Monte Hall Problem
More to come
A woman told me that she knew that she had to believe in God. Apparently when she didn't believe in God,
she became depressed. This gave her insight as to how her mind worked and convinced her that it was 'best'
to believe in God.
Matthew Alper wrote a book called The "God" Part of the Brain, which seems to support what the woman told
me.
Chapter One starts out:
Alper goes on to propose that the human tendency to believe in God is "'nature's white lie', a coping
mechanism selected into our species to help alleviate the debilitating anxiety caused by our unique
awareness of death."
Given that our brain is wired to tell us "white lies", what exercise have you done to overcome the tendency
of your mind to adopt religious-style beliefs? What books on evolutionary psychology have you read which
help you to gain views of reality that your mind is not naturally programmed to understand?
Another book called How God Changes Your Brain by Mark Robert Waldman and Andrew Newberg, MD
tells us that truth becomes irrelevant to well being: if a belief feels good and reduces stress, then by all
means maintain it, even though it is objectively false.
Investabot
Next
More to come
A woman told me that she knew that she had to believe in God. Apparently when she didn't believe in God,
she became depressed. This gave her insight as to how her mind worked and convinced her that it was 'best'
to believe in God.
Matthew Alper wrote a book called The "God" Part of the Brain, which seems to support what the woman told
me.
Chapter One starts out:
- "The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other in silence for some time; at last the Caterpillar took the
hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.
'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.
Alice replied rather shyly, 'I-I hardly know, sir, just at present--at least I knew who I was when I got up
this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'" Lewis Carroll
By the time I was twenty-one, my quest for knowledge of God had taken several unexpected turns. In
this time, I had searched the world's myriad religions only to find myself frustrated by a gamut of flaws
and inconsistencies in all their logic. I had investigated the various paranormal phenomena only to
encounter a trail of false claims and chicanery. I had experimented with the mind-altering effects of
psychedelic
drugs as well as transendental meditation, only to undergo a series of distorted sense-experiences,
none of which had brought me any closer to acquiring verifiable knowledge of any spiritual reality or
God. As a matter of fact, if anything, they had only served to draw me farther away. This was due to
the fact that while exploring the effects of LSD, I had a bad trip that led to a severe clinical depression
compounded by a dissociative, depersonalization, and anxiety disorder. For a year and a half, I
suffered this unfortunate state until, finally, with the aid of pharmachological drugs, I was restored to
my previous, relatively healthy self.
Though it may have come at a very high price, I nevertheless managed to garner some extremely
valuable information from this otherwise wretched experience, information regarding the nature of my
allegedly immortal human soul.
According to the various belief systems (religions) I had thus far encountered, the human soul was
supposed to be spiritual in nature, a fixed and permanent agent, unalterable and everlasting. Again
and again, I was told that when I died, though my physical body would perish, "I"--the sum of my
conscious experience, the essence of my thoughts and feelings, what was perceived as constituting
my soul or spirit--would persist for all eternity. The fact, however, that my conscious self had been so
drastically altered convinced met that my conscious self had been so drastically altered convinced
me that there was no fixed or eternal essence in me.
Alper goes on to propose that the human tendency to believe in God is "'nature's white lie', a coping
mechanism selected into our species to help alleviate the debilitating anxiety caused by our unique
awareness of death."
Given that our brain is wired to tell us "white lies", what exercise have you done to overcome the tendency
of your mind to adopt religious-style beliefs? What books on evolutionary psychology have you read which
help you to gain views of reality that your mind is not naturally programmed to understand?
Another book called How God Changes Your Brain by Mark Robert Waldman and Andrew Newberg, MD
tells us that truth becomes irrelevant to well being: if a belief feels good and reduces stress, then by all
means maintain it, even though it is objectively false.
Investabot
Next
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