THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION - BEN'S BLOG

Evolution Revisited

10/3/2020

Atheists and other non-believers in supernatural phenomena are not the only ones who have accepted the reality of evolution. Many Christians and other theists have realized that the observable facts and findings constantly reaffirm, refine and correct the scientific conclusions and the picture has become clearer and clearer. Many Christians understand that the Bible is to be taken metaphorically, not literally, and they realize that the “days” in Genesis metaphorically and symbolically indicate a “period of time.” They also understand that each metaphorical “day” covers a period of time that is far longer than 24 hours. Evolution is accepted by 98% of scientists and by many theists.
The human writers of the biblical texts had no conception of the geologic history of the earth or the enormous length of time required for our planet to form. The best that they could do was to apply a period of time that they could observe (a "day") to their ancient theology. They lacked any conception of science and, thus, evolution.
The debate is long over, except for a small group of “young creationists” who have developed an alternate “science” to “prove” that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, a pseudo science which has been thoroughly debunked. According to this pseudo science, no star in the observable universe could then be farther away than 10,000 light years. Real science tells us that is not the case.
I suggest that we ignore these “young earth creationist” arguments by reminding creationists that their “science” has been proven to be in conflict with real, observable facts. We attempt to limit debate between theists who claim that evolution is God’s way to create life and non-believers’ assertion that the laws of nature provide the best, and most accurate, explanation of the origin of life.
I wrote this post to assert that any debate about the veracity of evolution is over. Because evolutionary biology is an established fact and that it forms the basis for modern science and modern living, the only remaining debate is whether evolution is God’s way or nature’s way to reproduce life.

Y0u Are Alone

8/10/2020

I am relaxing on my favorite lawn-chair enjoying the breezy, sunny, summer weather in the cool shade of an oak tree and quaffing a cool beer. A little squirrel is carefully approaching, ready to flee if I make a move. I absorb the environment through my five senses which connect me to reality. It suddenly occurs to me that I am the only person in the whole universe who observes these immediate surroundings. Just me! Isn’t that miraculous?
My senses are recording the sounds, the smells, the landscape, the temperature, and the taste of the beer and my brain organizes all this information to create not only a picture in my mind but also to create a feeling of peace and contentment, just for me alone.
I will never know how another person, when experiencing a similar set of conditions, would perceive this scene. The grass reflects a certain frequency of light that we all call green, but I will never know how another brain interprets that same frequency. Perhaps my “green” is “red” for someone else? What about smell and taste? Are they the same for everybody? Obviously, they are not, because we have different likes and dislikes. But there is no way to know. Emotionally, we also differ in our reactions to similar situations.
Yes, we are unique and alone. We cannot read the thoughts of others. We can guess their thoughts by observing body language but we cannot ever be certain to know what another person thinks. I know that some magicians pretend that they can read minds and some people believe in extrasensory perception (ESP) but, over a hundred years of serious research in ESP and meta-physics, the results have been fruitless. Even money rewards, such as James Randi’s one million dollars if scientific evidence could be shown to verify ESP, have never been claimed.
Yes, you are alone. Observe through your senses what it is like to be alive. That experience is different from person to person and you will never know how other brains construct the environment that we call the reality in which we live. Although we are alone, that does not mean that we are necessarily lonely. Enjoy your life as much as you can; it is the only one you will ever get.

Mass Delusions

6/1/2020

MASS DELUSIONS
I know I am going to get dumped upon but I will take the chance that enough people will at least think about it. I want to make a distinction between clinical and common delusions. In this post, will not be talking about "clinical delusion" which is associated with mental disease. I am writing about a different and even more devastating delusion which is "mass delusion."
I have written about delusional people before and I have written that religion is, itself, a delusion. The comments that I have received have rejected the assertion that religion is a delusion and point to the absurdity of such an assertion by noting that the majority of the world's population would be mentally ill (or, at least, deluded) if religion was found to be a delusion. I am not saying that most people in the world are clinical delusional, but I am saying that we have inherited a tendency to accept delusions because we have a capacity to imagine anything as illustrated by the imaginative creations of Superman and Harry Potter. When these imaginations are believed to be real, they become delusions.
The strength of delusion-beliefs (DB)vary from person to person, from skeptics to ultra-believers, distributed on a bell-curve which is similar to the intelligence bell-curve but not correlated to it. A person with a very high intelligence quotient (IQ) can be anywhere on the DB curve. Here we have the juxtaposition of delusion and intelligence. What I always wondered at is how very intelligent persons, high on the IQ curve, leaders in biology, for example, defend creation stories over evolution. Does it depend on their inherited positions on the delusion-belief bell-curve?
So we are all subject to delusional-beliefs and everyone fits somewhere on the bell-curve. Many conspiracies theories, as examples of delusions, have a great deal of support in the population. Most conspiracy theories have little effect but some can cost lives. You only have to look at the millions who think that President D. Trump, no matter what he does, is doing a great job. Trump has called COVID-19 a plot by Democrats to........... well, here it is not clear at all what the strategy or intentions of Democrats might be. What might be the actual end-game for the Democrats to introduce a global pandemic? Can Democrats also be blamed for the emergence of COVID-19 in China? If so, then is this what is intended by the Texas County GOP Chair who recently incited a gathering to take off masks and hug each other. If Democrats have a plot to kill millions with a virus, then are the Republicans complicit in the plot by instructing adherents to remove their masks, thus promoting the spread of the Democrat's deadly plague? It is difficult to see which of them, Democrats or Republicans, are to blame for COVID-19. Or was it a joint effort: Democrats introduced COVID-19 after consultations with a secret laboratory in China and have co-opted Republicans to help them spread COVID-19 by getting ordinary citizens to remove their face masks at Republican Trump-promoting rallies? Asserting a political rationale to the spread of COVID-19 is a double-edged sword. Is it possible to see any positive, well-intended and well-considered plot by one party or another to kill thousands of Americans or, alternatively, is it possible to suggest that both Republican and Democrats wish to promote COVID-19 to kill fellow citizens? If so, why? Or is this yet another example of the illogical delusion-beliefs carelessly promoted by individuals who have abandoned all vestiges of critical thinking?
So it is obvious that many millions of people are susceptible to delusions and since delusions are very persistent and hard to overcome, we will have to be resolute to fight this inherited tribal instinct, as we fight other ones which are obsolete in the modern world, such as rape and tribal genocide, because we are the only tribe left in the world.
We survived the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Now we will have to adapt to survive.

Does cosmic consciousness exist

5/21/2020

Neuroscientists, physicists and philosophers, all engaged in the study of consciousness, have proposed several theories trying to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. Some are claiming that consciousness needs only a material brain but others claim that non-local consciousness is responsible for the sensations that we experience.

There is an inborn human wish that death cannot be the end of our short period of awareness and therefore humans keep searching for reasons to prove one can live forever, but it is time to realize the fact that we are here for a short time only and therefore we should enjoy the enormous luck that gives us a chance to experience this window in our magnificent universe.

I like to make the point that intelligent educated but religious persons trying to use the latest in physics by esoteric philosophy to hang on to the idea of an afterlife when it doesn't seem make sense if we use critical thinking. The trouble I have is to express their philosophy to the readers in a short essay, where many even may know little about quantum physics and therefor are impressed with the famous names which the theists throw around to make their argument sound genuine. So here i argue that even if their theories become proven true, the afterlife, as it is envisioned by most people as an extension of earth life, is still not valid.

Dr. Stuart Hameroff, anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona, holds the controversial opinion that "consciousness originates from quantum states in neural microtubules" and claims to have confirmed that the material brain cannot create consciousness and that consciousness exists independently of the brain. There are several theories of consciousness that involve quantum physics. Dr. Hameroff and the well-known British physicist Sir Roger Penrose claim that consciousness resides in microtubules of braincells which are primarily sites of quantum processing. Dr Hameroff stated;"Upon death this info is released from the body, meaning that your consciousness goes with it."

They have argued that our experience of consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in those microtubules, a theory dubbed Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) postulates that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons rather than the conventional view that it is a product of connections between neurons. The mechanism is held to be a quantum process that is orchestrated by cellular structures called microtubules

Dr. Hameroff told science channel, through the wormhole documentary, "let's say that the heart stops beating, blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state. The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed. It can't be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. Renowned scientist Lanza adds that "not only does it exist in the universe, it exists perhaps (perhaps?) in another universe." So, is there really a part of your consciousness that is non-material and will live on after the death of the physical body? Hameroff stated "There is supposedly (supposedly?) a cosmic awareness which makes human consciousness possible, therefore, once your physical body dies it will find another one and remains part of the cosmic consciousness. Energy cannot be destroyed, so the awareness continues".

Dr. Hameroff's tortured theory is an attempt to prove that quantum theory can be used to denote an afterlife. Let's assume that Dr. Hameroff is correct and that consciousness cannot be formed in the material brain but needs a "cosmic consciousness" in order to form. The focus, then, should not be on the operational details of microtubules, which are well understood, but on the existence of a "cosmic consciousness." Where is this theorized cosmic consciousness and how might we prove its existence?

There also seems to be confusion between consciousness and awareness. The recognition of "self" relies on your memory stored in your material brain. There is now enough research to establish that as a fact. Many cases of brain injuries and diseases have shown that they can destroy parts or all of your memory (total amnesia for example). Observing Alzheimer's patients also shows that awareness of "self," depending on your memories, slowly dies when the brain functions slowly deteriorate, it is therefore immaterial whether your consciousness needs a cosmic connection to exist if awareness dies with the material brain. Since everyone's awareness of "self" dies with the memories, it is irrelevant whether the energy in your microtubules returns to the "cosmic consciousness." Dr. Hameroff claims that, because energy cannot be destroyed, the consciousness generated in quantum processes in microtubules is "distributed and dissipated to the universe at large." But even if this is true, the memory which constitutes your "self" will die with the material brain.

What Causes Consciousness

4/18/2020

Consciousness has baffled mankind for a long time. There are many philosophies and speculations that try to explain it but none have yet been verified with empirical evidence. What is becoming evident, however, is that consciousness is a function of the brain. In other words, it is created by the matter which constitutes our brain and is not, as many have speculated, a function of supposedly supernatural forces external to the natural brain.

There are many psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and dimethyltryptamine (DMT) which influence one’s thoughts and beliefs. Experiments with these drugs have shown that they can change one’s beliefs and ideas permanently.

Last April, the Imperial College in London launched the Centre for Psychedelic Research to study the effect of mind-altering substances. It published a report in the journal Scientific Reports. The Centre outfitted 13 volunteers with brain activity caps and injected DMT into them. There was a notable increase in theta waves which occur when one dreams. Researcher Christopher Timmerman stated: “It’s like day-dreaming, only far more vivid and immersive, it is like dreaming with your eyes open.” Robert Carhart-Harris, head of the Centre, said “the knowledge that the drug appears to produce something akin to waking sleep could help unravel the mystery of consciousness.”

Thus, the conjecture is that consciousness is getting closer to being elucidated in the foreseeable future and that the notion of consciousness is a brain function, needing a living material brain, is becoming clearer. Awareness and your identity depend on your consciousness and your memories, which are all functions of your brain. When the brain dies, the awareness dies, as we observe in Alzheimer patients. Without awareness, the afterlife is a moot point.

World Chaos

2/29/2020

A friend asked me why the world cannot get it together and is always in turmoil and conflict. My guess is that the tribal instinct of defending the tribe against other tribes is buried in our genes. It is apparent that the tendency toward cooperation between individuals within ancient tribes was highly effective but it did not extend to other tribes which were viewed as competitors and, therefore, the enemies. It might take a long time before the world human population regards itself as being one tribe.

Looking at other animals, such as wolves, monkeys and wild dogs, we notice that they often form packs that cooperate in obtaining food and they protect the weaker members of the pack. There seems to be a limit to the size of the pack, perhaps because packs that are too large are too difficult to organize into an efficient unit. If that is the case with humans as well, the future looks bleak unless we conquer our hereditary instincts.

Inherited instincts are hard to overcome but most of us have been able to prevail over some of those instincts, which don’t suit our modern way of life, to a great extent, such as rape and killing, by our ability to reason rather than to rely on instincts. We, humans, might be successful eventually by realizing we are one tribe instead of fractionalizing into smaller groups.

It is an interesting topic and the above is a quick reaction to the question and I realize to have to do a lot more research and reading about this subject before a reasonable theory can be drawn. Sometimes I am overwhelmed, not only because of the amount of information, but also for verification of reliable sources of such data. The truth is very hard to find.

Does Atheism Mock Theism?

1/1/2020

Many times I have read posts that question why so many atheists and agnostics are “attacking” theists who say “Leave us alone and let us live the way we believe in. We should live side by side in peace and respect our differences.”

Here is an example of such a post:
I want to say something about the spirituality debate. You don't believe in God? That's ok, but why is it so important for many of you to mock those of us that do? If we're wrong, what have we lost when we die? Nothing! How does our faith in Jesus Christ bring you any harm? You think it makes me stupid? Gullible? Ignorant? That's ok, too. How does that affect you? If you're wrong, your consequence is far worse. I would rather live my life believing in God and serving Him and find out I was right than not believe in Him, and not serve Him, and find out I was wrong. Then it's too late.
Ain't no shame in my game! I believe in Jesus Christ. He said deny me in front of your friends and I will deny you in front of my Father.
Facebook Challenge:
If you're not ashamed copy & paste it! God is Good!
I'm willing to do this...how about you?
God is good, Amen!
No, you are not stupid, gullible or ignorant, and I do not mock but rather respect your beliefs. However, there is a reason why I “challenge” religion. By showing why religion is a man-made concept, I hope that the damage done by religion can be mitigated.
All religions always want to enforce their "morals" on the "other" religions and non-religious people. Some recent examples of theists “forcing” religion down the throats of non-believers include anti-abortion activities and proposals to adopt sharia law. Strife between denominations also can lead to great trouble. Religious fanatics who kill others include suicide bombers, LGBTQ haters and parents who let their children die because they believe in prayer more than modern medicine or withhold blood transfusions. These religious fanatics are, well, religious. Atheists and agnostics don’t kill others with suicide attacks. Atheists and agnostics don’t “force” atheism down the throats of believers. Atheists and agnostics are not dangers to society. It is the religious fanatics who pose the biggest threat to the security of others.
Big churches get the use of infrastructure, police and fire protection without paying taxes. These churches use the money raised to help people in poor countries to build churches and promote their religion. That's how it affects the rest of us. The churches “force” religion down the throats of the most vulnerable. It is a quid pro quo: the churches offer religion in exchange for food and other resources.
Therefore, it is imperative that atheists and agnostics fight religion. We respect religions that are peaceful and tolerant, pay their taxes and do not try to foist their outdated “morals” and “laws” on the rest of us. You can copy and paste this as well.
As a footnote: Look up Pascal's Wager, if you are a theist, in Wikipedia; you’ll discover why it is invalid.

Is Mind/Body Dualism a fact?

12/1/2019

Dualism is a philosophy that posits mental phenomena are non-physical and that the mind is distinct and separable from physical constraints.

Consciousness (the mind) exists independently of physical reality (the material brain). If that is the case, one must explain how the non-material mind (consciousness) can affect physical reality.

Paul Churchland, at the University of California’s Institute for Neural Computation, made the observation that, in cases of brain damage caused by accidents, drugs or mental disease, consciousness and awareness can be extensively changed. If the mind is separate and immaterial, how can it be changed by material causes? How could there be material damage an immaterial entity?

Many patients who have had damage to their brains have exhibited permanent changes in their minds, indications that there is a correlation between mental states and brain states.

Another problem with mind / body dualism is that, if the mind can exist independent of the physical realm, how does one explain the creation and retention of physical memory? How can something material interact with something that is immaterial?

Any action by a non-physical mind on the brain would be a violation of conservation of energy. In neuroscience experiments, brain scans have uncovered brain activity up to 10 seconds before an actual activity is carried out. This is strong evidence that cognitive processes have a physical basis in the brain. Human beings begin their existence as a totally physical and material entity. There is nothing mentalistic or nonmaterial involved in conception. Research and observations strongly indicate that the mind is created in the brain and cannot exist without a material brain.

There is some new and interesting research on the effects of mind altering substances such as dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which indicates strongly that material brain changes caused by hallucinatory drugs could explain consciousness. We will report on that in another blog.

^ Churchland, Paul (1988) Matter and Consciousness, Revised Edition, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
^ Lycan, William (1996) "Philosophy of Mind" in The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, ed. Nicholas Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
^ Dehaene, Stanislas (2002). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness. MIT. p. 4.

The Purpose of Life

10/8/2019

Several times I have seen posts asking the question “What is the purpose of life?” The answers have ranged from “no purpose” to many varied, and sometimes very lengthy, definitions but none of them made any sense to me and when reading the many comments, the answers did not make much sense to many others.

Why does this question arise in the first place? Do we, as an insignificant organism, want to be important? If we study the well-accepted theory of evolution, humans seem to be a fluke of nature. That is one of the reasons many theists, despite the overwhelming evidence provided by evolution, cannot accept it.

Many people are looking for the significance of, and the reason why, we are here. The development of life through natural means seems impossible because of the enormous odds. The universe is so enormous and beyond our understanding, while time is counted in billions of years. Life defies the odds. We have won that lottery because we are here. Remember, no matter how large the odds in a lottery, one can win tomorrow.

When we consider the “purpose of life” question we must take into consideration the fact that more than 90 percent of the life forms that have ever existed have gone extinct. Humans will eventually go extinct as well, some predicting within a hundred years, others predicting another large meteorite, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, will do the trick or when the sun goes nova. Thus, we are in a temporary situation but for what purpose?

So I would like you to revisit the question “What is the purpose of human life?” but, before you do, you must answer the question ”What was the purpose of the dinosaurs’ lives?” Think hard about it.

NDE Research

9/23/2019

In an article by Robert Martone, a research scientist and expert in neurodegeneration, describes a new study which compared the stories of 625 individuals who reported their NDE experiences with stories of 15000 individuals who had taken one of 165 different psychoactive drugs. When analyzed many similarities were found between near-death reports and drug experiences. The drug Ketamine especially led to these similarities.

Both these groups had many experiences in common, such as feeling it as a real experience, a bright light at the end of the tunnel, floating away from and looking at your own body, meeting departed family members, and an exciting and intense feeling of peace, loss of fear of death and feeling of being a part of something universal. This suggests that NDEs reflect changes in the brain on approaching death.

In many cultures, the use of psychoactive drugs was part of religious practice. NDEs are probably based in brain biology, although it is near impossible to detect what changes take place in the brain during an NDE, we can compare by linguistic analysis the NDE reports with these drug-induced hallucinations.

By researching many NDE stories, collected over many years and comparing them a with the large experience anecdotes found in the Erowid Experience Vaults, a collection of first-hand descriptions with drugs they found remarkable similarities. While many psychoactive drugs were tried the highest comparison were with the hallucinogen Ketamine. Other drugs, such as LSD and DMT showed similar experiences.

DMT is found in South American plants but is also made in the brain, leading to the speculation that endogenous DMT might explain NDEs. Future research will show if this conclusion is correct but the researchers suggest that NDEs have such a lasting effect, Ketamine could be used to induce an NDE like state in terminal ill patients. To relieve anxiety about death. The research is continuing so stay tuned.