The transcendent: Is is all in our heads?

Faith & Science Conversation
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In response to an aspect of my last question concerning spiritual things and entities, I have been thinking a great deal about our own perception of these. The field of neuroscience and evolutionary studies have shown that there is so much about our lived experience that traces to our “hidden brain,” as science journalist Shankar Vedantam puts it. People in different parts of the world have different, albeit “real-feeling” experiences with God(s).

I mention Shankar Vedantam because he was interviewed on a podcast I like called “No Small Endeavor.” It was here I discovered that he has his own podcast where he talks about the many activities of our brains that evade our notice—biases, habits, you name it. I found a transcript for one of these episodes called “Creating God.” Here’s the link for anyone interested:

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629616978/creating-god

The basic message here is that religion came about because it was useful for things, like coping with struggles that arose and building trust in groups. We have said that religion may have evolved with us, and some find no problem with seeing God in that process. But I do think, as I do with most things, that such claims have implications. As sources like this one imply, it makes me wonder: Why are there so many various experiences if it was guided by THE one, true God?

Some people, like the guy interviewed in the transcript, find this to be sufficient evidence to leave faith behind and call it false, while still acknowledging its usefulness in the present day. For those of you that have thought through this question, what has it led you to think about the nature of spiritual experiences, religion, and our own confidence in what we perceive?

(Comparing my questions to those asked by past contributors on this forum, I can tell who was going through the “deconstruction” process :joy:. It gives me hope that my faith can make it out alive.)

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Physicalism and its implications
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Thank you! I really like Shankar Vedantam. It’s a thoughtful post.

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And does this work even if we believe it is just a fantasy coping mechanism?

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I mean, it has been shown to work. I don’t know how to discern if that makes the claims in said religion true to reality or just, as you said, a fantasy.

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No I mean does it work when the persons it is supposedly working on (i.e. helping) believe it to be just a fantasy coping mechanism?

Because I don’t think so.

I think actually believing it is real is part of what makes it work.

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Ah, my bad. I suppose that is a fair point, though any deception would be of no use unless it was believed.

Religions claim different things—some people have used the illustration of “blindfolded people feeling an elephant,” but there does seem to be a very broad variation in religious practice and statements of belief. It may “work” when we believe it, but how do we know what of it is a true representation of who God is, what God wants from us, and who we are?

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I kind of understand your perspective on the nature of religion being subjective, and I can agree with you in that sense in areas. But I don’t know if it accounts for the numerous conflicting experiences about the reality of God very well. Is God’s revelation in contradiction with Him? I feel like, while truth and God can be represented by more than one thing, they can’t really be in alignment with everyone’s claims, right?

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Oh, you’ve heard of him! Maybe he’s more known than I thought.

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Sure… but I think the search for certainty is a wild goose chase where the geese are just pure illusions. So… why waste my time when life remains to be actually lived.

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Sounds interesting.

As mentioned numerous times I fall into the boat where I do think it’s most likely not true. I see absolutely no evidence to support anything supernatural from any god, magical powers regardless if it’s through prayer or spells, or crystals, or ancestors and no angels or demons. I see no evidence for any of the supernatural claims in the bible. No evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, turned water into wine, or walked across water, or Peter’s shadow healing people or Moses.

All evidence I see points towards billions of years of evolution that happened on this planet, and potentially on millions of others so far away we can’t ever reach them, and seemingly we don’t see any proof that any of these animals including those that survived as a group millions of years longer than ours having been helped supernaturally. For a fact, almost all of them are extinct. I see no evidence of any gods helping the dozens of other human species that existed and have went extinct. With our current species, I don’t see God helping all the immigrants being persecuted, all the people dying in war, all the kids with incurable cancers and so on. And no this is not a question about evil, but that there is seemingly no supernatural intervention. Almost all humans die from trauma or diseases and not peacefully in their sleep. Everyone of us here will most likely die from something horrific happening to us or slowly as a disease eats away from us. The same for Muslims, Buddhists, atheists. Same for Japanese, Chinese, German, Iranian, and so on. What god helped all the indigenous people.

We literally have a billionaire pedophile group that has been operating for decades and seemingly facing absolutely no consequences in almost every nation.

Additionally, I see no God helping the billions of pigs, chickens, cows, tuna and so on. They are all dying horror of deaths under as children compared to their natural lifespans just because animal abusers like the taste of their bodies.

You know the greatest blessing I’ve seen God give us recently was Covid. So many of our species died but more importantly wildlife thrived. Nature did better than ever in recent human history than when we were the ones being “caged” up. Though domestic abuse rose. 7 million humans roughly died from covid. The average human eats 7,500 animals across the course of their life. Most Covid deaths were older so even if we use only 25% that’s roughly 13,125,000,000 livestock animals saved. Not to mention the rebounding of wildlife. Not to mention all the animals those people kill with glue traps, rolled up newspapers and so on.

So i just see no evidence anywhere for anything supernatural. But what i do have is a few personal experiences that seemed to come from God. Almost everyone I talk to from all around the world seems to have little stories of things that seem to be magical. Not just Christians. I have talked with tons of atheists and after being extremely open with them like I try to be in these posts they have often shared moments in their life where something miraculous seems to have happened. Things that seem magical and that they basically just placed in a box because outlier events that probably have a naturalistic explanation does not change the facts they see when looking elsewhere.

A vet who’s an atheist that honestly kind of hates religion recently told me that out of their whole life there is only one incident that seemed magical to them. Though it’s not a happy story so much. Maybe. He had a dog that he loved. Had the dog for 9 years. Five years ago while driving through Texas coming back to Alabama he was involved in a hit and run where a truck slammed into his car. Turned out the truck was reported missing weeks before. It totaled his car and knocked him out. He woke up in the hospital. Almost lost his leg. Luckily not his hands or arms and so he can still be a veterinarian. Anyways one of the the first things he asked was about his dog. There was no dog when he was there. As soon as he was able to leave he did and was driven back to the spot of the wreck by a friend. Never found the dog. 2 years ago he was going back on the same trip. His dad lives in Texas. He was back along the same stretch of road and thought he saw his dog run across the road down a trail. He pulled over. He went down the trail and heard barking. This was the same road but like 40 miles further down. He said about 29 minutes into walking and calling he heard the barking again and realized it was coming from a house and was going to turn back but say a blue collar with a stainless steel star off about 5 feet into the bushes. Same as what his dog had and it was his dog’s collar. So he went to the house and knocked on the door. A elderly couple opened it and he asked them if they found a dog that was a black German shepherd and they said yeah. He was invited in and saw his dog. It was his dog. His dog was still alive but sick. He showed them pictures, showed them the collar, and talked with them. He got his dog and went to the nearest vet and it was chipped and was indeed his dog. He brought his dog back home and had him for a few days before the dog passed away. His dog was in not great shape and older and no way was that his dog running and the couple even said they had the dog inside for hours. So even thought he is an atheist, and does not believe in the supernatural he can’t help but feel that the event was weird. It actually made him he said far less hateful towards religion. Though he still thinks the world would be better without it and he cried while we were talking. He could be lying. He could be telling the truth. He could have just seen a similar looking dog. He has no idea and neither do I and so he just kind of keeps it mostly to himself.

So for me, those are the reasons why I still believe. Even if it’s a delusion, it makes the strangeness of life seem better categorized.

So I have faith, even though I am not holding my breath that it’s true.

For me the strongest power of religion is hope in a more beautiful world that seems unattainable but we cling to that hope and see sparks of it, enough that we believe it can engulf the world. So I cling to it. Instead of thinking violence is the way to liberate the world. Violence towards those who hunt animals, eat animals, do experiments on animals like many of my brothers and sisters in veganism do. There are many animal rights and eco terrorists. I don’t hate them for what they do. I understand why they do it. I understand that if hope fails, if love fails, that may be the answer one day. But for now I choose to instead believe that hope and love is the way. That reaching out to the next generation is the way. To show how tasty plants can be. To show how strong and healthy you can be on them. To highlight native plants and wildlife and protest circuses, breeders and so on. This is the way to go. Same as I don’t support the majority of the humans living in poverty and suffering as billionaires live lavishly should not attack them and pull them apart. Instead we should vote. I see how faith shaped the lives of so many. So many people like King, Ghandi and dozens of others. Hundreds of others. So I think faith is good. I think that the reason why king believed in everyone being united was not the evidence he saw around him but the faith and the hope in the story of God. Same for Ghandi.

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The illustration used refers to John Godfey Saxe’s poem “The Blind Men and The Elephant”:

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried: “Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“’Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

The usual moral drawn from this is that different people (or religions) are grasping different parts of the same underlying reality. But notice something: the analogy only works if there really is an elephant there to be perceived. If instead we imagine the blind men arguing about a flying cow then the same pattern—confident, conflicting descriptions—would not suggest partial truth. It would suggest that they are all mistaken about the object itself. It tells us what follows if there is a real object being imperfectly perceived. It does not tell us whether such an object exists in the first place.

One way to respond to conflicting claims about a supposed reality is to conclude that there is no underlying reality at all. In that sense, positions like Christ mythicism function differently from disagreements about what Jesus was—they remove the “elephant” rather than offering another description of it. That move may be driven by historical arguments, but it also has the effect of sidestepping the question of whether the object of belief is real.

I’m not aware of comparably well-known movements called Muhammad mythicism or Gautama mythicism. With Moses there is certainly major debate over historicity, but even there the discussion is usually framed in terms of legend, memory, and historical uncertainty rather than a named “mythicist” movement comparable to Christ mythicism.

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Right, but it seems that participants on this forum don’t think that the answer requires concluding that there is no underlying reality to the spiritual claims just because they are diverse. My question is how they understand spiritual experiences as legitimate interactions with the divine, not just a useful delusion, given the diversity.

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Because I find myself trying to make sense of a confusing world while holding onto what I find important—that being, God. Maybe the question seems silly to you, and maybe it is indeed silly considering the other things I could be doing in life… but making sense of these things feels important to figuring out how to live that life.

I think thats why people like me that have come to these forums asking the same questions. They feel like a crucial part of figuring out our worldview so we CAN live according to something substantial.

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NOT AT ALL! I love the questions. Spent most of my life studying and thinking about them.

It is certainty which I don’t believe in, NOT the search for answers itself! Seems to me, it is certainty (and the answers pretending to certainty) which tries to make the search for answers to go away and disappear – the kind of reasoning which says “because God said so.”

So… doesn’t mean I don’t have my own answers. I have plenty. But I don’t pretend to certainty. I go for the answers I like and don’t pretend otherwise.

Oh yes. But some things you have to choose. Because while there are many things where what you want makes no difference at all, life requires you to make a stand on what you want. It is part of the very nature of life itself.

Definitely! Always. Because no matter how many answers you do find. There are always more questions to consider.

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[1] I’m weary and skeptical of many neuroscience claims. I’d recommend the same posture for readers here. Many of these claims boil down to worldviews researchers bring with them. We would need to look at the mind/body problem and how they understand rationality and the intellect, what their take is on souls, etc. Physicalism holds no special place in explaining human thought and rationality. If someone wants to be a real skeptic, they aren’t doing a good job of it if they haven’t taken a deep look at the hard problem of consciousness and the mind/body problem. A lot of people seem to just assume brain science explains it all which is not demonstrable nor even possible in my view.

[2] For the hidden brain stuff, I would distinguish between the intellect and the imagination (which we share with other animals). Sure, we have different biases, neurochemistry and social and evolutionary habits. People in different areas heavily filter experiences of God through their distinct cultural and biologically conditioned imaginations. But the existence of God is not established on the basis of these imaginations, but on careful metaphysical arguments that use the intellect.

[3] The diversity? A number of responses present themselves:

a) We are rational creatures in a contingent universe upheld by God every instant. Maybe there is a natural intuition that everything around us depends on something else. The evolutionary usefulness is not made up, but a side effect of our metaphysical reality.

b) The fall. Human reason and our experience with God is deeply affected by the fall of humanity. Hence, it may be that we let our imaginations and biological predisposition take steer of the ship over and against our rational intellect. So people are going to get God wrong and this is perfectly understandable in the Christian worldview which posits a world pervaded by sin.

[4] It is a genetic fallacy to claim the explanation of a belief logically invalidates it. That is absurd. We can use a math example: maybe recognizing patterns and counting predators helped us survive. Hence, we engage in mathematics. This does not mean mathematics is not true or an objective part of reality or that 2+2 does not really equal 4 because math evolved as a survival tool. Losing math also loses science. We are just dumping all knowledge down the drain at this point, not just religious belief. A case of materialism sawing off the branch it sits in.

[5] In a universe created, sustained and upheld by God every instant, should we have evolved to not seek God? To not be religious? I really don’t understand the objection. God exists. We seek after the divine. God appears to value freedom. The purpose or end of the intellect is to seek truth. God is the highest truth.

[6] Personal experience is important but I think it is also important to maintain that the existence of God is an objective and demonstrable fact. A religion based solely on personal feelings is entirely subjective and not probative intellectually to anyone who is not sharing that direct experience(s). It is quite easy to dismiss such a religion since people all over the world have feelings in contradictory contexts. This makes religion subjective and for many people—it turns our God into a dismissible (but useful for some) fiction.

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  • For me, the diversity of spiritual experience raises questions about interpretation, but it doesn’t justify dismissing the entire category. I say that in part because I’ve had at least two spiritual experiences that were, for me, profound and difficult to reduce to purely psychological explanations.
  • That doesn’t settle the question for everyone, but it does mean I don’t start from the assumption that all such experiences are merely useful delusions. I would add that my own experiences are not isolated. There are also the accounts of other Christians I have known and trust, whose experiences, while not identical, seem to point in a similar direction. That doesn’t eliminate the diversity, but it does suggest, IMO, that at least some experiences may be tracking something real rather than being purely constructed.
  • Beyond that, my convictions about Jesus—his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension—and my sense that something real takes place in Holy Communion also shape how I interpret those experiences. They don’t eliminate the need for discernment, but they do give me a framework in which spiritual experience is at least potentially a genuine interaction with something beyond the self.
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Dear Seamitchell,

There can be no doubt that there is a self-existent reality on which all that is not self-existent depends. Consider the sum total of reality - all that is, whatever that is. The sum total of reality has to be self-existent in part or whole because THERE’S NOTHING ELSE FOR IT TO DEPEND ON. Virtually every religion on earth acknowledges this, and has a “high god” that created everything else. The vast majority of them admit, however, that they know nothing about it so they invent lesser gods whom they can flatter or bribe to get what they want. These lesser gods are, indeed, inventions. But the idea of a self-existent creator is not.

There are 3 major world religions that say what all else depends on is one part of reality, God. They are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There are also 3 major traditions that say it’s the whole of reality that’s self-existent and that all the things that appear to us to be dependent are made of the self-existent reality. These are: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. In addition, there are also religious Naturalists who believe that part of the natural universe is the self-existent reality. For example, materialists claim that everything is either “purely physical” or caused by the purely physical, which has no origin.

If we regard self-existence to be the hallmark of the Divine, then the issue about religious belief is: What is the Divine reality? not whether there is one.
If you’d like to talk more about this email me at roy.a.clouser@gmail.com

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A placeholder to keep the response window open while I decide if I have anything worth sharing.

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The area of neuroscience/brain research I am most familiar with involves the division of the brain into hemispheres. When I was a young man it was a hot topic but on a banal level like horoscopes, silly stuff. But the science was only getting started and what got popularized was almost entirely mistaken. As with the infancy of chemistry, ideas about brain lateralization ran wild. My information comes third hand from the writing of Iain McGilchrist which many neuroscientists regard as the most complete and accessible compendium of research in the field.

I won’t try to condense his condensation of the literature still further. But in nutshell he characterizes the early mistakes as arising from trying to locate particular cognitive functions into one or the other hemispheres. What he has shown is that both hemispheres are involved in everything our minds do but from a different perspective. The left hemisphere has evolved to focus narrowly on details and recognize familiar things which are needed. But the right hemisphere evolved to maintain broad, sustained attention to everything else. The left hemisphere (LH) helps us obtain lunch while the right hemisphere (RH) enables us to simultaneously avoid becoming another creature’s lunch.

Science allows us to extend the reach of what the LH does to produce cognitive maps and other purpose driven representations of the world. Our secular culture is saturated with this perspective. But a mountain of data will never equal wisdom which can only come by way of the hemisphere which attends to the big picture.

The way I see it, we identify most strongly with the drive toward expedience which characterizes the LH.'s perspective, and this is what must be transcended. When I imagine myself as an individual among many or at a lump of matter, I am turning the simplistic eye of the LH inward. But that cold analytic eye is not able to understand the embodied feelings and insight provided by emotional intelligence. These aspects can never be assimilated by the LH but we are dimly aware of the disconnect. The wisdom we need comes not from observation and prediction but from receptivity to what is nobler in our own nature. Wisdom requires we grasp our individual limitations and so become receptive to something greater within - this is what I think of as transcendence. I think religion can and should encourage this growth through humility and the Christian mythos is exemplary.

I don’t think the right hemisphere is God but I do think it is where a relationship with God takes place. When we ask the big questions: who are we and how should we live the LH will always seek self aggrandizement but the movement toward finding meaning in life starts with recognizing what one cannot accomplish on ones own in an instrumental manner. Perhaps what is needed is for institutions of religion to embody more humility too. Give up the exclusivist claims and recognize that the one who will be what He will be will also allow himself to be known by a number of names.