can you?
Perhaps I am confused; that’s not uncommon. However, I fail to see a necessary connection between “life” after death and the existence or non existence of God. Perhaps someone can explain it for me.
The law of biogenesis says that life comes from life. We may posit the same of intelligence. If there is no eternal lifegiver, we are not alive. If there is an eternal lifegiver we may hope to share in that eternal life. Matter, per science, is not eternal. so we are speaking on a non-material level. Unless Something is eternal, nothing could ever come to be. Nothing come from nothing. Unless life is eternal, life could never come to be. Thats why.
150,000 years ago? Any antelope that runs away from a lion knows that he or she is going to die someday. Within the next couple of minutes if they stop running. Fish v. shark, the same. Every squirrel I ever met thought that I had homicidal plans against him. Or squirrel-cide, whatever. The realization at the cave mouth certainly was probably something, but it was not something so obvious that living things have known for millions or billions of years before humans got here. What a stupid statement!
But one assumes that animals reacted with fight-fright-flight, whereas humans were the first to be conscious; to be able to or forced to think about the fact that they would die, which IS a significant milestone in evolution or whatever you want to call it.
Hmmm, now I see that Newscaper has somewhat covered this, but I will add that it is a big deal in the Bible, when Adam and Eve realize that they will die. I have come to believe that a lot of the early Old Testament and the Epic of Gilgamesh contain responses to these basic early moments in human consciousness with their respective myths (which are “true” in their own way) thereupon.
Humans were the first to be conscious? I always assume amoebas are conscious too, and why should there not be some mechanism, incipient to our consciousness certainly, that serves for self-awareness in trees. The limbs search for the sun and the roots for water. What guides them? If you really think dogs, cats and mice are not conscious of pain, I do believe you have not been paying attention. I don’t think any great change in consciousness or awareness of being food to some stronger animal really changed in the ascension from lower animals to the animal level of humans. What did change was that we observed Barney Rubble beat off the lion with a stick that caused the lion to fall over a precipice and get cut on the sharp stones below. The stones were too heavy and short to carry around, and once thrown were gone. But the stick when partly broken became sharp too. And the stones when sharp could break, then sharpen the stick. Hey, now 5 cooperating and communicating humans with sharpened sticks in paws that could fashion and hold them were a fair fight for the lion with his claws and fangs where one on one the human, even in flight, was doomed. Consciousness did not make humans. Reason did. And Kant said after Descartes and Hume that Reason cannot prove anything outside experience and, most agree, God as creator and precursor to the Universe was outside experience except for those stepping out of their minds, who because of that seem crazy to the rest of us and may well be.
But we can ask, what evolutionary reason is there for the awe we feel at immense nature, the beauty of the sunset, the Grand Canyon or Rockies on the far scape. Niagara! I suspect though I can’t prove that it does not come from trained prejudice, as does atheism, that God put those feelings of awe in us, even for the copycat works we create ourselves, as a Sign that He/She is there. That “proof” works for me. Maybe that was the Human thought that the lower animals did not have, but maybe they have it too. I would not underestimate the lower animals, just because we don’t speak their language.
The point would be that man’s consciousness evolves as well as his skill levels and reasoning. I don’t know exactly how humans of today experience consciousness than let’s say the Founding Fathers, Medieval folks, the Vikings, or the Romans, but simply the changes in the way we experience basic things in life: work, survival, communication, transportation, entertainment, family structures, society in general would make it a miracle if consciousness has NOT changed.
But one does see how this is a core distinction between conservative and progressive values. One insists that there is a core set of values and principles, virtual absolute truths that do not vary from the time that Abraham experienced God in the desert to the present. One claims that human beings change and grow and things can get better for them.
For myself, I slouch to the position that the old truths are damned important, but that we are also always becoming something a little different. God better be there when I need Him/Her/It; otherwise, out of sight, out of mind. When we see the wonder and special qualities of life and nature, some say there must be a god, some don’t. When we see the terrible things which come about on this earth, so say there is no God, some don’t.
Please rethink the silly notion that reason can prove nothing outside experience.
You imply that, in some vague, ignorant way you believe in some sort of “god”. Experientially? Or delusionally? Have you not invented a comfortable supreme being who approves of your chosen lifestyle? Do you, like mclain and Winfrey, claim to experience interplay with your astral projection? Can you not logically prove God’s existence? For shame!
OK, fill the blackboard with your calculations and we await our Road to Damascus experience through the blinding light of your rational discourse.
Mike LaSalle …you sound very insecure.
have fun with your imaginary friend. I will wait for evidence that there is a god/creator. In the meantime I will accept that there are lots of things I cannot explain and choose not to make up something to “brainsooth”.
By declaring your need to speak up, even though you claim to have no knowledge, you are indicating your own feelings of insecurity.
As many philosophers have noted, any attempt to explain (away) a philosophy or religion using evolutionary mechanisms is more or less doomed from the start, because it’s an argument that has to cut both ways. If your belief forming faculties are entirely shaped by natural selection and all geared towards/programmed for aiding survival, then what do you do with any and all beliefs, including evolution, or atheism (by some definitions atheism could easily be included as a religion)?
In fact, the secularist is at a loss in trying to justify the accuracy of any of his belief forming faculties. As Alvin Plantinga notes, mild paranoia is a far greater aid to survival than an wholly accurate reporting of the external world. Why should I trust the beliefs of Lionel Tiger if, as Nietzsche says, all truth claims are just power grabs for survival (on atheism)?
Not to mention this kind of reductionist approach commits the genetic fallacy. Even if it did explain the origin of, say, belief in God, it does nothing to confirm or deny His actual existence. All it would mean is that the belief helped our ancestors survive. As such, this line of reasoning does little in advancing the debate on the actual existence of God.
Scotty and all who believe that secularism is a synonym for atheism. This is a misconception spread by “traditionalists” and critics of “bourgeois individualism” such as Carl Schmitt, Nazi jurist, and author in 1919 of Political Romanticism, who read the secularization of his time as narcissism. In my day, secular meant one thing only–the pluralism of belief supported by the First Amendment.
For the effect of “the death of God” on some powerful authors of the last two centuries, see http://clarespark.com/2009/10/23/murdered-by-the-mob-moral-mothers-and-symbolist-poets/. I link antisemitism and misogyny.
You get the Ron Rosenberg award for grand indifference.
who can get the closest to declaring what is true or real?
well, if you’re an educated schmuck from today, you write an article like this. It seems to be intelligent and blah blah blah.
fact is, don’t know……. it’s why I appreciate Buddha’s teachings………. his statements about creation, creator? he said, ‘don’t know’
will probably find out, but right now, ………… don’t know……
if you say or preach that you do?? red flags should fire from the launching pad……………… because………… no one knows, that I can find out about…………. the ones that say they know seem certifiably nuts, see muslim, christianity, etc
Very interesting article. I can accept the idea that the instinct for survival is different from the awareness of one’s own death (although I have anecdotal evidence that higher animals, other than humans, do indeed comprehend death, perhaps even of themselves). But the universe, however it began, does exist, therefore we exist. That all its conditions are just right for our existence is an argument for a reality beyond, and quite apart from, our limited perception.
In other words, even if no one hears the tree fall, it still makes a sound in terms of vibrations in air and earth.
As it happens, I believe in a God that is impossible for human understanding… at least for now. As a species, we’re pretty far along in our pre-adolescence, and we’ve got a long way to go yet. We probably will evolve beyond the idea of The Old Man In The Sky, but perhaps not ever beyond the idea of God. Even that much going to take a bigger, quicker brain than the authors of God’s Brain are writing about. Give us a couple of epochs, and then see.
Karl Marx was right about one thing – religion is the opiate of the masses. Of course Communism is a religion too. What that proves is that people want to have faith in something. Reason is just not enough for more then 2% of the world’s population it seems.
“Reason is just not enough for more than 2% of the world population it seems”. Yes, but the term “reason” is very complex. Let’s cite Goethe: “Er nennt’s Vernunft und braucht’s allein / Nur tierischer als jedes Tier zu sein(Goethe, Faust). Rough translation: He calls it reason and (he) only needs it / to be more like an animal(more bestial, beastly) than any animal.
“religion is opiate of the masses”. Yes, but only when the earth is such a miserable place that a place in heaven is the only hope(argument of Marx that I accept).Furthermore, most important, a world without God offers no comfort for those who are left back on earth after the death of a beloved person. The poet Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) tried in his poems to overcome the death of his fiancée Sophie. For him “the search for the blue flower” was a reaction to the finality of death. Therefore the statements in the article: “The prospect of complete nothing after death appears to be bewildering and unendurable to many people” and “religion is a survival technique” are very true for those who seek comfort. And when life ends with death? That we will never know because we are dead.
A rash presumption. Capable of scientific proof?
“Reason is just not enough for more then 2% of the world’s population it seems.
”
Then said 2% is in a state of arrested development. Not there is anything wrong with that.
Where did reason come from? What is the cause of reason? In what ways is reason of passion different from reason of logic? What is the logic for reason to be?
What is the logic and or reason for passion to be?
Right. Marx was not an atheist, which is kind of impossible to be. Marx just chose to spell G-O-D as H-I-S-T-O-R-Y which for him served the same function in his religion as God did in the earlier religions. Those earlier Gods failed and so did History, judging by the short eye-blink from Marx’s death. Atheism is impossible because all God means is a greater force in or out of Universe than me, the speaker. No one believes that they are ultimate force in the universe, or that they had a hand in bringing about the Big Bang, which has been proven, and some force brought it about. No professed Atheist I ever met believed they were the ultimate force in the universe. All they denied was some other Fellow’s God (Thor with a thunder hammer) and that this other fellow’s God had his, the Atheist’s exact same perspective, and would answer his prayers on command at any time, just for asking. This is not atheism, it is fatuousness. That is why I don’t believe in Atheists. I am an A-atheist.
Marx denied the existence of God by refusing to define Him rationally. God didn’t go away just because the crazy commie wouldn’t look in His direction.
I would rather read “Toward A Meaningful Life” by Rebbe Schneerson and be uplifted than waste a couple hours I will never get back only to find out some atheists think life stinks.
Perhaps you could read the always popular “God Delusion” by Ricahard Dawkins, and see why atheism makes many people much more happy than fear of a God.
Every survey I have ever seen finds that those who believe in God and are actively involved in a church/synagouge are much happier than those who aren’t.
Case in point. Your rather strident attempt to justify your own belief system indicates that you yourself are far from happy.
Calling someone out for making a strident comment, then making a strident comment is odd. I found it more difficult when I was a believer to be happy because living in fear of a supreme being is stressful and unrewarding. I can be happy and a decent person because I want to be, not because a book commanded me to do so. Right now I am obviously unhappy but it has nothing to do with my lack of belief, and everything to do with my gegraphical location.
You can’t honestly believe surveys anymore to begin with.
Two humorous new cartoons related to how the Obama Administration is hurting American
“Obama’s Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “If it were a car . . . ” at http://drawfortruth.wordpress.com/category/obama/
don’t forget that global warming is a religion also……….
not to mention a scam of the highest order……
every summer when it gets hot, it gets reinforced again until winter when the north winds blow……….. you like global warming, then you pay for it, leave me out.
Everyone speaks for God…
His brain…
His greatness…Chris Hitchens, God is Not Great
His existence…Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Some even report on extensive personal discussions with Him…Neal Donald Walsch, Conversations With God
And, of course, many many more.
I, too, then, can speak for God, and will maintain that He/It would likely not find much of Itself in the world’s religions.
Perhaps God, were he paying attention, would get a big kick out of all this speculation from one of his creatures on the 3rd rock from the sun.
Oh He does, “The One enthroned in the Heavens laughs,” says the second Psalm.
I am God. Prove that I’m not.
Predict the future in detail, flawlessly, or revive a dead guy using nothing but your voice. If you cannot do that, then you certainly aren’t God.
While a bit off topic, God’s supposed omniscience poses an interesting problem for the theist. That being it’s incompatibility with the notion of free-will, a basic Christian tenet. You see, God’s foreknowledge of your actions is incompatible with your acting freely. What God knows must happen right? Therefore, the play is already written and your actions have already been pre-determined. Either God is omniscient and you have no free will or you have free will and God isn’t omniscient. It’s one or the other, can’t have it both ways, at least not in a rational sense. Wrap your mind around that.
You made the claim, the burden of proof is yours… Well? We’re waiting!
Along with all the above, I can even fold time! Told you I was God. But why is the burden of proof on me if the burden of proof isn’t also on youknowwho in the above comments? Apparently he can argue there is life after death without out the need to support it with evidence. Why do you not extend my claim of being God the same courtesy? Youknowwho has not been required to provide support for the claim “there is life after death.” Therefore, going along these lines I am not required to provide support for my claim that “I am God.” Indeed, to paraphrase youknowwho’s own words, “It does not somehow fail to be possible or meaningful if I cannot supply you with a testable hypothesis here. It is a matter of faith, either that I am God and the afterlife exist or that they do not exist. You just choose,”
Sorry guys, you can’t have it both ways.
Knowing and determining are not the same. God knows whether Mr. Dawkins will repent or go to Hell; but He allows Mr. Dawkins to use his free will to make the choice. before He created man, God knew that men would sin. If He did not create man, Jesus need not suffer and die. But His love is so great that He went ahead and created mankind, knowing, not determining, that Jesus Christ, His Son, would have to die to save those sinful men. And it was left to Jesus to make the final decision. All men could choose to love and obey Jesus Christ and be saved. But only a few will do so. God knew that always. But He left the choice up to us. To know is not to determine.
All this discussion is a brilliant example of what is the crisis of the West today:
our intelligence gets continually raped by pseudo-intellectuals whose brain must be the same size of a hen’s brain.
Would these pseudo-intellectuals tell me how “something” came to be ?
Oh, I guess they didn’t focus their sharp minds on philosophical problems , did they ?
It’s a simple question: how is there anything, how does anything exist ?
Can these brilliant pseudo-intellectuals show any case of anything coming to be from the sheer nothing ?
Oh , they can’t. i thought so.
Or will they resort to tricks, like the “quantum” vacuum ?
No, sirs, I said, the sheer nothing.
Can the sheer nothing produce anything ?
Can the sheer nothing create you, the Milky Way and my cat ?
They are too stupid to speak about Religion, that’s the problem. Too stupid and too ignorant.
And they are not curious, either, otherwise they would have philosophical questions in their pinheads.
This is the tragedy of the West today. We call “intellectuals” the idiots.
Let’s pray for them too.
We need your condescending (and idiotic) prayers about as much as we need a subdural hematoma. If you have nothing of substance to say then go away. “Intellectual” is just a code word for those who can’t make sense of the world without their magical sky daddy. It’s really an infantile mindset.
And to think, somebody just claimed that atheists were happier.
P continually disproves that.
Then again, he’s a liberal, they’re always made at somebody anyway.
Dear Sherab:
If at one time nothing existed, nothing could ever come to be. Ergo, Something has always existed; ie, is eternal. Matter is not eternal, so that something in not material. Humans have not always existed. But the Something has. Ergo, by whatever chain of causation, humans have to be the effects of that cause. No effect can possess a quality not found in its cause. But humans are personally conscious, living, intelligent beings, capable of love and selfsacrifice. Ergo, their cause must be a personally conscious, living, intelligent being, capable of love and selfsacrifice, and also capable of creating our universe of infinite size and complexity, and maintaining it in working, harmonious order. We call that Being,” God.”
On the other hand, one cannot prove that God does not exist.Logically, universal negatives are incapable of proof. So there!
Good point, Sherab! Nothing times nothing is nothing. If Something is not eternal, nothing can ever exist.But mankind is not eternal. So we must have a Cause. And it must be that Something which has always existed, because we did not come from nothing. Since we are intelligent, loving, personally conscious living beings, and an effect can have no qualities not found in its cause, our Cause, that Eternal Something, must be an intelligent, loving, living, personally conscious being.God?
Edmund Burke above has it wrong. All kinds of higher animals have a fear of death when it is imminent, but human beings are aware of it, and can anticipate it, when it is far away.
Religion is (at least the core of it) is an adaptation to what I call the Tragedy of Sapience. It is not just an awareness of one’s own mortality, but of that of everyone we love.
There is some nobility in unflinchingly facing the fact of one’s own death as the end, leading to non-existence (if you are a pure materialist), but there is *nothing* whatsoever ennobling about contemplating the permanent death of a spouse or one’s children.
It is one thing to disagree about the existence of anything beyond the here and now, or that there is any higher purpose, but quite another to be so dismissive about people finding solace in religion, when it is based in love.
I will not claim certainty on the division between an antelope and a man, since I have never been an antelope, but antelopes have memories and if they are scared of death in one moment, they can recall it on some level later, just as humans can. Secondly, Humans mostly do not dwell on their mortality, usually being busy with other things on their mind of more immediate moment, same as animals. But you are confusing cause with effect I think. Because we can reason from cause to effect, having accidentally stumbled on the process and been able to do something about it (without opposable thumbs, what could an antelope do really?) our brains developed to the point where you and I can now discuss this. But I don’t think the mortality discovery is any great thing, and I don’t see why the Authors of “God’s Brain” would mark it as some sort of benchmark that was not already well-developed as of the time of need in the lower animals. I don’t get it. Reason is the key to the difference between the lower animals and us, not awareness of death.
Last month, I wrote an article taking off on a thesis once expressed by Douglas Adams about an artificial God. I neither believe nor know that there is or is not a God. Adams, who characterized himself as a “radical atheist,” did not believe or know either; he was, however, convinced that there is none. We part company there.
However, the notion of an artificial God has some appeal.
He was “convinced” without “believing or knowing”? Is this an obamanism, or are we speaking clintonese? This scam is similar to that of a priest who told me that the communion host is the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ. When I pointed out that lab tests could easily disprove his fakery, he admitted that physical proof was not possible, that the spiritual could not be evidenced; but that the lord’s Body was “sacramentally” present. When I demanded a definition of “sacramentally”, he stated that the term is “indefineable”. Orwell labelled such “doublespeak”, did he not? The pity is, that Father Quack Quack knows better, and is perpetrating a con on his parishioners.
The authors of this book have the perspective of scientific secularism and it’s foremost principle of faith: scientific empiricism shall explain everything and is the only way of knowing. Those of us with Christian faith reject that scientific empiricism is the beginning and end of epistemology.
Science is limited to the realism of the natural world this side of the atomic divide. It may never explain the phenomena of the subatomic world, which seems to be entirely unreal. It’s true we can observe the effects and spin elaborate theories, but the trend has been that the deeper the investigation, the greater the questions. It tends to be a growing discovery of how little we know about the existence of reality.
Neither can science answer the big questions. It can tell us how to build the bomb, but cannot tell us if we should or should not use it. That is a religious, philosophical question. The only thing that science and nature can teach us is survival of the fittest, kill or be killed, for the advancement of the is the most successful gene pool of the physical animal. Thus from biological imperative, it would be perfectly right to destroy competing gene pools, with superior technology for the advancement of our own gene pool.
The Christian heritage of the West originally derived its sense of law from transcendent power that clearly defines the human different from the other animals. The human being is uniquely self-aware with a sense a moral dimension opposing the instinct of the animal. This faith believes in the requirement that man is to become a moral being and that there is meaning to life larger than the mere self, and license to the animal instinct.
Man has full RAM (random access memory) capability that can utilize an alternative operating software that can counter and control the hardwired ROM (read-only memory) of genetic imprint. It is this alternate operating software that makes civilization possible. Even the phrase “rule of law” is a formulation that can only be called religious.
A unique and interesting feature of successful religious- philosophical beliefs that underpins the development of civilization is that it has never, will never, be developed from” scientific approach” but from religious teachers with transcendant understanding and perception which the worldly-wise will de-construct and think themselves wise. Secular rationalism is hopelessly inadequate in development of a religious philosophical system that will work.
That sense of three-dimensional understanding— that intuitive depth perception called wisdom with transcendent inspiration, will not follow the current intellectual fads, which are always evolving. A successful system that is timeless does not necessarily follow rational logic of the worldly wise — because things are infinitely more complex then the solutions proposed by secular philosophers (Freud–Marx and others). Christians believe in the transcendant inspiration of the Bible and it speaks to the being of man with three-dimensional perception and understanding to those who are open to its transcendant dimension.
The Carl Sagens and Isaac Asimovs of this world shall never see God. God seems to inhabit a twilight zone where, like night vision, outlines can be a perceived only by looking indirectly, Trying to focus directly (attempting scientific testing, logic of reason) the outlines disappear. So then, it is declared there is nothing there. But it is like the biblical injunction — “no man shall see the face of God,” or physically perceived him and try to reduced God to a scientific phenomen —- attempting to set up man to be as God, in alliance with the thinking that man can be as gods unto themselves. Naturally, the minority within society that forms the political class seem to gravitate to this idea of gods among men, controlling the destiny of millions of the “common cattle” of humanity.
This causes considerable confusion regarding religious faith when religious ideology is used by the political class to condition the populace to accept autocratic rule with its attendant corruption of living above the law. The blame is put on religious faith instead of the corrupt political class.
Jake,
Well stated.
Read Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question and then you might reconsider his perception of God’s existence. It’s a short 5 minute read and can be found online.
Good read. Here’s the spoiler alert. The story got around the pretty obvious conclusion from the Big Bang that the Universe is a one off event (because once entropy flings out the initial core as far as it can go, it can’t yo-yo back into the first point it exploded out of) by saying the computer that Man of Earth built expanded with Man to cover the whole universe, and entered hyper space. Once entropy used up all energy, and all the suns burned out, only the hyper space computer was left and in answer to the last man’s question programed into it, after some unknown period it repeated the big bang (exactly how the story can’t say) by declaring “Let there be Light!” So man creates God — the Socialist Dream. Was it Bakunin or Proudhon who first said, “If God does not exist, we would have to invent Him.” If I were God, I would be pissed.
You must begin by accounting for the existence of matter, which is not eternal. Later on you must account for life from nonlife and intelligence from nonintelligence, etc. No Thing comes from Nothing.
Mr. Jake Peachey,
Of all the comments I’ve read on this article, you make the most sense. I applaud you sir.
Regards, Mike
Just as there are and will always be arrogant, self-satisfied atheists of the Richard Dawkins / Sam Harris variety, there are and will always be arrogant, self-satisfied theists of the Falwell / Swaggart variety. Faith, whether it be faith in God or faith that there is no God, is like that.
Americans had started to be amiable about religious differences in the decade or two after World War II. It’s a pity that didn’t last, but it appears that for some, the knowledge that some others disagree with them about unverifiable, unfalsifiable propositions is enough to pitch them into a fever.
Christmas hostilities, anyone?
Lots of great minds arguing great concepts today…
Allow me to make a simple point if I may.
The reason for the evolution of mans “belief” in life after death to me, is the observation, experience, and acknowledgement of Love.
I held my 4 year old son in a theater on Fathers Day as watched his first “Big Screen” movie. He went from bored, to frightened, to happy as we watched the latest animated Pixar release. Seeing him awe struck at the scale of characters and personalities he only knows from the small screen…seeing him UNDERSTAND the concepts, beyond the prat-falls, chases and stunts…knowing WHY they were at times sad, UNDERSTANDING their wish to stay together with their “family”, and his happy triumphant joy at the end, was a priceless moment.
It was measurable evidence of his emotional development, highlighted and shared with me in a way I cannot fully describe. If you have children, you know “these moments”, and they are profound.
But it was only lights and sound…there was no “evidence” of anything occurring between us, other than simultaneous exposure to X-number of pixels and decibels, over X-many minutes and seconds.
It can’t be measured, bottled, analyzed or proven.
No sterile observer could detect anything happening between us, other than mutually experienced lights and sound, and the occasional “clasping of bodies” (I call them Hugs). No proof of anything else at all, right?
But I love my little boy, with a magnitude I cannot possibly describe. I hope there is a way for it to continue forever, even though I cannot really understand what “forever” is, or what it means.
So it is with basic foundation of the western God. The hope/belief that there is indeed a “creator” who loves ME with the same, nay, even GREATER love, than I feel for my son. And that the whole world, if they could see how beautiful and precious my little boy is, would feel no ill will towards him, forever.
This model succeeds because it is a joyous, “honorable” belief system…one that takes the very best of human experience, and applies it to the whole universe. Surely it must have sprung up, not from the dark fright a cave, but from the small hand and yearning eyes of a child. Extrapolated into the hope that, since the love of a child is a “proven” reality in our own hearts, cannot everyone be loved, like father and child? Could not, (please?), the Creator of all this, want the same?
Tis a far, far better model to hope for than any other I can imagine…One that seems Just, and Righteous…one that is WORTHY of announcing and advocating, one that is even SELF ADVANCING upon the GOODNESS OF ITS OWN MERITS….rather than one that exists only by force, violence, and coercion.
What decent, sane person would harm their OWN child?
Why WOULDNT one hope that such love could transcend death?
I don’t know the truth…maybe in the end we do just fade into blackness, and there is nothing…
But its not something I Pray for.
It is always interesting how vociferous atheists are in proselytizing. Many are as interested in controlling what individuals believe as the religious people that they often demonize.
Are there crazies among Christians and other religions? Oh yes. There are now just as many crazies in the atheist’s camp. Just maybe there are crazy people who use whatever they bond with to exhibit their penchants for mania.
When it comes to a desperate need to justify themselves, there are none that top the atheists.
While I have met one or two people of a religious type who won’t stop trying to convert those around them. I have met hundreds of atheists who do so as well, often trying to insert the topic into areas where it has no connection.
As to intolerance, atheists rank at the top in that area. Many find it impossible to hold back from insulting anyone around them who dares to make any kind of religious statement.
Look P above.
I cannot speak for God’s Brain so I will say that it does not take belief in God to know that sucking out the brain of a human baby is evil in all form and manner of being.
Today, America is tortured with an Infanticidal President who has no brain merely a pathetic Harvard Inbred degree which affords him the RIGHTEOUSNESS to kill a human being who merely surived being aborted in a hospital named after Christ.
Only the fried=brained accept the slaughter as a form of do-gooder intentions; of course anyone with a brain would know that the road to hell is pave with do=gooder intentions.
Suck on that Intellect!
Praetorian said,
I do not agree with this view. However, in order to explain why I think this is incorrect, I need to establish my own biases up front:
I begin with the assumption that “God” has already been discovered as at least a theoretical probability via the Omega Point Theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point_Theory
I also assume — along with many actual professional theorists like Richard Feynman and John Wheeler (much less PJM columnist Frank Tipler) — that we live in what is popularly called a “multiverse“. (And I interpret the double slit experiment as a repeatable test for its existence.)
Since I believe in the multiverse, it is easy for me to see how free will and determinism can exist simultaneously. To me, it’s a quantum problem like Schrödinger’s cat: All possible states of matter are equally true.
I subscribe to the idea that consciousness precedes reality. That means that the actual state of matter (as opposed to an arbitrary, alternate or potential state of matter), is dependent on the existence of an observer.
Praetorian’s statement that,
… is factually in error, as I see it.
God is omniscient simply by being consciously aware of all possible (or potential) outcomes of the multiverse.
The actual outcome of this universe is up to you.
Therefore free will exists, and God is omniscient.
The one guys right…leftists go around demanding answers and assuring us that the burden of proof is on those who disagree with them.
Well it’s equally on both of us and obviously God can’t be proven or disproven.
However there are countless empirical facts…
Christians, as a group, give more charity than any other religion or social group in the world.
Judeo Christian thought has driven the world to its current glory…the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and everyone else would still be living in the 10th Century if not for the Christian West.
And, as mentioned above, we have infinite examples of created things but absolutely zero examples of uncreated things.
Also if Praetorian is as much of an intellectual as he wants others to think he is then he should at least consider Pascal’s Wager. For me this is the best defense of believing in God in our current state without going so far as to attempt to assert God.
In the end God wanted us to have to choose Him without knowing that he can give us everything..for if we knew that choosing Him would be essentially meaningless.
Also please explain to me why God can’t be big enough or powerful enough to give us free will while also knowing what choices we will come to make, but still letting us have free will even though he might be forced to make good of evil because He loves us even though we make sinful choices.
I was reading an Astronomy magazine last week and found a list of what I’ll call ‘the latest facts’ about the universe. Toward the top is an assertion that science now admits and buys into the Big Bang, lacking strong evidence for any other explanation of the universe. Hubble discovered red shifting and mapped out a pattern of visible bodies in which they are all departing from a fixed point in the definable ‘explosion’ pattern.
Science admits, also, that the beginning, in which all matter and energy in the universe originated from a fixed point with no size or volume, is by definition a violation of all ‘laws of nature and physics’. Before the Big Bang, there was nothing, not even a vacuum, not even time itself. So say the scientists, except of course for the panicked atheists among them who recognize how close this story comes to “and God created the heavens and the earth”, or “and God said, light, BE!!!”
Science admits that the origin of everything that exists is a moment which is opaque to science. They explain that they cannot explain it. But they know it happened.
HELLO, GOD.
It’s like a bunch of people in a cartoon, with little talk bubbles in which they all busily agree there is no cartoonist.
OH yeah.. analysis by scientists shows that if the universe had exploded from that fixed point at something like .000000001% more speed, all matter would have flung itself too far apart to slow down and ‘gel’ with gravity into stars and planets. And if the explosion of the universe had occurred with something like .000000001% LESS speed, everything would have collapsed into itself because gravity would overwhelm the momentum of the matter.
The universe is on a razor’s edge of unlikeliness, not just in its beginnings but in how it ended up after stabilization… looks suspiciously like it was carefully planned to come out in a certain way, where earth happened to end up rotating around the sun and life was possible. The mathematical odds that it would come out THIS way are, so to speak, astronomical. We are, um, lucky indeed.
I have come to the conclusion that God exists because — surprisingly — I have faith in science.
Science tells us that Reality and Imagination are the same. In fact, imagination can be said to precede reality.
Imagination: the MIND — in contrast to the BRAIN — causes the wave of time to close on physical reality. In causal terms, the material world is rendered by the perceiver.
Therefore the chain of logic between the Big Bang and this present moment is an invention of Mind.
In other words, we can say with certainty that a collective Mind exists, and that it is the cause of all physical reality.
Wrap your mind around that much and see what happens.
I am curious as to how you all explain such things as this:
In 1919, a priest named Padre Carlo Naldi came with
his Jewish friend, Lello Pegna. The priest explained
that Pegna had recently become totally blind. They
had come to Padre Pio to see if he could be healed.
Padre Pio told Pegna: “The Lord will not grant you
the grace of physical sight unless you first receive
sight for your soul. After you are baptized, then
the Lord will give you your sight.”
Months later, Pegna came back without the dark
glasses that he normally wore. Pegna explained to
Padre Pio that, despite opposition from his family,
he had become a Christian and was baptized. At the
beginning, he was discouraged when his blindness
continued, but after a number of months his sight
returned. The physician who had earlier told Pegna
that he was hopelessly blind now had to admit that
his eyesight was in perfect condition. Fr. Paolino
kept in contact with Lello Pegna for nearly thirty
years, and reported that his vision was still perfect.77
Gemma di Giorgi was a child born without pupils in
her eyes. Gemma was declared to be incurable by a
number of specialists. At the age of seven (1947),
Gemma’s grandmother brought her to meet Padre
Pio.78
About half way there Gemma began to see.
Gemma’s grandmother and other friends marveled at
this miraculous occurrence; they called it a miracle!
When Gemma arrived, Padre Pio, although never
having seen Gemma before, called Gemma by name
in front of the congregation at church, and heard her
confession. During the confession, despite the fact
that Gemma mentioned nothing of her blindness,
Padre Pio made the sign of the cross over each eye.
At the end of the confession, he blessed her, and said:
“Be good and saintly. ”79
Decades after this event, Gemma sees perfectly and
still undergoes eye examinations by specialists who
agree that there is no explanation for her ability to
see. Gemma has no pupils, and it is a scientific fact
that without pupils a person cannot see. Gemma’s
grandmother also said: “Many eye doctors have
arrived here in our home and all have declared the
same thing: that without pupils in one’s eyes one
should no
I am curious as to how you all explain such things as this:
In 1919, a priest named Padre Carlo Naldi came with
his Jewish friend, Lello Pegna. The priest explained
that Pegna had recently become totally blind. They
had come to Padre Pio to see if he could be healed.
Padre Pio told Pegna: “The Lord will not grant you
the grace of physical sight unless you first receive
sight for your soul. After you are baptized, then
the Lord will give you your sight.”
Months later, Pegna came back without the dark
glasses that he normally wore. Pegna explained to
Padre Pio that, despite opposition from his family,
he had become a Christian and was baptized. At the
beginning, he was discouraged when his blindness
continued, but after a number of months his sight
returned. The physician who had earlier told Pegna
that he was hopelessly blind now had to admit that
his eyesight was in perfect condition. Fr. Paolino
kept in contact with Lello Pegna for nearly thirty
years, and reported that his vision was still perfect.77
Gemma di Giorgi was a child born without pupils in
her eyes. Gemma was declared to be incurable by a
number of specialists. At the age of seven (1947),
Gemma’s grandmother brought her to meet Padre
Pio.78
About half way there Gemma began to see.
Gemma’s grandmother and other friends marveled at
this miraculous occurrence; they called it a miracle!
When Gemma arrived, Padre Pio, although never
having seen Gemma before, called Gemma by name
in front of the congregation at church, and heard her
confession. During the confession, despite the fact
that Gemma mentioned nothing of her blindness,
Padre Pio made the sign of the cross over each eye.
At the end of the confession, he blessed her, and said:
“Be good and saintly. ”79
Decades after this event, Gemma sees perfectly and
still undergoes eye examinations by specialists who
agree that there is no explanation for her ability to
see. Gemma has no pupils, and it is a scientific fact
that without pupils a person cannot see. Gemma’s
grandmother also said: “Many eye doctors have
arrived here in our home and all have declared the
same thing: that without pupils in one’s eyes one
should not be able to see and that, therefore, this is
a miracle.”
שלום לך ותודה לך על מידע שלך – בחרתי בהחלט משהו חדש מימין כאן עשיתי זאת המומחיות בעיות טכניות כמה השימוש באתר אינטרנט זה, כי אני מנוסה כדי לטעון מחדש את אתר האינטרנט הרבה פעמים קודמות יכולתי לקבל את זה כדי לטעון שצריך הייתי תוהה אם האירוח שלך הוא בסדר? לא שאני מתלונן, אבל פעמים מקרים טעינה איטית לעיתים קרובות להשפיע על המיקום שלך ב-Google ואת עלולה לגרום נזק ציון האיכות שלך אם הפרסום והשיווק עם אדוורדס בכל אופן אני מוסיף זה RSS לדוא”ל שלי יכול לחפש הרבה יותר שלך תוכן מרגש בהתאמה הקפידו לעדכן את זה שוב בקרוב