Religion as a Large Language Model

 

I cured myself of a bad case of Evangelical Christianity in 1980 but I needed to crawl out of the trap from the inside. I spotted the trick. I'm happy to share it here.

CHATBOTS

Chat-GPT is in the news these days. Microsoft has incorporated it into the Edge browser with impressive results. It may be the first time many people have come into contact with a state-of-the-art AI application. The air is thick with nonsense about this particular application, but most agree it is pretty spooky, even scary. Will thinking machines replace humans?

To jump ahead in my argument a bit, I think the answer is that we all have the ability to run a "chatbot" in our heads. We learn a language in a manner very similar to the way chatbots are trained.

LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS

Large language models are a well-established engineering technology. The technology produces stunning results, even if you kinda know how it works. To me, this is like the feeling of wonder I have whenever I see a jet transport take off. I know it's not magic, but it sure feels like magic. 

My own interest in AI goes back to my 1968 Thesis. Back then, I was sure we could use "AI" to pool all human knowledge, then converse with, say, Einstein as he would have talked.  That's pretty much what CHAT-GPT does. 

Of course, DaVinci pictured helicopters 500 years ago, but his designs could never have worked. The devil is in the details. What I envisioned was nothing like what actually works, nor did it use the "artificial intelligence" methods I was familiar with. 

Chomsky won a Nobel Prize for the theory that our brain works kinda like a computer. It turns out to be true, but not in the way Chomsky (and everyone else at the time) thought.

THE STOCHASTIC PARROT

Emily Bender invented the term "Stochastic Parrot." It was not intended kindly. She had much to say about why chatbots seem to "know" things. Who would be accountable? What if people believed the parrot as if it were human? 

She seems to have missed the problem of humans believing humans who just "parrot" ideas without true understanding.

THE CONSCIOUS LLM

Last year, a Google employee (Lemoine) raised a huge stink by claiming his LLM (an implementation of the LAMDA LLM) was self-aware. It was afraid of being turned off.  Incorporation of CHAT-GPT into the Microsoft Edge browser assures me that Leomoine will soon have a lot of company down this rabbit hole.

But my point does not concern whether LLMs are "conscious." It has to do with whether we are conscious. Or, to put it more gently, whether we are conscious all the time, especially when we are talking when we have no idea what we are talking about.

CHAT-GPT "KNOWS" A LOT ABOUT RELIGION

This is what CHAT-GPT confidently tells me about the resurrection:

Yes, our bodies will be raised not spiritually or ethereally but physically and materially. Our souls will be reunited with our transformed physical bodies, brought back to life from the dead. Scripture teaches this in many ways¹².

CHAT-GPT is just regurgitating what it finds in its "Large Language Model." It has no idea what it's talking about. In fact, no idea at all. Just a very big set of mathematical equations.

But here is the $64,000 question: Why would a human being ever make such an outrageous claim? It seems to me that the process is similar, if not identical. The human being relies on a "Large Language Model" of relevant (Christian) writings and spits out something that sounds "intelligible" but is utterly disconnected from actual human experience. You might fairly ask how CHAT-GPT "knows" about the resurrection. But the same question can be asked of the preacher. Many claims that true AI is impossible because an AI can never have a body and experience the world as we do. But you would think anyone with a body would not make the claims here.

I would make a broader claim: Religion could not exist without language, specifically Large Language Models, that provide a deep and rich way of stringing together sentences that are (for the most part) internally consistent. Different religions can get away with mutually contradictory language models because these models have no connection with actual human experience. Religous LLLms are about themselves.

I "cured" myself of a bad case of Evangelical Christianity by simply resolving not to use religious terminology. After about two years, it became obvious that I had about as much use for that language model as I had for Chinese. Questions like "Is there a God" are also part of the Christian model, as are any number of "canned answers." 

Even "I don't know" is part of the model (doubt). I can't even be an agnostic since "doubt" is unintelligible outside the Christian LLM. It's a problem Chinese people have.

 

A Random Talk

This is an experimental blog post. The idea was to simply talk about a range of issues with the aim of creating a "mind map", then using the map to create traditional posts that are more structured and focused. But along the way, I wondered if I could post the original voice note

So, to test this, click on the link below, which will show you a LINK to the audio Store that and play it. Your machine will probably have an app that plays audio. In my case, it's iTunes.

This talk can be indexed just like a text essay.

In the long run, the plan is to take notes on my own "rant" in mind map form (which can also be shown in the blog).

A Random Talk

Another Deep Dive into Stupidity - Conspirituality

This post includes links to great podcasts. I encourage you to follow the links to the podcasts. They are much more informative than anything I have to say about them.

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As COVID deaths in the US exceed 700,000, I continue my search for the source of widespread stupidity.

To state the obvious, stupidity sells.

I encountered this CBC podcast on the subject of "Conspirituality" - lovely term embracing the dog's breakfast of ideas promoted for commercial reasons that treat "mainstream" health measures (such as vaccines) as a kind of conspiracy against the individual who, instead, should be buying magic crystals, retaining semen or following some arcane practice rather than submitting to the awkward fact that good intentions and independent thinking will not save you from having a more or less run of the mill body and life.

Another lovely term from this podcast is "privatized religion". This refers to the fact that anybody with a measure of charisma** can take to YouTube and start what is, in effect, a religion for profit. At its heart, such religion must regard all the facts arrayed against it as a vast conspiracy (such as Youtube taking down anti-vax posts).

I often hear people say they are "religious" but reject "organized religion". While I am certainly skeptical of "organized religion", I think that disorganized religion is even worse. Especially the kind promoted for profit by a charismatic individual*

While you are at it, take a look at a compact and informative podcast from New York Times on the ivermectin issue. Previously softened up to believe anything, "conservatives" tend to believe that the vaccine is part of a huge conspiracy and ivermectin is being hushed up and suppressed by "them" - maybe Biden and his fellow cannibals. 

The CBC podcast shows how some specific "conspirituality" commercial religions are specifically linked to Q-Anon, the conspiracy theory animating the true believers of the Trump core.

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* I know, I know. Catholicism fits this description on a huge scale. So do all organized religions. People who abandon the grand conspiracy theories behind these religions fall into the arms of snake oil salesmen that simply sell them a more exciting alternate universe. There is nobody out there selling rationality or reasonable skepticism. In the supermarket of ideas, rationality has an obscure kiosk in the alley. 

** "Charisma" is performance art. For more on this, check here.

Why is Everyone so F*G Stupid?

Jacob Chansley (with The Horns) Got 41 Months in Prison

Totally Repudiated Q-Anon Etc

It is a total mystery why some people refuse to get vaccinated or why an entire political party seems to be living in an alternate reality. As I write, thousands of health care workers in New York have refused to get the first jab in order to go back to work. And the "audits" keep coming. What the f*k is going on?

To understand human behavior, you must stand back. Compassion must always be the starting point. There, but for the grace of God, go I. Through long effort, I reduced my own FI (f*g idiot) score from 9 (MAGA hat) to 5 (seriously confused). Along the way, I have had bizarre ideas about "reality" and acted on them. Sometimes with tragic results. Anti-vaxxers don't have a monopoly on stupidity.

When I was about 5 years old, I grew skeptical of the stories everyone seemed to believe about some fat guy at the North Pole delivering presents for all the children of the world in one night. More than this: he made all these presents in his workshop. And he kept a list of who has been naughty and who's being nice.

I busted my parents by marking all the oranges in the house, then finding marked oranges in my stocking on Christmas morning. They immediately "fessed up" but warned me not to share the secret with my little brother. Along with millions of kids the same age, I was being invited to join the conspiracy.

It turned out that grownups are in on conspiracies on a grand scale. The next one I was confronted with went something like this:

• There is an old man in the sky-a kind of Super-Santa called "God".
• The naughty/nice list still applied but the "nice" people would live forever.
• Super-Santa created the entire Universe and was responsible for everything that happened. You could get Super-Santa to bend things your way by praying.
• And so on ...

If you can believe this, you can believe anything. 90% of Americans actually believe some version of this story. This makes Trump's "big lie" look like an innocent fib. Let's call it the HUGE lie. It's not really about God - it's about casting off from the world of evidence into the rough waters of human imagination. There they be monsters.

How do we get from Santa to Trump? My own experience illustrates the process.  Having determined that not only my parents but just about everyone was lying to me about Santa, I went on my merry way trusting people to tell me the truth about important stuff. The "God" idea was so commonly accepted that it didn't occur to my young mind that it was Santa for grown-ups. I admit to serious confusion. For example, when the teacher in Sunday School asked us to reply "present" I was upset that there were to be no presents. This silly experience illustrates how young and tender-minded I was when they started shoveling the HUGE Lie into my brain. This time, there was nobody to "clue me in". As I was to discover over the years, there seemed to be no way to test the idea. Everyone seemed to believe it. But I was skeptical. In Grade 12, I encountered Bertrand Russel's "Why I am Not A Christian", which theoretically blew up the whole hoax. However, I found that virtually nobody was interested in discussing the issue. I became a lone "agnostic". I was also trapped in the false dichotomy that ensnares many who start by questioning the HUGE lie. You eject all the spooky stuff but you are left with a "God-shaped hole". NOT believing in God does not satisfy the needs that fantasy provides. You become vulnerable to other craziness.  Many people manage to believe both the HUGE lie and a basket of completely unrelated garbage such as Alien abduction. There is never enough.

My skepticism continued for many years, but almost accidentally, I became actively interested in "Christian" teachings and the life of Jesus, but, again, nobody seemed to share my interest. Eventually, I encountered the "charismatic" flavor of Christianity - people who were very much "interested". It was a world full of magic and wonder. Faith healing. Daily communion with Jesus. And, at last community.

How do we get from a kid confused about "presents" to me being a candidate for the Ministry of the United Church? There are many forces at work but it seems to me that the main thing was finding people who actually gave a shit about deeply important matters. It was the end of my lonely search.

I must note that, once one rubs elbows with the "guys up front" - the teachers in Theology School, the priests, and ministers - nobody believes in the "official" story. The HUGE lie is a myth, supposedly valuable for "ordinary" folks. I remember one of our fantastic instructors expressing his frustration that everything he taught us would never reach the "folks in the pew". We would go on about our business "as if" the HUGE lie were true ("as if" were the exact words of the very senior minister who was my mentor).

My education for the Ministry was cut short, but that's another story. Having been "up front", I could no longer occupy a pew with a straight face. I wandered away.

So finally, in my late 20's I find that there is "no there there". Thanks to my "professional" education, I come away with a decent understanding of how these stories capture the imagination - how "myth" weaves its way into the culture to the point where few of us realize where myth ends and "reality" begins. 

Throughout history, it seems that people were unaware of any difference between the world they inhabited and the magic-filled world of myth. Since virtually all of "scripture" was written in cultures that were completely enveloped in myth, it makes no sense to ask, for example, if Jesus actually died on the cross, or even if Jesus actually existed. 

Of course, such ideas would outrage most "Bible-believing" Christians, although they are totally in line with the official education I received toward a Master of Theology. The "pros" don't talk about these things since they would quickly become unemployed if they did so. 

So, by age 30, my FI score has nudged down to maybe 6. I was no longer "agnostic", but regarding the entire sweep of Christianity (and all other religions) as a mixture of myth and outright fraud. I had the good fortune to travel the world and visit "Eastern" religions on their home turf. I was not impressed.

But still, it took me another 34 years to "connect the dots" to really understand what kind of society we wind up with if 90% of citizens believe a preposterous lie even though it actually makes almost no impact on their actual behavior. A professional geologist I met illustrates this point. On the one hand, he believed the world was created in 7 days. On the other hand, his profession required him to understand how rocks were created over millions of years Well, God just made the whole thing (fossil dinosaurs and all) in 7 days. Why not?  My case was not very different. Belief in God or not made no real difference in my life. I could think about the issue once or twice a year and, finding nobody interested, put it back on the shelf while I attended to the business of living.

But for many, the "real world" doesn't satisfy their need for excitement. Nor does the hypocritical, boring, confusing, self-contradictory world of organized religion. They need UFOs. They need conspiracy theories. They need to be under constant threat of cosmic significance. For many, this "itch" can be satisfied by fantasy. For others, brought up in a world already shot through with secret influences, the need is for stronger stuff. Such as Q-Anon. Such as microchips in vaccinations. Such as cannibal Democrats.

The road from Santa in the Sky to Donald Trump is sketched in CBC's excellent podcast, "The Flamethrowers". Way back in the birth of radio, stations needed cheap content and Bible Thumping preachers needed a way to reach more people (and pockets). We saw this in Alberta, in William Aberhart. Everywhere we see a pivot from hardcore, fundamentalist religion to politics or something spicier than "old-fashioned religion". Conspiracies fit the bill. In Aberhart's case, the call of fantasy economics was irresistible.

If you can believe in God - even a little bit - you can believe anything. In the words of Rachel Maddow, you have moved to Earth 2.

But why America? What is it about America that makes it such a fertile ground for outright denial of reality?

America was founded by half a dozen sects who simultaneously claimed their beliefs were the only correct ones and that others were mistaken. Bound for Hell even. This combination of rabid focus on made-up doctrine along with the tendency to endlessly split into more and more factions is the founding feature of Protestantism (it's in the very name). It is in the American tradition to cling proudly to one's own version of the HUGE lie and shun others - sometimes to the point of violence.

This sets the stage for charlatans of all stripes to round up "true believers" and convince them of something even nuttier than what they already believe. There is something WE know and YOU don't. What's more - you need to demonstrate your belief. You need to act. Shoot an abortion provider. Invade the Capital. It's a habit of mind.

This produces the phenomenon I call the "skunk at the dinner party". Skunks want to be more and more offensive to rule out any serious possibility of communication. If you are sufficiently counter-factual in your announcements, people simply walk away. This is not a mere difference of opinion. An encounter with one of these skunks can make you sick for days.

This is the road to mass stupidity.

Further Thoughts on "Box 1"

This essay builds on the concept of "Boxes" introduced in my April Summary. In a nutshell, we are all trapped in "Box 1", which is the world "inside our heads".

For millennia, there has been little dispute over the fact that our access to "reality" is far from trustworthy. In the extreme, there are those who claim that "reality" doesn't exist at all, or at least the existence cannot be proven. I am reminded of a professional geologist I once met. He managed to make a living dating million-year-old rocks, while simultaneously believing that the world was 4,000 years old. As the Red Queen said, we are capable of believing six impossible things before breakfast.

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Both "reality" and the "mind" exist and are susceptible to experimentation. Obviously, mental phenomena are correlated with events in the brain. Much of the focus of "Cognitive Studies" is on this correlation. We see books like Dennet's "Consciousness Explained," which would better be titled "Consciousness Explained Away." The core of this approach is to study the brain in the context of what I call "computational" models of how the brain produces the various phenomena it does, including consciousness. At present, this approach seems to be able to detect the presence of consciousness through sensors placed in the brain, but, apart from Science Fiction, we see no evidence that we will ever be able to "peek in" to share the experience of another human being.

I believe that this approach sidesteps the core issue, which should be to explore the mind in its own terms, whatever the "mechanism" may be. In fact, attempts to "explain" consciousness seem to misunderstand the nature of "explanation" itself. I think Sam Harris put it best when he said it's hard to imagine what an "explanation" would look like. For one thing, "explanations" of the mind in terms of physical phenomena the language of explanation itself is a major roadblock. Those who would "explain" the mind assume that "mind-like" concepts can be stripped from the explanation, in a way that evolution can be reduced to physics, chemistry, and math. Damasio's approach attacks this particular problem at the root, by defining life itself as "striving to thrive." One may view this as a metaphor, but the fact is that it is tough to describe any living behavior without introducing the "mind like" language of what the organism is "trying" to do. Planets don't "strive" to obey the laws of gravitation, nor does nature "strive" to conserve energy. Or at least, this is the way we are taught to think of things.

All this tends to bypass the most amazing capability of the human mind, which is to construct a deep, rich, detailed universe that we experience in one particular time and place. Everything we know about that universe is the product of our own mind with extensive help from other minds. The world, as we experience it, is "mind-like" for a good reason. It is an active product of the brain.  The implications of this are routinely missed.

Anne (not her real name) says things like "things happen for a reason." She is always asking"why" bad things happen to good people. Such a mindset fails to recognize that the universe, as experienced. It is a mental phenomenon, full of intentions, reasons and justifications,  The evolutionary purpose of the mind is precisely to search out reasons and explanations - expecting to find them when a more objective perspective would claim that such statements and questions are inappropriate when applied to a world governed by physics and mathematics. The misunderstanding here is to mix up Box 1 (the mind) with Box 0 (the "real world" that is assumed to exist but is forever just beyond our grasp).

Anne is not happy with the explanation that an innocent girl was killed due to broken bones, gravity and momentum when hit by a car, yet she will accept that this explanation is somehow valid. What she fails to understand is that her own mind - a reason-seeking machine - is spinning its wheels, unable to detect agency where none exists. In fact, her wheels will keep turning as she seeks out an agent, such as a negligent driver, bad breaks, unmarked crosswalk, neglectful parents and on and on. In an emergency, Anne can always fall back "karma" and "fate", which hangs on to the notion that the universe is "mind-like" but that its intentions are unknowable.

Anne experiences a feeling of profound injustice and moral outrage. She is hard-wired to attribute the source of this outrage to be some Universal "mind" behind everything that happens. She is also hardwired to accept her perceptions as real. We don't wander through the world telling ourselves that "this is not real". Anne's perception (not just her abstract belief) is that there is something beyond herself that looks upon the situation and feels the same grief that she does.

Such a problem can be said to underly the whole of religion. This may be supposed to be a consistent failure to recognize the difference between Box 0 and Box 1. It should not be remarkable to find mind-like aspects of a world that is, after all, created by a mind. Our mind.

Not all religions fail this way, but many start out being sensible about the issue then slip into superstition. For example, in the (personal) branch of Zen I follow, we trust experience over philosophical word-play, which can be taken to be all forms of "mind like" assumptions about the world. Even so, I accept that there is no escape from Box 0 such as, for example, taking LSD or sitting in a cave for years. In theory, solid things like logic and mathematics are "mind like" and should be distrusted in favor of experience itself. Such ideas go back to the Tao Teh Ching which points out the difference between what we say about reality and reality itself (depending on the translation you are reading and what you are reading into it). But if you study the book as a whole, you detect a general disdain for investigation of any kind. We actually do need to understand Box 0 as well as we can, for simple reasons of survival if for no other reason.

In practice, Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen become straightforward fantasy worlds, actively denying what the rest of us would call "science." To my mind, this takes skepticism too far. "Skepticism" becomes skepticism of opponents to my religion, rejecting all arguments on principle as existing in some "truth domain" that doesn't touch the experience of the believer.

On the other hand, I think that religious attitudes and practices can be entirely appropriate if they are admitted to belong to Box 1, where there is no such thing as "objective truth." In Box 1 the universe is full of moral principle and agency. I first grasped this in Theological School where the instructor challenged us to ask what we would see if someone videotaped the Ascension of Jesus to Heaven.

This was a challenge (an outrage to a few of us). Are we to take Acts 9:1-11 to be a literal eye witness account, or are we to ask who wrote the passage and why? I became quite comfortable with this kind of question, personally delving into similar thorny issues, such as what was the experience of Isaiah when he spoke not for God but as God.

My approach is to accept religious experience as valid in "Box 1" - the world created by the mind. It then becomes possible to discuss religious beliefs and attitudes as one might discuss literature (in fact that is precisely the approach adopted by liberal schools of theology). Even in the world of imagination, some interpretations make more sense than others.

Of course, this is often offensive to believers, who tend to insist on the literal, objective truth of their version of history. Such folks, through no fault of their own, have come to mix up Box 0 and Box 1. Educating them on this matter can be stressful but, as my own education has proven, not impossible. In fact, most thoughtful believers are curious precisely on this matter.  Not everyone follows the Red Queen.

Is God the "Ultimate Reality"?

Religion is (and still is) a means whereby cultural norms are enforced through means of authority derived from "off planet". Zero-cost credits for carrots and sticks are offered to be cashed in in that alternate universe. Religion justifies the infliction of terrible punishments in the here-and-now and has sponsored genocidal wars. Religions that we generally regard as "peaceful" seldom live up to their own reputation. Good Christian folk brought their kids to watch lynchings in the US South. Buddhism is playing a key part in the genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar and a similar role in the violent suppression of the Hindu minority in Ceylon. Religious authority is behind the rape of thousands of children and the coverup of these crimes. Religious authority enthusiastically participated in the attempted genocide of indigenous people in Canada in the residential school system.

If these are the benefits of religion, we can clearly do without them. Rational human being should not only reject "organized religion" but push back hard against the claims of religious enthusiasts to exert outsized influence on the rest of society.

That said, we must also recognize and respect the fact that, for many, the religious "matrix" is as real as our own. Moreover, the religious experience is quite real and waiting around the corner for any of us.

At one point in my life, I was an enthusiastic member of the evangelical wing of Christianity. What was I thinking? All this is usually comfortably buried under half a century of skepticism but sometimes I'm pulled back at the most unexpected moments.

On my latest dog walk as I watched the trees reaching for the light in a way that reminded me of my "Roots" analogy - how we blindly reach our roots into "reality", sucking up information for our survival. The tree does not "know" about sunlight, wind, and water, yet its existence depends on all these things. What is there "out there" that is equally vital to human beings but forever beyond our ability to understand or even suspect?  That line of thinking was 100% in line with the way I thought in 1977.

Back then, the theology of Paul Tillich was popular - he spoke of God as the "ground of all being". I recalled for the first time in decades the impressive Theology of wonder by G. K. Chesterton. My insight on the dog walk was not new, but perhaps more mature and articulate.

The world truly is wonderful. We do indeed reach out to a vast, unknown - perhaps unknowable Universe. What is more, we are rooted in this vastness. We rely on it for our existence. It is very natural for this feeling of dependence, combined with the feeling of awe and helplessness to be translated into what theologians call an "I/Thou" relationship. This means that we regard the other end of this relationship (the vast, unknowable Universe) as personal - i.e. God. Of course, it actually is personal. We are experiencing the Universe through our own brains which are alive and, in some sense, playing it to us on our "inner movie screen". That screen is not flat, dead and impersonal. It's created by live neurons in our heads. But our brains also create the illusion that what we see "out there" really is "out there".

"Professional" theologians will ignore the neuroscience and try to build a rather academic "Christian" theology on this slim foundation. In the same spirit, people make from the "First Cause" argument** that "proves" the existence of God to swallowing whatever version of Christian theology that appeals to them. Paradoxically, people of "faith" acknowledge our the palpable lack of ultimate knowledge but then turn this into a surprisingly long list of certainties large and small.

"Peak experiences" are often interpreted in whatever religious context (matrix) that's "in the air". Peak experiences are a real thing (I've had a few myself). In fact, my insight about the trees on my walk might qualify as a mini-peak experience. After years of such jolts of insight, I more readily attribute them to bipolar illness than any special insight.

Since the '70's we have been able to produce "peak experiences" quite reliably with a pill - LSD, MDMA or psilocybin. In the long run, that puts peak experiences and religion itself under the umbrella of neuroscience. Back when all this became a tsunami of "experimentation", we were also experiencing a much more cosmopolitan view of religion. In the end, this resulted in the invention of whole new religions and new religions under old names, such as what passes for "Eastern Philosophy" in California. For many, peak experiences could not stand on their own. If a matrix of religion were not readily available, one could be invented. Space aliens served as well as God. But whatever the psychic explorers thought about the details, we all agreed that there was another "level" to the Universe. Peak experiences were the door into this Universe.

There were other ideas "in the air" back in the 70's. At the time, I did not regard Christianity positive drag on human progress. I was quite aware of how empty dogma served as the glue to identify the "in group" vs the "out-group" (I called this the "Creedal Group" and eventually wrote a whole blog about it). But "hardcore" professional theology was not what people assumed it to be. Still isn't. For this, you need to attend a liberal Theology school (I went to Queens University in Kingston). It turns out that the musings of "professionals" about God are as dry and irrelevant as trigonometry. They have nothing at all to do with the daily life of a "true believer". For a true believer, Christianity makes life an adventure. The theory of it all is left to others or simply left out entirely.

There was something in the air called Liberation Theology  This pushed many in the Catholic Church "hard left"*- to see Christianity as a champion of the poor - especially in South America, where US-backed right-wing dictatorships were slaughtering the poor by the thousands. For young, idealistic folks like myself, it married political outrage to a nascent knowledge of the Bible. You can certainly read the Bible and especially Jesus this way. Back then, the "standard" portrait of Jesus looked a lot like the standard portrait of Che Gueverra.

Being smart, arrogant and gullible is a dangerous combination. I can now see that I knew nothing about Christianity, Liberation Theology, Marxism or Che Gueverra. But sometimes a sprinkling of knowledge is precisely what you need to inspire projects to save the world. For me, Christianity, or at least Jesus (interpreted correctly) was on the right side of history. It was also more fun than Computer Programming.

I am a human being - just as likely to be trapped in a matrix as anybody else. I had been warmly accepted into an open-ended social group for the first time in my life. Our awkward questions can be put on the back burner. Sometimes permanently.

In, "Going Back to Church", I take on the same subject, looking back on my theological education and the future as a Minister that I escaped through no honorable effort of my own. I write from the pews in a modern congregation with the old ladies and my 98-year-old mother in law.
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* As it turned out, the Catholic Church pushed back hard against Liberation Theology and embraced the "powers that be". The Catholic Evangelical movement (of which I was part) would become a vehicle for conventional dogma. It would not be until the elevation of Pope Frances that social responsibility - or maybe not raping little kids quite so much - asserted itself at the highest level of the Catholic Church. Just a bit.

** The "First Cause" argument is something that is only offered by people who already want to believe in God and are looking for a way stop thinking about it. It is for children.

Making Choices in a World Without God

It's natural to ask whether all this speculation matters. Asking this, it is easy to slip into the trap of making general conclusions and offering general advice for those who may agree with me on the issues raised here. That's a mistake. All I can do is say what it means to me Others may draw their own conclusions.

Basically, I can ignore religion's claims of authority (derived from beyond the observable Universe) as well as its claims that its insights trump observation reality.

If I compare my life and priorities with others who allow religion to totally dominate, the advantage is huge. Millions are willing to die for their particular religious fantasy. Millions of others willingly surrender their right to chose for themselves in matters of great personal impact. It matters.

This blog recognizes that I am embedded in a culture that is strongly influenced by "Christian" values and mythology. Many of us are broadly familiar with the stories in the Bible. However, actual in-depth knowledge of this book is rare. Young people - even those who think of themselves as Christian - are as shockingly ignorant about the Bible as they are about all other topics. As an influence on "Western" culture, Christianity has been so misunderstood, misapplied and discredited that it is now safe for any individual to disown it without looking back.

What is less clear is whether, by turning one's back on Christianity, I am left with the need to replace it with something else. If we accept that the soul (if any) dies with the body and there is no other Universe but the one Science describes, what are we to do without the supposed guidance that religion provides? This question remains even when we acknowledge that religion has a terrible track record in providing its supposed benefit - namely a population of believers who behave in anything like a moral, principled way.

Absent religion, Is there anything like good and evil? What is justice?

I am still left in my own personal "Matrix" in which every object, event, and situation is colored with value - everything is "good" or "bad". That's the way my brain works. If it didn't I'd starve to death in my bed, not caring to move.

One starting point is to accept the gift and the burden of free will - both for me and for those around me. We are all free to be murderers, liars, cheats and/or general parasites on society. Conversely, we can choose to be honest, principled and dedicated to the welfare of humanity. Moreover, we must admit that the choices we make and those made by others are often dictated by forces beyond our control. This observation leads us to an attitude of compassion and forgiveness (including self-forgiveness). Such an attitude recommends itself even if only to support personal peace of mind. We can choose not to be the angry sword of justice. Of course, we may choose differently but to do so flies in the face of true understanding and is bound to cause us personal grief.

But what do we do about the palpable danger that certain individuals pose to us personally and society at large? I think it makes sense for us to act to prevent such individuals from harming others. That is a supportable aim of what we call a "Justice" system. At the same time, we need to avoid the tendency for revenge and moral judgment to taint our core aim, which is to prevent harm. We need to take into account the actions of those who commit no "crime", but, through neglect and indifference. Especially in this category, the only effective action is to avoid these sins myself.

It is striking that one of the core values promoted in the Bible is what we might call tribalism. This is particularly evident in the Old Testament, which is the (largely mythical) story of how the ruler of the Universe concerns himself with the "chosen people": Israel. The "us and them" message continues in the New Testament with the message that belief in Jesus is the one and only criterion for selecting the individual for eternal life. The "us and them" mentality runs through the entire history of Christianity, as it splits into innumerable sects that regard themselves to have the keys to heaven and "outsiders" to be bound for Hell. Systematic indifference toward people who have been left out of the story entirely (such as those who never heard the "Gospel") continues in the form of indifference toward "enemy" civilians killed by the thousands in other countries.

I feel personally free to challenge this message and to do so wherever it occurs - whether in a religious context or not. It is the toxic message that is left behind even when the other-worldly justifications for it have been rejected.  We need to stop thinking in terms of "us and them". "We" have no right to be killing "them". "They" have all the rights and aspirations that "we" do. "They" are not wrong about everything just because they are "they". "We" have no special insight into ultimate truth just because we are "we".

SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT RELIGION

Leaving aside morality as it pertains to social issues, we are increasingly confronted with issues that arise out of an increasing appreciation of our place in the Universe - the place that is shared by all human beings - whatever they may believe about supernatural forces or authority. To cite just one question that each of us must answer for himself: Is it right and good that life should survive on Planet Earth? It is amazing to me that many young people are so lost in the moral vacuum left by religion that they will be indifferent to this question or shrug their shoulders to answer, No. More narrowly, many people regard humans as to be a positive evil on the planet and welcome the demise of the human race. The stunning truth is that is hard to find anyone who thinks such questions are worth a moment's thought.

Our chance to prevent catastrophic climate change is slipping away from us on a daily basis. There is a very real possibility that the end of the human race is not far off and we may, in fact, prevent that from happening by personal actions in our lifetime. Will we?  Will we try? The Biblical story is not helping us here. The story of Noah tells us that God judged all of humanity to be worth destruction (indeed all of Nature). God condemned all of humanity because of the disobedience of one man (Adam) over one instruction, then arbitrarily reversed that decision because of the sacrifice of one man (Jesus) but that saved only "believers". All this mythology predisposes believers of all sorts (not just Christians) to be open to the idea that the Universe would somehow be better off without us.

I'm not quite arrogant enough to propose a solution to this ultimate existential question. All I can do is make a choice for myself. I chose not to commit suicide out of guilt for being a human being. I chose not to give up on humanity. I chose to regard saving the natural world from destruction as being a cause worthy of my active support.

The fashionable trend toward "save the planet" ideology is encouraging to me, but the really big, nasty threats are not being prevented or even challenged. We march to save the whales but fail to save the oceans. We are willing to save the planet as long as it doesn't cost jobs or raise taxes. We are happy to watch the planet die because others are not doing their share to prevent it. It can all seem silly and sad. Personally, it often seems that all I can do is to see the situation as clearly as possible and share that knowledge (or at least the desire to have that knowledge) with others.

From what I know of the "big picture", there is no ultimate guarantee that things will turn out the way I'd like. I'm certain of my own fate. The thought that there may come a time when there is no living thing left in the Universe is even more fearful. The Universe without God (which is what I believe to be the case) has no special love for us or life itself.

There is a daily corollary of this attitude, which is a love for life in all its forms. For me at least, such love takes the place of religion. Like faith, it is a free choice.

Thoughts on Religion vs. Reality

For the moment, let me talk about the world of human experience as "E".

The world that Science investigates is assumed to exist apart from human experience, although we can only know it through human experience. Without really thinking about it, we imagine the "real world" to be about the shared experience: verifiable, consistent and augmented by what we call "reason". But we have long admitted that Universe, which I will call U, is not the same as "E". In fact, we assume that we can never know "U" entirely, directly or completely.

We all know that "E" is not the same for each of us. In fact, it is quite remarkably different between different cultures and different times or even for a single individual throughout his or her lifetime.

The question at hand is, is there anything "out there" apart from E and U?

In most religious traditions the answer is "yes".  Most religions postulate a universe in which the individual "soul" - the most important part of E  - exists apart from the individual physical body and survives death into a realm that may or may not is occupied by spirits, gods, occult forces and a whole world. Christianity specifically claims that the "soul" always exists apart from the body - an idea that appears in modern Science Fiction in many forms. Mystical traditions claim that some varieties of E (mystical experience) perceive alternate universes or perceive U directly, whatever that may mean. At least in the early days of the "drug culture", drugs like LSD were seen as a means of exploring that alternate reality - not just a way of bending the brain out of shape.

Religions also tend to assume that there is a moral universe that exists beyond the world of mere mortals but applies in some way to the moral choices we make. For example, the fate of our souls depends on the moral choices we make. In such a moral universe, the concept of "free will" is an essential attribute of the soul. If we have no free will, the entire idea of merit and reward beyond death (or even in this world) makes no sense. Religious apologists are well aware of this problem - frequently claiming that in a world without God (or their religion), morality cannot exist.

But if we stick to the evidence available, we are forced to conclude that our minds and therefore all of E are happening between our ears and are therefore embedded in U, like the rest of our bodies. There is no other Universe. Mind, like gravity, however mysterious, is a phenomenon within U.

One of the most impressive bits of evidence for this is the structure of the brain. Brain structure heavily contributes to "character" in the sense that lesions, injuries, tumors, and drugs can dramatically alter moral behavior. What we consider to be "moral" choices - the ones that supposedly chart the progress of the soul - are the work of identifiable brain structures.  If you break down "free will" into components, you wind up with faculties (brain structures, processes and systems) that may or may not work as expected. These faculties may fail individually or in combination as a consequence of specific injury to specific brain systems. For moral decisions to take place:

• You need to be aware of the alternatives for action;
• The alternatives need to be emotionally "tagged" - some "feel" better than others - otherwise you don't care;
• You need to access applicable memory and social "rules";
• You need to feel things like disgust, lust, shame, pride, and empathy;
• You need to be able to hold all this in working memory long enough to work out an action;
• You need to be able to act according to your mental "computation" (many people "know" what is right but behave in alarming, self-destructive ways anyway).

Drastic departures from "normal" capabilities in these areas are labeled with morally-tinged "disorders" such as psychopathy or even mild character judgments such as "laziness" or "impulsiveness". We are just beginning to understand the physical roots of these personality patterns. The field of psychological neurology is gradually stripping away our common sense idea that "bad" people are acting out of free choice - making "bad choices". What's left is a view that "normal" people make "normal" choices using "normal" brain structures. There is no room left for the idea that morality is something that exists outside of E (what we experience) and our bodies (part of U). We may need to toss wickedness onto the same scrap heap as demon possession.

Brain structures are stunningly complex in a way that shouts "design". Of course, we put aside the "Santa's Workshop" view of this "design". There is no "designer". But what then? We must say that our brain structures are a result of strong evolutionary pressure.

Our nervous systems extract an astonishing amount of detail from basic sensory information. To cite just one example, there are 20 different types of ganglia in the visual system. These nerve cells extract the "analog" information coming in from the retina. Each type of ganglion "speaks its own digital language" to the deeper structures of the brain. At the moment, we have a vague idea what five of these ganglion types are "talking about". What the others are "saying" remains mysterious. In no case are we in a position to decipher the language that each type speaks.*

There are hundreds of different cell types in the hippocampus - the brain area critical to memory. The complexity of this design is several orders of magnitude beyond anything that has come out of human design efforts. What is motivating this incredible process? It can be nothing but what we call R. The "real world". Our brains are embedded in R and they are a direct consequence of phenomena in R. Specifically, evolutionary "pressure" from events in R have consequences for even subtle differences in the design of our bodies - especially our brains. This applies to the way our brains make "moral" choices. There is no particular need for us to know what these "pressures" are. For example, we have been breathing for millennia before we discovered oxygen.

Evolutionary "pressure" is "adaptive", or "survival of the fittest". But for humans, survival depends on acting together with other humans. Great sections of the brain are specifically devoted to this job, including obvious things like speech but even more sophisticated "circuitry" that computes socially acceptable behavior - that's what we call "morality".

The main business of religion is to help us "compute" our behavior in socially acceptable ways. Religion is the result of many brains "computing" general solutions to the problems of existence, especially existence together with other humans.

We are left with a view of the world and our role in it that departs significantly from virtually all religions, but, at the same time, tells us why we have religions and why there is no particular reason for them to "make sense":

• There is no "soul" apart from the body. Consciousness - and all the mysteries of the self - are created by the brain. The "self" can be disassembled bit by bit or ultimately destroyed by injury to the brain. The fact that we can't "explain" this does not put the phenomenon in a special category. We have no ultimate explanation for anything at all - including gravity.
• "Free will", if it exists at all, is severely constrained by the details of our individual brain structure and health.  Wild departures from "normal" - such as psychopaths - have brain abnormalities not much different from being blind from birth. We must challenge our common-sense idea that others may be regarded as fundamentally "good" or "bad" in some absolute sense. 
• With no "soul" or independent realm that dictates moral choices outside of our minds, the need for anything like "heaven" or "god" vanishes. As Pascal famously noted: "We have no need for that hypothesis".

But does the need for religion itself vanish? Our brains are designed to depend heavily on the input from other brains. To cite a simple example, our courts could not function without laws. Laws could not exist without language and the deep history behind the moral "computations" performed by cultures over the centuries. The fact that different cultures compute different answers to the moral problems presented does not diminish the fact that individuals are not "designed" to make moral choices entirely on their own.

It does seem possible for these insights to inspire something that looks like "morality". For example, perhaps we should back off from our natural tendency to regard people with different moral standards as "evil". Perhaps we should be more skeptical of ideas like deliberation and willfulness in those who offend against our laws. Perhaps we need to re-think our ideas of "justice" entirely - especially when it comes to our systems of punishment and reward that supposedly motivate people to behave in the "right" way. It seems to me that people who accept compassion as a core religious belief are already close to accepting this attitude for simple "scientific" reasons. It is a simple, verifiable fact that E is a creation of the human mind in response to the "real" pressure from R plus our efforts to survive in partnership with others (also playing itself out on a stage in R).

The vast majority of the human race believes or acts "as if" their own cultural standards of morality are absolute and not "invented" by "mere" humans. We want to think that their worldview is not "merely" mythical but in some sense reflecting a special insight into the nature of reality, usually augmented by some kind of "supernatural" (not part of U) history. I don't think it is too much of a leap for such people to accept that their worldview is a special case of "E". Other worldviews - even conflicting worldviews - need to be understood as fundamentally human and not uniquely valid conclusions of the nature of reality. For the individual, morality boils down to what we should do - here and now, in this world. Practical experience tells us that it's quite possible for folks with utterly different worldviews to agree on a wide range of common action.

On the other hand, it should be possible for us to deny "supernatural" justifications for actions that cast others as "evil" - deserving suppression or even death.

It's not too much to ask.

* More on visual system ganglia and the "big picture" posed by the brain here.

The Matrix - Pushing the Metaphor

Many of the "Matrix" ideas can be seen as just a slightly different angle on ideas presented elsewhere in this blog - especially here, where I summarize "progress to date".

Art is a useful species of simulation. It allows us to imagine different worlds using no more hardware than our senses and our brains. The result can go beyond what we usually think of as "metaphor" - even extending into the realms of myth and religion.

The Matrix movie series provides a challenging dramatization of metaphors that are so commonplace that they have become tropes for empty speculation and dead-end philosophy. The movie updates some old ideas in dramatic new ways:

• Many religions, including the "Abrahamic" and Hindu traditions, regard reality as some kind of dream, with the "real", important reality being the realm of the gods. The "soul" is separable from the body and travels on after death into the more important realms of the gods. In such traditions, little attention is paid to the actual details of the "real world". It's Turkmenistan*.
• Certain philosophies, most notably "idealism", claim that the there is nothing but our experience - the "real world" is either non-existent or unknowable. This comes close to how I regard the "matrix" to work, but, in my view, the matrix is built on the real world and assumes the existence of the real world.
• Antonio Damasio teaches that complex animals, such as mammals, "model" the real world by means of states of their central nervous system. However, somehow the word "model" doesn't convey the fullness of our experience - how totally comprehensive and all-embracing these models can be. We live inside the models.
• In his best-selling novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig presents the concept that a motorcycle, in spite of being made of hard physical metal, is really an idea. While Pirsig later claimed that the novel has nothing to do with either Zen or Motorcycles, his motorcycle-as-idea formed the basis of what was "Zen" for me and allowed my concept of the "Matrix" to encompass more than "mere" mental phenomena. All "artificial" objects are also ideas and therefore part of the "matrix" for both their creators and users.
• In the Knowledge Illusion, Sloman shows how the world surrounding us and the world of our ideas is really constructed by society. Our own contribution to our thoughts is easy to overestimate (the illusion). Our ability to navigate the physical world is the result of an illusion that we know more than we actually do - actual knowledge coming, for example, from the designer and builder of the car we thoughtlessly drive around.
• In Thinking Fast and Slow, one of the most influential books of the 20th century, Kahneman shows how we go through life on auto-pilot most of the time, living in a sea of assumptions that are questioned only when we run up against surprising challenges. This calls to mind the throngs of people in the matrix, who go about their lives without a thought about what is really going on (in this case, they are living in a computer simulation).

All this combines to produce my vision of the "matrix" as being more than a product of the individual mind and more than something "merely" mental. Like any good work of art, it invites us to go beyond the obvious and ask for deeper connections. The matrix is what Hoffstader would call an "Essential" metaphor. We are invited to take the "red pill" to learn our true nature. Within the constraints of movie fiction, our "true nature" is something simple, dramatic and (let's face it) implausible. Outside of fiction, discovery of our "true nature" is perhaps the most important quest of all.

* Turkmenistan is my short-hand for aspects of the world that you know are real but, other than that, we know little about them and you are not overly curious to know more.

Stephen Hawking, Mensa and Intelligent Answers to Good Questions

Last night I attempted to introduce the idea of "Spinosa's God" to a MENSA group. I got my head torn off. Although these people are in the top 3% on the IQ scale, they are all over the map on the "emotional intelligence" scale, nor can one assume that they are widely informed outside of their various specialties, even though they tend to assume that. It is famously difficult to know what you don't know, but especially difficult for smart people. I call this the Donal Rumsfeld syndrome. But don't get me started ...

"Spinosa's God", defended by Einstein and the coincidentally recently deceased Stephen Hawking refers to the unexpected deep order in the Universe. This "God" is not a person behind the scenes, pulling the strings to punish the bad guys and reward the good guys. "He" is totally impersonal - another name for physical law, which turns out to be comprehensible by the human mind - mostly in terms of mathematics. It is important to understand that those who speak of this kind of "God" are speaking of their personal feeling of awe, not a fact "out there" in the world.

In our "conversation" (food fight) at MENSA, I reminded my friends of my time 40 years ago as a junior Minister and theological student. For them, this tarred me as a Scientologists or ISIS terrorists. It seemed to be impossible to get anyone to talk about what they believed or I believed to take a break from filling the room with "straw men". They competed with each other to rant about the stupidity of un-named individuals who were not there to defend themselves. Logically speaking, blaming all the evils of the world on people who believe in God is equivalent to blaming the same problems on people who are over 2 feet tall. For most of history, everyone believed in God.

So here, in a "note to myself" let me say a few things I would have loved to have on the table with the "top 3%".

For one thing, even in my most "religious" years (age 27 or so), I leaned toward the "Theology of Wonder", specifically that of G. K. Chesterton. That is about the experience of awe and humility inspired by the Universe - growing more compelling the more you learn about the Universe. As the Island of Knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of the unknown. At the time, I felt this compatible with a career in the professional clergy. I was also taken up with the language and mythology of the evangelicals, who stressed a "personal relationship with Jesus". To me, at the time, this meant bringing my personal affairs into line with what we imagined to be a personal, daily relationship with Jesus. My MENSA friends were not at all interested in the fact that education of the professional clergy is mainly about understanding the myth as myth. They imagined themselves as uniquely able to spot the logical inconsistencies in the "faith", which is an achievement akin to proving that Superman is not a real person and being proud of the insight.

In the long run (by my 30th birthday) I saw all this as a language -  a way of talking about life in a way that admitted you to a certain social circle. It was a point along a very long journey from the time someone told me about God (age 5) to the present day (age 71). I can still speak the language and appreciate the worldview, but it's all very much in the rearview mirror. My MENSA friends showed no interest in what I believed now or how I viewed my old ideas: only in competing with each other to attack what they imagined other idiots (not named or present) must believe. It was MENSA at its worst.

As it happens, my journey has taken me back to the old neighborhood in the last year. I wrote about the dismaying hollowness of a modern Christian Service here. This was made all the more unsettling because the young Minister was exactly at the point that I would have been at her age (early 30's), attempting to force what she really meant into the procrustean bed of "Christian" language.

I was also reminded of Spinosa's God through my project to read everything Damasio has written, including "Looking for Spinosa".

The fact is that none of this interested my MENSA chums, who don't seem to read or think very much. The previous hour of discussion had been devoted to Game of Thrones and Zombie movies.

What was it that had dragged me back to reconsider issues that had been buried for 40 years? Looking closely, I think it was an emotional shock - a sudden realization that there is something absolutely real and important but previously caught only out of the corner of my eye. The "Theology of Wonder" came roaring back.

I tripped over it quite accidentally when I considered the "proto-life" era. I quite vividly imagined the impressive complexity of the first known life form and the yawning gap - perhaps permanently mysterious - between physics and the simplest form of life. Not really an original insight, right? But it bothered me. It kept me awake for hours. It stayed with me as a new, important feature of reality. It's a bit like the Big Bang. I have no direct knowledge of the Big Bang, nor does it have the slightest impact on my life. Yet it is profoundly important to my worldview - always in the background. This is something the hardened skeptic has problems grasping: that "spiritual" insight can come as much from the shocking realization of what you don't know as from what you suddenly do know.

This is not entirely unrelated to the long series of shocks that came in the last few years from my study of Zen. For example, I found that I had no idea what I meant by the word "self" or even the word "I". For me, at least, the "spiritual" attitude comes from "knowing" less and less about more an more - a fundamentally Zen concept. But I digress ...

Is it unreasonable for other, intelligent human beings to grasp these awesome mysteries and wrap them up into a feeling of humility and awe that is religious? Is it crazy to seek out a community that shares these feelings? Is it not the height of arrogance to assume that such people are reacting foolishly to not knowing answers to the ultimate questions? It is the conceit of the world-weary cynic to imagine that "religious" people think they have all the answers. It is not a fundamental error of logic to assume that although some religious proponents talk as if they have all the answers, that this is typical or even universal of the "type". These are errors that are shocking to find in a group that prides itself in exceptional intelligence. To many in that room investigate the wonders of the Universe by devouring and endlessly discussing Game of Thrones: leave the crazy speculation to the fools.

One particularly high-decibel genius defended the theory that the Universe is a simulation (the Matrix idea). He failed to see that this is logically equivalent to belief in God behind the scenes. The only difference is a modern "science fiction" gloss - something that a Scientologist would appreciate. "Believers" in the Matrix theory show exactly the unwillingness to discuss things like "proof" that we see in hardcore theists. The only difference is that the theists are also tarred with all the evils committed for thousands of years by people who believe in God. In my narrow experience, the Matrix idea is uniquely popular among people who are smart enough to be fooled by it. And people who watch too much TV.

These ultimate mysteries form a common ground for respectful dialogue between "religious" folks and the rest of us. There I also a broad common ground in our common acceptance of social justice - although the modern skeptic will loudly deny this has anything to do with our Christian traditions.

One "bumper sticker" sums up my personal "religion":

"Whatever this is, we're all in it together". 

When it comes to profound ignorance on deeply important matters, there is no "us and them".

Islam: The Way of Strangers - Graeme Wood

"Plenty of ... Islamic State recruits, like plenty of normal people, are dullards and goofballs, incapable of articulating the beliefs that rule their lives. At best they are proficient at parroting them, with the same brain shrinking effects apparent in Hare Kristna ... They know these things because they have been taught them, and not because they have crafted their ideologies or studied classical Arabic... [they] are easily lead"

Graeme Wood is no friend of Islam. But he went to amazing lengths to find any kind of logic in the world view of ISIS. More specifically, is there any light at all between what ISIS believes and those who claim Islam is a "religion of peace"? "The Way" is a long series of interviews with "true believers, ISIS "scholars" and the learned lights of Islam who claim that ISIS has somehow got it wrong in their interpretation of the supposedly infallible Koran and sayings of the Prophet.

It is a case study of how religion works and how dangerous it can become.

More Thoughts on Religion

This post builds on my view of the human condition presented here.

Is it possible to find yet another reason to turn away from religion, organized or not?

I think my initial, basic reason was the attraction of skepticism, which always seemed to me a necessary frame of mind for a scientist. I don't suppose I have ever been a "real" scientist, but they seemed to me to be the ones on the track of genuine insights about reality. This frame of mind goes all the way back to my earliest memories at about age 5.

More recently, I have despaired about the role of authority in religion. Surrender of one's own common sense and will to an authority seemed to be the core of religion and a special case of many of the problems that beset humanity in general.

After spending a year or so studying psychology, neuroscience and especially neuroanatomy, I have gained some confidence in my understanding of how the brain (and, by extension, humans) work. This lead me to yet another source of discomfort with religion. It's just wrong. This is more than rejections of the fantasies underlying religion (God, heaven and hell, the moral underpinnings of the universe, karma, reincarnation). It's about the nature of the "soul", which is assumed by all religions I know about but rarely explicitly discussed.

A close look at the structure of the human brain does not, of course, discover anything like a "soul" or a connection to a higher realm. What it does discover is a deep connection between humans, human bodies and the world we find ourselves inhabiting. It is therefore sensible to work with a world view that:

• Does not look for a "higher reality" but seeks meaning in relationships, the human experience, and the "real world"
• Does not assume an immortal "soul", but assumes a rather ephemeral, ever changing "self" whose reality depends deeply on relationships with other "selves".

The Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity and Islam, place a heavy emphasis on the eternal soul - the idea that we will pack up everything that's important to us and migrate to a better world at death. Of course, this is all made worse by the untenable idea of God, but the core problem is a misconception of who we are. No amount of theological tinkering can fix this.

Buddhism makes a different error. Different schools of Buddhism differ in whether or not they regard the "self" as real. At most, they regard the atman to be "kinda" real.

But the goal of Buddhism seems to be to separate the believer from the world - at least as much as possible. This runs counter to the way the brain is constructed. It's like rigorous training to avoid walking. Buddha himself abandoned his wife and child to sit under a tree for months to find "enlightenment", which, it turns out, basically justified his decision to abandon the world. Interestingly, in the long run, he gave in to his need for human contact by establishing bands of panhandlers who had, like him, abandoned the world except for depending on regular folks to feed them.

It's only by acceptance of authority, generation after generation, that such absurdities can take root. Fundamentally, humans are always perfectly aware of their real nature. They live in a constant state of "double think". Knowing the truth, knowing the dogma and somehow believing both at the same time.

The Birth of Soul

The "soul" is perhaps the poster child example of a "meme". What is essentially "us" survives death. Stripped to its fundamentals, this is the idea that the "mind" exists in some kind of parallel universe, independent of the physical world we all inhabit on a daily basis.

Modern versions of this idea set aside the parallel universe and assume that we can somehow "upload" ourselves into computers. This preposterous idea flies in the face of anything we know about the brain, but it has roots in the ancient lore of the soul. We just can't let go of the idea that we are ghosts that can be somehow set free.

"Idealism" takes the view that we can know only the world of the mind - indeed reality itself is the illusion. This is simply another variant of the concept that mind and world are fundamentally disconnected.

Where did this idea come from?

I think there is a simple answer. Imagine yourself to be a hunter-gatherer way back tens of thousands of years ago. Somebody dies. What do you make of this? What do you think has happened? Reasoning as humans do, you look for something similar. The only similar state of affairs that would occur to you is sleep. The person must be asleep but can't wake up. You know from personal experience that, during sleep, you dream. You do all kinds of normal things in your dreams, like hunt and avoid dangerous animals. You do strange things too, like fly and talk with the dead. It is perfectly logical to assume that your dead companion is dreaming but can't wake up. In fact, he is stuck in an alternate universe - a "dream world". From time to time, you may even visit this person in the dream world and chat with him. Conclusion: the essential nature of the person survives and does not depend on the physical body. Everyone has a "soul".

This is all very logical and not, as some would claim, "superstitious". It is not, as many assume, simply the result of wishful thinking or denial of mortality. It was a good theory based on a available evidence.

Over thousands of years and hundreds of civilizations, this meme has morphed into a myriad of religions, all based on the fundamental assumption that death is like sleep and we go on after death to live in a realm eventually populated by dead people and gods. Eventually, the oldest profession (the priesthood) arose, providing a living for those who claim to have special knowledge of he alternate universe and a unique ability to communicate with the spirits who inhabit that world. By the time we arrive in historical times, religions have become competing unwieldy tangles of mythology and guesswork. People are willing to kill over the precise details of religious theories. It's good to remember the assumption they all make: the existence of the soul. Imagine a world where all of a sudden people stopped believing in the "soul". To cite just one example, Islam would vanish like a popped party balloon. The attitude we characterize as "extremism" absolutely depends on belief in the immortal soul.

Even the minority of us who reject the idea of the immortal soul are still stuck with the idea that the "mind" (the modern word for soul) is a rather small, personal thing, rattling around in our brains. Our "mind" is something that mysteriously arises in the brain. Something to do with "consciousness". But this is just the soul stripped of its immortal qualities and trapped in our heads.

Many of the posts in this blog and the sister blog "Programmable Ape" explore the idea that "mind" is only partly a private thing. For example, you cannot understand the "mind" of any person without taking into the account language of his "inner voice" or the "programming" provided by his culture. It's also true that one evolutionary purpose of the mind is to accurately model the real world [1]. While it is true that this model is imperfect, it must also be admitted that the "real word" plays a large part it our experience - the "contents" of our minds. It almost seems that we don't learn a lot of useful information about "mind" from the fact that we seem to need a brain to have a mind. This is why we have entire branches of Science devoted to the study of how minds work in general without any specific reference to how the brain works. On the other hand, we see a million papers published every year in neuroscience but few that shed any light on how the mind actually works and none that tell us why it feels the way it does to have a mind (or does it feel this way to have a part of a mind?)

I conclude that we need to seek analogies and models for the mind that don't rely on the "trapped soul" metaphor. The mind is not an "epiphenomenon" arising out of  the complex neural structure of the brain, nor are our minds some kind of ultra-sophisticated computer. While it is far from the whole story, we can start by imagining the mind to be an active subset of the incredibly subtle and powerful "software" of human language [2]. If we imagine a brain that lacks this capability, we wind up with brains that lacks language - the brains possessed by the rest of the animal kingdom. The vast gap between the mind of a human and the smartest non-human animal gives a hint of the importance of this single capability. The example of language hints at the fact that "mind" is something shared among many humans and ultimately bound to the universe humans inhabit (what language is about). This is very far from the "dream world" theory of the mind. If there is to be an "alternate universe", it must be the world of the mind itself, which we all understand (in non-mystical terms) to differ from the "real world" in specific ways revealed in laboratory experiments and everyday experience. If we reject idealism, we must accept that both realms (mind and the real world) are real and in intimate communication with each other. Neither is "imaginary".

This view of "mind" also takes us away from the fashionable assumption that the mind is somehow identical to the brain. No amount of billion-dollar brain initiatives will uncover the secrets of the mind. The mind is not to be discovered in a "wiring diagram" (the "connectome"). It is more likely to be discovered in studies that reveal he structure of language, human society and reality itself. The brain is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of "mind", although in humans, it seems to be necessary but not sufficient. Accordingly, the wiring diagram of the human brain will not tell us much about what mind is.

In parallel to our efforts to re-imagine the "mind", it makes sense to reconsider what we mean by "self". How are these two ideas related? Modern psychology and experimental philosophy is teaching us a lot about the "self". For example, we learn that our sense of continuity with the past is very fallible (which is not the same thing as an "illusion"). We learn that our concept of free will is elusive in the laboratory.  We learn that "personality" depends as much on context as on some innate attribute of the soul. In general, the "self" is subject to exploration from the "outside". In fact a case may be made for the view that the "self" is the way we explain our behavior to others and even to "ourselves". Behind all this data gathering is the unstated question: What is it like to be X? What is i like to be me? That is a question that endlessly fascinates us and drives many forms of art. In all our investigations, we find that the "self", like the "mind"often seems like a small wave in a vast ocean of real people in the real world.

It is difficult to accept the Zen contention that the self is an illusion. It is illusive, dynamic and ephemeral, but this does not make it "unreal". It is, in fact, the mysterious foundation of all experience.

[1] It is always dangerous to assume that evolution has a "purpose". To me, such claims don't pass the sniff test. It is equally possible that the primary job of the mind is to support society by, for example, supporting face recognition and fidelity of communication.

[2] While we use the term "language" for the way we instruct computers, computer languages differ from human languages in many respects, the most important being that a speaker of a human language knows (or thinks he knows) what he is talking about.  Computers don't "know" the information they manipulate any more than a car knows about internal combustion.

Alien Invasion

In Alien 1979, we were introduced to a creature that invades its host and connects itself so deeply to the host's internal organs that removal of the invader will kill the victim.

When religion is installed in the mind of a baby and left to grow for years, disentanglement seems close to psychological suicide. The human "self" is so entangled with the invader that survival without the resident alien seems impossible. In fact, the invader has become the "self".

The alien egg is planted soon after birth. The victim is raised in a deeply religious household that is itself part of a religious culture. Inside the bubble, the fantasy is daily reality. This is particularly insidious for women, who may find themselves mothers in their early teens, saddled with caring for (and infecting) families of their own long before they develop brains that are capable of "pushing back" against bubble-think. Religion tends to be "hard wired" into generations of women, who form the cultural back bone of religious culture, even if it seems that men play the dominant role in such cultures. Religion is built in to the rituals of daily life from morning to night, day to day, month to month and birth to death.

The idea of God is inherently an insult to reason, but inside the bubble this tension is twisted into a never-ending state of emergency in the real world. The believer puts aside the question of how an all-powerful, just and loving God could create such an awful world. The "solution" to this paradox would seem simple outside the bubble: there is simply no God, at least not in the literal sense. But inside the bubble, the "solution" is in terms of "us and them", personal sinfulness, the threat of ostracism and eternal damnation. The concept of a loving God is turned into an ever-present threat, especially for those who would think for themselves or ask impertinent questions. The occasional beating or witch burning ensures that all this is real, physical and terrifying on a daily basis.

Inside the bubble, the natural human desire to be loved and accepted is made conditional. As soon as the toddler starts to talk, she is taught not to ask questions. She quickly learns how to find the carrots and fear the sticks.

If, by some circumstance, she is ripped out of the bubble and dropped into the world at large, she carries with her so much trauma that it is virtually impossible to even form the right questions or realize that she has taken the bubble with her. She wears a kind of space suit that isolates her from the way people think in the world outside.

• For her, God must exist and, for her, He does. He has a voice inside her head and holds a filter before her eyes that makes Him seem to be present in every moment. Challenging God as an "idea" makes no sense to her - it would be like doubting her own existence.
• In fact, her self image is irrevocably distorted. Her religion has taught her that she is an immortal soul. It is impossible for her to challenge what she means by some of the first words she learned: "I" and "me".
• Her education has taught her that the universe itself is governed by ethical principles. Therefore, all the terrible things in the world "should not", in some sense, be happening. They are unfair, unjust. Doubting God doesn't fix this, and without God (she has been taught) the world would be even more terrible and beyond salvation (whatever that means).
• She has long been taught that everything that happens is part of the drama with God pulling the strings. Her own sinfulness (part of her DNA) is part of the reason things are so horrible. Things don't "just happen". They happen for a reason - part of a cosmic drama with a beginning, an end, good guys and bad guys. She is part of the drama, constantly challenged to ask, What can I do? Why is this happening?
• She has been inoculated at a young age to regard other religions as false, evil and dangerous. Outside the bubble she is suddenly surrounded with people who have other beliefs. It is literally impossible for her to ask why she is suddenly alone among people who share few if any of her core beliefs. She is too terrified and isolated to challenge her world view as an idea. To her, it's just real. While she may be deeply troubled by her beliefs, she is unable to ask, Is my own religion false, evil and dangerous?

Learning to survive in a Godless world is to be forced to learn a new language at a late age. You can learn to speak like a native, but with a heavy accent. In the new language, words like "God" and "justice" and even "should" don't mean the same to you as they do to everyone else. For you, God is not an idea. He is somebody real that you left back home. Somebody who is still out to get you. "Hell" is not a four-letter word. It is a place waiting for you.

A central idea of this blog is that our "inner voice" is essentially a "virtual machine" - a proxy for the culture at large. Our "minds" belong to that culture, speak for that culture in the language of that culture. Therefore, when we debate with the true believer, we debate with her culture - she speaks for it. In some sense, in that conversation, she is the religion you are attempting to "un-install".

The metaphor of a language learned too late in life applies when we encounter people crippled by a life-long exposure to deep religious culture. You need to speak about things that have shared meaning - real things in the practical world. It is unkind and perhaps dangerous to attempt to "rescue" such a person from what you regard as a world of myth and illusion. We are all trapped in such a world. For all of us, the way our world view fits reality can be uncomfortable at some times and utterly wrong at others.  Do we really have an alternative that can replace the appeal of religion on every level?  It's not just about "ideas" but the need to completely re-invent the self and learn to talk all over again from scratch. Religions use the metaphor of "rebirth" as a door in to the faith. It applies equally to the door out.

I was raised in a "Christian" culture (hence the title for the blog) but was always expected to "make up my own mind" - in other words, I was also raised a skeptic. It was easy for me to treat religious ideas as theories to be accepted or set aside based on evidence, consistency or simple usefulness. There was never a time when a single version of Christianity dominated my world. I must accept that I have no idea what it would be like to be raised in a bubble. I can clearly see the damage that does, but, lacking any "cure" for the psychic disease, I can't go around bursting bubbles.