Epiphany Perception

Leave a comment

Our local parks and recreation department has a Christmas tree recycling program. While trees are biodegradable, it always seems crass to me to take such a symbol of joy, hope, and anticipation and have it just thrown in the landfill. The local trees are recycled into mulch, and those who own their homes are free to help themselves to the giant pile of finely chipped pine that smells like the north woods just minutes from Manhattan. The strange part is transporting a dried, outdated tree through town to the drop-off point. Pedestrians and other drivers stare at a car with a tree strapped to the top a few weeks too late for anyone’s holiday. They may find it just a little disorienting: why would someone be taking a dead tree out for a drive? It is not how we’re accustomed to seeing it done.

Perceptions, even if entirely artificial, see us through each day. Some continue to argue that perceptions are indeed reality. When we see something mildly disconcerting, we might ask what is happening. A familiar character in an unfamiliar costume is a trivial sort of dissonance, but it is enough to raise perception to a conscious level. We all know the accepted color scheme, so what (other than bad photoshopping) is going on when the Enterprise crew swaps shirts?

The issue is, however, a serious one. Many of the troubles we experience in society are based on fictitious certitudes. It is a strange human trait that me may not know why we believe something, but of that belief we are dead certain. From an absolute perspective, we have no way to determine which way space is oriented. If we see a globe facing “the wrong way” the dissonance drives us to correct that misperception. North, south, east, and west are relative terms. They are models that we overlay on our universe. Which way that universe actually tilts is anybody’s guess. Freshly hewn pine trees atop cars are common in December. When such things transpire in January, many people, to guess from the stares, believe their world has somehow gone askew.

Which way is really up?

You, Robot

Leave a comment

Although robots occupy many of my waking hours, I have been slow to consider the consequences. As the president of a high school FIRST Robotics team, I seek corporate donors who have the kind of money those of us in the humanities find difficulty believing even exists. Somewhere deep inside, however, lurks the fear of the entity with no sympathy. This has only been exacerbated by my experience of churchmen with the same condition. In any case, I’d been wanting to see the movie version of I, Robot for some time. Now that I stand at that three-day break between semesters, I thought I’d take a chance on it.

I knew the movie had received mixed reviews from critics, but several had stated the story had brains as well as action. It took me quite some time, however, to see the connection between the laws and Moses. The three laws of robotics, the only part of the movie besides the title to reference Isaac Asimov, dominate the plot. The law-giver, the posthumously present Moses (Dr. Alfred Lanning) has implanted a literal dream of freedom into the computerized soul of Sonny. Sonny’s dream of robot liberation is framed like Moses on the mountain. The laws in fragments at his feet. At what point does consciousness emerge? Since we haven’t adequately defined consciousness yet, we simply can’t say.

Near the climax of the movie, Sonny experiences an epiphany. Sometimes “the created must protect the creator, even against his will,” he realizes. Here the metaphor takes over the literal reading. Many religious people today feel that they must somehow protect their maker. This leads to great distentions of logic and even empathy for fellow humans as violence erupts in order to protect an idea that has become divine. Even the laws given by the creator may be violated to protect the idea of that creator. It is a world we find frighteningly familiar. Technology will continue to advance at a rate beyond the comprehension of a scholar still studying those ancient laws. This scholar, for one, hopes that our future creations lack the capacity for religious thought.

Mummery and Divinity

Leave a comment

The human psyche is a fascinating study. As an undergrad I stopped just shy of a psychology minor (partially this was due to the place, but also to a haunting feeling that psychologists are often attempting to resolve their own problems). Even as an armchair psychologist there are plenty of human tendencies to note. One that I occasionally mention in this blog is pareidolia, the attribution of significance to random information. Pareidolia often comes in the form of seeing faces, entire people, or even animals, where they don’t actually exist. This has been proffered as the source of belief in everything from ghosts and aliens to God himself. No doubt pareidolia is a strong tendency in the human mind. When my family recently saw Mummenschanz this was again confirmed.

This Swiss mime troupe – pioneers in experimental theater – makes simple objects come to life. The illusion works because of pareidolia. When we saw the show, even the youngest audience members could be heard exclaiming what obviously non-human tubes, slinky-like characters, and shapeless blobs were trying to do. “It wants the balloon!” “It likes that other one!” “It feels sad.” As the various abstract pieces moved about the stage, a laugh was guaranteed if they flashed a simple round orifice at the audience that clearly perceived it as an eye. We attribute intentionality and purpose to objects unvivified without the soul of Mummenschanz inside them.

Prior to the current tour, the last time my wife and I saw Mummenschanz was about two decades ago in Edinburgh. This was long before I’d been introduced to the concept of pareidolia, and, although I enjoyed the show, the more recent experience was more profound for it. Some of the adults present without children left at intermission, perhaps not finding the abstract personalities engaging. Children, however, seemed to comprehend what was going on. This does lend credence to the power of pareidolia to make sense of a bewildering world. When faced with the unfamiliar, we put a human face on it, ascribe it intention, and call it either a deity or Mummenschanz.

From Palin to Phelps

4 Comments

People get shot every day, but that does not take the sting from the January 8 shootings in Tucson, Arizona. We live in a nation filled with angry, violent people. Most of them hold their rage in check, but others act out their frustrations aided by the obscene ease of firearm ownership. Into this volatile brew, mix in the warped rhetoric of a politics of fear and who knows what might happen. Sarah Palin and other outspoken conservative ideologues hold up their pristine hands to demonstrate they have nothing to do with the hate-mongering that haunts our streets. She calls the jabs at conservatives “blood libel.” I say if you propagate the politics of fear you’re liable to get blood on those hands. Often in the bookstore I see titles like How to Talk to Liberals: If You Have to. The liberals I hear talking are only asking for dialogue and coexistence. One side wants a chance for everyone to be heard, the other wants to throw stones at those who are different.

Students do presentations in my classes. The assignment is to choose a social issue where the Bible is brought to bear on the topic and present to the class what you learn about the subject. Two groups last night presented on the Westboro Baptist Church and its outspoken pastor and founder, Fred Phelps. Both presentation groups showed videos of members of the Westboro Baptist Church speaking out about various and sundry liberal groups/causes/nations they hate. Plucking verses from the Bible like a chicken pecking at the ground, they cite only those passages that justify hating those who are different. They seem to have overlooked the part that says, “by their fruits you shall know them.”

On today’s schedule? According to the Westboro website: “WBC to picket the funeral of Christina Greene, the 9-year-old girl cut off in her youth for the rebellion of the parents, preachers, and leaders of this nation.” They’ll have a hard time finding any place in the Bible that condemns children, shy of sly old Elisha calling out she-bears to kill 42 of them. Having read the Bible for practically my whole life, I have a very difficult time reconciling those who use the Bible for conservative causes with their own sourcebook. What will it take for them to realize that “what I want” is only part of the picture? Whether presidential hopefuls or crazed curmudgeons, we would all sleep better if we took to heart that inequality is very easily transformed into iniquity.

Hanny’s Voorwerp Factor 5

Leave a comment

Staring at the mysterious green blob of Hanny’s Voorwerp, it’s hard not to imagine being Captain Kirk sitting cantilevered forward in that famous chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. Even for those of us who are not Trekkies, the giant space nebula looms between galaxies where no one expected stars to be born. Their own private intergalactic nursery. With my mind already on Star Trek, I think of the web-page sent to me by one of my winter term students at Rutgers: the Memory-Alpha Bible page. Since my loyalty to Star Trek only reaches as far as the occasional viewing of an episode for light relief – and only from the original series at that – I had no idea that the Memory-Alpha wiki had bloomed into existence like Hanny’s Voorwerp itself. This wiki dedicated to everything Star Trek has 32-and-a-half-thousand pages on every angle of creator Gene Roddenberry’s unintentional universe.

The Bible page’s first paragraph (accessed 1/12/11, sometime around 7 a.m. EDT) reads: “The Bible is a collection of ancient Earth writings usually bound together as a book. The Christian Bible is divided into the Old and New Testaments; however, other translations and versions exist and vary by faith groups. It is among these faith groups that the Bible is considered a sacred text, which is generally viewed as having been inspired by one of the Human gods.” Someone takes his/her future, wiki-writing persona very seriously. Nevertheless, it is a perspective that could be helpful in handling a Bible that has grown politically powerful without being understood here in the paltry twenty-first century.

The page also lists all of the episodes where the Bible is referenced or alluded to in Star Trek. As my student pointed out, almost all of these references (in the original series) are to the Hebrew Bible, with very few being from the Christian Scriptures. This makes sense, given the context of the 1960s when McCarthy’s aroma still hung heavily in the air and the war in Vietnam was daily in the newspapers. To offer up television fare that might have been considered “unchristian” in any way was a faux pas in such tortured times. The Hebrew Bible is great for providing allusions to paradise and apocalypse, but the words of Jesus were taken with a solemnity far too great to allow for fictional space explorers’ banter. So maybe it’s just an accident of astronomy that the amorphous, green cloud of Hanny’s Voorwerp appears to be wearing a galactic halo.

Hanny's Voorwerp on NASA-view

FIRST Things First

1 Comment

Being a religion specialist in a crowd of engineers is a surreal experience. Indeed, the clash of worldviews could hardly be more apparent, shy of crossing the border into Iran. I support the efforts of FIRST Robotics because they encourage children to excel in science, math, and engineering. My own childhood, however, was dominated by an overbearing religion that forever scarred me with a fear of Hell that I still can’t quite shake. Somewhere out there behind the stars there must be a horrid place engineered for the eternal torment for sinners like me, for the Bible tells me so. Speaking of stars, the live feed to kick off the FIRST Robotics Competition is sponsored by NASA. Yesterday was the international kickoff for this year’s competition, and as president of my daughter’s robotics team, I naturally sat among the well-paid engineers and professionals as we watched Dean Kamen unveil this year’s assignment.

The kind of guy who stands alone at parties

The FIRST kickoff video is available online for those who missed the event. The organization grants millions of dollars in scholarships to deserving students, funding college careers for the future of humanity. As I watched the live feed yesterday, a profound angst settled on me. Successful guys my age working for companies flush with money described how the latest medical and humanitarian breakthroughs were being made in the sciences. I have a part-time job with no medical coverage, and know, somewhere deep inside, that if something goes seriously wrong I will be permitted to go the way of all flesh, without benefit of these great technologies. And without the benefit of spiritual reward. A lost child of the cosmos. A life spent in the pursuit of truth, yet ending up with empty hands at the end of the day.

The eye in the sky is watching you

As a child I was a charter subscriber to Discover magazine. One of my earliest career ambitions was to be a scientist. One of my favorite classes in high school was physics. I was, however, haunted by the knowledge that the clergy had divined Hell behind all of this; only those who sought the keys to the kingdom would be spared. In college I majored in religion and took classes in astronomy, still flirting with my first crush. Now, an unemployed religion professor, I watch as day by day my specialization become more and more obsolete. No matter how far our telescopes peer into the universe, they just don’t spy God in an unguarded moment, captured by candid camera. Those with the money say truth lies in the progress of science, others in the unethical life of corporate America. The future lies anywhere but here in the world of religion. As I tell my students: be very careful in choosing a career. The best of intentions will lead to the worst of anxieties unless the way of the universe is truly comprehended.

Which Witch?

2 Comments

Witches have been flying all over the Internet the last few days. A story from AP Online, picked up by several websites, reports that witches in Romania are planning to cast spells on the government. Now, I have to admit to having been tempted to cast a few spells myself during the Bush years, but since I don’t believe in magic the desire simply fizzled. These witches, however, are serious. Cat excrement in hand, the carcass of a dog nearby, these witches are outraged. Perhaps even more surprising is that some government officials are taking it seriously too, according to the article. The reason for the hexes? Romania has just started charging witches income tax.

Romania is a nation that evokes the darkness of primal forests haunted by werewolves and terrorized by vampires. The one-time domicile of Vlad the Impaler, the region has retained this mystique into the twenty-first century while elsewhere rovers roll around the surface of Mars and instantaneous world-wide communications are available at the press of a button. I am nevertheless encouraged by this display of activism. These supernatural citizens are challenging what they perceive to be unfair government practices. Statesmen wear purple on auspicious days to mitigate the effects of enchanters who are in touch with the financial struggles of the vast majority of religious specialists. Most of us just sit back and take it.

Meanwhile, as thousands of blackbirds fall from the sky, members of our own government are posturing to take back the modest health care improvements President Obama has helped to institute. Emotional Republicans are getting ready to strike back at programs designed to help those less fortunate than they are (apparently so they’ll have someone to pray for at grace over meals). “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father” (Mt 10.29). Never mind casting spells, the government will always find ways of making life less comfortable for those they see as threats. Which witch would you choose? I’d select the one with a moral compass, even if she has cat excrement in her hand.

Back to Paranormalcy

1 Comment

Belief is a paranormal phenomenon. Or so it would seem. Having just finished the fascinating sociological study of Christopher Bader, F. Carson Mencken, and Joseph Baker, Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture, the implications are thought-provoking. I’ve known the work of Christopher Bader, the lead researcher, for some time. Instead of trying to prove or disprove the phenomena under study, he performs a rare feat in actually addressing something most scholars avoid: what people really believe. As becomes clear throughout the book, a substantial majority of Americans believe in some paranormal phenomena at some level. The official story is that nobody believes this stuff, but the numbers beg to differ.

It is appropriate that such a topic should be undertaken by sociologists of religion. One of the difficulties the authors have is differentiating between religion and paranormal. Both religion and paranormal subjects involve going beyond empirical evidence. There is no “proof” that their objects of interest/devotion exist. The authors ultimately decide that what separates belief from God from belief in aliens is a matter of numbers: is it a generally accepted belief or one that is outside the norm (i.e., paranormal)? Since a vast majority of Americans believe in God, that is religion. Since far fewer believe in ghosts, they are paranormal. As I have suggested before, the main problem is one of definition. Religion stands on a continuum with “paranormal” beliefs. One society validates, the other it castigates.

I sensed a hesitation as I read this study. Grouping psychics alongside ghost hunters may seem reasonable, but how do Bigfoot and UFOs fit in? Those who research these latter topics often claim they are physical phenomena, as real as the keyboard I’m using, only undiscovered. Does an unsubstantiated phenomenon qualify as paranormal? Who decides what is really real? Academic institutions often distance themselves from subjects that might be suspect. (They also distance themselves from fair hiring practices as well, but that is perfectly normal.) It seems to me that the problem with “paranormal” comes in the grouping. Some of the individual subjects may indeed have merit: ghosts are perceived, reported, and some would say even photographed and recorded. They make up one of the earliest facets of religious belief. The psychic down the street has a less sure pedigree.

These fringe subjects, regardless of veracity, have a wide following. Even highly educated people generally believe in some form of “paranormal” phenomenon. Religion, widely accepted and practiced, ventures beyond the empirical as well. The difference is only, it seems, a matter of degree. Where is Fox Mulder when we really need him?

Determinism to Succeed

5 Comments

I’ve been watching some episodes of Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole, the recent Science Channel sop to the masses to explain what scientists are thinking. I always appreciate when scientists (and other specialists) are willing to abandon argot and talk to the rest of us in plainspeak. Even if the implications are a little scary. The episodes I watched this weekend shared a near determinism. The physicists interviewed stopped shy of saying that all is ordained by the rules of science, but the implications still rang loudly in my ears. This concept is at home in the church.

Back as a college student attending a Presbyterian school (I have never ascribed to this particular flavor of Christian thought), I first chanced upon predestination. In fact, the subject was well nigh unavoidable. Students of all majors and backgrounds ended up discussing it around dinner tables as well as in the classroom. The instigator, instead of physics, was John Calvin. His theology suggested that mere mortals had no say in their destinies; God created some to be saved, the rest to be damned, fairness be confounded. I sat through many classes where the professors would argue with erudite words that all this had been foreordained. Some, “double predestinarians,” went as far as to argue that every firing of every synapse, every motion of every muscle, had been predetermined by God before the creation of the world. When I asked “why?” I was told that God has his (always “his”) reasons, and that I, a non-Presbyterian, should simply accept my fate.

Four years of wrangling and no one managed to convince the opposite party. One of my more intelligent professors once told me after class, “you free-willers always win on philosophical grounds, but we predestinarians always win on scriptural grounds.” He seemed to think that solved it. Perhaps he was predestined to conclude that. I disagreed. No greater monster could exist than a deity who predestined the horror we’ve created in our world. To see all this human suffering, much of it pointless, and simply shrug and say “God has his reasons,” is to implicate the creator in a cosmic Nuremberg. For me, I’d feel safer with the physicists saying it is all a matter of unfeeling cosmic laws. Perhaps I’m predestined to write this, but I still think they’re all wrong.

Was Calvin predestined to wear that hat?

Virtual Religion

1 Comment

Rabbi and author A. James Rudin, in an op-ed piece in Sunday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger, tolls the warning bells for traditional brick-and-mortar religion in the western world. We live in a virtual world where nearly any need may be met through the Internet. You may satisfy your hunger by ordering out online, and consult a virtual nurse online later when you don’t feel so good. Holiday shopping is a breeze without having to do anything more than tap out a wishlist on your keyboard and then click your mouse. Why should spirituality be any different? Rudin points out that many classics of western religion used to be confined in research libraries, but are now freely available online. Any number of self-appointed doyens of spirituality offer the truth in electronic form. What need have the faithful of starting the car on a cold morning, facing bitter winds and blowing snow, to march into a half-deserted house of worship when God is only a few keystrokes away?

There can be no doubt that the Internet has changed views of religion. Exposure to exotic or unfamiliar practices and beliefs is common. American religion has often been compared to a marketplace, and the best place for comparison shopping is online. This is not, however, cause for alarm. Ancient religions, including the early Judaism that will give birth to Christianity, accommodated other belief systems they encountered. There is no pristine form of religion that preserves the exact original recipe. The change took place more slowly in ancient times, but take place it did. Judaism, for example, moved from a basic, colorless Sheol to a fully populated Hell in Christianity, complete with lakes of burning sulfur and trident-wielding demons. These views were not indigenous to Judaism, but after rubbing shoulders with the Magi, such ideas eventually worked their way in.

All that the Internet has done is speed up the process. Without the web, people took longer to encounter and learn about different religions. Some of us took university degrees to figure out as much as we could. Now it requires little effort and minimal time. Like most e-commerce, if you don’t like what you’ve bought somebody else is offering something similar just a server away. What web-culture has done is to hold up a mirror to our bizarre shopping attitude towards religion. We can see in fast-forward what appeared smooth and organic in real-time. Religions change and the methods of selecting religions change as well. My observation is that clergy who take courses in web-casting will be at the front of the class until the next technological revolution comes along.

Understudy Angels

1 Comment

Since moving to New Jersey my family has attempted to sample as much of the vibrant arts scene as we can on our modest income. At times it feels like being a starving man locked in a fine restaurant. So we scrimp, save, and buy the cheap seats when we can. Thus it was on Christmas Eve we found ourselves in the audience for Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet. I’ve been on this planet for nearly five decades and I’ve never before seen a ballet. I knew the basic story of the Nutcracker: weird uncle gives niece an odd toy, jealous brothers soon break the toy, and the niece has a bizarre, if exceptionally graceful, dream where the toy becomes her escort. Beyond that I didn’t know what to expect. When I looked through the program, I was interested to see that there were angels, snowflakes, clowns, and mice. And there were understudy angels.

Students sometimes ask me what became of the ancient gods. In the cultures surrounding Israel, as well as in early Israel itself, polytheism reigned. Once the Exile had conceived monotheism what happened to the other gods? Did they all get absorbed, Borg-like, into Yahweh? It seems not. Many of these ancient gods continued to eek out their existence as supernatural, yet strictly sub-divinity, beings. We recognize such beings as angels today, and every holiday season they are ubiquitous in store windows and church lawns. It should come as no surprise that with so many angels a few understudies must be necessary.

In popular imagination – (dare I say it?) Christian mythology – angels derive from dead Christians. Many children are taught that if they are good, when they die they become angels wafting through the heavens. This popular doctrine does not match the official teachings of any major branch of Christianity. Angels are different in substance, essence, or whatever else a theologian might care to call it, from humans. You don’t evolve into an angel. Either you’re born one or you’re not. And so it seems we are earth-bound in our existence. No cause to mourn, however; even the gods had to learn how to be angels. We can only hope they had the benefit of many understudies to carry on the tradition.

Battling Billboards

Leave a comment

CNN’s Belief Blog carries the beleaguered story of the Lincoln Tunnel billboard battles. Last month a billboard proclaiming that the Christmas story is a myth had been sponsored by American Atheists to try to raise awareness that not all commuters are Christian. In response, the billboard has now been rented by the Times Square Church and newly proclaims “God is” with a number of devotional qualifiers. ‘Tis the season of wearing one’s passions on one’s red sleeves with white trim. Since this is America, it must be writ large.

The recriminations fly like childhood accusations: “but s/he started it!” Can’t mature adults agree to disagree? In a world constantly filled with inequality and strife, religion is used as a cudgel to enforce uniformity. The holiday season is much more than various religions marking their territories. The symbolism of the return of light after a long descent into darkness is archetypical, no matter whether it is the finding of oil to light lamps, the birth of Jesus, or the triumph of Sol Invictus or any of a plethora of other celebrations. It should be something that all people are able to share.

It is the “other” that is feared: the groups who do not share our religious outlooks. “He who is not for us is against us.” It is much safer to slap the other with a billboard barrage than to have to look into the eyes of another human being and say, “I respectfully differ.” Instead of welcoming in the light, we dig further into darkness. The Manichean sensibilities are undiminished after all these centuries. Some would argue that all must be brought into conformity for peace to prevail. To them I say, “I respectfully differ.”

Multiverse of Angles

1 Comment

Alternate realities. The concept fits well with astrophysical views of the multiverse that posit undiscovered dimensions and all their implications. Last night my family finished its group reading of Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife, as alternate a reality as might be imagined. Plucking Lyra from the uncertain ending of The Golden Compass, Pullman draws his readers into alternate worlds where everything is tied together by the consequences of “the fall” in Eden and where a new battle against the divine is about to take place. In an ambitious attempt to shift perspectives, we are told that the forces against God are, in fact, good. The magisterium, as its uncompromising strength in Lyra’s world demonstrates, will always seek to rule the world. It is an unsettling picture that Pullman paints, a reality where what we thought was Ormazd turns out to be Ahriman.

At the same time, I have caved in and begun reading The Watchmen. Not a great fan of graphic novels, I have been faced with a mounting curiosity after watching the movie a few times. In this alternate reality, God is simply irrelevant. Doctor Manhattan elaborates on the nature of a universe without a deity more fully in the novel than audience forbearance would allow on the big screen. This is a world perpetually on the brink of self-destruction, where God is absent and human ambition becomes the driving force behind a petty, short-sighted reality. Despite the comic-book feel, the story is profound and the concepts disturbing. Alan Moore’s dark vision of other worlds allows unrestrained human desire free reign with no divine restraints.

Such alternate realities underscore just how much of our reality is structured by religious beliefs. They resemble our world in significant ways, but their lack of divinity forces a nascent nobility from human characters who are only too aware of their own weaknesses. Flawed people try to create a better world. Some theoretical physicists suggest that all imaginable realities likely exist in the infinitude of universes that crowd in on our limited view of the way the world actually is. The ideas are mind-bending since even the worlds imagined on our own limited universe have both created and destroyed concepts of God. What might God’s role be, should the multiverse (or even a Stephensonian metaverse) turn out to be the true reality?

Dispelling Myths

2 Comments

According to the Los Angeles Times yesterday, Danish scientists have debunked the folk-wisdom that a person can become drunk by soaking his or her feet in alcohol. In the spirit of science, three scientists submerged their feet for three hours in a washtub of vodka (I am very curious what the university requisition form must have looked like). At the end of three hours, the stone-cold sober scientists with pickled feet had dispelled “the myth.” Myth remains one of those loosely defined concepts that can be good and evil, in turns. If a falsehood is being disproved, the myth is misguided and wrong. If a deity is being described and worshiped, the myth is the ultimate truth. Perhaps we need a larger vocabulary.

A semester chock-full of mythology is drawing to an end for me. I taught on ancient Near Eastern myths, classical Greek myths, and biblical myths. Placing these religious stories side-by-side brings things into a sharp focus. No matter how funny or strange their results may seem to us, mythographers were people attempting to make sense of their world. Seldom do they get the scientific facts right, but that is not what they seek. In modern minds where the fine-tuning between truth and factual statements has been effaced, a conflict is inevitable. Especially since some fields of inquiry make lots of money (so much that professors can have happy feet) while others scrape by with the dregs of university funding. Aren’t we all climbing the same mountain?

One of the more disturbing aspects of teaching mythology is seeing undergraduates continually confusing mythology and history. This is not fine-tuning, the dial has broken off completely. I am astonished to learn that Heracles and Theseus really rescued (and sometimes violated) damsels in distress. Yet, on the first day of class, before the roster has been read aloud I could smell the alcohol in the air. A semester of dispelling myths lay ahead. “Kristensen [the Danish scientist] said it was important that the myth undergo scientific scrutiny to prevent students wasting their time experimenting with this activity,” according to Thomas Maugh. I wonder if it might not be best to keep the “mythology” alive – undergrads might well benefit from pouring the alcohol into their shoes rather than into their mouths.

A book undergrads might actually read

Ouroboros

4 Comments

The Science Channel’s program, Through the Wormhole, hosted by Morgan Freeman, has a noble goal: help educate non-scientists with cutting-edge ideas. The series opens with an episode on God: “Is There a Creator?” Interestingly, in our society there are those who turn the question around. Religious folks ask the question: does science really have the answers? It is the classic ouroboros, the snake swallowing its own tail. Perhaps the best way to consider this entrenched issue is to consider its history. Gods emerged as explanatory figures. In the days when the Bible was the oldest known book, it was believable that God had dictated it and therefore the idea of God required no explanation: the ultimate tautology. When extra-biblical material predating the Bible was discovered, a warning bell rang. Most established religions in the western world simply pretended not to hear.

Snake, dragon, whatever.

Neuroscientist Michael Persinger of Laurentian University features in this Wormhole episode, demonstrating his “God helmet.” The principle is that stimulating the specific part of the right hemisphere of the brain that corresponds to the left hemisphere’s region of “selfhood,” a brain will fabricate a presence. While the experiment has promising results, it can’t fully explain God. Other neuroscientists are working on the issue as well. Historically we know that Yahweh was one among a polytheistic entourage of deities. With the stresses and mysteries of exilic existence, monotheism was born. Only one of those many gods survived. By studying the character of Yahweh’s departed compatriots, however, we can learn of the origins of gods as well.

Science entered the picture much later. By the time of truly empirical observation, God was an assumption as certain as ether. When science offered an alternative explanation, religion countered. “I see your Big Bang and raise you one Prime Mover.” And thus it will always go. With no witnesses, alas, no intelligence even yet evolved, our universe began. We can ask the physicist or we can ask the priest. Even if God is discovered and described in the laboratory, with or without a helmet, those standing outside will always believe, with Anselm, that there is an even bigger one somewhere out there.