- Knock yourself out.
- My recent exposure to the fascinating possibility that the two hemispheres can hold mutually exclusive opinions on a matter has led me to explore other conscious/unconscious/subconscious phenomena.
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Hey that face looks familiar. I used to post on a Religious Forums with a user that looked just like that - judging from his avatar. The non religious were just the worst there (with a couple notable exceptions) so here I am here again to get my religion talk fix.
Funny thing is I have been pro faith both there and here, but the crowd that objects are on opposite sides of the spiritual divide. There it was because I wasn’t anti enough, here it is because I am not pro enough toward the favored brand.
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- Because you’ve been in RF, it shoould. I lifted it from the same OWF.
- I used to hang out there too; but left because I got taken to the woodshed more than once for pushing back on Mormon and Jehovah’s Witness nonsense.
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As a first pass let me give you a seat of my pants impression of how the inner relations between the sides of our noggins work (I’ll save the cautious, supported talk for later.) I’d say that neither of the two sides of our brains can properly be said to hold an opinion, that is in the domain of the whole person. The RH (right hemisphere) is the one that experiences the world directly but it isn’t the loquacious side. It knows more including what the other side knows. The LH is the side which has more to say and is generally not shy about doing so. It has very little insight into what the RH knows for its orientation is toward practical concerns, how to get things done in the world. The LH is the side that considers hypotheticals and weighs probabilities. The RH knows enough to know it doesn’t know everything and mostly is not concerned with concocting theories and models. The LH very much wants to pin things down, figure them out and gain control in the world; it has no idea what it doesn’t know and is very invested in its theories, giving rise to anger sometimes when other evidence seems to undermine them or when others disagree.
For the LH to gain access to what the RH knows, it must be receptive to what that may be and there will be no stone tablets of voices in a burning bush. All the RH offers is contextual, implicit understanding by way of intuition and insight. It has seemed to me that the Holy Ghost (is that the term?) is something like the RH. It is an unequal partnership, the one that knows less is nominally in charge and the one that knows more doesn’t insist on its primacy. It is a partnership in the sense a doctor and a scrub nurse are partners; it isn’t equal but both are needed and it is best if the one that is lesser, realizes that and values what is greater.
Okay had to take a shot from the hip. (No charge for that.). I wonder if @Rob_Brewer would care to critique my wild shot? Unlike me, he has actually finished reading The Matter With Things while I am taking my sweet time. But if there is anything you’d like to know from that source I can try to locate an excerpt for you.
Those two sects were my religious brother’s favorite whipping boys too. Given the circles he kept to I doubt he ever suffered any repercussions for his bias.
- I don’t know your brother, and I’m sure he’s nice enough given his biases: but I wasn’t whipping anyone in RF just to be whipping folks in RF; I was “pushing back” folks that were giving me a hard time because they didn’t like something I said.
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- Fair enough. My understanding/impression of LH is that it likes its dots connected by lines. The RH gets by with fewer dots, fewer lines, or both. That the LH "is atheist and the RH “is theist” may not have been long-held opinions; they may have been conclusions decided on the minimum of dots and connecting lines. V.S. Ramachandran can be forgiven for having entertained an auditorium of like-culture LH students or an auditorium of LH professionals, but the fact remains: given the same question, the LH response and the RH response were mutually exclusive responses from the same human being.
- Personally, although that fact surprised me initially, it doesn’t so much now.
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Oh I believe that, I’m finding it way too unpleasant and am taking a leave for now.
I’d say relying on ones LH in a non reflective, prideful manner is a great way to become a particularly unpleasant sort of atheist. If one can just take notice of all the gifts one gets by simply shutting up and recognizing where the real brains in the operation reside one realizes that religion is a pretty good approximation of the proper relationship. Then if one doesn’t get all busy being a pushy LH dominated apologist, perhaps one can avoid being the believing counterpart to an unpleasant atheist.
Just got a copy of “Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark?” It was referenced in some of the groups I read, and has a forward by our own Debora Haarsma. In the first chapter was a good quote:
“How can we expect people to believe us regarding things requiring faith (Jesus, the resurrection, miracles) when we deny observable, testable, and measurable science evidence? Are we credible?”
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Hi Mark, I think Iain McGilchrist might say it in this way:
In the intricate dance between the two cerebral hemispheres, they do not engage in the act of forming opinions in the way we conventionally think of it and was presented in the OP. Rather, the essence of opinion resides within the whole person, within the intricate interplay of these hemispheric domains.
The right hemisphere, although often overshadowed by its more verbose counterpart, is the one that directly encounters the world. It possesses a insightful understanding, one that integrates the discernment of the left hemisphere. It is an oracle of sorts, quietly and intuitively comprehending the vast tapestry of existence. However, it is not given to loquacity, preferring the eloquence of silence.
In contrast, the left hemisphere is the raconteur of our cerebral narrative. It articulates and categorizes, eagerly seeking to convey its representations for navigating the world. Its orientation is firmly rooted in the realm of pragmatic pursuits, the pursuit of how to accomplish tasks and achieve goals. It dwells in hypotheticals, assessing probabilities and laying the foundation for control.
Yet, it is the right hemisphere that grasps the limits of its own knowledge. It harbours no delusions of omniscience and rarely indulges in the creation of elaborate theories. In essence, it is a humble repository of intuition and insight, offering understanding that is contextually nuanced and implicit, and the right hemisphere’s wisdom is conveyed through the language of intuition and insight, and it requires a receptive ear to discern its message.
For the left hemisphere to access the reservoir of knowledge held by the right, it would have to cultivate such receptivity, instead it prefers black on white statements that it eloquently repeats and does not diverge from, it yearns for concrete answers and a firm grip on reality. It clings to its theories, sometimes with an irksome insistence, leading to frustration when confronted with contradictory evidence or dissenting voices.
In a sense, this partnership between the hemispheres mirrors an unequal alliance, akin to a doctor and a scrub nurse. While not equal in stature, both are indispensable, and the lesser must recognize the greater and value its contribution. It is a delicate balance, where the hemisphere that knows less ostensibly assumes control, while the one that knows more graciously yields, in pursuit of a harmonious symphony within the cerebral landscape.
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Wait, Iain? Is that you or Rob? Great to see you here my friend.
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No, its just me mimicking Iain, and giving your words the IM touch 
Regards
Rob
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You nailed it, Rob.
Outstanding knock-off!
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I think that one important point that Mark was making about the hemispheres was what Iain McGilchrist emphasised, that the delicate balance, where the hemisphere that knows less ostensibly assumes control, while the one that has a more comprehensive perspective more graciously yields in pursuit of a harmonious symphony within the cerebral landscape, also leads to discrepancies in society. We find a habitual narrowing of perspective, which is also promoted by specialisation and more recently the focus on ever smaller screens, and is also visible in religious fundamentalism, by which one attempts to explain all of existence from the perspective of one written source.
This last example is sometimes explainable as the fear of loss of identity, with foreign scriptures and traditions becoming better known, and a pushback against pluralism, which also appears as historical and cultural criticism within theology. Paul Tillich belonged - together with Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Rahner - to the circle of influential German-speaking theologians in the first half of the 20th century. Tillich described the fundamental problem of humanity in his Systematic Theology as “existential estrangement,” and differentiated between rational knowledge and the truth of faith: rational knowledge is related to reality, the truth of faith reveals its meaning to us.
This roughly corresponds to the functions that McGilchrist divides into the left and right hemispheres, and what Mark and I had also discussed in our exchanges. Nevertheless, the fundamentalist approach has been to dispute this differentiation and to give priority to the Bible as a kind of “manual of life,” which reveals exactly the left hemispheric tendency that McGilchrist is warning against.
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Thanks, Rob.
I think you are saying the same thing that Mark and I have talked about for some time now here and on our own.
[bolding mine]
I want to focus a bit on this bolded area, where I think you and I, and probably most of the people who hang around here, would find some real agreement – that all of existence is not explained by the perspective of one written source.
For any of us Christians who find truth in scientific understanding of the world, pure fundamentalism becomes impossible, although the means of analysis and synthesis of knowledge used in scientific investigation are not what IM would promote as the way to broaden one’s perspective. As I understand, IM would see this as still working in the same LH register of logic and rationalism that he seeks to expand our thinking away from. However, for many Christians the step of recognizing (consensus) scientific knowledge is an enormous leap of faith. That one can – even may (darf)! – do it, can feel like stepping into the unknown and certainly the dangerous.
Making that movement doesn’t make things any simpler. Of course not! If we’ve maintained faith at all in Jesus of the Bible, we’ve added sources of truth, not reduced them to 1.
I think your point about treating the Bible as a “manual of life” is a good one for a number of reasons, particularly if one holds to a particular view of what it can and does tell us. Conflicting and unclear commands (at least by contemporary ethics) force us to choose, but at the same time claim there are no inconsistancies or conflicts within the library of texts, when there clearly are. Jesus seemed happy to amplify a few of them himself in clarifying the Law.
While I appreciate IM’s breadth of thinking, I confess to being more conservative about where I seek Truth and truth. But I greatly value the depth of insight that he encourages us to seek through thinking differently and seeking more and more opportunities to do so. I tend to logic and evaluation, and I recognize a little better that my thinking is sometimes stuck in a track, that I’m missing the broader picture, or allowing someone else to define the parameters of the discussion, which serves them but not me or a broader inquiry. However, learning to see over the edge of the track and how to climb out – now that will take more training and practice!
I’m glad you and Mark are here. I anticipate some rich and fun discussions.
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Yes and that works very well for you in providing you a bedrock of faith which you know I celebrate wherever anyone is able achieve faith in relationship to the sacred. Perhaps it is because you have worked so hard to achieve an authentic Christian faith, following Kierkegaard and Penner in questioning purely superficial forms of faith in a genuine desire for authentic faith. With that providing you with food for the RH you can afford to lead with LH tools in your pursuit of authentic faith.
Let’s be fully honest about your embrace of art, music and poetry too. You always say you are the least spiritual person you know but I think you sell yourself short.
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Hi Kendel,
Thanks for your reply and especially your closing comments. I think we know who we are talking about when Mark or I (or rather IM) mention people who reduce their point of reference in that way, and they are an extreme example but not restricted to Christianity, nor to religion in general. IM shows how such extreme examples are generally found when the right hemisphere is damaged in some way but points out that we know people who develop fixed ideas, that is those of an obsessional nature, that are persistently maintained and not subject to change, also known as idée fixe, despite plausible evidence against them.
What you said about the use of analysis and synthesis of knowledge is in fact the way to broaden one’s perspective, but on a broader basis, accepting for example that the varying literary styles of scripture are in fact pointing to a need to get beyond the day-to-day language, which is not viable when we are talking about what is essentially ineffable. Poetry is a method, mythology and fable are also methods, as well as legendary stories that exaggerate dramatically, which have all taken over to some degree the ancient habit of enactment, in which amongst the various facets of drama, hyperbole was an expression of awe. We find this in all traditions and the same kind of development across civilization as it was back then.
The section that IM wrote on “the sense of the sacred” was one that he spent the longest amount of time on, primarily because the word God is a loaded word, and many no longer speak the word with the reverence that it should. In a similar way, Lao Tzu tells us that ‘the tao that can be named is not the eternal tao’. He quotes theologian Herbert McCabe as saying, “When we speak of God, we do not clear up a puzzle; we draw attention to a mystery.” He quotes the twelfth-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides, saying that God “exists, but not through existence.”
So, I think we can see that it is the all too supposedly familiar use of the word God that he opposes, as well as the “engineering God” and he is pointing to the sacredness and holiness of what the word implies. But this is also a problem in science and in western Christianity, with science failing to point to the ineffable that continues to amaze us, and some Christians saying what God is or is not. IM points to the “Cloud of Unknowing” which is not ignorance, but the wisdom that should follow the collecting of knowledge, that the only thing we know for sure, is that we know nothing.
It is the fact that science presumes to know, and attempts to claim that religious awe is antiquated, that makes recognizing scientific knowledge a leap of faith, plus the claim by many celebrity scientists, that there is no meaning to be found. In a way, the way IM approaches the sacred has stabilized my own convictions, that God is much larger and inexplicable than any of us knows.
The “manual of life” is a problem for several reasons, first of all language, secondly the fact that the Bible is pre-science, and thirdly because even the Bible describes a process which didn’t stop when the canon had been established. The reliance upon a 2000-year-old testimony, and rejection of knowledge that has been established since then, especially when it criticises our understanding of that “manual,” as I experienced during my training as a nurse, and later when talking to the more conservative Christians, doesn’t do justice to the cultural and historical divide. Besides, as you say, Jesus showed up inconsistencies in his time too.
I (and IM) value the Bible and am particularly willing to let myself be corrected by the teaching of Christ, which I try to understand even better in ways I have already described elsewhere. But I cannot ignore the vast wealth of teaching that is available today or accept the exclusionary attitude of some parts of the church. In a hostile world, there was a degree of authoritarianism required to establish order, but then the church’s job is to proclaim good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the Lord’s favour to those who enter the covenant. Love is the driving force, but also the sustenance of faith.
It’s good to be here.
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Any cause or community that becomes more adept at reaching for power and rooting out heretics, rather than winning converts has already been conquered from within. When fear is enthroned, Love is cast out. Truth, integrity and real hope are never far behind, as they too are quickly escorted to the nearest exit.
-James 1:20, 1 John 4:18
-thoughts provoked in me after having listened to a most recent French Friday interview over at the Holy Post.
-Merv
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