The Quest

The Quest
The question of whether there is a personal interventionist God. One who listens to and answers prayers, is, to me, clearly answered in the negative. I can't recall a time when I ever believed despite praying with my mother as a young child. Born again atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens stand out as they have the zeal of revelation or anger at having been duped. A lifelong atheist like myself would consider writing a book on the God delusion as a waste of time. There are bigger questions.
How the universe came about, why are we here? Etc are as beyond the reach of contemporary science as they are beyond religion. A commitment to reason and a degree of condescension to the idea of faith and the supernatural are, to me, a moral good. Clearly being reasonable, positioning reason above superstition, is a moral good. Being closed to reason and the better argument is a character flaw however virtually no one, on any subject, from politics, philosophy to religion, is sufficiently secure in their self to accept the better argument over their own. This is true of scientists as much as the religious however much they may claim otherwise. It is human to decide upon a theory and find evidence to support it whilst dismissing evidence against. This is common to the working of all human minds bar the very select. Faith in a people's God given right is the basis of territorial wars such as the Zionist versus Palestinian conflict. It isn't of much use to say land is yours because a god others don't believe in gave it to you. Such debates ought to take place under secular agreement.
More interesting questions are; is consciousness an emergent property of the brain? This seems all but proven by the effects drugs, brain damage and Alzheimer's have on us. Yet we are no where close to understanding how matter can think never mind David Chalmers big question of consciousness. For most of the twentieth century neuroscience touched only on cognition and computation. Emotions were deemed far too slippery to try understand. More recently we are finding neurochemistry with correlates to love, joy, anger etc. There will no doubt develop a biology of emotion.
What interests me now is the first hand mystical experience and what it means. Sometimes referred to as pure consciousness and if the two are the same. These states exist as evidently as does love. Just as falling in love has a biological neural correlate, so, in all likelihood does the mystical experience. But neurobiology has little to offer in the understanding of love. This is the job of poets, artists, musicians. Science has its limits. But why do they occur? What is their purpose? Why do some never experience them despite, in some cases, devoting their lives in their pursuit. And why can they occur out of the blue to an ardent atheist, a scientist, a Christian, a Moslem, an agnostic, a dentist or a bricklayer who seeks them not in the least? Why are the features that are common to the mystical experience usually similar? One can argue love has an evolutionary purpose in reproduction and protection of family and tribe. But the mystical, the highest human experience that most never enjoy, what evolutionary purpose can that be said to have?



Sent from my iPad