Is bicamerality bullshit?

Now I lay me down to sleep
And pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And if I die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.Little kid: "Mommy, do you think I will die before I wake?"Mommy: "No, no, of course not, dear."Little kid: "Then why do you put ideas like that in my head, Mommy, just as I am trying to go to sleep at night?"Mommy: "Bicamerality, dear, bicamerality."”HM

No, I'm not trolling. I'm just trying to get things straight. arachno says he/she has defeated my, and Jaynes', position on bicamerality. But he/she hasn't even read the book. I'm seeing Hebrew and Greekie stuff in his/her posts, but nothing substantially useful to me to help me with my OP inquiry. I'd like to know what religion is about if it is not about bicamerality. aracno has nothing to contribute in that regard. All he/she is doing is saying over and over again that bicamertality is bullshit.Look, if religion is not about praying to God and getting holy advice from the hallucinated voice of the Lord, then what is it about? What is prayer about? What on earth is it about? Give me something else besides bicamerality to explain it by. Then I'll go away happy.”HM

What a bunch of unsubstantiated crap! I don't think you even understand the give-and-take principles of constructive debate. And I think I have been more than fair and flexible about my position on bicamerality. So instead of spitting paper wads at me give me something I can use to correct my faulty dogma. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ”John 1:1And it was a bicameral Word, indeed!”HM

In all sincerity, NJ, I don't understand this. But I do know that many people hold what you say as true. I'm asking what that means, specifically, in terms of consciousness, unconsciousness, and/or bicamerality. Is it a brain function to pray for the binding of human spirits? Doesn't prayer require something in the brain or in the mind to happen that is different from fully conscious activity? What is that thing? What is that voice? If He does, and if I am a fully conscious person, then what hasn't He spoken to me? He ought to have the power to do that. He's alleged to be pretty goddamn powerful, you know. I doubt if Jaynes was a True Believer. And I happen to like the idea that people who speak with God are crazy. It sure helps me to feel better about myself.Life would be so much easier for me if I could find communion with the human spirit, or with that of God. It would be nice to have a bicameral voice in my head to talk to, like cell-phone implant. Maybe then I wouldn't need virtual ones to talk to on my computer.”HM

NJ, good post! There's a lot there to be considered. I'm still thinking about it. Well, here's another possibility. Maybe that emotion comes from another "brain," vertically aligned with the regular one (i.e., in the stomach). Researches have called it "the second brain":

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Researchers believe this belly brain may save information on physical reactions to mental processes and give out signals to influence later decisions. It may also be responsible in the creation of reactions such as joy or sadness.

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Yes, and maybe love, too. Could that "brain" also be involved with "the human spirit" or "the holy spirit"? If so, maybe that is what I have been confusing with bicamerality.”HM

What would satisfy you, arachno? Maybe if I simply declared bicamerality bullshit and walked away. I would be a liar if I did. Because I don't know what human consciousness really is, and neither do you. And I don't know what bicamerality is, and neither do you. I don't even know where either one is located. In the head? In the nerves? In the heart? In the guts? Whaddya got to help me out? You still admit that prayer happens, but you don't know what's going on in there with it. Neither do I. I suggested bicamerality. And I would love to have an alternative to turn to in my honest reasoning. Now that is bullshit! I'm open to any good explanation that doesn't include "group-think" and "social construct" in it. Those notions don't carry any explanatory value.”HM

Good points. The same thing could be said about algebra. Where would a surgeon go inside a human body to specifically excise his learned algebra? It's not a very good question. And it's not even about souls and spirits.Maybe arachnophilia is right all about bicamerality. Maybe it is nothing more than "group think" for the sake of mass manipulation. Maybe it's an infra-biological tool. Maybe it's a preposterous fantasy. And maybe man invented God to serve his needs, not His. But if that's the case then many, many humans have not yet evolved to a state of full consciousness where such corruption is rendered inoperative. It still infests humankind in unspeakably bad ways. Is the Islamniac fully conscious when he straps a bomb around his daughter's waist for the sake Allah Akbar? When I watch those frenzied Muslims on TV running around in their sweaty nightshirts I see extreme bicamerality. Or the pope blessing the crowds in his immaculate gown; same thing. Maybe I should see "extreme peer pressure" instead, and be done with this bicamerality bullshit.”HM

Not to mention Dianetics/Scientology, Christian Science, phrenology, astrology, and Sheldrakean morphogenic fields. If all of those "sciences" are hard enough to stiffen a soft concept like the religious mind then we should know by now what moves a true believer to prayer. I don't think even true believers know what moves them to prayer. And so I suggest bicamerality and take a load of bovine wastes products over it. Well, excuuuuuse me!brennakimi, you didn't mention sociobiology. I particularly like that one because it leaves a open the possibility that bicamerality (aka religiosity) is genetic predisposed (like schizophrenia).Question; If advancing from bicamerality to consciousness is NOT an evolutionary thing then why do educated people consistently show less and less interest in a bicameral sport like religion?”HM

That's true. Buz, in Message 101 I suggested that bicamerality might be vertical rather than horizontal. What do you think of the possibility that, say, love and the religious experience could be partially rooted in the guts, which mighty close to the heart? The "the second brain" is an interesting angle on the topic. No?”HM

This is the kind of thing that must fester like a boil in the bicameral mind, causing its victim to blame good and honest people like Buz for 'damaging the cause of Christianity.' No, it is Christianity that has embarrassed Christianity. And I think you have been bicameralized so severely that you might break out any moment in acute schizophrenia.”HM

nwr, you are wrong. Check out this 1999 article in WIRED: This is your brain on God:

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I'm taking part in a vanguard experiment on the physical sources of spiritual consciousness, the current work-in-progress of Michael Persinger, a neuropsychologist at Canada's Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. His theory is that the sensation described as "having a religious experience" is merely a side effect of our bicameral brain's feverish activities.

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Did he actually say "bicameral"? You see, Jaynes and I are not the only fools who have looked at "the religious experience" this way.”HM

Sorry, brennakimi. My remark was meant as hyperbolic humor. I do value your opinion. But I really don't think Jaynes' bicamerality as totally "debunked." Please see Message 118.”HM

Arachnophilia, I have reread your arguments against bicamerality, and those of others, too, and I cannot defend Jaynes' position on the structural aspects of consciousness. My interest focuses more on two other issues that remain unresolved:1. The use of a symbolic language to put metaphors into use as a means of conceptual communication, upon which any form consciousness must find its landscape.2. The role of "the guts" in both religiosity (a subjective state of belief in a god and an afterlife) and consciousness (an objective state of knowledge about nature).Love, for example, can be experienced by a fully conscious person, and a religious one, as well. But does love have anything top do with the corpus callosum of the brain? Maybe it has more to do with "the second brain" in the lower thorax, as I suggested in Message 101. As such, maybe there is something to "vertical bicamerality"”the "heart" and the "head" of an individual are known to compete for judgment on a issue; it is even said that they "talk" to each other. How much does that play into explanations of religiousity, bicamerality, spirituality, consciousness, or whatever interprets the metaphors running around in our extant nervous systems?”HM

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The most incomprehensible thing about nature is that it is comprehensible. ”A. Einstein