The Psychology of Religion

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The Psychology of Religion

The first and most important thing to realize about religions is that they consist wholly of people believing things only because other people tell them to believe them (with spoken or written words), plus a tiny handful of people who believe things their minds have invented but, for reasons of mental defect, cannot tell apart from reality, and a similarly tiny handful who do not believe but tell others what to believe (though even among religious leaders, almost all are themselves believers to some degree). The only alternative to obeying religious edicts is heresy, a term that derives directly from the Greek word for "choice". Thus freethinkers are by definition heretics, and only heretics can think freely.

Humans have a hereditary predisposition toward mystic faith (certainty without evidence) in particular and religion (social institutions founded on tenets of mystic faith) in general. This predisposition was adaptive in prehistory (while humans were evolving to their present form), when the rational approach, however doggedly followed, would not lead one to a satisfactory understanding of nature. The advantage of religion is that the human mind's inherent and otherwise insatiable curiosity, and the risks and expenditure of time, energy, and mental resources associated with its care and feeding, are checked, preventing it from engaging in a vain exploration of the yawning chasm that is the whole of reality.

Arguably, this is still adaptive for most people, as anyone who has attempted to master differential geometry, unified field theory, systems neuroscience, or indeed nearly any area of math or science currently undergoing development in academia, can readily attest. The life sciences and the social sciences, particularly economics, are now uniting with the mathematical constructs of complex dynamical systems theory to create a bulwark of very powerful models intellectually accessible to only a tiny sliver of humanity.

Thanks to Irving Wolfson MD and his brief contribution to the Evolutionary Psychology forum for the above idea.

People who believe in their futures, and that providence will favor them, are more fecund than those who do not. At least that's the case anywhere that's even remotely civilized. The statistical evidence for this is overwhelming. In the 2004 election cycle, in terms of public and media-popularized perceptions, the presidential candidate of secularism (and of abortion availability) was John Kerry, and the candidate of theistic faith (and of abortion abolition) was George W. Bush. Thus election results can be used to effectively measure popular religious sentiment on a county-by-county basis, although inevitably there are other influences that color the results.

Bush-voting counties have significantly higher growth rates than Kerry-voting counties (many of which actually have shrinking populations). 97 of the 100 fastest growing counties in the US voted for Bush in 2004. This is part of a phenomenon that David Brooks of the New York Times calls ``natalism''. In The American Conservative, Steve Sailer finds that Bush carried 25 of the 26 states with the highest white fertility rates, while Kerry carried the 16 states with the lowest rates. In The New Republic Online, Joel Kotkin and William Frey observe that ``Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation - but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas.''

In January 2005, the Petris Center at UC Berkeley released the results of a survey of mental health markers for the counties of California. Respondents were asked, among other questions, if they were "downhearted and sad". There is a correlation between counties with poor mental health as measured in this study, and counties with high margins of victory for Kerry. Similarly, there is a correlation of high mental health with high margin of victory for Bush. The two counties identified by the study as having the worst mental health, by their composite measure calibrated for economic circumstance, were also the two counties with the highest margins of victory for Kerry (68% in San Francisco County, and 51% in Alameda - those are margins, not totals!). The 18 counties sharing the highest health ranking were, with few exceptions, carried by Bush, most with a margin greater than 20%. Some of the exceptions tend to prove the rule. Sacramento is an urban core in a Kerry state that Bush came within a whisker of winning (Kerry by 285 votes, of 454310 total votes cast, a margin of .06%). Alpine (Kerry by 8 percentage points, of 699 total votes cast) and Mono (Kerry by 7 votes, of 5322 votes cast) counties may appear in the healthiest category only because they were aggregated with 5 counties all carried heavily by Bush. And it's highly significant that San Diego, the only major urban core in the healthiest category, was also the only major urban core in California won by Bush. Of the eight counties in the next-to-healthiest category, only Sonoma and Yolo were carried by Kerry, albeit in 36 and 21 point landslides respectively.

One would intuitively and logically expect that personal religion and a sense of a personal god, clearly comforting and affirming psychological influences, would be correlated with belief in a future wherein providence will be favorable -- in short, that theistic faith will be correlated with a lack of depressive psychological conditions. Likewise, one expects that a lack of personal religion and of a sense of a personal god would be correlated with doubt that the future will be providential, and so in affliction by depressive psychological conditions. As recounted above, this intuition is borne out by fairly decisive evidence. It is also inevitable that belief in a providential future correlates with fecundity, since children rely on future prosperity. This too is clearly borne out by the evidence, as discussed above. The negative sense is also amply evidenced. A recent (2005-Jan-22) headline in The Scotsman reads ``Self-doubt leaves French feeling down in the mouth''. France, indeed, has disastrously low fecundity, like the rest of Europe, and its secularization is rather advanced, as it is throughout Europe. Again, the exception tends to prove the rule: only the Muslim immigrant population in France (and elsewhere in Europe) has a high birth rate.

The evolutionary consequences of the dynamics outlined above are clear. There is a powerful and persistent pressure to maintain and propagate the hereditary traits that are conducive to theistic religious faith. They will be robustly and inexorably expressed in the population.

The religious instinct is the central enabler of the Hegelian dynamic. The instinct has two barely separable components: a predisposition to embrace premises on faith when the dividends of mental frugality are expected to outpace those of thorough investigation, and a predisposition to embrace on faith only a premise promoted by someone whose authority is respected. This latter predisposition is adaptive in and of itself, because it tends to instill social consistency and cohesion, equipping the community to work effectively as a team. Thus is enabled the cult of specialization, and the whole of Hegelian epistemology: the mutual deceptions of Hegel's heralded bureaucracy (following inevitably from the division of intellectual labor), and the horrors of Idealism and Positivism.

Inevitably, the religious instinct - since it is a prima facie abridgement and violation of reason - becomes a vehicle for those intent on concentrating social control in their own hands. It cannot be overemphasized that the purpose of religions is control over the actions of people, achieved through control over the thoughts of people. Etymologically, ``religion'' derives from the Latin for ``to tie back'', evidencing its binding, constraining character.

The god concept - common to many though not all religions - is the ultimate organizational corruption. A god would have total authority with no accountability. The priests and potentates who cite god as the source of their authority similarly wield total authority with no accountability.

Practical religion is sociocognitive warfare. With this realization, a great deal of what is considered by Americans to be ``culture'' or ``political systems'' is seen to actually be religion. For example, though communism in the USSR was atheistic (denied ``belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of man and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world'' (from Webster)), it was obviously a religion. As one peruses the litany of establishment tactics in my introductory essay, the burrowing of religion into the American cultural landscape becomes clear. Many of the tactics squarely aim to subvert reason.

``Religion'' and ``cult'' are two names for the same thing. Typically, the former term is used when referring to centuries-old institutions of sociocognitive warfare, and the latter when referring to new ones or ones which are of intermediate age and include significant doctrine that is inconsistent with, or not ancestral to, the doctrine of an old institution. Both Scientology and Catholicism are both religions and cults. When subordination to a new institution of sociocognitive warfare ceases to be stigmatized by those who are subordinated to older institutions, the new institution ceases to be considered a cult and comes to be considered a religion. Once an institution is considered a religion, it will continue to be considered as such, even if subordination to it is again stigmatized. This has occured with Judaism, the subordinates of which have been stigmatized by a variety of groups for a variety of reasons.

The engine by which mystical ideation becomes cultural doctrine includes three primary components: insanity, evil, and feebleness of mind. The insanity is embodied principally by schizophrenics, though also by individuals with certain other types of brain disease. The evil is embodied by the power lusting second hander. The feebleness of mind is embodied by ordinary people, of ordinary mental fortitude and ordinary susceptibility to memetic infection. By mental fortitude, I mean capacity to maintain rational consistency, particularly when presented with a concerted effort to befuddle.

Schizophrenics have minds that are qualitatively different from those of non-schizophrenics - in a manner of speaking, they do not have human minds. The difference is genetically correlated, and is anatomical and neurochemical in basis. The mind of a schizophrenic has a threshold of awareness and recognition that is either too low or too high. This has a variety of calamitous results for his capacity to think rationally. Of interest here are those whose threshold of awareness and recognition is too low, so that hallucinatory sensations and delusory patterns are perceived. Associations between meme vectors (as discussed in The Origin and Evolution of Culture and Creativity by Liane Gabora) are faulty, since effectively the association filter's Q is too low (that is, its region of sensitivity is too large). The schizophrenic is impaired in the formation and comprehension of fine analogies, since the low Q cannot maintain the distinctness of the two ideas whose symbolic topologies are being mapped together. Instead, they form artificially course analogies, artificially mapping together ideas that are not actually related. This results in their telling fanciful tales of unlikely causality, poesy, and lexical invention. They weave fantastically diverse memes into a largely senseless, but artful and memorable tapestry. L. Ron Hubbard was a schizophrenic.

Second only to the schizophrenics in the habitual confabulation of senseless, artful, memorable tapestries are those with prefrontal or amygdalar dysfunction. When portions of the amygdala or prefrontal lobe of the cortex are degraded, lesioned, or decoupled from the prefrontal lobe or amygdala (respectively), existence loses some of its subjective emotional reality. Crucially, the role of emotional consequence in planning is distorted, reduced, or eliminated. The capacity to reason and to use language can remain largely intact, but the intellectual products of such individuals reflect a distorted or absent emotional context. In fact, sociopathy - in which an individual is prone to the unfeeling infliction of cruelty - has essentially the same anatomy. Immanuel Kant had a prefrontal tumor.

The power lusting second hander, who is in a position to control the propagation of ideas through an apparatus of publication and censorship, tolerates and perpetuates that output of the insane which is of utility in his efforts to amass and maintain power over people and property. This system is most evident when the insanity is schizophrenia: the second hander acts as the filter which the schizophrenic's mind lacks, but the second hander's filter is malignant. The schizophrenic acts as the creativity which the second hander's mind lacks, but his creativity is madness.

The psychology of the power lusting second hander can be dissected into its two primary components. Power lust has a survival dividend because it tends to place the individual in a position to produce many offspring, and to provide those many offspring with social and material advantages conducive to their production of offspring. Being a second hander is essentially a character flaw, resulting from an individual's fear, lack of confidence, and laziness. It is never caused by a cognitive inability to be a first hander: being a first hander is not at all difficult in terms of the requisite intelligence.

Now, to treat the mentality of the masses, and how they come to be laid low by the above process.

Susceptibility to memetic infection is prerequisite for language acquisition, and since language capability bestows a decisive survival advantage, memetic susceptibility is essentially universal. This supplies the basic substrate by which the tenets of a religion are adopted as a set of ideas and symbols.

Non-linguistic socializability is another form of susceptibility to memetic infection. It is the capacity of an individual to incorporate himself into the community he is born into - particularly, the capability to adapt to social circumstance - the capability and tendency to adopt pre-existing community mores and problem-solving techniques. Failures to adapt or adopt impair one's capability to subsist and reproduce - though there is a sizeable incidence of people who do not adapt to their communities in the manner indicated by socialization, indicating that it is not decisive. The fundamental reason that the unsocializeable are ubiquitous, if relatively uncommon, is that without an insurance policy of cultural diversity, whole tribes can be extinguished by environmental or competitive insults the tribe lacks the collective mental wherewithal to overcome. The biological survival of the collective is necessarily predicated on the continuous actuality of individual diversity. Since the reverse is not true (individual survival is not predicated on survival of the collective), the intrinsic primacy of the individual is self-evident.

Three corollaries of the inborne propensity to socialize are (1) a tendency to adopt community doctrine without critical examination, as a method of minimizing the time and mental effort expended to learn how to avoid socially imposed penalties, (2) a tendency to follow instructions, including an awareness that disobedience leads to penalties, and (3) a tendency to accept the doctrine of service. It is tempting to explain the first as a pseudorationally implicit consequence of expedience (laziness and caution), but more likely, the uncritical adoption of certain behaviors is specifically selected for. The third is likely an inborn propensity, since service is precisely that type of socialization selected for according to the principles outlined in the previous paragraph. The awareness cited in the second is also likely inborne and specifically selected for. A particularly egregious example of instruction is the "command mystery" - that is, an instruction to refrain from contemplating the reasonableness of a tenet or statement. The proscription of idolatry common to Judaism and Christianity is an example of a command mystery, since "To believe, for example, that God literally came down on Sinai and literally spoke to our ancestors is to commit the sin of idolatry, which, in its purest form, reduces God to a natural/human phenomenon. People descend and speak, God does not--except in a mythic way" (quoting The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought by "noted theologian" Neil Gillman).

The cognitive and emotional constellation of phenomena known as "falling in love" evidently has a decisive survival dividend, as the capacity to do so is universal or nearly so. Mystic faith in its most dramatic form co-opts this reason-impairing attachment constellation. The centerpiece of the phenomenon is the uncritical rearrangement of one's values to accommodate the object of the sentiment, and facilitate its realization of its goals.

The capacity to enter trance states, though probably not unique to humans, constitutes in them a state of immensely heightened suggestibility and impaired discriminatory capabilities, often involving delusion, and in some cases involving hallucination. It is not clear if the trance is an evolutionary adaptation, or an incidental characteristic of brains that evolution could not correct, but regardless, its role in the practice and propagation of mystical ideation is evident and well known.

A type of limited trance, which can be described as awe, exists in humans, and is triggered by fixation on an isolated idea. In essence: if an individual is convinced through some means to consider an idea without considering the ideas which naturally relate to it, a more general state of dissociation is precipitated. The trance is largely or entirely a dissociative phenomenon.

Repetition of sensory constellations and of actions is also effective at penetrating the defense mechanisms of the mind and building memes. If an individual can be led by some means to repetition, a covert path to indoctrination is created. Many varieties of repetition can also induce trance states.

Music and dancing (which prominently feature repetitive structures) are tools whereby trance states in particular, and susceptibility in general, can be created. The intertwining of religion, music, and dance, is far older than civilization. Precisely how music exerts its effects on the human mind is yet to be understood, but the effects themselves are well-known. This transcript of GRAY MATTERS: Music and the Brain (1998-Mar) sheds some light on the issue. (Note that there is much in this transcript that I find offensive, in particular the false - in fact, absurd - premise that the dramatic chill sensation that music sometimes produces is a triggering of a phylogenetic baby-is-crying emotional response, and is particularly correlated with sadness and with the impression of a ``lonely, anguished cry in the wilderness.'' Chills are sometimes associated with these, but just as regularly, are associated with their antithesis - with an exultant climax of blaring, massed, densely harmonic sounds and coursing, thumping rhythm. Chills are likely a phenomenon that arises from certain sensory or cognitive transitions or inflections that produce a particularly resonant conscious wavetrain. The resonance is almost surely transduced to visceral state via the amygdala and its brainstem projections. The amygdala is cued to the resonance by the midline nuclei of the thalamus, which are components of the complex of thalamic nuclei that participate in the recruiting response. See The Symphonic Architecture of Mind for more on these themes.)

Sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, water deprivation, ingestion of psychotropics, and a variety of other traumatic stresses, also have roles in religious rituals stretching far into prehistory. In a manner similar to but more potent than that of music, these tools induce trances and susceptibility, and particularly, facilitate irrational ideation. They are psychotomimetic, predictably causing delusions and hallucinations. As such, they cause otherwise mentally sound individuals to have encounters with apparitions of the type described by religions, leading them to embrace tenets they would previously have rejected.

The spectrum of techniques enumerated above is the same spectrum used in brainwashing, and religion is simply mass brainwashing.

Opposed to this brainwashing is mental fortitude - the capacity to maintain rational consistency. This capacity varies widely, of course. One determiner of fortitude is intelligence itself, particularly the size, precision, and agility of the various types of symbolic and spatial reasoning facilities and working memories. The thoroughness and precision with which long term memories of utility are registered, the avoidance of registration of memories that are of little or no utility, the integration of memories with each other, the efficiency with which they are organized, the responsive activation of memories of instant utility, and the avoidance of activation of irrelevant memories, are all conducive to mental fortitude. Categorical adequacy is prerequisite. But beyond these basic ingredients, crucial is the firm rejection of any thought which is logically inconsistent with another thought logically established with greater confidence to accurately model reality.

In each mind, the mechanisms of mental fortitude square off against the mechanisms of susceptibility. In an ordinary individual, a rough balance is struck, in which he is rationally consistent in a broad spectrum of routine tasks and mundane subjects, but is not rational in those areas where his community has made a concerted effort to indoctrinate him. Religions by design impart doctrinal tenets which are broad in their impact, so that an adherent's decision-making process is colored by the religion quite often.

In some, mental susceptibility dominates mental fortitude, as discussed by Richard Dawkins in his essay, "Viruses of the Mind":

[...]

Roman Catholics, whose belief in infallible authority compels them to accept that wine becomes physically transformed into blood despite all appearances, refer to the ``mystery'' of transubstantiation. Calling it a mystery makes everything OK, you see. At least, it works for a mind well prepared by background infection. Exactly the same trick is performed in the ``mystery'' of the Trinity. Mysteries are not meant to be solved, they are meant to strike awe. The ``mystery is a virtue'' idea comes to the aid of the Catholic, who would otherwise find intolerable the obligation to believe the obvious nonsense of the transubstantiation and the ``three-in-one.'' Again, the belief that ``mystery is a virtue'' has a self-referential ring. As Hofstadter might put it, the very mysteriousness of the belief moves the believer to perpetuate the mystery.

An extreme symptom of ``mystery is a virtue'' infection is Tertullian's ``Certum est quia impossibile est'' (It is certain because it is impossible''). That way madness lies. One is tempted to quote Lewis Carroll's White Queen, who, in response to Alice's ``One can't believe impossible things'' retorted ``I daresay you haven't had much practice... When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'' Or Douglas Adam's Electric Monk, a labor-saving device programmed to do your believing for you, which was capable of ``believing things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City'' and which, at the moment of being introduced to the reader, believed, contrary to all the evidence, that everything in the world was a uniform shade of pink. But White Queens and Electric Monks become less funny when you realize that these virtuoso believers are indistinguishable from revered theologians in real life. ``It is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd'' (Tertullian again). Sir Thomas Browne (1635) quotes Tertullian with approval, and goes further: ``Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith.'' And ``I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visible objects is not faith, but perswasion [sic].''

[...]

another example, from Newsday/Press Democrat 1990-Dec-23, by David Firestone:

"It remains one of the most baffling yet affecting phenomena in modern religious life: A beam of light or a spot of dirt in an otherwise ordinary place is perceived as the image of the Virgin Mary, and suddenly thousands of pilgrims descend on the site, turning it into a makeshift shrine. ...In previous years, it has been a vision in the sky, a glint off a car bumper, a face in a tortilla, a tear on an icon. ...But while church leaders are often loath to debunk a visionary experience, not wanting to damage the faith of thousands, they are also leery of letting such events get out of hand. If someone who claims to have communicated with the divine begins spreading teachings that are contrary to church dogma, bishops have not hesitated to step in."
 
In the United States, a religion such as Christianity or socialism is held by most as doctrine. The indoctrinal apparatus allows for some flexibility, of course, with many Christians rejecting the grossly absurd orthodox catalogue of miracles and myths, and many socialists rejecting the tenet of orthodox Marxism which dictates abandonment of Christianity. Importantly, none of these "compromises" have any bearing on the efficacy with which the religious fulfill the desires of the establishment that propagates the doctrine.

from the Guardian UK, 2005-Oct-13, by Robert Winston:

Why do we believe in God?

[excerpt from The Story of God by Robert Winston -AMPP Ed.]

Faith in a higher being is as old as humanity itself. But what sparked the Divine Idea? Did our earliest ancestors gain some evolutionary advantage through their shared religious feelings? In these extracts from his latest book, Robert Winston ponders the biggest question of them all

The Dolley Pond Church of God With Signs Following was founded in Tennessee in 1909 by one George Went Hensley. This former bootlegger took to the pulpit in a rural Pentecostalist community in Grasshopper Valley. One Sabbath, while he was preaching a fiery sermon, some of the congregation dumped a large box of rattlesnakes into the pulpit (history does not record whether they were angry or just bored). Without missing a beat, in mid-sentence, Hensley bent down, picked up a 3ft-long specimen of this most venomous of snakes, and held it wriggling high above his head. Unharmed, he exhorted his congregation to follow suit, quoting the words of Christ: "And these signs will follow those who believe ... in my Name ... they will take up serpents."

News of Hensley's sermon spread through Grasshopper Valley; others joined him in handling snakes, and the practice caught on. There have since been around 120 deaths from snakebite in these churches, but most of the congregants tend to refuse medical help if they are bitten, preferring to believe that divine intervention will be more efficacious. Sadly, Hensley himself perished from a snakebite in 1955, and shortly afterwards the US government wisely acted to prevent the practice - although it is still legal in parts of the States.

Today, snake-handling continues mostly in small communities in rural areas of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as pockets in other southern states. Participants feel that "the spirit of God" comes upon them as they open the boxes containing the snakes. Often lifting three or four of them up simultaneously in one hand, holding them high and allowing the creatures to wind around their arms and bodies, they praise God ecstatically.

To many of us, religious or not, this type of activity seems little short of outright lunacy. And it's certainly the case that religion and mental ill-health have long been linked. The disturbed individual who believes himself to be Christ, or to receive messages from God, is something of a cliche in our society. Ever since Sigmund Freud, many people have associated religiosity with neurosis and mental illness.

Many years ago, a team of researchers at the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota decided to put this association to the test. They studied certain fringe religious groups, such as fundamentalist Baptists, Pentecostalists and the snake-handlers of West Virginia, to see if they showed the particular type of psychopathology associated with mental illness. Members of mainstream Protestant churches from a similar social and financial background provided a good control group for comparison. Some of the wilder fundamentalists prayed with what can only be described as great and transcendental ecstasy, but there was no obvious sign of any particular psychopathology among most of the people studied. After further analysis, however, there appeared a tendency to what can only be described as mental instability in one particular group. The study was blinded, so that most of the research team involved with questionnaires did not have access to the final data. When they were asked which group they thought would show the most disturbed psychopathology, the whole team identified the snake-handlers. But when the data were revealed, the reverse was true: there was more mental illness among the conventional Protestant churchgoers - the "extrinsically" religious - than among the fervently committed.

A Harvard psychologist named Gordon Allport did some key research in the 1950s on various kinds of human prejudice and came up with a definition of religiosity that is still in use today. He suggested that there were two types of religious commitment - extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic religiosity he defined as religious self-centredness. Such a person goes to church or synagogue as a means to an end - for what they can get out of it. They might go to church to be seen, because it is the social norm in their society, conferring respectability or social advancement. Going to church (or synagogue) becomes a social convention.

Allport thought that intrinsic religiosity was different. He identified a group of people who were intrinsically religious, seeing their religion as an end in itself. They tended to be more deeply committed; religion became the organising principle of their lives, a central and personal experience. In support of his research, Allport found that prejudice was more common in those individuals who scored highly for extrinsic religion.

The evidence generally is that intrinsic religiosity seems to be associated with lower levels of anxiety and stress, freedom from guilt, better adjustment in society and less depression. On the other hand, extrinsic religious feelings - where religion is used as a way to belong to and prosper within a group - seem to be associated with increased tendencies to guilt, worry and anxiety.

It is possible that strong levels of belief in God, gods, spirits or the supernatural might have given our ancestors considerable comforts and advantages. Many anthropologists and social theorists do indeed take the view that religion emerged out of a sense of uncertainty and bewilderment - explaining misfortune or illness, for example, as the consequences of an angry God, or reassuring us that we live on after death. Rituals would have given us a comforting, albeit illusory, sense that we can control what is in fact ultimately beyond our control - the weather, illness, attacks by predators or other human groups.

However, it is equally plausible that the Divine Idea would have been of little use in our prehistoric rough-and-tumble existence. Life on the savannah may have been in the open air, but it was no picnic. Early humans would have been constantly on the lookout for predators to be avoided, such as wolves and sabre-tooth tigers; hunting or scavenging would be a continual necessity to ensure sufficient food; and the men were probably constantly fighting among each other to ensure that they could have sex with the best-looking girl (or boy) or choose the most tender piece of meat from the carcass. Why would it be necessary, in the daily scramble to stay alive, to make time for such an indulgent pursuit as religion?

Richard Dawkins, our best-known Darwinist and a ferocious critic of organised religion, notes that religion seems to be, on the face of it, a cost rather than a benefit: "Religious behaviour in bipedal apes occupies large quantities of time. It devours huge resources. A medieval cathedral consumed hundreds of man-centuries in its building. Sacred music and devotional paintings largely monopolised medieval and Renaissance talent. Thousands, perhaps millions, of people have died, often accepting torture first, for loyalty to one religion against a scarcely distinguishable alternative. Devout people have died for their gods, killed for them, fasted for them, endured whipping, undertaken a lifetime of celibacy, and sworn themselves to asocial silence for the sake of religion."

It seems at first glance as if Dawkins is arguing that religion is an evolutionary disaster area. Religious belief, it seems, would be unlikely, on its own merits, to have slipped through the net of natural selection. But maybe that interpretation of what Dawkins is saying neglects some of the further benefits that religion might well offer in the human quest for survival and security.

In his book Darwin's Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson, professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University in New York state, says that religiosity emerged as a "useful" genetic trait because it had the effect of making social groups more unified. The communal nature of religion certainly would have given groups of hunter-gatherers a stronger sense of togetherness. This produced a leaner, meaner survival machine, a group that was more likely to be able to defend a waterhole, or kill more antelope, or capture their opponents' daughters. The better the religion was at producing an organised and disciplined group, the more effective they would have been at staying alive, and hence at passing their genes on to the next generation. This is what we mean by "natural selection": adaptations which help survival and reproduction get passed down through the genes. Taking into account the additional suggestion, from various studies of twins, that we may have an inherited disposition towards religious belief, is there any evidence that the Divine Idea might be carried in our genes?

While nobody has identified any gene for religion, there are certainly some candidate genes that may influence human personality and confer a tendency to religious feelings. Some of the genes likely to be involved are those which control levels of different chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain. Dopamine is one neurotransmitter which we know plays a powerful role in our feelings of well-being; it may also be involved in the sense of peace that humans feel during some spiritual experiences. One particular gene involved in dopamine action - incidentally, by no means the only one that has been studied in this way - is the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4). In some people, because of slight changes in spelling of the DNA sequences (a so-called polymorphism) making up this gene, the gene may be more biologically active, and this could be partly responsible for a religious bent.

And it is easy to suggest a mechanism by which religious beliefs could help us to pass on our genes. Greater cohesion and stricter moral codes would tend to produce more cooperation, and more cooperation means that hunting and gathering are likely to bring in more food. In turn, full bellies mean greater strength and alertness, greater immunity against infection, and offspring who develop and become independent more swiftly. Members of the group would also be more likely to take care of each other, especially those who are sick or injured. Therefore - in the long run - a shared religion appears to be evolutionarily advantageous, and natural selection might favour those groups with stronger religious beliefs.

But this is not the whole story. Although religion might be useful in developing a solid moral framework - and enforcing it - we can quite easily develop moral intuitions without relying on religion. Psychologist Eliot Turiel observed that even three- and four-year-olds could distinguish between moral rules (for example, not hitting someone) and conventional rules (such as not talking when the teacher is talking). Furthermore, they could understand that a moral breach, such as hitting someone, was wrong whether you had been told not to do it or not, whereas a conventional breach, such as talking in class, was wrong only if it had been expressly forbidden. They were also clearly able to distinguish between prudential rules (such as not leaving your notebook next to the fireplace) and moral rules.

This would suggest that there is a sort of "morality module" in the brain that is activated at an early age. Evidence from neuroscience would back this up, to a degree. In my last book, The Human Mind, I noted that certain brain areas become activated when we engage in cooperation with others, and that these areas are associated with feelings of pleasure and reward. It also seems that certain areas of the brain are brought into action in situations where we feel empathy and forgiveness.

So religion does not seem to be produced by a specific part of our psychological make-up. Is it more likely, then, that religious ideas are something of an accidental by-product created by other parts of our basic blueprint, by processes deep in the unconscious mind that evolved to help us survive?

Shared beliefs

What identical twins teach us about religion

In the United States during the 50s and 60s,it was considered best to separate at birth twins who were to be adopted. This led to a number of these children being brought up by families who did not even know that their adopted baby had a twin; and sadly, the children themselves were brought up intotal ignorance of their "lost" twin.

Identical twins, of course, are formed in the uterus by the embryo splitting; so identical twins have exactly the same DNA.

Non-identical twins -growing from two separate eggs fertilised by different sperm - do not have identical genes, but will just share many general aspects of their genetic inheritance, as do any other brothers or sisters in one family unit.

Thomas Bouchard, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, recognized that these twins, if compared with each other as they grew up, would provide an important way of measuring genetic and environmental influences.

His groundbreaking work in the 1980s and 90s gave rise to some extraordinary insights into which aspects of the human condition are more likely to be due to nature, and which to nurture.

In one study, Bouchard concentrated on72 sets of twins who had reached adulthood. He first established which of the twins (35 sets in all) were genuinely identical by genetic testing.

These were then invited to complete personality tests.

Such questionnaires, which are widely used by psychologists, pose questions in the form of statements, to which the respondents have to rate their level of agreement on a scale of one to eight. The following is a small sample of the many statements relating to religion:

· I enjoy reading about my religion.

· My religion is important to me because it answers many questions about the meaning of life.

· It is important to me to spend time in prayer and thought.

· It doesn't matter to me what I believe as long as I am good.

· I pray mainly to gain relief and protection.

· I go to my (church, synagogue, temple) to spend time with my friends.

· Although I am religious, I don't let it affect my daily life.

When Bouchard and his team compared the answers to these and other personality questions, they found strong statistical evidence that identical and non-identical twins tended to answer differently. If one identical twin showed evidence of religious thinking or behaviour, it was much more likely that his or her twin would answer similarly.

Non-identical twins, as might be expected (they are, after all, related), showed some similarities of thinking, but not nearly to the same degree. Crucially, the degree of religiosity was not strongly related to the environment in which the twin was brought up. Even if one identical twin had been brought up in an atheist family and the other in a religious Catholic household, they would still tend to show the same kind of religious feelings, or lack of them.

Work by several other scientists has inclined to confirm Bouchard's findings. One study, conducted by an international team at the Institute of Psychiatry in London under Dr Hans Eysenck, looked at information from twins living in the UK and Australia.

The researchers found that attitudes to Sabbath observance, divine law, church authority and the truth of the Bible showed greater congruity in identical rather than non-identical twins - again supporting the idea of a genetic influence.

Bouchard has consistently found in many of his studies that intrinsic religiosity -which seems to incorporate a notion of spirituality - is much more likely to be inherited. Extrinsic religiosity tends to be a product of a person's environment and direct parental influence. Bouchard also found that tendencies towards fundamentalism were also rather more likely to be inherited.

It is of some interest, too, that, in the populations that Bouchard and his colleagues have studied, women tend to have inherited rather more religious attitudes than men.

· The Story of God by Robert Winston is published by Transworld at £18.99. Winston's new series of the same name will be broadcast on BBC TV, starting in December.

from the Washington Post, 2004-Nov-13, p.B9, by Bill Broadway:

Is the Capacity for Spirituality Determined by Brain Chemistry?
Geneticist's Book 'The God Gene' Is Disputed by Scientists, Embraced by Some Religious Leaders

Dean H. Hamer has received much criticism for his new book, "The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired Into Our Genes."

Evangelicals reject the idea that faith might be reduced to chemical reactions in the brain. Humanists refuse to accept that religion is inherent in people's makeup. And some scientists have criticized Hamer's methodology and what they believe is a futile effort to find empirical proof of religious experience.

But Hamer, a behavioral geneticist at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, stands by research he says shows that spirituality -- the feeling of transcendence -- is part of our nature. And he believes that a universal penchant for spiritual fulfillment explains the growing popularity of nontraditional religion in this country and the presence of hundreds of religions throughout the world.

"We think that all human beings have an innate capacity for spirituality and that that desire to reach out beyond oneself, which is at the heart of spirituality, is part of the human makeup," Hamer, 53, said in an interview at his Northwest Washington townhouse. "The research suggests some people have a bit more of that capacity than others, but it's present to some degree in everybody."

"The God Gene," published in September and featured in Time magazine's Oct. 25 cover story, is a sequel to "Living With Our Genes," a 1998 book in which Hamer examined the genetic basis of such behavioral traits as anxiety, thrill-seeking and homosexuality. Hamer said his previous research, most notably his work on anxiety, encouraged him to look into the genetic propensity for religious belief.

What he found was that the brain chemicals associated with anxiety and other emotions, including joy and sadness, appeared to be in play in the deep meditative states of Zen practitioners and the prayerful repose of Roman Catholic nuns -- not to mention the mystical trances brought on by users of peyote and other mind-altering drugs.

At least one gene, which goes by the name VMAT2, controls the flow to the brain of chemicals that play a key role in emotions and consciousness. This is the "God gene" of the book's title, and Hamer acknowledges that it's a misnomer. There probably are dozens or hundreds more genes, yet to be identified, involved in the universal propensity for transcendence, he said.

Furthermore, the scientific linkage of a gene with chemicals that affect happiness or sadness does not answer the question "Is there a God?" but rather "Why do we believe in God?"

"Our genes can predispose us to believe. But they don't tell us what to believe in," said Hamer, whose current research involves HIV/AIDS.

Critics in the scientific community argue that Hamer's conclusions are simplistic and speculative, relying too much on anecdotal evidence and too little on testing of the VMAT2 gene to determine other possible connections to behavior. They also wonder whether his findings can be replicated, a necessity in scientific research.

"The field of behavioral genetics is littered with failed links between particular genes and personality traits," said Carl Zimmer, a science author who reviewed the book in last month's Scientific American.

Some religious leaders welcome the idea of a genetic basis for spirituality and say it validates long-held teachings.

"I wondered for a long time why [the concept of] a genetic implant hasn't been put in print or been part of a conversation in the broad theological community," said Bishop John B. Chane of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Chane associates Hamer's findings with the Apostle Paul's statement, "There are a variety of gifts but the same spirit."

Chane also welcomes the notion of genetic universality as a new, deeper way of promoting understanding among people of different faiths -- particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all of which trace their beginnings to the same father, Abraham.

Others, such as Bishop Adam J. Richardson Jr. of the Washington area district of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, said that it's hard to quantify matters of the spirit and that attributing behavior to one's genetic makeup "can be a frightful thing." By analogy, saying that people are predisposed to be spiritual also means that criminals are genetically wired to be criminals and have no hope of rehabilitation.

"Why not just put them in prison and throw away the key?" he asked.

Richardson said there's also the danger of people losing hope, of believing their genetic makeup limits their development and personal growth. "In my own system, we do have choice. We always have choice," the bishop said.

Hamer said his own religious development began in a Congregationalist church, which he abandoned when he became a scientist. But he discovered new spiritual meaning when he began researching this book -- through, in part, Zen meditative practices he learned at a Zen center near Kyoto, Japan.

He likens spirituality to the capacity for language: Humans are genetically predisposed to have it, but the language people speak and the religion they practice are learned rather than inherited characteristics.

People are designed to communicate through language, but they speak English, French or Chinese because of the part of the world they grew up in. Similarly, genetic makeup urges people to believe in a Creator or find spiritual fulfillment, but culture, history and environment determine whether one is a Christian, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist or Muslim.

Although people can change or abandon that religious affiliation, they cannot rid themselves of the genetic propensity to be spiritual. But people can build on and develop that innate spirituality through meditation, prayer and creative arts such as music and painting. These practices can be done inside or outside organized religion, he said.

Hamer said he has received numerous comments from people who say that the dichotomy of spirituality and religion makes sense. "I always knew this, that I was inclined to be spiritual, even though I've always had a problem with religion," they tell him.

"I see more and more people doing things like yoga," Hamer said. "They do it initially because they want to get more flexible and look good and feel great. Then they find that once they spend some time sitting on a mat, doing nothing but concentrating on their body and clearing their mind of everything else, they say, 'That feels kind of good.' "

Such feelings can lead to an intuitive sense of God's presence, Hamer said. "We do not know God; we feel Him."

Organized religion can become so codified, so caught up with learned rituals, that the focus on spirituality gets lost, Hamer said. The resurgence of Pentecostalism and other emotion-based religions is one sign of the staying power of inherited spirituality, he said.

Megachurches, too, are part of this phenomenon and have widespread appeal because of the emotional aspects of worship, he said. "They have lots of music, video screens, the whole multimedia thing going on," he said. "They're tapping into that [innate spirituality]. It's fun and allows people to get into that spiritual frame of mind."

Hamer said more research has to be done to determine whether there is a genetic basis for other religion-related phenomena, including the existence of archetypes, the similarity of creation stories in various religions and the common characteristics of fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Also left hanging is why women score much higher than men on transcendence tests.

"I'm not completely sure about that," Hamer said. "I just know that it's true. Women are more attuned to their emotional connections, and that's at the heart of spirituality."

from the New York Times, 2004-Nov-2, by John Langone:
 
REVIEW: THE GOD GENE
How Faith Is Hard-Wired Into Our Genes

Why, the geneticist-author of this provocative book asks, is spirituality such a powerful and universal force? Why do so many people believe in things they cannot see, smell, taste, hear or touch?

Dean Hamer, a molecular geneticist, argues persuasively that genes predispose humans to believe that "spirituality is one of our basic human inheritances," and that, indeed, there is a specific individual gene associated with faith. "I propose," he writes, "that spirituality has a biological mechanism akin to birdsong, albeit a far more complex and nuanced one."

Genes, Hamer adds, do not tell the whole story. Humans' genetic predisposition for spiritual belief is expressed in response to personal experience and the cultural environment, and it is shaped by them. But the genes, he says, "act by influencing the brain's capability for various types and forms of consciousness, which become the basis for spiritual experiences."

In other words, an inclination toward religious faith is no accident. What captured Hamer's attention was a gene, called VMAT2, that controls the flow of mood-regulating chemicals called monoamines in the brain. Crucial to making the connection was a scale called "self-transcendence," which, the author writes, "provides a numerical measure of people's capacity to reach out beyond themselves - to see everything in the world as part of one great totality."

How to measure such an amorphous linkage was tricky, given that one cannot simply examine the genome sequence and identify the location of any "God genes."

"Even if we knew the biochemical function of all the genes," he writes, "we would not know how they interact with one another, and with the environment, to mold a trait as complex as spirituality." So, convinced that the brain chemicals controlled by the "God gene" influenced spirituality by altering consciousness, he studied DNA samples from volunteers, trying to identify sequences of DNA that might be involved in the degrees of spirituality observed from one person to the next.

He was, he says, looking for what has been called the "causes of human diversity," not the reason that humans have aptitude for spirituality "but the reason that some have more or less than others."

Hamer is best known for a 1993 study linking male homosexuality to a region of the X chromosome. Other researchers tried to replicate the findings in 1999 but were unable to do so.

Hamer writes that while he found an apparent association between VMAT2 and spirituality, the gene is not the only one to affect spirituality. "It plays only a small, if key, role," he writes. "Many other genes and environmental factors also are involved. Nevertheless, the gene is important because it points out the mechanism by which spirituality is manifested in the brain."

He also points out that science can tell us whether there are "God genes," but not whether there is a God. "Our genes can predispose us to believe," he writes, "but they don't tell us what to believe in. Our faith is part of our cultural heritage, and some of the beliefs in any religion evolve over time."

Needless to say, many geneticists are skeptical. When Hamer told his former boss at the National Institutes of Health that he was writing this book, her suggestion was, "Wait until you've retired."

Another colleague said: "A God gene? That's got to be nonsense. Have you replicated it?" Theologians, too, are not always thrilled when science encroaches on their territory. "Theologians often see science as irrelevant, incomprehensible, or even destructive," Hamer said.

Still, he writes, the fact that spirituality has a genetic component implies that it has evolved for a purpose. "There is now reasonable evidence that spirituality is in fact beneficial to our physical as well as mental health. Faith may not only make people feel better, it may actually make them better people."

from Creative Loafing Atlanta, 2004-Nov-10:

Parallel universes
Darwinism favors evangelicals' survival over secular neighbors

"Cultures evolve as well as species, and that's what we saw with the religious vote" on Nov. 2, says Ed Larson, a history professor at the University of Georgia. Larson won the Pulitzer Prize for examining the collision of religion and science in his book Summer of the Gods, an unconventional look at the 1925 Scopes "monkey" trial.

In an interview with CL Group Senior Editor John F. Sugg, Larson had more than a few provocative thoughts on the unleashed power of religion evident in last week's vote.

Creative Loafing: Explain the Darwinian nature of the religious right.

Larson: There are survival characteristics associated with being an evangelical.

Are you talking about natural selection?

Who are the people having kids today? Immigrants, yes. That's one group. But among white, middle-class Americans, religious people are having children at a much higher rate. More and more and more children percentage-wise than non-religious people. There's a survival value in religious beliefs. They have a sense of purpose. They feel their mission in life is to multiply and be fruitful. The whole Darwinian concept -- evolution -- is on the side of evangelical Christians. They're growing by any measure.

What about the rest of society?

Take a look at Europe. The native Europeans are almost totally secularized. They're experiencing a negative growth rate. But their countries are flooded with immigrants with strong religious orientations, many of them Muslim. The demographics in Europe are changing. Over there, the replacement population looks different. In America, they look the same as the rest of us. But it's the same phenomenon. You see the rise [of religious fundamentalism] in Europe among the immigrant population.

Here, the growth of evangelicals has been tremendous, but since they look the same, no one noticed. The evangelism, it's not happening on the street, but at workplaces and on campuses. At the University of Georgia, there's a much higher percentage of evangelicals than when I came here 17 years ago.

The media all seemed astounded at the religious vote.

A century ago, newspapers reported on what the sermons were on Sunday. People knew what the preachers were preaching. That changed. A number of events -- the Scopes trial, abortion, prayer in school -- evangelicals withdrew. They talked among themselves, but they weren't evident to secular Americans except on rare occasions.

Is this something new in American history?

America never was a true secular society. There have been times in the past when religion grew stronger. Ben Franklin wrote about ... what was called the "Great Awakening." Later, in the 1820s, there was the "Great Revival." Those movements changed politics. The South was one of the least religious regions of the nation until the Great Awakening. That transformed the South.

How did that impact society?

The secular element in America is also deeply entrenched. There are two tracks developing parallel universes. They're living together but they don't see each other. One house on a street is evangelical, another house is secular. They're not truly neighbors.

Do we ever meet in the same space and time?

The most painful point of common culture is the election. Every four years, or every two years, these two parallel universes bump into each other. There are areas of overlap -- concerns over jobs, fighting terrorism. But there are areas of profound conflict -- abortion, gay rights. The sharpest conflict is likely to be over abortion. Roe vs. Wade could be reversed.

Why were Republicans so successful at motivating evangelicals?

The GOP was incredibly good at turning out the vote among evangelicals, something they didn't do four years ago. Gay marriage was clearly a motivating factor. The media has given it a lot of publicity. The ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Court tied the issue to the Democrats' candidate from the same state.

And ...

There's the tremendous cultural comfort evangelicals feel with George W. Bush. He has as similar story and experiences as do the evangelicals. His personal testimony resonates with Pentecostals and evangelicals. Even Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush couldn't match George W. Bush in that regard.

George Bush speaks of his miraculous turnaround. Jesus turned his life around. The story just fits with them.

Are we headed for a theocracy? Is this a defeat for the Enlightenment that guided the nation's founding fathers?

No. The Great Awakening was parallel to the Enlightenment during the late 18th century. At the time of the founding, there were a lot of backwoods, unenlightened people in America. People overreact. Evangelicals want government that reflects their values. But that doesn't mean they want a theocracy. Most definitely don't.

Where do the Democrats go from here?

I don't see the trend lines changing much. Ever since the revival took hold in the 1970s -- well, the Democrats have won two times. Jimmy Carter was a natural for evangelicals, whereas Gerald Ford didn't speak to them. Bill Clinton told the account of coming forward at a Billy Graham revival. He spoke in a voice to the religious that neither George H.W. Bush nor Bob Dole could match. Clinton was able to neutralize the evangelical [vote for Republicans] even though Reagan had been able to move them.


from the Times of London, 2006-Sep-13, by Tim Reid:

America is revealed as one nation under four faces of God
A survey shows that the way Americans see the Almighty is closely linked to their political beliefs

NINE in ten Americans believe in God but how they vote, or regard the Iraq war, depends on the very different views they have about His personality, according to a detailed survey of religion in the US.

It found that Americans hold four different images of God — Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical or Distant — and these views are far more powerful indicators about their political, social and moral attitudes than any of the traditional categories such as Protestant, Catholic or Evangelical.

The study also suggests that America is more religious than previously thought, with only 5.2 per cent of respondents calling themselves atheist and 91.8 per cent saying that they believed in God.

In Britain, by contrast, 20 per cent say that they hold no belief in a higher power and only 38 per cent claim to believe in a traditional God, according to a 2005 survey.

The American survey, conducted by Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion in Texas, broke new ground in asking respondents how they viewed God's personality.

Researchers found that Americans hold four distinct views, and these “Four Gods
 
Theology Moves Toward Abstraction

For many, the urge to believe in transcendental existence and immortality is overpowering. Transcendentalism, especially when reinforced by religious faith, is psychically full and rich; it feels somehow right. By comparison, empiricism seems sterile and inadequate. In the quest for ultimate meaning the transcendentalist route is much easier to follow. That is why, even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart. Science has always defeated religious dogma point by point when differences between the two were meticulously assessed. But to no avail. In the United States 16 million people belong to the Southern Baptist denomination, the largest favoring a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, but the American Humanist Association, the leading organization devoted to secular and deistic humanism, has only 5,000 members.

Still, if history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to the science of biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result, those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth face disquieting choices.

Meanwhile, theology tries to resolve the dilemma by evolving, sciencelike, toward abstraction. The gods of our ancestors were divine human beings. The Egyptians represented them as Egyptian (often with body parts of Nilotic animals), and the Greeks represented them as Greek. The great contribution of the Hebrews was to combine the entire pantheon into a single person, Yahweh (a patriarch appropriate to desert tribes), and to intellectualize his existence. No graven images were allowed. In the process, they rendered the divine presence less tangible. And so in biblical accounts it came to pass that no one, not even Moses approaching Yahweh in the burning bush, could look upon his face. In time the Jews were prohibited from even pronouncing his true full name. Nevertheless, the idea of a theistic God, omniscient, omnipotent, and closely involved in human affairs, has persisted to this day as the dominant religious image of Western culture.

During the Enlightenment a growing number of liberal Judeo-Christian theologians, wishing to accommodate theism to a more rationalist view of the material world, moved away from God as a literal person. Baruch Spinoza, the pre-eminent Jewish philosopher of the seventeenth century, visualized the deity as a transcendent substance present everywhere in the universe. Deus sive natura, "God or nature," he declared, they are interchangeable. For his philosophical pains he was banished from his synagogue under a comprehensive anathema, combining all the curses in the book. The risk of heresy notwithstanding, the depersonalization of God has continued steadily into the modern era. For Paul Tillich, one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, the assertion of the existence of God-as-person is not false; it is just meaningless. Among many of the most liberal contemporary thinkers the denial of a concrete divinity takes the form of "process theology." Everything in this most extreme of ontologies is part of a seamless and endlessly complex web of unfolding relationships. God is manifest in everything.

Scientists, the roving scouts of the empiricist movement, are not immune to the idea of God. Those who favor it often lean toward some form of process theology. They ask this question: When the real world of space, time, and matter is well enough known, will that knowledge reveal the Creator's presence? Their hopes are vested in the theoretical physicists who pursue the final theory, the Theory of Everything, T.O.E., a system of interlocking equations that describe all that can be learned of the forces of the physical universe. T.O.E. is a "beautiful" theory, as Steven Weinberg has called it in his important book Dreams of a Final Theory -- beautiful because it will be elegant, expressing the possibility of unending complexity with minimal laws; and symmetrical, because it will hold invariant through all space and time; and inevitable, meaning that once it is stated, no part can be changed without invalidating the whole. All surviving subtheories can be fitted into it permanently, in the manner described by Einstein in his own contribution, the General Theory of Relativity. "The chief attraction of the theory," Einstein said, "lies in its logical completeness. If a single one of the conclusions drawn from it proves wrong, it must be given up; to modify it without destroying the whole structure seems to be impossible."

The prospect of a final theory by the most mathematical of scientists might seem to signal the approach of a new religious awakening. Stephen Hawking, yielding to the temptation in A Brief History of Time (1988), declared that this scientific achievement "would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we would know the mind of God."
A Hunger For Spirituality

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Can we find a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and empiricist world views?

Unfortunately, in my view, the answer is no. Furthermore, the choice between the two is unlikely to remain arbitrary forever. The assumptions underlying these world views are being tested with increasing severity by cumulative verifiable knowledge about how the universe works, from atom to brain to galaxy. In addition, the harsh lessons of history have taught us that one code of ethics is not always as good -- or at least not as durable -- as another. The same is true of religions. Some cosmologies are factually less correct than others, and some ethical precepts are less workable.

Human nature is biologically based, and it is relevant to ethics and religion. The evidence shows that because of its influence, people can readily be educated to only a narrow range of ethical precepts. They flourish within certain belief systems and wither in others. We need to know exactly why.

To that end I will be so presumptuous as to suggest how the conflict between the world views will most likely be settled. The idea of a genetic, evolutionary origin of moral and religious beliefs will continue to be tested by biological studies of complex human behavior. To the extent that the sensory and nervous systems appear to have evolved by natural selection, or at least some other purely material process, the empiricist interpretation will be supported. It will be further supported by verification of gene-culture coevolution, the essential process postulated by scientists to underlie human nature by linking changes in genes to changes in culture.

Now consider the alternative. To the extent that ethical and religious phenomena do not appear to have evolved in a manner congenial to biology, and especially to the extent that such complex behavior cannot be linked to physical events in the sensory and nervous systems, the empiricist position will have to be abandoned and a transcendentalist explanation accepted.

For centuries the writ of empiricism has been spreading into the ancient domain of transcendentalist belief, slowly at the start but quickening in the scientific age. The spirits our ancestors knew intimately fled first the rocks and trees and then the distant mountains. Now they are in the stars, where their final extinction is possible. But we cannot live without them. People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will refuse to yield to the despair of animal mortality. They will continue to plead, in company with the psalmist, Now Lord, what is my comfort? They will find a way to keep the ancestral spirits alive.

If the sacred narrative cannot be in the form of a religious cosmology, it will be taken from the material history of the universe and the human species. That trend is in no way debasing. The true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic. Material reality discovered by science already possesses more content and grandeur than all religious cosmologies combined. The continuity of the human line has been traced through a period of deep history a thousand times as old as that conceived by the Western religions. Its study has brought new revelations of great moral importance. It has made us realize that Homo sapiens is far more than an assortment of tribes and races. We are a single gene pool from which individuals are drawn in each generation and into which they are dissolved the next generation, forever united as a species by heritage and a common future. Such are the conceptions, based on fact, from which new intimations of immortality can be drawn and a new mythos evolved.

Which world view prevails, religious transcendentalism or scientific empiricism, will make a great difference in the way humanity claims the future. While the matter is under advisement, an accommodation can be reached if the following overriding facts are realized. Ethics and religion are still too complex for present-day science to explain in depth. They are, however, far more a product of autonomous evolution than has hitherto been conceded by most theologians. Science faces in ethics and religion its most interesting and possibly most humbling challenge, while religion must somehow find the way to incorporate the discoveries of science in order to retain credibility. Religion will possess strength to the extent that it codifies and puts into enduring, poetic form the highest values of humanity consistent with empirical knowledge. That is the only way to provide compelling moral leadership. Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science, for its part, will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of moral and religious sentiments.

The eventual result of the competition between the two world views, I believe, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself. However the process plays out, it demands open discussion and unwavering intellectual rigor in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

from Alternet.org, 2005-Mar-31, by David Morris:

The End of Reason

Organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level, so let's call its institutions by their proper name: superstition-based institutions.

For Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, until 2003 the deputy head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's most powerful office, seeing The DaVinci Code in a Vatican bookstore was the last straw. In early March he lashed out at Catholic bookstores for carrying the book, and directed Catholics not to read it. Why? "There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true."

Fables?

Dan Brown's phenomenal bestseller suggests that Jesus was an immensely popular and prophetic leader who married one of his closest associates and had a family. Archbishop Bertone and the Church maintain that Jesus was at the same time a man, the son of God, and God himself, that a virgin woman gave birth to him and remained a virgin, that a few days after he was killed he came back to life and shortly thereafter was taken up to heaven to spend an eternity directing the destinies of billions of people.

In a rational world the burden of proof as to which is fable would fall on the Church. But there's the rub. For when it comes to organized religion, no burden of proof is required. On the contrary, by definition, religion requires faith and faith renounces evidence. Taking a proposition "on faith" means to consciously and willfully refuse to examine the facts.

There is a word for this type of thinking: Superstition. Many dictionaries define superstition as "belief which is not based on human reason or scientific knowledge." The American Heritage Dictionary defines superstition as "a belief, practice or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature" and "a fearful or abject state resulting from such ignorance or irrationality."

Of course, we all have our superstitions. I may refrain from walking under a ladder, or throw salt over my shoulder after a salt spill to avoid bad things from happening to me. But organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level. It demands that we govern our lives with superstition, promises us eternal salvation and bliss if we do, and threatens us with eternal damnation and pain if we do not.

It is long past time we stopped giving a free pass to organizations that refuse to be guided by reason and would force their unreason on the entire society. A first step would be to stop calling these "faith-based institutions" and start calling them by the synonymous and much more instructive term, "superstition-based institutions."
No Other Superstition But This One

Organized superstitions might be more socially supportable if their creed included a provision accepting the organized superstitions of others. Unfortunately, modern religions do not practice tolerance. For example Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore gained widespread fame and even adulation when he refused to obey court orders to remove from the Alabama Courthouse a huge stone tablet on which was inscribed the Ten Commandments. When he was asked how he would react to the suggestion that a monument to the Koran or the Torah also be placed in the Courthouse he brusquely declared he would prohibit such an installation.

A few months later, Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence explained why he knew he would win his battle against Muslims in Somalia. "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

The creationism vs. evolution debate also illuminates this intolerance. Christians insist that their creation myth represent the creationist side. But there are many creationist myths, many of which predated both Christianity and Judaism. If evidence is not needed, why exclude any superstitions? As Sam Harris notes in The End of Faith, "there is no more evidence to justify a belief in the literal existence of Yahweh and Satan than there was to keep Zeus perched upon his mountain throne or Poseidon churning the seas."

The impact of moving towards "superstition-based institutions" would be highly controversial, quite educational, and on the whole exceedingly salutary. Consider the impact on the audience if we switched the interchangeable terms in President George W. Bush's following statement, posted on a federal web site:

I believe in the power of superstition in people's lives. Our government should not fear programs that exist because a church or a synagogue or a mosque has decided to start one. We should not discriminate against programs based upon superstition in America. We should enable them to access federal money, because superstition-based programs can change people's lives, and America will be better off for it.

Fanatics and Zealots Destroying the Liberty of Thought

In her magnificent book, Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby describes the 230-year-old battle in the United States between reason and superstition. She discusses the post-Civil War period in which the battle may have been most evenly matched.

Robert Green Ingersoll, possibly the best known American in the post Civil War era and the nation's foremost orator, traveled around the country arguing about the harm that comes from self-congratulatory, aggressive and assertive organized religions.

He explained why the word God does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The founding fathers "knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man."

Ingersoll believed that reason, not faith, could and should be the basis for modern morality. "Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of 'inspiration,'" he insisted. "It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge -- that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized."

In 1885, Elizabeth Cady Stanton explained how organized and assertive religions around the world have restricted women's rights. "You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman ... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon a funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord', of course he can do it."

Stanton's enduring motto was, "Seek Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth."

During the era when Ingersoll and Stanton spread their own form of the gospel, the Church was making ever-more explicit its own hostility to reason as a guide to human behavior. In 1869, Pope Pius IX convinced the First Vatican Council to proclaim, "let him be anathema ... (w)ho shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine."

His successor, Pope Leo XIII, in one of his best known encyclicals maintained, it "has even been contended that public authority with its dignity and power of ruling, originates not from God but from the mass of the people, which considering itself unfettered by all divine sanctions, refuses to submit to any laws that it has not passed of its own free will."

Other churches agreed. In 1878, geologist Alexander Winchell was dismissed from the faculty of Vanderbilt University in Nashville for publishing his opinion that human life had existed on earth long before the biblical time frame for the creation of Adam. Most Methodists supported the dismissal, arguing that Vanderbilt was founded by Methodists and dedicated to the goals of the church.

Some 45 years later, the famous Scopes trial opened. Most of us know that William Jennings Bryan was the lawyer for the prosecution of Scopes, a biology teacher who in his classroom violated Tennessee law forbidding the mention of evolution. What we may not know is that William Jennings Bryan was a three-time democratic presidential candidate and Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state. After the Wilson administration Bryan devoted himself to campaigning around the nation on behalf of state laws banning the teaching of evolution. For Bryan faith always trumped science. "(I)t is better to trust in the Rock of Ages than to know the ages of rocks; it is better for one to know that he is close to the Heavenly Father than to know how far the stars in the heaven are apart."

That was then. This is now. A few months ago, a dozen science centers, mostly in the South, refused to show Volcanoes, a science film funded in part by the National Science Foundation. The film was turned down because it very briefly raises the possibility that life on Earth may have originated at undersea steam vents.

Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said that many people said the film was "blasphemous." Lisa Buzzelli, director of the Charleston Imax Theater in South Carolina, told The New York Times, "We have definitely a lot more creation public than evolution public."

Buzzelli's probably right. And that cannot bode well for America's future economic and technological leadership. A 1988 survey by researchers from the University of Texas found that one of four public school biology teachers thought that humans and dinosaurs might have inhabited the earth simultaneously. A recent survey by Gallup found that 35 percent of Americans believe the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of the Creator of the universe. Another 48 percent believe it is the "inspired" word of the same. Some 46 percent of Americans take a literalist view of creation; another 40 percent believe God has guided creation over the course of millions of years.
The Politicizing of Religion

I know most people who are reading this are asking, "Would you ban organized religion?" Of course not. Religion is an integral part of human existence. For tens of thousands of years humans have sought to explain the unknowable and have found comfort in believing that the death of a loved one may simply be the transition of that loved one to another, more sublime state.

But today organized religion has declared its intention to use its influence far beyond its congregation. The politicization of religion and the rise of a superstition-driven state may be the most important development in this country in many, many decades.

Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader and arguably the third most powerful person in Washington told an audience just a few weeks ago that the problems in America began when "they stopped churches from getting into politics ... Lyndon Johnson ... passed a law that said you couldn't get in politics or you're going to lose your tax-exempt status ... It forces Christians back into the church. That's what's going on in America ... That's not what Christ asked us to do."

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading candidate to become chief justice, has declared in oral hearings "the fact that government derives its authority from God." In January 2002, in a major speech revealingly titled "God's Justice and Ours," delivered to the University of Chicago Divinity School, Scalia favorably cited Paul's announcement, "For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." And Scalia declared that the death penalty is God's will. "The more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral," he observed. "I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal."

One of President Bush's first acts in office was to create an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Today 10 federal agencies have a Center for the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The White House web site gives churches Do's and Don'ts for applying for federal assistance. It has funded 30 organizations to provide training and technical assistance for religious organizations desiring federal grants. And it guarantees that any religious organization in need of help will find a ready and willing person on the other end of the phone.

After failing to persuade Congress to change the law, President Bush, by Executive Order, rewrote the rules to allow federal agencies to directly fund churches and other religious groups. In 2003 such groups received an astonishing $1.17 billion in grants from federal agencies.

"That's not enough," H. James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives recently told the Associated Press. He notes that another $40 billion in federal money is given out by state governments and "many states do not realize that federal rules now allow them to fund these organizations."

In 2003, an independent study found little activity or interest by states in contracting with religious groups. But federal intervention has persuaded them that future funding depended on their having these groups provide services. By Towey's count, 21 governors have established their own faith-based offices.

The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives maintains, "There is no general federal law that prohibits faith-based organizations that receive federal funds from hiring on a religious basis." It further explains that "for a religious organization to define or carry out its mission, it is important that it be able to take religion into account in hiring staff. Just as a college or university can take the academic credentials of an applicant for a professorship into consideration in order to maintain high standards, or an environmental organization can consider the views of potential employees on conservation, so too should a faith-based organization be able to take into account an applicant's religious belief when making a hiring decision."

One major program funded by the White House is Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. It runs the InnerChange Freedom Initiative in prisons in Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa and Texas. The Christ-centered program offers prisoners privileges that include access to a big TV, computers, and private bathrooms in return for a hefty dose of Bible study and Christian counseling. As a condition of being hired, the program's employees are required to sign a statement affirming their belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible.
Superstition as a Lethal Force

Organized superstition in this country has begun to drive and guide social policy. The clearest example of this is the recent enactment by several states of laws that allow pharmacists and doctors and hospitals to refuse to treat patients whose behavior conflicts with the their superstitions.

The central problem with organized, assertive religion, of course, is that it endows superstition with a moral and messianic fervor. God-directed superstition can be a lethal force. Indeed, one might argue that this type of force is behind much of the violence around the world. The conflicts in Palestine (Jews v. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v. Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v. Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims v. Timorese Christians) and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians v. Chechen Muslims) constitute only a few of the places where religion has been the explicit cause of million of deaths in the last ten years.

Sam Harris discusses "the burden of paradise." Why are there suicide bombers? "Because they actually believe what they say they believe. They believe in the literal truth of the Koran ...Why did 19 well-educated, middle class men trade their lives in this world for the privilege of killing thousands of our neighbors? Because they believed that they would go straight to paradise for doing so."

To Harris, condoning the use of superstition as an important social force enables and encourages extremism. "The concessions we have made to religious faith," he maintains, "to the idea that belief can be sanctified by something other than evidence -- have rendered us unable to name, much less address, one of the most pervasive causes of conflict in our world."

In 1784, Patrick Henry introduced a bill in the Virginia General Assembly that would have assessed taxes on all citizens for the support of "teachers of the Christian religion." The bill's passage seemed certain. But then James Madison issued his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, eventually signed by some 2,000 Virginians.

"What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society?" Madison asked. "In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have seen the upholding of the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberty of the people."

The two-year debate over the assessment bill ended in its overwhelming defeat. Instead the Virginia legislature in 1786 passed an Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. The preamble to the original bill, written by Thomas Jefferson, declared, "Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their mind; that Almighty God hath created the mind free... ."

The final law contained only the last few words of Jefferson's preamble, "Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free ... ."

After the passage of the legislation, Jefferson wrote Madison to express his pride in Virginia's leadership on this crucial issue. "(I)t is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests and nobles, and it is honorable for us, to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions."

In early February 2005, the Virginia House of Delegates easily approved (69-27) an amendment to the state's constitution that would allow the practice of religion in public schools and other public buildings. A few weeks later the amendment was killed in a Senate committee (10-5).

It was a lonely victory for reason in this increasingly unreasonable time. The battle between rationality and superstition continues.

David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minn. and director of its New Rules project.

from New Vision (Kampala) via allAfrica.com, 2004-Jul-7, by Moses Nsubuga and Chris Kiwawulo
 
Demons Attack Kiboga Pupils

Kampala -- Primary school in Kiboga district was closed in May after parents reported that their children were being attacked by demons.

Bisika Primary School, located in Butemba sub-county, was later re-opened but the pupils continued to live in fear. Another demon attack was reported on June 29, in the same school. Subscribe to AllAfrica

Bisika, a government-aided day primary school, is located five kilometres from Kiboga town. The well-furnished four-building school has 450 pupils.

The parents accused Isma Sserunkuuma, a man, who lives near the school, of bringing the demons locally known as mayembe. They said Sserunkuma wanted the demons from a witchdoctor to help him acquire wealth.

Acting on the parents' report, the Kiboga resident district commissioner (rdc), Margaret Kasaija, ordered for the arrest of Sserunkuuma and the closure of the school until the demons would be driven out of the school. Sserunkuuma is still in detention.

"I wonder why people really acquire demons and resort to bewitching others," Kasaija lamented before she cautioned the public against acquiring demons.

At the time of arrest, Sserunkuuma said he could not afford the demons' enormous demands. He said the demons demanded for 300 virgin girls and cows to provide them with blood for sustenance.

Sserunkuuma added that when he failed to provide the virgins and cows, he set them (demons) free. They then attacked the pupils. He pleaded that he had no intention of harming the school, but only failed to control the demons.

The demons reportedly affected primary four, five, six and seven pupils below 12 years. When attacked, the pupils gabble and run around the compound. Others undress and foam around their mouths.

They also shake violently as if shocked by an electric current. Parents also said they had to tie their children on pegs with ropes to avoid their disappearance.

The national chairman for traditional healers, Ben Ggulu, performed traditional rituals before the school was re-opened in May. He also healed 15 pupils, whose mental abilities had been affected by the demons.

Ggulu would hold herbs atop the pupils' heads to invoke the demons out of them. Using traditional charms, Ggulu spoke strange languages causing bark cloth-wound cow's horn to move around the place, a ritual he said he did to search for the demons.

"Sorcery has become a common practice in this district, especially in Ntwetwe, Kapeke, Kyankwanzi and Butemba sub-counties," Ggulu, who is also the Kapeke sub-county chairperson, said.

He noted that many people acquired demons without knowing their nature, adding that, "harmless demons do not ask for blood and human sacrifices."

Ggulu said some people use harmful demons to kill others in the struggle to gain wealth.

He said the Police had let the public down in handling witchcraft cases because they had failed to investigate such cases properly. He asked the Police to contact him in such cases.

"In such cases, the Police should be very careful because there are people who falsely accuse their neighbours of possessing demons for other interests," Ggulu said.

Ggulu appealed to parliamentarians to review the witchcraft law, which he said was weak.

Residents, some of whom, have migrated to other places in fear of the demons owned by their neighbours, said they were tired of endless mayhem caused to them by demons.

One Bisika resident, Isma Sserugya said Sserunkuuma's demons had not yet affected residents and boys in the school, arguing that they were convinced to believe that the demons were interested in virgin girls as Sserunkuuma disclosed on his arrest.

The district Police commander, Okwot Obwona, said most incidents of mob justice in Kiboga district were against witchcraft suspects.

The Bisika LCI chairperson, Diriyam Lukwago said, "I will not accept the practice of acquiring demons to go on in this village. We have even come up with a by-law to evict any one who will be found with demons."

Asked about the spiritual history of the residents, Lukwago said most of them were staunch believers, who did not believe in demons, adding that the Muslim community constituted the largest percentage.

The chairman asked residents to cooperate with his council to fight sorcery. The district director of health services, Dr. John Bosco Serebe, confirmed the incident but declined to comment further, saying the cases were still being examined in the district laboratory.

During the last demon attack, a priest Rev. Fr. Herman Kakooza was called in to pray pupils.

from the Wall Street Journal via OpinionJournal.com, 2005-Jan-21, by Tunku Varadarajan:

Scientific Unease
To some, all moons are saturnine.

Man has always been fascinated by the lamps in the sky. The ancient Babylonians invented math to calculate the movements of the moon and the planets. The Magi followed a star.

So the recent landing on Titan--Saturn's largest moon--of a probe dispatched from Earth all of seven years ago is but the latest fruit of the love affair between science and the human imagination. We've come a long way from Stonehenge.

Though all God's children started pretty much with the same blank slate, the Western branch of the family has--over time and with gusto--immersed itself in science, growing to cherish its potency and, perhaps for that reason, permitting it a comfortable coexistence with religion.

Where conflicts have arisen between science and religion, our scientific empiricism--which is a source of our tolerance and of our ability to resolve conflict (mostly) without coming to blows--has usually ensured that our intellectual principles are not stifled by our prayers.

To be sure, the very empiricism that safeguards science has also been benign for religion, as biblical scholars--not to mention the ordinary faithful, schooled in biology--have sought to interpret old texts in ways that sit elegantly with modern truths. The Word has not been allowed to remain static or to become a laughingstock (except on boorish fringes), for an inherent part of our scientific temperament is humility.

Our imagination is fed, and fired, by science in ways that some other societies find offensive. But although the scientists in our midst do speak rather frankly and often practice their craft with an unseemly swagger, we do not live--even remotely--under a scientista tyranny. For this we must thank our innate skepticism, which extends even to technology, as well as our philosophers, who are always inclined to keep science on its toes.

In Western philosophy, it is just as valid a question--and just as intellectually respectable--to ask if science can explain everything as it is to ask if it can explain anything. And this is related to the question--which some might say has an almost theological flavor--of whether scientists are in the business of explaining phenomena or of merely describing them.

The impact of science on our societies goes beyond the physics and chemistry of it all. Experiment is part of our political imagination, defining the limits of our reach and our ambitions; and, as we saw during the Cold War, it offers a compelling theater in which ideological competition can be enacted. Soyuz and Apollo, Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn: These names are as much a part of our scientific history as they are the stuff of our political memory.

In some cultures, however, science provokes neither admiration nor intellectual hunger but, instead, a fierce political resistance. V.S. Naipaul has written irrefutably of the conflict between the West and the Islamic world as being a conflict over modernity. In essence, the discord is about science and the imagination--our open-ended science and their tightly sealed imagination.

Our Islamist antagonists have an underdeveloped sense of science, chiefly because of their inability to let the (sacred) Word slip out of the mullah's grasp. The empirical will always struggle to exist alongside the religious in lands where godly texts are not open to candid evaluation. How can there be data-testing--and an impartial imagination--if no one asks hard questions, if one is taught that all the answers to everything exist already, in the Book?

Science--like all providers of awkward truths--can be profoundly disconcerting. A Turkish friend tells me that when Apollo 11 completed its mission in 1969, his Ottoman grandfather--one of the last survivors of an ancien régime--refused to accept that the Americans had set foot on the moon. It was a kind of dawn that he was too tired, and too old, to rise to.

More than other achievements, technological landmarks have the effect of dwarfing all else and heralding a brand new era. Apollo 11, the first such modern landmark after Hiroshima, took place at the height of the race between two systems that competed for a claim to the future. The Titan landing has happened at a moment when the world is again divided, but with one side--alas--on a race to the past.

Mr. Varadarajan is editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal.

from Caltech, by Richard P. Feynman, the text of Caltech's 1974 commencement address:

Cargo Cult Science
Some remarks on science, pseudoscience, and learning how to not fool yourself.

During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. (Another crazy idea of the Middle Ages is these hats we have on today—which is too loose in my case.) Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas—which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked—or very little of it did.

But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFO's, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.

Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk to talk about that I can't do it in this talk. I'm overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism, and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks (they're dark and quiet and you float in Epsom salts) and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how much there was.

I was sitting, for example, in a hot bath and there's another guy and a girl in the bath. He says to the girl, “I'm learning massage and I wonder if I could practice on you?� She says OK, so she gets up on a table and he starts off on her foot—working on her big toe and pushing it around. Then he turns to what is apparently his instructor, and says, “I feel a kind of dent. Is that the pituitary?� And she says, “No, that's not the way it feels.� I say, “You're a hell of a long way from the pituitary, man.� And they both looked at me—I had blown my cover, you see—and she said, “It's reflexology.� So I closed my eyes and appeared to he meditating.

That's just an example of the kind of things that overwhelm me. I also looked into extrasensory perception and PSI phenomena, and the latest craze there was Uri Geller, a man who is supposed to be able to bend keys by rubbing them with his finger. So went to his hotel room, on his invitation, to see a demonstration of both mind reading and bending keys. He didn't do any mind reading that succeeded; nobody can read my mind, I guess. And my boy held a key and Geller rubbed it, and nothing happened. Then he told us it works better under water, and so you can picture all of us standing in the bathroom with the water turned on and the key under it, and him rubbing the key with his finger. Nothing happened. So I was unable to investigate that phenomenon.

But then I began to think, what else is there that we believe? (And I thought then about the witch doctors, and how easy it would have been to check on them by noticing that nothing really worked.) So I found things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you'll see the reading scores keep going down—or hardly going up—in spite of the fact that we continually use these same people to improve the methods. There's a witch doctor remedy that doesn't work. It ought to be looked into: how do they know that their method should work? Another example is how to treat criminals. We obviously have made no progress—lots of theory, but no progress—in decreasing the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle criminals.

Yet these things are said to be scientific. We study them. And I think ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience. A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way—or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one. Or a parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or another, feels guilty for the rest of her life because she didn't do “the right thing,� according to the experts.

So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science.

I tried to find a principle for discovering more of these kinds of things, and came up with the following system. Any time you find yourself in a conversation at a cocktail party—in which you do not feel uncomfortable that the hostess might come around and say, “Why are you fellows talking shop?� ... or that your wife will come around and say, “Why are you flirting again?� —then you can be sure you are talking about something about which nobody knows anything.

Using this method, I discovered a few more topics that I had forgotten—among them the efficacy of various forms of psychotherapy. So I began to investigate through the library, and so on, and I have so much to tell you that I can't do it at all. I will have to limit myself to just a few little things. I'll concentrate on the things more people believe in. Maybe I will give a series of speeches next year on all these subjects. It will take a long time.

I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call Cargo Cult Science. In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he's the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it would he just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in Cargo Cult Science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson Oil doesn't soak through food. Well, that's true. It's not dishonest; but the thing I'm talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest, it's a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will—including Wesson Oil. So it's the implication which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with.

We've learned from experience that the truth will out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science.

A great deal of their difficulty is, of course, the difficulty of the subject and the inapplicability of the scientific method to the subject. Nevertheless, it should be remarked that this is not the only difficulty. That's why the planes don't land—but they don't land.

We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.

But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves—of having utter scientific integrity—is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I'm not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. “Well,� I said, “there aren't any.� He said, “Yes, but then we won't get support for more research of this kind.� I think that's kind of dishonest. If you're representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you're doing—and if they don't want to support you under those circumstances, then that's their decision.

One example of the principle is this: If you've made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of result. For example—let's take advertising again—suppose some particular cigarette has some particular property, like low nicotine. It's published widely by the company that this means it is good for you—they don't say, for instance, that the tars are a different proportion, or that something else is the matter with the cigarette. In other words, publication probability depends upon the answer. That should not be done.

I say that's also important in giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it would he better in some other state. If you don't publish such a result, it seems to me you're not giving scientific advice. You're being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don't publish it at all. That's not giving scientific advice.

Other kinds of errors are more characteristic of poor science. When I was at Cornell. I often talked to the people in the psychology department. One of the students told me she wanted to do an experiment that went something like this—I don't remember it in detail, but it had been found by others that under certain circumstances, X, rats did something, A. She was curious as to whether, if she changed the circumstances to Y, they would still do, A. So her proposal was to do the experiment under circumstances Y and see if they still did A.

I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person—to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A—and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know that the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control.

She was very delighted with this new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot do that, because the experiment has already been done and you would be wasting time. This was in about 1935 or so, and it seems to have been the general policy then to nut try to repeat psychological experiments, but only to change the conditions and see hat happens.

Nowadays there's a certain danger of the same thing happening, even in the famous field of physics. I was shocked to hear of an experiment done at the big accelerator at the National Accelerator Laboratory, where a person used deuterium. In order to compare his heavy hydrogen results to what might happen to light hydrogen he had to use data from someone else's experiment on light hydrogen, which was done on different apparatus. When asked he said it was because he couldn't get time on the program (because there's so little time and it's such expensive apparatus) to do the experiment with light hydrogen on this apparatus because there wouldn't be any new result. And so the men in charge of programs at NAL are so anxious for new results, in order to get more money to keep the thing going for public relations purposes, they are destroying—possibly—the value of the experiments themselves, which is the whole purpose of the thing. It is often hard for the experimenters there to complete their work as their scientific integrity demands.

All experiments in psychology are not of this type, however. For example, there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on—with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.

The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and, still the rats could tell.

He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.

Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-Number-l experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using—not what you think it's using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running.

I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The subsequent experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn't discover anything about the rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of Cargo Cult Science.

Another example is the ESP experiments of Mr. Rhine, and other people. As various people have made criticisms—and they themselves have made criticisms of their own experiments—they improve the techniques so that the effects are smaller, and smaller, and smaller until they gradually disappear. All the parapsychologists are looking for some experiment that can be repeated—that you can do again and get the same effect—statistically, even. They run a million rats—no, it's people this time—they do a lot of things and get a certain statistical effect. Next time they try it they don't get it any more. And now you find a man saying that it is an irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is science?

This man also speaks about a new institution, in a talk in which he was resigning as Director of the Institute of Parapsychology. And, in telling people what to do next, he says that one of the things they have to do is be sure they only train students who have shown their ability to get PSI results to an acceptable extent—not to waste their time on those ambitious and interested students who get only chance results. It is very dangerous to have such a policy in teaching—to teach students only how to get certain results, rather than how to do an experiment with scientific integrity.

So I wish to you—I have no more time, so I have just one wish for you—the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom. May I also give you one last bit of advice: Never say that you'll give a talk unless you know clearly what you're going to talk about and more or less what you're going to say.

An adaptation of this address appears in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (W W Norton & Co, 1984).

In 2002 Mike Jay published an article on the surviving cargo cult in Tanna, Vanuatu, Melanesia, including photos. The culture is remarkable and pitiful.

from Science, 2005-Feb-11 (V307, N5711, p.854), by Joanna Kempner, Clifford S. Perlis, and Jon F. Merz:

Forbidden Knowledge

There is growing concern about the politicization and social control of science, constraining the conduct, funding, publication, and public use of scientific research (1). For example, human cloning and embryonic stem cell creation have been regulated or banned (2), activists have been lobbying Congress to remove funding from certain government-sponsored research (3-5), and science journal editors have been compelled to develop policies for publication of sensitive manuscripts (6, 7).

Forbidden knowledge embodies the idea that there are things that we should not know (8-15 ). Knowledge may be forbidden because it can only be obtained through unacceptable means, such as human experiments conducted by the Nazis (9, 11 ); knowledge may be considered too dangerous, as with weapons of mass destruction or research on sexual practices that undermine social norms (8, 9, 12); and knowledge may be prohibited by religious, moral, or secular authority, exemplified by human cloning (10, 12).

Beyond anecdotal cases, little is known about what, and in what ways, science is constrained. To begin to fill this gap, we performed an interview study to examine how constraints affect what scientists do. In 2002-03, we conducted 10 pilot and 41 in-depth semistructured interviews with a sample of researchers drawn from prestigious U.S. academic departments of neuroscience, sociology, molecular and cellular biology, genetics, industrial psychology, drug and alcohol abuse, and computer science. We chose diverse disciplines to gauge the range, rather than prevalence, of experiences.

We asked subjects to consider their practices and rationales for limiting scientific inquiry or dissemination and to tell us about cases in which research in their own discipline had been constrained. Respondents reported a wide range of sensitive topics, including studies relating to human cloning, embryonic stem cells, weapons, race, intelligence, sexual behaviors, and addiction, as well as concerns about using humans and animals in research.

Nearly half the researchers felt constrained by explicit, formal controls, such as governmental regulations and guidelines codified by universities, professional societies, or journals. Respondents generally agreed that formal controls offered important protections. Less consensus surrounded the necessity, efficiency, or good sense of specific policies. Stem cell research was repeatedly identified as an example of an overly restricted area. Many respondents expressed a preference that scientists--not policy-makers--determine which research is too dangerous.

We were surprised, however, that respondents felt most affected by what we characterize as "informal constraints." Researchers sometimes only know that they have encountered forbidden knowledge when their research breaches an unspoken rule and is identified as problematic by legislators, news agencies, activists, editors, or peers. Studies by Kinsey et al. (16, 17), Milgram (18), Humphreys (19), Herrnstein and Murray (20), and Rind et al. (21 ) were attacked only after publication. Many researchers (42%) described how their own work had been targeted for censure. One researcher was accused by activists of "murderous behavior" because he was incapable of reporting HIV+ subjects who admitted to unsafe sex practices in an anonymous survey. A sociologist published an article that undermined the central claim of a particular group, who allegedly then accused him of funding improprieties.

In other cases, the mere threat of social sanction deterred particular types of inquiry. Several researchers said that their choices to study yeast or mice instead of dogs were guided by fears of retribution from animal rights groups. As one respondent commented, "I would like to lunatic-proof my life as much as possible." Drug and alcohol researchers reported similar fears, stating that they had not pursued studies that might provoke moral outrage.

Finally, there may be unspoken rules shared by the community. As one respondent stated, "every microbiologist knows not to make a more virulent pathogen."

We failed to detect a coherent ethos regarding production of forbidden knowledge. Respondents at once decried external regulation and recognized the right of society to place limits on what and how science is done. They stated that scientists are "moral" and "responsible," but acknowledged cases in which scientists were sanctioned for acting outside the mainstream of their disciplines. They also said that, although information and "truth" had inherent utility, full and open publication was not always possible. Whereas most respondents worked hard to avoid controversy, others relished it.

In summary, formal and informal constraints have a palpable effect on what science is studied, how studies are performed, how data are interpreted, and how results are disseminated. Our results suggest that informal limitations are more prevalent and pervasive than formal constraints. Although formal constraints will bias science--by affecting what is studied and how it is studied--these biases are relatively transparent and amenable to political change. Informal constraints, in contrast, may be culturally ingrained and resistant to change, leaving few markers by which to assess their effects. We believe it is important to observe these constraints, assess their effects, and openly debate their desirability for science and society.

References and Notes

1 R. A. Charo, J. Law Med. Ethics 32, 307 (2004).
2 G. Q. Daley, New Engl. J. Med. 349, 211 (2003).
3 J. Kaiser, Science 300, 403 (2003).
4 J. Kaiser, Science 302, 758 (2003).
5 J. Kaiser, Science 302, 966 (2003).
6 J. Couzin, Science 297, 749 (2002).
7 Journal Editors and Authors Group, Science 299, 1149 (2003).
8 C. Cohen, New Engl. J. Med. 296, 1203 (1977).
9 D. Smith, Hastings Center Rep. 8 (6), 30 (1978).
10 G. Holton, R. S. Morison, Eds., Limits of Scientific Inquiry (Norton, New York, 1979).
11 D. Nelkin, in Ethical Issues in Social Science Research, T. L. Beauchamp, R. R. Faden, R. J. Wallace, L. Walters, Eds. (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, MD, 1982), pp. 163-174.
12 R. Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (Harcourt Brace, New York, 1996).
13 D. B. Johnson, Monist 79, 197 (1996).
14 B. Allen, Monist 79, 294 (1996).
15 D. B. Johnson, Sci. Eng. Ethics 5, 445 (1999).
16 A. C. Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Saunders, Philadelphia, 1948).
17 A. C. Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Saunders, Philadelphia, 1953).
18 S. Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (Harper Row, New York, 1974).
19 L. Humphreys, Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places (Aldine, Chicago, 1970).
20 R. Herrnstein, C. Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996).
21 B. Rind et al., Psychol. Bull. 124, 22 (1998).

This study was approved by the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board. We thank all respondents for their participation; B. Sitko for assistance; and C. Bosk, A. Caplan, J. Drury, C. Lee, and B. Sampat for comments. Supported by the Greenwall Foundation (J.K., C.S.P., J.F.M.) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (J.K.).

from http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/12/academic-freedom-in-denmark.php, by Helmuth Nyborg:

Dear Colleague. December 3rd 2005

At the 2001 meeting of the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR), I reported a 4 IQ point advantage for males in intelligence. Upon my return to Denmark I was interviewed by a journalist, and a veritable media storm ensued. The director of my institute publicly stated that he would personally look into the situation. He also said that I made a fool of myself and my institute. Consequently, a "Committee for Proper Research" reprimanded me for what they saw as "premature publication" - i.e. reporting in the media before a full publication in a peer-reviewed journal was at hand. I was called to several meetings with the Dean and the President of the University. The paper was eventually published (See Nyborg, H. (2005) Sex-related differences in general intelligence g, brain size, and social status. Personality and Individual Differences, 39, 497-509; available online at www. sciencedirect.com.)

In 2004 the director wrote to the dean, saying that he could not evaluate my research contribution in his yearly report. In April 2005 he halted my ongoing 30 year longitudinal reseach project by confiscating the research protocols and informing the Dean he would setup a committee to re-examine my calculations and the method (hierarchical factor analysis) used. As of december 3rd. 2005, I have not been notified who is on the committee.

I am asking if you will write me a letter of support. If so, please address it "To Whom it may Concern," use official paper with you professional affiliation stated, and send it to me at [helmuthnyborg @ msn.com -R] or to my private address: Adslev Skovvej 2, DK-8362, Hoerning, Denmark. Please feel free to comment on any aspect of the academic freedom and scholarship issues raised that you find relevant.

I will then assemble the letters and use them in a defence of my academic freedom.

from the Evolutionary Psychology list:

Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 21:47:27 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
From: Irwin Silverman <isilv@yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: Academic Persecution in Denmark

This should help resolve the recent debate on this list as to whether pressures for political correctness in academe were specific to North America (albeit sadly).

Helmuth Nyborg's contributions in the area of hormones and sex-related differences in spatial cognition are legend. He is an inspired theoretician and a meticulous researcher. I will certainly send a letter.

Irwin Silverman, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Psychology
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto ON M3J 1P3
Canada

from Scientific American, 2004-Oct, by Michael Shermer:
 
[...]

One more-Shamanism

Shamanism

excerpt from "Aborigines," from http://users.orac.net.au/~mhumphry/aborigin.html:

In Aboriginal society, like every other society, there were problems; droughts, shortages of food, people became sick or injured, and they died. Supernatural forces were blamed for almost every event, and magic and ritual used to correct the situation. The "medicine man" or "doctor" was a powerful man, and tried to cure many physical ills, sometimes by massage or sucking, to remove the "evil" causing the pain, or by the application of natural medicines made from plants or roots. The emphasis on healing was on the spirit, rather than the body. It was the belief that the spirit was the primary resource of illness - evil thoughts act first on the spirit, and the physical symptoms came later - that led to "evil thinking" someone, as in the well-known custom of "bone pointing". The person who was a victim of a spell would usually sicken and die, because he believed that this would happen.

These wordbites about shamanism are provided as historic examples of radical application of the religious operating system (the spectrum of methods used in sociocognitive warfare - "operating system" is a technical term used in military literature). Of course, shamanistic visions and ideations are entirely the consequence of cultivated hallucination and delusion, and represent nothing more than the inventions of the minds of the entranced.

by Richard Shand, 1995-Sep-26, from http://home.fireplug.net/~rshand/streams/scripts/shamanism.html:

Shamanism
A Master of Ecstasy
"The word shaman comes to English from the Tungus language via Russian. Among the Tungus of Siberia it is both a noun and a verb. While the Tungus have no word for shamanism, it has come into usage by anthropologists, historians of religion and others in contemporary society to designate the experience and the practices of the shaman. Its usage has grown to include similar experiences and practices in cultures outside of the original Ural-Altaic cultures from which the term shaman originated. Thus shamanism is not the name of a religion or group of religions."

"Shamanism is classified by anthropologists as an archaic magico-religious phenomenon in which the shaman is the great master of ecstasy. Shamanism itself, was defined by the late Mircea Eliade as a technique of ecstasy. A shaman may exhibit a particular magical specialty (such as control over fire, wind or magical flight). When a specialization is present the most common is as a healer. The distinguishing characteristic of shamanism is its focus on an ecstatic trance state in which the soul of the shaman is believed to leave the body and ascend to the sky (heavens) or descend into the earth (underworld). The shaman makes use of spirit helpers, which he or she communicates with, all the while retaining control over his or her own consciousness. (Examples of possession occur, but are the exception, rather than the rule.) It is also important to note that while most shamans in traditional societies are men, either women or men may and have become shamans."
- Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)

"These myths refer to a time when communication between heaven and earth was possible; in consequence of a certain event or a ritual fault, the communication was broken off, but heroes and medicine men are nevertheless able to reestablish it."
- Mircea Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

"By entering an ecstatic state, induced by ritual dancing and the invocation of spirits, the shaman is believed able to return to that time, visiting heaven and hell to talk with gods, spirits of the dead, and animals."
- Cosmic Duality

"Shamans reach the state that gives them access to the supernatural world in a variety of ways. A very common way is by ingesting mind-altering drugs of various types."
- James Davila, "Enoch as a Divine Mediator"

"It is the Siberian and Latin American shamans who have most often employed psychedelics as booster rockets to launch their cosmic travels. In Siberia the preferred substance has been the mushroom known as Amanita muscaria or agaric. This is perhaps the much-praised soma of early Indian religion as well as one of the drugs referred to in European legends."
- Roger N.Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism

"Another common method is to listen to the protracted pounding of a drum. Less direct methods are also widely practiced. These include various forms of isolation and self-denial, such as fasting, solitary confinement, celibacy, dietary and purity restrictions, and protracted prayer. Igjugarjuk, a Caribou Inuit shaman, claims to have been isolated by his mentor in a small snow hut where he fasted and meditated in the cold, drinking only a little water twice, for thirty days. After his initiatory vision (see below) he continued a rigorous regime involving a special diet and celibacy. Leonard Crow Dog, a Native American Sioux shaman, describes in detail the process of his first vision quest. He participated in a sweat lodge ceremony for spiritual cleansing, then was taken to a fasting place of his family's, where he was wrapped naked in a blanket and left in a hole to fast and pray alone for two days (an adult shaman will fast four or more days). Wallace Black Elk also frequently describes both the sweat lodge ('stone-people-lodge') ceremony and the vision quest. Ascetic practices by Japanese shamans are especially prevalent among those who actively seek shamanhood rather than being called by a deity. These practices include fasting and dietary restrictions of various kinds, seclusion in a dark place, walking pilgrimages between sacred places, and rigorous regimes of immersion and bathing in ice-cold water. These disciplines, especially the endurance of cold, eventually fill the shaman with heat and spiritual might."
- James Davila, "Enoch as a Divine Mediator"

"Let him who would join himself to the prince of Torah wash his garments and his clothes and let him immerse (in) a strict immersion as a safeguard in case of pollution. And let him dwell for twelve days in a room or in an upper chamber. Let him not go out or come in, and he must neither eat nor drink. But from evening to evening see that he eats his bread, clean bread of his own hands, and he drinks pure water, and that he does not taste any kind of vegetable. And let him insert this midrash of the prince of Torah into the prayer three times in every single day; it is after the prayer that he should pray it from its beginning to its end. And afterward, let him sit and recite during the twelve days, the days of his fasting, from morning until evening, and let him not be silent. And in every hour that he finishes it let him stand on his feet and adjure by the servants (and?) by their king, twelve times by every single prince. Afterward let him adjure every single one of them by the seal."
- Sar Torah, paras. 299-300

The shaman is said to 'make a journey,' during which he is spoken to by the spirits, who give him curing instructions and make their wishes known for certain kinds of propitiatory sacrifices; they may also appear to him in the form of visions or apparitions. Motifs of death and rebirth, often involving bodily dismemberment and reassimilation, are common in shamanism..."
- McKenna and McKenna, The Invisible Landscape

"...It appears that shamans are able to draw on a range of psychologically skillful diagnostic and therapeutic techniques accumulated by their predecessors over centuries. Some of these techniques clearly foreshadow ones widely used today and thereby confirm the reputation of shamans as humankind's first psychotherapists."
- Roger N.Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism

"We know today that the medicine man derives his power from a circular feedback involving his personal myth and the hopes and expectations of those who share it with him. The ensuing 'mutual exaltation' was studied by McDougal and by Gustave LeBon many years ago. It is still regarded as one of the key factors in the psychology of masses. It has subsequently been reinterpreted in Freudian terms as the individual's willing surrender to an all-powerful father figure capable of meeting the childish dependency needs still lingering in members of the group."
- Ehrewald, The ESP Experience

"Shamanism often exists alongside and even in cooperation with the religious or healing practices of the community....Knowledge of other realms of being and consciousness and the cosmology of those regions is the basis of the shamanic perspective and power. With this knowledge, the shaman is able to serve as a bridge between the mundane and the higher and lower states. The shaman lives at the edge of reality as most people would recognize it and most commonly at the edge of society itself."
- Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)



Initiation Rituals
"A common experience of the call to shamanism is a psychic or spiritual crisis, which often accompanies a physical or even a medical crisis, and is cured by the shaman him or herself....The shaman is often marked by eccentric behavior such as periods of melancholy, solitude, visions, singing in his or her sleep, etc. The inability of the traditional remedies to cure the condition of the shamanic candidate and the eventual self cure by the new shaman is a significant episode in development of the shaman. The underlying significant aspect of this experience, when it is present, is the ability of the shaman to manage and resolve periods of distress."
- Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)

"Frequently a candidate will gain shamanic powers during a visionary experience in which he or she undergoes some form of death or personal destruction and disintegration at the hands of divine beings, followed by a corresponding resurrection or reintegration that purges and gives a qualitatively different life to the initiate. For example, the Siberian (Tagvi Samoyed) Sereptie, in his long and arduous initiatory vision (on which see below), was at one point reduced to a skeleton and then was 'forged' with a hammer and anvil. Autdaruta, an Inuit initiate, had a vision in which he was eaten by a bear and then was vomited up, having gained power over the spirits."
- James R. Davila, "Hekhalot Literature and Mysticism"

"I saw that I was painted red all over, and my joints were painted black, with white stripes between the joints. My bay had lightning stripes all over him and his mane was cloud. And when I breathed, my breath was lightning."
- Nick Black Elk, in the narrative of his Great Vision

"...The important moments of a shamanic initiation are these five; first, torture and violent dismemberment of the body; second, scraping away of the flesh until the body is reduced to a skeleton; third, substitution of viscera and reveal of the blood; fourth, a period spent in Hell, during which the future shaman is taught by the souls of dead shamans and by 'demons'; fifth, an ascent to Heaven to obtain consecration from the God of Heaven"
- Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation

"They are cut up by demons or by their ancestral spirits; their bones are cleaned, the flesh scraped off, the body fluids thrown away, and their eyes torn from their sockets...His bones are then covered with new flesh and in some cases he is also given new blood."
- Fabrega and Silver in Behavioral Science 15

"The ecstatic experience of the shaman goes beyond a feeling or perception of the sacred, the demonic or of natural spirits. It involves them shaman directly and actively in transcendent realities or lower realms of being."
"The shaman is not recognized as legitimate without having undergone two types of training:
1) Ecstatic (dreams, trances, etc.)
2) Traditional ('shamanic techniques, names and functions of spirits,mythology and genealogy of the clan, secret language, etc.)
The two-fold course of instruction, given by the spirits and the old master shamans is equivalent to an initiation.' [Mircea Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion, v. 13 , p. 202; Mcmillian, N.Y., 1987.] It is also possible for the entire process to take place in the dream state or in ecstatic experience."
- Dean Edwards, "Shamanism-General Overview" (FAQ)

"The novice's task of learning to see the spirits involves two stages. The first is simply to catch an initial glimpse of them. The second is to deepen and stabilize this glimpse into a permanent visionary capacity in which the spirits can be summoned and seen at will."
- Roger N. Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism

"All this long and tiring ceremony has as its object transforming the apprentice magician's initial and momentary and ecstatic experience...into a permanent condition - that in which it is possible to see the spirits."
- Mircea Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

"The next thing an old shaman has to do for his pupil is to procure him anak ua by which is meant his 'angakoq', i.e., the altogether special and particular element which makes this man an angakoq (shaman). It is also called his quamenEg his 'lightning' or 'enlightenment', for anak ua consists of a mysterious light which the shaman suddenly feels in his body, inside his head, within the brain, an inexplicable searchlight, a luminous fire, which enables him to see in the dark both literally and metaphorically speaking, for he can now, even with closed eyes see through darkness and perceive things and coming events which are hidden from others; thus they look into the future and into the secrets of others.
"The first time a young shaman experiences this light...it is as if the house in which he is suddenly rises; he sees far ahead of him, through mountains, exactly as if the earth were on a great plain, and his eyes could reach to the end of the earth. Nothing is hidden from him any longer; not only can he see things far, far away, but he can also discover souls, stolen souls, which are either kept concealed in far, strange lands or have been taken up or down to the Land of the dead."
- K. Rasmussen, Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos



A Second Real World
"The pre-eminently shamanic technique is the passage from one cosmic region to another - from earth to the sky or from earth to the underworld. The shaman knows the mystery of the breakthrough in plane. This communication among the cosmic zones is made possible by the very structure of the universe."
- Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

"The main feature of the shamans' universe is...the cosmic center, a bond or axis connecting earth, heaven and hell. It is often pictured as a tree or a pole holding up the sky. In a trance state, a shaman can travel disembodied from one region to another, climbing the tree into the heavens or following its downward extension. By doing so he can meet and consult the gods. There is always a numerical factor. He climbs through a fixed number of celestial stages, or descends through a fixed number of infernal ones. His key number may be expressed in his costume - for example, in a set of bells which he attaches to it. The key number varies from shaman to shaman and from tribe to tribe."
- Geoffrey Ashe, The Ancient Wisdom

"He commands the techniques of ecstasy - that is, because his soul can safely abandon his body and roam at vast distances, can penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky. Through his own ecstatic experience he knows the roads of the extraterrestrial regions. He can go below and above because he has already been there. The danger of losing his way in these forbidden regions is still great; but sanctified by his initiation and furnished with his guardian spirit, a shaman is the only human being able to challenge the danger and venture into a mystical geography."
- Mircea Elliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

"In the ages of the rude beginnings of culture, man believed that he was discovering a second real world in dream, and here is the origin of metaphysics. Without dream, mankind would never have had occasion to invent such a division of the world. The parting of soul and body goes also with this way of interpreting dream; likewise, the idea of a soul's apparitional body: whence, all belief in ghosts, and apparently, too, in gods."
- Neitzsche, Human, All-Too-Human

"We must recognize ourselves as beings of four dimensions. Do we not in sleep live in a fantastic fairy kingdom where everything is capable of transformation, where there is no stability belonging to the physical world, where one man can become another or two men at the same time, where the most improbable things look simple and natural, where events often occur in inverse order, from end to beginning, where we see the symbolical images of ideas and moods, where we talk with the dead, fly in the air, pass through walls, are drowned or burnt, die and remain alive?"
- P. D. Ouspensky



Perception in Trance States
The ceremonies of the Cult of the Horned god were first found in the Paleolithic cave paintings of Ariege which depicted a dancing figure in the skin of a horned animal.

Cave paintings from the Upper Paleolithic (20-30,000 years ago) depicts zig zags and dots combined with realistic images of animals against grid forms. Similar abstract geometric are also found in the ritual art of the South African bushman where the trance dance of the shaman is a central unifying force of the community. In the dance the shaman perceives his body as stretching and becoming elongated. His spirit soars out of the top of his head and is transformed into an animal. In the century old depictions of the trance dance, the bushman shaman absorb the energy of a dying eland and take on many of the magic animal's physical characteristics. He perceives his transformed state as similar to being under water; he has difficulty breathing and feels weightless. When he returns from his spirit journey he is able to perform healing and even his sweat supposedly posses curative powers. A few days later the shaman would be able to reflect upon his experience and paint it in natural rock shelters found in the surrounding cliffs. There was no esoteric stream of wisdom and everyone in the village would share in knowledge of the spirit world.

Psychologists differentiate two stages in trance states induced by drugs, fasting and/or sensory deprivation.
1.) Antopic forms - abstract geometric forms such as grids, dots and spirals
2.) Realistic images from memory combined in surreal ways against a geometric background.
The Paleolithic paintings depicts similar hallucinatory images to the modern bushman's but differ in one respect; they were not done out in the open but in the deep, dark recesses of caves. Was the sensory deprivation of being immersed in the dark a means of inducing a trance state in the Cro-Magnon shaman?
- "Images of Another World"
An episode of Ancient Mysteries broadcast by the A&E Network

"Among the Eskimo shaman's clairvoyance is the result of qaumenaq, which means 'lightning' or 'illumination'. It is a mysterious light which the shaman suddenly feels in his body, inside his head, within the brain, enabling him to see in the dark, both literally and metaphorically speaking, for he can now even with closed eyes, see through darkness and perceive things and coming events which are hidden from others. With the experience of the light goes a feeling of ascension, distant vision, clairvoyance, the perception of invisible entities and foreknowledge of the future. There is an interesting parallel, despite differences, in the initiation of Australian medicine-men, who go through a ritual death, and are filled with solidified light in the form of rock-crystals; on returning to life they have similar powers of clairvoyance and extra-sensory perception."
- John Ferguson, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions

Hypnogogic images
"Hypnogogic images are the germinal stuff of dreams, and they usually begin with flashes of light. Often, an illuminated circle, lozenge, or other generally round form appears to come nearer and nearer, swelling to gigantic size. This particular image is known as the Isakower phenomenon, named after an Austrian psychoanalyst who first identified it. Isakower claimed the image was rooted in the memory of the mother's breast as it approached the infant's mouth."
"Hypnagogic images can be interpreted in many different ways. Literally and figuratively, it's all in the eye of the beholder. The drowsy person in the hypnagogic state is just as open to suggestions as subjects in the hypnotized state."
"When people start floating n the hypnagogic state, the amplitude and frequency of brainwaves decrease. The alpha rhythms of wakefulness are progressively replaced by slower theta activity. This translates to a loss of volitional control, a sense of paralysis. As the person descends further into sleep itself, the outside physical world retreats to the fringe of consciousness and the new reality becomes the internal dream world."

The final stage of hypnagogic images is, "polyopia, the multiplication of the image, usually seen in one eye....These specks of light...are produced by electrical activity in the visual system and brain. One can almost imagine the specks representing electric sparks flying along the neural pathways of the brain." They may look like hundred of stars "but they can also take the form of spots, circles, swirls, grids, checkerboards, or other figures composed of curves or lines. They are easy to see in the dark, but, in the light, they are on the borderline of perception."
"Even when the hypnagogic forms are not consciously noticed, they can still register as subliminal stimuli and influence subsequent image formation and fantasy."
- Ronald K.Siegel, Fire in the Brain
 
This is just a small sampling of the content of the page "Ancient Rites" from the site The Architecture of Modern Political Power. Of course I can see he is biased to a certain extent, towards atheism, however, in my opinion, the huge amount of research presented by the author more than makes up for that defect. After all, we are all biased to some extent, aren't we?

However, I may be wrong, and this site might be in much greater error than I realize. I haven't read much off the site in a great while, so my memory may be misleading me here.

http://www.mega.nu/ampp/ancient.html#metatop

http://www.mega.nu/ampp/
 
AMPP is an interesting read, what is what I can say after having read up some chapters partially. Still, I decided last year against recommending it here. There were things in the intro which hint in direction of certain characters named in the Lobaczewski book.
 
Faith in a higher being is as old as humanity itself. But what sparked the Divine Idea? Did our earliest ancestors gain some evolutionary advantage through their shared religious feelings?
Doesn't this assume that evolution, or "evolutionary advantage", are even realistic concepts that have anything to do with our reality? And hypothetically considering that they do, that would imply that our human race as it exists now is a result of evolutionary choices that were better than the alternatives, which must've been discarded by the evolutionary process in favor of what we have now (take a good look around!). If we take into consideration the idea that evolution is about survival, about continuing existence and adopting as necessary to continue this existence, it seems to indicate an interesting conundrum. We have the easily verifiable fact that knowledge protects and ignorance endangers, so logically it seems to make sense that if evolution is about protecting and maintaining your existence and that of your race, knowledge would be favored over ignorance. The more you know, the more you can do, the less fear you have, the more power you have, the more chances of survival you have, etc. So if there is no data to verify most religious beliefs, why would evolution support a mass delusion that endangers everybody who allows themselves to believe it? This allows those who are selfish and clever to use this delusion to manipulate the majority who are subjected to it, and the survival of the species is placed in the hands of those who are in fact least concerned with the survival of the species but only with their own well-being. In other words, why would evolution support a mass delusion that results in consistently growing threat of self-destruction by the human race?

The author asks the question about "evolutionary advantage" - but advantage for what? Survival? If we observe the world today, which is supposed to be the result of this evolutionary process, the human race is at risk of self-annihilation. And the reason for this is exactly that - mass delusion, which again, allows those who are self-serving and clever to control the masses. So once again I must ask, why would evolution place the fate of the many into the hands of the few, and ironically, the few who are least concerned over the fate of the many and therefore least fit to preserve the human race? Why are the chances of the human race to survive decreasing as time goes on instead of increasing, as would be logical if evolution was choosing what is best for survival and continuation of life?

It is clear to me that wishful thinking, assumptions, and inability to think critically and logically is what brought humanity to this point. So is evolution anti-evolution? All this suggests to me that ignorance is actually a perversion and stagnation of evolution. In the animal world, an incorrect world view means death. If you do not spot your predator before he spots you, you're dead. If you are a predator that cannot deceive or manipulate or trick the prey, if you do not know what your prey will do and how to trap it, you're dead. The only thing in nature that protects nature is knowledge, whether it be from experience or instinct or both. If you're a bunny that doesn't know how to evade a wolf looks like, you're dead. So if evolution armed plants and animals with the instinctive knowledge that they need to survive - those who have wishful thinking or not enough experience or their instincts are not sharp enough, they die. So why would evolution do the opposite with mankind and arm them with wishful thinking and delusions about themselves, about the world, and about the universe, if all of that only endangers the survival of the whole race?

Logic is telling me that it is not evolution at all that brought us to this point. It is something that is anti-evolution, something that must be keeping us from evolving, something that is not interested in our survival or well-being at all, but its own at our expense. Someone in another thread said that "we are the evil from which we flee". Joe then said that this is false, that the evil is a foreign installation. But if knowledge protects, then it seems the "evil" is that which is keeping us from acquiring knowledge, and keeping us from evolving. What is it? Well we know that we're conditioned from birth, filled with disempowering programming and delusions. We also know that we're constantly manipulated by agents of the pathocracy, the psychopaths. We also have evidence of hyperdimensional manipulation throughout the entire existence of humanity. Sure we're full of programs, but those are all "foreign installation" not our natural state of being. And this includes our personality and practically everything that we define to be "self". So how is it that we ARE the evil?

Well we are STS, and are naturally predisposed to wishful thinking and assuming. So I guess in that sense we are "the evil" but we can choose not to be through the Work, which would prevent others from manipulating us as well. But the condition of the world isn't because of our STS nature in and of itself - I mean at the root this IS what has allowed the world to be brought to its current state, but it is all those who took advantage of our nature and manipulated us and programmed us and distorted our minds that are the cause of the world's current condition. And I think that we cannot fix anything without changing our own nature, but it is through the analysis of the world itself and HOW others are exploiting us that allows us to understand our nature and know what our weaknesses are, osit. I think this is the case because studying the pathocracy and external objective reality does lead to understanding of the self, since the enemy does not waste its time doing what is useless and ineffective and a waste of their time and energy, and so by studying the enemy and understanding what they do and how they do it, which we logically say they do because it WORKS to control us, we will know what our weaknesses are and what we need to work on. I guess it's like finding the rabbit hole by following the rabbit.
 
Faith in a higher being is as old as humanity itself. But what sparked the Divine Idea? Did our earliest ancestors gain some evolutionary advantage through their shared religious feelings?
Yes, I agree with your point that "evolutionary advantage" is an assumption .However, I fail to see the conundrum you specify regarding shared religious feelings as having any advantage towards survival.

Allow me to explain my point.

Directed towards the quote that your thoughts are expressed, the two primary concepts seems to be

1.) Faith in a higher being is as old as humanity itself; and,
2.) Question is made as to whether shared religious feelings contributed to survival (paraphrased for the purpose of applying towards concept I'm attempting to express.)

First, don't misunderstand that I am in disagreement with your views as stated, because I am not necessarily opposed. Actually, as written, I see nothing fundamentally contrary to my views. However, suppose we removed some limitations upon which your assessment was made, and applied 1 and 2 towards more loosely defined circumstances, like these:

I assume that most members of this forum have a certain amount of faith in the existance of a higher being, namely the C's. I also believe that it is safe for me to point to a shared faith that most of us have as a group, namely, that "knowledge protects".
I don't see it as being too conclusory for me to allege that this group is placing faith that somehow we can acquire the knowledge necessary to protect us from what we collectively perceive as posing the greatest threat towards ourselves, non-human extraterrestial beings who are not only not inhabitants of our earthly realm, are hyperdimensionally domiciled and not restricted by time as we know it. Though not structured or organised, could our collective view be held as being "religious" in nature?

As to your propositions made in your second paragraph, certainly, as given, hold true, at least in my opinion. However, still, I can't help but view the limitations imposed that make them true. Is the possibility discounted that perhaps some of our ancestors, the megalithic cultures, might have relied upon a collective faith in some intelligent higher being(s) and therefor were aligned collectively in "religious" beliefs that allowed them, when the time was right, to escape from 3rd density confinement...?

Lol, I understand that this discussion will most certainly be fertile grounds for you to hammer me at some future time when I most certainly will be found guilty similarly restricted constructs. I certainly welcome such correction, as same can only be benificial. Honestly speaking, however, I must confess that under normal circumstances I probably wouldn't have stretched my thinking in such way that would have enabled me to be aware of possible correct alternative viewpoints to those to which I responded. I guess, to put it plainly, you called me out to assess the validity of certain implications, and thus "inspired" me to
think "outside the box", so to speak, by appealing to my vanity so that I was motivated to have a discussion with you in which I might not appear to be mentally a midget. :)

Now that my abstract reasoning is out of the way, I will continue the discussion with you on a more normal level of communication, which is most likely the proper way, at that.

I understand your points very well, and logic leaves little room to disagree with your observation that:

A) " It is clear to me that wishful thinking, assumptions, and inability to think critically and logically is what brought humanity to this point."

B.) " So is evolution anti-evolution?"

C.) " All this suggests to me that ignorance is actually a perversion and stagnation of evolution. In the animal world, an incorrect world view means death. "


* As to point A, I agree, but I also believe that our inability to think critically was intentially imposed upon us by our educational system. In fact, my critical and logical thinking brought me under the iron rod rod of punitive measures at school, as I seemed to have some basic defect that created within myself a "problem with authority."

* As to point B, the question might be more appropriately stated as " Are we being subjected to anti-evolution conditioning purposely by those who have as an agenda the prevention of our evolution.

* As to point C, I certainly agree wholeheartedly, and therefore must conclude that some very capable players are excercising a very competant ability to keep us ignorant of the knowledge that might afford us greater evolutionary prospects to progress to 4th density STO beings in a more natural way than having such an evolution forced by the event realm border crossing that presents itself at the end of the short cycle applical to the physical world(s). And, even then, it seems as if anti-evolution forces are actively operating to ensure that any "forced" evolution will be an "anti" evolution as an "evolved" STS slave to the STS heirechy.

Your next paragraph brings up these same points, essentially.

One more quote from you and my responsive discourse and I can conclude our discussion and hope that I gave your post the time and attention it deserved. You held that:

"""""""""""""""""""""""""Well we are STS, and are naturally predisposed to wishful thinking and assuming. So I guess in that sense we are "the evil" but we can choose not to be through the Work, which would prevent others from manipulating us as well. But the condition of the world isn't because of our STS nature in and of itself - I mean at the root this IS what has allowed the world to be brought to its current state, but it is all those who took advantage of our nature and manipulated us and programmed us and distorted our minds that are the cause of the world's current condition.""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

Or, alternativley, are we (almost) helplessly vulnurable to the above detrimental conditioning because the predator gave us it's mind?

It was interesting to me to read on the mind-trek site the following:

.........................................................




THE TRIUNE BRAIN
In order to increase your control over your emotions, it is helpful to understand emotions from the viewpoint of a brain specialist. This will help you to understand the origins of our emotions and why we have them. The advantage of this is the same of any type of self-knowledge: the more you become aware of the mechanical or automatic aspects of yourself, the more you are able to increase your control over them.

Although we often refer to our brains as a single, solid unit, it is clear that this is not an accurate description. Rather, our brains consist of a conglomerate of various sub-brains and sections, all interconnected. Dr. Paul D. MacLean, a prominent brain researcher, has developed a model of brain structure which he calls the "triune brain." In other words, humans have not one brain but three. (Actually, even this is an oversimplification; but this model has the advantage of displaying our evolutionary heritage.) MacLean states that the human brain "amounts to three interconnected biological computers," with each biocomputer having "its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space, its own memory, motor, and other functions." Each of the three brains corresponds to a major evolutionary development and are categorized as follows: the reptilian brain, the old mammalian brain and the new mammalian brain. MacLean illustrates this point facetiously when he points out that when a psychiatrist asks his patient to lie down on the couch, he is asking him to stretch alongside a horse and a crocodile.

According to the triune model of the brain, evolution has simply added new sub-brains to preexisting ones like a man who keeps building additional structures onto an old house. However, to continue with the analogy, with each new addition to the house the physical structure of the older components were altered or modified to some extent. In other words, the reptile brain in humans is not exactly the same as the brain of a lizard. That is not to say we haven't retained any reptilian functions in our brains; we most certainly have. MacLean has shown that our reptile brains play a major role in our aggressive behavior, territoriality, ritual and social hierarchies.

[Now, isn't that interesting when applied towards your questions in the immediate quote above?]

The R-Complex
The most ancient of the three brains is called the reptilian brain or the R-complex. (See diagram above.) The R-complex evolved around 200 million years ago.

As I've mentioned above, the reptilian brain is still influential in humans; in fact, it still performs in much the same way as it did for our remote ancestors. Much of human behavior can be described in reptilian terms, especially those involving aggression and territoriality.

In addition, the R-complex also influences our emotions. If, as MacLean suggests, our brains are a kind of biological computer, then just like all computers, they are run by programs - instruction codes. Programs can be genetically transmitted or they can be acquired after birth. Furthermore, the older and more primitive a brain, the fewer programs it has to choose from; it also tends to rely almost completely on genetic programs which have been "hard-wired" into the brain. The primitive reptile brain is basically a survival brain, possessing only a few dozen or so ancient programs to choose from.

The emotional responses of the reptile brain are severely limited. Leslie Hart, a writer on brain research, states:

"As we look at the three-brain structure of humans, it becomes manifest that, in general, the old, more primitive schemata and programs and the cruder emotions are in the oldest brain tissue, and that the highly subtle pattern-detecting capabilities are in the newest, the neo-cortex". [author's italics]

In other words, initially, emotions were directly related to basic survival needs. To see why this is so, we need to understand the concepts of "homeostasis" and "biasing."

The human body has a built-in ability to regulate itself; it maintains the settings of various bodily conditions within certain established parameters. Take, for example, body temperature. We have a kind of thermostat which regulates the temperature of the body, just like we have thermostats attached to the heating and air conditioning systems in our homes. We have many of these thermostats regulating and adjusting various bodily factors.

For the most part, the aim of these thermostats is to keep our various bodily systems in balance - something called "homeostasis." The oldest function of emotions was to change the bias or setting of our bodily systems. To illustrate this, imagine a rabbit feeding on some vegetation. In this quiet and calm state, its internal systems are biased at a low setting. Now imagine a fox suddenly shows up. Noticing this, the rabbit reacts by abruptly shifting its internal setting. It has rebiased its homeostasis setting to "emergency." This is similar to suddenly moving the thermostat pointer in your house from 78° to 44° and the heat (or cool air if it's summertime) starts pouring in. When the rabbit changes over to the emergency setting, the drastic changes in various bodily systems prepare the animal for immediate action. "This emergency shift of bias," says Hart, "lies at the heart of what we call emotion."

Now, it is important to keep in mind that in humans, although our reptile brains are fully functional, the various parts of the brain are all interconnected and, consequently, influence one another. Next, we take a look at the old mammalian brain, also known as the limbic system.

The Limbic System
The old mammalian brain, or the limbic system, is sandwiched between the R-complex and the new mammalian brain. (See diagram above.) This brain is about 60 million years old and is far more sensitive and sophisticated than the R-complex.

The limbic system is much concerned with the emotions. Brain physiologists have discovered that the amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure located in the limbic system, plays a major role in both aggression and fear. When the amygdala of a placid domestic animal is stimulated electrically, the animal is roused into a high degree of fear or frenzy. Conversely, if the amygdala of a naturally ferocious animal is surgically removed, it becomes docile and will even tolerate being petted.

The limbic system also seems to be the origin of altruistic behaviors.

Says Carl Sagan:

"Much in animal behavior substantiates the notion that strong emotions evolved chiefly in mammals and to a lesser extent in birds. The attachment of domestic animals to humans is, I think, beyond question. The apparent sorrowful behavior of many mammalian mothers when their young are removed is well-known. One wonders just how far such emotions go. Do horses on occasion have glimmerings of patriotic fervor? Do dogs feel for humans something akin to religious ecstasy? What other strong or subtle emotions are felt by animals that do not communicate with us?"

As a biocomputer, the old mammalian brain contains a much greater number of programs than its predecessor, allowing it a far wider range of response. In addition, the limbic system plays a major part in the generation of our emotions; in fact, we could call it our "emotion brain."

The Neocortex
The newest brain, the neocortex or new mammalian brain, has only been around for a few million years. In humans the neocortex is also the largest of the three brains - accounting for about five-sixths of the entire brain.

In order to see what role the neocortex plays in our emotional responses we need to back up a little. The R-complex is essentially a survival brain; it is capable of only a handful of behaviors. The limbic system is capable of a much wider range of behaviors, especially those concerning the emotions. As we have already seen, a component of the limbic system, the amygdala, plays a major role in fear and rage. The limbic system is largely responsible for the resetting of various bodily systems during our emotional reactions.

But in order for me to react to something with fear, I need to perceive or interpret that situation as warranting a fearful response. A part of my brain needs to say: "If you've ever had the need to be afraid, it is right now!" If I am walking along the street and suddenly encounter a street gang wielding baseball bats, before I can feel afraid, I need to interpret this situation as a threat. By the same token, if I had been informed by someone that I would come across life-sized puppets in the form of a street gang, I would feel no fear at all; for I now interpret the situation as non-threatening. It is the job of the neocortex to detect patterns and interpret the "meanings" of situations.

The importance of this interpretation process will be discussed further in a later section on cognitive psychology. There we will see that many of us make the mistake in assuming that events and circumstances directly cause our emotional states. We forget about the cognitive process of interpretation which comes between the event and the emotion.

Shifting Down to Our Lower Brains
According to Hart, it is the process of resetting the biases and preparing the organism for a change in activity which constitutes emotion. For the most part this is obviously true. If I suddenly find myself face-to-face with a wild bear, in order to escape, I need to instantaneously reset various bodily systems and put myself into the "emergency, run like hell!" mode.

Says Hart:

"Emotions involve the human brain at all levels. To oversimplify, the oldest brain does the body resetting, the middle brain gives the orders, and the new brain provides complex and detailed analysis of the situation and gives permission for or inhibits the emotion. But the new brain, the cerebral cortex and its associated pathways, does not always win. It can be temporarily shunted out of the decision making as older, simpler circuits take over. A suitable term for this is "downshifting.""

When we downshift, full use of our new brains is suspended and more control is given to our lower brains. One can readily see how this can become problematic. When we become upset or are in a negative emotional state, we turn over the controls to our lower brains and the consequence is something we've all experienced many times: we can't think clearly, our thinking becomes muddled, as if someone has thrown a bucket of mud on the windshield of our car.

Under any kind of threat we tend to downshift. The reason for this should be clear: in many serious, threatening situations we are required to take immediate action. We confront a wild bear and we make an instantaneous decision to run. The lower brains work well in these kinds of situations; they were designed to make quick decisions. So downshifting is an automatic protection mechanism. It enables us to shift to more primitive and dependable response patterns.

Unfortunately, downshifting has an obvious downside. When we downshift, we lose full use of our new brain, the neo-cortex. Our ability to think straight seems to vanish. The problem is that we continue to downshift even when it is not necessary or even beneficial to do so.

By learning how to counteract or prevent ourselves from downshifting, we can greatly increase our personal power and our control over our emotions. An effective method for doing exactly this is the freeze-frame technique discussed below.

ON HUMAN STUPIDITY
Downshifting is actually one aspect of a much greater problem. Recall that when we downshift, we turn over the controls, so to speak, to our lower brains - we revert to older and more primitive response patterns and programs. In addition, we tend to lose our ability to think straight.

However, even when we are not actually downshifting, we are strongly influenced by our reptilian and old mammalian brains.

Consider the following passage from Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminati Papers:

"The great genetic portion of stupidity is programmed into all of us and consists of "typical mammalian behavior." That is, a great deal of the human nervous system is on auto pilot, like the closely related chimpanzee nervous system and the more distantly related cow nervous system. The programs of territoriality, pack hierarchy, etc., are evolutionary stable strategies and hence work mechanically, without conscious thought. These evolutionary relative successes became genetic programs because they work well enough for the ordinary mammal in ordinary mammalian affairs. They only become stupidities in human beings, where higher cortical centers have been developed as monitoring systems to feed back more sophisticated survival techniques and correct these stereotyped programs with more flexible ones.

"In short, to the extent that a human follows the genetic primate-pack patterns, without feeding back from the cortex, that human is still acting like an ape, and hasn't acquired facility in using the New Brain."

This goes to the heart of the problem of emotional control. Getting a handle on our emotions is a matter of gaining more conscious control over those behaviors which ordinarily swing in automatically without conscious thought. Now, many of our "typical mammalian behaviors" are quite useful, as when a mother responds automatically to the needs of her newborn child. It is when we allow ourselves to be controlled by these automatic (genetically programmed) functions without feedback from the new brain that we run into problems. For example, suppose my mammalian programming prods me to lash out at someone who I feel is challenging my position in a social hierarchy. If I were to pause and consciously consider the situation, I would probably come up with a much more effective strategy or course of action. But it's more than that. For, as long as I continue to think and behave automatically, it is my programming which is running the show, not me. And the whole idea behind emotional control is that I am the one in control, not my programming nor my emotions.

MULTIMINDED
Not only do we have more than one brain, but it could also be argued that we have more than one mind. Our minds are not a single unit. Rather, various "small minds" are constantly wheeling in and out and taking control at different moments. For example, you are driving to work and someone cuts you off. Suddenly your anger routine (one of your small minds) automatically swings to the forefront of your consciousness and takes over the controls. You find yourself yelling and cursing. A few minutes later, your anger routine subsides and you calm down.

Most of us seem to have all sorts of small minds which swing in and out, taking control of our consciousness. In order to develop more emotional control, you need to develop your ability to control the various small minds which tend to wheel in automatically. Says Robert Ornstein in his book, Multimind:

"It is a question of who is running the show. In most people, at most times, the automatic system of the [mental operating system] organizes which small mind gets wheeled in, most likely on that automatic basis of blind habit. But there is a point when a person can become conscious of the multiminds and begin to run them rather than hopelessly watch anger wheel in once again" [my emphasis]

And how do you begin running your own show? By practicing self-observation. Develop your ability to stand back and observe your own mental and emotional functioning as if you were a zoologist studying the living habits of animals. Describe what you see and take notes. Ornstein states:

"Under the stimulus of self-observation, the [mental operating system] seems to begin to change and the fixed links between action and reaction are loosened, leaving room for some serious choices and redirection of the mind."

The multimind metaphor is also useful for increasing your ability to deal with other people's emotional reactions. This is important when trying to avoid getting caught up in a process of knee-jerk emotional reactions with other people. In this scenario, someone says something which sets you off and you automatically react by saying something which irritates the other person, and on and on like a pendulum swinging back and forth. If, instead, you simply remain calm and say to yourself, "There goes one of her small minds again; I will not get dragged into this," you can avoid such a confrontation.

I highly recommend reading Multimind. It contains important information on emotional control.

TAPPING INTO YOUR AUTOMATIC THOUGHTS
One of the most critical aspects of gaining more emotional control is to learn how to identify your automatic thoughts. In most instances, our negative emotional responses are directly preceded by automatic thoughts. These automatic thoughts remain hidden for most of us. Unless you train yourself to look for these thoughts, you will probably not be aware of them. But once you do learn how to catch hold of your automatic thoughts, you will not only become aware of them, but you also learn how to control them.

An excellent source of information on automatic thoughts is Aaron T. Beck's Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. You may also want to look into Renaeu Z. Peurifoy's Anxiety, Phobias & Panic. Although both of these books are largely concerned with various emotional disorders, they contain valuable information on the topic of emotional control in general. They are both worth reading even if you don't have any "emotional disorders."

Assigning Meaning to Events
The basic idea behind cognitive therapy is that by changing the way you think, you can change the way you feel and act. The process of changing the way you think consists of restructuring your thought processes; in fact, in cognitive therapy this is referred to as "cognitive restructuring." If you don't like the way you are feeling or acting, you simply make changes in the way you think, hence the term "cognitive therapy."

It is not surprising then, that cognitive therapists argue that most of our emotions are a result of the interpretations we make of the events around us. This is quite different from the way we normally think about our emotional states. Usually, we tend to regard our emotional responses as being directly caused by outside events and situations. This view is reflected in the way we talk. For example, an angry man says of his wife, "She made me so mad!" Or, a gloomy woman says of her co-worker, "He made me sad." But, according to the cognitive approach, events and situations do not cause emotional reactions, as pulling back a rubber-band and releasing it causes it to snap back. Rather, it is our interpretation of the event which triggers the emotional response. Once we grasp this, we can see that it is of enormous importance for emotional control. The cognitive explanation of emotional response is illustrated below:

.......................................................................end quote from referenced site...........................................................

(One of the two links I provided in a subsequent post under "The Politics of Obedience-A Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" will bring up the page from which this was extracted, for anyone interested in reading more)


In conclusion, I believe that the 4th density STS have always imposed these anti-evolutionary conditions upon us by appealing to the natures of certain greedy STS humans in direct communication given as "religious" experience, and since these 4th density lizards are technologically gcassiopiae sites could grant me the ability to not automatically drop to my knees in obedience to a talking burning bush, should reatly superior in advancement than us, can we look to our ancestors in an accusatory manner for relying upon clearly supernatural demands for obedience? I don't know about you, but only through knowledge that I have gained from the I ever have the misfortune of encountering such a devil!

And that takes us to the conclusion which is also the beginning of our discussion, which I wrap up with a question of my own:

Is it possible that at some distant point in time that certain of our ancestors shared some important reality oriented religious oriented views that did, in fact, give them an evolutionary advantage, which yielded bountiful fruit in their cultivated goddess worship, and it was that condition that the anti-evolutionary religions had to be created so that said evolutionary processes could be dissolved?

Thanks for the opportunity provided for critical thinking in this discussion. Looks like we are in agreement, mostly.

Regards,
Dane
 
Correction: The paragraph that begins with the words "In conclusion, I believe.." should read as follows:

In conclusion, I believe that the 4th density STS have always imposed these anti-evolutionary conditions upon us by appealing to the natures of certain greedy STS humans in direct communication given as "religious" experience, and since these 4th density lizards are technologically greatly superior in advancement than us, can we look to our ancestors in an accusatory manner for relying upon clearly supernatural demands for obedience? I don't know about you, but only through knowledge that I have gained from the Cassiopae sites could grant me the ability to not automatically drop to my knees in obedience to a talking burning bush, should I ever have the misfortune of encountering such a devil!
 
heyday, no offense intended at all, but your posts are incredibly long - is there any way you could summarize these things and be more precise with your points? Perhaps you could simply include links to these web sites to allow people so inclined to go there and read - instead of posting novellas. Also, if you make a correction, you can just go back and edit the original post - you don't need to add yet another post in a line of posts to do that.

A little external consideration to your readers goes a long way - fwiw.
 
Hey, anart,

Sure, I can try to condense more, no problem. And thanks for the info on editing, I'm sure I'll be needing to know that, for sure. :)
 
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