"The longer you focus on any concept, other parts of the brain will respond as if that idea was objectively real. Focus on peace, you become more peaceful; focus on your anger, and your anger will feel justified and real. If you believe in God, God eventually becomes real. So be careful about what you believe!"
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Mental Secret: How to believe anything
I liked this comment from author and researcher Mark Robert Waldman about the "Speaking in Tongues" news article I blogged a few days ago:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Interesting. So if I focus on something absurd long enough, my brain will treat it as real. And if
I can convince others to focus on it, they will treat it as if it's real also. So by the same measure
that's being used to "debunk" God, can we not also debunk science? No one can prove string theory. No
one can prove many tenets of quantum theory. No one even prove evolution. But if you focus on it long
enough, your brain will treat it as real. So really, what I take from this isn't that God isn't real,
but that nothing is real. Hate isn't real. It's just people focusing on the idea of hate. Prejudice
isn't real. It's just people focusing on prejudice. Racism isn't real. It's just people thinking
about it too much. Those poor Nazi's. If they had just spent more time contemplating happy butterflies
rather than Darwin's theory of natural selection, then we never would have had a holocaust. Of course,
there really was no holocaust. There are just too many people thinking about it and therefore making
something false into something real.
Mr. Waldman, with all due respect, the fact that I think about something doesn't make it real. I can
believe that I'm not 40 pounds overweight all day long. But that's not going to make me a pound thinner.
Likewise, I can doubt the existance of God, aliens, or the oppression of the Bush administration. But
that doesn't make any of those things less real. Some things in life are real regardless of what you
believe about them.
Well said, Xeno. I understand Mark's point that when we believe something, we act on it as if it were
real. It can be seen easily in the actions of a child who fears monsters in the closet. And it can be
seen in the actions of citizens who give up their liberty because they fear terrorists who "hate our
freedom." Neither are real, but we act as if they were and in some regards, that's all that matters.
But my argument is that there are realities that are not bound by our beliefs. They exist whether we believe
in them or not. If God is in our mind, then if we die, will God still exist? Berkeley addressed these
issues in his "Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous." And I would side with Philonous that it is not our
mind that imagines God, but it is God's mind that imagines us. If you remove all the theists in the world,
God will still exist. Just like political corruption will still exist, even if you remove all the
neoconservatives.
I can define God for you, Xeno, but what good will that do? My intention is not to advance my idea of God,
but rather to play devil's advocate to those who say He doesn't exist.
I agree that this issue is critical and of universal human importance. But in defining the limits of what
we deem as an acceptable understanding of God, we impose an unnecessary prejudicial view on others.
From your standpoint, if God is broadly defined, then it's acceptable. But if God is more specifically
defined, then it's not. While appearing open-minded, this is nonetheless the same attitude that separates
Jew from Muslim and Hindu from Christian. It says, "My view of God is superior to yours."
I have my own view of who and what God is. And I can tell you in specific detail why I believe it. But will
that serve to unite us or will it be a point of contention? If it's the latter, why must that be so?
If I am a Hindu, will you think less of me? And if I am a Catholic, will it make it that much easier for you
to disregard my views? And yet I am neither.
You ask if Thor still exists. I would say that no spirit ever dies. Anthropologists like to create a notion
of man before the 19th century as primitive and superstitous. Like a dumb ape, unable to comprehend his world
and filling it with myth and legend to try to make sense of it. Of course, today we would never do that. We
would never create popular myths to try and make sense of our world. Unless it's religion. But
state-sanctioned myths of science and "education" are perfectly acceptable and above reproach. But in
reality, it's all the same. People have not changed much over the past 10,000 years. And I am not one
to believe what I'm told simply because it comes from an established organization such as a university or
church. Both have interests that are not necessarily in my own best interest.
It should be clear to anyone that follows independant media that we still create popular myths. And it's not
just religion that's doing so. We create popular myths in politics to allow inexcusable behavior at home
and abroad. We create popular myths in education to avoid ethical and moral responsibility. And yes, we
create religious myths in many cases to control the masses.
Xeno, I respect your opinion about God. I think you're wrong, but I still respect your view. Yes, religion
has been used to abuse other humans. But it's not just the Muslims, Jews and Christians doing all the harm.
It's important to remember that Hitler took the occult notion of a pure Ayyan blood line and combined it
with Darwin's argument of Natural Selection to justify the Holocaust. The Reichstag didn't give Hitler his
power. It was a tool, but it wasn't the only tool. Also key was the rejection of the Christian faith
and a fervent belief that German blood contained pure Aryan DNA. The German people were fighting because they
truly believed (to get back to the original point of this discussion) that they were superior humans, born
to be masters of the world. If anythign, religion isn't the enemy. Bad ideas are.
Post a Comment