In all sincerity, NJ, I don't understand this.
That's sincere, and anyone could hardly fault you for it.
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?
Let me phrase it this way: If you were to ask someone what love is, you'd likely receive different answers. Some say its just an emotion generated in the brain. Placing a person in an MRI, and showing them pictures of loved ones, you would notice specific parts of the brain lighting up, indicating activity.
But is that actually what love is? Is it just chemicals and synapses? Some people would say,
absolutely! But I submit that this is not what love is, its merely the physiological
response to love, not love itself.
Now, along those lines: What is this innate desire to pray to God? Is it loneliness? Is it schitzophrenia? Why is it so pervasive? Why in a really bad situation, like a life-threatening moment, do people cry out to that which, in their mind, doesn't even exist?
Where does this concept of God come from? Either people are uniquely delusional, or we misunderstand what things like God/love really is. And in an attempt to rationalize it, we look at physiological responses to explain the phenomenon.
I think any non-believer should be mystified at how and why such a
God meme can transmit via evolution, if we were to make purely naturalistic assumptions.
What Jaynes seems to forget is the fact that the concept of God has not left us. So why he refers to the ancients seems like a good place for him to foist upon us anecdotal evidence. That why no one will ever really be able to debunk his hypothesis. The hypothesis itself may be appealing to someone because it offers for them a reason why it is anything but God itself.
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.
Heh... There are two lingering questions about God that stump me. One is that since He could manifest Himself in whatever He chose, at least hypothetically, why would He have chosen not to directly manifest Himself?
My understanding of it is that it is for a grand reason -- namely, that the search for God is far more effective than direct contact. Its kind of like watching a movie. Knowing the end before you go through the progression leaves this world to a drab existence devoid of any real meaning.
Its that
aha! moment that we find the most satisfaction. Its like adversity in many ways, I have surmised. The only reason you derive any sense of pleasure or accomplishment was for the sole fact that it was not handed to you on a silver platter. The fact that you struggled, and erred, and came up short again and again, but through the trials and tribulations, you finally succeed. Its only then when the profundity is understood.
The second is why God would choose us at all. The only thing I can surmise is that if you were an all-knowing, all-capable Being, totally self-sufficient within itself, what is the one thing you could give yourself? You can make beings in your image that have the ability to love or to reject. After all, does love really exist without the possibility of hate? Do mindless automatons love you?
Beyond that, I'm stumped.
Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : Edit to add
“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious" -C.S. Lewis
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