Letters to the Editor
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why is tibet overrun while switzerland is left alone?
both are mountainous countries with nothing anyone pretty much wants. i think it must have been their particular religions. switzerland has heavy christian influence. it's only export (besides clocks) was mercenaries. if tibet were like afghanistan, i think it too would be "free", if control by islam makes one freer than control by the han people. perhaps equally under the thumb. proselytizing religions make one *fierce*. perhaps for a *true* view of judas we ought to ask the moslems. they, ask any of them, know the truth. i think we should all thank god for His Disbelief, enshrined in the enlightenment. imagine *either* camp's arguments in saudi arabia. we live on a knife edge of bloodthirsty know it alls. as to who, or what, exists, can you really imagine that the Almighty Creator of the Universe is interested in *your* opinion?
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There is no A.C. (even if there was, she'd be f'ing bored with you by now)
can you really imagine that the Almighty Creator of the Universe is interested in *your* opinion?
-- david sugarman
So STFU already you pathetic waste of oxygen.
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Cosmo Guzzardi
I can't prove that "brain chemicals" are responsible for all our thoughts and emotions. However, as someone who suffers from bipolar disorder I can tell you that the meds I take, which alter "brain chemicals", have a big effect on the way I think and feel.
Certainly not proof of brain chemicals being the be all and end all of thought and emotions, but it is a data point.
As to the questions of why we are here and what the purpose of life might be, those are null questions because we can never truly know the answers. We can make guesses but our guesses are probably no better or no worse than people who lived in the mists of history and whose thoughts have been handed down to us through the spoken and written word.
The fact that mystical experiences can be brought on by fasting, meditation and ingestion of drugs leads me to believe that a mystical experience is simply an altered state of mind caused by electrochemical changes within the brain. I certainly have no way of proving that, but nevertheless that is my opinion.
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Two Points...
Point 1:
It is impossible to scientifically prove any claim with respect to "totality" because science is based on sensory perception. Sensory perception requires that there be "difference" between "this" and "that" in order to even register as existential. So the issue of God's existence, or not, is not a subject that science can comment on. Intelligently. By definition, God's existence as an omniscient entity precludes the presence of any perceptual difference. Which also precludes any possibility of scientific proof as to existential affirmation.
Those scientists who attempt to use science to prove or disprove the existence of God are turning science into a religion instead of using it as a tool for the discovery of the humanly experienced universe/multiverse.
Point 2:
The persecution of the Gnostics of the early Christian church was, itself, the first apostacy of the Catholic Church. The consequences of that persecution should, therefore, be held in abeyance pending further information and revelation. The idea of a church canon was a fear-based response to watching one's fellows fed to lions and burned alive in some unspeakable ways. The Catholic churches' need to unify what, apriori by God, was already unified, essentially denied the existence of God as a relevant entity and made the church a political, temporal and terrestrial entity which supplanted all belief in any God but the church.
The proper argument should not be whether the gnostics were heretics, but whether or not the Catholic church, itself, should be considered anything more than a warmed over organization inculcated with 2,000 years of human banality. While some might consider this organization "evil," we might also recognize that it is one of the oldest and most successful human organizations ever to hit the globe with much to teach us about ourselves.
Another argument could be made with respect to whether or not the Catholic church needed to organize and centralize its dogma into a canon in order to overthrow Rome. Many gnostic traditions and temperments are widely available to those who seek spiritual growth and "gnosis" in spite of every single attempt on the part of human beings to expunge and squeeze gnosticism out of existence.
In my book, gnosticism has operated alot like ultimate truth. Very gentle, very available, and insistent on nothing from human beings. Gnosticism is not some "ooga-booga" form of rocket science that only smart people get; the key tenet of gnosticism is that each person has their own relationship with a God of their own understanding. The nature of that relationship, when, indeed, one finds a viable entity to fulfill this need, is spelled out in the Ten Commandments. Particularly when one reads those commandments not as "thou shalt not," but as, "one can not successfully...."
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Mystical experience and the brain
The fact that mystical experiences can be brought on by fasting, meditation and ingestion of drugs leads me to believe that a mystical experience is simply an altered state of mind caused by electrochemical changes within the brain.
My field of study is neuroscience; I'm in the middle of graduate school, so I feel competent to point out a couple of things about this issue.
This directly addresses the question of the supernatural vs. the natural. If belief is God includes a belief that God created and makes use of his own physical laws, there's no reason to think he wouldn't use physical change to create religious experience. For millenia, religious people (shamans, oracles, priests, and priestesses) have used the physical in the form of drugs to help induce a religious state, precisely to make use of this part of the brain.
Evidence of a physical root for the mystical is no answer. You can as easily argue that this strengthens the atheist view by saying the brain creates God, as argue that it strengthens the theist by providing a physical means for communication for God. As with every other possible argument, the limitations of the human brain and our perception make it impossible to answer this question for one side or the other.
For example, in addition to the argument we evolved a God module to make use of something that was there, rather than to create something that wasn't, there are hints that the brain does more than mere electrochemical behavior. For example, there is the recent research about quantum tunneling. It's been demonstrated (by physicists) that it's entirely possible neurons involved in scent use a quantum mechanical process called electron tunneling to distinguish between otherwise indistinguishable molecules. Initially ignored by neuroscientists who are used to thinking solely on macro-physical levels, physicists explored the issue further and found it was both possible and probable.
Such discussions remove the "magical sky fairy" argument some atheists are fond of using.
The God module may have created God, but may just as well have formed as an adaptation allowing us to better experience and communicate with God.
"Some people want me to say whether God is there or not, but these experiments can't answer that. If I scan a nun and she has the experience of being in the presence of God, I can tell you what's going on in her brain, but I can't tell you whether or not God is there" - Andrew Newberg, Univ. of Pennsylvania researcher