Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

Obesity is one of the greatest challenges societies face over the coming years. Australia as well as other developed countries around the world have ever-increasing numbers of overweight children. Is there a magic silver bullet to reducing your weight? Despite promises from television and glossy magazine advertising the unfortunate answer is no. Shannon Wills, who writes on health at Physical Therapy Assistant Schools , has kindly offered to highlight five common myths about diet and weight loss. I can speak from personal experience that these should be taken seriously. She welcomes your comments at her email id : shannonwills23@gmail.com.

Alex McCullie

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5 Myths about Diet and Weight Loss                                                    Copyright © 2010 Shannon Wills

They do the rounds every now and then, and because people tend to believe all that they hear if it’s repeated often enough, fiction becomes fact and myths become reality. There’s a lot of misinformation relating to diet and weight loss, and if you’re not really aware of what’s right and what’s not, you could end up jeopardizing your weight loss program. If you want to lose weight the right way and keep it off, you must be aware of the following myths:

• It’s ok to starve because I need to reduce my calorie count: Yes, you do need to eat fewer calories than you burn if you want to lose weight, but that does not mean you must starve yourself. Some people think that eating a piece of cake for lunch and then skipping dinner is the right way to lose weight because as far as they’re concerned, they’ve hit their calorie count ceiling with the cake and are not supposed to eat anything else for the day. If you starve or if your meal times are very irregular, you risk increasing the production of gastric acid in your stomach, and this may cause ulcers. So eat balanced meals instead of binging on one and starving for the other.
• Diets restricted to one food group help you lose weight permanently: Diets like the Atkins method where you are allowed to eat any kind of protein while totally omitting carbohydrates your food touched the peak of popularity before they crashed down to earth. Although it may seem like you’re losing weight initially on a protein-only or carb-only diet, your body is deprived of essential nutrients when you neglect certain food groups. The best way to lose weight and keep it off is to eat sensibly, in smaller portions and only when you’re hungry.  
• You can lose weight without exercising: Some people think that dieting is enough to help them lose weight because it’s the calorie count that matters. When you lose weight because you’re not eating enough, you start to look haggard and your skin hangs on to your bones when the fat disappears. Your immune system becomes fragile, your bones and muscles become weak and brittle, and you’re prone to injury and illness. Besides, if you don’t eat enough, your body goes into starvation mode and starts to conserve the fat that you do have in preparation for the lean times to come. If you want to lose weight in a healthy way, you must exercise regularly besides following a diet. You don’t have to sweat it out every day and struggle to exercise, even an hour of walking every day or four days a week is enough exercise for the average human being. You need to exercise smart, not take the no-pain, no-gain route.
• Once you lose weight, you won’t gain it back: Don’t assume that any weight loss you’ve achieved is permanent. If you stop exercising and revert back to your old eating habits, you could very easily gain all those pounds that you worked so hard to lose. Weight loss must be a way of life, not something that you adopt for a few months and then give up because you’ve achieved your goal.
• It’s all genetic, so it’s ok to blame my genes if I’m fat: Yes, our genes do decide where and how we put on weight, but that’s no reason to avoid exercise. If your genetic makeup is predisposed against you, you must work even harder to reduce weight. Once you get used to exercise and a healthy diet as a way of life, you look and feel much better because your health improves, you look great, and you lose weight.

By-line:

This article is written by Shannon Wills, who writes on the topic of Physical Therapy Assistant Schools . She welcomes your comments at her email id : shannonwills23@gmail.com .

Feel free to download a pdf version (right-click to save) of this document.

Defenders of Christianity often escape criticism by referring to atheist ignorance of true Christian beliefs. Even though their beliefs vary more than Christians like to acknowledge, we can have some “showy” knowledge of the New Testament to throw into the conversation. Christians are surprisingly ignorant of their own sacred texts.

The New Testament, essentially a new covenant with God, is a disparate collection of 27 books written in Greek somewhere between 70CE and 150CE. Most believe Jesus was executed about 30CE. The collection of books was canonised, made the measure of true Christian beliefs, some 300 years later. Our English translations come from scholarly reconstructions from Greek documents and fragments as well as later Latin and Coptic translations. Ironically the most popular English translation, the Authorised Version or King James Version, is considered one of the most unreliable.

Do we have the ‘original versions’?

No, we only have only copies of copies of copies and so on. P52 is the earliest fragment, in Greek, of John 18:31–33 and dated around 125CE. We also have later fragments or pages as well a limited number of books or codices, such as Codex Sinaiticus, dated around 350CE. These later codices contain writings that partially correspond to today’s New Testament. For example, Codex Sinaiticus contains the earlier Latin translation of the Old Testament (Hebrew scriptures), much of the New Testament, and extra non-canonical writings like Epistle of Barnadas, a very anti-Jewish text.

What were the first and last writings of the New Testament?

Interestingly, for most Christians, it was one of Paul’s letters, 1 Thessalonians, written around 50CE. The last was probably 2 Peter around 150CE. Most scholars agree that the Gospel of Mark was the first of the gospels, not Matthew as printed in the New Testament. Mark’s gospel was written around 70CE.

Who wrote the gospels?

Most scholars agree that the gospel writers are anonymous, despite the traditional church assignments to apostles or companions of apostles. We can speculate that they were reasonably well-educated Greek-speaking Jews living somewhere in the diaspora, Jews living away from ‘Palestine’. Jesus and his immediate followers would have spoken Aramaic, the common semitic language of Palestinian Jews since the Babylonian captivity some 500 years previous. Like 90% or more of local population, Jesus and his followers were probably illiterate.

More next time…

Alex McCullie

While religion is becoming less important to Australians, it still is big part of the US daily life. Here’s a state by state breakdown (10 top and 10 least plus overall) from the Gallop poll article.

Alex McCullie

The UK bus “probably no God” continues with a London business driver being horrified at seeing the bus messages questioning the existence of God (see article at Christian Today website). Why are religious people so fragile even with the most moderate questioning? Is this the problem of faith with no evidence?

I should complain every time I see a “you will be saved by God message”.

Alex McCullie

previous related blog entry

Who was Jesus according to Mark?

The New Testament gospels are our only real source of information about the activities and sayings of Jesus and each gospel presents a different persona, especially between the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke and that of John. And when you include the non-canonical gospels like the Gospel of Thomas, you are presented with many different and often irreconcilable versions of Jesus.

I decided to look at Mark’s gospel. Beware I’m an ordinary reader and not a theologian nor a New Testament scholar. Historians mostly agree that Mark’s gospel is the earliest canonical gospel and both Matthew and Luke use it for their writings. Mark’s gospel was written around 70CE, some 40 years after Jesus’ death, and it draws from stories told within Christian communities. As an aside, most scholars agree that the New Testament books were written in Greek and the Old Testament books were written in Hebrew. Jesus and disciples probably spoke Aramaic, a Semitic language similar to Hebrew.

We know little of Jesus from non-Christian sources. Jesus was born in Judea or Galilee around in 4 BCE and was executed by the Romans between 29 and 32CE for insurrection. He founded a small Jewish religious sect that continued after his death and expanded to become the official religion of the Roman empire under Constantine. Our knowledge of Jesus’ activities and teachings come from the canonical and non-canonical gospels but cannot be verified by external sources. Even though you’d think that their efficacy should be treated as religious faith alone, scholars are able to apply secular techniques to establish likelihoods of their accuracy. As one example, the Jesus Seminar, a group of liberal New Testament scholars, attempts to identify the actual sayings of Jesus. The Seminar estimates that 20% or less of Jesus’ sayings can be actually attributed to him. Other examples of fine secular research are the extensive and impressive writings of Professor Bart Ehrman.

Let’s be clear about the purpose of a gospel. It was not a biography in any modern sense but proclamations about the ‘good news’ of Jesus for Christian communities and potential converts. Some took a predominately narrative form like Mark and others were simply sayings like Thomas. So the intended readers or listeners were Christian and already believed in Jesus as the son of God. Mark sprinkled his gospel with explicit references to Jesus’ divine nature for the faithful. I’ll simply look at how Jesus was presented to his contemporaries and perhaps understand his mission.

Firstly here’s some background about Mark and his gospel.

Traditionally Mark’s gospel has been attributed to John Mark, a companion and personal secretary to Peter. This attribution made 60 years after writing is probably more about credibility within early Christian communities than any real historical accuracy. All we can guess is that the author was a well-educated Greek-speaking Christian: very few people in the first century could read or write let alone write a full book. It is also worth noting at this point that Jesus and his disciples came from the lowest parts of Jewish society and therefore were most probably uneducated and illiterate. For simplicity, though, I’ll refer to Mark as the author of this gospel.

Mark’s gospel is a rapid-fire narrative covering the last year of Jesus’ life – (1) Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist; (2) his gathering of disciples; (3) listing miracles he performed and parables he delivered; (4)disagreements with local religious leaders; (5) entry into Jerusalem and rampaging of the Temple; (6) the last supper at the Passover and his arrest; (7) his trial and execution; and (8) the empty tomb after execution. Curiously there is no mention of Jesus’ virgin birth. This does not seem to be oversight as his family later saw Jesus as mad (3:21). It’s hard to explain that if his mother already knew of Jesus’ divine nature at birth. Another amazing omission is his appearance to disciples after resurrection, which is arguably the core part of the Christian faith. Most historians agree that the reappearance stories in Mark (16:9-20) were added by later copyists and editors of the gospel. Finally, after my first reading I couldn’t help wonder what was Jesus doing for his previous 29 years prior to this final year of ministry. Again the gospel is not a biography and so this history wasn’t theologically important to Mark. Again, it’s important to remember that a gospel is primarily a theological document more than a historical one.

Now let’s look at Mark’s Jesus. He was an itinerant rural Jewish healer who preached an apocalyptic message of the imminent overthrow of Caesar’s rule by that of God. A future “son of man” would replace Roman world of power, privilege and corruption with a loving kingdom of God. Jesus expected this to happen within the lifetimes of his disciples (9:1). He taught this message to his closest disciples as secret knowledge but ultimately the knowledge that would lead to his execution for sedition. Is this the true secret that Judas Iscariot betrayed to the authorities as suggested by some historians? Throughout most of the gospel, Jesus’ preachings were neither truly understood by his closest followers nor accepted by most Jews including family and friends and local religious leaders. Jesus’ demand for secrecy on one hand and his preaching in confusing parables exasperated the situation. Ironically he would then express frustration and disappointment with his disciples for their lack of understanding.

Despite some local crowds in rural areas Jesus went relatively unnoticed by Jewish authorities until he entered Jerusalem during the Passover festival – a politically very difficult time for the Roman occupiers. The Passover symbolised a previous time when the Jews were freed from foreign oppressors. His predictions of ending the Roman rule and co-operative Jewish elite with his disturbances at the Temple inexorably lead to his arrest by the local Jewish leaders and his subsequent execution by the Roman authorities. This was a typical way of handling a perceived public threat.

As a messiah Jesus appeared vastly different to most Jewish expectations. Jesus fell short of their King David-like hero who would rid the Jews of the Roman oppressors by military force. And, frankly, he doesn’t fit the modern day hero concept either. Only years of Christian teaching encourage us to define a saviour or messiah as one who suffers and not one who is strong and powerful enough to oust oppressors. We are unable to see this dissonance.

Even after Jesus’ death, Christians worked hard to avoid the linking of his death with the Old Testament curse of the hanging man (Deuteronomy 21:20-23). Ultimately I couldn’t decide how Jesus saw himself. Was he the “son of man” and heralding the kingdom of God or was he awaiting the “son of man”? And did he see himself as the unique son of God? Many historians do believe that Jesus believed he was or would be “king of Jews” even though that expression wasn’t later used by Christians.

Overall Mark makes the “suffering and misunderstood messiah” the major motif of the gospel. I felt that Jesus’ position is largely self-imposed. However it is easy to relate to Jesus. He appears more human than divine by displaying many of our qualities and weaknesses – compassion to help the inflicted; acceptance of the shunned; annoyance and anger with confused supporters and enemies; fears of his pending death; and finally doubts with God at Jesus’ death with his famous cry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (15:34 from Old Testament Psalm 22:1)

A famous turning point in the gospel when Jesus had to prompt their understanding:

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” (Mark 8:29) – at last thought Jesus.

Even then they didn’t understand the purpose of Jesus’ intended suicide to save humanity. At times the gospel is like a comedy sketch where the audience knows the purpose of the protagonist but the stupid characters do not. We feel like shouting out. I guess that makes for good story-telling and was part of the Mark’s motivational techniques for the faithful.

Finally here are some observations.

Mark seems preoccupied with human weakness, suffering, ignorance and fickleness. He shows this through the very human Jesus, the afflicted, the disciples, local religious leaders and even Jesus’ own family and friends. Humanity, without Christ and forgiveness, is full of anger, fear, distrust, stupidity and fickleness. Only at the end of the gospel does Mark offer hope through the “rising” of Jesus as announced by the unknown young man in the empty tomb (16:6).

I find Mark’s Jesus a very confusing character. His healings and teachings seem erratic as he and his disciples wander rural Galilee almost deliberately avoiding the cities and crowds. Despite separate instruction his disciples were for the most part unable to understand Jesus. Family, friend and former acquaintances rejected his teachings. Even Jesus doubted his own mission. Today we would see him as well-meaning and very disturbed person who needs help not punishment. Perhaps that is Jesus’ legacy to humanity – prefer to help and support others in distress and not to punish them.

Alex McCullie

pdf: Science and Our Fall From Grace (right-click to save)

500 years ago most people believed that god created the universe with Earth at its centre and created all living things. Man and woman were made in god’s image and endowed with non-physical souls that continued after death. This was the teaching of the Christian church. Using the bible, Archbishop Usher (Ireland) in 1654 calculated the age of Earth as 6,000 years old and even named the date and time of its creation.

Today science tells us that humans evolved through physical processes like all other living things over millions of years. Our planet is 4.6 billion years old and revolves around a sun that is situated in a remote part of a very large universe. Science explains our perceptions, thinking and emotions in physical terms without needing souls, separate ‘minds’ and after lives.

So what happened?

Three scientific developments have severely shaken beliefs in our special role in nature; in fact have lead to our “fall from grace”. The Copernican revolution showed that the Earth is not the centre of the universe. Theory of Evolution proposed a strictly natural explanation for the development of all living things including humans. And, over the last 30 years, Neuroscience is providing physical explanations for our perceptions, feelings and thoughts – traditionally seen as part of a non-physical mind.

What is science?

There are many definitions of science.

“Science is the concerted human effort to understand or to understand better, the history of the natural world and how the natural world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding” (Bruce Railsback, Professor, Department of Geology, University, of Georgia)

“The scientific method seeks to explain the events of nature in a reproducible way, and to use these reproductions to make useful predictions. It is done through observation of natural phenomena, and/or through experimentation that tries to simulate natural events under controlled conditions. It provides an objective process to find solutions to problems in a number of scientific and technological fields.” (Rutherford & Ahlgren, Science for all Americans 1990)

These definitions and others show that science is empirically-based. Ultimately its knowledge is based on observations of the physical world from a third-person perspective. Scientific work – observations, experiments, hypotheses and theories – is conducted rigorously to reduce the effects of human wishful thinking and biases. Conclusions are open to criticism through peer review before being published in journals. The scientific community attempts to minimise deference to authority and not to rely on unchallenged texts and claims. Many writers refer to the methods of science as methodical materialism or methodical naturalism. Even scientists with strong religious beliefs conduct scientific research on this basis.

By using empirical methods, modern science has successfully replaced superstitions with reliable physical explanations in our world. Science generally takes a bottom-up approach when researching and explaining the world by examining the parts to understand the whole. Religions, on the other hand, usually provide edicts, rules and explanations from broad articles of faith and apply them to specific situations in a top-down fashion.

Science works with a number of widely-acknowledged assumptions, namely:

1. Nature is orderly, i.e., regularity, pattern, and structure. Laws of nature describe order.
2. We can know nature. Individuals are part of nature. Individuals and social exhibit order; may be studied same as nature.
3. All phenomena have natural causes. Scientific explanation of human behaviour opposes religious, spiritualistic, and magical explanations.
4. Nothing is self evident. Truth claims must be demonstrated objectively.
5. Knowledge is derived from acquisition of experience – empirically – through senses directly or indirectly.
6. Knowledge is superior to ignorance.

Assumptions are adapted from Chava Frankfort-Nachmias and David Nachmias, Research Methods in the Social Sciences. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1996

Finally we should say what science is not. Firstly science is not art with individual artistic expression. Nor is it technology, such as nuclear power plants, even though technology utilises scientific knowledge. And, finally, science isn’t philosophy or religion. Science does not attempt to talk about human purpose or happiness even though scientific research may contribute to understanding our place in the world.

Copernican revolution

Between 1543 and 1633 Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo published theories and research that overturned people’s traditional view of Earth at the centre of the universe. Their work replaced the traditional Ptolemaic Earth-centred view with a new heliocentric model. Not only did they challenge people’s natural intuitions about Earth but also the church teachings about god and man’s special place. Despite powerful church opposition like Galileo’s conviction of “grave suspicion of heresy”, the heliocentric model became the accepted view of Earth and the solar system.

So we were not at the geographical centre of god’s creation after all.

Theory of Evolution

In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of the Species overturning the universal belief that we were the special product of creation. The theory of evolution saw humans as having evolved naturally like all other living things. Adaptation of organisms to local environments was proposed as the primary process driving the evolutionary development of living things.

Evolution directly contradicted the creation stories of most religious texts including the Genesis story of the Christian bible. In particular, evolution questioned notions of implicit human progress towards perfectibility as well as our natural superiority and dominion over other living things. The view that the world was populated with a hierarchy of fixed species became obsolete. Worse still, human beings were now seen as having evolved from the same ancestors as “Iesser” animals and, under different circumstances, may not have evolved at all.

Evolution is almost universally accepted by the scientific community with overwhelming evidence from a variety of disciplines. However, not surprisingly, evolution continues to be seen as threat for many religious people and is regularly challenged by well-funded groups. Creationism and Intelligent Design movements are recent examples.

So humans have evolved through natural and blind processes of chance and adaptation.

Neuroscience

Over the last 30 years the neurosciences have researched mental processing as physical brain activity. Specifically, neuroscience is effectively exorcising the “ghost in the machine” – the soul.

There are three areas of study. Firstly, cognitive neuroscience directly relates thoughts, perceptions and emotions to the functioning of the brain using advanced imaging techniques. Behavioural genetics links genetic information with behaviour through research programs such as with separated twins. And, finally, evolutionary psychology examines the mental capabilities as an evolved brain with a series of sub-systems that resulted from environmental adaptations.

Neuroscience research is new and ever-changing. However some conclusions seem clear. Firstly, our brain and its processing are more like a chaotic Chinese restaurant than a well-designed computer. Secondly, most of our mental processing is subconscious with very little reaching a conscious level. Thirdly, our brains are very creative at filling information gaps with explanations that may or may not be true. In most situations our folk theories and rule-of-thumb processing work satisfactorily as we evolved that way for survival. However our thoughts, feelings, attitudes and beliefs can also be very unreliable and self-deceiving. A final conclusion suggests that we need to rethink our understanding of free-will. Neuroscience suggests much less freedom than we intuitively believe.

Neuroscience tells us that our mental processing operates in a very approximate, self-fulfilling way and suggests the need to maintain a healthy scepticism regarding information and situations we come across. Finally don’t forget that most cognitive processing is handled subconsciously by our brains.

Final Comments

Today’s science provides better grounded and less mysterious explanations for the physical world than religions did some 500 years ago or even today. The results of scientific research with the reasoning of philosophy offer wonderful opportunities to explore the human condition and to lead to more fulfilling lives less reliant on wishful thinking, revelations, faith and superstition.

References

Kitcher, P 2007, Living with Darwin, Oxford University Press
Hauser, M 2006, Moral Minds, HarperCollins
Pfaff, D 2007, The Neuroscience of Fair Play, Dana Press
Mayr, E 2001, What Evolution Is, Basic Books
Lakoff G & Johnson, M 1999, Philosophy in the Flesh, Basic Books

Good reading

© 2008 Alex McCullie

pdf: Atheism and Agnosticism (right-click to save)

Typically atheism and agnosticism are seen as alternate positions of disbelief in a god. The atheist is perceived as taking the harder line of absolute rejection whereas the agnostic has a more diffident position of uncertainty. Even today agnosticism is probably seen as a more socially acceptable and reflective view.

Amongst atheist communities the meanings of atheism and agnosticism cause considerable debate and angst about which, if any, truly reflect people’s positions. Many dislike the term atheist as a “belief in opposition” and seek alternatives like non-theist, naturalist, physicalist or materialist, free thinker, humanist and non-believer, even though some can have quite different meanings.

Atheism and agnosticism have very different etymologies. Atheism is literally without (“a”) gods (“theos”) from Greek and has a long history of use. Socrates was accused of atheism for not worshipping the gods of Athens. Early Christians were similarly accused by their opponents in Roman Empire. Atheism was usually used as a derogatory term for not believing in the accusers’ gods and not total rejection. Even though agnosticism uses a method of construction – without (“a”) knowledge of the divine (“gnosticism”), it was only coined publicly in1869. Prof Thomas H Huxley, an English biologist, was concerned like many others with the definitive nature of atheism and felt that agnosticism was a more reasoned stance.

Most dictionaries provide two similar but distinct meanings for atheism – a disbelief in god and a denial of the existence of god. For example,
•    Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
(http://www.answers.com/atheism)

Many writers refer to these positions as weak or passive (“disbelief”) and strong or active (“rejection”). Despite seemingly similar these positions are quite different. Imagine arguing either of these stances with a believer. Holding a weak atheist position requires you to refute any arguments seeking to prove the existence of god. This is similar to not believing in any number of ideas like unicorns, ghosts and Iraqi WMD. The believer has the responsibility to convince. The fact that billions of people believe in a god or gods does not constitute a proof.

Alternatively, supporting strong atheism requires that you refute proofs of god’s existence and, more importantly, prove that god doesn’t exist. Unfortunately as no definitive proof exists one way or the other, this strong position seems ultimately impossible to support. There is a slight wrinkle here, though. A strong atheist could reasonably ask “what do you mean by god?” There are many arguments around the apparent contradictory nature of some conceptions of god, such as the presence of an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving god with the freewill and existence of evil.

Many of today’s strong atheists prefer to talk about probability rather than certainty of the non-existence of god. Richard Dawkins makes this point in “God Delusion” by describing god’s existence as highly improbable.

Instead of separating atheism and agnosticism I prefer to talk about the belief in existence of god (metaphysics) and claimed knowledge available (epistemology). So a strong atheist would have no belief in god and would also believe that we have certain knowledge of that. The weak atheist would have the same belief but make no claims about knowledge. The typical non-believing agnostic would also not believe in god but have doubts about whether or not it is ultimately unknowable.

References

Craig, E. 2005, The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge, London.

Flynn, T. 2007, The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Prometheus Books, New York

Martin, M. 2007, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Benedict, G. 2008, The Watkins Dictionary of Religions and Secular Faiths, Watkins Publishing, London

© 2008 Alex McCullie

This question was posed by Philosophy Today magazine. Here is my answer…

It’s not necessary.

This deceptively simple question has such profound implications for our sense of independence. I take a bottom-up approach to understanding reality. We have developed coherent and comprehensive physical explanations for our world. Using empirically-based sciences, we continue to build an understanding of the living and non-living aspects as it is now and has been over its 4.5 billion year history of Earth. There are still gaps in our knowledge and will also be so. Either way the growth of awareness of the physical reality over the last 500 years has been extraordinary by any measure.

However there still seems to be a significant ontological gap between the third-person physical explanations of the world and our rich first-person experiences. But is there?

Consider the following. Imagine all humans suddenly dying or consider the Earth some 750,000 years ago. Either way there would be no self-reflecting living things with personal experiences or imaging’s that concerns us today. The physical explanations of reality would be fully satisfactory, if somewhat incomplete. So the need for this gap does seem to depend on having animals like us with the ability for self-reflection. To put this timeframe into perspective we evolved to our present form some 100 000 years ago about 0.002% of the history of Earth.

We have a couple of ways of dealing with this gap. Firstly, we could infer an ontologically separate non-physical reality (NPR) – many people do. This reality could be as large as a parallel version to our total physical reality. Many see this type of NPR being filled with an all-powerful being as well as being a repository for the non-physical aspects of dead human beings – their ‘souls’. Or, for many, the NPR could be as limited as a repository for our first-person conscious processes – the “mind” – residing somewhere in the brain. This very limited form of NPR would disappear with the death of the host.

All versions of NPR seem to solve the dilemma of the gap between physical existence and your personal experiences until you delve into the detail. Immediately you notice two things. There is no physical evidence that these NPRs exist. That may seem self-evident as they are “non-physical” realities. Also there seems to be no satisfactory explanation of how these NPRs interact with the everyday physical world. For me, explanations around miracles, magic and supervenience do not “cut the mustard”. They are non-explanations and shouldn’t be considered enough to be convincing.

Given the main question let us concentrate on the universal NPR with an all-powerful being. The first difficulty is which one? The obvious sources of information, other than personal wishes or desires, are the many human religions. Given the age and obscurity of their sacred texts, most believers rely on interpretations from the religious leaders for their understanding about NPR. Even then the variations and contradictions of teachings within each religion and across different religions are staggering especially when presented with such certainty. Given the variations of theory and teaching surely a person’s belief must be an accident of birth both time and place.

From my limited observations there seems to be only a few common factors amongst the religions. There is a certainty that their version of NPR exists (often with an all-powerful being); that the universe has an underlying purpose; and that knowledge of this will give you an insight to the meaning in life. Many use the promise and threat of life after death to control people’s behaviour. No evidence other than personal revelations and testimonies are offered to support these beliefs. Even here the religious theories are malleable with regular adjustments to confirm to society expectations. Their “absolutes” is more “relative” than they wish to admit.

“The Vatican has overhauled its list of mortal sins, adding several more to cope with the age of globalisation.”
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/list-of-mortal-sins-gets-longer/2008/03/10/1205125804885.html

Alternatively, we could work with a physical view only. It is reasonable to expect that science will provide better explanations as to how the brain processes perceptions, feelings and cognition to manage our body’s interrelationships with the external physical world, including social relationships. Newer theories arising from neuroscience, linguistics and philosophy are proposing ways of understanding the human condition such as morality, aesthetic appreciation and socialisation. Theories like “embodied realism” provide satisfying explanations for human cognition within an embodied relationship with our environments.

Moreover there may always be a separation between third-person knowledge and first-person experience. And is that really a problem? You can still enjoy music, films, plays and art without participating in a romantic fantasy that will never fulfil its promises.

© 2008 Alex McCullie