WindOnReed2's Xanga

Jonathan Haidt: The real difference between liberals and conservatives

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:55:41 GMT

And Jacob Wrestled with Proteus

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 08:45:35 GMT

J20080921

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"Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man."

--Trans. N. K. Sanders

- - -

“and there was evening and there was morning”

- - -

She said,

“Friend, I will stay here and talk to you, just for a little.
To be sure, it will soon be the time for sweet rest
for one whom delicious sleep takes hold of, although he may be
sorrowful. The Divinity gave me grief beyond measure.
The day times I indulge in lamentation, mourning
as I look to my own tasks and those of my maids in the palace.
But after the night comes and sleep has taken all others,
I lie on my bed, and the sharp anxieties swarming
thick and fast on my beating heart torment my sorrowing
self. As when Pandareos’ daughter, the greenwood nightingale,
perching in the deep of the forest foliage sings out
her lovely song, when springtime has just begun; she, varying
the manifold strains of her voice, pours out the melody, mourning
Itylos, son of the lord Zethos, her own beloved
child, whom she once killed with the bronze when the madness was on her;
so my mind is divided and starts one way, then another.”

(Odyssey 19.509-524, trans. Lattimore)

- - -

He grabbed by the neck his own aged nurse,
when saw she through the dark disguise,
washing his feet, knowing his wounds;
he choked the one who reared him;

“Leave it to the gods and keep the story in silence.”

(sum a section Odyssey 19)

- - -

“He who knows doesn’t say; he who says doesn’t know.”

- the Old Boy

- - -

"The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
'Nothingness' is the beginning of heaven and earth."

- the Old Boy

- - -

Words are not themselves the things to which the words refer.

- - -

Telemachos: “There must be surely a God here.”
Odysseus: “Hush, and keep it in your own mind, and do not ask questions. For this is the very way of the Gods.”

(Odyssey 19.40 ff.)

- - -

“Have I been with you so long, Philip, and still you have not known me?”

- - -

Was that Mentor or Athena on the shore just then?
An old man, or divinity in disguise?

- - -

“After this, he appeared in a different form to two students as they were walking into the country.”

He “walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.”

“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.”

He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, but she did not know that it was him.

- - -

“but she did not know that it was him,” thinking it was a gardener.

- - -

“And I thought of the parts of PawPáw that were present in the room, in me, Phil, Josh, and Zach, and in other ways in Ashley, and before and after in MawMáw.

PawPáw’s birthday was Saturday (August 9). I wanted to celebrate, but ...
Everybody was s c a t t e r e d that day, and I had made no effort to plan an event.

PawPáw is scattered,
about the earth and sky.
And he is also present,
but in different “form.”

”

He is scattered and illusive.

“This is my body” and it is broken.

“Three times I started toward her, and my heart was urgent to hold her,
and three times she fluttered out of my hands like a shadow
or a dream” (Od. 11.205 ff.)

In mad sorrow I like dionysos, emanuel, osiris, zagreus, am torn apart.

i-less savor

my tears were my food
day and night

Like the nightingale I pour out my lamentation through the dark wood.

- - -

Weeping endures for a night,
but joy comes in the morning.

- - -

Khalil Gibran:

When love beckons to you follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

- - -

We are the bread of life.

- - -

"Unless a stalk of wheat fall to the ground . . . "

- - -

I am with you always.

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. I tell you the truth, whatever you did to the least of these you did to me.”

- - -

The shepherd, Eumaios, was lowly, but kind.
He took in a wandering stranger and gave him food and clothing.
He did not know that this stranger was his own master, Odysseus.

And who knew, but Eumaios himself was the son of a king!
As a boy he had been sold into slavery by his nurse, herself a slave.

And his nurse, she was the daughter of a wealthy Phoenician.
She had been captured and sold into slavery.

- - -

Do you remember what life was like in this world before you were born?

- - -

Alice decided to count the number of atoms in a pixel, and the number of pixels in her story.

She got close to the end and realized her story wasn’t finished.

A lass, she was so exhausted.

A laugh. She was delirious.

Sleep is delicious.

- - -

Baucis and Philemon, though old and poor, were kind to the town’s two strangers.
They gave the little they had, and the supply, amazing to say, never failed.
They did not know that God and his son Hermes had taken mortal disguise to visit mankind.
Their love was their salvation.
These are male and female,
high priests eternal to divinity
the tree upon which is built the temple.

- - -

And in Egypt, as Menelaus I wrestled with the Immortal God, Proteus.

First he turned into a great bearded lion,
and then to a serpent, then to a leopard, then to a great boar,
and he turned into fluid water, to a tree with towering branches,

gnitfihsshapes a whirlingmrots,
but still I did not let go.

no.

no matter what shape He took, I held him fast

And when the Ancient One, wise in wayless ways, grew weary
he spoke to me in words and questioned me

and after all my wandering
unto me was offered the divine gnosis,

- - -

Siddhartha sat under the Bodhi tree,
nor would he be moved
until he had reached enlightenment.

Silently he vowed, "Even if my flesh and blood were to dry up, leaving only skin and bones, I will not leave this place until I find a way to end all sorrow."

He sat there for forty nine days.

As the morning star appeared in the eastern sky, he became an enlightened one.

- - -

"It's God's fault. It was his will. He chose to take my husband away for twenty years," Penelope said.
The stranger replied, “But did god choose to be god?
No.
Every God faces the same existential crisis as we all do.
He, She, It didn't choose to exist in the first place,
must less determine its own character, or will its will.
Whatever meaning or lack of meaning, Divinity shares it.”

- - -

“Split a piece of wood . . . and I am there,

lift up the stone and you will find me.”

(Gospel of Thomas)

- - -

Who recognized Krishna when he appeared behind the reins?

The chariot-driver spoke to Arjuna.
Krishna said,

“I am the conscience in the heart of all creatures;
I am their beginning, their being, their end;
I am the mind of the senses,
I am the radiant sun among lights;

I am the song in sacred lore;
I am the king of deities;
I am the priest of great seers;
Of words, I am the eternal OM,
the prayer of sacrifices.
I am the measure of what endures..
I am the chief of divine sages,
leader of celestial musicians.
I am the recluse philosopher among saints.

I am the thunderbolt among weapons,
among cattle, the Kamadhenu.
I am the procreative god of love.
I am the endless cosmic serpent,
the lord of all sea creatures;
I am the chief of the ancestral fathers.
I am gracious Shiva among howling storms.

Of restraints, I am death,
Of measures, I am time.
I am the purifying wind.
I am the cleansing Ganga.

Of sciences, I am the science of the self;
I am the dispute of orators.
I am victory and resolve,
the lucidity of lucid men.
I am the brilliance of fiery heroes.

I am the morality of ambitious men;
I am the silence of the mystery
I am the seed of all creatures,
I am the death destroyer of all.”

(Bhagavad Gita)

- - -

“I am the resurrection and the life.”

“I am the path. the truth. the light.”

"I am the vine. You are the branches."

- - -

My right eye holds the darkness, my left eye holds the light;
In this head they meet, and from one belly both proceed.

- - -

On the third day, the stone was rolled away, and Odysseus, by the might of his mind, left the cave of deadly Polyphemos.

- - -

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of it's own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone.

Like a door that keeps revolving
In some half-forgotten dream.
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream.

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket,
Words that jangle in your head.
Why did summer go so quickly?
Was it something that we said?
Lovers walk along the shore
Leaving footprints in the sand.
Is that the sound of distant drumming,
or the fingers of your hand?

Scattered pictures in the hallway,

the fragment of a song.
Half-remembered names and faces,
but to whom to they belong?

When you knew that it was over
in the autumn of goodbyes
For a moment you could not recall
the color of her eyes."

(Mancini, "Windmills of your Mind")

- - -

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends

Th.s is t.e w.. .he w.... .nds

not with a bang, but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot (1925)

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“The Tao is the womb of all.”

- - -

Athena took the form of a young man.

- - -

Athena became a bird in the rafters.

- - -

“I am meeting myself coming and going.”

- - -

Who forgot to remember?

- - -

Blind Tiresius was a seer.

- - -

Faces of the same being,
Nature knowing itself.

- - -

spiegel, spiegel an der Wand . . .

- - -

“so my mind is divided”

- - -

di vision

- - -

Being nothing and all
Divinity
mindless
invented a game
nogame
Lila
that he might
HiDE and lose and find herself
in countless permutations.

- - -

"And there was evening and there was morning . . . "

- - -

- - -

Khaos is the yahnning gap,

orkhasm.

And from khaos kosmos comes.

well-spring

The Edger - Neuroscience

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:43:25 GMT

I think Da_Vinci posted part of this a while back, from TheEdger.org:

Move Over Evolution
Aug 17th, 2008 | By Rodrigo Neely | Category: Feature | The Edger
http://theedger.org/2008/08/17/move-over-evolution/

Poor evolution.

Evolution, which is as sound a scientific theory as we have ever had has been in the cross hairs of religion far longer than any of us have been alive.

Politicians court entire voting blocks by proclaiming their doubts about the theory of evolution, and the faithful cheer.

Why?

What is it about evolution so terrifying to so many? Is it because it gives a natural explanation for the appearance of design as Daniel Dennet the author of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea says? Why not, that seems like a good explanation to me. Nothing is more fascinating or elegant to me in nature, than living beings, especially us: homo sapiens.

The appearance of design in organisms is real. But the mechanism of this design is well understood, that mechanism is natural selection. The elegance of this system yields countless complexity, that whatever reproduces with variation will yield different adaptive complexities over time. Its beautiful, it really is.

According to Dennet evolution as an idea is so “dangerous” because it explains that nature is enough to produce all of the marvelous things we see around us.

I do not disagree with Dennet about evolution offering a marvelous explanation about there not being a need for a designer, but I think Daniel Dennet does not fully understand what is at play in the minds of the believers who are so vitriolic against evolution.

We tend to assume that what is most important to the religious is where we come from, but I will argue that what matters most to the religious is where we are going. Which almost all of them are hoping, banking, and betting on is an eternal life, hopefully in some transcendental paradise.

There is one branch of science which has almost nothing to say about where we come from, but a whole lot to say about where we are going. It is my beloved neuroscience.

In the development of neuroscience we have found increasingly more and more evidence for the very real fact that everything we are is produced, contained, maintained, and experienced by the human brain.

Daniel Dennet once eloquently put it, “Yes there is a soul, and it is made of millions of little robots.”

Those little robots are called neurons, and it is the class of cell which your brain and nervous system are made from.

But being somewhat of a bastard, I find Dennet’s “Yes there is a soul…” comment to be reminiscent of the also famous “Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus…” comment.

There is no soul.

That means that there is no afterlife.

When your brain dies, you die, every ability you have to experience life, passion, love, suffering, enjoyment ceases.

That means there are no 72 virgins for the martyrs of Allah, and no eternity of praises in the throne room of the lamb for the martyrs of Jesus.

It is the end of all experience.

What I can’t seem to get around my head is why don’t we have pseudoscience movements trying to teach the old Aristotelean idea that the brain is just a cooling system for the body, and nothing more.

I don’t see why neuroscience is not under perpetual attack by the religious extremists of this world, it deals a blow to the only thing they have to offer their followers: eternal life.

I wish to change this. I want to pick a fight.

Religious people of the world, there is no afterlife, and neuroscience is the reason why!

Perhaps unwisely. I want the religious to know that if neuroscience is right about how memory works, how experience works, how these things tshut off and turned on by the activities of specific chemical processes in specific physiological structures in the nervous system, then that means that their religion is false.

At least its promise of pie in the sky is false.

I want them to know the truth as I have come to understand it, the life you are living now is the only one you’ve got.

I want the Kirk Camerons of the world to demand that their followers refuse all neurology as witchcraft.

I want the Discovery Institute to try to create an “alternative theory” for the source of cognition, trying to come up with imaginative hogwash for the idea that personality, thought, dreams, and passion is happening somewhere independently of the brain.

I mean, really what motivates more people to believe in these ancient religions?

Is it really that they are just dying to have a solid explanation for where the earth and its diverse flora and fauna come from?

Or is it that they are dying to have a reassurance that they aren’t dying?

- - -
by Rodrigo Neely

Tags: afterlife, Daniel Dennet, death, evolution, neuroscience, soul

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comments

1. Chris Ray August 18th, 2008 12:15 am :

It has been widely commented that the abolition of dualism is FAR more dangerous to the religious ethos than any upturned jawbones. I cannot agree more; no matter how old the universe is, if there were no afterlife, the chief (only?) “real” religious payout would die.

Rodrigo Neely: the anti-Descartes!

5. Ron Knox August 18th, 2008 3:07 pm :

Most “organized” religions have a belief that there is an afterlife, whether it promises 75 virgins or spending the rest of eternity in the presence of God, or some other promise of similar description. The core reasoning which binds all of these beliefs is, very simply, Faith. The question I put before this panel is: “What’s wrong with that?”

If all “believers” have faith in an afterlife, and they’re all wrong, what’s the problem? No one, of course, has yet experienced an afterlife event and verified that such a claim is true. Believers in Christianity, for example, carry their faith to the ends of their human lives, with the belief that they will experience the rest of eternity (an oxymoron in itself) in the presence of their God. The beauty of their faith is that while they are alive they treat one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. Their lifestyle brings happiness in this life. Does it really matter who is right and who is wrong about the concept of Evolution vs. Creationism, or the reality of an afterlife? My comments are offered as “food for thought”. (And perhaps an acceptance of your challenge for a fight - with the concept of true or false not the end game - perhaps a glass of Spanish Sherry to smooth the vocal chords?)

Roy Natian Reply: August 18th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

      Hi Ron,

      Yes, faith can bring happiness…but at what cost? I submit to you it is more harmful than good.

      Well, the main problem with faith is this: it is not based on evidence. Faith is believing in something without sufficient reason to. That is the problem. If someone truly values truth, then they cannot use faith. Simple as that.

      But there are more problems with faith. It seems that you forget that faith does not just apply to belief in the afterlife. People use have faith in many other things, and many a time, that causes problems. Case in point (and something I’m familiar with), the Philippines is a 3rd world country. It is a very poor country. Many many many people living there are in poverty and live in horrible living conditions. Do you know why this is so?
      In a nutshell: faith.

      A recent study showed that one of the main reasons people in the Philippines are so poor is that families have too many children. Having 3 or 4 or more children while being poor is a very common thing in the Philippines. Families do not have enough resources to support so many children. And the reason why people have so many children is that they don’t use contraception. Why? Because of faith.

      The majority of Filipinos are Catholic, and I’m sure you know the Catholic church is against contraception. But the Filipinos listen to the Pope…why? Because of faith.

      That’s just one example of many of why faith is harmful.

Rodrigo Neely Reply: August 18th, 2008 at 6:13 pm

      It is a good question Ron. One deserving of a thoughtful answer.

      The best thing I can give you is my own anecdote. I was not a particularly religious kid growing up, and my father is a secular humanist. But I endured a lot of traumatic events growing up and had gotten involved in what can only be described as a self-destructive lifestyle. At age 19 I stabbed myself in the stomach in a suicide attempt with a 4 inch butterfly knife.

      Months later I accepted Jesus as my personal lord and savior. I had a lot of faith. I was a charismatic christian, and like all charismatic christians I believed that the Lord Jesus spoke to me in my internal dialogue. I believed that the holy spirit filled me with joy, and it did make me more positive than I had been before.

      But I am an atheist now.

      Faith ultimately failed me.

      I lost my faith gradually as I pursued a quality science education and I learned the importance of evidence, objectivity, and reason when figuring things out.

      Unlike my religious conversion, there was no explosive life transformation, but a gradual trend of making better and better life decisions as I relied less and less on faith.

      One of those life decisions was to really take on ethics, to reject biblical authority as a source of ethical understanding and look for objective ethics elsewhere. I found that by being engaged in a thoughtful process of ethical inquiry my own values improved, they were more meaningful to me, more yielding in my own life and in the lives of others.

      In short I believe faith is a problem because I think a life lived when reality is accepted on its own terms is a better life for the individual, as it has been for me.

Chris Ray Reply: August 18th, 2008 at 11:21 pm

If I may append my own minor commentary to Roy and Rodrigo’s excellent points, it would simply be that I feel the inner urge to hold that something that is true is inherently more deserving of being taught to the young than something that is false. Roy is absolutely right about the material harm of telling large groups of well-armed people that death has a silver lining, and I just wish to make an inquiry about the metaphysical harm (whatever that means) of telling children something that is untrue but also unfalsifiable just because it may help them get over the hurdle of the existential crisis.

7. Minh August 19th, 2008 11:35 pm :

      That’s an interesting question Rodrigo. I do not know why the origin of consciousness has not been as vilified as the origin of species. I’m definitely intrigued now why that is.

      My guess is that the answer is more political, than philosophical. I am not familiar with the US system, but in Canada, I don’t recall learning neuroscience in High School, but I did learn about evolution. For better or worse, politicians can influence H.S. curriculum because they many H.S. are publically funded. And since evolution is part of H.S., it is targetted.

      Universities, on the other hand, which run autonomously from government, don’t teach creationism at all, as far as I know (unless it’s a christian ‘university’). There is no court or politician that would even be able to criticize evolution in University without getting their wrist slapped.

      My feeling is that when neuroscience reaches the H.S. level, then we will start seeing more opposition and denial regarding its claims.

8. Mitchbert August 22nd, 2008 6:56 pm :

Well, I’ve got a slightly different tack on this; my cousin is a dyed-in-the-wool, fundamentalist Xian. To accept the truth of evolution would be catastrophic. Evolution implies there were no literal Adam and Eve in The Garden. There was no ‘fall from grace’, no ‘original sin’. Without ‘original sin’ then there’s no need for ’salvation’. Without the need for ’salvation’ then Jesus is pointless and the bedrock of Xianity just falls apart. I know this is extreme, but it’s part of the mosaic.

--------------- ----------------- ----------------- --------------- ------------------

I think #7 has a point. I don't think neuro-science has received as much public attention. Second, knowledge takes forever to trickle down to common people. Third, there has been no great debate over whether or not neuro-science should be taught side-by-side with "religious soul/spirit theory" (??) in public schools. I know plenty of believers who seem never to consider seriously or deeply what the function of a soul or spirit may be or what the brain does and how all fits together into their picture. Lots of inherited assumptions and vague notions, little probing.

One may say that "soul" is the thinking/feeling stimulus/response apparatus, and that science is showing the entire nervous system to be the soul. Or, one may ditch the term "soul" in order to avoid confusion with common religious and superstitious ideas of a non-physical, supernatural thinking apparatus. It is possible to do either and remain "scientific." The danger in the first approach is the possibility of confusion over terminology/intent.

Education, education, education.

The New York Times did run a piece in 2007: “Science of the Soul? ‘I Think, Therefore I Am’ Is Losing Force” –
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/science/26soul.html

I thought the article was worthwhile.

Doerr Speech - Go Green

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:38:44 GMT

It's something that everyone needs to begin to agree upon, regardless of political affiliation.

John Doerr made this emotional speech on the importance of going green back in 2007. It's only 18 minutes long - well worth the time. Share it with friends if you get the chance.

It is over a year older than Gore's recent speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt9wZloG97U), but I think both are so critically important.

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Here's the URL for the TED speech - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/john_doerr_sees_salvation_and_profit_in_greentech.html.

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On a positive note, the NY Times ran a nice Op-Ed ("Texas to Tel Aviv") today talking about two people doing wonderful things for clean energy:

1. an 80-year-old Texas oil man and billionaire, T. Boone Pickens, who's building the world's largest wind energy field in the Texas Panhandle. $2 billion in land investments and 700 wind turbines.

2. Shai Agassi and the Israeli government want and plan to create an electric car system for all of Israel.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/opinion/27friedman.html?pagewanted=all)

Why aren't more people doing such? Hopefully, we/they will.

Unfortunately, recently senate Republicans have been blocking incentives for wind and solar energy. They vote again next week.

Clean, sustainable energies are too important.

Whether you are or have been Republican, Democrat, whatever - Go Green. Make your party go green. Share the speeches with family and friends. Vote.

Join WeCanSolveIt.org even if you can't contribute money. You can join for free.

http://www.wecansolveit.org/

10 Years. Don't Miss the Speech

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:13:15 GMT

This is important for all individuals, the country, civilization, the species, the entire planet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt9wZloG97U
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I hope enough people can put other differences aside and agree on this. It's the right way to go for so many reasons.

Join the "We" Campaign - "We Can Solve the Climate Crisis" - and/or read the entire speech Gore gave on July 17, here:

http://www.wecansolveit.org/pages/al_gore_a_generational_challenge_to_repower_america/

Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior, NYT

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:49:36 GMT

The following article is from the New York Times, March 20, 2007, followed by only brief commentary.

Illustration by Edel Rodriguez based on source material from Frans de Waal.

Social Order: Chimpanzees have a sense of social structure and rules of behavior, most of which involve the hierarchy of a group, in which some animals rank higher than others. Social living demands a number of qualities that may be precursors of morality.

-- -- -- -- --

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: March 20, 2007
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html?pagewanted=all

Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.

Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.

Moral philosophers do not take very seriously the biologists’ bid to annex their subject, but they find much of interest in what the biologists say and have started an academic conversation with them.

The original call to battle was sounded by the biologist Edward O. Wilson more than 30 years ago, when he suggested in his 1975 book “Sociobiology” that “the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized.” He may have jumped the gun about the time having come, but in the intervening decades biologists have made considerable progress.

Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book “Moral Minds” that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language. In another recent book, “Primates and Philosophers,” the primatologist Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes.

Dr. de Waal, who is director of the Living Links Center at Emory University, argues that all social animals have had to constrain or alter their behavior in various ways for group living to be worthwhile. These constraints, evident in monkeys and even more so in chimpanzees, are part of human inheritance, too, and in his view form the set of behaviors from which human morality has been shaped.

Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings, and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess morality. But he argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies.

Dr. de Waal’s views are based on years of observing nonhuman primates, starting with work on aggression in the 1960s. He noticed then that after fights between two combatants, other chimpanzees would console the loser. But he was waylaid in battles with psychologists over imputing emotional states to animals, and it took him 20 years to come back to the subject.

He found that consolation was universal among the great apes but generally absent from monkeys — among macaques, mothers will not even reassure an injured infant. To console another, Dr. de Waal argues, requires empathy and a level of self-awareness that only apes and humans seem to possess. And consideration of empathy quickly led him to explore the conditions for morality.

Though human morality may end in notions of rights and justice and fine ethical distinctions, it begins, Dr. de Waal says, in concern for others and the understanding of social rules as to how they should be treated. At this lower level, primatologists have shown, there is what they consider to be a sizable overlap between the behavior of people and other social primates.

Social living requires empathy, which is especially evident in chimpanzees, as well as ways of bringing internal hostilities to an end. Every species of ape and monkey has its own protocol for reconciliation after fights, Dr. de Waal has found. If two males fail to make up, female chimpanzees will often bring the rivals together, as if sensing that discord makes their community worse off and more vulnerable to attack by neighbors. Or they will head off a fight by taking stones out of the males’ hands.

Dr. de Waal believes that these actions are undertaken for the greater good of the community, as distinct from person-to-person relationships, and are a significant precursor of morality in human societies.

Macaques and chimpanzees have a sense of social order and rules of expected behavior, mostly to do with the hierarchical natures of their societies, in which each member knows its own place. Young rhesus monkeys learn quickly how to behave, and occasionally get a finger or toe bitten off as punishment. Other primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. They remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them. Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task, like a piece of cucumber instead of a grape.

These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality.

Dr. de Waal sees human morality as having grown out of primate sociality, but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals.

Religion can be seen as another special ingredient of human societies, though one that emerged thousands of years after morality, in Dr. de Waal’s view. There are clear precursors of morality in nonhuman primates, but no precursors of religion. So it seems reasonable to assume that as humans evolved away from chimps, morality emerged first, followed by religion. “I look at religions as recent additions,” he said. “Their function may have to do with social life, and enforcement of rules and giving a narrative to them, which is what religions really do.”

As Dr. de Waal sees it, human morality may be severely limited by having evolved as a way of banding together against adversaries, with moral restraints being observed only toward the in group, not toward outsiders. “The profound irony is that our noblest achievement — morality — has evolutionary ties to our basest behavior — warfare,” he writes. “The sense of community required by the former was provided by the latter.”

Dr. de Waal has faced down many critics in evolutionary biology and psychology in developing his views. The evolutionary biologist George Williams dismissed morality as merely an accidental byproduct of evolution, and psychologists objected to attributing any emotional state to animals. Dr. de Waal convinced his colleagues over many years that the ban on inferring emotional states was an unreasonable restriction, given the expected evolutionary continuity between humans and other primates.

His latest audience is moral philosophers, many of whom are interested in his work and that of other biologists. “In departments of philosophy, an increasing number of people are influenced by what they have to say,” said Gilbert Harman, a Princeton University philosopher.

Dr. Philip Kitcher, a philosopher at Columbia University, likes Dr. de Waal’s empirical approach. “I have no doubt there are patterns of behavior we share with our primate relatives that are relevant to our ethical decisions,” he said. “Philosophers have always been beguiled by the dream of a system of ethics which is complete and finished, like mathematics. I don’t think it’s like that at all.”

But human ethics are considerably more complicated than the sympathy Dr. de Waal has described in chimps. “Sympathy is the raw material out of which a more complicated set of ethics may get fashioned,” he said. “In the actual world, we are confronted with different people who might be targets of our sympathy. And the business of ethics is deciding who to help and why and when.”

Many philosophers believe that conscious reasoning plays a large part in governing human ethical behavior and are therefore unwilling to let everything proceed from emotions, like sympathy, which may be evident in chimpanzees. The impartial element of morality comes from a capacity to reason, writes Peter Singer, a moral philosopher at Princeton, in “Primates and Philosophers.” He says, “Reason is like an escalator — once we step on it, we cannot get off until we have gone where it takes us.”

That was the view of Immanuel Kant, Dr. Singer noted, who believed morality must be based on reason, whereas the Scottish philosopher David Hume, followed by Dr. de Waal, argued that moral judgments proceed from the emotions.

But biologists like Dr. de Waal believe reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached. They argue that morality evolved at a time when people lived in small foraging societies and often had to make instant life-or-death decisions, with no time for conscious evaluation of moral choices. The reasoning came afterward as a post hoc justification. “Human behavior derives above all from fast, automated, emotional judgments, and only secondarily from slower conscious processes,” Dr. de Waal writes.

However much we may celebrate rationality, emotions are our compass, probably because they have been shaped by evolution, in Dr. de Waal’s view. For example, he says: “People object to moral solutions that involve hands-on harm to one another. This may be because hands-on violence has been subject to natural selection whereas utilitarian deliberations have not.”

Philosophers have another reason biologists cannot, in their view, reach to the heart of morality, and that is that biological analyses cannot cross the gap between “is” and “ought,” between the description of some behavior and the issue of why it is right or wrong. “You can identify some value we hold, and tell an evolutionary story about why we hold it, but there is always that radically different question of whether we ought to hold it,” said Sharon Street, a moral philosopher at New York University. “That’s not to discount the importance of what biologists are doing, but it does show why centuries of moral philosophy are incredibly relevant, too.”

Biologists are allowed an even smaller piece of the action by Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina. He believes morality developed after human evolution was finished and that moral sentiments are shaped by culture, not genetics. “It would be a fallacy to assume a single true morality could be identified by what we do instinctively, rather than by what we ought to do,” he said. “One of the principles that might guide a single true morality might be recognition of equal dignity for all human beings, and that seems to be unprecedented in the animal world.”

Dr. de Waal does not accept the philosophers’ view that biologists cannot step from “is” to “ought.” “I’m not sure how realistic the distinction is,” he said. “Animals do have ‘oughts.’ If a juvenile is in a fight, the mother must get up and defend her. Or in food sharing, animals do put pressure on each other, which is the first kind of ‘ought’ situation.”

Dr. de Waal’s definition of morality is more down to earth than Dr. Prinz’s. Morality, he writes, is “a sense of right and wrong that is born out of groupwide systems of conflict management based on shared values.” The building blocks of morality are not nice or good behaviors but rather mental and social capacities for constructing societies “in which shared values constrain individual behavior through a system of approval and disapproval.” By this definition chimpanzees in his view do possess some of the behavioral capacities built in our moral systems.

“Morality is as firmly grounded in neurobiology as anything else we do or are,” Dr. de Waal wrote in his 1996 book “Good Natured.” Biologists ignored this possibility for many years, believing that because natural selection was cruel and pitiless it could only produce people with the same qualities. But this is a fallacy, in Dr. de Waal’s view. Natural selection favors organisms that survive and reproduce, by whatever means. And it has provided people, he writes in “Primates and Philosophers,” with “a compass for life’s choices that takes the interests of the entire community into account, which is the essence of human morality.”

------------------- ------------------------   ----------------------    -------------------    -------------------

Some of my thoughts -

Regarding Dr. Wilson's statement, “the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized,” I agree that biologists have much of importance to say and that philosophers must take into account the findings of biology, though I don't think any discipline has a complete monopoly of authority on the subject. Further, the lines of distinctions between disciplines should be admittedly fuzzy. Probably all disciplines interrelate. Biology does have the good fortune of being, simply put, more objective than some philosophy; "wisdom" has proven quite subjective at times.

I tend to agree, to a considerable extent, with Dr. de Waal's view of human morality's roots in the sociality of our closest kin.   It actually seems completely obvious to me. ... especially as de Waar puts it, "human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies." Opponents would simply have to ignore non-human animal behavior altogether and ignore evolution, too, in order to disagree. I thought Carl Sagan's and Ann Druyan's 1993 book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors did a good job of explaining common behavioral roots.

I was also surprised that anyone would deny that animals have emotions, as some of de Waar's psychologist-opponents did.

The idea that sympathy/empathy is a basic foundation for morality (in the modern sense) is one that occurred to me years ago.

"Reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached" - While I think that this is very often true, I do not necessarily consider it universally true or necessarily true. I also think that some humans are far more capable of relying on reason/logic than others, when it comes to making decisions or even simply thinking. I do think the quote is insightful. Reason and emotion are not always separate. There's another good NYT article on the topic of emotion, reason, morality, instinct, and genetics, written by Steven Pinker, Jan 13, 2008, called "The Moral Instinct."

As for morality evolving before religion, this, too, just makes good sense to me when looking at history, archaeology, and evolution. Usually writers use modern notions of morality when writing on this subject, but at its root etymologically, morality is simply habit/custom, the meaning both of Latin mos/moris and Greek ethos. Insofar as customs are habits (or even more complex socially enforced rules, as de Waal explains), I would have no objection if someone suggests that other primates have habits/customs (or simplistic morality even in a more modern sense, as with the rhesus monkeys who refuse to shock other monkeys in order to get food). The fact that we refer to the mating habits even of insects as "habits" or "mating rituals" suggests to me the blurry nature of what habit/custom can mean. Of course customs can be more complex, and they have evolved in humans to have symbolic associations. Also, even though morality as habit then custom in its simplest forms existed before religion, and even among other animals, still, for so much of human history morality and religion have been evolving together in some "symbiotic" relationship. ["symbiotic" - including memes and genes, both of which I am placing in the bios category.]

My De-Conversion from Christianity, A Narrative

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:08:14 GMT

I've have been asked multiple times recently to explain why I left Christianity. I decided I should post the story so that I will have a page to which I might refer anyone who should ask in the future.

“If you don't mind my asking, what was your reasoning that led you to decide it was all fraudulent?”

...

I wish I could explain it in an easy way, but it all took time.

The most important parts took place when I was 23-25.

It is a bit hard for me to remember the exact sequence; so some of what follows may be out of order.

It started with a few things, and those few things eventually multiplied and produced a synergetic effect.

Also, I have left out any episodes of a personal nature which involve other individuals.

As for how I came to Chrisianity to begin with, I have answered that question in an appendix to this post.

- - - - -

One of the first obstacles I encountered was different views of the Mosaic law within the Bible and Christian history. The OT (Old Testament) said the Mosaic law would be forever, and the prophets predicted its future greatness. The Jesus of Matthew (5) still supported the law and said he did not come to abolish it and that none of it would pass away, but would endure as long as heaven and earth. To me, this seemed to agree with what Jewish prophets had predicted.

Paul, however, in Eph. 2:15, speaks of Christ "abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations." In Col. 2:13-17, he says that Jesus "canceled the written code, with its regulations. . . . He took it away, nailing it to the cross." New Moon celebrations and Sabbath days were just "a shadow." [Also, I was unaware, at the time, that many scholars don’t think Paul wrote Ephesians or Colossians.] And he said in Rom. 10:4, "Christ is the end of the law."

This caused me great consternation. I, wanting to please God, wasn’t sure whether or not I should be honoring the Sabbath (Saturday) and such. It seemed to me that Paul went counter to both the Old Testament prophets and the Jesus of Matthew, as best as I could tell. And I learned that the Catholic Church changed Sabbath observance from Saturday to Sunday, but I questioned whether they had the authority to do so, since this seemed counter to the OT prophets, in whom I believed at the time.

The OT messianic prophecies never called for an end to the law; in fact, they actually called for Gentiles to adopt the law of Moses, which was to be "a light to the nations." I had verses like Isaiah 66:19-23 in mind: “Yhwh says he will gather the exiles back to Jerusalem and "will select some of them also to be priests and Levites. . . . As the new heavens and new earth that I make will endure before me, declares Yhwh, so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me, says Yhwh." (Paul, in Colossians 2:13-17, says New Moons and Sabbaths do not really matter.)

I don't have time now to give you all the details. I wrote more about this here, including many quotes from the OT supporting the law (you’ll have to scroll down a bit, as it's part of a larger appendix I wrote): http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/MessianismPreChristian.html#epilogue .

- - - - -

That same year, I noticed that the genealogies in Matthew and Luke were different, and when I sought apologetic commentary on the issue, I was very dissatisfied with the excuses they had developed.   I posted on the genealogies here (if you scroll down past the resurrection problems): http://www.xanga.com/WindOnReed2/643236583/resurrection-problems.html .

I may have also realized at that time that different gospels quoted Jesus in slightly different ways while trying to tell the same story.

I may have also realized at this time that Jude quoted the prophecies of Enoch, which were apocryphal. Why then were the writings of Enoch not part of scripture, I wondered. If they were fraudulent or errant, why was Jude considered inerrant.

I also realized that the process of accepting books into the cannon was an institutional process conducted by fallible humans.

- - - - -

My faith in the infallibility / perfection of the Bible was gone. I decided that the Bible was written by humans and had some errors, but that the gist of the story was still true. So I was still Christian.

However, I did begin to think that people who simply dismissed errors or accepted un-firm explanations were being dishonest.

- - - - -

One of the other early problems started the next year, with my girlfriend asking me, "When did God make Adam and Eve, according to the Bible?"

The question led me on a mission to understand the chronology of the Old Testament (OT) and how history developed. I had previously managed somehow to get a degree in history without this issue coming up. It had probably failed to arise because I had studied history mostly from the Renaissance forward, with only the general outline of ancient history in my head, having heard no comparison between Biblical history and history in general.

I was eager to answer my girlfriends' question.   (She was a chronic doubter, and I was always trying to convince her of the truth of the Bible.)

I used the OT itself and one secure date from history (the 586 BC destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians) to reconstruct the time line of the Bible. I had not paid much attention to such before. I ended up doing all kinds of things to see if the Biblical stories could match known world history, but I could not make them fit. Eventually I gave up my suspicion that science and archeology were part of a vast conspiracy with fabricated evidence, because I realized how foolish I was becoming. I read about Egypt, Sumer, Babylon, Canaan, Phoenicia, etc. Also, I realized that the Pentateuch was the Jewish equivalent of the myths and legends that so many cultures produced for themselves – Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, etc. The creation story, flood story, Babel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Egyptian captivity, Moses, the Exodus, the Mosaic Law, Joshua, Judges - these stories were largely myth and legend with bits of real history behind certain parts. To me, the conclusion seemed undeniable.

I typed up some of my reasoning and conclusions here:

http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/OTChrono.html .

- - - - -

I did a thought experiment one day. I started by assuming the existence of God, creator, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. I imagined a time when only God existed, and I asked myself several questions:

When God was alone in “the beginning” (i.e. before “creation”) did "he" think?
If so, what did he think about?
If he thought of creating, whence the thought?
ALL aspects of creation - how did they come to God's mind?
What did God made the world and its beings out of?
Where was the world and its beings located?
If God was thinking, before anything else existed, does that imply that God has parts? internal movement? Can thinking occur without change/movement of ideas/impressions/etc.?

My thought experiment went something like this:

1. When God was alone in “the beginning” (i.e. before “creation”) did "he" think?

Well, it would probably make no sense to speak of this God as thinking, because our model for “thinking” comes from our own experience, in which we work with what we experience through our senses. This God would have no external world, nothing to ponder except himself. So maybe thinking doesn’t make sense in such a scenario. Perhaps this God would better be described as impersonal, transpersonal, meta-personal, or the Source of personalities.

BUT assuming he ...

[Wait, “he” makes no sense. Did this God have a penis? No. So “he” is not really appropriate. Maybe I should use “it” or at least realize that I don’t really mean “he” when I say “he.”]

2. BUT assuming “he”/it DID think, what did he think about? If God was thinking, before anything else existed, does that imply that God has parts? internal movement? Can thinking occur without change/movement of ideas/impressions/etc.?

IF “he” thought, it must have been about Himself/Itself, there being nothing else to ponder. If there were thoughts, then yes, God would be both unity and multiplicity. Yes, thoughts imply movement and change and multiplicity. So God, as a thinking being, would necessarily be moving internally, changing internally while remaining God, evolving while remaining God.

3. If “he”/it thought of creating, whence the thought?

The thought(s) would have to be (an) aspect(s) of himself, there being nothing else. God’s thoughts would still be “God,” parts/aspects of God, made of God, existing within God.

4. ALL aspects of creation - how did they come to God's mind?

They would have to be aspects of God – “himself” working/playing with “himself.”

5. What did God make the world and its beings out of?

“Himself.” There would have been nothing else. Thus “creation” would have had to be more like emanation. God would have to let some thought become, and he would always be operating within himself. Everything would be God.

6. Where was the world and its beings located?

Within God. No other “place” existed. All things would have to be a manifestation of God..

. .

So, it dawned on me and became so simple and so completely clear that given such a starting point, pantheism would be the only logical, rational, legitimately-possible option. The universe would be “God” or “in God” or a manifestation of God.

There could never arise anything separate from such a God. If something could arise as a separate entity, then it would have had to have arisen of its own power, apart from God, and that would mean God was not omnipresent or omnipotent. It would make God part of yet a larger universe including-yet-beyond himself. In which case, that larger universe should probably be called God; or else “God” would have to be an aspect/manifestation of that larger universe.

So, going back to the premise and accounting for the conclusions:

1. If such a God existed, I was part/manifestation of such a God.

2. If such a God did not exist, I was still part/manifestation of the Universe, which might just as well be called God in a meta-personal or impersonal or trans-personal way.

3. There might theoretically be finite divinities or a finite divinity, but these could not be omnipresent, omniscient, or omnipotent.

[I knew that in some places, the Bible supported such a form of pantheism or panentheism (e.g. “In him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28); “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there.” Ps 139:8), but that in others, the idea of separation seemed prominent.]

- - - - -

I also came across Greek and Roman mystery religions for the first time. The more I read, the more I realized that so many elements of Christianity were already present in paganism. More and more, it began to seem that there was hardly anything really novel about Christianity. Now, years later, when I study Greek and Latin literature, I still find so many parallels and shared symbols. It’s great fun to study.

- - - - -

All my questioning was causing me great trouble/anxiety. I loved God more than anything, and I wanted to please God more than anything. I had become afraid of the direction I saw my research heading. I had to pray every day, throughout the day, “God, please don’t let me be deceived. Please, guide me into all truth and understanding.”

I still remember one day thinking about these verses:

Matthew 7:7-11 “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asks receives; and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened.Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”

And I knew also Luke 11:9-13.

I began to realize that it was a sad thought that I should be so afraid of questioning and researching and seeking truth. I realized that if God were there and actually loved me anywhere near as much as my earthly parents loved me, then I had nothing to fear. I knew that my own parents would never disown me for seeking truth. These thoughts along with that thought experiment leading to implicit pantheism, really helped give me the courage to continue pursuing truth.

I cannot remember which came first, the thought experiment or the Matthew 7 passage.

I began to consider it VERY sad that so many were afraid of God’s wrath.

- - - - -

I took a philosophy of comparative religion class. I had always wanted to understand the world’s religions, and I wanted to understand how they had gone astray and why they weren’t Christian. (I had always assumed their falsehood, even before I knew anything about them.)

I was still very much a Christian at this point, still hoping eventually to be a full-time minister.

In the process of reading about the world’s religions, I realized that there had been so many truth-seekers, and that people had developed and written so many interesting things. I actually found that although I didn’t like all of it or want to change religions, I couldn’t help but feel an affinity for/with certain ideas, especially within philosophical Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. I couldn’t help but feel a kind of companionship with the people who had written the literature I read and who had been on such similar quests.

Also, I once again returned to questions that had bothered me in childhood, but which I had subsequently dismissed as irrelevant considering God’s omniscience and goodness:

Why God would allow so many people to go astray?

Why would he punish so many in hell?

Why didn’t he reveal himself to the Egyptians, Sumerians, Hindus, Chinese, American Indians, Celts, Africans, Greeks, etc.?

Why would he only appear to a few people out of one little tribe in one little part of the Middle East, if he loved everyone?

Why would the God of the whole world only appear to a few people in a small rebellious province?

Why would the resurrected Jesus not appear to Romans, Pontius Pilate, Tiberius, etc.?

I could not deny that other people around the world had been truth-seekers too.

I didn’t have good answers. This question had to be shelved, but it’s presence was felt.

For the philosophy of religion class, we also had to read the Humanist Manifesto, I and II. I had grown up hearing from preachers about how EVIL "secular humanism" was. I was surprised to find that humanism had been very unfairly portrayed by Christian media, and I came to respect highly those men who were involved in its founding. Loving and caring about others is part of humanism just as much as it is part of any good system of thought. I eventually came back to the humanist manifestos and developed an affinity for humanism.

- - - - -

For a religion class, I did a paper on messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. I worked part-time, and I took only 2 classes that semester; so I had lots of free time, which I devoted to reading. This turned out to be a big deal for me. I had often wanted to do such a study, and although I had done a little with it before, I finally got my chance to be thorough. I listed every NT citation of a fulfilled prophecy. I also read every OT prophet, word for word, times over, and read about Jewish history in far more detail than I had ever considered before.

This was different for me, because when I had been in high school, I had read the Bible multiple times, hungry for understanding of God, but when reading the prophets, I could only really grab onto the general stuff that could apply to anyone if taken out of context (like “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, and they are plans for your welfare, not of your destruction.” - and such).

My study was thorough. During the process and afterward, I came to realize that the Jewish prophets never called for anything like the Jesus of Christianity. I also realized that what they did predict never happened; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and others were actually false prophets. I saw that some elements of the Jewish population had eventually given up traditional Judaism to become more like Greeks and Romans, but that the lower classes continued to RE-interpret the prophets and develop all kinds of literature, leading into apocalypticism. I saw that the New Testament is dishonest in its treatment of OT “prophecy,” taking sentences and phrases out of context and making them mean things they obviously were not intended to mean when they were written. I also realized that Isaiah was written at different periods by different people addressing different circumstances; this became completely obvious to me, and scholarly work I read agreed. I also realized that at least parts of Daniel were pseudepigraphic, written during the 2nd century BC and falsely attributed to a legendary hero in order to lend authority to the work.

The whole study took me SO much time. It turned out to be very influential in leading me to reject Christianity. Everything began to line up and point to the fraudulent nature of Christianity, if scriptures were to be taken literally and not as mere symbol.

My entire paper is here: http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/MessianismPreChristian.html .

Some sections which especially influenced me were these:Appendix D: Christian Misinterpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures: http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/MessianismPreChristian.html#appendixd.

Appendix B: The Suffering Servant: http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/MessianismPreChristian.html#appendixb .

Epilogue: Why Jesus Was Not the Messiah, the Christ: http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/MessianismPreChristian.html#epilogue .

- - - - -

I encountered discrepancies in the resurrection/ empty tomb stories in the gospels.

I realized that I could not make them harmonious without altering details.

I wrote on the topic here: http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/ResurrectionDiscrep.html .

I also came to realize the order in which the gospels were written, and how each subsequent author/community edited or added elements to the story.

I also began to consider it very telling that not even the Christian stories claimed that Jesus bothered to appear to Pontius Pilate or any Romans or other groups.

- - - - -

I also found problems with ancient cosmology, including the cosmology of the Bible and its authors. Doing word studies, I realized that heaven and sky were the same place to Jews, Greeks, and Romans. I had heard stories about Russian astronauts saying, “There’s no God up here,” and I had thought, "How foolish those Russian atheists were." But I came to realize that my thinking about heaven was based on reinterpretations made after Copernicus and Galileo. Before them, the writers of the Bible and early Christians for hundreds of years really DID think that God was up in the sky. In fact, that's why the Jews, Greeks, Romans, etc. (and the Biblical characters) all listed their hands when they prayed.

Yahweh hadn’t even always been depicted as omni-present, but had evolved from a local-national storm God to a more universal God.

I still remember this, too: On World News Tonight one night, I heard Peter Jennings say that Pope John Paul had declared that hell was not a place beneath the earth, but was a state of separation from God. I did a Bible study for myself, and I knew that the Bible and many of its writers DID think that hell was beneath the earth – just as the uneducated (and even many educated) among Greeks, Romans, and others thought.

- - - - -

I also began to find problems with the ancient concepts of spirit, soul, matter, and body.

I realized that the ancients didn’t know what they were doing when they developed their ideas and terminology.

I wrote about some of these issues (spirit/soul/body and heaven/hell) here (scroll down to reasons #24-25):

http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/ListofReasons.html ,

and (dualism/spirit/soul/body) here:

http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/DualismAndTheMindBodyProblem.html .

Regarding Jesus’ ascension, I realized that different early Christian communities had different ideas/stories, and that the whole ascension story didn’t even make sense with modern cosmology. It seemed obvious, then, that only ancient people who believed that heaven was sky would invent such a story of an ascending savior god.

And ancient people DID invent such stories. I encountered Livy’s story of the ascension of Romulus (Livy – book one – written in the first century BC). I saw that Romulus, too, was a son of a God, had a miraculous birth story, rose into heaven, and was called a God himself. Romulus reappeared to a senator on a mountain top and told him to “Go” and give the people his message that Rome would one day rule the world (cf. the Great commission, Mt 28).

By the time Livy wrote, some educated Romans were skeptical of their own tradition, so Livy included skepticism in his account, but it was obvious that the ancient Romans, well before Livy, actually believed the stories of Romulus. All of this was well before Christianity was invented.

I found plenty of other Greek stories of saviors born of virgins to divine fathers, performing amazing feats, descending to Hades and returning, ascending to heaven, etc. To the Greeks, Heracles/Hercules had been a real man. Spartan kings and others claimed descent from his children. Perseus, Theseus, Orpheus, the Egyptian Osiris, Asclepius, Apollonius of Tyana, Empedocles, etc. – in various cultures there were such miraculous stories, and the common people believed they had really occurred.

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Numerology:

I had often noticed that certain numbers recurred in the Bible: 3’s, 7’s, 12’s, 40’s.

BUT I eventually realized that other nations’ mythology used the same special numbers in their myths. I studied the use of the numbers in the Bible and in other myths and found that the numbers seem to be used in symbolic ways. Certain numbers show up in certain situations.

I wrote about it just a bit here:

http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/biblenumbers.html.

Once I saw how numbers were used, it made any story which used such numbers in certain patterns SUSPECT, likely to be myth/legend, or artificially or symbolically constructed, rather than simply historical.

Both the Old and New Testament were full of special numbers.

e.g. They even show up in the genealogies, lending further credence to the conclusion that they’re fabricated.

In Matthew, there are 3 sets of 14 generations from Abraham to Jesus: 3 x 14 = six 7's. Then Jesus is the seventh 7.

In Luke, although it is a different genealogy, Jesus is the 77th in descent from God through Adam.

I already knew that the genealogies were contradictory, and I could never buy the attempts of apologists to excuse the differences. This numerological element only confirmed what I had already come to think.

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I also realized that the biography of the real Jesus had been increasingly augmented over time, and that the Christian story of Jesus had been purposefully constructed in such a way that it conformed to the same symbolic patterns as OT events.

A few examples:

Baby Moses endangered by evil king = Baby Jesus endangered by evil king (in Matthew alone); Israelite sojourn in Egypt = Baby Jesus has a sojourn in Egypt (in Matthew alone); Moses - the law form the mountain = Jesus - sermon on the Mount (in Matthew alone)     or = Jesus - great commission from mountain (Mt 28 alone); Moses on Mount Sinai = Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Passover lamb – 1st born slain in Egypt = Jesus as slain Passover lamb; 3 days darkness in Egypt = Jonah 3 in whale = Christ 3 in tomb (cf. 3 hrs darkness on cross); Exodus = Resurrection; Israelites 40 years wandering before promised land = Jesus 40 days before ascension (Acts alone); Promised Land = Heaven; cross Jordan = baptism.

Moses, Elijah, Jesus all fast 40 days/nights.

I had already done my research on Jewish messianic prophecy; so I had seen how NT authors took scattered bits from the OT and wove them into the story of Jesus in order to try to portray him as fulfilling prophecy. Now even more it looked as if certain people scoured the Jewish scriptures and used bits and pieces to add all kinds of fictitious elements to Jesus life/resurrection/ascension.

The miracle stories, too, seem designed to create and portray a savior who does all the traditional works of Moses, Elijah, Elisha combined – multiplying food, raising the dead, healing people, etc. – and betters them.

Eventually, I encountered Randel Helms’ Gospel Fictions (1988. Prometheus Books) and other literature which further confirmed what I felt must be the case.

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I realized that humans over millennia had invented countless stories, many of which they were more than willing to die for. Christianity became an obvious example of but one more such, instead of the only true such.

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A "Personal Relationship" with "Jesus Christ": This phrase began to appear so ridiculous that I became embarrassed that I had grown up hearing and using it. I had to admit that the phrase was nonsense. Neither myself nor any Christian I had ever known had had a genuine "personal" religionship with Jesus. In a personal relationship, one person is able to talk to AND hear from the other person in a clear manner. Also, a personal relationship can actually be demonstrated pretty easily. I have known plenty of Christians who claimed to talk to and hear from God/Jesus (I did so myself), but the things they claim to hear are always things that anyone could make up, i.e. such people simply have a dialogue with their own mind. Growing up, I soooo much wanted to "hear God's voice" as all the characters in the Bible allegedly had. Who knows how many times I sat on the floor in my room rocking back and forth and pleading with God to speak to me and direct me.

In my youth group, the youth minister would have us sometimes go into separate rooms of the church to be alone with the Bible and with "the Lord," and when we came back, we were expected to talk about what God had "told" us.   Everyone used this language, "God told me ...," "God put it on my heart to ...," etc. Basically, you could read something in the Bible and have feelings about it, and that meant God was talking to you. But by such means, I can also talk to lots of dead people who wrote things. Such is no indication of a personal relationship.

I eventually began to challenge other Christians. I knew that they were claiming a "personal relationship" with something that was really just in their heads. I knew that they couldn't really ask God something and hear an answer from God. This is easily testable. Simply ask a Christian something that he has no means of finding out by human measures.

Do YOU claim to have a “personal relationship” with a or “the” “one true” god?

If so, what can you show for it? If you ask “him” a question, will "he" answer you?

If you say yes, then I propose we test this hypothesis. I will give you the question to ask your “god,” and IF you REALLY have a “relationship” with this so-called god and “his” “spirit” really does “dwell” inside you and you are not just deluding yourself with empty words, then he will answer you and you can tell me what he says. THAT might give me some evidence that maybe, just maybe you have something REAL, as opposed to some ancient words.

Will you say, “Oh, but you should not put the Lord your God to the test”??!!

Well now, how convenient for your claims, huh?! Any prayer request whatsoever can be considered a “test.” Yet your holy book says God/Jesus will give you ANYTHING you ask for in faith. I guess we will see what kind of faith you have.

Christians do not have any real personal relationship with Jesus, other than as they can mentally construct a Jesus in their head from what they've read and heard from preachers.

The claim is that Jesus'/God's very Spirit dwells within them. Yet it is very obvious to non-Christians that there is nothing supernatural about the lives of Christians.

It is also interesting to note what a big mess the "guidance" of the "holy spirit" made of early Christian history and then Roman Catholicism and Protestantism and all its off-shoots.

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All these different questions and studies came together with such force that I found myself no longer able to believe the Bible and no longer able to be an orthodox Christian. I was no longer afraid of such a conclusion as I had previous been, because everything seemed so obvious and fit together so well.

If children are told about God throwing unbelievers into hell, and they then learn how many unbelievers there are and have been, and especially if they have friends who are not part of their brand of Christianity, and they realize that non-Christians are so often sincere, loving people, ... the natural reaction of most children is to think that such a thing is sad and unjust. "Why would God do such?" "Won't God find a way to save everybody? Of course he will; he's all-powerful." But over time, so many children within the Christian religion have their natural inclinations replaced with all kinds of explanations, justifications, pseudo-rationalizations, and they buy into the story and still call God just, simply because that's part of the a priori definition of God fed to them by their parents and other well-meaning-but-ignorant authorities.

I was happy to be able to see the world outside of the perspective of my youth. I felt “born again.”

Also, I no longer had to make excuses for Yahweh's behavior in the OT or for anything else that people often feel in their gut to be screwy.

I had previously acquired such a reputation as a zealous Christian, that many were very startled to discover my change in beliefs. I composed a list of some of my reasons, so that I could more easily share them:

http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/ListofReasons.html .

Also, while happy to be free from what I had come to realize was simply a cult that had become very popular, I was quite ANGRY that I had been lied to and manipulated. The process of coming out of Christianity had been so emotionally/ psychologically difficult, even with my being open-minded enough to seek answers.

The difficulty of the process is not easy to convey to someone who hasn't experienced it.

I had friends who were actually unable to even question or listen to me, because they were afraid of hearing it. I knew my parents had not lied on purpose; I knew they had done the best they knew how. But I resented the whole establishment of Christianity, and I saw that so much of the rest of the world was in a similar condition – each region having a huge population of people believing to some degree or other in ancient superstitions.

I created a simple web site to post some of my work: http://www.geocities.com/investigatingchristianity/ .

I have, since then, gone on

- to study Latin, Greek, and ancient history, religion, and philosophy,

- to teach high school Latin for a while, and

- to return to classics and ancient studies, which I am doing now in graduate school.

I constantly encounter material that reaffirms my conclusions at age 25. BUT I found that I am often too busy to continue my old projects for various papers and studies; so the site is always incomplete.

As zealous as I used to be for Christianity, so zealous am I now for trying to show people its error, if taken literally. But not everyone is willing to seriously question. Christianity often appears just as embedded in many families/communities as Islam is in the Middle East, Pakistan, and Indonesia, as Mormon Christianity is in Utah, and as Hinduism is in rural India. Such conditions only hinder human progress.

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Childhood Background

To someone who asked me,

>> "Why did you become a Christian in the first place? If someone would have asked you as a 17 year old what would you have said your testimony was?

I replied much as follows:

    I was taught to believe in God and Jesus as a child from the time I could understand English. Children generally accept what they’re taught, until/unless they have reason/cause to believe otherwise.

    From the time I was small, mom and dad taught me to talk to God and tell him anything and everything, so I grew up doing that. I was taught to believe in God, who made/governed everything; I was taught that he loved me and everyone; I wanted to know him, b/c I wanted to know this being who everyone said was responsible for everything.

I heard the message that God created everything, that people were sinners - having disobeyed God’s laws/will, that God loved everyone, that God became flesh in Jesus and taught people how to live, that he sacrificed himself to pay the price for our sins, that he rose again, and that whoever believed in him and his message would love forever with him.

I believed what I heard, I asked God’s spirit to dwell in me, I turned from anything the Bible said was wrong, I prayed “in Jesus’ name” for forgiveness, I got baptized, and I lived in prayer and seeking to follow the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament.

I first made the decision as a child.

My father's side of the family had been Catholic. My mother's side was Baptist. When I was 6 or so, we started going to a non-denominational church. I told my parents one day that I wanted "to ask Jesus into my heart" and be baptized.

Within a couple of years my family stopped going to church for a while We always believed the message, and we would read the Bible at home and talk about it, but we weren’t hearing it every Sunday or anything.

When I was in high school, I was thirsty for understanding. I went to church with a girlfriend; I heard the same message described above, maybe said with more emotion, flare, enthusiasm, and I believed it and thought maybe I hadn’t known enough what I was doing when I was younger, so I made the same decision again.

I dedicated my entire life to following Jesus, his teachings. I prayed throughout each day for guidance. I sought to submit to God’s will for my life. I had grown up reading the Bible. Then, during my sophomore year in high school, I read through the entire Bible on my own initiative for the first time. I continued to read it again and again.

The aim of my life was to know God, love God, serve God. In my mind, I had said, “What could make more sense than to devote one’s life to the God of the Universe?”

As a 17-year-old, I had told people that God was the center of my life, that he gave me peace and purpose, that he heard my prayers and answered them, that he made his presence felt, and that everyone needed to experience God’s love and direction. I repeated the same message that I had heard, the same message that I had read in the New Testament, the message described above.

I wanted to give my all, and I believed that God wanted me to be a minister, to share the message of Jesus with people, so I prayed and read the Bible all the time, led Bible studies and prayer groups at school and at church, counseled people who had problems, brought friends, 2 of my brothers, and other people to believe Christianity and devote their lives to following Jesus, sometimes played piano and help lead worship in the youth group. I was president of the youth group my senior year.

    My goal of being a ‘minister’ lasted roughly from age 17 to 24/25. During that time, I continued to pray every day, read the Bible, try to follow its teachings, and teach others about God/Jesus/the Bible.

Synapse Evolution and Complexity - NYTimes

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:50:25 GMT

2008-06-10 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/health/research/10brai.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1213107263-EZsAzpUN0NqfGotfoupeYw

Brainpower May Lie in Complexity of Synapses

By NICHOLAS WADE

Published: June 10, 2008

Evolution’s recipe for making a brain more complex has long seemed simple enough. Just increase the number of nerve cells, or neurons, and the interconnections between them. A human brain, for instance, is three times the volume of a chimpanzee’s.

A whole new dimension of evolutionary complexity has now emerged from a cross-species study led by Dr. Seth Grant at the Sanger Institute in England.

Dr. Grant looked at the interconnections between neurons, known as synapses, which until now have been regarded as a standard feature of neurons.

But in fact the synapses get considerably more complex going up the evolutionary scale, Dr. Grant and colleagues reported online Sunday in Nature Neuroscience. In worms and flies, the synapses mediate simple forms of learning, but in higher animals they are built from a much richer array of protein components and conduct complex learning and pattern recognition, Dr. Grant said.

The finding may open a new window into how the brain operates. “One of the biggest questions in neuroscience is to answer what are the design principles by which the human brain is constructed, and this is one of those principles,” Dr. Grant said.

If the synapses are thought of as the chips in a computer, then brainpower is shaped by the sophistication of each chip, as well as by their numbers. “From the evolutionary perspective, the big brains of vertebrates not only have more synapses and neurons, but each of these synapses is more powerful — vertebrates have big Internets with big computers and invertebrates have small Internets with small computers,” Dr. Grant said.

He included yeast cells in his cross-species survey and found that they contain many proteins equivalent to those in human synapses, even though yeast is a single-celled microbe with no nervous system. The yeast proteins, used for sensing changes in the environment, suggest that the origin of the nervous system, or at least of synapses, began in this way.

The computing capabilities of the human brain may lie not so much in its neuronal network as in the complex calculations that its synapses perform, Dr. Grant said. Vertebrate synapses have about 1,000 different proteins, assembled into 13 molecular machines, one of which is built from 183 different proteins.

These synapses are not standard throughout the brain, Dr. Grant’s group has found; each region uses different combinations of the 1,000 proteins to fashion its own custom-made synapses.

Each synapse can presumably make sophisticated calculations based on messages reaching it from other neurons. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons, interconnected at 100 trillion synapses.

The roots of several mental disorders lie in defects in the synaptic proteins, more than 50 of which have been linked to diseases like schizophrenia, Dr. Grant said.

Dr. Edward Ziff, a synapse expert at New York University, said Dr. Grant’s work was the first in which synapses had been analyzed from a cross-species perspective. “I would say this work is unique,” he said. “Grant’s been a leader in making this type of analysis and he deserves a lot of credit for it, although a certain amount of guesswork is involved.”

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