About ten years ago I wrote an award-winning essay for the Maryland Mensa journal, M-ANATION entitled ‘The Paradox of the Intelligent Believer’. The essay sought to get at the root of why intelligent people buy into supernatural nonsense, especially a belief in God when no quality independent evidence supports it. At the time my conclusion was more or less open-ended because many aspects of neurological advance were yet in their infancy. The most that could be done was to trace supernatural ideations to the temporal lobes, based on the research of Michael Persinger at Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
Today, we’re on much firmer ground and in a better position to account for such intellectual anomalies as Dr. Jason Lisle – an astrophysicist who received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado-Boulder – but who stands firm that “The Bible is the history book of the universe. It tells us how the universe began and how it came to be the way it is today.” Which, of course, is utter irrelevant nonsense, since first – the Bible is not a book of cosmology or even science (shown with numerous examples in previous blogs) and second, referring to “the Bible” (generic) is disingenuous since there are multiple versions with differing texts. So which? The King James? The Revised Standard? The New Revised Version? The Gilead version?
So how can one account for Lisle’s ridiculous beliefs, which he apparently seems to be able to easily separate from his work (which otherwise would never be published at all).
Let’s begin by realizing, as first pointed out by Dr. Richard Ornstein in his book, The Evolution of Consciousness (1991), that nothing, no perceived aspect of reality, enters consciousness whole. Everything is first processed, and it was Ornstein who first noted the unusual 1-second delay between a perception and its recognition in the brain. During that one second the brain’s neurons in specific regions had effectively re-constructed that direct perception into a secondary apperception.
If a perception is complex, say an event unfolding over seconds or minutes, then differing brain regions (Ornstein refers to “neuronal assemblies”) each do their work in assembling the processing bit by bit, piece by piece into an approximate construct resembling it. At the end of the processing the human brain has some rough construct [C] which is derived from an original event [E] : {a, b, c, d, e} where the bracketed set denotes component subsets with likely differing time intervals t1, t2, t3, t4, and t5.
Thus, the brain processing on outer events is always via the template:
[E] -> [C]
And [C] => {a(t1 +t), b(t2 + t), c(t3 + t), d(t4 + t), e(t5 + t)}
Where t = 1 sec, the consciousness ‘delay’ interval
The processing is never: [E]-> [E]
The conclusion here is that the whole constellation of objects, events perceived must be assembled piece by piece by the brain, from an architecture embedded in its synapses, neural pathways and neuronal assemblies. The dynamic process of this assembly is what we refer to as “mind” to distinguish it from the physical brain. Thus, brain is the physical substrate, and “mind” the dynamic process of assembly towards recognition, cognition and interpretation.
As depicted in the earlier [E] -> [C], this means that all our experiences are second hand only, not direct. It is this disconnect that raises profound questions and issues concerning whether a human brain can know anything directly. By the same token, “God” then can not exist as a concept or as a reality other than in connection with the mind, or the brain’s processing activity. To believe otherwise, i.e. that one can “know God directly” is to assert a one to one direct knowing which as we saw is impossible.
Now, newer research reinforces this. Brain activation studies using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), PET (positron emission tomography) and SPECT (single photon emission tomography) all show a detailed picture of specific functions of the brain which conform to the preceding view. Neuroscience researchers can now determine which brain regions are activated by motor behavior, which by the five senses and which by certain emotions – say stimulated by having a subject observe a particular image. More amazing, neuroscientists can actually see disparate brain regions turn on and off as differing emotions flare, or differing thoughts occur, or one changes from doing a simple subtraction say, to differentiating a complex function.
The startling conclusion is that everything we interpret as being real, every experience – can be associated with a specific brain region. This obviously includes religious, spiritual or mystical experiences too. Thus, if God does in fact exist, the only place he can manifest that existence is within specific pathways, synapses or neuronal assemblies of the brain. But which?
The most recent work based on SPECT –scans appears to zero in on the region designated “OAA” – the orientation association area. Much of this work has been done by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and his asosciate Eugene Daquill M.D.. Their main findings are published in their book, ‘Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief’.
As the authors note: (p. 5)
“In normal circumstance, the OAA helps create a distinct, accurate sense of our physical orientation to the world. To do its job well….depends on a constant stream of nerve impulses from each of the body’s senses. The OAA sorts and processes these impulses virtually simultaneously during every moment of our lives”
So, in other words, without the benefit of the OAA brain region, we’d be essentially discombobulated vegetables, unable to even get out of bed in the morning. We wouldn’t know which end is up or down, or right from left, and certainly wouldn’t be able to find our way out of a room, far less walk through a downtown of any major city.
The authors’ investigation of how the brain’s OAA translates an image into a religious reality is described in detail in their book, on pages 121-22. This is in connection with a person given an image of Christ and asked to focus on it. Within minutes, neurological measurements show electrical discharges spiraling down from the right attention area (right OAA) to the limbic system and hypothalamus “triggering the arousal section of the structure”.
Now, we know the hypothalamus has both arousal and quiescent components. The authors’ test results and measurements actually showed that as the subject focused on the image of Christ BOTH were activated. As assorted cortical thresholds were crossed, a maximal stimulation (given by spikes in the SPECT scans) produced a neural “flood” that generated feedback to the attention association area.
To make a long story short, the attention area of the OAA was seen to begin to deprive the right orientation area of the OAA of all neural input not originating with the contemplation of Jesus. In order to compensate, and thereby preserve the neuro-spatial matrix (in which the self could still exist) the right orientation area had to default to the attention area focusing on “Jesus”. As the authors put it (p. 121):
“ It has no choice but to create a spatial matrix out of nothing but the attention area’s single-minded contemplation of Jesus”
They go on to note that as the process of cortical threshold "re-emphasis" continues, all irrelevant neural inputs are stripped away until the only reality left is Jesus. That reality (actually a pseudo-reality confected by the right attention area) thereby takes over the entire mind. Or, in the words of the authors, “it is perceived by the mind as the whole depth and breadth of reality.”
This is a profound insight, and fully explains why it is essentially impossible to wean believers away from their objects of worship or devotion based on logic and reason alone.
What has happened, in other words, is the subject’s whole existence and identity has become bound up with the focus of his OAA, or more specifically – the right attention area’s focus which channels nearly all neural inputs to that region.
In the mind of the professed believer, say focused on Jesus as his “Savior”, there is no possibility at all, NONE, of leaving that focus behind because his OAA brain areas are now exclusively dependent on it for him to survive. Take them away – say by removing surgically the right attention areas of the OAA- and this person will die. He’ll either commit suicide, unable to ground himself in any continuous or recognizable reality, or he will go mad.
What of someone like Jason Lisle, who can seemingly absorb all the rationalist –reductionist arcania contingent on qualifying for a Ph.D. in astrophysics, yet profess to accept biblical explanations of creation? This is not hard to explain based on the OAA observations.
What has happened to Lisle (and likely other individuals with advanced scientific backgrounds who became ardent believers or God-defenders) is that the right orientation areas of their OAA regions have been “hijacked” by the irrational focus of the activation association areas. Because so much neural energy is diverted to the latter (from the former) then the only choice is for the brain to modulate the imbalance.
In the case of the Jesus image example, in order to compensate and thereby sustain the neuro-spatial matrix (in which the self could still exist) the right orientation area had to default to the attention area focusing on “Jesus”. In the case of a putatively practicing scientist, the right orientation area has to default to the attention area focusing on that matrix of beliefs that consumes the most neural input.
If nearly all a believer’s time and energy is spent on professing biblical “truths” or “salvation” then the bulk of neural energy will flow to stimulate the activation area of the OAA, and the orientation area has no choice but to follow on. If the preponderance of analytical or reductionist-naturalist matrix is in the orientation area, it will lose the battle of dominance to the activation area and its belief matrix. In other words, the self attached to the beliefs will always countermand and triumph over the self attached to the less stimulative naturalist mindset.
In this way, a person such as Jason Lisle can exist and not even be aware its brain is compromised into a kind of hostage situation, or an internal “Stockholm syndrome” if you will. It can’t afford to release its native doubts or naturalist aspect since that directly threatens the self. (Incidentally, contrary to a certain retarded pastor's delusions, I harbor no "jealousy" at all for Lisle! I do feel sorry for him that he felt the need to trade his credentials for a dubious "fame" (in fundie circles) by exchanging whatever quality scientific work he did eons ago for bunkum and codswallop. In the end, we can debate the merits or otherwise of "real books" ad infinitum but two of mine have been on Christopher Hitchens' list of top 10 atheist books for the past year. Lisle's work on solar granules (years ago), while impressive, doesn't qualify him as a person of gravitas NOW - when he harbors totally irrational beliefs- like a 6,000 -yr. old cosmos which he can't even back up by publication in professional journals. Indeed, his perception by the rest of the solar physics community (having attended a conference last year in Boulder) is much the same as Linus Pauling's after he began promoting his theory of "megadose Vitamin C". A CRANK! One can have a dozen Ph.D.'s but they don't amount to diddly once one veers into crank-hood because from then on one will always be a CRANK no matter what other work he did!)
Anyway, what is more interesting about the whole OAA dynamic is that it actually has a much broader, more generic basis than mere narrow beliefs. Indeed, the authors were able to replicate states in which the activation area generated a stable state of “absolute unitary being” in which “subjective observations were impossible on the one hand, and no subjective self existed to make them on the other”.
In other words, states were replicated that embodied what one encounters in transcendental meditation. Since the "God" one apprehends in meditation is essentially impersonal (albeit transcendent) then this implies the OAA contrives to form one singular type of absolute state that is applicable to all interpretations of God.
This what the authors of ‘Why God Won’t Go Away’ call the state of ‘Absolute Unitary Being’. In their parlance, it is exactly THIS state which is the closest one will come to “God”. As the authors note (p. 123):
“If the brain were not assembled as it is, we would not be able to experience a higher spiritual reality even if it did exist”
Is there an actual "Absolute Unitary Being" that is manifested by the OAA in the (brain) state of absolute unitary being? Can it be called God? We explore that next!
Today, we’re on much firmer ground and in a better position to account for such intellectual anomalies as Dr. Jason Lisle – an astrophysicist who received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado-Boulder – but who stands firm that “The Bible is the history book of the universe. It tells us how the universe began and how it came to be the way it is today.” Which, of course, is utter irrelevant nonsense, since first – the Bible is not a book of cosmology or even science (shown with numerous examples in previous blogs) and second, referring to “the Bible” (generic) is disingenuous since there are multiple versions with differing texts. So which? The King James? The Revised Standard? The New Revised Version? The Gilead version?
So how can one account for Lisle’s ridiculous beliefs, which he apparently seems to be able to easily separate from his work (which otherwise would never be published at all).
Let’s begin by realizing, as first pointed out by Dr. Richard Ornstein in his book, The Evolution of Consciousness (1991), that nothing, no perceived aspect of reality, enters consciousness whole. Everything is first processed, and it was Ornstein who first noted the unusual 1-second delay between a perception and its recognition in the brain. During that one second the brain’s neurons in specific regions had effectively re-constructed that direct perception into a secondary apperception.
If a perception is complex, say an event unfolding over seconds or minutes, then differing brain regions (Ornstein refers to “neuronal assemblies”) each do their work in assembling the processing bit by bit, piece by piece into an approximate construct resembling it. At the end of the processing the human brain has some rough construct [C] which is derived from an original event [E] : {a, b, c, d, e} where the bracketed set denotes component subsets with likely differing time intervals t1, t2, t3, t4, and t5.
Thus, the brain processing on outer events is always via the template:
[E] -> [C]
And [C] => {a(t1 +t), b(t2 + t), c(t3 + t), d(t4 + t), e(t5 + t)}
Where t = 1 sec, the consciousness ‘delay’ interval
The processing is never: [E]-> [E]
The conclusion here is that the whole constellation of objects, events perceived must be assembled piece by piece by the brain, from an architecture embedded in its synapses, neural pathways and neuronal assemblies. The dynamic process of this assembly is what we refer to as “mind” to distinguish it from the physical brain. Thus, brain is the physical substrate, and “mind” the dynamic process of assembly towards recognition, cognition and interpretation.
As depicted in the earlier [E] -> [C], this means that all our experiences are second hand only, not direct. It is this disconnect that raises profound questions and issues concerning whether a human brain can know anything directly. By the same token, “God” then can not exist as a concept or as a reality other than in connection with the mind, or the brain’s processing activity. To believe otherwise, i.e. that one can “know God directly” is to assert a one to one direct knowing which as we saw is impossible.
Now, newer research reinforces this. Brain activation studies using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), PET (positron emission tomography) and SPECT (single photon emission tomography) all show a detailed picture of specific functions of the brain which conform to the preceding view. Neuroscience researchers can now determine which brain regions are activated by motor behavior, which by the five senses and which by certain emotions – say stimulated by having a subject observe a particular image. More amazing, neuroscientists can actually see disparate brain regions turn on and off as differing emotions flare, or differing thoughts occur, or one changes from doing a simple subtraction say, to differentiating a complex function.
The startling conclusion is that everything we interpret as being real, every experience – can be associated with a specific brain region. This obviously includes religious, spiritual or mystical experiences too. Thus, if God does in fact exist, the only place he can manifest that existence is within specific pathways, synapses or neuronal assemblies of the brain. But which?
The most recent work based on SPECT –scans appears to zero in on the region designated “OAA” – the orientation association area. Much of this work has been done by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and his asosciate Eugene Daquill M.D.. Their main findings are published in their book, ‘Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief’.
As the authors note: (p. 5)
“In normal circumstance, the OAA helps create a distinct, accurate sense of our physical orientation to the world. To do its job well….depends on a constant stream of nerve impulses from each of the body’s senses. The OAA sorts and processes these impulses virtually simultaneously during every moment of our lives”
So, in other words, without the benefit of the OAA brain region, we’d be essentially discombobulated vegetables, unable to even get out of bed in the morning. We wouldn’t know which end is up or down, or right from left, and certainly wouldn’t be able to find our way out of a room, far less walk through a downtown of any major city.
The authors’ investigation of how the brain’s OAA translates an image into a religious reality is described in detail in their book, on pages 121-22. This is in connection with a person given an image of Christ and asked to focus on it. Within minutes, neurological measurements show electrical discharges spiraling down from the right attention area (right OAA) to the limbic system and hypothalamus “triggering the arousal section of the structure”.
Now, we know the hypothalamus has both arousal and quiescent components. The authors’ test results and measurements actually showed that as the subject focused on the image of Christ BOTH were activated. As assorted cortical thresholds were crossed, a maximal stimulation (given by spikes in the SPECT scans) produced a neural “flood” that generated feedback to the attention association area.
To make a long story short, the attention area of the OAA was seen to begin to deprive the right orientation area of the OAA of all neural input not originating with the contemplation of Jesus. In order to compensate, and thereby preserve the neuro-spatial matrix (in which the self could still exist) the right orientation area had to default to the attention area focusing on “Jesus”. As the authors put it (p. 121):
“ It has no choice but to create a spatial matrix out of nothing but the attention area’s single-minded contemplation of Jesus”
They go on to note that as the process of cortical threshold "re-emphasis" continues, all irrelevant neural inputs are stripped away until the only reality left is Jesus. That reality (actually a pseudo-reality confected by the right attention area) thereby takes over the entire mind. Or, in the words of the authors, “it is perceived by the mind as the whole depth and breadth of reality.”
This is a profound insight, and fully explains why it is essentially impossible to wean believers away from their objects of worship or devotion based on logic and reason alone.
What has happened, in other words, is the subject’s whole existence and identity has become bound up with the focus of his OAA, or more specifically – the right attention area’s focus which channels nearly all neural inputs to that region.
In the mind of the professed believer, say focused on Jesus as his “Savior”, there is no possibility at all, NONE, of leaving that focus behind because his OAA brain areas are now exclusively dependent on it for him to survive. Take them away – say by removing surgically the right attention areas of the OAA- and this person will die. He’ll either commit suicide, unable to ground himself in any continuous or recognizable reality, or he will go mad.
What of someone like Jason Lisle, who can seemingly absorb all the rationalist –reductionist arcania contingent on qualifying for a Ph.D. in astrophysics, yet profess to accept biblical explanations of creation? This is not hard to explain based on the OAA observations.
What has happened to Lisle (and likely other individuals with advanced scientific backgrounds who became ardent believers or God-defenders) is that the right orientation areas of their OAA regions have been “hijacked” by the irrational focus of the activation association areas. Because so much neural energy is diverted to the latter (from the former) then the only choice is for the brain to modulate the imbalance.
In the case of the Jesus image example, in order to compensate and thereby sustain the neuro-spatial matrix (in which the self could still exist) the right orientation area had to default to the attention area focusing on “Jesus”. In the case of a putatively practicing scientist, the right orientation area has to default to the attention area focusing on that matrix of beliefs that consumes the most neural input.
If nearly all a believer’s time and energy is spent on professing biblical “truths” or “salvation” then the bulk of neural energy will flow to stimulate the activation area of the OAA, and the orientation area has no choice but to follow on. If the preponderance of analytical or reductionist-naturalist matrix is in the orientation area, it will lose the battle of dominance to the activation area and its belief matrix. In other words, the self attached to the beliefs will always countermand and triumph over the self attached to the less stimulative naturalist mindset.
In this way, a person such as Jason Lisle can exist and not even be aware its brain is compromised into a kind of hostage situation, or an internal “Stockholm syndrome” if you will. It can’t afford to release its native doubts or naturalist aspect since that directly threatens the self. (Incidentally, contrary to a certain retarded pastor's delusions, I harbor no "jealousy" at all for Lisle! I do feel sorry for him that he felt the need to trade his credentials for a dubious "fame" (in fundie circles) by exchanging whatever quality scientific work he did eons ago for bunkum and codswallop. In the end, we can debate the merits or otherwise of "real books" ad infinitum but two of mine have been on Christopher Hitchens' list of top 10 atheist books for the past year. Lisle's work on solar granules (years ago), while impressive, doesn't qualify him as a person of gravitas NOW - when he harbors totally irrational beliefs- like a 6,000 -yr. old cosmos which he can't even back up by publication in professional journals. Indeed, his perception by the rest of the solar physics community (having attended a conference last year in Boulder) is much the same as Linus Pauling's after he began promoting his theory of "megadose Vitamin C". A CRANK! One can have a dozen Ph.D.'s but they don't amount to diddly once one veers into crank-hood because from then on one will always be a CRANK no matter what other work he did!)
Anyway, what is more interesting about the whole OAA dynamic is that it actually has a much broader, more generic basis than mere narrow beliefs. Indeed, the authors were able to replicate states in which the activation area generated a stable state of “absolute unitary being” in which “subjective observations were impossible on the one hand, and no subjective self existed to make them on the other”.
In other words, states were replicated that embodied what one encounters in transcendental meditation. Since the "God" one apprehends in meditation is essentially impersonal (albeit transcendent) then this implies the OAA contrives to form one singular type of absolute state that is applicable to all interpretations of God.
This what the authors of ‘Why God Won’t Go Away’ call the state of ‘Absolute Unitary Being’. In their parlance, it is exactly THIS state which is the closest one will come to “God”. As the authors note (p. 123):
“If the brain were not assembled as it is, we would not be able to experience a higher spiritual reality even if it did exist”
Is there an actual "Absolute Unitary Being" that is manifested by the OAA in the (brain) state of absolute unitary being? Can it be called God? We explore that next!
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