h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Does anybody else have confusion over left and right, and is it just those with autism? As a personal observation I have noticed that I can point left but say turn right my wife, when giving her travel directions. This seems to indicate the visual part of the mind knows the truth and indicates it but the verbal part lies / gets confused / has data processing difficulties

Ah! This may be more about the two separate and autonomous(?) hemispheres of the human brain.

This video will figuratively blow your mind. It definitely blew mine (or at least the left hemisphere with the speech controls).

http://youtu.be/wfYbgdo8e-8

I don't know if anyone wants to know this, but "The origins of consciousness" by Julian Jaynes offers the theory that until about 3,000 or 4,000 years ago, the Homo Sapiens of that time heard voices in their heads, which they believed to be the voice of God. The voices emanated from the left brain. If you look at the date of the book (1976), you see that this theory was offered quite a while ago. The recent book "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari [2015] takes some of Jaynes's material as a given, so maybe substantiating evidence came up between then and now? Or they may both be wrong?

Anyway, this is a bit off topic, though it relates to the speech centers being in the left brain.

Anyway, Hoovooloo is a fan of the jaynes book. This may matter to some researchers, or not.

Just sayin'.

Sorry if I've meandered.

"The voices emanated from the left brain."

How does he know that? Because that is where the speech centre is?

"Hoovooloo is a fan of the jaynes book."

Is that your conclusion or did Hoovooloo mention it?

Or am I confusing Hoovooloo with Nighthoover who never posted anything?

So many questions.

Hoovooloo definitely mentioned it. There is no doubt about that.

I took the trouble to read it, so as to understand where he was getting his ideas. I guess that, if Jaynes is at all close to the truth, the idea of there being a God is shot out of the water.

Must look into Jaynes.

Your conclusion is also one I reached when i came across T H Huxley's Essays at school. At least, I thought, everything about religion has to be rewritten.

And probably not by people who think like the ones who wrote the Bible.

Who wrote the bible? That's a fascinating question that has been very well answered for the Old Testament by Richard Friedman, in a book called (unsurprisingly) "Who Wrote the Bible?"

As for the New Testament, it has many telltale signs of having been assembled by Romans, who eventually morphed their dying empire into a very powerful church.

Lots of the bible is terrific, particularly Job, which is really the only book that discusses what God might be like and how such a being might interact with humans. Funnily enough it concludes that it is the height of ignorance and insolence to attempt any such discussion.

Other bits are horrendous, particularly the book of Revelation, which is only rivalled by The Book of Mormon for its viciousness in putting down all but the Chosen Ones.

I prefer the book of Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert Heinlein.

Sometime around 397 A.D., the New Testament canon was assembled.

http://www.josh.org/who-decided-what-in-bible/?mwm_id=241874010215&mot=J79GNF&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-8DlkvPM6gIVirbICh3OUAqeEAAYASAAEgJ1H_D_BwE

The Roman Empire had a heavy influence on the makeup and tone of the new Testament. The Empire as a political authority is gone, but in its entrenched form as a church, located at the Vatican, it still has an ifluence.

Hugh wrote the Bible and should be thanked for his efforts. Jaynes may have been right about voices in the head but is there external evidence of a supernatural entity in existence (look at all those 'e's', I feel a competition coming on)?

I think schizophrenia is talking to yourself and not realising who you are speaking to

Did he hew it into rock, and did it raise a hue (and cry)?

Who knows?

Jaynes surmises that Schizophrenics are the people who currently have the brain makeup of the people who are thought to have written the Old Testament. Maybe when the new brain wiring came along, more and more people had it, and they were not kind to people with the old wiring.

A lot is surmise, but I don't know if much is proven.

What proof could there be?

The people who wrote the bible weren't that much different from us. When were brains last rewired? In evolution, ten thousand years are the blink of an eye.

I rewired my brain a few times with psilocybin.

Brain wiring is probably a comlex subject.

I plead ignorance.