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Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 3 of 6
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Christian Belief, Cognitive Science, Knowing, Psychology Of Belief, Psychology Of Religion,
Living News
I Know Because I Know
On a warm afternoon in June, two men have appointments with a psychiatrist. The first has been dragged to the office by his wife, much to his irritation. He is a biologist who suffers from schizophrenia, and the wife insists that his meds are not working. "No," says the biologist, "I'm actually fine. It's just that because of what I'm working on right now the CIA has been bugging my calls and reading my email." Despite his wife's skepticism and his understanding of his own illness, he insists calmly that he is sure, and he lines up evidence to support his claim. The other man has come on his own because he is feeling exhausted and desperate. He shows the psychiatrist his hands, which are raw to the point of bleeding. No matter how many times he washes them (up to a hundred in a day) or what he uses (soap, alcohol, bleach or scouring pads) he never feels confident that they are clean.
In both of these cases, after brain biochemistry is rebalanced, the patient's sense of certainty falls back in line with the evidence. The first man becomes less sure about the CIA thing and gradually loses interest in the idea. The second man begins feeling confident that his hands are clean after a normal round of soap and water, and the cracks begin healing.
How do we know what is real? How do we know what we know? We don't, entirely. Research on psychiatric disorders and brain injuries shows that humans have a feeling or sense of knowing that can get activated by reason and evidence but can get activated in other ways as well. Conversely, when certain brain malfunctions occur, it may be impossible to experience a sense of knowing no matter how much evidence piles up. V. S. Ramachandran describes a brain injured patient who sees his mother and says, "This looks like my mother in every way, but she is an imposter." The connection between his visual cortex and his limbic system has been severed, and even though he sees his mother perfectly well, he has no sense of rightness or knowing so he offers the only explanation he can find (Capgras Delusion).
From malfunctions like these, we gain an understanding of normal brain function and how it shapes our day to day experience, including the experience of religion. Neurologist Robert Burton explains it this way: "Despite how certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of knowing what we know arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason." (On Being Certain, xi) This "knowing what we know" mechanism is good enough for getting around in the world, but not perfect. For the most part, it lets us explain, predict, and influence people or objects or events, and we use that knowledge to advantage. But as the above scenarios show, our ability to tell what is real also can get thrown off.
Burton says that the "feeling of knowing" (rightness, correctness, certainty, conviction) should be thought of as one of our primary emotions, like anger, pleasure, or fear. Like these other feelings, it can be triggered by a seizure or a drug or direct electrical stimulation of the brain. Research after the Korean War (e.g. R Lifton) suggested that the feeling of knowing or not knowing also can be produced by what are called brainwashing techniques: repetition, sleep deprivation, and social/emotional manipulation. Once triggered for any reason, the feeling that something is right or real can be incredibly powerful -- so powerful that when it goes head to head with logic or evidence the feeling wins. Our brains make up reasons to justify our feeling of knowing rather than following logic to its logical conclusion.
For many reasons, religious beliefs are usually undergirded by a strong "feeling of knowing." Set aside for the moment the question of whether those beliefs tap underlying realities. Conversion experiences can be intense, hypnotic, and transformative. Worship practices, music and religious architecture have been optimized over time to evoke right brain sensations of transcendence and euphoria. Social insularity protects a community consensus. Repetition of ideas reinforces a sense of conviction or certainty. Forms of Christianity that emphasize right belief have built in safeguards against contrary evidence, doubt, and the assertions of other religions. Many a freethinker has sparred a smart, educated fundamentalist into a corner only to have the believer utter some form of "I just know."
Does this mean that rational argumentation about religion is useless? The answer may be disappointing. Religious belief is not bound to regular standards of evidence and logic. It is not about logic but about something more intuitive and primal. Arguments with believers start from a false premise -- that the believer is bound by the rules of debate rather than being bound by the belief itself. The freethinker assumes that the believer is free to concede; but this is rarely true. At best the bits of logic or evidence put forth in an argument go into the hopper with a whole host of other factors. And yet each of us who is a former believer (we number in the millions) reached some point in our lives when we simply couldn't sustain our old certainties. Our sense of knowing either eroded over time or abruptly disappeared. So sometimes those hoppers do fill up.
Given what I've said about knowing, how can anybody claim to know anything?
We can't, with certainty. Those of us who are not religious could do with a little more humility on this point. We all see "through a glass darkly" and there is a realm in which all any of us can do is to make our own best guesses about what is real and important. This doesn't imply that all ideas are created equal or that our traditional understanding of "knowledge" is useless. As I said before, our sense of knowing allows us to navigate this world pretty well -- to detect regularities, anticipate events and make things happen. In the concrete domain of everyday life, acting on what we think we know works pretty well for us. Nonetheless, it is a healthy mistrust for our sense of knowing that has allowed scientists to detect, predict, and produce desired outcomes with ever greater precision.
The scientific method has been called "institutionalized doubt" because it forces us to question our assumptions. Scientists stake their hopes not on a specific set of answers but on a specific way of asking questions. Core to this process is "falsification" -- narrowing down what might be true by ruling out what can't be true. And to date, that approach has had enormous pay-offs. It is what has made the difference between the nature of human life in the Middle Ages and the 21st Century. But knowledge in science is provisional; at any given point in time, the sum of scientific knowledge is really just a progress report.
When we overstate our ability to know, we play into the fundamentalist fallacy that certainty is possible. Burton calls this "the all-knowing rational mind myth." As scientists learn more about how our brains work, certitude is coming to be seen as a vice rather than a virtue. Certainty is a confession of ignorance about our ability to be passionately mistaken. Humans will always argue passionately about things that we do not know and cannot know, but with a little more self-knowledge and humility we may get to the point that those arguments are less often lethal.
Robert A. Burton, On Being Certain
V. S. Ramachandran (TED talk), A Journey to the Center of Your Mind
If you don't want to miss any of this series, subscribe to Valerie Tarico at this blog or send email to valerietarico at hotmail.com and request to be added to her mailing list for weekly articles.
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I think it is really a tribute to Valerie Tarico as a blogger that her (as far as I can determined) unpublicized article has generated 345 comments.
See Valerie Tarico's Profile
Thank you. I'll take it that way!
I second that. Also, MS, I'd like to thank you for being, so kind, considerate, and thoughtful. Kudos to you as well.
I just watched "Doubt".. Wow, heebie jeebies...brought back bad memories of being slapped around by nuns..(no slapping in the movies though--too politically dangerous to show that much truth)... But if only we had nuns back then as cute as Amy adams, I might still be a believer..
The Zanti misfit is always talking about the Mainline Christian denomination. We don't have a First Mainline Church of Louisville. Does anybody know what he's talking about? Apparently, with this denom, one need not believe the fairytale.
Now, every church that I'm aware of expects one to profess belief in the zombie story. I realize that people can just *say* they believe it in order to get into the club, but doesn't that seem a lot like lying?
John, you're embarrassing yourself. From Wikipedia:
"In typical usage, the term mainline is contrasted with evangelical. Mainline churches tend to be open to new ideas and societal changes without abandoning what they consider to be the historical basis of the Christian faith.[2] This places them to the ideological left of the evangelical churches."
Do you use your computer much? I mean, to find things out via?
We worked this out over a year ago. He's a "Stealth Atheist". David Sloan Wilson had a series of blogs called "Atheism as a Stealth Religion"; but to me, Z's world seemed kind of "religion as stealth atheism" ;-)
Yes, but what church do the stealth atheists belong to? He always evades my question about the profession of faith.
I wonder who wrote the Wiki entry. lol.
"We worked this out."
Ah, but you're not a member of any group, following, etc. Okey-dokey.
I'm not an atheist--I'm a liberal Christian. Just because you can't accept any kind of Christian but the I-put-Rod-Parsley's-church-in-my-will type doesn't make moderate to liberal Christians atheists.
By your standards, quite a number of mainline C.'s of the past half century are atheists. And just because HeevenSteven said so. What kind of authority do you fancy yourself to possess?
Well, John, I am guessing that the Censornati refers to Cincinnati. Thus, let me mention one mainline church I know well from relatives who were long time members. Kennedy Heights Presbyterian Church in Kennedy Heights. Of course, this is just one example. Lakeview Baptist Church in Rochester, NY. Any United Church of Christ. Most Presbyterian churches, in fact, and many Methodist ones. American Baptists. Lutherans. Episcopalians. I imagine some of these churches can be found in Louisville, although I am not familiar with that city (except for the excellent fried chicken).
Well al, does one have to profess a belief in the zombie story to join these churches?
That's my question. Do these "mainline" churches believe the fairytale or not?
BTW - Are you a Zanti-sock?
What could be equal to that affection? Who has ever been seized by such a mania of love for anything beautiful whatever, so that because of it he not only willingly allows himself to be wounded by the object of his love without swerving from his affection towards the ungrateful one, but even prizes the very wounds above everything?
JohnFC, truthfully, which one of us has not been wounded by someone we love even to the point of prizing those wounds because they are some proof of our relationship?
You forgot "God is love".
LOL!
Now that's dangerous territory.
Be careful where you step. This opens up room for abysmal abuse and victimization. You don't want to go there.
I see how there is that possibility.
Let me tell the story differently from a more modern point of view rather than 14th century: (mostly following Russian Orthodox theologian T. Hopko):
For when all was sinful, cursed, and dead, Christ became sin, a curse, and dead for our sake -- though he himself never ceased to be the righteousness and blessedness and life of God Himself. It is to this depth [an executed criminal], of which lower and more base cannot be discovered or imagined, that Christ has humbled himself "for us men and for our salvation." For being God, he became man; and being man, he became a slave; and being a slave, he became dead and not only dead, but dead on a cross. From this deepest degradation of God flows the eternal exaltation of man. God became man so man could become god.
This is in continuation to the discussion that is primarily between JohnFC and DofA, which has become difficult to follow due to all the recursive indentations.
You said: "OK, so god sent himself to earth to be sacrificed to himself in order to save us from himself.
Then, he re-animated himself in such a way that nobody recognized him in zombie form....None of it makes any sense "even as a story".
Below we talked about the re-animation part. Here is some more of how I think the sacrifice of himself to himself part of the story makes sense, at least as a story.
Nicholas Cabasilas (1319-1391) has this to say:
Just as human affection, when it abounds, overpowers those who love and causes them to be beside themselves, so God's love for men emptied God (Phil 2:7)....He does everything to show us that He loves, even enduring suffering and death to prove it....
It was necessary, then, that the greatness of His love should not remain hidden, but that He should give the proof of the greatest love and by loving display the utmost measure of love. So He devised this self-emptying and carried it out, and made the instrument [i.e., Christ's human nature] by which He might be able to endure terrible things and to suffer pain.
...and this sounds like The Creator of the Universe to you?
It sounds like a plan that Wile E Coyote would hatch to me.
Why not snap his fingers and make us all just love, love, love? No more sinning.
You asked for a compelling story as a story.
Would you want your lover to make you perfect for your relationship by control? Wouldn't you rather that your relationship involved both of you?
The only way any of the gospels, or paul's letters make any sense is to read them in the context of their own time and place, among the people they were written for.
The problem we have now is that we don't exist in that time and we have a vastly different context with which we view the world, indeed the whole universe, and our place in it.
The mistake "we" make is to assume that these ancient texts were divinely inspired to have universal meaning for all time. They don't and cannot; therefore to an increasingly greater number they're gobbledygook.
A human sacrifice, a "lamb of god" made perfect sense to the Hellenistic Jew. To many today it's no more meaningful than any other ancient myth.
I basically agree with you and in my opinion that is why Fundamentalists are so dangerous they think the Bible magically contains meaning. I do believe the texts are divinely inspired but I don't think they contain all the meaning --it is the relationship between the readers and the text that is meaningful. Moreover, just as we can read Beowulf or Odysseus and get meaning even though they are ancient, we can also read ancient texts from the Bible and get meaning, but it is not really something we can do on our own without a teacher-- for any of the above mentioned texts.
I agree. But I'm afraid the core meaning of human sacrifice hasn't changed that much: it is the scapegoating mechanism.
How do we know that Hell exists?
If the notion that Hell is a place of eternal fiery torment is a doctrine of men, you are certainly entitled to know that. It would be morally wrong to teach the idea of a Lake of Fire just to scare people, but sin's existence proves Hell's existence.
God's law would be meaningless if there were no penalty for breaking it. Sin, the violation of God's law, is an unquestioned reality; therefore, Hell, the penalty for sin, is a reality.
The truth is that even Satan is afraid of Hell. It is a place of punishment for him as well as for the unbelievers. Satanists and other socially rebellious people will experience the worse judgment of all. God is justice and holiness. He must punish sin with eternal death, but He takes no delight in suffering of the wicked. It will be Satan and his demons who will torment the damned.
God is love.
Bible.ca is one of my favorite websites to find ridiculous quotes by fanatics as well. Not quite as good as Brother Jed. but close...! The really clever people for me are the folks at the Official Blog of the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill.
Bible.caca
Ive often wondered what became of the nuns that taught me in elemetary school... They're on HuffPo now...;-P
The truth is that hell does not exist. Except maybe on earth, while we live. In case we sucked.
Nice series.
The "knowing what we know" mechanism seems a perfectly good evolutionary adaptation for a species that requires information about the world, but can gather that information only on a limited basis. This mechanism allows us to enter a dark room in our house confident that a lion has not somehow found its way onto the sofa (which reminds me to trim the cat's claws). Of course, the negative consequence of such a brain mechanism is to fill EVERY gap in our knowledge with *something*. This is the "god of the gaps".
What interests me is your exploration of science and the scientific knowledge. You write, quite correctly, that "knowledge in science is provisional". Unfortunately, True Believers seize on this notion as indicating that science is equivalent to religion, end of story. What TBs fail to realize is that scientists do not view science as an unchanging monolith, but as a developing body of knowledge. Science, as you correctly point out, is a process - it is not a set of commandments or beliefs. If angels do in fact exist, then provide that evidence and science will accept the winged ones.
Interestingly, some who insist on not taking the bible literally, fall into the trap of taking science literally. They think that science is written on tablets and prayed to by left-wing academics. Believing science to be just another world-view or belief system allows them to spout such nonsense as science is not the only source of truth.
.
Some things I know and some things I don't.
It's really interesting that even after centuries of debate, we still haven't figured out the need that you describe to be precise about the level of certainty and reliability when it comes to the different forms of knowledge or belief. But I would add everyday knowledge and experience to science and faith.
I totally agree that the reason for this confusion is the need to 'overattribute' certainty. But it's a need that we are perfectly well equipped to overcome. As you say, it's what scientists do when they go through their training.
And yes, much of the confusion probably also comes from misunderstanding and overinterpretation of science itself.
There seems to be no way around accepting that there are a lot of things that seem terribly important or terribly interesting or both and which we still don't know. And neither misinterpretations of science nor of religion will change anything about that state in which we find ourselves. Better to get used to it.
But it is also important to recognize that our limited knowledge does not justify believing in gods to fill the gaps.
Everyone who is honest with themselves must arrive at a point where they question the (most common) conception of god - i.e., an unseen uber-being who crafted a giant SIMs game that we call the universe. It is a fantastical claim.
Now the question of where this widespread, pernicious belief comes from is not unimportant. And that is the point to Valerie's series of articles. So here's the problem for all True Believers : if these articles posit a plausible source of god belief that is not supernatural in nature, then - lacking any empirical evidence - how does a True Believer justify their notion of god? Their only recourse is to fall back on the phrase "I just know it", which is the idea being explored by Ms. Tarico here.
When True Believers argue that science and religion are equivalent because both are merely belief systems, or because the existence of god can neither be proved nor disproved, they throw up a smoke screen of nonsense. Faith is irrational, immutable, and subjective. Science is adaptable, testable, and rooted in logic. Is science perfect and complete? No, there will always be questions for which answers have yet to be provided. But science will accept those answers once provided, and will even provide the method for discovering them. No religion ever revealed the structure of DNA or built a computer.
"Believing science to be just another world-view or belief system allows them to spout such nonsense as science is not the only source of truth."
Prove that it is. (-:
(For some reason an earlier reply has failed to show up. I will paraphrase.)
What "truth" is revealed by believing in the supernatural? What "truth" is revealed by virgin births, turning water into wine, or rising from the dead? The Bible is not a set of mystical Zen koans as you seem to believe - it is pretty harshly black and white.
Oh, but I forgot, you really don't know much about Christianity, do you?
Zanti, you have frequently insisted that many (most?) other Christians believe as you do. Well, since you are so fond of proofs, I challenge you : Prove it.
Create a questionnaire that you can use to test the beliefs of your fellow Christians. Here, I'll help you with some of the questions : Does god exist in esse (as a being), or merely in posse (as a metaphor)? Did Jesus actually exist, and if so, was he divine (the son of god)? Was Mary a virgin? Did Jesus rise from the dead? Is there an actual place called heaven? Where is heaven located? Is there a hell?
Now stand outside any Christian house of worship on a Sunday and conduct your survey. If you're worried about bias because of the proximity to church, hand out your questionnaire in a mall.
Better yet, distribute the survey to all of the priests and pastors in your community.
Then report back to us with your findings. We are all aquiver with anticipation.
.
What we have here is the "Motley crew's anthology on belief", it;s a beautiful thing... I LOVE IT!
"...with a little more self-knowledge and humility..." amen to that, Valerie.
Their is one group of learned professionals that I wish would dare to involve themselves more in this discussion... The Historians.
I'm convinced that this battle of myth and logos has been going on since we first dared to subjugate blind faith to reasoned observation and new knowledge.
I'm of the opinion that both faith and science are necessary to the advancement of humanity - it's history that seems to imply that we desperately seek both knowledge and meaning in life. ...two tasks with two different schoolmasters. Trouble seems to always come to a boil when we feel that meaning and knowledge are entirely interchangeable, and could be found via the same path.
A quest for self knowledge and a humble disposition are virtues equally valuable to the study of life's meaning and making, and I think a looking back through history, without a looking down, could help us with both.
"that men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." [A. Huxley]
See Valerie Tarico's Profile
I love the way that you said this: Trouble seems to always come to a boil when we feel that meaning and knowledge are entirely interchangeable, and could be found via the same path. People rarely will kill each other over "this I find meaningful" but often over "this I believe."
Nearly everything you offer about human behavior and motivation seems to derive from a literal reading of things. For instance, someone bombs and abortion clinic and explains that he did so because he believes fetuses to be human. And you buy that. But the actual reasons for bombing abortion clinics seem to have something to do with a desire to keep women in their place and/or as an outlet for rage over our country having elected an African-American president.
I suppose that the guilty parties believe that white males rule and are expressing that belief through their behavior, but I'd call it more a brute conviction than a belief.
We spend so much time trying to explain human behavior vice simply accepting the basic forms thereof as part of our nature, keeping in mind that awful behavior is just as natural as the better kind.
I don't understand what you're referring to when you say "the study of life's meaning".
Are you using the word *meaning* the same way you would use the word *purpose*?
If so, an individual assigns meaning to his/her own life (some assign no meaning at all). In other words, your own life is what you, yourself, make of it.
If you mean life, as in *all living things*, why do you assume it has any?
And how would you go about studying *something*, without having any evidence that that *something* even exists?
I have heard, though, that the short answer to the question of the meaning of life, is 42.
'Life's meaning' as in that utterly human need to give order to life. To conceptualize a beginning, middle, and end. We're creatures that fall victim to despair all too easily without some big-picture concept, myth, or mission. If religion offered any utility in the past, it was to enable mankind to get out of bed predictably and off to the fields, factories, frontiers, and, yes, too many front-lines of battle.
Once, religion's sole duty was to offer transcendence beyond the suffering of life to all those who saught it. A call to look inward with disciplined effort, and then to go out to community, and live the golden rule.
Religion vs. non-religion debate often includes cross words that imply the abolishment of the other rather than any sort of possible reformation. Hate for views easily slips into hate for people. I'm certainly not immune to this.
If religion takes up the task of science, how long on the blasphemous denial and limitation of the greatness of the creation that they are only a small part of? If science wishes to take up the business of meaning, what model of revelation and evangelism should it take? ...with higher education out of reach to many.
My call to the historians, plus anthropologist and social scientists, was to echo Dr.Valerie's reflection on human history from part 2. A better understanding of ourselves and past quests for meaning is what I hope for.
Naive perhaps , but...
Vive la réformation!
One needed clarification...
I'm focusing on a 'meaning for the masses' that religion, when at it's best could offer.
I'm well aware of the many who have no need what so ever for ethereal meanings or mystical meanderings.
...they're usually the quiet ones.
As a scientist I have spent most of my time in the realm of logos. But as a poet I sometimes revert to the realm of mythos. Once during my 60 years of being a church goer, I signed up for a prayer and meditation group. During one of my exercises while sitting outside under a walnut tree, I had an extraordinary sense of the presence of Jesus. He told me to read the Gospel of Thomas and that the Old Testament God doesn't exist. It was also okay to stand up to the establishment since that is what he did. When I reported this to my prayer group, I was asked not to come back. My wife didn't think it was possible to get kicked out of a prayer group, but I did it. I don't think religion for the most part has any way of dealing with personal transformative experience. Anyway I am back in logos mode when it comes to religion and actually get ill if I go near a church.
Dear, elmerfude, the long forgotten (or rather, averted) mystics of the great religions, be they christian, jewish, or muslim contemplatives, may or may not offer much food for thought and good compliment to the gnostic texts.
I've come to greatly enjoy sitting in the stillness and silence of a church... when there is no priest or preacher at the pulpit. ...for being able to do so, I thank a wisdom that has been lost to history.
"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it."
"There's a seeker born every minute" - Dr. Happy Harry Cox
You got hit in the head by a falling walnut?.. lol..
LOL No the squirrels beat me to them.
Don't forget that Newton discovered gravity by being hit on the head with an apple. And Eve got kicked out of the garden for eating one. Don't underestimate the spiritual power of falling fruits and nuts.
"Arguments with believers start from a false premise -- that the believer is bound by the rules of debate rather than being bound by the belief itself."
This is why I prefer mockery to "debate" about fairytales and I know that Je$u$ doesn't mind. He told me so.
To debate the fairy tales indeed makes little sense. But to mock faith itself is rarely a good idea. Faith may be ultimately wrong and it may cripple people in their dealings with life. But you shouldn't be so sure that you have all the answers for the 'last things'. And you will need them, sooner or later. Faith and religion are traditions in which people store anxiety about these 'last things'. This is often not justified by science or contradicts it, but at the same time neither science nor everyday knowledge can entirely replace it. The boundaries have been shifting ever since the traditions began, and they will probably continue to do so for a while - because that's what the human needs suggest.
Your point is unclear. What is it that I will need sooner or later?
How do we know something to be true?
One recent debate I got involved in concerned the question of whether humans are animals or some higher life form. I made the case for humans as part of the animal kingdom while my opponent argued that we are not animals because we have a soul and animals don't.
This went on for a fairly lengthy thread until I finally ended the debate with my usual refrain: Believing something to be so does not make it so. Of course, that cuts both ways.
See Valerie Tarico's Profile
It does cut both ways, but most of the time we agree that the burden of proof lies with the person who is claiming special knowledge.
In none of my debates with neo-atheists have I made any claim to special knowledge. What I believe rarely, if ever, comes up. Yet, my opponents carry on as if the burden of proof applies to me and not to them--in other words, in spite of which form an argument happens to take. Quite a number of Dawkins followers apparently presume that, because they are Dawkins followers, their judgments regarding religion are somehow infallible. I shoot back that logic and reason aren't clubs we belong to, nor things to be invoked to give our arguments the luster of authority. My point, to date, has never gotten through. And it doesn't seem like a very deep point.
Does it concern you, as it does me, when people mistake logic, reason, and science as badges to wear vice disciplines to practice? I know that I cringe when people insist they're arguing on the side or reason and logic, given that reason and logic do not represent "sides" to be on--they are things to be arrived at, not spots to stand in or under. I wonder if the people in question dress the part, too--you know, wear logical and reasonable clothes, for instance. Or assume a scientific expression (eyes narrowed, hand on chin). I don't know how far they take the association thing. ("Here's my brother, Logic N. Reason.")
Zanti, Let 's do a thought experiment, There's this "cat " ( take, beatnik ) and his thoughts are stuck inside a box do to antiquated philosophical memes, can he know anything outside the cage, whoops, I mean box he's in?
Therefore does obsession overpower his reason?
Great homework assignment again Valerie. I've been a TED junkie for a couple of years, but somehow I missed Ramachandran's talk.
In case anyone is interested, there was a novel, "The Echo Maker", written around a character with Capgras delusion. It won the 2006 National Book Award for fiction.
See Valerie Tarico's Profile
TED talks cover of the most fascinating cutting edge information available anywhere. My whole community of progressive nerds is hooked. :)
Subscribe to edge.org --lots of Ramachandran's work is there.
I've spent alot of time on Edge, but as you know, there's an awful lot there.
Thanks a lot for the cogent reasoning put forward.
And thanks for the references: people like R. Lifton or E. Schein may deserve the same amount of public attention as Paul Celan or Hannah Arendt.
you write:
'Humans will always argue passionately about things that we do not know and cannot know, but with a little more self-knowledge and humility we may get to the point that those arguments are less often lethal.'
And I couldn't agree more. In fact I believe you are understating the case.
To avoid lethality is what has been achieved in the 18th century, in terms of the history of mind. To aim at the proper level of self-knowledge and humility is a cause that has been much advanced by Darwin, 150 years ago.
To make these observations explicit is part of the legacy of Popper, who wrote 'the open society and its enemies' more than half a century ago.
But I am far from objecting to your cause or your intentions. That's because McCarthy and Creationism date back ... well ... well after all of this. Too bad.
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