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

I would be interested to compare how believers and non-believers react to this news story:

'Believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress, according to new University of Toronto research that shows distinct brain differences between believers and non-believers. . .

Their findings show religious belief has a calming effect on its devotees, which makes them less likely to feel anxious about making errors or facing the unknown. But Inzlicht cautions that anxiety is a "double-edged sword" which is at times necessary and helpful.

"Obviously, anxiety can be negative because if you have too much, you're paralyzed with fear," he says. "However, it also serves a very useful function in that it alerts us when we're making mistakes. If you don't experience anxiety when you make an error, what impetus do you have to change or improve your behaviour so you don't make the same mistakes again and again?"'

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090304160400.htm

All: Thanks for discussing the mono/poly controversy. For those who agreed, glad I could help.

Effie:
I'm afraid that you have a mistaken notion of how Mary and the Saints are perceived in Catholicism. They are not nearly God-Like, and are no more Spirit-Like than we are supposed to become after death. Some may have 'honored positions', but they're just dead guys' spirits.

The trinity, however, is another thing. One could choose to interpret that as three gods, with a common mind but different parts to play; or, as one god, with three distinct facets.

If one accepts the concept of a truly omniscient and limitless god, these things could be made possible without contradition. Such a god could even 'make something so heavy he cannot lift'. He'd only have to reconstruct the universe to make it possible without violating physical laws or logic.



PS: I agree with Dogster: ["I would argue, however, that the Great Onion Spirit's existence was implicit in the discovery of the existence of the Great Mammoth Spirit."

And I nominate this for quote of the day!]

>>Some may have 'honored positions', but they're just dead guys' spirits.

I question that.

'Blessed Mother, intercede for me...'

We're clearly talking about something more than an honoured person here. We're talking about someone who has some clout with the big guy. And some of these dead people, whether in Catholicism or some Islamic traditions, seem to have god-like powers to bend the laws of the universe in order to affect miracle cures, like when dangling a medal of Mother Theresa over a woman's belly cures her of ovarian cancer (even when she doesn't have it in the first place).

On a wider point...whether all these djinns/angels/saints/spirits are gods, demi-gods or whatever...religions do seem to have a tendency to 'multiply entities'. They all seem to carry huge pantheons or celestial hierarchies around.

anhaga - just seeing if I can find the paper as that article doesn't contain enough info to really respond.

I must say though that Dr. Ian McGregor has some interesting psych papers to his name. Lots of stuff about personal certainty and its use as a defensive mechanism when facing situations which question our personal assertions. Titles such as:
Defensive zeal: Compensatory conviction about attitudes, values, goals, groups, and self-definitions in the face of personal uncertainty
Thinking and caring about cognitive inconsistency: When and for whom does attitudinal ambivalence feel uncomfortable?
Defensive Zeal and the Uncertain Self: What Makes You So Sure?Defensive pride and consensus: strength in imaginary numbers.
Zeal Appeal: The Allure of Moral Extremes.

Shall have to go read some of those, sound interesting.

>> like when dangling a medal of Mother Theresa over a woman's belly cures her of ovarian cancer (even when she doesn't have it in the first place)<<

Ed, You don't know that that woman didn't have cancer. If she had a bellyache then asking the holy spirit what was wrong is the obvious thing to do. If she got a reply in the form a certain knowledge in her heart (heart knowledge trumps every other kind) that she had ovarian cancer, then that's what she had. Praying to Mo T then cured it. QED

I'm glad I could clear that up for you.

>>You don't know that that woman didn't have cancer.

Actually...I do. Fortunately she'd just been discharged by doctors who'd successfully treated her. For TB.

Praise be! Another miracle! So praying to St Theresa of Calcutta will transform inoperable ovarian cancer into treatable TB.

We live in an age of wonders.

It gets even better! She can transform it *before* you pray.

Plus, she allows TV documentary makers to film in low light by giving them high-speed Kodachrome stock.

Incidentally...I have a colleague - he's a very nice man, intelligent, etc. etc. But he really does believe that Sai Baba can produce gold out of thin air. Fair enough. So can Paul Daniels.

(My colleague has an excuse. He saw some awful things during a Royal Navy engagement)

I have friends and family who believe that every happy accident is a miracle and every unhappy one is....and accident.

What about that Turkish fellow who accidentally didn't die in that accident?

>> The trinity, however, is another thing. <<

Everything that anyone ever needs to know about the holy Trinity is very concisely covered by Voltaire in a few pages of the Penguin Paperback 'Miracles and Idolatry' a handy precis of his Philosophical Dictionary.

In a very few paragraphs he reviews the several different conclusions reached by the councils of bishops called to discuss the issue of the three-in-one beginning with the first assembly ordered by Constantine (as mentioned by someone above) and several times since over the centuries.

Voltaire makes it abundantly clear that each and every one of these resulted in binding but contradictory decrees and were more about the politics of their day than god. He adds that their residue of conflict and confusion has been too high a price to pay. For modern (since 1764) man any time spent thinking about the question is a waste of energies.

Once one has read that short chapter the issue will never challenge the mind again.

peace
~jwf~

>>She can transform it *before* you pray.<<

That's from Hitchens isn't it? She can even do miracles for those who are not even likely to pray.

When I had a darkroom I would try to use underexposed film anyway so as to not lose a shot. With a little practice I could get an effect that was almost..holy. A very thin, ethereal quality of light that wasn't there until I miraculously added it.

Just to get back to the origins of monopoly:

on another thread there's been a little discussion of a recent Canadian court case involving a Greyhound bus, a Chinese Immigrant, a Carnival worker, a decapitation and schizophrenic psychosis.

So, when an individual is driven to commit psychotic acts by the voices he/she hears due to schizophrenia, whence do believers think the voices come? What would a person with schizophrenia living 20,000 years ago think about those voices? Did paleolithic schizophrenics hear the voice of the Great Mammoth Spirit?


As a side-note, do believers today believe that God will hold the psychotic individual responsible for those actions?



(an extra ten points for the first researcher who mention's the title of a certain book by Julian Jaynes.)

anhaga
A truly "mad" person, who is not in control over their senses, through no fault of their own (ie. drugs, drink etc.) will NOT be held accountable by Almighty God.
It's the same in a court of law. Of course, they need to be assessed and perhaps detained, if there is nobody who can take responsibility for them.

An interesting article here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126941.700-born-believers-how-your-brain-creates-god.html?full=true

"In 2004, Jesse Bering of Queen's University Belfast, UK, put on a puppet show for a group of pre-school children. During the show, an alligator ate a mouse. The researchers then asked the children questions about the physical existence of the mouse, such as: "Can the mouse still be sick? Does it need to eat or drink?" The children said no. But when asked more "spiritual" questions, such as "does the mouse think and know things?", the children answered yes."

"Olivera Petrovich of the University of Oxford asked pre-school children about the origins of natural things such as plants and animals. She found they were seven times as likely to answer that they were made by God than made by people."

I have a friend who is schizophrenic. She is not *mad*, is under meds and still hears voices. She handles her condition (and two children and a job as an assistant university prof) by meds and knowing through science that the voices are not real. Off meds, before she met her husband and learned about her disease- she papered her apartment with tinfoil to stop the alien broadcasts. Now she lives a comfortable, constructive and useful life teaching and raising a family. The disease is not linked to inheritance of genetic disorder so her children should live normal lives, abeit more knowledgeable about the disease than the average person and much more than a faither.

I would ask of the children, how many were told that their pets or their friends' pets *went to heaven* or *didn't really die* by their family or caregivers? How many, during the *why* stage of every childs development were explained to using *god* as a reason? Did ANY of them come up with the concept full blown? I doubt it.

That's what I like about children. They're so innocent and can understand the meaning of God so easily. It would be very interesting to do a survey of young people (teenagers), in rural areas and city areas on belief/non-belief.

Being surrounded by nature rather than concrete (man-made stuff), is very likely a big influence, IMHO.
In most of the "developed world", the population is mainly centred in urban areas and countries such as China/India are also catching up.
It's a kind of curse!

Hi warner, nice to have you back

That was an interesting article. Sometimes I think that we're making some progress.

To say that there is a natural need to believe in the supernatural is what we've been saying all along. Our point is that what makes humans unusual is the ability to question what comes naturally then look for some better way of understanding.

I personally have very strong spiritual feelings. I don't know if you have read it but there is in my journal an account of one of the times that god has come to me to get me to believe in him. I'm perfectly certain that if I had been born in another age I would have become a believer. Since I have trained my mind to think instead of feel, I am in much better shape.

'It would be very interesting to do a survey of young people (teenagers), in rural areas and city areas on belief/non-belief.'

I grew up in the wilds of Canada, warner. From the time I could walk I was surrounded by forest and I've never lived more than a short walk from natural, wooded areas (when I didn't actually live in the woods). So that's one tiny bit of evidence that being surrounded by nature leads to atheism.

Notice the children didn't say Jesus created the plants and animals, they said God! Children are a lot less complicated than Adults.
It's Adults that doubt, NOT children!

All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful
The Lord God made them all


I should be an infants teacher. (No, not indoctrination. It comes naturally)

'It's Adults that doubt, NOT children!'

Well, warner, as I mentioned, I guess I was an adult by the time I reached my forth birthday.

Of course, to put it another way, as a child I wasn't and as an adult I'm not really much of a doubter that the world around us is wonderfully fascinating and does not need a god to explain it. I've never, from my earliest days wandering in the woods of northern Ontario, had a need for that hypothesis. Those who postulate a god, as far as I can tell, are the ones filled with doubt about the world around them.