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Getting Beyond Threat-based Beliefs

2010-10-17T13:46:00.002-05:00

Why don't immigrant cultures assimilate into the culture of the country to which they move? Besides the obvious process of two cultures learning about each other, and learning to trust each other, which can take decades if not several generations, the failure of an arriving culture to assimilate has only a few causes. This subject enters discussion today often in the context of Muslim peoples coming into Western cultures. While all the usual factors impede the blending of the involved cultures, in the case of Muslim cultures one additional element operates. Muslim immigrants have a particularly difficult dilemma: whether to relax into the culture to which they have moved, or to preserve their religion. And by "preserve their religion" I refer less to efforts to create and maintain the structures of Muslim practice -- mosques; certain ways to conduct social and business life; holy days, etc. -- than to the need as perceived by the faithful to fulfill the mandates of their faith so they reach heaven.

To a greater extent than any of the other major religions, Islam is a religion of enforcement. Threat operates in Islam the way guilt operates in Christianity. While Western pluralistic cultures have in recent years come to perceive Muslim cultures as threatening, few in the West recognize how much the average Muslim feels vulnerable because of Islam. The frequent violence in Islamic cultures around the world is only an outer expression of the pressure each Muslim believer feels imposed upon him by existence. A Muslim is taught from early childhood that his only refuge from the whole of existence is to satisfy the requirements of his faith. Now some might -- quite rightly -- argue that at least part of the Christian community is similarly burdened. It seems relevant that perpetrators of Christian-based violence have a view of the world similar to the vast majority of Muslim believers.

Other worldviews have failed to provide a convincing -- convincing to those who have been raised in communities that endorse what might be called a threat-based faith -- alternative. The problem is similar to what happens to a child who is born into an abusive family. The child commonly becomes himself or herself abusive and perpetuates the violence and abuse that was suffered in childhood. This is sometimes called the cycle of violence. Threat-based faiths operate in exactly this way, and continue to exist for exactly the same reason.

In recent years sociologists and psychologists have adopted the concept of a meme, an idea or action that is self-perpetuating and contagious. Some have described love as a meme. Threat-based beliefs can also be meaningfully categorized as memes.

It might be argued that Christianity at one time was almost entirely a threat-based faith. The historical event called the Reformation can be viewed as the turning point for Christianity when faith based upon threat was neutralized. Or at least an alternative was proposed. More informed scholars of religion than I will need to elaborate on this premise, including just how significant the Reformation was in this regard, and what specifically the Reformation accomplished or failed to accomplish. Today Christian faith is almost entirely a faith of moderation and inclusion, and one that is able to examine itself. This is why today it is able to confront many aspects of sexual behavior within its clergy and congregations. It is also why the threat-based elements of the faith gain so little traction culturally.

In Islam, the influences of moderation remain under threat. People who live within a threat-based faith live lives of fear and/or exaggerated bravado. That such faiths almost always subjugate women shows the extent to which threat is perceived everywhere. In threat-based faiths, men see themselves as the protectors of the faith, and worry that women might disrupt that protection and put everyone at risk. Similarly, any emergence of religious moderation within a threat-based faith is itself seen as a threat.

It can be argued that today's culture wars come from a confrontation between threat-based beliefs and people who understand their existence differently. But what is going on is often slightly different. Were there no threat-based faiths in the world, many different faiths might well coexist peacefully, even if their respective worldviews are very different. But today faiths based upon threat interact like adversaries in a ring, bound by commitment to confront that which is threatening them, lest failing to do so condemn them to a hellish eternity. And people who have no skin in the game are forced to watch and are at some risk of being caught in the crossfire.

Someday, this will all be a historical footnote viewed with bemusement.

Health Care Reform vs Improving Democracy

2010-03-19T19:52:00.004-05:00

A couple days ago the health insurance reform bill, an analysis of the bill, and a cost analysis of the bill were all released to the media. I have looked at all three documents. What most impresses me is the degree to which these documents are written in a specialized language. A medical equivalent would be a report between specialists containing all of the highly technical language and assumptions that professionals know -- the abbreviations, the jargon.

Documents like this show up in medicine all the time -- for instance, a surgical report, or a report from the doctor who did an emergency room assessment. The casual reader of this type of document would be able to decipher less than half of what's stated because of a lack of an understanding of the language. The same seems to be true for those recent documents about the healthcare bill -- that the authors are so immersed in the specialized jargon of legislation that an average citizen will be unable to decipher them. At least the task is beyond the reach of the citizenry within the timeframe required by the decision process.

This situation does not nourish democracy. Making public documents that are indecipherable serves no one but vested interests that want to keep their agenda hidden from the public. Of course this is one of the basic dynamics of government as it exists today in American democracy -- that people who have an interest in an outcome that advantages them over the general population wish to keep that advantage hidden, protected. This behavior is so common that it is now considered normal, and people generally think that any alternative to it is naïve or impractical.

No one recognizes that democratic government has an obligation to provide the citizens a clear and coherent exposition of the laws it is working on – not an analysis that’s so obscure or general as to be meaningless to most everyone. This is no small amount of work, but it’s one that could be done by real people with a useful outcome. Because it isn’t yet a priority, American democracy suffers.

This situation can be summarized as follows: most people in American democracy do not believe in, trust, or support the democratic process except and to the extent it advantages them. Most people today think that if laws were enacted or policy developed that enhanced democracy generally, they themselves would lose out, would lose influence, importance, even significance. This is why we never hear a politician talk about improving the democratic process except when that phrase is a euphemism for selective advantage. If a politician were to state her interest in strengthening democracy -- and by democracy is meant equal representation and opportunity for all -- she would almost certainly go down in defeat before those who would point out how individual groups would suffer.

America today does not trust democracy. It trusts a government shaped and controlled by vested interests. America thinks that an equitable society would cheat people. This situation does not bode well for the American dream or for America continuing to serve as a global icon of liberty and opportunity. I'll leave it to the reader to contemplate the alternatives.

The current healthcare reform struggle has been shaped by these attitudes. The product of that struggle is sure to bear the scars and distortions resulting from them. Such is the complexity of the health care reform bill that it will be a matter of debate for many years whether democracy has been served by it. It seems likely the best one can hope for with this legislation is that democracy will be only minimally harmed.

Of course central to the whole intention of the health care reform legislation is the idea that society has a responsibility for the health of its citizenry. Certainly there are some in the US who think society has no such obligation. The most extreme of these people may well even argue that departments like public health should be abolished, that it's each person for him or herself, for the whole of their life. At the other pole are people who believe society is obligated to provide for the health care of every citizen. Between these two extremes is a vast range or spectrum of options; the healthcare struggle has been about where in that spectrum society should be. This entire issue would not have become important except for the problem that the current arrangement is bankrupt. The proposal under consideration has been sold as a path moving the country away from that bankruptcy. Alas, but there is yet no agreement about what all contributes to the current bankruptcy or its avoidance. Hence, the political food fight we have witnessed.

Thar' She Blows...

2010-01-06T16:34:00.002-05:00

There is a country -- one country -- that is hunting aboriginal creatures for science. It is killing a small percentage of these beings each year during a certain season when they are foraging for food. They say their research cannot be done except by killing these creatures. No small number of people outside this country strongly dispute this argument, and assert it is but a foil to obscure the fact this country wants to feed its citizens the flesh of the innocent creatures. In its defense this country says it is not appreciably affecting the total population of these creatures by its research. Obviously, it has no sense these creatures have individual worth. Finally, in response to well verified reports that the flesh of these creatures finds its way into the markets and grocery stores of this country, this country insists it is within its rights to harvest a species that has traditionally been a source of food for centuries.

This country consider itself exempt from the proscriptions accepted by all the other countries of the world (there are a few exceptions) that have now agreed it is immoral to kill these large brained sentient creatures for any reason, particularly for food. But like far more technically primitive countries that continue to harvest bush meat -- which usually means monkeys, apes, and sometimes even gorillas -- and despite the obvious sophistication of their primate victims (to say nothing of how similar they are to humans), this country that continues to harvest the aboriginals of our planet also sees its traditions as taking precedence over any increased understanding of the natural world that has entered human knowledge and consciousness. It is as if this society has decided to follow the ways of its ancestors and ignore human advancement. And perhaps not unsurprisingly, this country becomes quite indignant and righteous when its practices are discussed openly in public. They not infrequently assert their point of view, awareness, and understanding is superior to that of everyone else. It's as if they simply cannot acknowledge an error, that it is too demeaning, too humiliating, to do so.

This country has chosen to defend its actions politically and wage a campaign in support of its traditional practice by finding small largely helpless countries and providing them various forms of aid in exchange for their political support. Apparently they find no burden in exploiting the helplessness of small poor countries as a method to perpetuate their traditional violence against these aboriginal creatures. It seems as though they have chosen to adopt a role of being a bully not just against those aboriginals who they harvest each year, but against all who object to this practice.

Perhaps the people of this country suffer from an inferiority complex since it seems they also cannot accept the findings of those in the psychological sciences who have shown that bullies and those who feel humiliated often suffer from some deep unrecognized and certainly unacknowledged sense of inadequacy. Thus it appears, despite their often loud assertions to the contrary, that they are constantly comparing themselves to all others around them and by that measure find themselves inferior. So in response to this deep existential anxiety and sense of inferiority, they engage in arrogant postures and irrational actions including ones such as this practice of killing. Almost certainly there is no way that their continuing to do this will make them feel superior. Rather, they are condemned to burden their children with heavy indoctrination in their way of thinking lest these new members of society finally be forced to face the error and violence of this traditional and arguably barbaric practice.

Perhaps someday all this will change and this country will join the community of nations who understands humanity has a sacred obligation, one that also returns to it many benefits, to nourish every sentient being. Part of humanizing ourselves is recognizing when traditions more based on our animal origins can be put aside. We all carry such an ancestry. We all are working on advancing ourselves from whatever position we find ourselves in. What is not understood -- and this applies to individuals too -- is that each society, particularly those that cling to abuses out of some sense its identity will be lost if it ceases doing so, fails to appreciate the extent to which it perpetuates its own suffering (and feelings of inferiority) by such practices. Perhaps someday this nation that insists it has a right to continue its violence will recognize how much it is burdening its people by continuing these abuses. We all who are not so burdened hope this awakening will come soon.

Incentives In US Health Care

2009-11-22T15:01:00.003-05:00

Until the health care system is rewarded for delivering good quality care, and more importantly for delivering exceptional care, US health care overall will continue to languish if not deteriorate. The problem is not (only) for doctors to find more efficient ways to take care of people; rather, it is to find some way for doctors and the entire health care system to get paid for care that improves people's health.

As it is now, the health care delivery system gets rewarded for doing "stuff", regardless whether it helps people's health or not. Sometimes it does stuff that improves people's health, then doesn't get paid. How long do you think that's going to continue? Other times, it does stuff that adds little or nothing to people's health. So -- no surprise here -- the payment system has in response erected many steps by which the "stuff" health care does gets scrutinized and evaluated: does this make (economic and/or medical) sense?

To correct for its faulty reinforcement of tech-y procedures, the payment system has created obstacles to the delivery of services. This results in a reduction of care, arguably in the quality of care, and poorer outcomes, despite all the money being spent. Only when the system brings back the goal of improving people's _health_ will this situation change. Of course this brings up the very real question: what measures establish health? What defines health?

We might do well to make a list, and then change whatever needs changing to meet that standard. Things like the US government's GPRA measures were created in part to do exactly this, but any even momentary examination of these standards shows the great gap between some of these measures and the system that's designed to meet them.

Only when measures are created that correctly match health care actions with patient health will a system of performance measures improve health care. If the health care system does certain things, and those things are directly connected to patients' health, then it makes sense to reward the health care delivery system for doing those things. But if there are things the health care system does that at most only indirectly support the health of patients, then the only measure of the system's performance should be whether the system has done those things, NOT whether patients' health has improved. Further, to the extent the health care system's performance is measured by those actions that only indirectly contribute to patients' health, that system will "learn" to either ignore or "game" those performance measures, and patients' health will not improve.

Specifics makes this clear: If it is known that the Z vaccination reduces the incidence of a condition that causes poor health, then the monitoring system can use either the delivery of the Z vaccine OR the occurrence of the condition (that the Z vaccine prevents) in the population to assess how well the health care system is working. However if, in another situation, it is known that avoidance of health condition X requires an action by each patient, and the monitoring system chooses to measure the performance of the health care system by using the incidence of health condition X, then it no longer is enough that the health care system's performance include merely informing patients to do this action; they must have some means to compel patients to follow their recommendation!

Enforcement does enter health care today when there is an epidemic illness. But in most other situations, patients are allowed and expected to make their own choices, and live the consequences of those choices.

So in many health care situations, the health care delivery system can only make available resources that people might or might not choose to use. To expect more from the health care system introduces a new department into health care: a sales force coercing patients to act in certain ways. Certainly in both product- and service-oriented industries quite apart from health care, the marketing division plays a major role. Advertising and "sales" has only recently become a facet of health care, and then only in certain arenas within the health care industry. Laser and cosmetic surgery, drug promotion, and tobacco cessation are examples.

The marketing of actions people can take to preserve or improve their health has never previously been industrialized. Until very recently, common perceptions of marketing in health care were connected with shady remedies -- "snake-oil" salesmen and their ilk. Now we see every day promotion of drugs, non-regulated (OTC) treatments, and myriad other health-related products and services that have at least as much investment in self-promotion and profit as they are concerned about people's health. And regulation has entered this arena as well, and politics too.

The result of the marketization of health care is that people no longer are certain about who has authority -- who has the truth -- about staying healthy. Further, ever increasing scientific and technical advancements now confuse the patient with new possibilities and new paradigms. No wonder people are becoming numb to the barrage of entreaties by health advocates. All these changes have transformed the patient into a customer, one who often simply wants to press the mute button.

This arrangement has had one major effect socially: it has released almost everyone from responsibility! Against this tide, various agencies have created the outcome measures discussed above, with both useful and unexpected effects. Further, we now see a national dialogue that seeks to establish how much responsibility, if any, society as a whole has toward the health of individuals. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is a contentious issue, with some people endorsing a collective effort and others insisting it's "every man (and woman) for him(her)self". Judging from the progress in our government on this issue, it is not going to be resolved or go away any time soon.

Meanwhile, health care for the nation overall appears to be far from optimal and possibly worsening, and health care financing plans seem certain soon to reduce funds for health care (under any system). Without a radical shift, or at least a concerted shift, from how this industry functions today, the health of US citizens -- where health is one of the pillars of every nation's strength -- seems likely to weaken and make less certain within a few decades the continuation of this nation as an egalitarian society.

Consensus Superstitions and Supremacy Groups

2009-06-11T19:19:00.004-05:00

Hate groups. What are these things anyway? Support groups for the mentally ill? Conspiracies? How to understand the mind that regards some specific group of people as worthy of eradication? How does this mind come into existence? What sustains it and nourishes it?

The news of the last few days have been filled with numerous stories about supremacy groups and the recent murder by a white supremacist. These people are upset, the news tells us, partly because the US has a black president and partly because the economy is weak. This suggests that supremacists attract new converts when people are stressed and feel alienated. So it should be no surprise that their behaviors -- expressing and sometimes acting out violence -- can themselves be viewed as acts that distress others and alienate others from them. Call it (psychological) projection.

This situation brings up a larger topic: what constitutes mental illness. As a society we are struggling with this feature of our existence, and have relegated its definition and most of the actions implemented by society's psychology-linked institutions to a relatively small group of professionals whose work we vaguely understand and to some degree find repellent.

As a society we have not confronted the concept of mental illness nor its relevance to day-to-day life. We tend to mock a mentally health life as bland, even moribund, certainly not worth our individual concern. Only people whose lives have been directly touched by mental illness -- their own or that of people in their immediate environment -- have some sense that mental health is valuable and worth nourishing. But even among these relatively enlightened people, most have a nearly medieval view of what mental illness is, albeit one now somewhat veneered by well-advertised drug promotions.

One way to understand this situation is to consider who we conceptualize ourselves to be, or, perhaps better said, what we understand ourselves to be. After all, one can hardly begin to examine mental health and illness with no sense of what it is that is healthy or sick. Since the vast majority of people have a core sense of themselves only expressible through traditional consensus superstitions like soul and spirit, no one should be surprised society is having a tough time bringing this subject into the 21st century.

If we choose to put aside all superstitions in pursuit of a comprehensible and comprehensive sense of mental health, we need a way of speaking about ourselves that is free of those superstitions. Arguably, little exists to aid us. Instead, there is a near cacophony of voices with what has to be labeled as political agendas, articulating ancient or traditional viewpoints frequently embellished with quasi-scientific flourish. These people need to be ignored, or grow up.

But it is understandable that these ancient absurdities persist so loudly in contemporary thinking. Why? Because little else is available to consider or develop. This essay is in part an effort to explore or provoke new thinking or concepts that might function to refine our appreciation of illness and health in what is called the mental realm.

If one puts aside superstition -- basically 'belief', to be distinguished from 'conjecture' -- our existence needs to find its source in the world we know. This is the world of Earth and atoms, of electricity and cells, of patterns and complexity. Abandoning superstition, we are left with the material world in all its glory and mystery as the cause of our own existence.

Immediately it is obvious why our subject has not long ago matured; it treads deeply on territory of belief and faith, and challenges the teachings most have heard since early childhood. If we persist despite these hindrances, we are faced with accounting for our existence by linking it to how the body works. We are forced to admit we are in some marvelous way the creation of our body and brain. We cannot yet explain this except in very fragmented ways that struggle to satisfy someone who is aware of their own functioning moment to moment. So one naturally hesitates before the assertion that we exist because of the body's activity only; it's almost beyond comprehension.

Yet any even modest examination of what we know about ourselves makes this conclusion compelling, even if we still lack much knowledge about how it is accomplished. And while this perspective may provide some foundation stones upon which we can build a clear and comprehensive understanding of health, it still offers little to distinguish mental health from mental illness. However, some assertions can be made, and perhaps not surprisingly, many of these echo the wisdom we humans have gathered across the ages, wisdom often found in those very traditions we have otherwise tossed aside lest they hinder our understanding.

Returning to the topic of supremacy groups -- their attraction to violence; their stereotyping; their repulsion toward the culturally and racially alien -- it is easy, though not complimentary, to explain such attitudes as rooted in the animal-world antiquity we all share. As such, these responses -- shall we call them supremacy behaviors? -- must have long ago provided survival advantage in those aboriginal settings when human beings only existed in small groups that were constantly threatened by their neighbors and other predators. Since this viewpoint rests on an assumption that everyone not in supremacy groups must have an ancestry similar to those drawn to supremacy groups, we must ask how it is those in supremacy groups have failed to acquire the understandings and social skills of those not in such groups. Why have these folks not developed the way everyone else has?

This question brings into focus another contentious topic: is it nature or nurture that defines us? As any student of human development now recognizes, the answer to this question is "not 'or', but 'and' " -- meaning, both nature AND nurture define us. This of course means that we are as much defined by how we are raised as how our genetics forms us.

Framing our subject of supremacy groups and mental illness with these ideas allows us to ask: are the members of supremacy groups the product of genetics or an upbringing different from the rest of society? There may be some research that illuminates this question but it is not extensive nor widely distributed. Thus we are all left with hunches and subjective impressions. For me these include several features of aberrancy including psychosis and histories of abuse. That is, members of these groups often bear evidence of these afflictions.

Current understanding of psychosis suggests that it is often a symptom of neurophysiologic dysfunction arising from an organic cause such as intoxication (i.e., intentionally or unintentionally ingested intoxicants) or anatomic abnormality of the brain. For example the common psychotic illness called schizophrenia -- which almost certainly is a catchall term for a whole group of conditions -- has both a genetic, i.e. familial, incidence pattern as well as strongly suspected experiential correlates, some even gestational such as certain viral illnesses occurring during the individual's gestation. Of course these effects don't exclude what these people endure and experience once they are born.

Similarly, situations of abuse very frequently have a lineage consistent with early life behavioral imprinting, meaning the person is taught at an early age to view and regard the world and others in ways that are dysfunctional, and this education is traditional in certain families. Only sometimes do people successfully outgrow such early life traumas.

It is not difficult to regard people who find themselves drawn toward supremacy ideologies as wounded. That these people can bring great hurt on others does not take away their own suffering. Of course the term "suffering" itself may be misrepresenting these people's experience; there are many mental health conditions where suffering is not acknowledged (or acknowledgeable?) by its bearer. Psychologists speak of a lack of insight when they describe such individuals.

So the social problem of supremacy groups and the existence of mental health conditions of such severity that their existence puts society at risk present special challenges. Current technology for recognizing mental health conditions remains rather primitive. Too often it relies upon the art of psychiatric impressions rather than robust objectives tests, though recent advances in imaging technology hint that objective psychiatry is no longer far away.

The whole of human society is now regularly confronted by people driven by supremacist ideologies that in general appear to be supported by overt delusional rationalizations compelling terrorist actions. Though these people often wish to restore some perceived previous society that enthroned their preferred social group, it seems far more likely their actions and rhetoric is going to accomplish something quite different: an enhanced and more commonly-accepted understanding of human frailty and the nature of human development, especially what contributes to mental health and a diverse harmonious society. From the perspective of supremacists, this outcome may be disappointing though something in their ideologies may be found to have sufficient value to become a precious part of our future. An example? Devotion.

Society's Mental Illness

2009-03-26T16:44:00.001-05:00

What is the problem with the mental health care system today? I think it's a spiritual one. People do not understand, often are unwilling to consider, that we are biological beings, not only in terms of our body but in terms of our being. People don't want to admit that we are inextricably linked to our bodies. Most people would rather imagine we are somehow attached to the physical body. Most of us prefer to see the human spirit as a passenger riding in the body's shell. We would rather imagine that we are something bigger and more robust than, really something more important and superior to, the physical body. Admittedly some of this thinking arises because we don't yet understand very well how we could manifest from the body's functions. This gap of understanding, this gap in our knowledge, seems to be narrowing as science increases what we know about the brain.

When we can accept that we are the creation of our body (mostly our brain), our perspective on many social and cultural difficulties will change radically. When we accept that the function of our brain determines who we are, we will be much more interested in how our nervous system and our brain can malfunction.

Today we give a sort of lip service to the idea that our brain causes us sometimes to behave and think in abnormal ways. Of course we used medications to affect our brain so that we can improve our mood and sometimes our behaviors. But behind this usage of medicines continues an undercurrent of magical thinking regarding who we are and how we function. So most people today still think that how a person functions in the world -- really who he is in the world -- is a function of his character, more specifically his God-given character. And we regard character as something we each are responsible for despite our vague sense that even how we are able to exercise that responsibility can be influenced by how our brain and body is functioning. Alcohol intoxication is an obvious example.

When we accept as a society that how people function reflects how their brains are working we will make a priority of examining people's brains when we find people functioning in ways we recognize as dysfunctional. Then when someone does something harmful to themselves or to others we won't need to accumulate a dossier of their misbehaviors before we consider they might have a brain condition. We will examine brain function whenever someone misbehaves.

Now this sort of viewpoint freaks no small number of people out, because it can be viewed as an invasion of privacy and an erosion of personal freedoms. Further, for those people who regard the best society to be one filled with individuals operating in their own self-interest with little or no oversight by their communities -- a sort of libertarian perspective -- attributing these behaviors to the brain's functioning imposes on society an obligation to manage each person's brain function. After all, if the brain's dysfunction prevents a person from managing themselves (including keeping their brain healthy), then that task has to fall upon others.

"What," you say, "you mean I have to pay my taxes to take care of other people's mental dysfunctions?" Of course today this already occurs to some extent but how it occurs can quite arguably be described as inefficient and even sometimes abusive. For instance, many people with mental health problems reside in the penal system where their mental health care is often minimal. That many of these people end up returning to their communities with their mental health problems unmanaged means that, as is the case for ordinary criminals, the mentally ill prisoner really has no enduring rehabilitation.

This arrangement, which is our current social response to the significantly mentally ill, means that nothing fundamentally changes for these people when society's intercession ends. Today, society's arrangements for the newly-released probationer do little to change the risks to the larger population; recidivism rates approach three cases in four. And if anything it is worse for people with significant mental illness when they return to society. Today such "state-of-the-art" medical care for the mentally ill exacts a heavy price on how our society appears and functions.

Changing this situation requires us to see ourselves in a new way where our mental functioning is viewed as a product of brain activity. Rather than relying upon our wishful religious traditions to guide us when a person misbehaves, in every case we need to consider, then look for, evidence of brain dysfunction.

There is a reason this hasn't already occurred, and it has two facets. One is that it requires us to see ourselves in a new way, a way distinct from tradition. Second, it means we need to learn a great deal more about how the most complex organ in the body, the brain, works. That requires resources -- people, equipment, money -- to advance the science. To the extent this work rubs up against the beliefs of tax paying citizens, it is likely to be hindered. Arguably that is happening now and it is likely to happen even more as the science advances. Religions that are offended by this science are faced with a challenge at least as great as the one they see coming from evolution. Truly they are faced with obsolescence unless their viewpoint and message adapts to modern understandings.

While this adjustment of religious thinking and advancement of science proceeds, we will have to live with the consequences of our current policies toward the mentally ill. Unfortunately, that will mean no small number of lives shattered. This is our situation today.

Islamic Conservatism

2008-01-25T18:56:00.000-05:00

The word “conservative” when used to described factions in Islamic (and often other) countries defines a sort of repressive retardation. It is basically a philosophy of fear, one evoked by fear, and one operating outside the awareness of its proponents, sustaining fear. While this is occurring in Turkey only to a moderate degree, many other countries more passionately Islamic than Turkey live completely under such fear.

And among the ways this never gets confronted is the practice of identifying (and blaming) external threats for society’s suffering. Cultures of this type effectively function like people with no immune system – they are forever vulnerable to disease and must build for themselves a sealed world lest an external agent infect them. But a person with no immune system also can get in trouble with cancer – that is, with self-created “invaders” – because an active and healthy immune system monitors and eliminates such wayward tissues when they first appear. If there is no immune system, those malignant cells can proliferate. The Islamic world today suffers from such cancers.

Alternatively, if the immune system is too active or just dysfunctional, it attacks the body itself as an invader, as foreign. In some ways Islamic countries have a dysfunctional immune system. But mostly they have almost no immune system at all. And so they struggle to survive in the world amid a sea of other “cultural organisms”.

The conceit of Islamic countries is thinking their current practices are a solution to their problems, rather than contributors to them. They would benefit from reviewing the maxim: repeating something that doesn’t work and expecting a different result is a sign of mental illness. Islamic countries are mentally ill in this way, and as a result never manage to confront the real issues before them – how to realize a vision of cultural harmony, comfort, and purpose. They do have these ideas, but the first and second are imagined to be achievable only after life has ended – in their heaven – and the third has been hijacked by their misunderstanding that repression is a nourishment.

The fantasy of the global caliphate many Muslims are drawn to, or are encouraged to support – this is the vision offered by Al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalists – fails to consider the condition of Islamic societies at the time of previous caliphates. If that history were known, few if any Muslims (perhaps those few in the highest positions of power would be exceptions) would view a new caliphate as a worthwhile goal.

Considerations such as these only lie quietly in the hearts of Muslims around the world today. Their whispers give Muslims hope even as the whole of the Muslim world remains drugged on the poisons of belief and repression. Perhaps someday they will find a way besides suicide to be free.

An Open Letter to the Israelis

2006-06-26T12:18:00.000-05:00

Now you are faced with having one of your own in the hands of the enemy. Yes, you regard the Palestinians as enemies, and they have reciprocated. Or were they first? Does it matter now? Whatever the case, this is your situation today.

Your actions are viewed by Palestinians as a demonstration you did learn something from the Holocaust. You suffered that horror, and now you are far more slowly creating the same experience for people who you have defeated in a war so long ago that you (and Palestinians) now have children who only see the recent tit-for-tat exchanges as justification for your actions and policies. Of course your children, like those in Palestine, have been taught hate and fear from their first breath, and so you both now have that product of your efforts becoming an ever larger percentage of your population.

So you are trying to decide what to do in response to this abduction. Some of you simply want to do more of the same. Hit them and hit them hard -- harder than you have hit them before. Others are wondering whether there is a message in the fact your two peoples have been exchanging assaults upon each other for so long with no meaningful change in your relationship.

Ask yourselves what you want of the Palestinian people. Do you want them simply to lie down like dogs in the lifeless dust of the places you have left them and have them die? Or do you want them to flourish and become partners in creating a greater Middle East? Yes, I know you have differences over some real estate that for each of you has great significance. And yes, I know, you (and the Palestinans too) are really not a homogeneous people; you have many different minds in your population, and some are no less fundamentalist than are their counterparts in the Palestinian lands. This is the result of how we all have made the world today.

So as there are three monotheistic religions in the world, perhaps a rule traditionally attributed to the one religion that is not directly involved in this conflict could be of some use. That rule is the Golden One, of doing to the other what you yourself would like them to do to you. Of course, such an action requires reciprocation to advance into a greater relaxation of tensions, and it requires starting with small steps. This current crisis, or the next one, or the one after that (if you are simply too stuck in your ways to be rational any sooner), can be the place where some new direction can occur. Rather than disdaining the people who are your counterparts (the Middle East conflict has been kept alive for many years entirely because each side has used 'ad hominem' accusations against the other; this has "neatly" avoided any talk about the real and salient issues of property, movement, rights, etc.

So look now at this situation of some soldiers being killed (and one abducted). Do you not see your own contribution to this situation? No I don't mean some political position or other policy decision. Rather I point to the obvious, that something about your powerful military system didn't work, and that failure cost you some soldier's lives, and now the possibility of another being tortured or even killed. Of course you want to avenge this. Who wouldn't? But is revenge going to get you out of this quagmire? And does having the power to go through some village and simply destroy everything and everyone remove the incentive of other Palestinian men to act against Israel?

I know the standard answer to this question, that giving into terrorists should never be done. This is how it is phrased. But this phrasing is itself an expression of your mind-set. It is not truth. In fact, it is not so difficult to argue conducting some military action that can be easily viewed as an act of avenging this abduction will only move the place marker back into the Palestinian camp and function as yet another incentive for some Palestinian men sooner or later to conduct another action against your army or citizens.

Now I realize the problem of leaders (on both sides, incidentally) is that they are caught between some of their own people (who are simply bully-fundamentalists hiding behind their bureaucrats, goading them to do their bidding) and the enemy outside the country (or territories) who wishes to demonstrate he is worthy of being given the post of leadership. So politicians for both Israel and Palestine are caught between two fires, with little hope of pleasing both.

Then to whom is this writing addressed? It seems the smart man (or woman) should just make a point of never getting into a position of leadership in these communities. That's the only way to avoid being torn apart by one's own people. Of course that it has come to this only indicates how desperate the situation is.

But it also indicates something else -- that within Israel (and Palestine, too, of course) there is a dialogue that is not now happening -- between the "hard liners" and those who are more secular and wish only to live in peace and prosperity. The problem of the Middle East is really an archetype for similar problems the world over, including in America, Africa and the Orient. It is really the problem of people anywhere today.

We have not yet decided to be civilized for the simple reason too many people see advantage in the old ways of authority, domination, subjugation, and power. One can even make an argument that the so-called democracies around the world are to a great extent imposed on their citizens, who in large part give only politically-correct lip-service in defense of democracy while at the same time they behave in a manner calculated to take every advantage of the loop-holes in their democratic system of government, for personal gain, even when those cunning actions undermine democratic principles. So it seems the Middle East is simply manifesting this planet-wide ambivalence toward being civilized.

The only hope in this picture is that the Israeli people have shown themselves to be quite brilliant in many other endeavors, and the Palestinians have demonstrated genius of global significance in times past. So both peoples are smart. Perhaps the intelligence of these two adversaries can discover a way out of their dilemma which at the same time will reveal to the rest of the planet how better to conduct itself. Then not only would the Middle East conflict become a closed entry in the history books, but the whole world might take another step toward growing up.

Deep down we all hope for this.

Improving Democracy

2006-03-10T13:59:00.000-05:00

There is a great deal of clamor in the media today regarding the furthering of democracy and an allegiance to freedom. While there is no shortage of people who imply this clamor is only posturing and polemics, the whole issue of how people regard democracy and freedom gets little sincere consideration.

It seems fair to assert that most people in the First World -- the Western democracies, of which the US is the poster child -- would say they support democracy and freedom, and that they vote to exercise their rights as citizens of democratic nations. But as we watch politicians-at-work -- and it is these people who are acting in the people's behest -- it seems few politicians see their task as enhancing democracy and freedom. Rather, most of the time the people's representatives are working vigilantly to extract from our democratic system all that they can obtain in behalf of their constituency, and, not surprisingly, the people who elected them endorse their efforts.

The system of so-called "checks and balances" strives to place the self-serving interests of each constituency in opposition to others with the idea the net result will be the best arrangement for the society overall. This process produces the political processes we all know and see in operation every day, people trying to discredit their political opponents, to outmaneuver their political adversaries, and people aggregating with others in what often are called "un-holy" alliances to push a certain ideology or political agenda. This "food-fight" arrangement constitutes our current politics and shapes how we regard each other.

It seems as though any democracy that arises out of this tumult appears as much by accident as by any intention. So little allegiance to democracy as an institution exists today in political activities, most everyone turns to the founding fathers of society when disputes arise regarding how government should function. There is great distrust of and little energy given to active intentional efforts to improve or refine democracy itself. People regard such an effort as only a scheme to promote someone's secret agenda. Further, to make the task of politics improving our democracy and freedoms often is simply too abstract to have much traction with people who have more immediate and physical concerns and grievances.

So society hobbles along on a framework few would argue is anything but brilliant, all the while seeking to exploit that framework to the advantage of one vested interest or another. And democracy persists as much because of its inherent integrity as by any effort of contemporary political forces.

What if society viewed its task as including an effort to identify all those areas where current government fails to meet some democratic ideal and it then strived to create modifications that moved the structuring of society toward greater freedom and democracy? Across the world, we watch in various countries the spark of democracy and freedom arise, only to be crushed back by dictatorship or some other authoritarian force so we know by those examples how difficult it is to change the status quo. And we also have a current American administration promoting democracy and freedom around the world while it engages in actions many view as anything but promoting freedom and democracy.

Considering this also brings up the issue whether democracy and freedom, or an authoritarian system, is better. And while I suspect most people in the West would argue against authoritarian regimes on principle, it seems most of these same people actively seek to enfranchise their own viewpoint over all others -- in effect they are seeking authoritarian influence over their democratic system of governance. They do this of course to gain themselves a position of benefit, most of the time regardless of what position they currently occupy. So while the system may be democratic, its adherents often aren't. Rather, they are relatively disempowered authoritarianists. Democracy as we know it today consists of the aggregate behaviors of a group of people each of whom is asked (or allowed) to exercise his/her dominion at the ballot box and in all caucus actions greater than voting. It is only that this arrangement invariably pits one group seeking to dominate against another with similar designs that democracy manages to appear. It exists almost as a by-product of the strained embrace of adversaries, each of whom wishes dominion. A democratic system seems more to provide the wrestling ring in which political adversaries can fight.

This is how the current system works today.

What if amid these tensions there flowered a project designed to improve the existing manifestation of democracy and freedom, to improve the ring and its rules? Well, first there would have to be some agreement just what constitutes improvement, and perhaps even some work would be needed to state clearly just what constitutes democracy and freedom. This alone is not a simple task, even if its fruits might bless all of human existence. Further, someone would have to find a way to sell any discovered improvement to the various political adversaries without diluting its benefits. Perhaps an example would be useful at this point.

Every few years, when the census shows us how people are now distributed geographically in our country, voting districts are "reapportioned" to bring back to some standard the number of citizens in each district. This is done, of course, since each district's interests are represented in government by one person, or at most a few people (representatives). As any student of politics knows, a common political strategy is for the political party in power to adjudicate the reapportionment process in their own favor by redrawing districts so they contain favorable amounts of people who support certain political parties. By this scheme, political parties preserve or even gain an "edge" in favor of the incumbent. Also by this scheme, districts frequently acquire bizarre shapes and boundaries.

One entirely non-partisan amendment to this quite important political process of reapportionment would be to impose legally some constraints upon the mathematical features of districts, constraints beyond the current rule that each district must contain the same number of people (within some small variance). Adding a boundary rule that would help lessen what is called gerrymandering (oddly shaped districts favoring one party over another) would place an upper limit upon the ratio of a district's circumference divided by its area. This would add to the constraints already used by whatever agency or system that performs redistricting. Of course there would likely be those states or regions where vested interests would obstruct implementation of such a rule, lest they lose influence. This would only serve to highlight the degree to which these places were against democracy and more interested in a tyranny by a contrived majority (or even possibly by a minority).

This small mathematic would start to add some science to "political science". It might also stimulate a search for other reforms by which democracy and freedom are strengthened. If an index of democracy could be invented -- a measure how much a people or region were functioning democratically -- and/or if an index of freedom could be found -- a measure how much individual freedom existed in a people or region -- then comparisons could be made and both competition and the "shame factor" might further a growth of democratic ideals throughout the world.

One illusion might collide with this effort -- that countries like the US are already fully democratic. To the extent such things as the reapportionment issue exists, it seems fair to assert even in the so-called democratic countries of the world, greater democracy (meaning equality of representation, among other things) could appear. That such a change will not always be welcomed even within existing democratic model-countries only points out the fact human civilization has yet to reach maturity.

Self-Esteem in the Muslim World

2006-02-05T16:25:00.000-05:00

The first thing that needs to be considered is whether the Muslim people, the Arabic people, have any sense of worth, whether their self-esteem is healthy or low. It seems it is quite low. This would explain why they have gone ballistic over something most of the rest of the world considers a non-event.

They assert their religious feelings have been hurt. They also feel (mistakenly, I would argue) this is about defending their faith.

These people have confused faith with politics. What they are calling faith, and using as a justification for damaging property, most everyone else quite accurately regards as politics, an expression of a political agenda. I suppose even it could be argued the people in the street are just following orders, but that only displaces responsibility and further erodes the self-esteem of the people who are now rioting.

To a degree this is similar to the race conflicts in the US. Both parties have felt agrieved for decades if not centuries. Both parties have had little power via the usual channels of politics. Both parties regard their plight as racial or cultural. And both parties from the viewpoint of first world peoples (mostly white folk) tend to behave like animals.

Of course we all would if provoked enough.

Now the solution to the race problem that the US enacted was to go after the bigotry that fed the racial divide, creating laws against prejudice, making policies that insured every program of opportunity contained a certain minimum percentage of the downtrodden (some argue this has done little to fix the esteem problem of the downtrodden, since people who enter such programs as a part of a quota don't themselves feel they deserve it personally), and relatively consistent enforcement of these principles. Of course these changes only occurred after a century of struggle and violence and are not yet completed.

The Muslim world is not so easily transformed. Besides the wealth of the Muslim peoples (with great income disparity within this population), the people who are agrieved are citizens of many nations. They themselves prefer not to be viewed as nationals since they -- perhaps rightly -- recognize they have greater influence and strength in aggregate.

In its treatment of these people, the rest of the world oscillates between gifts -- including programs of assistance -- and imposed isolation or constraint. Either these people are locked in a prison or thrown bisquits. Their plight has become so entrenched in their own minds they might fairly be accused of having a sort of prisoner's psychosis -- that condition where a man, when offered freedom, fights to stay in prison where he feels safe and nurtured (despite the cruelty and deprivations common in that place).

Now it has to be admitted that the Muslim world is hardly homogeneous. Beside the obvious chasm between the oil sheiks and the peasants in Indonesia and the Middle East, there exists a substantial number of Muslims in the first world -- America, Europe, Australia, etc. -- living mostly middle class lives. These first worlders are more assimilated into the wealth-generating, esteem-building societies where they live though still it has to be admitted a certain ghettoization remains.

And complicating this whole situation is these people's common bond -- their religion -- which despite more than 1400 year of activity remains incoherent, with voices from every direction issuing guidance about how followers are to behave and live their lives and exercise their influence. Adding to this chaos is a sort of spiritual tyranny that ranges from communities run by local war lords or politico-religious leaders who enforce their own views with threat of harm or loss of spiritual salvation and so impose their wishes and agenda upon their constituency, all the way up to the persisting dream of a global utopian community run by a nearly divine leader in the form of a caliphate.

It seems fair to assert the majority of these communities have not yet matured beyond a sort of modern day feudalism organized around a belief system that operates more like a dictatorship than a collective exercise of intelligence. And like all persisting belief systems theirs contains numerous features designed to negate any forces for change. The result of this situation in a world of increasing collectivity is for these people to be chaffing against the rest of humanity which is somewhat less constrained spiritually, psychologically, sociologically and economically.

It seems there are only two possible outcomes to this situation. Either the Muslim people will accept change and modernize their beliefs and system of living to ameliorate their relations with the rest of the world, or their culture will be crushed by the rest of the world, with only those at the edges (in every sense of the word) surviving the world's hammer.

This whole situation is somewhat remniscent of what happens when a gang in a city finally provokes a community into action. A common understanding nowadays is that gangs exist only as a solution to intolerable circumstances and as such are a cry for help, if only an unconscious one. So too it seems the chaffing of the Muslim community can be seen as a cry for help, despite the heated adamance with which most all Muslims might deny this idea. That maxim about "thou protesteth too much" seems applicable. As with gangs, a tough love approach in delivering the help that is being so indirectly requested may be the only option, and one can argue Israel's treatment of its Palestinian neighbors is a current example. The risk of such an approach however is that it may become too much toughness and not enough love.

Perhaps viewing the Muslim world as collectively having a self-esteem issue, as crying out for love through its continuing defiance during events large and small, and as expressing hardness and adamance simply because they truly feel they have their backs to the wall, will help the rest of the world to find a new way to respond to what seems today to be an area of human affairs needing much harmony.

Moving Toward An Islamic Reformation

2006-02-05T15:38:00.000-05:00

So now embassies burn because of one culture's inability to accept limitations placed on its speech in order to meet the mores and beliefs of another. The culture war is in progress. The combatants each have their tools, honed by living each day as they now fight.

One speaks publicly whatever it thinks to whomever, regardless of whether its words may cause suffering. Only slander and its ilk are restricted. Their idea: that each person's suffering is his own responsibility. In other words: you define what brings you suffering. Relevant to this viewpoint is a distinction between pain (a body phenomenon) and suffering (a state of mind).

The other reacts with physical aggression. Their response to anything that offends them is to burn it. They threaten and sometime actually destroy. Tolerance for them only becomes relevant once their point of view is granted equal worth to yours. And by worth, they mean validity and not simple acceptance of individuality. Their idea: that they will only be free of suffering if everyone is doing what they think is right.

These are the two sides of this war. Can you figure out which one is which? I wonder which one is going to win.

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One has to wonder why, for a religion that forbids icons and symbols of worship, there is so much concern about icons and symbols. It seems what this religion really forbids is the use of its icons and symbols. "We own our idols; don't you do anything with them" seems to be the real message. So much for a lack of idolatry. Thus, it seems this may be a trademark dispute.

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While this current dispute has been about specific actions and events, what it seems more about is insult and feeling offended. Disrespect, if you're from the projects.

The cry for respect is a complicated one in that it consists of the individual assertion of beingness admixed with a test of the limits of propriety -- what society's rules are.

Now we are witnessing a culture's cry for respect, its anger about being disrespected, and seeing firsthand just how complicated it is for respect to be achieved. The one who wishes respect does not want to be treated condescendingly, but it isn't often recognized what one needs to do to gain respect.

Respect means, literally, "turning to look again". We all know this experience: we see something or someone. We turn away, only moments later to realize there was something interesting, unusual, engaging or otherwise attractive in what we just saw. So we turn to look again. That is the root meaning of respect.

So respect is a relationship, and since it is a relationship, there are two parties engaged in its creation and maintenance. One of the problems that arises around the issue of respect is that it often is regarded as created by the action or decision of only one of the two parties in the relationship. This misunderstanding can occur in two ways: thinking one has already done enough, and thinking the other has not yet done enough. Most of the time, both are operational for both parties when disrespect characterizes the relationship.

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I wonder whether those rioters (of course they are really just a mob-mind, almost not sentient -- no mob is) have given any thought to how their reaction provides to the world a confirmation that the cartoon depictions of the Prophet were accurate (never mind the question of how they, the rioters, know what Mohammed looked like during his life fourteen centuries ago). So now we in the rest of the world know what Mohammed looked like (those cartoons have shown us), and we realize the whole of the Muslim world is trying on an individual basis to look just like the Prophet! Again, it seems the Islamic prohibition against icons is all but meaningless, unless you want to riot, that is! I wonder: do Muslims realize they are just emulating by their dress and appearance what they (who are not idolators) think Mohammed looked like? Do they not think this is a form of idolatry?

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So the Vatican has now spoken on this topic: "The Vatican says the right to freedom of expression does not imply the right to offend religious beliefs." This is just a strategy to avoid being caught up in this madness, of course. If people were to follow this instruction, who could speak? There are so many religions, so many beliefs. The world would be silent. Further, have not all advances in human society somewhat offended the beliefs of those among whom the progressive one has lived?

Madness. It really is a mad world.

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Dare I suggest the Muslims have it wrong? It seems they don't even know their own religion. Or if they choose to plead ignorance and turn to their imams and other religious leaders for guidance and "knowing", then it must be those leaders who don't know their own religion. After all, the rioters are chanting: "...we defend you, O Prophet of God." Isn't the whole point of Islam to align oneself to Allah and not to anyone else? Is there supposed to be worship of Mohammed? Isn't that focus on God (Allah) the reason Islam says there are to be no images of Mohammed? I think there was some confusion about this even when Mohammed was alive.

Now I suppose also it's hard to keep this sort distinction clearly in mind in the midst of a mob mind-meld. Then the lowest denominator takes over, and apparently for Muslims -- at least those who are rioting, and quite likely upon the command or suggestion of some religious leader(s) who has suggested these actions -- that lowest common denominator means forgetting God (Allah) and defending Mohammed (as if a dead guy needs defending). This is the Islamic Reformation crying for its birth.

A Horror Story

2005-10-29T11:55:00.000-05:00

Do I have a Halloween story for you! Ghouls and goblins are nothing compared to this.

The fundamental concept dividing atheism (matterism) and all the religions is not God. It is the soul. We know at least a little about what the faiths have to say about the soul. But what does a matter-oriented viewpoint say?

The soul is the most immediate apparently supernatural “object” most people encounter. If we want to be rational in how we regard and talk about life and ourselves, the soul as we know it has to go. I know you most likely want to argue this point. But stay with me for a few moments.

If the soul is a false concept, how then to understand being alive? What is aliveness?

My viewpoint -- and I appreciate the irony of my phrasing it this way -- is that the soul doesn't exist. We don't have a soul. The soul is a myth. It has been and is a convenient way of speaking about ourselves but it introduces immediately a distortion. It misrepresents.

The idea of "soul" arises when we try to explain ourselves. But just what exactly do I mean by "we"? The question of "soul" is a question about "who am I?"

For me, the problem of the "soul" is really a roundabout way of stating a problem the body has. For me, the fundamental thing is the body. We each are a body. This seems to be a pretty obvious assertion from someone whose way of viewing the world is materialistic. But what isn't realized sometimes when the human situation is posited this way is what us being a body implies.

If we each are a body, and I am saying we each are, then each body has a problem: how to relate, how to present itself, how to appear, particularly in the presence of other bodies. The body's solution to this problem (and it is a problem, since how the body does this could cause the body harms instead of benefit) is to create a package of behaviors and ways of expressing, and even an identity (the hardest concept perhaps, since it requires self-awareness) by and through which it relates to all the other bodies around it.

Today we talk about things like figuring out how to make our cars drive themselves, and how to make robots. These problems, very real problems, get close to the same engineering problem every body has, except the human body has this problem from its conception (or at least from very soon thereafter). The body in this sense is like those machines, but what it has created to solve this problem has been us. We are the invention of the body. We have been created to solve a problem the body has -- namely how to interact with other bodies. The reproductive imperatve resides in the body, in the DNA, and to accomplish that, the body will do whatever it takes. Even create us! Since we humans have become complex, and numerous, the body has created a complicated interface through which it relates to other bodies.

So we are that interface. We don't exist except for this. We have no separate existence despite a great deal of talk to the contrary. And when we die, it is simply the body failing to maintain its interface.

I appreciate how much this idea matches language and concepts found in the computer world. I also appreciate how often the ideas of one discipline end up moving over into another, and that spiritual ideas have across the years often developed out of ideas adopted from other disciplines. I see this view of myself and mankind and life as just that, the application of ideas developed in an entirely different area of inquiry. So I also appreciate ideas such as this one may undergo further radical transformation as other areas of life contribute in new ways to how we talk and think about ourselves.

But for now this is as far as it goes.

Of course this idea is to some degree what every atheist believes or understands. It is not really new. But its implications don't often get explored. What are some of the implications (besides the fact there is nothing that dies except the body, so don't worry about it)?

First, this idea explains how it can be that creatures other than humans have soul-like features. Clearly we should expect the interface the body makes to have evolved just as has the body. Second this formulation of the "soul" makes who-we-are closer to other natural epiphenomena, things that happen incidental to the existence or activities of something else. What do I mean by epiphenomenon? There's lots of examples -- the world is filled with them.

Light reflecting off a stream is an epiphenomenon. It can make a flickering pattern, entrancing at times. The sound flowing water makes is an epiphenomenon. Of course neither of those is self-aware. That's the big difference between epiphenomena of inert objects and epiphenomena of self-aware systems.

The issue of self-awareness is worth exploring. If we are defining self, how then to do that by talking about self-awareness? It seems tautological (self-referential), and it is. And we are (self-referential)! Just as the body has the problem of how to relate to other bodies it also has the problem of how to relate to itself. It doesn't make sense for the body to get into a fight with itself (although we sometimes talk about that when we discuss people being conflicted or ambivalent, but that's something apart from this discussion). The body has to deal with itself as soon as it has the possibility of tripping over itself. So complicated bodies have to have some self-awareness, and need that self-awareness to the degree they have the possibility of tripping over themselves. Think Dr. Strangelove, with the right hand fighting the left.

Do you know what happens when the brain is split in half? This is possible to do, and it has been used as a medical treatment for seizures. When the brain is split, each hemisphere functions as if it is a separate individual. And occasionally, one side reprimands the other! There's lots of accounts about this, and stories can be found in books by authors like Oliver Sachs.

So we exist – us, you and me -- as a convenience to the body. But because we, the body's interface with the world (and self), have become more complicated, we have become a force in and of ourselves. The emergence of something new is really the story of life. The pattern of emergence has repeated itself since life appeared on this planet.

Coral is a single cell creature that likes to aggregate and build deposits of calcium. Coral builds castles. It partners with an algae to do this. The result is the Barrier Reef in Australia, more than 1000 miles of sculpture. Coral's habit, a mechanical habit, has altered the movement of the ocean.

So too has the interface the human body has created, only more so. We build jettys, and ships.

From my point of view there is a general trend in the development of body interfaces -- they are becoming more independent from their bodies. I am referring to a developmental or evolutionary-historical trend. This suggests humans may be an intermediate form on the way to freeing the body's interface -- call it "spirit" -- from the body. If that happens, we won’t be able to call it "human spirit" any more, of course. I realize this seems "over the top", especially to atheists and materialists who eschew spirituality. But nevertheless it seems an accurate depiction of the trend or alignment of all life in aggregate. Someday (just how is anyone's guess) life may find a way to free the interface it has made for bodies. Actually it is probably more accurate to say the interface itself (again, that’s us) will accomplish this liberation.

So for All Soul's Day, remember where your "soul" came from, and what it is. People have sought and been awed by miracles since earliest times, but have overlooked the greatest miracle of all, that what started out entirely as a convenience has become an independent (to a degree) entity. The body's crutch has grown wings and taken flight, and hints it might even someday manage to free itself entirely from its origins. Does this not qualify as a miracle?
10/27/05

Teleologic Struggles

2005-10-02T17:46:00.000-05:00

The Dalia Lama, if he has been correctly quoted, worries that seeing people as "the products of pure chance in the random combination of genes" is an invitation to nihilism and spiritual poverty. In his recent book "The Universe in a Single Atom:", he elaborates, "The view that all aspects of reality can be reduced to matter and its various particles is, to my mind, as much a metaphysical position as the view that an organizing intelligence created and controls reality."

And the Catholic Pope (Benedict XIV) has recently commented: "Each of us is the result of a thought of God."

So, in these statements, where does the poetry end and science begin? It seems this discussion, which gets only louder and more stridorous as the months pass, is about teleology. But who is presenting the "problem" this way?

What we see are disputes about whether religion should be taught in schools. The general answer is "No!" unless the school is religiously funded and not public. No one is wanting to suggest we could have religion or teleology in our schools as an academic subject -- eg, here are all the major religions; here are their beliefs; here are their histories; here is their contemporary importance. Why? Because almost no one endorsing any form of religious teaching wants to support or even inform people of religious options and ideas other than the one they have chosen.

In this situation, objectivity has been demoted for (and by) the religiously empassioned, demoted into an inferior (sometimes even irrelevant) viewpoint . And no one is talking about how religion has, for many more centuries than those since Darwin, been fighting a rear-guard action as science and, more broadly, man's general enquiry have eroded the premises upon which religion has based its power and influence.

Now the point the Dalai Lama has introduced will certainly cheer those who wish for an acknowledgement if not admonition that science has drifted into metaphysics. Most other religious systems across the world have already signed onto the idea endorsing some sort of divine origin and destiny for man. Who else but the atheists contest this option?

Then recently atheism has been co-opted by being labeled a belief system. This strategy of course leaves unlabeled those who declare they don't believe -- period. Previously they were called atheists, but if atheism is a belief, then what to call someone whose viewpoint eschews belief?

The other quite salient point about the evolution/creationism debate involves something science could emphasize, but rarely does: if the evolution model is accepted fully, then this does not remove entirely a creator. It simply displaces that agency into the Big Bang or whatever the initiator of existence as we know it might be called. Of course few if any investigators suggest there might be something that preceded the Big Bang, and fewer yet advocate a viewpoint that our search for an origin may only be some anthropocentric misunderstanding, we being mortal and all (ie, we have an origin and ending). Just because we are mortal and finite, that doesn't mean necessarily the universe is as well. Is the wave the sea?

Perhaps it really is us that is the divinity we are searching for, because we have within us, built-in, certain tendencies. Among these are the capacity to assign being-ness to any sort of aggregate phenomena. The argument goes: this capacity developed to allow us to analyze group behaviors among communities and it appeared long before life took the form of primates. Such a capacity provides us with some benefits, such as a better way to detect a camouflaged predator, and whether we've been noticed as we approach a herd of some creature we wish to kill and eat. And of course being able to gauge the mood of a roomful of people when we enter.

Similarly, our subjectivity is not something nearly as unique as ordinary people would like to believe. Science continues to provide a growing body of evidence that many other creatures have a subjective life.

What is seeming more and more likely, and this is what encourages all who support evolution and science's findings as inferential foundations for postulating a teleology without divinity, is that we may have projected our own sense of self upon the whole of existence, given a name to that projection (God), and then turned around and begun treating it as if it has objective reality. While it is easy to see how that process might have provided a useful framing of ourselves and our world (and destiny) at a time when we lacked any data about our world beyond what our senses could provide directly, it seems obvious we might need to revise that scheme occasionally as we figure out how to explore the world and ourselves in more detail.

Today many refuse to consider the possibility their traditional and ancestral understandings, including beliefs about teleology, might need revision. Compounding this reticence is a recurring confusion about "matteristic" explanations. A common one is expressed thus: All is matter.

This quickly gets expanded into straw-man absurdities like "Thoughts are matter". This mistake typically is combined with a misunderstanding that science has in fact achieved "an explanation for everything". So it seems before any accommodation between the various position holders can be achieved, clarity about both the extent and the specifics of the ideas of every party will need to be known.

While this is not a small task, it largely resides in the "matterist" camps to elaborate these details, since the religions have been expressing their ideas for many centuries.

A few important points fundamental to the science position need to be stated. They distinguish science from belief even without being expanded into specifics. They are:
1. There are thing we don't know. This is not a problem. It is how things are for us now. We can expect growth in our understanding and knowing as time passes.
2. Evolution is not "just random chance". Evolution involves at least two processes working in lock-step -- mutation (genetic variation) and selection. Do one without the other, and nothing happens.
3. Subjective processes appear to be epiphenomena of the function of matter, specifically neuro-matter.
4. Brain size is important but organization is as important.
5. We are not all alike in terms of our subjective natures. In fact we are as different in that way as we are physically. (And there is not much congruence between our physical differences and the differences in our subjective natures).
6. It isn't "Nature or Nuture"; it's "Nature AND Nurture".

The Dalai Lama's statement about nihilism and "spiritual poverty" almost certainly gives voice to a concern most every believer shares. It is the concern of the individual man whose world view has shattered, writ large. Giving great expression to this concern, one might declare: "Will I exist if it does turn out I have no soul?" This conjecture certainly starts to remove the floor from our current world view.

I submit this is our situation, and always has been. That concern about nihilism and "spiritual poverty" the Dalai Lama expressed manifests as a gut-feeling, something so visceral and fundamental it seems certain it must occur to any creature anywhere upon what I'd call "first awakening".

What is "first awakening"? It is that moment in a creature's history where consciousness "ignites". It is that moment when the creature knows it exists, when both the capability and the capacity to preceive self come "on-line". That moment is a transformation only after which destiny can be considered, and, as well, the question: Am I alone? Before that moment, there is no self-awareness, or only insufficient self-awareness, and/or insufficient capacity to wonder (should we call this self-reflection?). After this change, consequences and destiny come within the grasp of the mind.

This transformation might more simply be called the emergence of mind, and for most discussions that common term will suffice. It should be noted in passing that science has already gathered considerable data making blurry what might now seem to be a clear distinction between those creatures with mind and those without. This aspect of our subject can be addressed elsewhere.

The question that's relevant to this commentary involves what happens when mind first appears. How does mind deal with the nothingness that seems almost a certainty for any creature recognizing that it exists in a place it doesn't understand very well, and with no picture of any future beyond the next few moments and is not preoccupied by hunger or avoiding being eaten. Sometime in our past this was our ancestors' dilemma. And it remains a dilemma today for every person who realizes he exists. In that moment the essential questions appear. Most people have been given a set of answers prior to that moment (church and Sunday school have that purpose), and upon the authority of their source they are adopted, to be carried unquestioningly often for the rest of life (until near death when, not infrequently, their contradictions or fallacies become discomfitting; this is one of the traumas of old age.).

My understanding (to varying degrees supported by science) is that this scenario describes the source of religion. This is the fodder from which religion springs, now and also long ago. At first awareness was so rudimentary even labels were absent. Labeling is a feature of mind's organizing power. Of course part of this story, an essential part, must also be the capacity to pass on to others in one's community what one knows. We see this in creatures as simple as birds (the bigger brained ones), and it certainly is a common (almost ubiquitous) feature in more advanced creatures (mammals). So even if the first creature to awaken didn't manage much with his mind, she (some could strongly argue the female may have been the one to develop this capacity first) passed some portion of it onto her offspring, and so history (pre-oral) began.

One of the major components in this transgenerational transmission was the capacity to facilitate the awakening of the individual. This continues today, so we have children today who are more developed (earlier, and also in terms of the extent or complexity of their subjective natures) than were children centuries ago.

In this way (admittedly a barely skeletal description) we have achieved an understanding of ourselves and our world. Current religions are the repositories of that collective understanding. But it is a mistake (though obviously of some benefit, since it is so prevalent) to view these repositories as static. A truthful examination of these ideas shows they too have been evolving.

We have stories in the Christian tradition and history where the existing dogma was transformed. To some degree, every tradition has such stories. And what they all show is that the repository of human understanding that keeps nihilism and spiritual emptiness at bay (and "at bay" may be a more accurate depiction of the situation than most can accept) is a living repository, not just because it exists in the lives of people, but because it is growing, developing, maturing.

To some extent, current tensions between what might be called the scientific-technological world and the world of subjectivity-religion reflect a time of transition. The passions aroused by this collision indicate friction. Where there is friction, there is heating, and eventually melting and blending. It seems certain such is occurring now. We are living in a time of the spiritual transformation of humanity.

It's interesting the Dalai Lama is expressing reservations about the trends in spiritual thought around the world. Somehow I doubt he is all that much concerned personally. But his public role involves both teaching and voicing people's concerns, and almost certainly his statements about the "spiritual poverty" of science's view of the world strike a raw nerve in many.

The current process seems to be one of cutting away false props people have used and relied upon for a very long time. If we are to enter into this pruning, we will need some resources by which to maintain balance and clarity, and none (to me) seems more relevant than meditation. This of course is something about which the Dalai Lama has great authority. So perhaps he will guide people who might otherwise fall into nihilism or despondency toward that means of having a robust and pure connection with one's subjectivity.

To me having a connection to one's subjectivity (arguably a "funny" way to putting it) is essential to feel comfortable with no God, no soul, and no afterlife.

Now the heat of cultural friction has increased with Cardinal Schoenborn's recent comment: "...evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not [true]. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science." What this declaration fails to offer is evidence for the designer (and his phrasing even puts science "on notice" that it is, from his point of view, "ideology").

It seems the ID school of belief has become self-referential to the extent everyone of that persuasion now assumes the evidence for their position exists, just because a couple of scientist have said it is so. Apparently the IDers grant no merit to the far larger body of scientists who declare they can't see that evidence anywhere, let alone see "overwhelming evidence".

Of course the great masses of the uninformed, who look to authority for support in their beliefs because their faith is too weak, accept such declarations as truth. After all, what use is the religious hierarchy if not to provide confidence that one's beliefs are on-target? Perhaps public events such as this one will be steps toward the great disillusionment the faithful will experience when they learn their champions, their authorities, speak without anything but faith. It may be the 21st century's equivalent to priestly pedophilia.

In all this is the "catch-22" of the faith-viewpoint: when faith is weak, evidence (that's fraudulent) is offered; when faith is strong, no evidence will contradict it. Upon such dynamics have religions built their sphere of influence. Unfortunately, there is a price to pay for all this, and that is a loss of discrimination and intelligence, manifest as terrorism and stagnation.

Alas.

Faith's War Against Science

2005-08-11T13:13:00.000-05:00

As the discussion about faiths' objections to the science of evolution heats up, it is becoming apparent this dispute is really being perceived by the faith community as a fight for survival. And few recognized that it is a false fight because faith's place in society is not at all threatened by science, regardless of its discoveries and understandings. Few seem to recognize there are plenty of areas in which science has little or no data, let alone meaningful models. This is most obvious regarding how consciousness arises from brain function, how a self-aware self forms from brain activity, and most importantly what these descriptions imply about how we should (to be accurate, honest and forthright) view ourselves.

Faith has had a centuries-long reliance on man's bewilderment about just what sort of creature he is. Faith has also recognized people are quite ignorant about how man and the larger natural world functions. These have provided the faith community with an opportunity, if not a temptation, to offer people some tangible connections between those spiritual abstractions the religiously-learned have accepted and what the common person knows from day-to-day experience. In former times and prior to receiving religious conversion by a representative of whichever faith was active in the community, ordinary people explained everyday experiences by various superstitions. This led to the plethora of gods and demons known to history as well as a need for everyday people to supplicate or entice favor from these perceived entities, lest they become victims of some transgression.

Now to be fair, the faith community has not really been all that much more advanced in its thinking than its constituency. The faith community has suffered greatly from its own superstitions, putting aside how its core ideas and premises might be categorized. This situation led to cathedrals being covered by gargoyles, to strange incantations and rituals melding local folklore with some central religious ideology, and more. Because the faith community has been in nearly the same boat of ignorance as its congregations, it should be no surprise the community of faith also could make some missteps. (No one would deny the common man has made many missteps, would they?) And among these has be one not much acknowledged to date: a reliance upon the material world to provide support for its religious assertions.

Meanwhile science has arisen and advanced, now sufficiently that it is at every turn stepping on faith's supports in the material world. Science has begun to assemble a robust and compelling explanation for things faith has relied upon across the centuries as demonstrations of the correctness of its assertions. Thus it should be no surprise that faith is feeling squeezed by the advances of science. And that squeeze is being felt in no place greater than science's sophisticated understanding of how man formed and manifested in this world.

Faith recognized millennia ago any convincing belief system has to provide its constituency with an explanation of man's origins if it is to be taken seriously. Most every system of faith has such an explanation. As well, enduring systems have offered a description of man's destiny and by all this some glimpse of what man is. These developments have led to the fundamentals of faith known around the world: soul and afterlife and God (the source -- origin -- of man).

Now science has come along with an alternative explanation complete with considerable evidence. Today we see faith reacting as if its authority is being threatened by these developments. So faith is attacking science.

Some will insist science is not the target, that the target is only one idea from science -- evolution. But this claim obscures the fact evolution arose as an idea in exactly the same way as have all other developments in science -- by inquiry, exploration, examination of what is known, the development of inferences from the data, and the devising of tests or predictions by which those inferences can be proven and extended. So for faith to suggest science has missed in the realm of evolution while performing well in all the other spheres of its interests rings hollow.

Basically faith's efforts to deny the understandings of science will only extend the suffering of the very people they claim to be serving. Faith's efforts to spread disinformation about science, faith's agenda to erode politically public support for science, faith's insistence its justification and purpose relies upon discarding the findings of science -- all these will eventually make a pariah of faith, and at a time when faith could provide a valuable function for society.

Mankind is faced with some major issues as it becomes an aware world presence. How to integrate various cultures in ways that honor all cultures yet allow people to share in the abundance that is now possible? How to understand and explain who we are in light of the discoveries of science, psychology, neurology? How to find a basis for morality? How to treat our world sustainably?

Instead we see efforts to defend old turf, and further, we see efforts to sustain by force ideas so archaic they require ever more repressive child-rearing practices lest the new ones (the children) coming into our world point out to one and all that "the emperor has no clothes".

People are being asked to grow up. Mankind is entering a sort of puberty. (One wonders what will manifest out of mankind's emerging "fertility".) Like any other adolescent, we are having a fit, and trying some pretty wild stuff. But it is quite clear, if mankind's adolescence has any commonality with the adolescence we all must transverse individually, then who we are to become will only remotely reflect who we were in our childhood.

It's all very exciting and a time to be extra alert! Remember: Adolescents are a bit accident-prone.

On Purpose

2005-08-06T23:32:00.000-05:00

A common objection to atheism centers on the topic of purpose. The major religions -- more particularly the monotheistic religions, and most specifically Christianity as it is voiced by American evangelicals -- these all defend their importance by arguing they give people purpose. They all declare (again, Christianity most loudly) they know life's purpose, and atheism and all the philosophies founded on physical existence do not.

This contention reaches a peak in the on-going dispute about evolution and creationism, including that sheep-in-wolf's-clothes, Intelligent Design. Many of the religiously devout assert that evolution's reliance upon random change basically implies that man has no purpose. They declare that if man has appeared by accident, then he has come into existence without purpose. Therefore his existence today has no purpose. Religionists of most every persuasion then argue that life without purpose is not tolerable, let alone moral.

They may have a point. However, we have no evidence, except for people's imaginings, that we have appeared for some reason other than by an accident of nature. The most rigorous formulation of this viewpoint claims that life is an accident certain to happen, given enough time and the nature of matter, and that this is our reality.

Believers contend that a being without purpose has no way to determine right from wrong. They convincingly declare: How can humankind without God have a purpose? If there is no God, then, they claim, man has no purpose. This, they assert, is just one of the problems with atheism.

Often following closely behind this line of thinking is a reminder of humanity's painful experience with atheistic communism. Linking atheism to communist institutions confuses politics with philosophy, spirituality and world view, and serves to condemn non-superstitious ideas as evil. Such a strategy may earn believers a few debating points but it does nothing to advance a dialog that seeks to explore our situation.

Religionists commonly contend they have no need to explore or seek since they already have the answer. They mistakenly perceive their external authority (such as the Bible) as granting their truth greater authenticity than any other viewpoint that lacks such an anchor. They can only make this mistake because they fail to notice that those even among their own congregations who have experienced first hand a synthesis no longer rely upon such externalities like traditional authority for their certainty. Instead, the traditions become useful tools and vehicles by which the convictions of these individuals can be conveyed.

Anyone whose understanding no longer relies on conventional religious concepts regards the artifacts of tradition as at best historical and usually of little contemporary significance. This is not to suggest the wisdom within every tradition is discarded or ignored. Among non-believers -- those who truly don't accept any of the traditional belief systems -- understanding is self-realized and in no way reliant upon any of the icons of traditional spirituality. For these people, their understanding is different.

For instance, they have no trouble seeing humanity as purposeless. They are quite sure people exist now, and have existed in all of the past, without any purpose beyond what they themselves created. Their understanding says it is people themselves who have realized the idea of purpose and thereby created it, and, further, it is people who have created for themselves some specific purpose. They are quite convinced that purpose is a quality borne by one's community, transmitted through upbringing and insight, and as such, it undergoes change and even evolves.

Rather than lamenting our existence in a harsh and barren universe, these minds find that existence without purpose is utterly liberating. They see that we do live in an indifferent universe, that Life is rough, and that we have found ways to sweeten life. We even have found features of existence that nourish us and encourage us.

Among these is man's curiosity and each person's affinity for the full scope of virtues humanity has managed to label, and almost certainly for some for which we have as yet only vague words. For such minds, our affinity for the virtues are "in-built" -- a "gift" of evolution -- even if those faculties are also fragile and need careful nurturing. Human creativity has given us insight into this aspect of our situation, and seems certain to provide us with more understanding. Creativity itself is both a product and a vehicle for people to find purpose. People's acceptance and trust of their (and others') creativity sustains and enlarges human purpose.

All of the great domains of human development have given us purpose. These include science, art, labor, and spirituality in all its forms. Viewing human culture and human destiny in this way places us not on some external agency's conveyor belt to some defined destination, but indicates a more responsive reality -- that we are today participating in creating the world we live in.

This world is not the result of people having forgotten their purpose. It is the result of people striving to manifest the purpose they glimpse. Of course this viewpoint does not claim the world as it is is the best we can do. Far from it! But this viewpoint does accept the reality of the world as it is, and acknowledges the contribution and responsibility of past human decisions for the human world as it is now.

This framing of the human condition shapes any consideration of morality also. From this viewpoint morality is just one facet of human creativity. It has developed as far as it has. Our current mode of living -- with moral ideals existing alongside often well-rationalized yet hypocritical practices -- serves only to demonstrate consciousness and morality is a work in progress, not something manifesting in life fully-developed. There is no medicine one can take just one time to achieve moral perfection.

Thus to those who have left behind superstition, other people are making a fundamental mistake by attributing to some higher authority their moral position or goal. They will argue that any reliance upon external authority can best be viewed as a stage of development. This brings into focus the viewpoint of the non-believer: that matter itself, and all its manifestations and permutations, is developing, evolving, advancing. We who are "particles" in that river have arisen within and because of that process by which development continues. Our understanding reflects that flow, as does the nature and quality of our consciousness.

Consciousness itself is one creation and manifestation of this impulse or flow. Our religions, and ideas like Intelligent Design, are attempts to both explain and provide people with a relationship to the "process of existence". We are but groping, ignorant and awakening beings trying to make sense of ourselves and our predicament, as well as to function as expressions of that which we wish to understand. The recursions in this situation cannot be over-stated.

People today have arisen and developed from a more primitive era. Their ideas and beliefs have similarly developed. Today, many concepts about man's place in the world, who we are, and what existence is, bear vestiges from our more confused past. Our ideas and models, our ways of talking, our depictions of the relationship between us and the all -- these carry and maintain now-obsolete ideas from our past.

At one time those ideas were transformational. At one time, people were "set afire" when they encountered these now-old ideas. But as with all things, these ideas have aged. Their time of ascendance has passed. They have done their work. Now they restrain and repress as much as they provide a foundation for more precise and advanced ideas.

We stand upon the shoulders of those who have preceded us. Our contribution will provide a platform upon which new minds and beings will develop and contribute. In this way is humanity flowering.

All efforts to express our situation must of necessity suffer from the limitations of our understanding. We cannot state truth rightly perhaps because we are part of it.

Now we have today a clamor from religious tradition to recognize humanity's waywardness, to adopt or re-adopt beliefs once regarded as living truth that today have been put on the back burner by the majority of people. This effort denies human advancement. It is no surprise its focus is on subservience, devotion, obedience, and piety. Those ideas have their place, but like all concepts that appear in the river of development, they must themselves evolve or be left behind.

Some ideas cannot evolve. They are more like life-preservers -- useful while we float in the water, but pointless once we reach the shore. These we need to abandon.

Now some might consider these statements pretentious or worse. Some might think this author sees himself outside these forces and trends. Nothing could be further from the truth. We all, including I, are in this together. We are all we have. Really.

It is true that existence has been our mother. Apparently. This makes our current practice of removing all traces of the natural world careless. That world certainly contains clues about ourselves, about where we came from, about how that womb works. Without access to the natural world, the only way we can discover what it might tell us is by trial and error. And error will certainly add to human suffering.

This viewpoint welcomes our purposelessness. This viewpoint recognizes we have a task -- to understand our purpose by creating it. This viewpoint realizes morality is a hard-won jewel, not some mandate from supreme authority (even though that concept does have its place as a stage of moral development). This viewpoint acknowledges there is more to purpose and morality than definition -- that effective transgenerational transmission has at least as much importance as what is transmitted.

This state of affairs is not a catastrophe. This is not a moral or philosophical quagmire. Rather, it is a glory and a blessing, and a possibility we could only dream of and yearn for. It is our situation.

Does Islam have a Death Wish?

2005-07-28T20:19:00.000-05:00

We've all seen it -- some place, blown to pieces. And the cause these days, almost without exception, is Muslim terrorists. Nowadays these bombings are often the end of a terrorist's life too, as a man (usually it's a man) blows himself up with his bomb.

Aside from the damage and disturbance to the lives of people who survive these events -- what can be said about those who die except their lives all ended prematurely and tragically? -- one has to ask what these terrorists are trying to accomplish. While everyone knows the arguments about resisting occupation and other issues that remain poignant and compelling in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, it now seems this means of Islamic expression has spread around the world. Are Muslims "occupied" all over the world?

Perhaps Muslim people truly think so. Certainly there is evidence to suggest their economic plight, aside from those who are fortunate enough to be floating on immense oil wealth, is often below that of the societies in which they live. Perhaps too there is some unalloyed prejudice against Muslims in some places.

But it seems perhaps there is something else going on...

It seems a certain segment of Muslims want to be liberated from their religion. Until that happens, they want the rest of the world to suffer as much as they do. This is why they prefer death to life Or to be accurate, this is why they say they prefer death to life.

Do Muslims want to be liberated from their religion? Such an idea is supported by their depiction of the afterlife: a heaven in which they get all that they are not permitted to have while alive. Many other religious people want to be liberated from their religions as well, but it seems Islam resides at the top of that list by a wide margin.

It is naive to imagine that Muslims wish they had a different religion, something to replace Islam. Their God will not tolerate it. The precepts of their faith will not tolerate it. Their practices will not tolerate it. These people would be perfectly capable of liberating themselves if this were not the case.

This is why also democracy is not accepted in the Muslim world. It quite precisely violates features of their religion. Or it violates what some Muslims view as fundamental precepts of their religion. This is also why theocracy is accepted, even desired, in the Muslim world. And finally this is why there will never be a Muslim writer declaring that Muslims want to be liberated from their religion. Even to speak such ideas is blasphemous.

Yet Islam exists in a world where individual freedoms are increasing. Even in China, where the collective has for generations superceded the individual, individual freedoms have grown. Perhaps nowhere other than China is the problem Muslims face more uncomplicated: in China Muslims struggle against the larger community and the state in which they exist.

Muslims have split into two "schools". One apparently follows the absolute authority of Koranic teaching, jihad, and sacrifice of the individual life in service to Allah. It is in many ways the violent equivalent to monastic life.

The other "school" of Islam is moderate and modern Islam, where people follow a ceremonial obeisance to the precepts of the Koran while living a life shaped by personal concerns of well-being, family and happiness. To the first school, these second school members have betrayed the essence of Islam in exchange for comfort, even indulgence. It is no surprise the jihadists have so little concern about their more moderate brethren (and sisters too) when they assault social institutions and societies they believe threaten Islam.

So it is strange to consider that these vigorous defenders of Islam are the ones who actually wish to be liberated from their faith! The moderates have already managed to achieve a degree of liberation by a more casual interpretation of Koranic teachings.

But few if any of the Muslims of the first school will likely admit having a wish to be liberated from Islam. Nevertheless, they do not ever even vaguely suggest that the afterlife to which they so strongly strive contains any of the hallmarks of their current faith and practice. It seems the heaven toward which these devoted ones all aim is the most un-Islamic place possible. Rather it is a place of great indulgence, even debauchery. Further, its depiction of women in this heaven certainly indicates no devout Muslim women ever reach there.

Islamic institutions fail to point out these features of their faith. To do so would reveal its absurdity. Just as Christianity achieved a reformation centuries ago, so also someday perhaps will Islam reform. Perhaps some of these issues will participate in that transformation.

On the Subjugation of Faiths

2005-07-16T00:58:00.000-05:00

" All too often the voice that gets shouted away in the public arena is the voice of the Christian..."

This common attitude mistakenly characterizes Christian values as challenged and threatened because of a political agenda by any number of opponents to Christian influence. Of course it has to be admitted there are some people who do have exactly that agenda. But it should also be recognized those ideologues are appending their efforts onto a much greater social and human phenomenon, the on-going revelation that Christian beliefs are fantasies.

Now of course not all Christian beliefs are fantasies. Most particularly many of the moral values of Christians are truths; they are based upon human truths. But enough of the tenets of Christian faith are imagined conceits, with nothing authenticating their validity except religious authority, to make every advance of man's enlightenment and understanding a threat to their continued appeal and "support". A crude simile makes this point: belief does best, even thrives, in an environment of unchallenged authority and constrained or repressed inquiry. It is much like a puppet that may look life-like in the dark, but brought out into the light of day, shows itself to be simply a construct to which we have mistakenly attributed life.

And by the word "support" I don't just mean the community's support of the veracity of a system of belief. By this word I also refer to how the support for any one system of belief by individual Christians is being eroded by advances in human understanding. Nowadays, many of the accepted and traditional dogmas are being revealed to be at best fanciful, and sometimes more precisely as superstitious.

This is why, for some time now, each generation is less influenced by Christian belief. In fact it appears each generation is less influence by belief generally. Of course, this situation challenges more than just Christians. It is fair to assert the Muslim community also feels deeply the effects of man's greater understanding. To some extent all monotheistic religions are being similarly challenged.

Now those faiths being brought out into the sunshine of greater human understanding are not evaporating without a fight. One can view the current "culture wars" both within the US and globally (mostly in the form of the Islamic jihad) as greatly stimulated by what can best be characterized as an unmasking of the falsity of belief central to most of the major religions today. Theirs is a fight for their spiritual lives. And it has every indication to be a fight they are certain eventually to lose.

This makes the atheists of the world destined to gain greater influence as time passes. Forever being regarded as spiritual pariahs or worse, their understandings soon will invite greater attention out of necessity, and so will require greater development as cultural guides for people who are discovering their traditions are fundamentally absurd. This situation is sure to stimulate the maturation of an atheistic viewpoint of self, existence, purpose and destiny as yet largely in its infancy.

Ideas such as the one expressed in the sentence that began this note (itself evidence of a certain level of frustration within that Christian writer), and the feelings from which such ideas grow, are sure to become more prominent as belief dissolves. Efforts to impede this dissolution will likely have little success, particularly across generational boundaries. However, there may be greater violence among the young as they discover the ways of their parents lack meaning. Their frustration will gain the attention of those skilled in shaping young minds, and will offer an opportunity (much as we see already in some madrassas and kibbutzes, and probably some Christian camps) to bend the hot passions of youth toward political ends such as class war, economic agendas, and ideological advancement based upon differences between cultures and more.

This coming turmoil, of which current violence may only be a harbinger, requires some action from those atheists and humanists who can give voice to their overview of self and world beyond simply asserting the absence of God and purely secular social concepts. Among important issues must be included some formulation about why we are, why we exist, if only as a starting point (which it certainly can only be, given our currently level of understanding) to invite a cross-cultural dialogue.

Atheists have not voiced much about who we humans are, what consciousness is, and how to understand, in a universe that has no discernable guiding super-consciousness, what sort of destiny we might expect. Now all these issues of course have quite specific answers from each of the major religions. And people draw great succor from them. But all their answers rely, to greater or lesser extent, upon one or more of those ever more obviously dreamy and superstitious ideas central to the major religions. So it becomes necessary for the community of non-believers to articulate some alternatives, even if they are rudimentary, to indicate "all is not lost". Doing this may spare society, if that is possible, at least some of the turmoil arising from its transformation into an enlightened belief-free sentience.

There is fairly frequently one particular comment heard during conversations about the unacceptability of the atheistic perspective. It asserts the loss of God and soul would make life have no meaning and not be worth living. One can hear in such statements the beginnings of a wail of despair that could end in suicide. So it is important for atheists to give some shelter to people who are discovering or will eventually find their system of belief really is in tatters. That refuge will likely end up being quite complex, but it is sure to address those several issues mentioned earlier.

For instance, it is important to explain who we are. This explanation will need to be one acceptable for small children as well as older persons of any age. It, like its predecessors from the traditions, will surely have several levels of nuance, in acknowledgement that people can appreciate more as they mature. It seems likely it will include features from our understanding of evolution. Perhaps that is just one reason that subject has attracted so much critical attention from the religious community; they see it is capable of replacing much of their catechism!

More fundamentally any comprehensive account of our existence that's not reliant upon God must account for consciousness. What is consciousness? Why has it evolved? How to categorize it in the taxonomy of natural phenomena? What is the nature of identity, self? The questions are many; current meaningful answers are few and lack beauty and grace. And considering these questions reveals a concept all but absent in current belief systems, that we do not know everything.

Currently religious system avoid getting trapped with having no answers by typically declaring "ours is not to know" or "the ways of God are not to be known by man" or some similar sympathy. Atheism or materialism or whatever you wish to label an understanding that refuses blind belief will also have to articulate its position on ignorance. Of course that word "ignorance" itself offers a great starting place: we all have known ignorance, even if sometimes adulthood has prompted us to forget those moments. Further, any attentive mind recognizes there is much it doesn't know, even if one has become an expert in some area of inquiry. In fact there are plenty of accounts granting great honor to ignorance; Socrates comes to mind. Finally, science has its roots deep in ignorance, for it is fundamental to any scientific exploration to admit first one does not know.

Lastly, the issue of dying requires clear discussion by those who have left behind belief. Interestingly, some self-described atheists talk as if there is an afterlife; others of course don't. The topic of how to regard our finiteness must accompany any understanding of existence with no God or transcendent soul.

It needs also to be stated: there needs to be place for belief within any meaningful God-free ontology of consciousness. After all, most everyone today shapes his or her life around belief. Belief is. Belief exists. Only a few have discovered they can survive and thrive without such features in their worldview. One way belief can be granted a place in the sort of understanding I am here predicting will someday dominate civilization is to view it as a stage of development. To consider this will surely provoke great distress among the faithful, as it of course implies there are stages beyond belief. "Alas," they will likely exclaim, "my belief is just a phase!" Discerning minds among the devout cannot avoid considering, however, what place belief will have in the afterlife they so fervently believe in. It seems likely that many will recognize belief will have no place in that hereafter, that it will be unnecessary. On that basis perhaps they can then consider it may not be a requirement for conscience here in the world of life and sensation and awareness.

This small example emphasizes the extent to which all the systems of understanding existing around the world will contribute to our collective view of self and existence as it will someday manifest once belief has been abandoned. One habit most traditions share today is a distrust of other ideas, other traditions. Once people consider we don't have any divine authority from which to obtain guidance, the discoveries cultures around the world have made -- about how to live and understand and flourish -- will be recognized for what they are, our most precious resource, something worth protecting and including in any system of understanding free of the burden of all belief and superstition.

A Common Understanding

2005-07-15T20:05:00.000-05:00

A man is shown a pile of shit. Someone says: "This is the greatest stuff you'll ever come across in this world. This is what is real and true. This is the truth." The man has no one to tell him otherwise, so he believes what he's told.

He sees a man sitting in the pile of shit. That man says: "Come join me. Come into the blessed world of this pile of shit. Bow before this pile of shit which has dominion over us all." So our man gets into the pile, since that will get him closer to it.

Someone says: "You need to defend this pile of shit. People may come and tell you it is foul or bad. They may mock you for coating yourself with this shit. Know that they are trying to humiliate you. Don't let them.

"Defy them! Defy and condemn completely their efforts to humiliate you. Remember they are ignorant. Many are even evil!

"Challenge them instead! Tell them they are lost, sinners, ignorant, damned. Tell them if they persist in their ways they have no possibility other than ever-greater suffering. Tell them they MUST realize they too need this pile of shit, that it is their salvation, that they have forgotten they have come from this pile of shit and they are really part of this pile of shit. Invite them to join you in this pile of shit.

"Tell them they need to accept this pile of shit. Tell them they need to let it enter into their life just as you have. Tell them they cannot endure beyond death without accepting and entering into this pile of shit.

"And if you find your worldly fortunes are not going well, then know it is because you are being treated badly by people who don't accept this pile of shit and your allegience to it. Know that this pile of shit is greater than all those material and worldly things. Remember this shit is even greater than you! It is that above which nothing of value exists. Nothing!

"Know that sitting in this pile of shit, you have arrived, you have found your life's destiny.

"Your life before you learned about this shit was nothing. You were at best wallowing in the mundane ordinariness of average people. Now you are found. You have come home.

"Know also you will be rewarded for your defense of this pile of shit. You will gain a great reward in your afterlife. We all have an afterlife, and yours, as a defender of this pile of shit, will be the greatest possible, far better and more than you can possibly imagine, even if you try.

"You will be honored for the magnificence of your defending this pile of shit. And you will gain a special place of honor should you die defending this pile of shit. Whatever else you might be able to do with your life, it will never even come close to the blessings you will receive as a martyr in defense of this pile of shit.

"And do not despair if, by your actions in relation to this pile of shit, you feel isolated from your family, your friends, and all those ordinary concerns that occupy common people. Your destiny, if you choose to become a defender of this pile of shit, will surpass that of any person you know or know about. It will surpass anything you could even imagine! Know that the joy you will earn as a defender of this pile of shit will grace you forever.

"Our work as custodians of this pile of shit is to spread it around the world, to find others who can recognize there is no greater accomplishment than to become a servant of this pile of shit. Do not betray your potential or the gift you have already gained by your contact with this pile of shit by being seduced away from this pile of shit by any of the temporary and quite false charms of this world. They exist only to deceive you. The are evil incarnate. Beware of their trickery.

"Know that before the presence of this pile of shit you can do no wrong if your intentions are devoted to defending and promoting this pile of shit. Bow before this pile of shit. It is your Master. And know while you are bowing that you bow to acknowledge you are nothing in comparison to this pile of shit. Yet by your bowing you join others who serve and are blessed by this pile of shit."

The Return of Faith

2005-07-01T17:19:00.000-05:00

What is occurring in US ( and global ) politics today is a retest of the validity of faith as the guiding principle for society. This is a "retest" because, as is sometimes forgotten, we humans have been down this road before. Our current, arguably quite turbulent situation today has arisen out of a time of greater devotion to religion than now exists. To be clear, our current more secular world has arisen out of a time of faith. Have you considered this?

Why did this social evolution occur? Why did we swing toward a secular world, our secular world today, and away from a faith-centered society? A complete answer would have to include the fact that the previous world of faith that our predecessors constructed upon a foundation of even more primitive understandings caused much suffering for many. Hence, we left that world eagerly, to found the largely secular world we now live in.

Few people today know of ("remember"?) the privations of that time a few centuries ago. These days we are not well educated about history. Those that do know of those times often mistakenly believe that era's suffering occurred simply because that society was more primitive. "We won't have those problems now," some might exclaim confidently. Not many people correlate the deficiencies of those societies with their beliefs and systems of faith. Rather, the common lament today is that our world lacks faith of those bygone times and suffers consequently. Nothing could be further from truth.

Central to this cultural disconnect is a failure to regard belief as supersitition. Few people celebrate superstition; after all, the word itself implies ignorance and a fear-based understanding. Instead most believers view their personal system of belief as the one truth that rises above the numerous superstitions and misunderstandings otherwise filling the world. It seems having a belief requires the suspension of any intelligent inquiry that might ask: am I just as entranced as those others whom I see are living in ignorance, misunderstanding, and even sin? Might I be as oblivious or in denial as they seem to be?

Of course, if the problems of our world don't come from our secular society, out of what do they arise? A short answer includes a smorgasboard of trans-generational neglect, abuse, ignorance and persisting socially-approved exploitation. Faith and belief seem at best conscripts to the conflicts this banquet nourishes. Yet, so seductive are faith and belief that we now have a growing outcry to restore a social arrangement based upon these factors.

Today we hear and see faith again waxing amid considerable resistance and clamor from secular influences. And there is some momentum to this trend, enough perhaps for the tide of faith and religion to again dominate human culture as it once did. It seems the lessons from faith's last reign have been forgotten and need to be relearned.

One comfort in this process is that any reversion to faith will likely persist over a much shorter period than it did previously. It seems possible, if not likely, a new framing for society will manifest, built from the strongest and most universal elements of all the religions in combination with an enlightened secularism. With this accomplishment will come new and unanticipated glories for mankind, and of course new challenges.

Flushing Korans

2005-05-16T18:49:00.000-05:00

Am I the only one who sees "flushing a Koran down the toilet" as funny? It seems this image is just too much for everyone, not just some traditional Muslims. I wonder... had there been no violent outrage about this by Muslims in Afghanistan and other regions, would there be much attention given to this "event"? Would the American media have bothered? Would any media have bothered?

Would the American government have bothered to express outrage? It seems likely that most all the drama around this "event" has more to do with "face" and manipulative posturing than sincerity. And on some level everyone knows it, even the players themselves. Everyone is caught in spin.

And now to top it off, we don't even know whether the offending incident ever happened! Is this latest revelation just more political "spin"? Even the White House, a bastion of Christian belief and not at all viewed as a defender of the values of traditional Islam, is expressing outrage at this event. And now it seems even more so at its possible/probable fabrication! Can there be anything in any of this except posturing?

And their description of what happened: ABHORRENT.

Amazing how infrequently we hear this word "abhorrent", as body counts rise and people's homes and lives are blasted away in this dispute, or in some other Middle East violence or in clashes elsewhere. Those events are not particularly abhorrent, it seems.

Perhaps imagining the passage of a copy of the Koran squishing down a deep porcelain throat amid a sucking gurgle, the White House saw that it might instead have been a copy of the Bible. What to say about all those other faiths and their holy texts? ...well you get the idea.

Now we live in a world where "religious feelings" are of more importance than life itself. People are killed for religious feelings. Yes, I realize this is hardly news. But am I the only one who sees this as just a tad off-balance?

Then there's that really important religious issue, which, it seems, no imam dares to discuss. You see, Islam is particularly against idol worship. In fact, if you check the history of Mohammed and how Islam arose, you will find it was particularly against idol worship from its outset, as that was a prominent practice at that time of history. I think it is fair to say idol worship was abhorrent to Muslims then. And I believe, if I am not mistaken, the avoidance of idol worship is required quite clearly by the Koran. The basic message: Muslims are not to be idol worshippers.

So why now is a copy of the Koran viewed as something worthy of worship? Why is the a copy of the Koran to be defended as if it were Mohammed himself? Why has the Koran become effectively an idol? OK, I understand it is not a statue or some other anthropomorphic representation, but it certainly SEEMS to be an object of worship today. What are Muslims defending? And why? It's not as if the words will be lost forever if a copy of the Koran is destroyed. Have the Muslim clergy across the world become blind to how they have made into an idol one of the icons of their practice? What would Mohammed say?

This of course says nothing about that other idol so central to Muslim belief: the Kaaba. But I'll not go into that.

It remains peculiar that people have become so skewed about their values, that a non-Muslim living in a country not considered even close to Islamic, has to point out these inconsistencies. How many people have died because of these practices? How many more are sure to?

If the Middle East and the West ever plan to find their common humanity, there will need to be a meaningful conversation between all parties involving belief, its place in life, and how absurdities like the one revealed by recents events such as the "toilet incident" can occur. This of course is going to unmask the contradictions in every belief system. How unsettling. How liberating.

OK, so that won't happen. I guess we will just have to keep on killing and hating and fearing each other.

Right To Life Issues

2005-05-14T17:03:00.000-05:00

So now the Right to Life (RTL) movement has entered into a new health care area. Health care providers whose religious beliefs include Right to Life precepts are now refusing to provide components of health care that have any link to fetal harm. This has resulted in pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for medicines that can harm a fetus (so far just the abortifacient RU486 and birth control pills) as well as resulting in physicians refusing to administer vaccines they claim were manufactured on cell lines derived from fetal tissues (ostensibly from aborted fetuses). Rubella is one, apparently.

It seems this could be the tip of the iceberg. How many medicines have been developed or require production on cell lines that are linked to fetal cells? Some of these practices are decades old I'll bet. This is a problem for righteousness.

The RTL movement has provided a powerful venue for people who want to live "in righteousness". It even might be accurate to say the whole fundamentalist movement involves righteousness. Righteousness has been the rallying cry for evangelical Christians, and a cornerstone on which they justify their promotion of belief to non-believers. It also seems to be a claim to purity. Righteousness seems to be central to a believer's preparation to meet God. Righteousness is preparing for the Rapture (being received into God's grace).

Religions of all types offer methods of purification through which the devout can be cleansed of their sins. Of course these methods start by claiming human nature is sinful, coarse, dirty and impure. "We are all born sinners," is the assertion of many fundamentalists. This may explain the appeal these religions have for people who have become lost in abuse (drug abuse or people abuse), violence, and criminality; these congregants know they are bad or have done bad things, and they appreciate a religion that speaks to their situation.

So these religions have developed a model of purity and find support from holy writings that encourage discarding sinful ways. And what is sinful? For the RTL movement, it is, among other things, harming other human beings. It certainly doesn't seem to include pridefulness itself. It even seems to endorse that false pridelessness called piety.

But these religions maintain their righteous posture for a price. Issues that might be complex or multifaceted are reduced to simple black and white positions, a kind of "posterizing" of the nuanced. This black/white does not necessarily involve race although at times that too can become part of this "posterizing" process, and lead to white supremacy groups and the "satanizing" of effective non-believers.

In the US, the RTL movement functions as a vehicle of righteousness. And it continues to enlarge. Now it has entered into some new areas of medical care. It seems the RTL movement will obtain legal protection for acts of conscience by RTL advocates. It's unclear whether these same protections will help others who don't share RTL beliefs but also feel to act in a certain way out of conscience. If the RTF agenda unfolds fully, contraceptive methods other than barrier devices will be banned, since they all could conflict with the sanctity of life of the zygote.

The issue here is when life starts. A fertilized egg is a zygote. RTL argues the sanctity of life becomes relevant with the union of sperm and egg. This viewpoint is really the sanctification of the individual human creature. I don't say "human being" since RTL proponents have in practice asserted even the body of a human without evidence of beingness is sacrosanct. Now of course we all revere the individual, from newborn to the elderly. The RTL movement has extended this reverence to the zygote, and with some merit. Who doesn't feel some protective concern toward the pregnant woman and her unborn child?

But the RTL movement has not declared its support for all the consequences of this position. For instance, fundamentalist couples probably should forego IVF (in vitro fertilization) since that procedure sets up all sorts of conflicts with RTF ideas. For starters, often many eggs are fertilized in preparation for implanting. What happens to those not implanted? They are frozen. Tens of thousands of frozen embryos sit in freezers across the US today. Suspended animation is not just a science fiction idea any more, at least for the RTL proponent.

Of course only one or two eggs could be fertilized at one time but then that would decrease the chance of successfully implanting them into the womb and thus raise considerably the cost of a successful IVF endeavor for RTL couples.

Then there's the problem of embryo culling. Because many embryos are commonly implanted (or many eggs induced, if the infertility problem is approached by only enhancing the woman's ovulations using drugs), the health care procedure has been at times to select a few to continue to birth, and to destroy (i.e., kill) any others. Of course this is against RTL principles. Never mind not doing so will often yield deformed babies from a multiple-baby birth.

So the simple solution for the infertile RTL couple is to forget about IFV and adopt. Certainly if the RTL ideas against contraception become the law of the land, there will be plenty of babies available for adoption. Infertile RTL couples can adopt these babies.

As for the elimination of vaccines grown on fetal cultures, one vaccine that may be affected is Rubella (I think). Since the illness from Rubella has not been eradicated by vaccine use (it only protects), the cessation of Rubella vaccination will result in a great increase in Rubella cases. This infection particularly causes fetal harm, so pregnant women who contract Rubella will either miscarry (directly contravening RTL policy) or produce a deformed brain-damaged child. These children will also need care, and infertile RTL couples may find their options for adoption will include these damaged children.

And for those kids who aren't adopted, orphanages will be needed, which will offer good employment for the righteous who will surely see merit in so directly working to preserve the sanctity of life.

Now all this is only to point out the RTL movement exists ONLY because technologies, including some apparently quite contrary to RTL concepts, have made a comfortable social and cultural situation -- a "nest" -- in which RTL ideas can be conceived (?recognized) and grown. It seems the RTL movement, despite its claims of holding the higher moral ground, exists only because human social development has now created a society where such concepts as RTL can gain nourishment. This may even be the situation for the total agenda of every fundamentalist religious movement today, that each exists only because social development has advanced enough to indulge such idealism.

Now the problem for the RTL people is how to refine and advance their movement without destroying the social incubator in which it has developed. If it fails to do so, the most likely outcome will be for human society to enter a period of social oscillation in which RTL ideas will recurrently exchange prominence with a sort of secular pragmatism across large time periods (decades to centuries).

Beyond Tradition, Maybe

2005-05-09T13:04:00.000-05:00

There may be a place for religion even if superstition is abandoned. But it will not be your father's religion...

Typical religions rely upon belief, supernatural explanations, and other hocus-pocus. But the questions religions supposedly answer remain, even if the supernatural and hocus-pocus is abandoned. Are these questions to be dismissed as immature or deluded?

The simple question of "who am I?" comes to mind. It's an interesting question if only because of the many answers it can trigger, all correct in their way and yet none somehow comprehensive or satisfying.

Now some assert philosophy contains religion, the essence of religion. However, philosophy seems a bit too intellectual most of the time. One of religion's appeals is its connection to visceral experience. We feel passion in religion, but hardly ever are we so moved by philosophy.

While some say it's good that philosophy avoids the morass of human emotion and passion, and offer arguments that these are primitive aspects of our make-up, few with these opinions have parachuted.

And even on a strictly intellectual basis, philosophy fails to engage the concerns people feel when they consider personally just who and perhaps even more importantly WHAT they are. Glib answers of being human fail to inform or illuminate associated issues like persistence and origin, even for those who recognize both the reality of their conception and that death ends their life. Even these people wonder (when they find time) just what they are -- What is being alive? And the common answers to this question seem more to demonstrate contemporary paradigms than they point to any enduring or comprehensive reality.

For instance today the non-religious person often answers this question (of who/what we are) by discussing neurological epiphenomena: I am only a construct of my nervous system, with self-awareness and internal modeling of my external circumstance including remarkably, modeling of my internal modeling! Such recursive descriptions manage to convey the ephemerality of existing intellectually, and even a bit of the paradox, but fail to explain how few if any of us PERCEIVE our ephemerality. We are ephemera conversing and acting on the world as if we are not ephemeral! And even more confounding, our ordinary definition of the ephemeral does not include the ability to act on matter. But we certainly do so.

So we may be tempted to resort to that old label "soul", but its considerable baggage of predestination and afterlife, let alone the persisting question of origin, hardly make this label rewarding. More recently the term "being" -- "I am a being" -- has appeared. It too gives no hint about persistence, nor offers any explanation how we manage to control the body and change the world we live in.

So these reifications seem inadequate if not obstructive deceptions. Some term, some model must be more precise and comprehensive than these. Another framing of this question involves dismissing "thingness" in lieu of process, which certainly makes a better match with our existence than more traditional ideas. But when we try it out -- "I am a process (of my nervous system's functioning)" -- we don't FEEL ourselves as a process. Might this be some sort of deception perpetrated by our own nervous systems, the very mechanism that has created (and evolutionarily invented) us? And if so, why? Why do we see ourselves as an object even though we actually are an ongoing process?

An obvious explanation invokes basic survival issues: we are more effective, and we have a greater chance of surviving, if we view ourselves as beings, as things (humans) rather than as processes, even though we are processes!

Of course all this could be viewed as philosophy. But it seems better categorized as some hybrid of philosophy and neurology, admixed with experiencing. It seems this is quite exactly what religion has been (admittedly with far too little information most often mixed with a great deal of fantasy and even politics).

From the perspective of this process model we are obviously just another natural phenomenon, albeit a sentient one. Also by this model we are different from other creatures on the planet only by degree. Lastly, our "place in the universe" becomes both a lot more obviously tenuous as well as quite miraculous.

In addition, aspects of existing such as ethics become "simple" pragmatics, despite the howls of protest from every rank that fears it will likely lose its place in the sun.

So perhaps there can be a religious perspective that incorporates these elements without falling into fantasies or vestments. Perhaps even this is more purely religious than previous efforts. So also might it be philosophy, if one can allow wet factors like neurology in the mix. And finally, perhaps it is even a special sort of physiology, one that requires a catechism whose goal is no different from those of tradition: to help us see past our "base", i.e. animal, natures.

Contemporary American Religious Struggles and Atheism

2005-05-09T12:54:00.000-05:00

First, for atheists, these struggles are a boon. Who had given any thought about atheists before disputes about evolution, gay "marriage", school prayer or other iconic issues now championed by evangelists? Atheism has been held up as the demonic archetype against which these traditions must prevail. As a result, "What's atheism, mommy?" may replace "Where do babies come from?" as the most-feared question from a child that a devout parent will hear. Atheists thank you.

There is a policy in neighborhoods across the US regarding atheism: "Don't ask; don’t tell." Yes, that same mantra used by the military regarding homosexual soldiers serves the whole religious US to salve its unease with atheism. (Incidentally, "mantra" is not a Christian word, though for this purpose Christians have adopted it wholesale. A stowaway from another faith system.) Because of this social policy, every community where religious fervor predominates wonders about its closet atheists. What are they up to? Are they going to sabotage vulnerable minds? They may be secretly infecting the community with their point of view and understanding. Heaven forbid!

Fortunately the vitriol against atheists and atheism rarely boils over into violence, so people who understand the human predicament from a perspective different from the religiously devout mostly move through the culture without jeopardy. Like repressive regimes across history, religious people understand that 90% of their work is accomplished by demeaning alternative viewpoints. If the child doesn't ever hear about or explore atheism, then he or she will reach the age of mental crystallization without coming across any alternatives to traditional ideas. Once crystallization has occurred, only the rare individual manages to escape the conditionings of early life. This allows the traditions to perpetuate.

But for the atheists, the beauty of the "Don't ask; don't tell" is how it permits ordinary people to rub up against the rationalism of atheism without realizing it, and benefit thereby. Atheists, because they are unencumbered by the pantheon of beliefs borne by religious people, often can perceive new solutions because they see what actually is going on. Communities of tradition are thereby spared involution.

So the basic message is:
Evolution or Involution -- Take Your Pick

What do atheists get in return from the religious other than some acceptance? They get an affirmation the subjective has relevance, that despite our having not (yet) modeled the inner world we each live, we all are deeply shaped by it. Arguably, we are it. Explaining this side of ourselves, really explaining our self -- how it is we exist, what exactly we are, and how that part of us is altered by death -- this topic the religions have expressed far better than atheism has, in part, if not mostly, because we lack illuminating science about this.

Atheism does rely upon science and the unfettered observation of what is. Some say science will never manage to illuminate self, for the simple reason its field of effectiveness is the objective, the reproducible. Still, science now has initiated an inquiry into self and consciousness and it gives every indication its results will be as disruptive of traditional thinking as any other scientific endeavor people have pursued.

Toward Reconciling Science and Belief

2005-05-03T21:21:00.000-05:00

The struggle between science and belief continues now in Kansas with another assessment by the state's education board regarding how and what children should be taught about human origins. Two positions are being presented: intelligent design (ID) and evolution. Both assert they are sciences. So far there has been no discussion before the adjudicators about what science is, so it remains unclear whether these two points of view are legitimately comparable. This sets up the likely absurdity that the board is viewing two things as if they are of one type -- i.e., they are making an apples-vs-oranges comparison.

Of course the ID proponents are saying they are scientists. Perhaps these folks imagine science to be something it is not. Said another way, IDers may be viewing themselves as doing science because they don't understand what science is. Thus it is possible (likely?) the concerns of ID proponents may not be comparable to those of non-ID science. Yet, as long as ID proponents view themselves as doing science, they will see themselves in opposition to non-ID science. This shackles their options.

But they have taken this position because others they have tried -- for instance, supporting the inclusion of prayer into school curriculum -- have failed. However, their choice now is causing the formal presentation of two different ideas as if they can be compared. It's hard to find a meaningful analogy to this situation. But here's one (alright, a feeble one):

What if this struggle were about whether the sunrise was beautiful or whether it was warming? (In a way, this is not so far from what is occurring in this dispute.) The aesthetes would argue for the former while the thermologists would argue for the latter. One point of view is entirely subjective (perhaps not entirely) while the other is objective (perhaps entirely).

It appears from the education board's point of view, these two positions are equally valid regarding their educational content, and further, both are versions of the same thing. Why else might the board wish to have both points of view presented together?

It's useful to ask why this dispute and debate continues? Because at its core it is about how we view ourselves. And the ID proponents feel their point of view is not receiving emphasis and support in the culture overall comp

Chimeras #2

2005-05-03T14:41:00.000-05:00

4/29/05: CNN
"Particularly worrisome to some scientists are the nightmare scenarios that could arise from the mixing of brain cells: What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep's head?
The "idea that human neuronal cells might participate in 'higher order' brain functions in a non-human animal, however unlikely that may be, raises concerns that need to be considered," the Academies report warned."

Nightmare scenarios? This quote demonstrates how much today we misunderstand the connection between the brain and consciousness, between our nerves and our "am-ness" and all we consider human. The replacement of one species' nerve cells for another's, or the inclusion of one species' nerve cells with another's, is viewed as tantamount to mixing the consciousness of these two species. What this level of understanding fails to appreciate or acknowledge is that the connection pattern of nerve cells determines their "higher level" effects, like consciousness, not the cells' origin. This is going to be a paradigm shift for much of humanity.

“Nobody’s proven that!" I can hear someone say... You're right of course, but that is the way it is. And sooner or later (probably sooner) someone will do the experiment to prove it. Interestingly there are those who would prohibit this experiment, as if they know the result!

To be clear, one could replace the nerve cells of a human with nerve cells from a pig, and if the pattern of connection were the same as it was originally, the consciousness of the resulting individual would be the same as it was prior to the substitutions (except, perhaps for a new propensity to wallow in the mud...). Of course this experiment will not occur soon for several reasons, not the greatest of which is the discomfort people have with placing another species' neurons in a human being. A more practical obstacle to managing this effect is our quite total lack of understanding how brain cells connect both initially (as the body is constructed) and later in life as the brain matures and learns.

However, at some point, it may be possible to place one species' neurons in a different species in sufficient amounts that functions linked with neurons in that brain area will be from a species different than the host species. This accomplishment, while of little practical value in and of itself, will no doubt be a challenge for anyone who regards our human-ness as requiring a human genotype.

In this way, science and research are sure to press our old ways of thinking about ourselves into new form.

What is important to realize in this situation is how our current ideas about self and consciousness may interfere with us learning just how self and consciousness arises from a clump of neurons. Those who might wish to prohibit such explorations may justify their positions based upon "nightmare scenarios" of their imagining. It will be necessary to point out (again, since this is a common habit of righteous ignorance) that their premise is baseless without data, and may (likely) prevent us from learning precisely what we need to know to "improve our lot", as the Brits might say it. Since proving by experiment the primacy of organization over substrate will shatter our imaginings about who we are as humans (we are actually beings, not humans, when it comes to this level of considering), it seems likely it will be an important reason people will hinder research of this type: to protect their paradigm, their belief and traditional understanding, even if (and perhaps because) it is shallow and erroneous.

Dealing with such attitudes contributes to the shape of the path of human advancement.