Peter is trying to make the Christian and Jewish myths somehow different from the pagan myths. They are essentially the same.

The Bible by itself is not enough to learn about Christianity. One should also be aware of the history of the religion, influences on Christianity by other traditions and the various translations and versions of the Bible.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford, has written “A History of Christianity”. It is a massive book, and the notes, references and suggestions for further reading in the back of the book are worthwhile. The first two chapters tell about Israel and Greece as two important influences on Christianity.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1561 directs one to “Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning” by Edward Carpenter. This tells how much of the Jesus story is derived from pagan mythology.

From the book: At the time of the life or recorded appearance of Jesus of Nazareth, and for some centuries before, the Mediterranean and neighboring world had been the scene of a vast number of pagan creeds and rituals. There were Temples without end dedicated to gods like Apollo or Dionysus among the Greeks, Hercules among the Romans, Mithra among the Persians, Adonis and Attis in Syria and Phrygia, Osiris and Isis and Horus in Egypt, Baal and Astarte among the Babylonians and Carthaginians, and so forth. Societies, large or small, united believers and the devout in the service or ceremonials connected with their respective deities, and in the creeds which they confessed concerning these deities.

continued

continued

And an extraordinarily interesting fact, for us, is that notwithstanding great geographical distances and racial differences between the adherents of these various cults, as well as differences in the details of their services, the general outlines of their creeds and ceremonials were--if not identical--so markedly similar as we find them.

I cannot of course go at length into these different cults, but I may
say roughly that of all or nearly all the deities above-mentioned it was said and believed that:

(1) They were born on or very near our Christmas Day.

(2) They were born of a Virgin-Mother.

(3) And in a Cave or Underground Chamber.

(4) They led a life of toil for Mankind.

(5) And were called by the names of Light-bringer, Healer, Mediator,
Savior, Deliverer.

(6) They were however vanquished by the Powers of Darkness.

(7) And descended into Hell or the Underworld.

(8) They rose again from the dead, and became the pioneers of mankind to
the Heavenly world.

(9) They founded Communions of Saints, and Churches into which disciples were received by Baptism.

(10) And they were commemorated by Eucharistic meals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_English tells about the many different translations of the Bible into English.
From that site: “Jewish translations often also reflect traditional Jewish interpretations of the Bible, as opposed to the Christian understanding that is often reflected in non-Jewish translations. Many interpretation differences arise from differences between the original Hebrew and the Greek Septaguint. For example, Jewish translations translate עלמה ‘almâh in Isaiah 7:14 as young woman, a direct Hebrew translation, while many Christian translations render the word as virgin, a translation from the Greek αρθένος (parthenos). Some new Christian translations use the correct rendering "young women", though this is controversial.”

Judaism was also influenced by the beliefs around it. Samuel Noah Kramer translated many of the cuneiform tablet of the ancient Sumerians. Many of the tablets contained stories similar to those in the Bible but written over 2,000 years earlier.

http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1059.html refers to Kramer’s book about Sumer.

continued

continued

http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/toc/1059.html contains chapter headings of Kramer's book:

Chapter 1 Education: The First Schools
Chapter 2 Schooldays: The First Case of "Apple-Polishing"
Chapter 3 Father and Son: The First Case of Juvenile Delinquency
Chapter 4 International Affairs: The First "War of Nerves"
Chapter 5 Government: The First Bicameral Congress
Chapter 6 Civil War in Sumer: The First Historian
Chapter 7 Social Reform: The First Case of Tax Reduction
Chapter 8 Law Codes: The First "Moses"
Chapter 9 Justice: The First Legal Precedent
Chapter 10 Medicine: The First Pharmacopoeia
Chapter 11 Agriculture: The First "Farmer's Almanac"
Chapter 12 Horticulture: The First Experiment in Shade-Tree Gardening
Chapter 13 Philosophy: Man's First Cosmogony and Cosmology
Chapter 14 Ethics: The First Moral Ideals
Chapter 15 Suffering and Submission: The First "Job"
Chapter 16 Wisdom: The First Proverbs and Sayings
Chapter 17 "Aesopica": The First Animal Fables
Chapter 18 Logomachy: The First Literary Debates
Chapter 19 Paradise: The First Biblical Parallels
Chapter 20 A Flood: The First "Noah"
Chapter 21 Hades: The First Tale of Resurrection
Chapter 22 Slaying of the Dragon: The First ''St. George"
Chapter 23 Tales of Gilgamesh: The First Case of Literary Borrowing
Chapter 24 Epic Literature: Man's First Heroic Age
Chapter 25 To the Royal Bridegroom: The First Love Song
Chapter 26 Book Lists: The First Library Catalogue
Chapter 27 World Peace and Harmony: Man's First Golden Age
Chapter 28 Ancient Counterparts of Modern Woes: The First "Sick" Society
Chapter 29 Destruction and Deliverance: The First Liturgic Laments
Chapter 30 The Ideal King: The First Messiahs
Chapter 31 Shulgi of Ur: The First Long-Distance Champion
Chapter 32 Poetry The First Literary Imagery
Chapter 33 The Sacred Marriage Rite: The First Sex Symbolism
Chapter 34 Weeping Goddesses: The First Mater Dolorosa
Chapter 35 U-a A-u-a: The First Lullaby
Chapter 36 The Ideal Mother: Her First Literary Portrait
Chapter 37 Three Funeral Chants: The First Elegies
Chapter 38 The Pickaxe and the Plow: Labor's First Victory
Chapter 39 Home of the Fish: The First Aquarium

continued

continued

Some of the above found its way into the Jewish Bible.

Christianity and Judaism are modern cults not essentially different from the pagan cults which are the source of most of their ideas.

It is time humans realised that biblical mythology is no more a guide for human behaviour, history, science or morality than pagan mythology and should be regarded in the same light.

I am fascinated by religion and the way people treat it to justify whatever they want to do. In our discussions on the net some people really get excited about homosexuality. They point to the biblical condemnation of it. It is not mentioned in the New Testament. The Jewish Bible condemns it but also condemns eating pork. Christians can get excited about homosexuality while eating a ham sandwich. A bit inconsistent.

I expect that when Christianity and Judaism disappear humans will found new cults which are just as irrational and also inspire atrocities.

Sells, at the end of the day these myths are all BS, and as we used to say."BS baffles brains".
David

Yes, you seem to be onto something important here, Peter.

According to Hinduism, life consists of the interplay of the three Gunas:

Tamas - inertia, darkness, stupefaction.
Rajas - willful activity.
Sattva - peace, serenity, tranquillity.

During one's evolution, one should overcome Tamas by applying Rajas, then overcome Rajas by cultivating Sattva, but the ultimate goal is to transcend all three.

I am not in a position to judge whether Peter's description of ancient cultures is accurate, but assuming it is, then the picture we get is that pagan cultures were inert and passive, while Judaism introduced nation-building wilfulness and this explains why Judaism was and still is at such a war with paganism and other expressions of passivity - it can even explain why Jews are at the forefront of science and technology and even why they are usually so hated by the Greens.

However, wilfulness can also be quite violent, as exemplified by the story of Dinah (Genesis 34) and bring with it that alienation and anxiety which Peter describes, so while it's a step beyond passivity, one should not stop there!

Alienation and anxiety can be healed, but not by retreating into magical nature: while the human dilemma and existential wilderness remain, we can attain peace and tranquillity by de-identifying ourselves from the human condition which sets us struggling to remain apart from otherness.

From the outside, Tamas and Sattva may seem similar because both are passive, but Tamas passivity is due to helplessness while Sattva passivity is due to self-sufficient wholeness and inner peace.

However, Peter ended right here, writing: "they are not for curing but for enduring". Perhaps the cure was been postponed for the his next article.

What everyone really needs in this time and place when there is no Living Spiritual Tradition - especially in the West, and when all of the ancient cults are Spiritually bankrupt and essentially corrupted by all of their archaic fetishes, is direct access to Truth, Reality & The Beautiful too. Direct access which thus relieves them of the dead weight of the now archaic mystifying mythological baggage.

This essay describes the situation of the dominant now archaic cults:
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/ScientificProof/theurgencyoftheteaching.html

These two references introduce 2 books which are very much about non-mythological Reality
http://global.adidam.org/books/religion-reality
http://global.adidam.org/books/reality-way

I give up, Peter. Your compulsion to say 'our' and 'we', when you mean 'mine' and 'me' is obviously beyond all help. It must have been ingrained from early childhood. Take out the false generalisations from your article, and you would have a personal account of your mental journey that might be of interest and value. But by putting them in you turn it into an unreasoning rant. Please don't point your 'we' at me.

Thanks for another interesting piece Peter, that goes some way to explain your use of the term Being a couple of months ago.

I think you're undoubtedly right to draw a line between what you call "I-Thou" and I-It" thinking and it was equally undoubtedly an important step on the road to developing a scientific model.

However, as seems increasingly probable, consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, then it can exist in any sufficiently complex quantum system. In other words, it may be equally valid to take either the I-It or I-Thou perspective, depending on the particular nature of the problem or observational task being worked on at the time, in much the same way that physicists switch between Newtonian and relativistic or quantum mechanical frames at different scales.

The dichotomy may be a false one in the end and whether causation may be said to exist may be to some large extent dependent on the state of mind of the observer! This brings us in a circle back to Schrodinger, of course. The "many interacting worlds" model of cosmology is starting to show some interesting promise as a means of explaining some aspects of quantum-level behaviour. Perhaps it has something to offer religion too?

JonJ, why the need to protest? Do you feel excluded?

Peter,

I agree that this is an interesting piece.

“I-Thou,  theological doctrine of the full, direct, mutual relation between beings, as conceived by Martin Buber and some other 20th-century philosophers. The basic and purest form of this relation is that between man and God (the Eternal Thou), which is the model for and makes possible I-Thou relations between human beings. The relation between man and God, however, is always an I-Thou one, whereas that between man and man is very frequently an I-It one, in which the other being is treated as an object of thought or action. According to Buber, man’s relation to other creatures may sometimes approach or even enter the I-Thou realm. Buber’s book Ich und Du (1923; I and Thou) is the classic work on the subject.” (http://www.britannica.com/topic/I-Thou).

On the other hand, there is a difference between Christian/Jewish mythologies and most of others in that the former are based on God, the Creator as strictly separate from nature (His creation). Consequently, nature can be “dissected”, scrutinised, leading to scientific and technological achievements within the Christian/Jewish cultural framework.

Although, “With the hippies it is quite clear that they have rediscovered something which had been thought of as lost since the days of the prophets … They have rediscovered nature as an epiphany of the sacred.” (A Conversation with Mircea Eliade , Encounter, March 1980). Something similar is implicit in the recent encyclical Laudatio Si

Is this separation or not between the sacred and profane, rather than the Buber meaning, what you had in mind when referring to I-Thou vs I-It?

Craig,
Obviously I enter the I-Thou relationship when I relate to another person, and at times when I am patting a dog. I realise that categorisation of cultures in a broad way is at times inaccurate, but taking the broad sweep of the argument I think it explains a lot. There is no doubt that Israel stood out among the nations in their attitude to the dead, and the natural nature of the physical world. All of this eventually culminated in the rise of natural science.

George,
I think that creation is an epiphany of the sacred and as such should be valued for its own existence and not only for its uses. However, natural history and human history are quite different things in that the former is a matter of mechanism only, mind is not involved in it. Subsequently, natural history is instructive to us in terms only of cause and effect. Human history has all to do with mind and thus is the schoolroom of the soul. Mythological cultures really had no history, or rather their history was endlessly cyclical. This explains why they are so conservative and why they are called "cold" or "frozen" cultures because they exist in a conceptual world of eternal recurrence.

I was thinking about St Francis while writing the piece. With his brother sun sister moon etc, did he pass over into mythological thinking? I think not but would have to think some more to say why.

Thanks for your post and the mention of Buber that is right to the point.
Pete

.

Dear Peter,

.

You wrote :

« For example, the annunciation to Mary of her conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit falls between the genres of history and mythology. While written as if it describes events in time, it is not history as we know it as a description of actual events. Neither can we describe it as mythology because the boundaries between nature and culture are not erased. Rather, we may understand it as a theological construct in narrative form created by the writer. »
.

Myths and facts are both used to explain reality. The difference between myths and facts is that facts are falsifiable whereas myths are not.

Christianity’s claim that Mary’s conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit is not falsifiable. In this example, there is a clear boundary between nature and culture. It is pure myth and, as you state at the end of the first paragraph of your article :

« Myth, in this case, means "not true". »

I agree that, as such, “we may understand it as a theological construct in narrative form created by the writer.”
.

You also wrote :

« We must refrain from thinking that religion and, for us, Christianity, is a panacea, something to make us feel better about the world and ourselves. It's blessing derives from its truth. »

As there is no empirical evidence either for or against the tenets of Christianity, it would be more correct to affirm that :

« It's blessing derives from our faith in it as representing the truth »

Please correct me if I am wrong.

.

Peter, I suspect that all of the great religious figures have had some element of the mystical in their thinking. It seems to me to be a quintessential component of the numinous epiphany that is so often a feature of the peak experiential aspect of religiosity. The sense of holistic connectedness that Francis and others have written about and is at the heart of the idea of a Creation is surely mythic in nature?

Jack Sarfatti, a physicist from Cornell in the US, has been doing a lot of work on the nature of causality that has some interesting reflections in what you've been discussing of late. You might be interested in looking up his work. He's far from the mainstream, but equally, he's no crackpot. His work is well-founded mathematically, it's his speculations as to the meaning of some of his findings that are most likely to be confronting.

George, I thought that second quote above was very interesting, thanks.

Banjo (and Peter), I wonder whether it is entirely true that myths are not falsifiable. Whilst they don't demand falsifiability as a prerequisite of existence as empirical science does and as a result they may drift over time to be something quite different to the original observations that inspired them, they are not just stories.

The ones that survive over time all have an instructive aspect to them. We musn't forget that the past 1000 or so years are hugely anomalous as a representation of human history and that for the majority of the time that humans and their ancestors have walked the Earth very little changed for thousands of generations. The same stone tools were used for 2 million years and for a million years before that they were only slightly more crude. An instructive narrative was valuable for millennia.

Our present rapid growth in technology and population is the result of a confluence of many different factors, not just the change in thinking that Peter has pointed out. That the need for some mythicality may persist is not surprising.

Craig,
I realise that I am using the word "myth" in a very specific way defined by Schneidau. I think his definition is relevant to the thinking of Israel amid the "nations". I reiterate my point that legends like the crossing of the sea of reeds in Exodus is not really myth but embellished history. Again, entirely invented narratives such as the Annunciation, look like history and not myth.
Peter

.

Dear Peter,

.

You wrote:

« I reiterate my point that legends like the crossing of the sea of reeds in Exodus is not really myth but embellished history. Again, entirely invented narratives such as the Annunciation, look like history and not myth. »

.

The exact location of the route of the alleged Exodus has been the subject of much conjecture, some opting for a northern route on the coastal highway (an ancient military route known by the Egyptians as “the Ways of Horus) from Tjaru (Egypt’s north-eastern frontier town with Sinai) along the Mediterranean across the Suez canal and on to Gaza.

However, this northern route has been associated with “the way of the land of the Philistines” whereas Exodus 13:17 specifically states : “God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near.”

Here is a 2006article published in the “Bible and Spade Magazine” :

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2008/08/19/New-Evidence-from-Egypt-on-the-Location-of-the-Exodus-Sea-Crossing-Part-I.aspx#Article

And an excerpt from James K. Hoffmeier’s “Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition” :

http://books.google.fr/books?id=CT_lHTEcL6gC&pg=PA183&lpg=PA183&dq=tjaru+egypt&source=bl&ots=thcRtFBTI7&sig=doF4RPf0nqa_IA4AcCo11VN57l0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7m-OVay1EcPfU4D1icAO&ved=0CFQQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=tjaru%20egypt&f=false

According to Wikipedia :

« General scholarly opinion is that the Exodus story combines a number of traditions, one of them at the "Reed Sea" (Lake Timsah, with the Egyptians defeated when the wheels of their chariots become clogged) and another at the far deeper Red Sea, allowing the more dramatic telling of events. »

There is; of course, no evidence, outside the bible, that the so-called Exodus ever took place :

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/The-Exodus-Does-archaeology-have-a-say-348464

As for the annunciation to Mary of her conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit, you note :

« Again, entirely invented narratives such as the Annunciation, look like history and not myth. »

That is a very personal point of view, Peter. Wishful thinking, perhaps. However, I think you will agree that the fact that any such “invented narratives” look like history in no way qualifies them as genuine historical events. No more than a remarkable copy of Michelangelo’s Mona Lisa qualifies as the original.

It qualifies as a fake.

.

Banjo, the Exodus story is an obvious case of the "drift" I was referring to, but of course its instructive purpose for a small group of tribes beset by much larger ones was and is immense. As a story of the enormous power of belief in the capacity of a group with right on its side to overcome great odds it's hard to beat!

The Annunciation story may well be "true". Have a look at Steven Fry's documentary on bipolar disorder on Youtube. One of the common themes among those interviewed(and Fry himself) is that they do not want to be "cured". One of them notably says "Why would I? I get to converse with Angels!". Their "illness" is a disorder largely because it puts them into opposition with the rationalist world around them. In a mythical culture that would be regarded as part of the range of normality. Roman Judaea was hardly 21st century empirical rationalist central and the Torah is full of prophets doing just that. Their explanations may be off-key, but that doesn't mean they are "fake".

Peter, thank you for the reference to Herbert Schneidau's work. It rang some interesting bells for me and I'll look into it further.

Craig Minns wrote: “a story of the enormous power of belief in the capacity of a group with right on its side to overcome great odds it's hard to beat!”

Dear Craig,

That is precisely the reason I find religion a dangerous and destructive force. It gives a people the feeling that they have right on their side whether they actually have it or not. It has played out in both history and myth too often as a justification for destruction. Whether the book of Joshua is actual history or myth I do not know, but it justifies divinely ordained genocide.

Joshua 3:10 And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Jebusites.

How does God’s command play out?

Joshua 6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

I am now reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s “A History of Christianity”. It tells how Constantine transformed Jesus into a God of Battles.
“[Constantine’s] troops bore on their shield a new Christian symbol: the Chi Rho, the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek combined as a monogram.”

The next step was to try to eliminate all the dissenting forms of Christianity. Jewish Christians, gnostics, Montanists, Monarchians had already been eliminated. At the council of Chalcedon in 451 other dissenters such as the Church of Antioch which had originated the word, Catholic.

Islam is the monotheistic partner of Judaism and Christianity and exhibits the same sense of belief in their rightness. We hear of Muslims shouting “Allahu Akbar” while committing an atrocity.

However, dissenting sects are legion in both Christianity and Islam. The sense of rightness justifies the slaughter who subscribe to a different version. I am horrified by the divine sense of rightness.

David, you're confusing cause and effect, I think. The sense of having the power to do things that are very difficult is enormously enabling. That sense of self-efficacy is what allowed you to take on the hard task of learning to apply the complex abstractions of mathematics to practical problems.

Developing the judgement to choose which things are worth doing is an entirely separate problem.

What may well be a completely reasonable thing for a tribe short on resources in a bronze age culture may become a particularly poor choice of action for a polyglot nation with an economy based on trade in a nuclear age culture. Circumstances alter cases as they say.

If the only thing guiding our actions is adherence to the judgement of others, such as power-hungry religious or political leaders skilled in manipulating emotions, it is inevitable that things will end in tears sooner or later. Conversely, if a cold rationalism is all we have to guide us, then what separates us from machines?

Spirituality is a quintessential part of the human experience, even if some never experience it or don't recognise it when they do. The fact that it can be misused by the unscrupulous does not taint the beautiful ideas it can generate.

In a world where nuclear war is just around the corner, it seems rather pointless to be discussing ancient myths and legends and spirituality.

The issue of nuclear war and probable human extinction seems to be more important that arguing about religions of which there are literally hundreds (all of which make fanciful claims, none of which can be substantiated or proven).

How about we forget about non-existent angels and Gods for the time being and spend some time trying to save our world from destruction by the American Empire?

Dear David F.,

<<That is precisely the reason I find religion a dangerous and destructive force.><

I can well and truly sympathise with your feelings, except that the examples you cite have nothing to do with religion, but with national histories.

The devious tactic of placing words in God's mouth according to one's political ambitions, words which God never uttered, is anything but religion - it's plain criminal.

<<Whether the book of Joshua is actual history or myth I do not know>>

While there could be some history mixed in it, surely you don't believe that God actually said such things as described in the book of Joshua?

Dear Craig,

I don’t feel that the alternative to believing in spiritual mumbojumbo is a cold rationalism. We as human beings can feel compassion, a sense of right and wrong, love and a desire for justice without being imbued by a sense some religious mumbojumbo can guide our way.

I feel what is called spirituality is another word for mumbojumbo and is essentially nonsense.

We can feel that other member of our species have more or less the same feelings that we have, care for them and try to see they don’t suffer. We can also feel that we are part of nature, and there is nothing outside of nature.

Spinoza rejected narrative religion and saw God as coterminous with nature. I can go along with that.

All I see in spirituality is crap.

Yuyutsu wrote: “While there could be some history mixed in it, surely you don't believe that God actually said such things as described in the book of Joshua?”

Dear Yuyutsu,

I don’t believe God ever said anything. The God in any religion is just a creation of the human imagination. The belief that a creation of the human imagination actually exists is a destructive and dangerous one.

Well David, you're perfectly entitled to feel that way, but it's not a lot different to the person who doesn't understand (say) complex numbers suggesting that they are crap.

The fact that you or I don't have a particular experience doesn't mean that someone who reports that they do is full of crap. Spinoza rejected his faith not because he didn't have a sense of the spiritual, but because he felt that the faith community he was born into was too locked into a particular view of the world. He would have been equally as unimpressed with your exposition of your own "faith" here.

Rationalism is a way of reasoning that demands a willingness to be convinced that one is wrong. His philosophy is very much in line with what I would like to think of as my own particular way of looking at the world. That is; a poor explanation of a set of observed phenomena does not invalidate the phenomena.

Attacking the explanation as "crap" may be satisfying if one's intent is to shock, but it doesn't help to explain what the actual phenomenon might be. I suspect that you also feel that way, and that perhaps the expletive is more from frustration at not having a proper explanation to offer?

David, are you essentially saying that every spiritual teacher dating back as far as mankind has existed, including even Buddha (who was an atheist, yet spiritual) was full of crap?

It seems you've developed a hate for spirituality. That is irrational and close minded.

Have you ever taken the time or made the effort to learn the deeper teachings of Eastern philosophy which are essentially the study of the mind? If you haven't then you really are in no position to criticise, unless of course you think modern psychology is also just a load of mumbo-jumbo.

What is actually wrong with 'feeling compassion, a sense of right and wrong, love and a desire for justice' if it happens to come out of a spiritual belief system? It shouldn't matter how you get there if you live and lead a life with the above qualities. What other people are believing shouldn't be your concern if it doesn't negatively effect you personally.

I accept not everyone needs religion, I don't, but many do learn better ways of thinking and behaving through their chosen religions? More people are doing good and behaving properly as a result of their religion, than the number giving their religion a bad reputation.

There's no need to universally put down all religions and spiritual belief as mumbo-jumbo. It's offensive.

Dear ConservativeHippie,

My opinion is offensive to you. Demonstrate that it is inaccurate or false, and I will respond.

Dear Craig,

Perhaps our difference is a matter of semantics or belief. My belief is that there is nothing outside of the natural world. I understand spirituality to mean that there is something outside of this phenomenal world - unseen entities that cannot be detected by our senses or any scientific instruments. I ask you whether you mean something other by spirituality.

Al Smith, an American politician, used to say, "Let's look at the record." We cannot be sure what Jesus, Buddha, Moses or other spiritual leaders said since what we have is written records contaminated by words that various people wished they had said, and so we cannot be sure exactly what they said. According to one of the Buddhist traditions, Buddha on his death bed, said, "Doubt everything." IMHO that's a fine sentiment. Other Buddhist traditions say otherwise. However, we can examine what religions have done.

One source I have read in this search is John Ferguson's "War and Peace in the World's Religions" Ferguson examined 15 religions. In each he found traditions for war and traditions for peace. There was no faith he could call thoroughly warlike or thoroughly peaceful.

Christianity has produced the Quakers, the Catholic Dorothy Day Houses and other pacifist groups. Judaism has produced the Jewish Peace fellowship, the refuseniks in Israel and other groups that have rejected violence. In Czarist Russia there was even an imam who sponsored a non-violent Jihad. However, the conclusion I have come to is the tendency to violence in religion will generally win out because it is a greater expression of faith to do what in ordinary course would be unthinkable such as Abraham sacrificing his son. I have read Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling” where he justifies that test of faith. My reading of eastern philosophy is limited. I have read Keven Burns’ “Eastern Philosophy”. At 89 I have a limited time. From the limited knowledge that I have I think all religion and spiritual belief are mumbojumbo.

Dear David F.,

<<I don’t believe God ever said anything. The God in any religion is just a creation of the human imagination.>>

Great, then you agree, in your own way, that no God ever told people to conquer others and commit atrocities - In this case, what remains are cunning and cruel nationalist rulers who stopped at nothing to obtain their ambitions, including the invention of gods and inserting whatever words they like in their mouths.

Why then complain about religion, knowing well that those were pretenders rather than truly religious? How is it possible to simultaneously believe that religion does not exist AND that it is bad/dangerous?

<<The belief that a creation of the human imagination actually exists is a destructive and dangerous one.>>

I'm not sure whether it necessarily is [destructive and dangerous], but why bother when there are very few, probably only a handful of people who subscribe to such a belief!

---

Dear Hippie,

<<What is actually wrong with 'feeling compassion, a sense of right and wrong, love and a desire for justice' if it happens to come out of a spiritual belief system?>>

More likely, the desire for a righteous and compassionate living comes first, then only a belief system is added to reinforce it.

<<It shouldn't matter how you get there if you live and lead a life with the above qualities.>>

Yes - in other words, religion is inherently there regardless whether or not you are aware of and rationalise it. A belief system, however, can help you through when times are rough and clouds obscure your path.

.

Dear Craig,

.

You wrote :

« The Annunciation story may well be "true". Have a look at Steven Fry's documentary on bipolar disorder on Youtube. One of the common themes among those interviewed(and Fry himself) is that they do not want to be "cured". One of them notably says "Why would I? I get to converse with Angels!". Their "illness" is a disorder largely because it puts them into opposition with the rationalist world around them. In a mythical culture that would be regarded as part of the range of normality. Roman Judaea was hardly 21st century empirical rationalist central and the Torah is full of prophets doing just that. Their explanations may be off-key, but that doesn't mean they are "fake". »
.

Of course not. I was referring to the “narratives” - not the persons - commenting on what Peter considers to be “entirely invented narratives” such as the annunciation to Mary of her conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit.

Having said that, we have no way of knowing if Mary existed or not. All that is certain is that if Jesus existed, he must have had a mother.

Presuming that both mother and son existed, the next question is : who, then, was the author of the tale of the enunciation? Of course, it could have been Mary. Perhaps, as you suggest, she was suffering from some mental disorder such as bipolarity or - why not, for that matter? – Schizophrenia, either of which could have been aggravated by her pregnancy. She was purported to have been 17 years old at the time and 6 months pregnant.

According to today’s geneticists, both mental disorders have a very significant genetic component. In other words, they are both hereditary. Jesus could have inherited the mental disorder from his mother or, alternatively, she could have brought him up in the delusion that the Holy Spirit really was his genitor.

If, however, Mary and Jesus did not exist, then the New Testament should be placed on the library shelves next to Greek and Norse mythology.

http://www.health.com/health/condition-article/0,,20275258,00.html

http://www.schizophrenia.com/research/hereditygen.htm

.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I complain about religion because religion claims that delusions actually exist.

"From the limited knowledge that I have I think all religion and spiritual belief are mumbojumbo." - Davidf

There you go, "limited knowledge" is the problem. The purpose of Eastern philosophy (not the superficial religious dogmas) is to attain knowledge and discover the truth though learning to realise your true nature, your unlimited potential. But to gain this knowledge you have to try; you have to examine areas within yourself that you've never seen. It takes a serious dedicated effort. Being 89 is not too late.

Calling it mumbo-jumbo because you don't understand or because you refuse to accept there are possibilities beyond your 'limited knowledge', or because you've got some misguided assumption all religions are bad, is offensive to me because I'm open minded to the possibility a whole lot is going on that we are not aware of. To me, you are simply displaying a stubborn close mindedness that in itself is offensive.

David, you have to admit there are many intelligent/successful people who are religious and/or have spiritual believes. Do you really think all these people are essentially just full of crap?

Your opinion is just that, an opinion, and no more valid than anyone else's, especially when you are discussing things from a completely close minded perspective.

David, you're taking the narrowest possible view of religion that simply doesn't hold for the vast majority of those who profess to be religious.

I realise you're applying a particular heuristic to analysing the problem and there's nothing wrong with that, except that I think you need to apply a new heuristic to choosing which heuristic to apply :).

Banjo, whether Mary and Jesus existed as individuals isn't really relevant to my point, since there is absolutely no doubt that the tendency of people to extrapolate patterns or explanations to try to make sense of their observed reality has existed for a very long time.

Moreover, there's no doubt that creative people have reported sometimes having trouble fitting their own forms of experience into grounded reality. I've mentioned John Nash (who died recently, sadly) before as an example of such a person.

Let's assume for the argument that what we call bipolar and schizophrenia are not disorders of processing, which is what we treat them as today. What might they otherwise be?

Back in the 60s, when Penzias and Wilson were working on a new set of equipment for satellite communications they found a "noise" in their equipment which drove them nuts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_background_radiation

Given the work on the quantum nature of consciousness, I'm drawn to wonder whether people like Nash are perhaps simply extraordinary antennas who are able to detect a form of "noise" that most of us are taught to tune out? Nash famously said that his "delusions" came to him in the same way that his mathematical ideas did, so "of course I took them seriously".

He tried to fit them into his particular frame of understanding, which was, at the time, the mathematics of probability. What might the frame of a Nash have been in Roman Judaea? Or in 17th Century France, when Blaise Pascal had his own famous revelatory epiphany? There are any number of examples.

Dear ConservatiseHippie,

I have avoided calling you names. You have a different opinion from me. That does not make me close minded. I would appreciate the same courtesy from you.

Certainly I have limited knowledge. We all have. We make value judgments from the knowledge we have.

Certainly there are intelligent, successful people who are religious. There are intelligent, successful people who are non-religious. Does that mean in one case their religion is the cause of their success and in the other case their lack of religion is the cause of their success? The success of religious people does not mean they are full of crap, but their religion might be.

An intelligent, successful person in a religious community might be a complete hypocrite as far as religion is concerned. He or she may believe in none of it but must pretend to believe in order to be a success in that community. Such a person might actually be a better person than the sincere religious believers.

Dear Craig,

I have the narrowest possible view of religion? How is it narrow? I regard anyone who professes or practices a religious faith as religious. I recognise any form of religious observance as religious whether it involves invoking demons or is is a service in a Unitarian church where members of the church are not required to believe in anything. I don't make distinctions as Yuyutsu does picking out some religious people as 'truly religious' which makes other religious people not truly religious. I regard those unaffiliated people who have a sense of the spiritual as religious. Possibly I have the broadest view of religion of anybody involved in this discussion.

Hi David, I'm not sure how to proceed in having a conversation if the entire discussion is to do with your reactions to the idea of religion as a valid way of parsing meaning in the world.

Let's take it as read that your view is that religion is bunkum, perhaps?

My last comments were nothing to do with religion, per se, other than as a possible explanation for the religious experience. Do you have anything to add to that?

Davidf, I apologise if you think saying you were closed minded is calling you a name. It wasn't my intention to offend you.

My definition of closed minded is: lacking tolerance or flexibility or breadth of view.

I'll bow out of this discussion now and possibly meet you in another discussion thread in the future.

Dear David F.,

<<I regard anyone who professes or practices a religious faith as religious.>>

So anyone who professes to be a witch is a witch, anyone who professes to be a policeman is a policeman and anyone who professes to be a scientist is a scientist? Perhaps their grandchildren too?

We were discussing the authors of the book of Joshua and seem to agree that they were criminal fraudsters of the worst kind, who shamelessly placed words into God's mouth to forward their nationalist agenda. Indeed you should be upset about them, indeed you should complain - but why do the rest of us deserve your fury, including those who do not even relate to that tradition?

<<I complain about religion because religion claims that delusions actually exist.>>

Existence itself is a delusion (for in reality there is nothing but God) and a modern idol - for something to be told exists, is not a compliment!

The very question of God's existence is relatively recent, of no religious import and only born out of the corrupting influence of the age of science. Those who claim that God exists, either do not understand the implications or are sacrilegious because they attempt to reduce God's name to that of an ordinary object. Even that flotsam down the toilet exists and they wish to compare God with THAT?

Rather than at religion, which claims nothing (because it's a practice rather than a theory), please direct your complaints at others who believe that delusions exist, especially that harmful delusion called "nation".

Dear Craig,

I am a bleeding heart appalled by the cruelty of humans to humans.

In Australia the government has put asylum seekers in offshore detention centres and has made it illegal for those who have been there to speak about the conditions. I am horrified that this is acceptable to the Australian public. Few protest. I feel one reason few protest is that the detainees are largely Muslim, and few people identify with them.

When I came to Australia, the government was supporting PNG in its attempt to put down the Bougainville rebellion. Australia was condemned on several occasions for the blockade. Most Australians don’t even know about it. The high command of the PNG army was composed of fundamentalist Protestants, and the Bougainvilleans were a mixture of different religions. The dispute was due to the objection of the Bougainvilleans to the destruction caused by the Panguna mine. MRA, a Protestant evangelical group, has played a part in getting the Bougainvilleans to accept the mine in the first place. Religion played a great part in the conflict.

In the lead up to World War 2 Australia was reluctant to take in Jewish refugees from the Nazis. They could have saved lives by taking some in. I think the objections were based on the feelings, largely dispelled by the Holocaust, of Jew hatred at that time the dominant Christian view.

The divisiveness and hatred promoted by religion exacerbated the situation in all three instances.

No religion is composed of monsters, and religion has promoted some very good things.

However, I feel that the evils sanctioned and encouraged by religion far outweigh the good that religion has done.

What is the religious experience? In the Bible there are occasions of people speaking to God, and Paul had a vision on the road to Damascus. My feeling is that religious experiences are either fiction, fraud or psychotic episodes.

Sellick’s religion is based on a king’s wanting a divorce.

Besides being a bleeding heart I also think that there is no reason to believe in any sort of supernatural entities or phenomena.

David, I'm sorry, but I must be missing something, because I can't see any relevance to the subject in most of your last comment.

In fact, your response seems to be solely aimed at trying to prevent a proper discussion being held.

All sorts of great ideas are misused. That doesn't invalidate the ideas, it means that we need to learn how to minimise the chance that they might be.

On the subject of Bougainville, I was living in PNG at the time and I can well remember that one of the major agitators was a fellow called John Momis, who was a Catholic priest and is now a politician. The thing that he and the rest of the separatists accomplished was to shut down the only source of wealth the island had, in a bid to try to take that source over for themselves. The mine remains closed to this day and Bougainville remains a poverty-stricken mess. I've been to the mine and there is no doubt it was poorly run, but the resource was valuable and it could have been made a good operation to fund development. Instead, Bougainville is a constant begger at the PNG Parliament and Momis benefits from that through being the man who gets to hand out the largesse to his wantoks.

Momis wasn't even a Bougainvillean, he was a Morobe man, from Salamaua. He managed to become the voice of the rebellion because he was educated and had a somewhat protected status as a priest. His skill at inflaming resentment to political ends was pretty useful too.

The thing is, David, that we could have a really interesting discussion about whether religious experience and psychosis are related, we could have a good discussion about all sorts of things around the topic, but you simply want to try to prove to yourself that your cognitive biases are justified.

It's a shame, but don't try to tell me I haven't tried or that I'm insulting you and run away in dudgeon. You've squibbed it.

Dear Craig,

Let’s back up a bit.

You wrote: “Spirituality is a quintessential part of the human experience, even if some never experience it or don't recognise it when they do. The fact that it can be misused by the unscrupulous does not taint the beautiful ideas it can generate.”

I looked up the definitions of spirituality in my Unabridged Dictionary and found none that seemed to match the concept you have mentioned above. All but one referred to ecclesiastical materials and the one that didn’t defined spiritual as opposed to material.

I don’t recognise that I have experienced spirituality. Have you? If so can you tell me about it? If you haven’t experienced it can you give an example of someone else who has experienced it and has told about it?

Will you tell about some of the ideas it has generated?

I am willing to listen.

.

Dear Craig,

.

John Nash is an interesting example. There are many others : Joan of Arc who had her first “vision” at the age of 13, Bernadette Soubirous (the 14-year old peasant girl from Lourdes), St Teresa of Avila, etc …

I noted the following about Nash in Wikipedia :

« Nash … spent several years at psychiatric hospitals being treated for paranoid schizophrenia.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, a person suffering from the disorder is typically dominated by relatively stable, often paranoid, fixed beliefs that are either false, over-imaginative or unrealistic, and usually accompanied by experiences of seemingly real perception of something not actually present. Further signs are marked particularly by auditory and perceptional disturbances, … Nash dated the start of what he termed "mental disturbances" … when his wife was pregnant. He described a process of change "from scientific rationality of thinking into the delusional thinking characteristic of persons who are psychiatrically diagnosed as 'schizophrenic' or 'paranoid schizophrenic'". For Nash, this included seeing himself as a messenger or having a special function of some kind, … and searching for signs representing divine revelation.

Nash suggested his delusional thinking was related to his unhappiness, his desire to feel important and be recognized, and his characteristic way of thinking, saying, "I wouldn't have had good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally." He did not draw a categorical distinction between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. »

Mental disorders are not the only source of hallucinations and delusions. They can also be provoked by alcohol and drugs. Many so-called “creative” people in professions such as publicity and show-biz often have recourse to these expeditious methods in order to surpass their limits and break into new grounds.

Unfortunately, the mentally deranged are unable to differentiate between delusion and reality.

Believing you can fly when you are “high” can prove fatal … and definitive!

The narrative of the life of Jesus reminds me of the Greek tragedy of Icarus.

He strove to fulfil his mother’s ambitions for him and died in the process.

.

Nash spent just a few months in hospital, Banjo, admitted by his wife. He was subjected to the awful experience of what was then regarded as state-of-the-art for schizophrenia, insulin-shock "therapy".

He was released because he learnt to suppress his reactions to his mental processes and tell his doctors what he figured they would need to hear. He then made his wife promise never to admit him again and fled the country. He finally returned after he "decided to stop paying attention" to the ideas he couldn't make sense of. However, it should be noted that even later in life, his mind never stopped working to make sense of the very counter-intuitive and his work on embedding discontinuous geometries in continuous matrices came when he was in his 60s!

Schizophrenia of the paranoid subtype is commonly associated with the sense of the sufferer that they have some special purpose often based on their interpretation of their observations of things in the world. Nash's comments about his mathematical background are particularly interesting and illuminating. The famous Indian mathematician Ramanujan reported his ideas as coming in dreams. Euler, Pascal as previously discussed, Einstein, Newton and many other greats in the field of mathematics all reported their mathematics as having come to them in various somewhat inexplicable ways.

Does it invalidate the ideas of a Ramanujan that he couldn't properly explain them in many cases? Similarly, if the ideas that underpin some of the great religions came to the prophets in a form that we would today call mentally disordered, do the ideas lose value?

David, this might help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality

Yes, I have had what I would call spiritual experiences. I think that you have too, but your distrust of being religious has lead you to reject them, or to categorise them as something else.

Csikszentmihalyi coined the term "flow". Look it up.

I saw a lovely quote this morning

All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable
which makes
you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see
something that isn't even visible.
N. McLean, *A River Runs Through it*

.

Dear Craig,

.

You wrote:

« Nash spent just a few months in hospital, Banjo, admitted by his wife. »
.

Many thanks for that, Craig. I imagine your source is more reliable than Wikipedia.
.

You ask :

« Does it invalidate the ideas of a Ramanujan that he couldn't properly explain them in many cases? Similarly, if the ideas that underpin some of the great religions came to the prophets in a form that we would today call mentally disordered, do the ideas lose value? »
.

Of course not. For mathematic and scientific ideas to be valid (have value) they have to be falsifiable. It doesn’t matter what inspired them.

It’s not the person who is “valued”, it’s the ideas, irrespective of the person and his mental state at the time.

Archimedes is reputed to have been inspired by the displacement of the bathwater when he stepped into it. The fact that he happened to be just taking a bath did not invalidate the principle that bears his name. Nor did relaxing under an apple tree admiring the scenery invalidate Newton’s theory of gravity.

The ideas expressed by a prophet are quite different. A prophet is “an inspired teacher, revealer or interpreter of God’s will” (OED definition). It is not empirical evidence but religious faith that assigns value to the prophet’s ideas, whether he is mentally deranged or not.

It is not even the possible pertinence, accuracy or wisdom of the prophet’s ideas. It is the faith that his followers place in him as God’s minister and spokesman.

It’s not the ideas that are “valued”, it’s the infallibility of the prophet, irrespective of his mental state at the time.
.

You also observe :

« Einstein, Newton and many other greats in the field of mathematics all reported their mathematics as having come to them in various somewhat inexplicable ways. »
.

Intuition, a stroke of genius, lateral thinking, particular circumstances … ? Perhaps. In any event, not because they were suffering from some chronic mental disorder such as bipolarity or schizophrenia.

.

Banjo, some of the greatest puzzles in mathematics involve trying to prove that a stroke of insight is correct. The Clay Foundation has a list of what were 7, now 6 and possibly 5 grand problems that have not been solved.

The reason that the most recent proof has not yet been ratified is that it is in itself so large and complex that it is presenting a massive challenge. And that's in response to a very simply formulated "conjecture".

Many of the great mathematicians and thinkers in other fields have been bipolar. Einstein almost certainly was.

If a proof of a relatively simply piece of mathematics can take centuries to be devised, and if mathematics (as Godel showed with his incompleteness theorem) cannot provide certainty, then don't you think it's asking an awful lot of religion to do so?

Oh and just one more little point. Ramanujan was a self-taught clerk in the Indian Railways who spent all his spare time "doing sums" to quote his wife. He sent these to the great Cambridge mathematician GH Hardy who couldn't make head or tail of them other than to say that he felt they must be right because they were so beautiful. He arranged for Ramanujan to go to Cambridge where he worked with Hardy and a colleague, Littlewood, to prove some of his work and to learn some more maths.

He died at the tender age of 31, after failing to take care of his health at Cambridge. He was known to be obsessive about his food and would simply throw out food he felt was substandard and go hungry, which probably contributed to his death.

Evariste Galois, another of those great products of the French 19th century, who invented group theory, wrote only 4 papers, all in a few months around his 18th birthday. One was his work on Group theory, which was rejected as a basis for admission to university by none other than the great mathematician Poisson, who himself gave us so much of the basis of statistical analysis. That paper has since been shown to be absolutely correct and Poisson's name is slightly muddied as a result, but it is by no means an easy thing to understand, especially since it was entirely new!

Galois was killed in a duel at age 20.

I could go on and on for a hundred pages.

Dear Craig,

I looked up the meaning of spirituality in Wikipedia. There are many meanings in many contexts.

It covers such a broad area that almost any unexplained occurrence can be called spiritual.

I have had an unexplained occurrence. I was driving down a street in Philadelphia in autumn. Fallen leaves covered much of the street. For some reason I stopped the car. After I stopped the car a little arm rose up from the leaves. A child had hidden in a pot hole. I asked the child where he lived. He pointed to a house. I took him there and told his mother about it. If I hadn’t stopped the car I would have run over him. I drove home and was upset for quite a while. I don’t know why I stopped the car as nothing seemed unusual.

“The History of Christianity” tells about theological conflicts. Are the Father and the Son of the same or of different substances? People on both sides of that conflict have killed those who had a different view. All the theological conflicts I have read about seem pointless as there is no way to determine which view is correct.

My explanation for the plethora of religions is that the views of various disordered minds are taken seriously. Sometimes the views of a disordered mind are worth taking seriously. Nash’s insights have proved to be useful and practical. However, the minds that proposed their views about the substances of the Father and the Son have produced nonsense and slaughter.

The most practical course for me to follow is to avoid commenting on or reading Sellick’s type of essay. However, the problem is that I am fascinated by religion.

MacCulloch in “A History of Christianity” wrote:

“I still appreciate the seriousness which a religious mentality brings to the mystery and misery of human existence, and I appreciate the solemnity of religious liturgy as a way of confronting these problems. I live with the puzzle of wondering how something so apparently crazy can be so captivating to millions of other members of my species”.

Davidf, have you read much about synchronicity? You experience on the road is a perfect example.

Have a look at this:
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/catching-the-bug-of-synchronicity/

continued...

I have had several experiences along the line of David's road experience.

Once I felt the need to go the Zoo, it was a nice day and I really didn't have anything else to do, so I went.

After wandering around the zoo for 30 minutes or so I wasn't finding I was as much in the mood as I thought and I decide to leave. On the way out I stopped in the coffee stop for a quick bite to eat.

As I was sitting there, almost ready to leave I noticed a toddler poking his hand between an open door and the door jam; and as soon as I saw this a gust of wind caused the door to slowly swing closed... I leaped to the door in time to literally save the child's fingers from getting crushed or worse. The child had no idea and the child's parents had no idea what had just happened.

As I left the zoo I felt may true purpose for going had been to be in the right spot at the right time for this little fellow. It felt deeply good, like I was tuned into the universe, if only briefly.

ConservativeHippie,

I think it’s more likely that a simple confirmation bias is at work. You don’t remember, or are not aware of, all the times you could have been there for someone and weren’t. What about that time you weren’t driving along Arthur Highway and didn’t accidentally get into a head-on crash with Martin Bryant killing him before he could commit the Port Arthur Massacre? There are a lot of people you could have been there for and never were? Is that then evidence against some sort of mystical interconnectedness?

What would be amazing is if such a crossing of paths like that never happened to you. It would be amazing if no-one's paths ever crossed so that events like that never occurred. Now THAT would be a phenomenon to write about!

Despite the the quackery of Deepak Chopra and the makers of What the Bleep Do We Know, and their misrepresentation of the research done by quantum physicists, we have no way of knowing if there is some mystical interconnectedness in the universe. What we can know, however, is that people cross paths. We also know that people's moods and preferences can change, and that this can result in them changing their minds about where they want to be.

That being said, which do you think is the more rational conclusion to draw from your experience?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kekulé tells of two of Kekulé's scientific dreams:

The ouroboros dream

The ouroboros, Kekulé's inspiration for the structure of benzene.

The new understanding of benzene, and hence of all aromatic compounds, proved to be so important for both pure and applied chemistry after 1865 that in 1890 the German Chemical Society organized an elaborate appreciation in Kekulé's honor, celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his first benzene paper. Here Kekulé spoke of the creation of the theory. He said that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail (this is an ancient symbol known as the ouroboros).[10] This vision, he said, came to him after years of studying the nature of carbon-carbon bonds.

...

He told yet another anecdote in 1890, of a vision of dancing atoms and molecules that led to his theory of structure. This happened, he claimed, while he was riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus in London. This probably occurred in the late summer of 1855.[16]

AJ, the conclusion I draw from such an experience is it was meant to be. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have been there. But the fact that I was drawn there seems to me to support the idea of synchronicity. Yes its a coincidence but a very extraordinary one.

"You don’t remember, or are not aware of, all the times you could have been there for someone and weren’t." That makes no sense at all in the context of amazing times that events do come together; there is no coincidence if it doesn't happen.

"What about that time you weren’t driving along Arthur Highway and didn’t accidentally get into a head-on crash with Martin Bryant killing him before he could commit the Port Arthur Massacre?"

Come on, give me a break - What about the time you were so sceptical about everything that when you won the Lotto you through your ticket away?

correction... I meant 'threw' your ticket away

AJ, while your comment seems reasonable on the face of it, is assuming that event probabilities are entirely stochastic. Do you think you could provide a proof of that?

Apart from that, it is an excellent example of the incompleteness theorem at work, although I suspect you didn't intend it that way.

CH, a better test would be if you noticed a whole series of improbable events. There don't have to be too many before the probability that stochastic (random) chance is at work becomes vanishingly small. However, it is very difficult to eliminate selection bias (which is what AJ was trying to get at) and even a small selection bias may (it may not though) be a problem.

ConservativeHippie,

You've missed my point entirely.

<<...the conclusion I draw from such an experience is it was meant to be. If it wasn't, I wouldn't have been there.>>

So why can't it have 'just happened'? Why does there have to have been some mystical force causing it? What would the world look like if such a force didn't exist, do you think? Would occurrences like that never happen? That, I would think, would take an even greater force.

<<But the fact that I was drawn there seems to me to support the idea of synchronicity.>>

How do you know you were actually drawn there? How do you differentiate between mere coincidence and a mystical force at work?

<<Yes its a coincidence but a very extraordinary one.>>

Not really. Given the amount of people who live on the planet, and the sheer number of interactions that are inevitable as a result of the fact, occurrences like that are bound to happen all the time. There was nothing extraordinary about it at all.

<<That makes no sense at all...>>

I was illustrating confirmation bias. Look it up. What I said actually made perfect sense.

<<What about the time you were so sceptical about everything that when you won the Lotto you through your ticket away?>>

You're mistaking scepticism with cynicism. Keeping an open mind does not necessitate or justify believing whatever the heck we want.

Craig Minns,

If this is not a Shifting of the Burden of Proof fallacy, then it comes pretty close...

<<...while your comment seems reasonable on the face of it, is assuming that event probabilities are entirely stochastic. Do you think you could provide a proof of that?>>

I'm not assuming anything. I'm simply asking what conclusion would appear to be the more rational one given what we currently know. Pathways cross, convenient ones too. I think it would be more extraordinary if they didn't.

You're simply failing to understand the problem, AJ. Whether you think the alternative explanation is more rational or not depends on whether you accept that events are stochastically distributed.

I'm simply asking you your basis for accepting that axiom.

Obviously if you want to assume it without proof, that's up to you and it is a great demonstration of Godel's theorem. Alternatively, if you'd like to attempt a proof, you'd be breaking new mathematical ground.

In the meantime, unless you can do the latter, then CH's explanation is just as plausible as yours, mathematically speaking.

ConservativeHippie made the statement: "AJ, the conclusion I draw from such an experience is it was meant to be."

This implies an existing purpose. However, that there is such a purpose is a matter of belief. AJ doesn't have to prove anything. He has made no unverifiable assumptions.

Craig Minns,

I definitely think that you're committing the Shifting of the Burden of Proof fallacy now. As david f pointed out, ConservativeHippie is the one who made the positive claim.

I haven't failed to understand anything. You are simply tacking on more assumptions to my scepticism than is necessary for me to justify it. My acknowledgment of the fact that such occurrences are likely to happen, with so many pathways crossing in a world as populated as ours, was simply the icing on my sceptical cake. Would you actually refute that that was the case?

All that is needed to justify a scepticism of ConservativeHippie’s brand of mysticism is the fact that he hasn't yet provided sufficient justification for that belief (proportionate to the extra-ordinariness of the claim). An acknowledgement that everything that has ever been thought to have had mystical origins was eventually shown to have rational/naturalistic origins, and that nothing that was thought to have had rational/naturalistic origins has been found to have mystical origins, only serves to further justify my scepticism. Your introduction of the stochastic is just a red herring.

It is for the reasons stated above that your suggestion, that there is a 50/50 chance of ConservativeHippie’s explanation being right, is simply nonsense. Your assumption that my position necessitates a positive belief in the stochastic is just another way of saying, “Well, haha, you can’t prove I’m wrong.” Which treads dangerously close to the Argument from Ignorance fallacy.

One of the defining attributes of the mystical and the supernatural is that they are mysterious and beyond the understanding of the laws of nature, so how could the probability of "CH's explanation [be] just as plausible as [mine], mathematically speaking"? Two unknowns do not necessarily become equally probable - even if the likelihood of a rational explanation were entirely unknown.

.

Dear Craig,

.

You ask:

« If a proof of a relatively simply piece of mathematics can take centuries to be devised, and if mathematics (as Godel showed with his incompleteness theorem) cannot provide certainty, then don't you think it's asking an awful lot of religion to do so? »
.

I do not “ask” (expect) religion to provide “certainty”. I know it can’t even provide circumstantial evidence in favour of its basic tenets.

I try to limit my beliefs to a strict minimum. They tend to cloud my vision. However, to believe (have faith) in anything, I do not demand such a high standard of proof as in criminal proceedings, i.e., “beyond a reasonable doubt” (which some have described as being 95% sure).

I am happy to accord my belief (faith) on the basis of the standard of proof applicable in civil proceedings, i.e., on a “balance of probabilities”, which essentially means “more likely than not” (or more than 50% sure).

What this means, of course, is that I prefer to place my faith in human reason rather than in human belief.

Perhaps you may recall my definition of faith :

[ "Faith" is belief where there is no material evidence, only circumstantial evidence or a credible eye witness (or both).
"Blind faith" is belief where there is no material evidence, no circumstantial evidence and no credible eye witness. ]

As previously indicated, in my view, most religious belief is blind faith
.

You indicate :

« Evariste Galois, … wrote only 4 papers, all in a few months …. One was his work on Group theory, which was rejected … That paper has since been shown to be absolutely correct … but it is by no means an easy thing to understand, especially since it was entirely new ! »
.

Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Human Condition”, 1958 :

« The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. »

.

I hadn't thought of the incident with the pothole and the child for years. At the time it happened I was very upset by it and put it from my mind. Synchronicity is a complicated explanation. When one becomes an experienced driver one notes road conditions and other matters and compensates for them without consciously thinking about the matter. Probably I noticed an unusual movement in the leaves and stopped the car.

I have a bias in favour of simple, prosaic and rational explanations as against complicated, extraordinary and miraculous ones. Those inclined to do so will opt for the latter.

I had a comment prepared for this, but I've decided that I won't bother putting them up.

I won't be commenting on OLO in future. Thanks to all of you who have been so interesting to chat with. I've enjoyed it.

AJ - where in my comments did you see me claim to have had a 'mystical experience' or that I think these special kind of coincidences are mystical? I have not used that word. For all I know synchronicity may be written into the DNA of individuals who meet unexpectedly at a predetermined perfect moment. There is certainly scope within the study of genetics to suggest its possible.

I'm wondering AJ, do you feel Carl Jung wasted much of his life exploring this phenomena? Are you better qualified and more informed that Carl Jung on this topic?
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Craig, sorry to see you have chosen to depart the Forum. I am fascinated with your decision because lately I've been considering doing the same.

Sells wrote: “There is no doubt that Israel stood out among the nations in their attitude to the dead, and the natural nature of the physical world. All of this eventually culminated in the rise of natural science.”

Dear Sells,

Exactly how did Israel stand out from the nations in their attitude toward the dead?

From what we have learned of other ancient Middle Eastern cultures the attitude of Israel toward the dead was pretty much the same as were other ancient cultures in the area toward the dead. Three chapters of Kramer’s book that I mentioned in an earlier post give examples
.
Chapter 19 Paradise: The First Biblical Parallels
Chapter 21 Hades: The First Tale of Resurrection
Chapter 37 Three Funeral Chants: The First Elegies

Frazer’s “Golden Bow” yields other examples. Very little of the ancient literature of Israel deals accurately with the nature of the physical world. However, much in other cultures did and contributed to the rise of science. Some examples:

Taxonomy Aristotle’s classification of species in his area
Logic: Aristotle
Mathematics: Euclid’s axioms and logical development of theorems from those axioms
Experimental Science: Eratosthenes’ measurement of the circumference of the earth to 99% accuracy.
Trigonometry: development by Egyptians to re-establish boundaries after the receding of the Nile floods.

Ancient Israel made contributions to agriculture, literature, political theory and codification of morality and law.

What contributions did ancient Israel make to the development of natural science?

ConservativeHippie,

I never said that you claimed to have had a mystical experience, and whether you chose to describe your experience as mystical, spiritual, supernatural, paranormal, or synchronicity, you are making a claim to a woo of some form or another, and thus my scepticism and questions remain relevant.

<<For all I know synchronicity may be written into the DNA of individuals who meet unexpectedly at a predetermined perfect moment. There is certainly scope within the study of genetics to suggest its possible.>>

How do you figure that? I mean without getting all What-the-Bleep-Do-We-Know on me and misrepresenting the works of quantum physicists by appealing to the weirdness of quantum mechanics the way some Christians do to shoehorn their god into science.

<<...do you feel Carl Jung wasted much of his life exploring this phenomena?>>

To some extent, yes. But I would say “not entirely” for the same reason that I don’t think Freud wasted his life, entirely, formulating his now-disproven ideas. Some of the psychological theories that we now have, we only have because others set out to disprove Freud’s. We only know that Freud's ideas were wrong because he proposed them in the first place. This is why psychology students still learn about his deas. Freud didn’t necessarily fail, he taught us how not to think about psychology through the rebuttals to his work. The same could be said about Jung's synchronicity.

<<Are you better qualified and more informed that Carl Jung on this topic?>>

On synchronicity? There are no qualifications in it. It’s a pseudoscience. That’s like asking someone if they think they’re more qualified than another in creationism. Clearly I’m more informed, though. Either that or I’m able to think more rationally on the topic than he ever was. So is damn near everyone else on OLO, for that matter. Remember, this is a guy who also believed in astrology, telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance and ESP. We have the advantage in living in more education times. Jung, unfortunately, was a victim of his times.

Craig Minns,

I’ve seen many people on OLO say they’re going to leave (heck, I tell myself that on a monthly basis), but they usually return. So it is for this reason that I am not too worried at the moment. I’m sure you’ll be back. I may staunchly disagree with you on this particular topic (and your position on it is a continuous source of bewilderment for me), but otherwise, I think you are a rare and refreshing voice of reason in an otherwise ultra-conservative discussion forum. It would be a pity if you were to never return.

ConservativeHippie,

Since I’m using up another post, I thought I’d just politely add that I’m not intimidated by big names. Ideas stand or fall on their own merit. To appeal to a person’s standing as a way of adding credibility to what they say is to commit the Appeal to Authority fallacy. Even Einstein said some stupid things, although he was often very cryptic in the way he spoke, so it’s hard to say that for certain.

I once had someone on OLO (a mystic, like yourself) quote Sagan to bolster their position. What Sagan had apparently said was so incredibly stupid (or utterly meaningless, at best) that I had look it up to see if he had actually said it, and unfortunately he had! So fallacious was this person’s way of thinking, that they were too busy being flabbergasted (over the fact that I could accuse the great Sagan (who I admire immensely, mind you) of having had a moment of stupidity) that they didn’t have the time to absorb the fact that I actually had a point.

This is an example of just how hazardous fallacious thinking can be.

While Jung's credentials should give reason to pause for a moment and consider his ideas (relevant to his field) a little more seriously, he was still capable of speaking nonsense. And if what he said was nonsense, then it remains nonsense regardless of who he is. Sir Isaac Newton was a creationist; are you going to doubt evolution now?

Dear david f,
>>Probably I noticed an unusual movement in the leaves and stopped the car.<<

This allegedly happened in the 19th century, somewhere in the “Wild West”: A train full with passengers was rushing along, while the pious engine-driver was praying. Suddenly an angel appeared before his locomotive, frantically waving his wings, until the driver stopped the train. They found themselves a few feet in front of a collapsed bridge. When he told passengers what he saw, they prayed, thanking God for sending an angel to save them. Only one atheist among them could not believe it, and indeed, found out that what the driver saw was in fact the shadows of a night moth caught in the lantern. So the other passengers now thanked God for sending a moth (and a pious engine-driver) rather than an angel to save them.

It is “faith seeking understanding” (and sometimes finding it) as Anselm put it, very seldom the other way around. The atheist was happy with finding the moth-understanding of what happened, the believers had a naive angel-understanding and then, thanks to the atheist’s insight, found also a not-so-naive moth-understanding of their faith, more precisely its application to this particular situation.

>>What contributions did ancient Israel make to the development of natural science?<<

The post -Enlightenment development of natural science and technology happened within a culture defined by Christendom that was inspired by BOTH ancient Israel and Greece (of course, religiously Christianity understands itself as having its roots only in the former). So I agree that ancient Israel’s contribution was only indirect, and that not only through Christianity (c.f. Maimonides, Spinoza, Einstein etc).

Dear George,

May other believers combine their beliefs with common sense the way you do.

AJ - you've got to be the most sceptical person I've ever encountered. You won't even believe that a person can say they are bowing out of the OLO forum without challenging them. (Davidf is probably in the top five sceptics, at least on this Form)

I accept we will never see eye to eye and that anything I offer will be shot down in flames. Where we cannot and will not ever agree is whether or not there is more influencing our lives than shear rationality and chemistry. I'm not asking you to accept my point of view; it makes no difference. It does seem however you feel the need to change my thinking with 'cold hard facts', but that's not going to happen.

In closing and as my final contribution to this discussion I offer this quote as food for thought (without any expectation that you or David will even remotely consider it could be a possible)

"Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, defined free will as the possibility that, after making a decision, you could have chosen otherwise. But a "decision," Coyne argues, is merely a series of electrical and chemical impulses between molecules in the brain — molecules whose configuration is predetermined by genes and environment. Though each decision is the outcome of an immensely complicated series of chemical reactions, those reactions are governed by the laws of physics and could not possibly turn out differently. "Like the output of a programmed computer, only one choice is ever physically possible: the one you made," Coyne wrote."

Occasionally I fall into the trap of unreasoning belief in accepting a news report, a public statement or other info. My dear wife will ask, "Do you really think that's so?" AJ has a great command of logic and a knowledge of various modes of false argument, but my wife is the most skeptical person I've met. She is a rare jewel.

Dear Hippie,

Regarding your quote from Jerry Coyne:

Whether the brain is deterministic or otherwise, I don't know and I'm not concerned with, because whatever, good or bad, occurred between the molecules of that brain which you call yours, is only a chemical reaction - not your decision.

Subjectively we are in control of "our" brain, thus responsible for its actions, but if at any time we feel that our brain is not influenced by our values, then we always have the choice and responsibility to renounce it, to stop identifying with it and with the body it controls against our wishes, so while the chemistry would probably continue in its same pattern, we would no longer have anything to do with it. So long as we remain identified with a stray/chemical/deterministic brain, we remain responsible for its actions.

ConservativeHippie,

I'm sceptical of claims in proportion to how extraordinary they are and how much evidence there is to support them. I'm probably more sceptical than most, but I'm no rarity. Join any sceptic organisation or go to any sceptic meetup (à la James Randi, Michael Shermer, et al. - not to be confused with denialism) and you'll find plenty like myself.

There's no refusal on my behalf to believe Craig, l simply voiced a prediction based on my own observations. You make it sound like I'm stubbornly crossing my arms, turning my head to the side and saying, "Nup, won't believe it!" That, I believe, portrays an inaccurate and unfair picture (a caricaturisation, almost) of a sceptical approach to claims that I take very seriously and believe I am actually quite methodological in my application of.

I don't think you're asking me to accept your view. There's no defensiveness on my behalf. I simply enjoy discussing these topics and debunking nonsense. Sometimes I learn from the experience. I've never understood this assumption of a need on the other's behalf to change minds. That sounds defensive to me. I would like to change minds, but I accept that the mind I change is unlikely to be the mind of the person I'm actually speaking with.

It's concerning that you're convinced that I can't change your mind, though. That's not exactly an ideal state of mind to ensure the truth of one's beliefs and suggests that you're more interested in believing what you want rather than what is more likely to be true. Even I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong, I wouldn't be much of a sceptic if I wasn't, I just know from experience that it's highly unlikely that you're about to demonstrate that now, or that it's even possible to demonstrate at all.

I don't understand what the relevance of the quote was supposed to be. Was it supposed to contradict my worldview or something I've said? I tend to favour determinism over free will myself. Determinism doesn't require a paranormal force, if that's what you're thinking.