the afterlife, near-death experiences, reincarnation, etc.

afterlife
Thanks, Joanne; you are kind--and timely.

Trust me, JLN, you're not a bore. Hey, I'm 67, and I KNOW I don't know everything there is to know. Stubborn as hell, but after living on this planet for this many years, a little stubborness is a requirement for survival. In crossing swords with you, I think I"ve got a small inkling of what you're trying to tell me/us. This old dog still knows how to learn new tricks, but it takes people like you to ram it into my brain. This is part of the fun of A2K. c.i.

afterlife
Ah, C.I. I'm 68. That makes our conversation even more interesting. I'll bet you thought I was younger than you given all my hippie talk.

You cudda fooled anybody! c.i.

Monger, you have asked questions which have been debated for thousands of years.

The Summerians and Egyptians, Babylonians , Romans and Greeks spent hours on these topics. Here is a brief summary :

(1) Our time spent on earth is but a fraction of our existence, perhaps the
first step of our journey. 90 or 100 years is but a blink of time. Scholars
think that our complicated development is far too precious just to be
discarded after that first brief visit.

(2) The "soul" has been defined as the "animating force of life".
So anything that has life must have an "animating force", don't you
agree. If we are all "God's creatures" then certainly your dog has
a soul.

(3) When man evolved enough to see his image in clear water (long
before mirrors were invented) he developed a "sense of self".
Once that occured it became impossible, say experts, to imagine
the "non-esistence" of self.

(4) Of course all religious thought is conjecture it is admitted by the
world's greatest ecclesiasts. In fact religion itself is man made,
no matter what priests and clergmen say. Historically it has been
suggested that NO religious thought existed beyond 80,000 years
ago. And when it was invented much of it was and still is myth and
allegory.

(5) The millions of people who lived before that time did not have
relgious thoughts, despite the fact that they were created by
the architect of the universe.

(6) It is a fascinating subject, one that I have studied for 75 years.
I am sure you will develop your own conclusions as time goes
by.

afterlife
Nice post, Ronamac. You're absolutely right, such questions about "eternal verities" reflect our nature more than they do the nature of the world we ask about. They are unanswerable but we continue, nevertheless, to treat them as if they were answerable. Then as the generations and centuries pass, we modify them, drop them, or replace them with equally unanswerable questions. It says something about us, doesn't it?

afterlife
Perhaps, Ronamac, they are not genuine questions at all, only rhetorical "questions." We already have our "answers" and then, as in the TV program, Jeopardy, seek their questions.

I've been following this discussion with interest and have decided to copy part of an article on the brain's need for reasons, even to the extent of making them up if none are obvious.

It isn't completely relevant, but I think it helps explain the number of different beliefs concerning something that is unknowable.

Are our beliefs simply a matter of genetics?

=======================

"But this drive to come up with the causes of events is
hardly limited to therapy patients. Neurophysiologists
discovered the same phenomenon in a radically different
context. While mapping the brain, they were amazed to find
that when the area responsible for an emotion was
electronically stimulated, subjects experienced the
mechanically induced feeling, then instantly came up with
reasons for their responses.

If you activate the area of the brain that generates
laughter, for example, the subject may happily "explain"
that his hilarity stems from an overly earnest looking
doctor or an odd diagram on the wall.

Neurologists also happened upon the mind's tendency to
concoct explanations for puzzling events. In rare instances
when the left and right sides of the brain become
disconnected, the verbal left half seamlessly fabricates
stories to explain actions initiated by the right half.

Apparently, the mind abhors an explanatory vacuum and
rushes in to fill the void, with no compunction about
creating "reasons" out of whole cloth.

Here is the link for the entire article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/17/science/17BEHA.html?ex=1042429405&ei=1&en=5042e9ddba218bee

afterlife
Diane, I would guess that while our most basic (i.e., universal) drives are genetically based (i.e., instincts), our beliefs are not. The former are CONSTANTS, which is what we would expect from species-specific traits; the latter are VARIABLES, more or less the creative accidents of history. I wouldn't be surprised, however, to learn that many beliefs that vary across cultures may have a deep-structural commonality (Levi-Strauss advocated something like this, if I understand him). Nevertheless, the surface forms of beliefs are what distinguish one cultural system from another and what make anthropology interesting.
This does not take anything away from the role of the neurological phenomena you've cited. It just means that our mental lives are not possible without physiological correlates. THINKING is not possible without a brain, a brain in good functioning order. WHAT we think is another matter. Laughing when a certain part of the brain is activated shows the purely physical BASIS for much mental behavior, but it does not help us to understand why one person has a good (clever, sophisticated) sense of humor while another's is very crass and dull.
Our consideration of such things right now, has to do with more than the simple conditions of our neurosystems. It involves a range of interpersonal, personal, historical, cultural, and who knows how many other factors. It's fun to say the obvious with big words.

Fasinating , Diane, thank you for sharing that with us.

Ron

JLN, I think you've tagged onto something about "the simple conditions of our neurosystems." All humans do not have all their cylinders working property for many reasons. I don't think it has much to do with human intelligence, or what most considers scholary achievement. It has more to do with emotional maturity, the lack of certain chemicals in our brains, our environment (race and culture), and ofcoarse our genes. Our perceptions may differ as a consequence of our sight, sound, feelings, language, and education. Homo sapiens as a part of the primates of this world is prone to establish some forms of hiearchy as does many animals. Our ability at language allows us to create more elaborate forms of hierarchy. This is why it is common in so many races and cultures that have created a royalty class and religion(s), even before the time of Jesus and the bible. It's all part of the human condition. c.i.

afterlife
Diane, if there were a God or a Newton, when the experimenter who stimulated the laughter part of the experimentee's brain asked the latter why he was laughing, the experimentee would have answered "Funny that you should ask."

Diane, the article speaks of the different areas of the brain and the fact that something senseless (such as laughing for no reason) could be somehow explained away by the "mind."

It may then be possible that the "mind" is the source that animates the body after birth, or that this thing we have called a "mind" may be the source itself.

We can at least be thankful for this "mind" that prevents us all from becoming completely and totally insane, should some human start pushing buttons within our brains to create emotions or whatever else.

I think the article shows the unique characteristics found in the human brain that are responsible for the development of education, civilization and religion. It is one of the parts of the brain that makes us decidedly human.

It makes us think.

If we are programmed to find reasons, even going so far as to make them up, it is easy to see how religion came about.

What is religion but a quest for answers, reasons, explanations for all that is unknowable? Different civilizations have developed different answers, but the primitive, basic need for those answers is a characteristic common only to humans and is already hotwired in our brains.

To me, it is a sign of our intelligence and creativity that there are so many different, sophisticated philosophies and religions that have evolved from this basic need.

Oh my, I should never post when it gets this late. I lose what little capacity I have to process logical thoughts and sentences.

Goodnight Gracie.

It was indeed a fascinating article and bit of research. What I keep coming back to is that the mind make up a reason out of whole cloth. Now where does it get that whole cloth? Those are the depths and what Jung called the genetic memories that could give us some real understanding.

afterlife
O.K. Diane, I think you've phrased it right. Our need (our "hard-wired" compulsion to find explanations for everything that happens and is experienced) is the foundation for the emergence of human civilization. I don't want to overstate this principle, but the cultures we've developed, the INVENTORIES of explanations for how the world works, how it originated, how it should become, etc. etc. stem from this need to find explanations even where they are not necessary for our survival. Animals, as far as we know, only develop the skills necessary for survival, and most of these "skills" are genetically derived instincts. We've gone far beyond that--for better and for worse. For worse because we seem to have lost contact with our most primeval needs and capacities, and for better, because we've "evolved" to the point that we can adapt to all kinds of situations (because of technological inventions and capacities). The pragmatist philosopher, C.S. Pierce, once explained that we need to find explanations for pragmatic reasons, to solve practical problems and even to resolve the stress from feeling confused. But these neurological findings you are talking about go beyond that. They say that we seek explanations simply because we are programmed to do so. Wow!

afterlife
The only problem I sense with the conclusion that we seek explanations because we hard-wired to do so is that it is tautological: we do it because we are made to do it. That tells us something very fundamental about ourselves, but is it enough? Do we still want to explain why in some periods of our history we arrive at certain TYPES of answers (say the middle ages) and at other times (the enlightenment) we arrive at other TYPES. The differences between metaphysical and empirical, theological and scientific approaches to explanations are significant in any history of intellectual life. Look at the so-called "traditional" societies of primitive and peasant societiess, where there appears, at least, to be little curiosity, where traditional explanations seem to satisfy everyone (I think this is an old-fashioned anthropological exaggeration, but not totally false). Then compare that kind of cultural orientation with the so-called modern type of society where change is persistent and where the RATE of change is phenomenal (cf. "Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler). These are not trivial differences; they point also to fundamental characterisitcs of our species. If it were not so, the neurological findings you've pointed to, Diane, would put an end to all the social sciences and humanistic disciplines. We would now know all that we need to know abaout ourselves. But we would still continue to raise questions and pursue their anwers--if only because we are hard-wired to do so.

I would assume that the nature of the explanations we create re the numinous reflect the changing and growing nature of our knowledge base and understanding.

Also, as our ethics and the moral values we favour change, we want our supreme being to be at least as enlightened as we assume ourselves to be...

it is interesting in this respect that it is the folk who find change most difficult, or possibly who have the most self-doubt, or the least exposure to the accumulating body of knowledge, cling to the older versions of the supreme being.

And some gods suit some power elites more than others...

afterlife
Good points, Dlowan. I particular like your reminder that knowledge and belief often have political functions. The legitimacy of the power elite has often rested on supernatural sanction. Rulers from ancient Egypt and Mexico to modern Japan have "descended" from supreme beings, not to mention the fact that European kings are crowned by high ranking church officials. And the moral systems of contemporary Mexican peasants are often enforced by deceased ancestors who send illness to individuals who violate community norms. Yes, morality and political legitimacy are closely related to a society's worldview, such that some beliefs are off limits while others are more mandated politically than they are neurologically. That is to say, while, in the abstract, our need for answers to questions may be neurologically driven, the particular answers we arrive at, may be channeled by other, external, factors. I wonder if even the so-called archtypical notions of Jung are not so inherent (universal) as they are said to be, at least they are not as inherent as, say, our sense of time and space--and a certain set of grammatical predispositions. You folks are driving me to speculative frenzy.