I am currently listening to
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari on audio and it has captivated me. I highly recommend you listen to it. As you make your way through this informative and entertaining book you will become acutely aware of what should seem obvious by now in 2015. - That religion is all man-made. (Christianity included) This fact becomes apparent when the author talks about the history of bloodshed between Protestant and Catholics over
the true nature of "gods love."
Religion is a hook, a virus, a comforting, simplistic worldview that takes you
under its spell because in the face of all evidence you believe something
to be true. Don't let the slick Christian apologist trick you into thinking they have evidence for any supernatural claims central to the core of their religious teachings. They do not, but evidence doesn't matter to people really, does it? There is no one I know that has come to their faith through reason or sifting through evidence. It's through emotion or often desperation. It's cultural. It's family and friends, it's tribal. It burrows itself deep into your core (crudely put, your heart convinces your brain it is real because ... it just feels right!) It becomes deeply intertwined with self identity and it's hard to break this. Trust me, I know, I used to be religious.
Once outside of the bubble of a particular religion you are free to see the cosmos in a more informed /true/ context with proper perspective. Without looking at everything though a "Biblical worldview" (or whatever chosen ancient book you find special and inerrant) you arrive at the freedom of clarity and perspective. There is nothing like freeing yourself from the theological mind-cage and socially-accepted superstition.
Religion has had many functions for human beings throughout our history. We probably owe our existence to it in some ways for religion's utility at the dawn of human history was vital for keeping our social species together and cooperating efficiently. It had another function after the dawn of agriculture - it was our first
attempt at science and philosophy (to explain the world and the way
things work). However, as science blossomed it destroyed the religious grip
that once put forth these "theories"instead of science ... We soon discovered (excluding Pat Robertson) that it was not the gods or a god that caused this or that earthquake for our punishment for wrong doing; it's not pleas to the gods
that caused it to rain. Science painstakingly, theory by theory, law by law pushed the God of the gaps further and further out of the natural world. God as an explanation became unnecessary.
Over 150 years ago Charles Darwin came along and destroyed the
last remaining "theory" religion had left in the natural world with his book
On the Origin of Species. This was the last grip religion had on the natural world - human
origins. human uniqueness - Darwin showed us it is not necessary that supernatural explanations (God) were needed to explain how our species arrived and also how our species has evolved naturally like all other species (as well as all species of life being related). Ah, I can hear a New Christian apologist scoffing at my blatant ignoring of people like Francis Collins or Kenneth Miller (both men are Christians and also accept and are experts in evolutionary biology and/or genetics). This is where they veer off the road to scoop up scientist by scientist (playing the us. vs. them tribal game) claiming each to be one of their team members (Newton was a Christian don't you know??). What none of these people do (Collins or Miller for example) is use God as ANY EXPLANATION in the lab or in any scientific papers they have written, or anything in the academic setting. Why not? Why don't these men who happen to be religious bring God into the classroom or the lab or in their experiments.... because they will admit - supernatural explanations for anything is not science. These men that are in no doubt highly intelligent I would suggest are religious despite the glaring fact that we don't need the supernatural to explain the natural anymore. Not in any real sense or any "theory".
So with nowhere else to go religion tucked it's ugly tail and cowered into a corner in its last remaining stronghold - human consciousness
- the "soul"/ that sense of "self". *Sidenote - Religion's grip on morality and ethics as the only game in town fell along the wayside pretty early on with the birth of secular philosophy. Also it should be apparent for anyone trying to glean any consistent "objective morality" from any ancient "holy book". Passages in Scripture (descriptive and prescriptive alike) can only be labeled at best as confusing at worst as immoral. The truth is unless you want to be ISIS or some radical religious fundamentalist it is near impossible to follow the letter of the law in every detail in any holy book. You would be immoral by anyone's standards. The New Christians simply care more about being against gay marriage but ignoring stoning adulterers.
So religion is left with "the soul". That mystical subjective sense of self - of consciousness. This is what I like to call the "ghost organ" because this seems to be what New Christians are describing. It is the nonphysical, extra-dimensional part to your body that makes you truly you. Even this is currently under attack. It's the last remaining battle. It's pretty simple really if you know any basics from human psychology or cognitive science. Our brain makes us who we are. You cannot say your personality (that part of the "you-ness") is something "soul-like" or supernatural in origin because we all know with head trauma people's personality alters. Some of us have had the unfortunate reality of relatives who have Alzheimer's Disease as they've aged. These people we love become unlike themselves. We all know that personality is directly related to brain functions and how synapses in our brains are wired and fire. You adjust these and you turn into someone else. So personality is connected to the natural not supernatural.
What's left for religion and God then in our core? Ah, consciousness. Well, we know consciousness derives from emerging brain activity as well. All of these stories of boys and men going to heaven and coming back do not prove anything. In fact they are deeply flawed and I suggest you check out the link below if you are still questioning how this can be. We have yet to solve what philosophers call the "hard problem" to consciousness, but it doesn't mean we won't. In fact I'm pretty certain we will within my lifetime or at least get much closer to solving it. Scientific advancement has been on such an unstoppable pace in the past few decades it's hard to image what 50 years will look like from now. There are many fascinating questions about consciousness. What other animals are conscious? Where does the line of consciousness stop on the branches of evolution. Has it evolved independently more than once?
The issues I mostly have with the New Christians is they actively exercise lazy thinking. Many do not think like a scientist or a good philosopher. They often don't address their own confirmation bias and value dogma (their holy book could never /actually/ be mostly false) over critical thinking. Even when they "think critically" it's within the parameters of their particular religious worldview context - never thinking outside of it. They talk about "the soul" as if it is a "ghost organ". When you try to pin down this very slippery/malleable image of "what a soul actually is" (something that they would tell you they are just as sure of as any other organ in their body) you just get these things that are easily explained in neuroscience. It's just the intuition that trips them up. And I understand. It's not easy.
Of course when we do this they use this against us going all the way and calling us reductionists and nihilists when we all know this is them not doing nuance (aka: lazy thinking), simplistic labeling the "opposition" to prop up their confirmation bias and rally the tribe on their team. It's just a fact that many of the things the New Christians use to describe their ghost organ- "the soul" CAN be reduced down to scientific explanations based in the natural world. There are things such as qualia but even these can be re-imagined and often reduced in a different light. I'll post a video by Marvin Minsky below to better get at what I mean by this.
Religion has lost all explanatory value based on anything in the natural world. I've shown how each pillar crumbled one by one. Religion could be useful for comforting someone because we all sometimes will accept a lie that is comforting (saying going to see our real daddy in the sky when we die) for many who are terrified (and rightly so) with the brute fact of existence. If you notice, religion throughout human history has always done well with the poor and minorities. If you were dealt the shitty hand in life and/or fell into poverty or the blunt end of societal prejudice you tend to cling to religion (even if it is all a lie) because it eases the pain. I get it, but it doesn't mean it's true. I know several religious people that said even if their religion was false they would still worship and pray and do all the things they would normally do. It's a deep spell that has a real psychological grip on our brains.
In this regard one could argue that religion is a positive factor to many of the faithful. I often think of my father and what he would do with his life and how would it really affect his happiness if suddenly he didn't have his church to attend and the fellowship with friends there. What would happen if suddenly Jesus was a non-existing son of a non-existing god? What if the gospel was utterly meaningless like I know that it is. To put it mildly, it would have a negative effect on his life. Some are not equipped to let it go, or maybe I just underestimate him. Who knows.
If this is all religion becomes (and I suggest it's all it has left) then it will most likely stick around for some time. Our species isn't suddenly going to break from that fear of death and solve poverty and prejudice anytime soon. Though as I type that I am reminded of the scientists inching ever more closely to curing our species from death. Ending aging and death is actually theoretically possible and could be likely in the future. I suppose this would then leave it up to "ending poverty and racism" for finally putting the nail in the coffin of religion.
To sum up, I am OK with religion as long as religion is put in it's place. As long as religion isn't making "theories" about the universe (the natural world). This also includes societal rules.. We do not want theocracy like Sharia Law or Kim Davis-style "religious freedoms" to take away other citizen's freedoms. Religion needs to be placed in it's current proper context. It has been defeated on all fronts and is left sort of like a vestige organ buried deep within most humankind. But that number is decreasing rapidly with each new poll. In truth, it should be treated like sports, or like role playing games. Like Biblical historian Robert M. Price (an atheist), one can be fascinated with myths and ancient stories (we are a story-telling species - it is our species' unique trait even if it does often get us thinking irrationally), but it's time to put childish things aside and stop putting forward these religious ideas as "theories" in our world (Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, Ray Comfort - I'm REALLY talking to you with this one!) and accept what we know through scientific/philosophical inquiry of this planet, all life, and the cosmos. Human morality, the causes of events in the world, human origins, consciousness, the self etc. - all these things have been torn from the grip of superstition/religions and placed in the hands of scientists and philosophers. There is no gap for the gods. The religious dogmas have been wrong and proven so time and time again many years ago and still today. The track record of "getting things right" for religion is abysmal. We need to let it go. Cut the cord, remove the vestige part of us that thinks we need it.
We don't.
I'll end with a better summary of what I'm trying to say. This is a quote from an email from Gog. I love how I am forcibly putting him into my blogs now since he was originally supposed to tackle this project together with me ("Gog & Magog" get it?!) This was Gog's response when I asked him if he would consider himself a physicalist.:
The best way to put
it is that I don't believe in supposedly non-physical objects that sound
suspiciously like physical objects and yet have no predictive power
when they're put forward in theory. For example, I don't believe there's
any evidence for an irreducible "soul substance" like the kind *some Christians put
forward. It's not even clear what that substance is supposed to be. I
like the phrase "ghost organs", as you put it, because that sounds like
what *they are after even if *they don't admit it. I think that's whatever *they are after is just a misleading picture at best.
I think anti-physicalists are stuck at certain difficulties. For example:
How
is our impression of this red rose physical? In what way? It's by no
means obvious one way or the other. In fact, it appears to defy
description altogether. The Wittgensteinian solution would be roughly:
we're trying to make verbal an essentially nonverbal process. Our color
language-games don't point to color impressions being irreducible in the
sense that a string in string theory is irreducible. Rather, IT MAKES
NO SENSE to apply this reducible/irreducible language-game of physical
objects to the color impression language-game in the same sense In the
typical variation of our natural language color impression
language-game, we give ostensive definitions of colors and the
impression of what is pointed at is not described in words (except in
cases in which 'light' is descriptive in 'light blue'). But then it's a
mistake to develop a theoretical framework and declare color as
immediate and irreducible as Marvin Minsky points out. In what sense is
color immediate and irreducible? In the natural language-game, it's not
even necessarily immediate or irreducible. You can split a colored patch
in two, for example. Or a colored light on a dimmer fixture can come on
gradually. - Gog
Check these out:
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind :
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sapiens-yuval-noah-harari/1118611502?ean=9780062316097
"Science on the Brink of Death" by Sam Harris:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/science-on-the-brink-of-death
Marvin Minsky on Consciousness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNWVvZi3HX8
