The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris

I don't see it as ever being either / or.

People speak of evolution as being a set set of rules, or even as a force, ill defined, but somehow in control. I've even heard people talk as if evolution is some kind of being... evolution does this, or that. People speak of 'nature' in much the same way.

Lately the Big Bang has been described as the [url=http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702084231.htm]Big Bounce.[/url]

Loop Quantum Gravity, mathematical modelling of collapsing worlds, simultaneous parallel universes, oh my!

In the face of rampant scientific speculation, some people will instead turn to the comfort of their god, or gods. True, when this belief sends out armies to attack non believers, that's a real problem.

[ 16 July 2007: Message edited by: Capsicum ]

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
[b]I wonder if Harris belongs to [url=http://patriot.net/~bmcgin/atheismisareligion.html][b]The Religion Of Atheism[/b][/url]. [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img] [/b]

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Don't know about Harris, but I do.

My religion requires me to believe in "No God". Here are some of our precepts:

* No God created the universe, the earth, and all that dwells therein.

* No God watches over us, teaches us right from wrong, and rewards or reprimands us accordingly.

* No God is worthy of worship by humankind. In fact, No God is worth shedding blood over in wars and strife.

* Besides all of nature and our own wits, experience, work and struggle, we of course have No God to guide us and to give thanks to for all that we enjoy on this earth.

* No God resides in Heaven - No God will welcome all religious folk there after they pass on.

The only real downside is that if you're looking for forgiveness of your sins (without having to change your evil ways of course) or eternal salvation through faith alone, don't bother joining my Church of Atheism. Those who do haven't got a prayer.

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Originally posted by Stargazer:
[b]I addressed Sam Harris in another thread here not too long ago. I read his book, The End of Faith and let me tell you, the man may be an atheist but he sure does give Bush and the US excuses while sermonizing Islam above all religions. I was frankly surprised to see him and Dawkins team up together, as Dawkins in much more balanced. Sam Harris quoted pages upon pages from the Koran, showing it's murderous ways to heathens and Christians, but did not do the same thing with Christianity. In fact, he says that Islam is by far the most dangerous religion - based upon his cherry picked quotes and his non admission of any from the Christian bibles. I'm a lefty and I was not impressed by his book at all.[/b]

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Interesting. I’ve got his book in my stack of books to read. Hope to get to it by this fall.

I'm a Pastafarian. And please don't get saucy with me!

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Originally posted by Capsicum:
[b]I'm a Pastafarian. And please don't get saucy with me![/b]

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Do basil and garlic figure in Pastafarianism at all? [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]

I won't touch Pastafare. I'm an Agchopstic.

Here's a relevant and rather long quote from an interview with religious scholar Karen Armstrong:

[url=http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/05/30/armstrong/]http://www.salon.co...

Interviewer: "Well, what do you say to the scientists, especially the Darwinists -- Richard Dawkins would be the obvious case -- who are quite angry about religion? They say religion is the root of much evil in the world. Wars are fought and fueled by religion. And now that we're in the 21st century, they say it's time that science replace religion."

Armstrong: "I don't think it will. In the scientific age, we've seen a massive religious revival everywhere but Europe. And some of these people -- not all, by any means -- seem to be secular fundamentalists. They have as bigoted a view of religion as some religious fundamentalists have of secularism. We have too much dogmatism at the moment. Take Richard Dawkins, for example. He did a couple of religious programs that I was fortunate enough to miss. It was a very, very one-sided view."

Interviewer: "Well, he hates religion."

Armstrong: "Yeah, this is not what the Buddha would call skillful. If you're consumed by hatred -- Freud was rather the same -- then this is souring your personality and clouding your vision. What you need to do is to look appraisingly and calmly on other traditions. Because when you hate religion, it's also very easy to hate the people who practice it."

Interviewer: "This does raise the question, though, of how to read the sacred scriptures."

Armstrong: "Indeed."

Interviewer: "Because there are all kinds of inflammatory things that are said. For instance, many passages in both the Bible and the Quran exhort the faithful to kill the infidels. Sam Harris, in his book "The End of Faith," has seven very densely packed pages of nothing but quotations from the Quran with just this message. "God's curse be upon the infidels"; "slay them wherever you find them"; "fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it." And Sam Harris' point is that the Muslim suicide bombings are not the aberration of Islam. They are the message of Islam."

Armstrong: "Well, that's simply not true. He's taken parts of those texts and omitted their conclusions, which say fighting is hateful for you. You have to do it if you're attacked, as Mohammed was being attacked at the time when that verse was revealed. But forgiveness is better for you. Peace is better. But when we're living in a violent society, our religion becomes violent, too. Religion gets sucked in and becomes part of the problem. But to isolate these texts as though they expressed the whole of the tradition is very mischievous and dangerous at this time when we are in danger of polarizing people on both sides. And this kind of inflammatory talk, say about Islam, is convincing Muslims all over the world who are not extremists that the West is incurably Islamophobic and will never respect their traditions. I think it's irresponsible at this time."

Interviewer: "But many people would say you can't just pick out the peaceful and loving passages of the sacred scriptures. There are plenty of other passages that are frightening."

Armstrong: "I would say there are more passages in the Bible than the Quran that are dedicated to violence. I think what all religious people ought to do is to look at their own sacred traditions. Not just point a finger at somebody else's, but our own. Christians should look long and hard at the Book of Revelation. And they should look at those passages in the Pentateuch that speak of the destruction of the enemy. They should make a serious study of these. And let's not forget that in its short history, secularism has had some catastrophes."

Interviewer: "Certainly, the major tragedies of the 20th century were committed by secularists -- Stalin, Hitler, Mao."

Armstrong: "And Saddam Hussein, a secularist supported by us in the West for 10 years, even when he gassed the Kurds. We supported him because he was a secularist. If people are resistant to secularism in Iraq now, it's because their most recent experience of it was Saddam. So this kind of chauvinism that says secularism is right, religion is all bunk -- this is one-sided and I think basically egotistic. People are saying my opinion is right and everybody else's is wrong. It gets you riled up. It gives you a sense of holy righteousness, where you feel frightfully pleased with yourself when you're sounding off, and you get a glorious buzz about it. But I don't see this as helpful to humanity. And when you suppress religion and try and get rid of it, then it's likely to take unhealthy forms."

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Originally posted by Michael Nenonen:
Karen Armstrong: "So this kind of chauvinism that says secularism is right, religion is all bunk -- this is one-sided and I think basically egotistic. People are saying my opinion is right and everybody else's is wrong. It gets you riled up. It gives you a sense of holy righteousness, where you feel frightfully pleased with yourself when you're sounding off, and you get a glorious buzz about it. But I don't see this as helpful to humanity. And when you suppress religion and try and get rid of it, then it's likely to take unhealthy forms."

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I've always liked Karen Armstrong. I have some of her books - she's a great writer - the ones I have are: 'Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths'; 'In The Beginning (A New Interpretation of Genesis)'; 'The Battle For God'; and 'A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam'.

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Originally posted by Michael Nenonen:
[b]Take Richard Dawkins, for example. He did a couple of religious programs that I was fortunate enough to miss. It was a very, very one-sided view."[/b]

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This business of trying to debunk a belief by punching holes in the adherants is bad mojo. Dawkins might be behaving in an impolite fashion, but that doesn't mean there is a god. Similarily, that Newton was a pretentious asshat (by most accounts) doesn't mean there's no gravity.

Charlotte

I wonder if the professed atheists on this post would be willing to allow theistic regimes and politically influential theistic movements the same sort of caveats that they inevitably bring out whenever anyone mentions the crimes of regimes and movements with profoundly anti-religious biases.

For example, Frustrated Mess, are you saying that none of the people who carried out atrocities in these regimes were atheists? If not, then the fact that theists were involved in these atrocities is therefore irrelevant. The real question is whether the regimes legitimized themselves primarily through religious language, whether these regimes were predominantly secular or theistic, and whether they were cozy with religious authorities or hostile to them.

Say what you will about the professed religious beliefs of Hitler and Stalin, their actual behaviour towards religious insitutions was draconian.

And, in any case, there is a link between Saddam's secularism and the support he received from Western governments, and that link is Iran. Western powers were very worried about the potential for religious revolutions like the one that toppled their pawn, the Shah. Saddam represented exactly the kind of authoritarian power-broker they preferred, specifically because his regime was ruggedly secular and therefore--supposedly--easily manipulated. This is exactly why the US supported Saddam's war on Iran.

As for the question regarding the existence of God, this is a metaphysical question that science quite literally can't address. Check out Ian Barbour's Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (1997) for a good number of reasons why this is so. Barbour was a professor of physics as well as a professor of religion at Carleton College, and Bean Professor of Science, Technology, and Society.

Speaking of authors like Dawkins, he writes:

"I suggest that these authors have failed to distinguish between scientific and philosophical questions. Scientists in their popular writings tend to invoke the authority of science for ideas that are not part of science itself. Articles in journals of physics, chemistry, and biology do not discuss materialism, theism, or other world views that provide philosophical interpretations of science. These are alternative belief systems, each claiming to encompass all of reality.

"In their epistemology, these authors assume that the scientific method is the only reliable source of knowledge--an assumption sometimes referred to by its critics as 'scientism.' If science is the only acceptable form of understanding, explanation in terms of astronomical origins, evolutionary history, biomechanical mechanisms, and other scientific theories will exclude all other forms of explanation. I would reply that science relies on impersonal concepts and leaves out of its inquiry the most distinctive features of personal life. Moreover, the concept of God is not meant to be a hypothesis formulated to explain phenomena in the world in competition with scientific hypotheses. Belief in God is primarily a commitment to a way of life in response to distinctive kinds of religious experience in communities formed by historic traditions; it is not a substitute for scientific research. Religious beliefs offers a wider framework of meaning in which particular events can be contextualized. As a rough approximation, we may say that religion asks why and science asks how...

"In their metaphysics, these authors have extended scientific concepts beyond their scientific use to support comprehensive materialist philosophies....The identification of the real with measurable properties that can be correlated by exact mathematical relationships started in the physical sciences but influenced scientists in other fields and continues today. But I would argue that these properties of matter have been abstracted from the real world by ignoring the particularity of events and the nonquantifiable aspects of human experience. We do not have to conclude that matter alone is real or that mind, purpose, and human love are only by-products of matter in motion. Theism, in short, is not inherently in conflict with science, but it does conflict with a metaphysics of materialism."

[ 16 July 2007: Message edited by: Michael Nenonen ]

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
[b]
If there was no religion in the middle-east over what would they be fighting?[/b]

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Territorial ambition, wealth distribution, oil, neo-colonialism, take your pick.

And as for Dawkins' supposedly Vulcan rationality, I don't buy it. I know an emotionally-charged crusade when I see one. The inability of so many atheists to recognize their own emotional motivations strikes me as an expression of what Sartre--an avowed atheist himself--would undoubtedly call "bad faith." This is the height of intellectual hubris, and a transparent attempt to define a rational and virtuous in-group in opposition to an irrational and vicious out-group.

[ 16 July 2007: Message edited by: Michael Nenonen ]

So, if the emotional appeal that motivates war is to God, King, and Country, is it possible that the God part of this equation is somewhat redundant? Is King and Country ever sufficient? Could God, in fact, be simply a synonym for King and Country--for the "in-group"? If so, then this says little about God, and a great deal about the ease with which religious language can be appropriated for non-religious ends.

As for Israel, remember that Zionism started out as, and for many Israelies remains, an essentially secular movement.

Regarding suicide bombers, the definitive study of their motivations was conducted by Robert Pape, who examined in detail a wide range of suicide attacks and the people who committed them. In his seminal book, Dying to Win: the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005)--and by seminal I mean that it refers to the most comprehensive data-set ever accumulated on the subject--he writes that there is "little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world's religions...Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland."

[ 16 July 2007: Message edited by: Michael Nenonen ]

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So, if the emotional appeal that motivates war is to God, King, and Country, is it possible that the God part of this equation is somewhat redundant? Is King and Country ever sufficient? Could God, in fact, be simply a synonym for King and Country--for the "in-group"?

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No. Governments and kings fall out of favour. History is littered with revolutions and beheaded kings. Ask the Tsars. But God is forever.

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If so, then this says little about God, and a great deal about the ease with which religious language can be appropriated for non-religious ends.

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Agreed. Which would be my point.

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As for Israel, remember that Zionism started out as, and for many Israelies remains, an essentially secular movement.

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Whatever Zionism started out as, and whatever it has become, there is no denying that Zionists appeal to the Jewishness of its target audience and has firmly planted itself, rightly or wrongly, on the faith and beliefs of Jews. And many of the settlers are motivated by a strong belief that the land they occupy was promised them by God. What would be the reason for their hate and obstinance if there was no God?

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there is "little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world's religions...Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland."

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It has always been argued that suicide bombers are motivated by revenge and anger. Other interviews have so indicated. But from where are suicide bombers recruited? Who trains them? Who indoctrinates them? From where do they get their strength if you can call it that? What would be the central organizing principle of Hamas if there was no Islam?

Okay, you've really thrown me for a loop here. Now I am not sure what to say. So I will say this: I have no fundamental disagreement with spiritualism. If someone chooses to believe in something and it offers something of value to their lives that otherwise was not there, who am I to say they are wrong?

My prime argument has been with religion. Religion is a tool of the powerful to manipulate and control the powerless. It teaches acceptance of suffering and indignity and poverty and pain and even slavery. Your reward, it says, will come in heaven.

If everyone knew this was it. That life is the here and now and when it is over there will be darkness and nothing more. That their afterlife is not a place in some undefined and unimaginable paradise but their own progeny. If they knew that, then they might be far less accepting of all the indignities heaped upon them. They may even demand heaven here, on earth. And they might be far more concerned with the state of the world they leave for their children to inherit.

If the Bathist regime believed Green Men with uranium blood would arrive from space to rule the world and so established a cult, but could still "stabilise" Iraq, the US would have still sent weapons and support.

The West, at that time, was less concerned about the spread of Iran's Islamic revolution because the Baath party was not just secular, it was predominantly Sunni. If it was predominantly Shiite, the West would likely have been less supportive.

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To maintain their control over their country, they cynically manipulate the most repressive religous institutions in order to maintain a social order

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!!! Who woulda thunk it?

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As for at least one of your other points--perhaps religion can't tell us whether or not God exists any more than science can. At the same time, perhaps neither religion nor science can tell me whether or not you, Frustrated Mess, are conscious or just a "philosophical zombie"...that is, an automaton who mimics sentience but really possesses nothing of the sort.

Certainly science provides no evidence that in addition to neurological events inside your brain there is some sort of consciousness, some subjectivity that can't, by definition, be subjected to objective quantification. My decision to interact with you as though you are something other than such an automaton...that you are a subject rather than simply an object in my perceptual field...is grounded in what, exactly?

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Oh, well faith of course. Not. A preponderence of evidence, the fact I communicate in return to you and with adaptive arguments suggests that should you believe I exist your belief is based on more than faith. What's more, we could arrange to prove that I exist. But you can't even get God to answer you to begin the process of proving an existence.

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At least with you, I can say that you have a brain ... My cat doesn't even have that.

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Then your cat is more God-like than I am.

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The question here is whether or not we interact with matter as though it is also an expression of mind. That question simply can't be answered by science. Religion encourages us to do this...

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To imagine? Fine. Why build a society around it?

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The only way to avoid a mind/matter dualism--a dualism for which I can find no philosophical justification whatsover--is to assume that the universe is mind-like, or, perhaps more to the point, that the mind is universe-like.

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Huh, huh. Maybe I am totally of my rocker here, but the very foundation of most religions (I believe Judaism is an exception) is the dualism of spirit and body and that the spirit can exist beyond the body.

I also don't accept that the universe is mind-like no more than I believe the earth is mind-like although I might agree both live. Rather I prefer to think of the universe as being a vast ocean within which we belong like fish in the sea. But that is me and I can't prove it. But at the same time, nothing in my life hinges on it being true.

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Originally posted by Catchfire:
[b]I find it difficult to believe that she meant the [i]only[/i] reason the West supported Hussein was because he was a secularist. [/b]

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I find it incredible too. But I was only responding to what she said in the quoted extract. And that's what she said.

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[b]Essentially, I find the frequent refrain of the Dawkins/Harris type, "if we remove religion, there would be no war in the Middle East," to be nothing short of laughable.[/b]

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If that's their view, it is worse than laughable - it is doing legwork for George W. Bush. I've already mentioned that Harris's overemphasis on Islam is suspect. In the case of Dawkins, whom I have read, he appears to me to have no understanding of politics whatsoever.

Religion is not a cause of war - nowhere that I know, not in recent centuries anyway. It is a horrendous fairy tale which allows evil to grab hold of otherwise good people and help them rationalize shedding the blood of other good people. That is one of the two reasons why religion must be exposed and condemned. The other one, of course, is that it "explains" the world through lies instead of through science.

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Originally posted by Catchfire:
[b]
Essentially, I find the frequent refrain of the Dawkins/Harris type, "if we remove religion, there would be no war in the Middle East," to be nothing short of laughable.[/b]

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I don't think Dawkins or Harris ever made that claim, and they don't try to simplify the historical, political socio-economic situations in the Middle East, They don't claim to be authroities on the Middle East . Going beyond an examination of the meta-physical beliefs of extremists and moderates is as far as they go because the other factors are beyond the scope of their premise, but at the same time, they do believe that faith is part of the tapestry of the complex conflicts in the middle east.

re: lack of tolerance in those archaic sources of hate speech:

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If your brother, the son of your father or of your mother, or your son or daughter, or the spouse whom you embrace, or your most intimate friend, tries to secretly seduce you, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” unknown to you or your ancestors before you, gods of the peoples surrounding you, whether near you or far away, anywhere throughout the world, you must not consent, you must not listen to him; you must show him no pity, you must not spare him or conceal his guilt. No, you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death and the hands of the rest of the people following. You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God. . .

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.(Deuteronomy 13:7–11)

It seams to me that a literalist, a fundamentalist and the extremist has no option in his world perspective but to kill the moderates that water down gods work and do not kill the sister that signs up for Yoga. They must kill the daughter and any one else in the family.. And they must kill those that a secular, and those that subscribe to other beliefs, and all their family members.

And its all all right, because it is the word of god. If people verbalise their dissent, then they must be silenced... first by being labelled bigots for not tolerating the belief of the extremist, and if that course does not work in a liberal democracy then stoned to death, along with their families. People like Hitchens and Harris and Dawkins must die, so must their families. And these people do receive threats like "we know where your children go to school"

[ 16 July 2007: Message edited by: TemporalHominid ]

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
[b]
If there was no religion in the middle-east over what would they be fighting?[/b]

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FM, you are totally wrong. Zionism was never a religious movement. The mass of orthodox Jewry opposed Zionism, and large swaths of it do today. The main cadre of the Zionist movement pre-1948, indeed to this day, were secular and even atheist. And there was nothing particularly Islamic about their adversaries, with occasional individual exceptions, until the very recent past.

The fight between settlers and indigenous people had nothing to do with religion, and it doesn't today. I'm rather surprised you would promote this view.

Frustrated Mess: You write, "I think that fits very nicely with Dawkin's selfish gene theory where he argues humans are survival machines for genes. But that doesn't mean we don't have consciousness."

I think you're missing my point. I'm not arguing that it's impossible that we have consciousness, I'm arguing that you are incapable of proving to me that you have consciousness. The strategy you're using to try and convince me that you have consciousness is to demonstrate that you are behaving in mind-like fashion. I'm rebutting by arguing (1) that the mind appears to follow mathematical regularities that are present in many parts of nature that we normally think of as being non-conscious, (2) that there is a very influential school of materialist philosophy (the metaphysical philosophy that Harris and Dawkins promote and that they pass off as being somehow "scientific") that claims that consciousness is an epiphenomena that cannot exert a causal influence on our behaviour, (3) that if we accept points 1&2 we have to admit that it is possible that mind-like behaviour can occur without consciousness, and (4) that if we grant 3 we have to admit that your mind-like behaviour can't be used as conclusive evidence of sentience.

I'm going on to argue that if we are willing to be philosophically generous and assume that your mind-like behaviour is evidence of sentience, then there is no reason not to be similarly generous towards the cosmos, which appears to function according to the same mathematical patterns that our brains operate according to. I'm also making the ethical argument that when we don't attribute some form of consciousness to things (like animals, thank you very much Rene Descartes) we tend to treat them very badly because in so doing we perceive them only as objects, rather than as subjects. Finally, I'm arguing that whereas science offers absolutely no grounds for attributing consciousness (in whatever form) to things that behave in mind-like ways, religion does.

Now, as for "the fish in the sea" argument and your assertion about the presence of life in the ocean of space, I'm reminded of a book by philosophy professor Leonard Angel entitled Enlightenment East and West (1994). (I'm going to cut and paste here from a portion of an article I wrote for The Republic...again, it saves time.)

Angel argues that, philosophically speaking, each of us has three bodies. First, we have an experiential body. This body is the particular physical system we experience as present whenever we’re aware, the body that we can feel, taste, smell, hear, and see, and that provides a centre for our sensory experience of the world. Second, we have a volitional body. This is the body that responds to our commands, that moves when we tell it to move. Third, we have a causal body, the physical support system that makes it possible for us to have experiential and volitional bodies.

These bodies aren’t identical. My experiential body produces countless sensations my volitional body can’t control or even understand. My causal body certainly includes such things as my autonomic nervous system, my gastro-intestinal system, and my circulatory system, which typically operate independently of my volitional body, and which are often inaccessible to my experiential body.

While experiential and volitional bodies are relatively straightforward, causal bodies are a little more complicated. What is included in our physical support system? Surely it includes all the organs, muscles, bones, nerves, and other localized phenomena that we normally associate with the word “body”, but Angel argues that we shouldn’t restrict our definition to these phenomena. If our causal bodies include everything that supports the physical existence of our volitional and experiential bodies, then this must also include the air passing through our lungs and the nutrients flowing through our stomachs. In fact, whatever interacts with us in a causal fashion is by definition a part of our causal body. Angel writes that “There is no compelling metaphysical reason which leads one to say that fruit trees and the atmosphere are not to be regarded as parts of one’s causal body, whereas the appendix, small toes, gall bladder, and hair are.”

If Angel is correct, then we all share a causal body that encompasses the entire Earth, but it doesn’t stop there. Think of what it takes to produce a brain capable of consciousness, of having both experience and volition. The human brain is the most complicated object in the known universe. It’s the latest stage in an evolutionary process that’s over three billion years old. Before that process could begin, a solar system capable of supporting life had to coalesce, which could only happen after a second generation of stars had appeared.

Returning to Ian Barbour's Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (1997), Barbour writes “We now know that it takes about fifteen billion years for heavy elements to be cooked in the interior of stars and then scattered to form a second generation of stars with planets, followed by the evolution of life and consciousness. A very old expanding universe has to be a huge universe—on the order of fifteen billion light years.” The human brain could only emerge in a universe as vast and ancient as the one we inhabit. And so our causal body is finally identical with the whole causally interactive universe, the network of causation from which everything arises and into which everything falls. (Interestingly, this would imply that whatever falls outside of our light-cone would likely not be a part of our causal body, as it couldn't in any way causally interact with us, but, even so, this makes for a monstrously expansive causal body.)

But what is the significance of the brain’s consciousness? Is it a pointless aberration in an otherwise unfeeling cosmos? Perhaps not. Many philosophers, such as Alfred North Whitehead, the father of Process Theology, argue that the only way to avoid the problems of mind-body dualism is by assuming that the capacity for experience is a property of existence itself. This property would reside, in however rudimentary or latent a form, in unified systems as miniscule as the atom. It would progressively develop through more nuanced and integrated responsive systems, such as those found in cells, followed by the increasingly sophisticated nervous systems found in the animal world, culminating, so far as we’re aware, with the expression of self-reflective, multi-layered consciousness in the human brain.

If our causal body is the universe, and if human consciousness is a sophisticated expression of a latent property found everywhere in the universe, then what would this mean? Alan Moore, the creator of such comics as V for Vendetta, wrote an entire series devoted to this very subject (check out his work--the man is a genius whose writing has been absolutely butchered by Hollywood). In the culminating issues of Promethea, he speculates that we’re space-time’s sensory organs, the means by which the living universe perceives itself.

Space, in this reading, is an integral part of our shared causal body, just as the ocean is an integral part of the fish's causal body. Our decision to separate body and space probably has a lot to do with an area of the brain that Andrew Newberg MD, Eugene D'Aquili MD/PHD, and Vince Rause, the authors of Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and Belief (2001) refer to as the Orientation Association Area, or OAA (this is simply a useful descriptor--it's actual name is the posterior superior parietal lobe).

This is the part of the brain that allows us to navigate through space so that we don't bump into things or fall down all the time.

Based on their research with experienced meditators, these authors believe that in deep meditation or prayer either the brain's quiescent or arousal system goes into overdrive, producing a corresponding activation of its counterpart (thus, when pushed to its limit, the arousal system triggers the quiescent and vice-verse). When this happens, the brain enters a state known as deafferentiation, in which sensory stimuli to the OAA suddenly diminishes dramatically. When this occurs, the OAA...which continues to function quite well despite the sudden loss of sensory input...experiences a state of oneness, interpreted either as pure egolessness or of immersion in a cosmic ego. The authors make the argument that this is in no way an expression of pathological functioning: it's not a seizure, it's not a psychotic episode, and it's correlated with overall mental health and high functioning in other areas of life, as well as improved empathy (which, I believe, is necessary for the development our ethical potentials).

(Of course, the meditators might just be automatons, so if we're going to take the author's positions seriously we have to be philosophically generous and choose to attribute sentience to their research subjects.)

The experience of this state of egolessness is remarkable in a number of ways, but most tellingly in the way that it's recalled later. Consider that when we dream or hallucinate, we're convinced that what we're experiencing is "real", but when we return to normal waking consciousness we can tell that what we experienced during these altered states was somehow less real than what we experience normally. In contrast, following a deafferentiated state normal waking consciousness appears less connected with reality than the state of egolessness that's been left behind.

Angel would probably interpret this experience as the sudden apprehension of our infinite causal body. I believe that it's very likely that this experience forms the experiental core of our religious traditions.

At their best, religious traditions provide methods (such as prayer, meditation, and ethical programmes) that make such experiences more likely. Normally, it takes ages for people to learn how to even begin the process of deafferentiation...there are, after all, degrees of deafferentiation that the brain is capable of. Towards this end, some kind of religious institutions are necessary in the same way that athletic regimes and institutions are necessary to produce athletic excellence. The problem, of course, is that these institutions are subject to all of the corruption that all human institutions are subject to.

One of the biggest mistakes of people like Harris and Dawkins, as I see it, is that in their criticism of religion, they mistake the general tendency towards institutional corruption as it plays out in religious institutions for a problem with religion itself, or with religious institutions in themselves. This, I think, is comparable to trying to get rid of "politics" or "political institutions" because of a belief that all politics is inherently corrupt. We are, I believe, religious beings in much the same way that we're political beings: both are part of the human condition, and, regardless of how often our best religious and political impulses are betrayed, we can get rid of neither.

[ 16 July 2007: Message edited by: Michael Nenonen ]

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Originally posted by Michael Nenonen:
[b]I'm not arguing that it's impossible that we have consciousness, I'm arguing that you are incapable of proving to me that you have consciousness.[/b]

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Hmmm. Adolescent pseudo-philosophical debates. Have you ever worked in a factory?

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[b]... an epiphenomena ...[/b]

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Nahhh, it's "an epiphenomenon".

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[b]...(like animals, thank you very much Rene Descartes) [/b]

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I thank, therefore I am!?

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[b](I'm going to cut and paste here from a portion of an article I wrote for The Republic...again, it saves time.)[/b]

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Perhaps, but think what it does to space! Especially on dial-up!

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[b] ... the authors of Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and Belief (2001) [/b]

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Wait just one minute, professor. These dudes are plagiarists. Wasn't it Oulon Colluphid who authored the epic trilogy: "Where God Went Wrong", "Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes", and "Who is this God Person Anyway?" [Apologies to Douglas Adams.]

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[b]This is the part of the brain that allows us to navigate through space so that we don't bump into things or fall down all the time. [/b]

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Coulda used that sucker when debates like this one used to intrigue me, I'll tell ya that much...

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[b]We are, I believe, religious beings in much the same way that we're political beings: [/b]

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Speak for thyself, my son. For in my abode, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch doth stand ready to smite, yea verily, all "religious beings" that do venture to traverse my godless lintel!

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Originally posted by Michael Nenonen:
[b]I wonder if the professed atheists on this post would be willing to allow theistic regimes and politically influential theistic movements the same sort of caveats that they inevitably bring out whenever anyone mentions the crimes of regimes and movements with profoundly anti-religious biases.
[ 16 July 2007: Message edited by: Michael Nenonen ][/b]

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Before anyone goes about putting words in anyone else's mouth, I'd like to declare myself an atheist who has NO interest in linking the crimes of the follower with the belief. I do NOT believe religion is the source of all evil or political instability.

Were we all secular atheists, the same folks would find a new excuse to behave barbarically, IMO.

Charlotte

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
[b]Unionist, I clarified my position to say "Whatever Zionism started out as, and whatever it has become, there is no denying that Zionists appeal to the Jewishness of its target audience and has firmly planted itself, rightly or wrongly, on the faith and beliefs of Jews."[/b]

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Ok, I see that now, thanks FM. But I'd like to note that you did follow up with this:

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And many of the settlers are motivated by a strong belief that the land they occupy was promised them by God. What would be the reason for their hate and obstinance if there was no God?

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If you're talking about some of the post-1967 Occupied Territories maniacs, that may be true - although even there I would argue that their "religion" is only a figleaf for territorial and economic aims, and it is only a fanatical fringe that talks that way. But in the origins of the conflict, and (I repeat) right up to date, religion has played no actual role. Palestinians aren't fighting because of Jihad or Allah and never were. Nor will you ever find any religious statements or motivations on the part of the Zionist leaders. It's all about territory, resources (water), politics, economics, interfering foreign powers - and if anything, race and ethnicity, not religion, are used to stoke the flames.