Agnostics and Atheists - A Psychological Examination....

The logical progression that allows the human intellect to go from point A to point B in that situation just plain doesn't exist.

It's called abstraction. It's a basic cognitive skill that humans have.

For example, imaginary friends. Children do that "incredibly creative feat" quite readily. It seems to be a spontaneous reinvention, and so perhaps the expression of an innate ability meeting an innate need.

I am unsure what it has to do with "logic." It is a performance. Also, other animals can perform abstraction, too.

A cat appearing to chase hallucinations...this somehow equates to the development in a belief if non-corporeal intelligent life within the human mind?

Equates? Meh, but apparently dude's cat hasn't heard that she cannot go from from point A (mice with bodies are fun to chase) to point B (mice without bodies may be nearly as much fun to chase). Maybe she can, because she doesn't waste time thinking it should be a syntactical reasoning process (what logic is) rather than a semantic one (what abstraction often is, meaning extraction).

Of course, I share your scepticism that human beings have more than a tiny fraction of the cognitive powers of a house cat. But there's proof of concept here, surely.

BTW, what makes mice fun to chase, even when you don't catch them? Could it be that the mice show inteliigence (for example, they often run away from the cat and rarely run towards the cat; that sounds like intelligence to me). Intelligences with bodies to intelligences without bodies, right there on the living room rug.

I can acknowledge that, but the indications certainly are that no other animal on this planet shapes its daily life around the existence of non-corporeal beings as a pervasive definition of itself as a species.

What species does? Not humans surely. I am a human, and I don't define humans around the existence of non-corporeal beings, nor shape my own life around them.

What on earth could have allowed that to occur if the non-corporeal realm does not actually exist?

You do realize that you have simply restated a version of the Ontological Argument. Discredited Ontological Argument would be a searchable term.

Originally posted by eight bits

The logical progression that allows the human intellect to go from point A to point B in that situation just plain doesn't exist.

It's called abstraction. It's a basic cognitive skill that humans have.

For example, imaginary friends. Children do that "incredibly creative feat" quite readily. It seems to be a spontaneous reinvention, and so perhaps the expression of an innate ability meeting an innate need.

I am unsure what it has to do with "logic." It is a performance. Also, other animals can perform abstraction, too.

Oh good. Someone brought this up.

Okay, this may end up being a bit complicated, but I trust that you'll be up to the challenge, so I won't worry about your ability to stay with me.

There is one way that any animal on this planet shows up ready to do what it is that it does. That way that it "prepares" for its role on this planet as what it is, is DNA. That DNA is information that is embedded within each and every cell of its body. There's a lot of information in each double helix strand, and scientists have been working hard to fully understand the entire breadth of impact that DNA has on animals, including the animal that you are - the human being.

They know that DNA traits are contributed - we'll focus on humans here to save word count - by combining parental DNA, but as far as how long term behavioral constants affect DNA information within any species' overall base profile, the best anyone can do is suggest that evolutionary changes affect that sort of thing, and I tend to believe that's true.

Now, the human being seems to have experienced evolutionary changes within recorded history that can be noted when you examine the impact on the human physiology that is highlighted by the 4 major blood types. The dynamic nature of the human being's adaptation to its own growth in numbers and global dominance can be seen as having rushed most of that evolution, with the O Type blood group being added to by the A and B types within only a few thousand years of advancing levels of civilization. Of course, as researchers will tell you, the blood type is only the indicator of changes between these human sub-groups that are much more profound, including changes in nervous system and digestive system, as advanced by Dr. Peter D'Adamo in recent years. This fact of evolutionary adjustments - occurring rapidly within the human species as a result of cultural changes - suggests that such cultural changes definitely do affect the DNA information structure of the human being in ways that are obvious (the blood type sub-groupings) and reasonably in ways that are not so obvious (the notion of "inherited predilection" at the instinctive level).

Your examples involved young children and cats. Researchers of human intellect suggest that the human personality begins its development in children between ages 3 and 5, and that it's not an immediate emergence, but rather a very slow build from its initial presence as a forming and therefore ancillary contributor to the child's overall behavior suite. Of course, the cat doesn't possess intellect, so it acts and reacts under the management of its DNA window of influence - the general parameters of what it means to be a cat and act like a cat. In a sense, you've used two instinct-driven animals to make your point.

I'm going to make the point that instinct - for the human animal - is the basic starter package, and that most human animals overcome that basic starter package as they grow in stature and experience. The human intellect eventually overtakes the DNA and things like imaginary friends fade into the past for most of them. So what am I suggesting? If widespread cultural impacts - like large centers of population - can affect the information contained within DNA (that one impact directly caused the shift in physiology that is indicated by the A blood type's emergence), then wide spread cultural impacts like beliefs that have been fully embraced can certainly affect the behavior-related information with human DNA, since human beings are more affected by social and intellectual changes that other creatures.

That means that the little girl with the imaginary friend is more than likely being affected by the instinctive embrace of that belief and emotional association to the unseen companion entity that thousands of years of humanity have also embraced, passing that predilection down to her via her species' DNA information base code. Information is information and impact on the species of that information manifests in both physiology and unlearned behavior. The little girl is still being largely managed by her inherited traits until she gets old enough to become a unique person. Not surprising that she'd mimic her ancestors like that.

The bottom line here is that the little girl inherited her ability to imagine and accept the existence of her unseen companion from the thousands of years of human beings that preceded her. As she gets older and can choose her own beliefs, she can reject that belief, but it will never become a notion impossible for her to imagine - as is the case with all other human beings on this planet. Unacceptable maybe, but not impossible to imagine. Once it became fully embraced by thousands of years of humanity, it would never be impossible to imagine for any future human beings.

Thing is, the initial notion had to start somewhere, and with one human - well, unless it wasn't invented at all, but that's not the premise that we're dealing with here.

I think that's enough to make the point.

reply to post by NorEaster


Flawed premise brings flawed results. I was attempting to show just how your premise is flawed but if you don't want to hear it that's fine. Good day sir and I leave you to the presumptory frey against your mirror image. But perhaps you should avoid naming those your enemy who are not.

Originally posted by NorEaster
So what am I suggesting? If widespread cultural impacts - like large centers of population - can affect the information contained within DNA (that one impact directly caused the shift in physiology that is indicated by the A blood type's emergence), then wide spread cultural impacts like beliefs that have been fully embraced can certainly affect the behavior-related information with human DNA

...paragraph after needless paragraph (you're not teaching 5th grade science), to say that thousands upon thousands of years of believing in fantasy has produced idiots...

Originally posted by NorEaster
since human beings are more affected by social and intellectual changes that other creatures.

...thats not true...

Okay, this may end up being a bit complicated, but I trust that you'll be up to the challenge, so I won't worry about your ability to stay with me.

Lol, dude. Wow me first, then patronize me.

The human intellect eventually overtakes the DNA and things like imaginary friends fade into the past for most of them.

Fascinating, but your claim was that some extraordinary creative leap was required to come up with the idea of intelligences without bodies.

While you don't believe that a cat can do the required abstraction, you did acknowledge that an adult human watching the cat might think that the cat is "hunting imaginary mice." So, the idea is then and forever after in that adult's head. It really doesn't matter whether or not the adult's idea is an accurate description of the cat's behavior, the principle has been discerned, and can be applied to other things.

BTW, part of my thinking based on the belief that the cat is chasing invisible mice is to appreciate that it is adaptive behavior for the cat. The cat is practicing (or so I believe, again, it is irrelevant whether or not I am correct about the cat). So, I not only have the idea of "invisible animated things" but the further idea that they may be good for something, like target practice.

Similarly, you doubt that children can do the abstraction, but the adult who sees a child interacting with an imaginary friend can think similarly to the adult seeing a cat interact with imaginary prey. In fact, you're talking to an adult right now who has seen both phenomena, and has "connected the dots." Having two real-life observed instances would reinforce the notion that "intelligences without bodies" were a possibility.

Social interaction for a human is a lot like solitary hunting for a cat. It is adaptive, and something that vicarious practice may improve. (There is a Woody Allen joke about that in his movie Love and Death.

Q: Why are you such a great lover?

A: I practice a lot when I am alone.)

And, of course, some children don't give up their imaginary friends (or, as in real friendships, they acquire new friends and discard old ones as they grow up, but the "institution" of imaginary friendship persists... see also Woody Allen's comment above). It only takes one adult doing it, and other adults seeing that intelligences without bodies are a serviceable idea, and the Great Mystery of NorEaster is explained.

As I said, you're trying to pitch a variant of the discredited ontological argument. No amount of lipstick on that pig is going to help.

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Originally posted by eight bits

The human intellect eventually overtakes the DNA and things like imaginary friends fade into the past for most of them.

Fascinating, but your claim was that some extraordinary creative leap was required to come up with the idea of intelligences without bodies.

To come up with the original idea...yeah, I am claiming that. It's completely counterintuitive to the corporeal brain to invent a noncorporeal version of itself. Not the version creation, but the notion of anything at all existing as present but noncorporeal. The dichotomy is a lot more extreme than you realize.

After thousands of years of evolutionary impact of everyone having accepted that dichotomy as fact, not such a cognitive leap at all. By then, the belief itself is encoded in the DNA. That's just how DNA works as it relates to instinctive behavior and what all animals inherit to help them survive. Ways of thinking and responding to the business of being alive. DNA supplies that. It doesn't make a distinction between survival instruction and deeply ingrained belief instruction. Not when it involves a species as obviously belief-centric as the human being, and certainly not when a belief is widely considered to be key to afterlife survival - a survival concern that only human beings seem to have developed.

While you don't believe that a cat can do the required abstraction, you did acknowledge that an adult human watching the cat might think that the cat is "hunting imaginary mice." So, the idea is then and forever after in that adult's head. It really doesn't matter whether or not the adult's idea is an accurate description of the cat's behavior, the principle has been discerned, and can be applied to other things.

BTW, part of my thinking based on the belief that the cat is chasing invisible mice is to appreciate that it is adaptive behavior for the cat. The cat is practicing (or so I believe, again, it is irrelevant whether or not I am correct about the cat). So, I not only have the idea of "invisible animated things" but the further idea that they may be good for something, like target practice.

Cats chase laser light dots. Go ahead and check out the dozens of YouTube video clips of cats chasing laser light dots. They chase anything that moves. They don't need it to be a mouse. They don't need it to be anything but movement. That movement - for a cat - can be any internally generated hallucination. A pinpoint of light projected in front of it by a hereditary glitch in the brain that may (or may not) be a survival mechanism to ensure that the cat never takes a day off from "hunting" - even (or especially) domesticated housecats.

You think it's intellectual abstraction, and I think it's a hereditary developmental reaction to the domestication of a predator species that has emerged to ensure that each cat never wanders too far away from its predatory roots. Which explanation do you think scientists will see as more likely? Keep in mind that all cats do this, and that each cat has its "crazy time" within the span of a 24 hour period, when it usually loses it like this and "sees things". Any cat owner will tell you that their cat has that usual time of day when it "trips" for about a half hour. Survival instinct kicking in and making sure it can make due on its own without humans feeding it.

Similarly, you doubt that children can do the abstraction, but the adult who sees a child interacting with an imaginary friend can think similarly to the adult seeing a cat interact with imaginary prey. In fact, you're talking to an adult right now who has seen both phenomena, and has "connected the dots." Having two real-life observed instances would reinforce the notion that "intelligences without bodies" were a possibility.

Children are mimicking inherited knowns that are provided by their DNA. No one told them that an invisible playmate is there. I know this because my daughter had her own invisible playmate and we never taught her to imagine such a thing. So either the invisible playmate was there, or she was instinctively capable of inventing that invisible playmate. Which is it?

If young children are instinctively capable of inventing that playmate, then that capacity is encoded in the DNA. That's how instinct works. If it is in their DNA, then it got there somehow, and you refuse to allow for the fact that it got there. You seem to be like most people who assume that human beings emerged whole and maturely formed in both physical and intellectual development from who-knows-where. That's just not possible.

Babies are born knowing how to cry. They know how to grasp. They know how to use their mouths to draw milk from their mother's breast. As their brains "turn on" more and more, they display more instinctive programming. They seek out faces, they instinctively bond in an emotional manner to other humans. No one needs to teach them how to bond like that, even though it involves some pretty complex intellectual associations. The DNA makes sure that the baby's brain already realizes how important it is to its own survival to bond with human beings.

Not all DNA encoded information is equally primitive. A small child, somehow transported from the Middle Ages into a car in the year 2011, traveling down a freeway at 65 mph, would have a very different physical/emotional and psychological response to that velocity of movement than a 3rd world child from 2011, who's never been in a car traveling that fast, and has never actually seen a car in its whole life (as would also be the case with the child from the Middle Ages). The reason for this difference in visceral experience is the inherited (globally speaking) capacity to process information at a much faster speed without acute sensory overload. The child plucked from the Middle Ages would not possess DNA information that allows for that increase in processing speed, and the sensory assault of the landscape flying past the windows of the car would literally cripple that child's ability to deal with the experience.

Yes, this capacity to take in enormous amounts of stimulation is a survival adjustment for the 2011 child, but so is the belief in supernatural beings. At least for Earth's human race. Eternal survival, to be specific. Not that it really is (or isn't) necessary to believe in that sort of thing to actually survive eternally, but the overwhelming human consensus is that it is necessary, and that consensus concerning survival is what affects the DNA programming as the human species develops over millennia.

Social interaction for a human is a lot like solitary hunting for a cat. It is adaptive, and something that vicarious practice may improve. (There is a Woody Allen joke about that in his movie Love and Death.

Q: Why are you such a great lover?

A: I practice a lot when I am alone.)

You are referring to social strategies and high-level social functionality. That's like the difference between crawling and mountain climbing. No one teaches the baby how to crawl, but mountain climbing certainly doesn't come instinctively. Dating and procreative tactics are not provided by DNA. The need to develop a strategy of some sort is provided by the DNA, but the intellect is left on its own to develop the means of succeeding at what the DNA insists that it succeed at.

And, of course, some children don't give up their imaginary friends (or, as in real friendships, they acquire new friends and discard old ones as they grow up, but the "institution" of imaginary friendship persists... see also Woody Allen's comment above). It only takes one adult doing it, and other adults seeing that intelligences without bodies are a serviceable idea, and the Great Mystery of NorEaster is explained.

As I said, you're trying to pitch a variant of the discredited ontological argument. No amount of lipstick on that pig is going to help.
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edit on 28-1-2011 by eight bits because: imaginary keystrokes.

Look, no one expects you or anyone else to believe what they refuse to believe, and I sure as hell don't care what you believe. I've carefully presented my very specific reasons for dismissing your dismissal. If that's not good enough for you, then take it up with whomever you feel is authorized to declare you the winner and then go out and celebrate your victory.

My daughter never saw another kid with an imaginary friend - if there'd been another kid available to her at all, she wouldn't have needed her imaginary friend - so I don't know how your "serviceable" notion worked for her. If you honestly believe that DNA doesn't provide instruction to the creatures that possess it, then you're all alone on that island. If you think that DNA only provides structural data, then - again - you're all alone on your own little island. If you think that human DNA doesn't or can't provide belief-centric instruction, then you're not considering the nature of information or how it works in applications like DNA. But like I said, go find your authority and have him bless your win here and have a fun celebrating how brilliant you are.

In my experience of this exchange, you completely failed to make your point, but whatever. I'm still looking for a plausible explanation concerning how the very first human brain made the leap from projecting what it - itself - is, to imagining and embracing the existence of what it - itself - isn't, while assigning both definite presence to that thing and personality to it. So far, I don't see anyone with that explanation.

All I've seen is people who insist that such a first never occurred, which isn't an explanation at all. That's an intellectual surrender, and an attempt to impose that failure on everyone else. It's okay to fail. This is a tough question. But don't insist that everyone else fail just because you failed. That's worse than failing.

It's completely counterintuitive to the corporeal brain to invent a noncorporeal version of itself.

You think so, but I disagree for the reasons already stated.

There's no question of winning or losing. It's a discussion board.

Nice talking with you.

reply to post by NorEaster


I recently thought of something that is somewhat relevant here. In this age we refer to our celebrities as "stars." Now flash forward thousands of years (or backwards) and "stars" may or may not mean something else. Say that in the future everything is straight forward and stars just means the bright shining objects in the sky. The future people would then believe that all of our movies were acted out by the stars in the sky instead of our actors and actresses.

My point is this, long ago when things were not well understood, and kings and men were sometimes referred to as gods, maybe then it had a somewhat different meaning than we have now.

So, what do you think?

Originally posted by eight bits

It's completely counterintuitive to the corporeal brain to invent a noncorporeal version of itself.

You think so, but I disagree for the reasons already stated.

There's no question of winning or losing. It's a discussion board.

Nice talking with you.

I appreciated the chance to hash out that one issue. It sent me off into the books and I need that kind of inspiration at times. Thanks.

Originally posted by totalmetal
reply to post by NorEaster

 

I recently thought of something that is somewhat relevant here. In this age we refer to our celebrities as "stars." Now flash forward thousands of years (or backwards) and "stars" may or may not mean something else. Say that in the future everything is straight forward and stars just means the bright shining objects in the sky. The future people would then believe that all of our movies were acted out by the stars in the sky instead of our actors and actresses.

My point is this, long ago when things were not well understood, and kings and men were sometimes referred to as gods, maybe then it had a somewhat different meaning than we have now.

So, what do you think?

I totally believe this. We are inheritors of a lot of really valuable information that we need to take a new look at to see what it might actually indicate. I recently did an examination of the 5,000+ yr old myth (we think it's only 5,000 years old, but that's because it first showed up in 3,000 BCE Egyptian scrawls, but it's likely older) that 2,000 years ago evolved into the Story of Sophia. This was the last version of this perennial myth, and while each other version had its own distinct aspects and cast of characters, the basic plot line has been fairly consistent over the millennia.

Here's a link to the myth's Wikipedia page, in case you're curious.

en.wikipedia.org...(wisdom)

As you can tell in the link, Sophia is the Greek word for Wisdom - philosophia literally means "love of wisdom", and the base word for philosophy. In the myth, Sophia is a feminine archetype who, for various reasons (depending on the version) ends up in "the chaos" (the corporeal realm) and can't get back again. She thrashes and freaks out, and all that activity (in congress with innate capacity and inherent need to establish order - being the informational source that she is) results in the stuff we know of as the universe, planets, material existence and ultimately corporeal beings that are intelligent enough to have self awareness. The king of these corporeal beings is the Demiurge - and the latest version (Christian Gnostics) have labeled the Hebrew god Jehovah as being this Demiurge character. This beast thinks it's the god of heaven and earth, but in this myth, it's Sophia's offspring (due to her creation of the realm that it rules) and is ignorant of the fact that it's not.

The myth goes on to tell how she is rescued by the Holy Spirit and the Christ (manifested within the corporeal realm by the person of Jesus) and she gets back to The Fullness (their version of true heaven) after a fierce "truth battle" with the Demiurge and its corporeal henchmen, and all works out in the end.

I bring this up because over the last year, I wrote and published a book that lays out the logical examination of all the traditional notions, all the well-established empirical data from every field of examination as it pertains to this reality we all share, all the things that we know and have proven to exist and all the things that we believe (as a 2/3 majority of modern humanity) to exist, and ran the whole of it through a logical woodchipper to see what the results might look like. Basically, I walked in the front door, declared everyone right and then let a raw, disinterested logic grinder determine the stuff that survives.

Oh, and I allowed the ancient stuff "allegory status" if it could legitimately claim it (Biblical stuff and anything, like Reincarnation, that's a belief mainstay for significant percentages of humans on this planet), and applied a very rigid metaphoric formula that was developed years ago to deal with parables and allegorical references in books like the Bible. Whatever couldn't survive the logic/reality test was free to claim allegory status, but if it didn't survive logical scrutiny after being metaphorically translated, then it was ultimately discarded. Discarded, too, was anything that directly contradicted anything that logically survived all challenges. After all, I wanted to be completely fair and balanced with this death-cage match. If it could win a majority of buy-in from everything else that had already passed muster, then it could stay.

Then I took it all and examined what it told me about the human being and what it's doing as a self-aware anomaly in a reality that seems - for all intent and purpose - to be free of self awareness at any fundamental level. A tangible something did emerge and what I had left actually did make sense with everything that we know about that sits right in front of us to the degree that we feel free to take it for granted and build upon it. It was pretty remarkable, mundane in one sense and amazingly elegant in another.

Months after publishing, as I was investigating debate points concerning the perennial nature of the Jesus narrative, I happened across this Sophia Myth, which was a primary staple of the Mediterranean Mystery Religion culture during the initial launch of the Christian Religion. Yes, I was pretty surprised that I'd missed this, but then I'd assumed that the Greco-Roman Mythology suite's legitimacy would be dead on arrival, and didn't feel like wasting my time with it or anything directly associated with it - my mistake, even though it definitely doesn't affect the final results of my examination, as you'll see.

I couldn't believe how closely this one myth aligned (using that same metaphoric formula that I'd used in my larger examination) with the primary structure of what my own reveal calls "The Process" - the principle reason for this entire contextual environment's existence. Not the reason for the whole of reality, of course, but just the reason for this specific environment that contains our own universe, the other universes that exist alongside it and however many dimensions are physically associable with these universes as well as our own.

The main point of this account here is that someone - somewhere, and at some point in human history - might possibly have stumbled over the exact information that I did, and preserved it (as they did in those days) within the form of an allegory that the enlightened among them knew to view as an allegory, and not a true account of some drama that actually happened. Of course, the average uneducated person simply believed the myth and it explained things for them to whatever extent it did.

The Sophia Myth might've endured a wide range of sub-plot additions and character reevaluations, but the basic story is where the important information exists. And it's in that basic story where I can line the pivotal characters and the basic plot right up with the technical aspects of the logic structure that I developed. That structure that dovetails nicely with what we already know about elemental existence, physics, logic and the unexplainable conviction that human beings have always had about themselves and their unique place in reality.

So yeah, I definitely agree with you about ancient people and how we need to approach what they believed differently that how they approached it. They were working with the information they had at the time, and some of the stuff they embraced was embraced as deliberately preserved information.

Originally posted by eight bits

It's completely counterintuitive to the corporeal brain to invent a noncorporeal version of itself.

You think so, but I disagree for the reasons already stated.

There's no question of winning or losing. It's a discussion board.

Nice talking with you.

Thanks eight bits - - - that's kind of the way I feel.

I've been following this from the beginning - - - and still don't get what's going on here.

I mean - - - does the OP have a belief and want everyone to figure out what it is? Or what?

Something is just not "clicking" on this thread.

Originally posted by Annee

Originally posted by eight bits

It's completely counterintuitive to the corporeal brain to invent a noncorporeal version of itself.

You think so, but I disagree for the reasons already stated.

There's no question of winning or losing. It's a discussion board.

Nice talking with you.

Thanks eight bits - - - that's kind of the way I feel.

I've been following this from the beginning - - - and still don't get what's going on here.

I mean - - - does the OP have a belief and want everyone to figure out what it is? Or what?

Something is just not "clicking" on this thread.

The premise is that at some point, a human being invented the concept of non-corporeal existence and did so out of whole cloth. I didn't say I believe that, but that is the premise. I am asking how this could be possible. No one has even bothered to offer a notion other than the notion that the premise itself is flawed. I've been reduced to defending that notion again and again. Yes....you're right. Something isn't "clicking" here.

In this thread, I clearly established the parameters of the examination, and invited folks to work out the thorny issue of how the first human being could have embraced what seems like a very counterintuitive notion - an intelligent being that cannot be perceived in any manner whatsoever (because it doesn't really exist) - to the degree that it became real to that person and became something that other human beings also accepted as real. The parameters of this examination are very, very simple, and they were based on the very well known point of view of a large percentage of atheistic and agnostic people - that the human being invented all of this stuff out of whole cloth and that there is no other realm that contains intelligent forms of life, be they spirits, aliens, gods, angels, demons, multi-dimensional whatevers, or any version of whatever has ever been suggested.

I simply wanted to see if anyone has a plausible idea concerning how it is possible that a 5-sense corporeal being - regardless of what's happened to that being's capacity for imagination since that invention of invisible people and whatever else humans have invented since then - could spontaneously create such a concept, since there is (or seems to be) absolutely no intellectual linkage between what the corporeal, 5-sense beings can possibly experience and the existence of what can't be perceived at all (because it doesn't even exist) by that corporeal being.

And, all I've gotten so far is one person who suggested that humans (and cats, apparently) are simple born with the ability to invent such beings, which to me was a dismissal of the premise since nothing emerges with such a distinct and sophisticated capacity without there having been a version of itself without that capacity (evolutionarily speaking). Atheists and agnostics - and others who firmly reject the idea of non-corporeal existence - should appreciate the idea of acquired capacity via evolutionary development. I certainly need to understand the linkage.

My belief is that I am not sure that spontaneous acquisition of a belief in or a capacity to imagine non-corporeal existence by the primitive corporeal human mind is possible. If this impossibility (due to the requirement of definite intellectual linkage to allow for such an otherwise disconnected notion to initiate) does end up being true, then we have to suspect that there was an event that instructed that first human in the notion of non-corporeal existence, and how to apply that notion to reality as it understood it to exist. I can't suggest what that instructive event could have been, but it would - if logically proven to have been necessary - certainly change the debate over the fundamental nature of reality. Not reality itself, but certainly the debate between those who believe in non-corporeal existence and those who see it as superstitious rubbish.

So, this is what is going on here. We're seeing whether we can establish a baseline of some sort. Reality-wise.

So far, no success, but like I said, I'm hopeful that someone will really take this thing on and I'll be here to peer review and help with the natural selection process. Frankly, I can't debunk the idea of a non-corporeal realm, and it's because of this one difficult issue that I can't. Maybe one of you folks can, and if you can, then I want you to succeed here.

I'm thinking a primitive man went on a hunting trip because he needed to provide for his family. He falls into a crevase on the mountain side being trapped for a few days. In that time he had bumped his head and had a vision of the moon overhead being the face of his significant other. Speaking to him and urging him on in his daily survival. He follows the trail of the sun and it reminds him of his father leading him home from hunts long ago.

Long story short he finally makes it home tells his fantastic hallucinations to his other. She believes him but the story is scewed. She tells the rest of the tribe that primitive man had seen a god/godess/spirit of the dead. Rest of the tribe worships him and he no longer has to hunt. He now has to come up with more elaborate stories to satisfy the tribes curiousness.

Watch the movie cast away with tom hanks.

Originally posted by Stalker619
I'm thinking a primitive man went on a hunting trip because he needed to provide for his family. He falls into a crevase on the mountain side being trapped for a few days. In that time he had bumped his head and had a vision of the moon overhead being the face of his significant other. Speaking to him and urging him on in his daily survival. He follows the trail of the sun and it reminds him of his father leading him home from hunts long ago.

Long story short he finally makes it home tells his fantastic hallucinations to his other. She believes him but the story is scewed. She tells the rest of the tribe that primitive man had seen a god/godess/spirit of the dead. Rest of the tribe worships him and he no longer has to hunt. He now has to come up with more elaborate stories to satisfy the tribes curiousness.

Watch the movie cast away with tom hanks.

I see. Well, that certainly doesn't need to be examined for accuracy. You've got the whole story mapped right out. Of course he (whoever this guy was) fell down a crevase and bumped his head. And of course, when he did he saw the moon and it looked like his wife/girlfriend/boyfriend whatever, and of course, that answers everything, because now he knows that invisible people exist. Because the moon looked like his girlfriend.

Why couldn't I see that? The moon looks like someone after a head injury, so the mind invents people that can't be seen or heard or perceived in any manner. The linkage is so obvious.

Christ. Y'know, the other board is kicking you guy's nuts on this one. I really had hopes for you, too.

[shakes head and frowns]

reply to post by NorEaster
Very well thought out argument, however one can make such an argument and substitute non-corporeal entity (or the implication I would expect of what non-corporeal entity suggest, a supreme being), with any invention of a being that is non-existent. Bigfoot, the lochness monster, monsters, et al. Our brains are canalized, but they aren't perfect. We react to what we sense, not always being rational because we can't afford to be. In being attacked by a tiger, one doesn't stand and calculate his odds of surviving in different scenarios based on the velocity and weight of the tiger and the configuration of the surrounding terrain, one runs the other way. Reacting in order to survive.

In this same mode of thought arises superstition. Elements of superstition are prevalent across the animal kingdom, not only in humans. An early human desperate for rain fall may find a connection between the animals he kills, and rain, obviously a coincidence, but with no understanding of the nature of random events, cause and effect manifests itself. If I kill this kind of animal, it will rain, because that's what happened last time. Certainly from there attributing this relationship to another conscious but unseen entity is to be expected. Thence forth it becomes sort of a runaway process.

Desperation, superstition, and reaction

Originally posted by uva3021
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Very well thought out argument, however one can make such an argument and substitute non-corporeal entity (or the implication I would expect of what non-corporeal entity suggest, a supreme being), with any invention of a being that is non-existent. Bigfoot, the lochness monster, monsters, et al. Our brains are canalized, but they aren't perfect. We react to what we sense, not always being rational because we can't afford to be. In being attacked by a tiger, one doesn't stand and calculate his odds of surviving in different scenarios based on the velocity and weight of the tiger and the configuration of the surrounding terrain, one runs the other way. Reacting in order to survive.

The difference is in intellectual linkage. Big Foot is just a hairy ape-guy. The intellectual linkage is obvious. Same with the Loch Ness Monster. The linkage is clear, since things that are big and scary do swim in the open waters. Not much of a stretch to invent a bigger, scarier thing swimming in the open waters. The invisible intelligent thing has no clear linkage between it and what we know to be real in the corporeal realm. Even wind - while invisible - is not imperceptible to the corporeal senses. It does exist to us and directly affects everything we can see, If the non-corporeal real is an invention, then it doesn't affect anything we can perceive, and is also imperceptible. What would be the reason for its initial emergence within a mind that has never conceived of it before? I'm not sure there is a reason why it would ever emerge within that mind. Not if it doesn't exist, anyway. If it doesn't exist, then there's nothing similar to it for the human mind to link it to, or to link to it from. That linkage has to exist and does with every other original notion.

In this same mode of thought arises superstition. Elements of superstition are prevalent across the animal kingdom, not only in humans. An early human desperate for rain fall may find a connection between the animals he kills, and rain, obviously a coincidence, but with no understanding of the nature of random events, cause and effect manifests itself. If I kill this kind of animal, it will rain, because that's what happened last time. Certainly from there attributing this relationship to another conscious but unseen entity is to be expected. Thence forth it becomes sort of a runaway process.

Desperation, superstition, and reaction

Superstition that were associated with known elements of nature or were the result of perceived associations related to incidents that were experienced is perfectly understandable, but that's not what I'm examining here. What I'm examining is how the imperceptible ever got lumped in with the stuff that superstitious people were already blaming for things going the way they go. Like I said, a volcano is easy to link a superstition to. So is the sun. Those things definitely exist and were major aspects within the lives of those people. Lions or tigers, the linkage is clear. These are powerful predators, and ancient people would've tried to figure out how to appease them for the sake of their own survival. How did the invisible, nonexistent, imperceptible realm get "perceived" by someone, and when it did (given that in this examination, such a realm doesn't actually exist at all) how did it end up being so acceptable a fact of rnormal eality that it was able to eventually trump everything else that was so much more obviously and immediately dominant within the perceivable realm of the ancient human mind?

The question is deceptively difficult, but if the noncorporeal realm truly doesn't exist, then the answer to this question must exist in a logical sense of being reasonable and plausible. If that answer doesn't exist, then maybe we need to think about why it doesn't exist.

reply to post by NorEaster

I previously mentioned the 'bicameral mind'.
I'm sure you must have heard of Julian Jaynes theory.
Is it not at least one possibility?
To quote one of your own quotes, which may be relevant
"In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God"

Or even...
Ancient religions for the most part involve some degree of astronomy.
A one off inexplicable event could easily give birth to the idea of a non corporeal god.
Something no longer observable or relevant with the passage of time could leave it's mark.
And heaven for some people is 'up there', and the gods come from the sky.
etc...etc

And what about the Jungian school of thought...that these ideas/concepts/gods/whatever
arise from within?

Originally posted by midicon
reply to post by NorEaster

 

I previously mentioned the 'bicameral mind'.
I'm sure you must have heard of Julian Jaynes theory.
Is it not at least one possibility?
To quote one of your own quotes, which may be relevant
"In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God"

While the experience of the bicameral mind can't be dismissed as having had a profound impact on human intellectual development, the question still remains concerning the initial invention of that which cannot possibly exist to the unexposed corporeal brain. Keep in mind that Julian Jaynes is dealing with consciousness in general, and in doing so is (from what I just gathered with a fairly cursory overview of his theory) giving the subject we're examining a glancing blow at best, and certainly not fleshing it out to any degree. I will admit that it would take a lot more than I'm going to commit to his published material to thoroughly quantify the application of his work on this issue, and what - if any - ramification it might have on this question, but to my own view, even the bicameral mind would need more than the mere realization of self-observation to invent a full realm of imperceptible reality. Verbal hallucination (or internal dialogue) and its association with self awareness is one thing, but it's not linkage to something as incompatible with the corporeal realm as its own complete antithesis.

Or even...
Ancient religions for the most part involve some degree of astronomy.
A one off inexplicable event could easily give birth to the idea of a non corporeal god.
Something no longer observable or relevant with the passage of time could leave it's mark.
And heaven for some people is 'up there', and the gods come from the sky.
etc...etc

An unseen god is also much different than an unseeable god. One exists as perceivable but simply removed from one's field of perception. The other violates all known aspects of reality. The two are very different in material essence, and the mind would have to invent the concept of non-material intelligent existence before moving on to invent a god that exists as non-material in physical essence. That's a lot of invention before finally acquiring a deity for use, and I simply don't see the motivation inherent in such an effort, especially with so much available to the corporeal mind - as you show here - to serve as a deity for the corporeal mind.

And what about the Jungian school of thought...that these ideas/concepts/gods/whatever
arise from within?

Jung's views were very influenced by his embrace of Christian Gnosticism, which isn't the kind of starting point that would allow him an unbiased view of how the human brain developed its own initial frames of reference. I just finished a book called "Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing (Stephan A. Hoeller, Quest Books 2002) and Jung is clearly mentioned as one of the most influential promoters of classic Gnosticism of the modern (post Enlightenment) era. He had his contributions, but I would not be comfortable allowing him to answer a question that would have as much an obvious impact on his own well known view of reality and the human mind.

Gnosticism teaches that the whole of humanness arising from within the eternal essence that is humanity. The view assumes a fullness of intellectual and spiritual development to exist at a primordial level for the human being to eventually discover. If one embraces that notion, then the unseen realm is absolutely intuitive as a concept and an existential certainty. After all, if this fullness of intellectual development precedes corporeal human existence, then where else could it have gathered together than in this unseen, "nonexistent" realm that we've already stated (for this examination, of course) simply does not exist.

I'm not trying to be difficult, but so far, the question remains unanswered.

reply to post by NorEaster




Your quest for an answer to, what is IMO a legitimate question, reminds me of the following scene, from Alice in Wonderland…

“There is no use trying; one can't believe impossible things." (Alice)

"I dare say you haven't had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” -Queen

Source

First of all, I should point out that I am a Theist, so any opinion I give would be biased and based on a theistic perspective, which isn’t really what your looking for.

but...

Having said that, I really can’t come up with a non-Theistic answer, as to how such a non-corporeal being can be conjured up, out of nowhere. And as you have pointed out, other types of Gods, like the sun God, for example, have linkage, and should in all logicality, have outlived the apparently unseen “Invisible Sky God”, as Atheists like to refer to him.

Your question presents a difficult hurdle to get over, but even if a person somehow manages to answer it, there appears to be another hurdle waiting for them, which is the main reason I am replying to your thread.

It’s probably best to use a description to help explain the second hurdle…

Imagine a Planes Indian, seeing a steam train for the first time, and then he goes back to his tribe and tries to explain to them what he just saw. Now I’m pretty sure that most of his tribe is not going to believe in something that they have never seen before, unless they see it for themselves, but of course with the “Invisible Sky God” this doesn’t appear to be a option.

My point is, that if one person had an experience of God for the first time, this does not guarantee that the rest of the tribe is somehow going to grasp it and then believe it. And even if one person believes in this non-corporeal God existing, and then passes this genetic memory onto his children, it will in all likely hood, be wiped out later, by conditioning from the majority of the non believing tribe members.

So it seems to me that there would have to be a larger collective belief within the tribe, which would have to take hold pretty quickly, for it to continue down through the generations. So the problem is not just revolving around answering the question in your OP, but also, how can it be initially transferred/conceptualized, on a massive scale.

The whole tribe would have to experience that mushroom, or follow their imaginary friends, or fall down that crack in the mountain and look up at the moon, for them all to believe. If only one believed, through whatever kind of experience, then I’m pretty sure, that it would be very difficult, for one, to convince everyone else.


- JC

Well the manifestation of the notion "another realm" or "non-corporal entity" is ultimately working with language and consciousness as auto-catalytic. I mean so much as we know about how aware other animals are, because we don't really know. But when a system of language is hypothesized to be imprinted in the DNA, there is obviously some version of yourself talking to you in your mind in order to create the best possible form of communication. Pidgin and subsequently creole languages all are based on a fundamental structure of word order, which would suggest an innateness to language. Complex communication isn't instinctual, therefore the brain starts to invent systems of thought and various constructs based on what is encoded into the DNA.

Often times a child says the word "goed" or "sawed" as the past tense of "go" and "see" respectively. Nobody taught the child these versions of the word, and certainly they didn't hear it from anywhere, except for maybe another child. With complex systems of language comes mindal projections of your own awareness. Its sort of hard to explain what I'm getting at, as you can obviously tell by my last sentence lol. But I guess I'm trying to say the whole process of language, thoughtful deliberation, reflection, etc... would be various components contributing to some projection of an other-worldy being.

My only other thought on the matter would be the invention of a non-corporal entity (which again I almost consider it synonymous with consciousness and rational thought) is a by-product of neoteny. We retain the juvenile characteristics of other baby primates into adulthood, that being the amount of hair, head sits on top of straightened back and neck, bigger head, and higher capacity for learning. Its been observed that, while other primates certainly possess more and more knowledge with age, the ability to engage in long, extended periods of learning, and absorbing the amount of information at an earlier stage of life, is diminished to a considerable degree. From there, perhaps one genetic mutation to an early neotenous hominid, and extended periods of learning morphs into self-evident learned flexibility (along with my strongly held self-made belief that language and reason arose with the appropriate structure of larynx).