{"id":4125,"date":"2014-04-14T21:39:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T02:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=4125"},"modified":"2014-04-14T21:39:29","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T02:39:29","slug":"living-with-a-wild-neurochemical-brain-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=4125","title":{"rendered":"Living With A Wild Neurochemical Brain State?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s been a bit of buzz recently in the \u201cpop-intellgensia\u201d press about Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest book<\/a> \u201cLiving With A Wild God\u201d. Ms. Ehrenreich (author of several policy-oriented works including the well-received \u201cNickeled and Dimed\u201d about the modern American economy’s exploitation of lower-income service workers) decided to write a \u201clooking back on my past\u201d account of the strong and memorable spiritual experiences that she had as a teenager and young adult. <\/p>\n

I assume that she was not using any mind altering recreational substances at the time, which would make such experiences entirely uninteresting, given that a lot of young people were having similar chemically-induced episodes at the time (i.e. the late 1960s). And her experiences in and of themselves weren’t all that extraordinary; similar things have been happening to people since the dawn of recorded history. You can read an interesting analysis of such experiences in William James’s classic \u201cVarieties of Religious Experience\u201d, written in 1902; see especially lectures 9 and 16. James quotes a Vendantic yogi’s description of such states as \u201csuperconsciousness\u201d, a fairly apt summary of what Ms. Ehrenreich seems to have experienced.<\/p>\n

What makes Ms. Ehrenreich’s reflections more noteworthy is her ongoing lifetime commitment to atheism and positivistic rationalism. Ms. Ehrenreich trained in her youth as a scientist, receiving a doctorate in cellular immunology. Following in the footsteps of her parents, Ms. Ehrenreich committed herself to the idea that humans can guide their own fates without need for any divine guidance; like her parents, she came to believe in the power of human reason, as manifested through critical thinking and scholarly accumulation of empirically verified knowledge. And in her book, she sticks by her guns. Unlike the people described in James’s lecture 9, she refuses to have a conversion experience. She will not fall pray to \u201cbelief\u201d; she \u201cwould like to put the whole idea of faith and belief away; let’s find things out\u201d.<\/p>\n

So why write a book about phenomenon that already has a scientific explanation<\/a> or two? And why are so many of the media sources that cater to intelligent Americans (such as NPR<\/a>, Huffington Post and Slate<\/a>) taking note of a work (even being haunted by it?) that on its surface is little more than a elderly fellow-intellectual re-considering a diary kept in youth regarding some imagined \u201cheightened states of presence\u201d? The author’s diary was written before she could know that such experiences were only artifacts of certain chemical and electrical states within the brain and body. It was written back in the dark ages before she could ponder modern neuroscience and its study of dynamic interactive systems and their chaotic behavior, before she could have known that such experiences can easily be reproduced by researchers using appropriate amounts of trans-cranial magnetic induction along side the temple of their subjects. There are quite a few different papers and reports<\/a> on how such intense mental experiences, which many believers consider to be \u201cspiritually awakening\u201d, can be explained and even reproduced through combinations of scientifically controlled brain conditions. What’s the big deal, especially for a scientist?<\/p>\n

Admittedly, I have not yet read the whole book. I’m making my observations here based on what I have read from reviewers<\/a>, published excerpts<\/a>, and author interviews<\/a>. But it still seems just a little strange for someone committed to scientific rationality to make such a drawn-out effort to review her life and come to grips with what she should by all rights simply dismiss as a bit of \u201cearly mind-state instability\u201d, a temporary insanity from her youth (and who doesn’t have bouts of temporary insanity in that bubbly, giddy stage of life?). <\/p>\n

Most of the reviews thus far have made similar effort to defend Ms. Ehrenreich from the religionists and believers. Perhaps, as Slate says<\/a>, she is searching for \u201ctranscendence\u201d, but surely not God!! She hasn’t given in to what all the the unsophisticated “churchies” are trying to sell!!! they repeatedly protest. But I wonder if they doth protest too much. <\/p>\n

What does all the buzz about this book boil down to? Here\u2019s my take: the \u201cenlightened intelligensia\u201d of the modern world (America, Europe, Eastern Asia) have gotten rid of God. They have largely fulfilled their dream of building a community of non-believers, a community dedicated solely to human observation and critical reason. Sure, they will still allow that humans are entitled to their feelings; but if any problems arise from this, we have our psychologists and neuroscientists (and the pharmaceutical industry as well) to efficiently resolve the conflicts. <\/p>\n

The new intelligensia and their followers are finally hitting back, finally preaching to the unwashed masses, i.e. the many especially out in the heartland who still entertain superstitious notions and customs regarding \u201chigher powers\u201d. And perhaps the \u201cbrights\u201d as they tried to call themselves (that name didn’t really catch on<\/a>) are making inroads in this regard. The percentage of Americans who no longer believe in God (or at least who are unsure about it) is said to be rising in recent years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And yet, at the same time this new atheist intelligensia is starting to miss God (you could substitute \u201cHim\u201d or \u201cHer\u201d here based on your prejudices; but whatever God\u2019s reality might be would be well beyond our biological reproduction concerns). Ms. Ehrelreich and others like her are starting to wonder if it is OK to talk about \u201ctranscendence\u201d and \u201chuman longings\u201d without immediately dismissing their feelings via psychoanalytic and neuroscientific facts and reasoning. They are wondering if it might be OK to dabble in Buddhism or other Eastern mystical traditions, so long as the more supernatural aspects of these traditions such as karma, reincarnation, and evil spirits have been \u201cwesternized\u201d for handling (akin to pelletized manure). It is interesting that Ms. Ehrelreich is an aging Baby Boomer. I realize that most atheists stick by their guns right to the death-bed (RIP Christopher Hitchens), but I can\u2019t help but wonder what is going on deep inside Ms. Ehrelreich\u2019s head. I can\u2019t help but wonder if Augustine\u2019s \u201chound of heaven\u201d is still at work, in some mysterious way here.<\/p>\n

As I have said before, I consider myself to be part of a Baby Boom intellegensia (or at least a follower thereof) that venerates the great traditions spawned by the Western Enlightenment. I pride myself on being a person devoted to critical reason, a person who appreciates scientific method, a person who wants to see the evidence (and evaluate just how good that evidence is, especially in terms of \u201creproducability\u201d with regard to natural phenomenon). I have no time for a young earth, miracles, near-death experiences, creationism, saint intercessions, or even a Jesus Christ the Savior (and let\u2019s not even get started on some of that Islamic stuff). <\/p>\n

And yet . . . science in all its cosmological grandeur, with its chaotic inflation fields and multiverses and hyperdimensions and scads of M-theory superstring paradigms to fit any imaginable universe, has not logically eliminated the possibility of God. According to its own rules, science still cannot rule out God. Science cannot tell us just what it is about consciousness that inspires us to think about God; science does not even know what consciousness is, despite burgeoning understanding on how it works. Having all the pieces is not adding up to knowing what the whole is all about.<\/p>\n

And thus, I embrace what I call a \u201chopeful quantum agnosticism\u201d. I respect the school of reason, and admit that neither I, nor human society in general, can \u201cknow\u201d whether God exists in the way that we know that the moon exists. I won\u2019t try to fudge the word \u201cknow\u201d here; let\u2019s leave “knowing” solely within the realm of reason. And yet I know that science, as it probes further into the realms of the huge (the cosmos) and the tiny (the quantum world), increasingly finds that this un-fudged concept of \u201cknowing\u201d becomes less and less applicable and appropriate.\u00a0\u00a0 It seems to me that quantum uncertainty is inherent to existence.\u00a0 If so, then is it so surprising that our species still exhibits a deep-down need for there to be a God, and yet cannot rationally prove the point one way or the other? (There\u2019s another new book out on that, \u201cWhy Science Does Not Disprove God<\/a>\u201d by mathematician Amir Aczel.)\u00a0 <\/p>\n

If there is a God, then that God has kept us in an epistemological superposition, a \u201cboth\/and\u201d state which simultaneously includes knowing and not knowing (similar to the observer in the Shrodenger\u2019s cat thought experiment). Could that make any sense in the grandest sense of things? I defer to a Zen koan where the master comments: \u201cnot knowing is most intimate\u201d. Perhaps a known God would be mostly ignored by us; only in the quantum uncertainty of not knowing, could God maintain our attention, maintain an intimacy with us, such as we are in this temporal, impermanent realm.<\/p>\n

(And a quantum God helps to resolve the \u201cHim\u201d versus \u201cHer\u201d dilemma; as with waves and particles, a quantum God is in a superposition of both states at once!)<\/p>\n

Many scientists and atheistic philosophers tell us that all talk of \u201cGod\u201d and \u201cmeaning\u201d and \u201cpurpose\u201d are meaningless and unnecessary in the rational world that they have made possible. And yet, those like Ms. Ehrelreich seem yet to need something more.\u00a0 Some non-rational but increasingly perceived need is not being satisfied by the Utopia of Western Enlightenment.\u00a0 As Mark Twain might have said, rumors of God\u2019s death have been greatly exaggerated.\u00a0 Have a great Passover and Holy Week!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s been a bit of buzz recently in the \u201cpop-intellgensia\u201d press about Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest book \u201cLiving With A Wild God\u201d. Ms. Ehrenreich (author of several policy-oriented works including the well-received \u201cNickeled and Dimed\u201d about the modern American economy’s exploitation of lower-income service workers) decided to write a \u201clooking back on my past\u201d account of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4126,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4125\/revisions\/4126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}