Let's All Be Possibilians

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Perham1

2,500+ Posts
From the unfathomed complexity of brain tissue—“essentially an alien computational material”—to the mystery of dark matter, we know too little about our own minds and the universe around us to insist on strict atheism, he said. “And we know far too much to commit to a particular religious story.” Why not revel in the alternatives?

Interesting viewpoint.

The "he" is David Eagleman, recent Guggenheim fellow and on faculty at Baylor College of Medicine in neuroscience.

Possibilian
 
this is pretty much the viewpoint i have always had. if atheists think religious people are mental midgets, they need to take a long look in the mirror. their view of the universe is like watching a child play with blocks.
 
I have to brag that at one point in my life I was friends with the author- we both moved on and are out of touch now however.

I read this article- he is an absolutely brilliant person, and perhaps a future candidate for a Nobel someday. I mean that honestly-
 
mcbrett, that's the main reason I posted this. The guy is getting some pretty big play and he's just down the street, so to speak, in Houston at BCM.
 
very interesting article. The author did a good job of covering a lot of ground in the span of a fairly short article. Seems that there is much more meat there than he could write about in the space given.
That being said, what I gleaned from the article is that our brains are in some way tied into or tap into the time space continuum. Not only that, emotions and what we are feeling is innately connected to how we experience time. I am sure we all know that a 30 min massage seems like only 10 minutes, yet 2 minutes of pain seems like an eternity. It is very cool to hear some of the science behind that.
While reading that my mind keeps going back to the explanations of Brian Greene about the time/space continuum as well. The thing I find curious is that while we as humans, finite creatures in a seemingly infinite universe (debatable it would seem) don't know everything. Yet we seem to be searching to find truths to which be can grab on. I believe this to be the underpinnings of the intellectually curious. We want to know more and by knowing me we have more questions, and so goes the spiral for knowledge. Beyond that though, is our knowledge being put into a context into which we can better understand ourselves and the world around us. This scientist seems to say YES... both to ourselves AND the world around us. Great way of looking at things.
The issue is where will this path lead? Will it lead to an infinite spiral of questions with answers, or at the last will there be some grounding truth. Some 'theory of everything.'? In essence what would that theory be? To where will it lead us? God? Or something else? Some knowable equation or system of scientific observable and reproducible datum? Isn't this the crux then of the divide between science and religion? Digging for the same answer, or at least at the end of the same question?
The issue, to me, seems to be that the religionist has a definitive answer (perhaps wrong, and not testable, but definitive): God. And yet the scientist can't test for this answer, and so goes on pursuing questions unsatisfied by a revealed answer, and instead looking for a question and and answer that can be discovered, and can be applied universally within their framework of experimentation and experience?

Great article. It really has me thinking. And btw, I posted the above for discussion matters not debating matters. The debating on Quack's has left me cold to both 'sides.'
 
I watched his TED talk video earlier this week. He attempts to define a middle ground of ‘possibility’ between religious belief and unbelief, but this is a false and unnecessary distinction. Maybe my objection is a semantic one, as he appears to use the term ‘strict atheism’ to mean an insistence or certainty that there is no God. There can be no certainty on either side of this debate, so I think he’s creating a bit of an atheist straw man here.

In reply to:
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Dion,
Christians, and many other religions believe that God has revealed Himself in some way. Theologically, the Bible is often times called 'special revelation' in that it is a special book in which God had revealed Himself, which is why God can be known.
 
THEU, what do you mean by a ‘revealed answer’ that fails to satisfy?

The standard framework is to distinguish "revelation" from "reason", imo. Reason is using logic, your brain, science, sense, etc. Revelation is something else. A myth text (in this case we usually talk about the Christian myth text known as the bible), or accounts from people more than likely suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy. See Saul of Tarsus.

I'm not meaning to bash the religious or those who see/hear visions. But let's get serious. There are certain parts of the brain that are directly connected to feelings, sights, and sounds of religion/god. TLE (temporal lobe epilepsy) brings these feelings/sights/sounds out in people.

Revealed "truth" is just another way of saying "My holy text says it thus it must be so." That's fine. A lot of religions take that approach. But I reserve the right to use my reason when evaluating those claims.

I'm all for some kind of unversal sense of love, cosmic justice, let's all be one with the galaxies, but when it comes to some of the rather bizarre specifics (resurrection, virgin birth, dude being swallowed by a whale, earth made in 6 days, etc.) I'll choose to views those as metaphor, not literal fact.

If you want to view them as fact, fine by me. Where I get pissed off is when you then try to inflict those literalist views in my public school curriculum and pass creationism off as "science". I also get pissed off when the political process gets hijacked by religion. Or is that when religion gets hijacked by the political process?
 
Perham1: It's taken me a while to get to this article but I agree entirely with his thesis. I guess I am a Possibilian. I think science will slowly but surely uncover deeper and deeper levels of knowledge and that is our purpose here. But, for my own enjoyment, I also like to imagine that there are currently unknown phenomena that humans might be able to directly access if we only understood more or perhaps that there are not fully explored ways in which humans might more directly and successfully experience the universe as it is.

Dionysus: I looked for that TED talk and couldn't find it. Could you post the link? I'm really interested in listening to it.
 
David Eagleman TEDxHouston video

OldHippie, my objection to Eagleman’s thesis is that it’s completely unnecessary unless one argues that atheism claims knowledge or certainty of non-existence, which of course it doesn’t because it can’t. Atheism is perfectly compatible with the possibilian view, in fact I would argue that they are synonymous for any open-minded person. Of course the existence of a creator/prime mover/first cause is possible.
 
Dionysus. Thanks for the link. That was a very good talk and I tend to agree with him. It allows me to be speculative about unprovable Jungian, Joseph Campbell weirdness. If I only knew how to go about systematically studying that kind of phenomena, I would come out of retirement. But I would still sleep late.
 
Joseph Campbell did some great work on the development of myths and religious folklore and how they came about in earlier cultures. I remember in my senior year at UT in 1989 I had a class where we used the Bill Moyers interviews with Campbell—The Power of Myth, I think it was called, edited by UT’s Betty Sue Flowers—and it was really good, but I love that kind of stuff. Campbell died right around that time if I remember it correctly.
 
1. I am a former atheist/agnostic/intellectual truth seeker who became an adult convert to Christianity through a revelation/discovery that was not an epileptic fit. I probably sounded a lot like you, Perham, before that, and I appreciate your spirit of seeking provable truth.

2. Without going into my own story all that much, I'll say that what happened first was the breakdown in confidence of my own rational/intellectual worldview to explain so much of the data I could obviously perceive around me. (Interestingly, I can perceive far more of the data now with a Christian worldview, but I know that's just me saying so.)

3. I first went from hostility toward Christianity--somewhat in the belittling way you seem to hold it--to a more amused neutrality toward it. Sort of an opiate of the masses idea; I couldn't understand it or believe it, but I had to admit that for those (probably simple) people, it did seem to have a beneficial effect. Probably some psych reason or power of positive thinking or accidental harmony with some unknown larger secular truth was behind that benefit.

4. My worldview got three cracks in it. First of all, it gave me no moral framework, and I found that I was very selfish and hurtful, and yet couldn't shake my inborn sense of guilt (which rationally, I should have been able to shake off as culture-instilled, but I wasn't really raised in a guilt-driven environment, so that couldn't explain it.) Second, I saw that all my co-travelers in the rational-only agnostic journey would bail on me at some point and believe the stupidest non-rational things. I eventually saw that almost no one who really thought about it believed that what you see is what you get.

5. I also had an interesting crack develop in my logic basis. I have a math degree from UT. I was in ChemE until my last year. Very scientific. Then law school. For me, my life was built around proofs. If you can't prove it, then it's as good as not true. Someone who says "I know it's true, but I cannot prove it" was generally mocked. Then, I came to learn about and understand Godel's theorem. Ever hear of it? Anyway, basically, even in math, it is proved that in every logic system, there will always be truths that cannot be proved by the axioms. It probably means nothing to you, but it is actually a very important point. So, someone who says they know something but can't prove it, but who are consistently doing much better at the blackjack table than you are, can't really be mocked anymore.

6. Then, too, I had my revelation experience, which would not be persuasive to you, but if you knew me, it would probably have some credibility with you.

Anyway, I appreciate your genuine search.
 
VY_Fan, you seem sincere and I'll do my best to respond in kind.

The moral framework argument you mentioned rings a bit hollow, to be honest. We all have an innate empathy, as do most other social animals. We would have never survived this long as a species otherwise. Though we're only beginning to understand the brain, we know there are mechanisms within it that govern our reaction to our experiences. We can now measure and test many of them to demonstrate how brain function and chemistry affect our ethical choices. These are demonstrable, repeatable experiments. To suggest that the basis for our moral sensibilities is entirely cultural is to completely disregard what we know about neurology and evolutionary psychology. In my view that's a pretty significant problem for your "first crack."

Second, the fact that people don't always view everything objectively doesn't mean that supernatural explanations are therefore justified. If someone were to point out something that I believed without evidence, guess what, I'd stop believing it! Just because some people choose to cling to superstition doesn't invalidate a rational approach to truth claims. By believing something yourself for which you don't have sufficient evidence, you're actually making the same error that you disliked in your rational friends.

Since you were once guided by reason, you know that your personal experience, no matter how moving and important it might be to you, is not in any way compelling to me. Anecdotes don't compel belief, no matter how earnestly they're delivered. My wife claims that she talked with her dead mother once, and as much as I love her, and as sincerely as she believes it, I think it's more likely that her experience had a more mundane explanation.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I'm not suggesting that the supernatural can't exist, but to make truth claims about it requires something more than hearsay. You talk about a need for proofs about God, when proofs aren't demanded - only evidence. Provide something that would substantiate your claims about your experience. If you can't, then you're simply assigning a meaning to it without sufficient justification. You claim you know something significant based on your experience, but really you simply think you know it. We can all be fooled by our experiences.

I'm not trying to ridicule your experience, whatever it might have been. I just want to point out that your argument doesn't provide anything compelling to an objective person. Those "cracks" were the result of poor reasoning and self-deception, human frailties that afflict even mathematics geniuses.
 
SH, how about hundreds of people seeing a resurrected man first hand? How about eye witness accounts of a resurrected man that were written down and widely distributed at a high financial cost and owning them sometimes meant execution? That's evidence for the supernatural.
 
Yes. Jesus didn't die from his wounds. Sounds plausible. Jesus was whipped with a cat of nine tails 39 times. 40 was the death penalty. Then he carried the cross down a road until he couldn't anymore. Then he was nailed through hands and feet (or wrist and ankles). Then he hung for 6 hours on a cross which caused him to suffocate. All the while Roman guards were there to make sure no one helped to leave him to die. One stabbed him in the ribs just before taking him down. Then he was left for 3 days in a cave with a huge stone covering the entrance. And Roman guards made sure he didn't somehow get out. Sure he survived.

It is a popular thing to say that Jesus was Buddhist. I wonder if people who claim that understand what Buddhism teaches. Is it anything like he taught? Jesus taught that the Jewish law was to be fulfilled. He taught that he himself was the fulfill of the law. Also Buddhism teaches detachment, from family, from friends, from anything in life. Jesus wept for the death of his friends, showed compassion to the poor, taught of the oneness he felt for His father and his disciples. The man was clearly not a Buddhist in any way shape or form.

The wise men (and not 3) were technically magi. That doesn't mean Buddhist monks. It means something specific. Magi were the learned men from Babylon. They studied the science, language, and Babylonian religion. 568 years before Jesus was born there was a man named Daniel who believed in the God of the Bible. He was the top wise man in Babylon. He told them the day which the Jewish Messiah would enter Jerusalem within a couple of days. They must have been looking for some kind of sign that the Messiah was born. God gave them a sign so they came. They weren't Buddhist. They were Babylonian.
 
Those who were hung on a cross didn’t die usually for several days unless their legs were broken, which would cause suffocation. Jesus may have appeared dead but could have been clinically still living when he was taken to the tomb. Also, Joseph of Arimathea treated Jesus with aloes, which are healing herbs, not embalming.

The story of bodily ascension doesn’t appear in the original gospels. The ascension references in Mark were added 200 years later. There’s one reference in Luke but this doesn’t appear in all bibles, and no mention of ascension to heaven at all in Matthew or John.

If Jesus escaped he likely would have traveled east, away from the heart of the Roman Empire. We know that the disciple Thomas went to India and founded a Christian church there.

In Buddhist tradition, when a Lama dies the wise men consult the stars and other omens to try and find the reincarnated infant. When the child is found he’s taken from his parents and educated in the Buddhist faith.

The teachings of Jesus have no parallels in the Jewish tradition. Loving your enemies and the idea that the meek will inherit the earth are consistent with Buddhism. And Buddhist detachment does not equate to an unfeeling or uncaring nature, but rather to a disengagement with the suffering associated with things through our thoughts about them.

Stories of the Buddha include walking on water and feeding his disciples with only a small amount of food. The theory of Jesus as a Buddhist is actually very compelling, especially considering the undocumented years of his life.
 
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