God Talk

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God Talk
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On the Meaning of Terms

• Meaning is constrained from two major sources.
• My society provides a language where terms have
  multiple ranges of meaning.
• My attempt to communicate something specific also
  constrains the meaning.
• These constraints may or may not overlap.
• Meanings are not preset but vary within a range
  with context.

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Thats three runs.

• Are we talking baseball?
• Are we talking about nylons?
• Are we talking about scientific lab results?
• Are we talking about a track meet?
• Are we talking about a game on your I-phone?

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Can you lend me your largest ramafruge?
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Two more requirements for meaning

• The terms must be imaginable.
• Examples of failure here are
• The corner of the circle.
• The intellectual development of a quark.
• If the concepts are intended to describe
  something real they must be tied to experiences.
• E.g. atoms, the dragons that attempt to swallow
  the sun and moon at eclipses.
• What about the supernatural?

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I propose Construmentalism

• By this I mean that I choose (usually
  automatically), from among the available concepts
  that might be useful in describing and organizing
  my experiences, certain concepts with which to
  construe my experiences in a way that I hope will
  be useful to me and communicative to others.
• To a significant extent, my mind dictates what I
  perceive.
• Not only do I choose to think I operate this way,
  I choose to think everybody does.
• Neither rationality nor empirical evidence
  determines the choice. I tend to construe things
  (according to stereotypical patterns) first and
  make up excuses later.
• True/false, right/wrong are largely beside the
  point.

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Implications of Construmentalism

• If I am right I cannot prove it.
• I can only propose and let you make of it what
  you choose.
• I must sit lightly on my construments and wait to
  see if something better comes along.

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Are we just playing with words?

• Some people are going to accuse me of simply
  playing with the concept God.
• But if so, this is serious play.
• I am suggesting that people who dont know what
  they mean (or didnt know what they meant) , do
  (or did) in fact mean something. And this is it
  and it is empirical.
• This path will allow theists and non theists to
  communicate.
• We all live with each other. To ignore something
  important to many is not friendly but impolite to
  say the least.
• Any conceptual framework which has survived for
  thousands of years, deserves some respect.
• A generation which ignores history has no past 
  and no future.

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• A brightness illusion - the centre on the left
  looks brighter

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If the eye is at Q there will be a virtual image
of P at P. P is not real but the observer
might not know that! Further the observer might
not have a concept for P and therefore be unable
to perceive P.
P
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Having a referent for God

• The term God is a human term. We created it.
  We apply it or we dont. If we dont choose to
  apply it to something it becomes meaningless (or
  vague) to us.
• It strikes me as incredible that many would try
  to prove or disprove the existence of God without
  first knowing (or deciding) to what the term
  refers or might be applied.

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Contributions from Immanuel Kant

• The capacities of the mind determine (contribute
  to) what we can and do experience.
• The stress on the distinction between phenomenal
  and noumenal.
• Limiting knowledge to the phenomena.
• We make some (not all) knowledge claims based on
  what the mind brings to experience.
• His useful distinction between pure and pragmatic
  reason.
• The role of forms and categories. Not fully
  correct, but suggestive.

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So what further do we need?

• Kants mechanics of the mind were defective.
  So we need a better theory of how construments
  develop from mental operations. Hawkins provides
  this.

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Hawkins on Intelligence

• Memory, Intelligence, Awareness, etc. in mammals
  seem to be functions of the mammalian cortex.
• The structure of the mammalian cortex is new with
  the evolution of mammals hence the word
  neocortex.
• In humans the cortex is more extensive than in
  other animals, about 30 billion cells with an
  average of 1000 synapses per cell.
• 90 or more of the cortex seems to have the same
  structure.

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The cortex as pattern recognition organ

• From the uniformity of structure, Hawkins follows
  Mountcastle in hypothesizing uniformity of
  function.
• Assuming the cortex is the organ of intelligence,
  the only input is a spatial-temporal collection
  of electro-chemical discharge patterns.
• These come from sense organs, and various
  sections of the brain, including the cortex
  itself.
• Our cortex creates our awareness of whatever from
  its perceptions of patterns in these discharges.

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On Memory

• Hawkins doesnt attempt to give us a precise
  mechanism for memory other than to suggest that
  the synapses are involved in storing and
  recognizing discharge patterns.
• It takes many fewer synapses to store a label
  than to store what the label represents.

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The cortex is not like a computer!

• The cortex stores sequences of patterns.
• The cortex recalls patterns auto-associatively.
• The cortex stores patterns in an invariant form.
• The cortex stores patterns in a hierarchy.
• Illustration Recalling the memory of a song.
• You will know the next note even if it is in a
  key, a voice, or an instrument, youve never
  heard before.

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How do you have a useful concept of dog or
circle etc.

• Every dog is a little different from other dogs
  and every time you see the same dog the
  experience is a little different.
• It helps to have seen some dogs, cats, birds,
  cows, etc. (so you have some memories and can
  build some similarity relations).
• Now when you see another dog, the discharge
  patterns in the cells of the cortex somehow seem
  similar to those associated with the name dog
  and not so much to the name cat.

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Forward and Backward Processing

• Each section of the cortex is taking inputs from
  multiple sections below or from the senses and
  from the thalamus and other sections of the
  brain. Perhaps I will already have enough clues
  to process at a high level.
• Processing goes forward and back. The back
  processing is a prediction (construment) of what
  you are sensing based on some similarity to some
  pattern in memory.
• It can fill in what you dont sense.
• It can preempt the forward processing by
  inhibiting alternative forward processing.

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Summary from Hawkins

• The cortex does not work by formal logic! Its
  guesswork, construment.
• The cortex will likely find something familiar, a
  suggested construment, even for first time
  experiences.
• If the dissonance is too much there is a
  mechanism to handle that and constitute a new
  memory.
• There is no role for foundational propositions to
  explain our beliefs.
• We dont conclude things based on self-evident or
  revealed propositions.
• We dont attempt to prove that our construments
  (predictions or guesses) are the only possible
  ones.
• Recognition, metaphor, even artistic imagination
  are in play.
• So far there is no role for proof. Our
  construments are stereotypical.
• Culture, early childhood experiences, and
  religious upbringing lead to different models of
  morality and the world. Moral reasoning is
  learned.

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How we think

• The mind/brain is not primarily an engine of
  rationality.
• We do not think rationally and we are not like
  computers.
• But, by grasping how we do think, we should be
  able to build better robots and fashion better
  arguments.
• Consider politics of reframing.

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The Role of Art

• Because of the presence of choice and the
  underdetermined character of our conclusions it
  is becoming evident that life itself is an art
  form.
• We construe our self-concept, and the rest of our
  phenomenal world, even our life in an artistic
  way.
• Science can be helpful, but it too is an art form.

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Rest of paper

• Present a Proposal for Empirical Referent of
  God (next 6 slides)
• Ancient Antecedents and development (5 slides)
• Some support from the Scientific study of
  Religion (11 slides)
• Some support from A History of God
• Have time for Questions and Answers

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What do we mean by empirical?

• Knowledge (a pattern) comes only or primarily
  from sense experience.
• The use of sensory evidence, tests, and
  experiments should enable us to choose patterns.
• The words empirical and experience come from
  cognate Greek and Latin words which were used to
  describe the method of a school of medicine that
  opposed the dogmatic approach.

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There are different degrees of Empiricism.

• Strong Empiricism we only know what comes from
  our senses (nothing else).
• Whatever we claim to know (from whatever source)
  should be confirmed or refuted by appeal to our
  senses.
• Whatever patterns we choose to use should be tied
  to experiences. (If what we conceive cannot be
  reconciled with our experience then there is a
  problem.)

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The concept God is tied to our experiences.

• If it were not so, it would have disappeared!
• The concept is fundamental and privileged. Much
  more so than unicorn, tooth fairy, Santa
  Claus, Easter bunny, or sandman, etc.
• Many people have religious experiences.
• There is something called the God Helmet used
  in Persinger's research in the study of the
  neural correlates of religion and spirituality.

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God is experienced as

• Powerful but there can be no empirical
  foundation for omnipotence.
• Benevolent but not omni benevolent.
• Knowledgeable but not omniscient.
• Long lasting but not eternal.
• Widely available but not omnipresent.
• Good but not perfect.

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God is experienced as

• Within us.
• Our physical and biological environment.
• Our social context.
• Our significant others.
• Our culture.

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God

• Society
• Sociology

• External Environment
• Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Agriculture

• Internal Environment
• Psychology, Medicine, Neurophysiology

• Significant Others
• Psychology, Sociology

• Culture
• Anthropology

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Ancient Antecedents

• Maat
• Rta (later Dharma)
• Asha (derived from Rta? Later Ahura Mazda)
• Tao (leads to wu wei, leads to laissez faire)
• Logos
• Buddha Nature, Sunyata

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Egyptian Goddess Maat

• Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance,
  order, law, morality, and justice.
• As a Deity she regulates the stars, seasons, and
  actions of mortals and deities in this life and
  the next.
• At creation she set the order of the universe and
  then sustains it.
• The sun god Ra created by setting his daughter
  Maat in place of chaos.

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Some Biblical references to God

• Exodus 3 Gods name is YHWH, the verb to be.
  Implies that God is Being itself, Existence, The
  Ground of Being, that with which we are
  ultimately concerned.
• Genesis God is the creator and sustainer.
• Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5 God is lawgiver and
  Judge. Source of morality.
• Psalm 19 The heavens declare the glory of God.
  Attributes of God seen in environment.
• Psalm 50, Deut. 33 God shines forth from the
  land, is present in his people, etc.
• Psalms, Isaiah 63, Jer. 2,3, Hosea, etc. God as
  Father, spouse, even kinsman.
• Various people have various gods Individual
  gods tie together the individual societies that
  live in various places. Jews are not to worship
  them because they lead away from YHWH and into
  foreign societies.

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Some New Testament refs to God

• John 1 Jesus is the logos incarnate.
  (neo-platonic view) Logos God Maat. The
  rational character of everything is God.
• John 8 I came from God. you are of your
  father the devil. There is something within
  individuals which forms them and guides their
  perceptions and actions.
• Acts 17 Paul preaches in Athens about the
  unknown god in him we live and move and have
  our being. We are his offspring. This
  environment shapes our lives, our activities, and
  our very essence.
• Eph 6 Our struggle is not against flesh and
  blood, but against principalities and powers of
  the air. Devils like Deities are not a type of
  being but characteristics of our environment.
• I John 4 God is love. Whoever lives in love
  lives in God and God in him. God is a
  relationship to others.

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Historical development of concepts

• Philosophy
• Natural philosophy
• Natural science
• Science, scientist

• God
• Nature
• Human nature
• Society, culture

• An example of some of this transition can be seen
  in the six editions of Adam Smiths Theory of
  Moral Sentiments (from 1759 to 1790).
• Some who would not object to Nature has provided
  man with. would object to God has provided man
  with. And some who would object to Human
  nature equips the individual with. would not
  object to Society provides the individual with.

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Freuds Dark Vision

• Freud regards religion as false and illusory.
• But useful as wish fulfillment and as restraint
  on human instincts toward incest, cannibalism, a
  lust for killing, and to combat laziness.
• Humans seek to maximize pleasure while minimizing
  suffering. Our tools are civilization (culture)
  and religion which supports it by restraining our
  negative impulses.
• But this solution creates displeasure by virtue
  of
• Our own painful, mortal existence
• Cruel and destructive aspects of the natural
  world
• Necessary sacrifices to live with other people.
• While the love instinct can be used to bind
  society together, the aggressive instinct must be
  repressed or redirected toward other societies.
• Repressed instinctive drives show up as guilt, or
  anxiety, or neuroses. Religion attempts to deal
  with these by explaining evil and providing
  forgiveness.

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Later psychoanalytic view

• The great religions help some people to resolve
  their internal and external conflicts, integrate
  their personalities and optimize their
  relationships (salvation).
• But many are left in a childish state of
  subservience to myth.
• Jung said that the gods are archetypes from the
  collective unconsciousness. When projected they
  lose power. Most of his patients (2nd half of
  practice) suffered from losing contact with these
  gods.
• Psychoanalysis might be a better way. Thus
  Psychoanalysis is the rich mans religion or
  Religion is the poor mans psychoanalysis.

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Hawkins, Bruce Hood and beyond

• We often think we have experienced something we
  havent.
• We have seen things fall but not gravity.
• We have seen live bodies but not life.
• We have experienced many dogs but not dog.
• We have experienced instances of social suasion
  but not God.
• In every case the abstract noun on the right is
  taken as a name for one or more perceived
  patterns.
• If we dont have abstract nouns like society or
  culture, the term God is very useful.
• So God is a construment.

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Hawkins, Hood, and beyond 2

• We have all experienced the feeling that someone
  or something, either within or outside our mind
  wants us to do something.
• Hawkins and Hood have shown that we have the
  concept of agency available even where we have
  not seen the agent.
• If the rains have washed out our path,
• If a crocodile eats the mailman,
• Or a tornado tears the roof off a house,
• Or the wind blows the water back allowing us to
  cross where there was water, etc.
• Surely it was an act of God. And
• Who is it who insists that I pay attention to my
  neighbors needs?
• Who suggests that I root for the home team when I
  dont know the players?
• Who convinces me to make a contribution to my
  church or United Way?
• Why do I stop at a red light when no one else is
  there?
• Why do I keep my promises? Why do I care what
  happens to others? Etc.
• These are not rational extrapolations from Kants
  categorical imperative. Some would cite social
  pressures and political calculations. But
  where these concepts are not available, God is
  a simpler explanation. I am not saying God is
  a better explanation, but that we are prewired to
  think that way.

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Emile Durkheim

• Religion is what holds society together.
• God is society writ large. It is societys way
  of representing itself to itself. The believers
  self image depends on God.
• The totemist knows that the totem represents God.
  He also knows that it represents his society. He
  may have another for himself.
• Religion reflects societys collective aspects.
  Every society can be called religious, for any
  society lacking collective ways of thinking and
  acting is not in fact a society.
• If we feel dependent on god, that is but a
  symbolic representation of our dependency on
  society
• if we tremble at gods justice and punishment,
  that is our regard for societys laws.
• Our reverence for divinity is but our respect for
  society
• our belief in the immortality of the soul, our
  belief in the continuity of the collective life.

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These concepts are protected and existentially
vital.

• They are protected because they are vital to the
  maintenance of society, the collective life of
  the group.
• Also therefore of
• Culture
• Ones own self concept
• A religion is a unified system of beliefs and
  practices relative to sacred things, that is to
  say, things set apart and surrounded by
  prohibitions beliefs and practices that unite
  its adherents in a single moral community called
  a church.

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Later Sociologists

• When sociologists say god is mediated to us by
  society they mean more than that others tell us
  what to believe. They mean that the referent is
  social. Many gods have become obsolete, but so
  have those societies.
• Guy Swanson found that belief in god was
  universal in societies with three or more levels
  of sovereign groups.

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E. E. Evans-Pritchard (d.1973)

• Argued that religion of the Azande (witchcraft
  and oracles) must be understood in social context
  and function. (solving disputes)
• Azande faith in witchcraft and oracles was quite
  logical and consistent once some fundamental
  tenets were accepted.
• Loss of faith could not be endured because of its
  social importance.
• Hence they had an elaborate system of
  explanations (or excuses) against disproving
  evidence.
• Besides an alternative system of terms or school
  of thought did not exist.

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Clifford Geertz definition of Religion

• Religion is a system of symbols which acts to
  establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting
  moods and motivations in men by formulating
  conceptions of a general order of existence and
  clothing these conceptions with such an aura of
  factuality that the moods and motivations seem
  uniquely realistic.
• Culture is also a system of symbols, So religion
  is a form of culture. And one the most important
  symbols is God.

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Geertz Comment on Culture and the role of
Anthropologist

• Geertz followed Weber when he wrote that man is
  an animal suspended in webs of significance he
  himself has spun and the analysis of it must be
  therefore not an experimental science in search
  of law but an interpretive one in search of
  meaning.
• The anthropologist must be both empirically
  rigorous and a savvy interpreter, akin to a
  psychoanalyst.
• In 1972 he wrote that cultural analysis is (or
  should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the
  guesses and drawing explanatory conclusions from
  the better guesses.

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Looking at the Human Sciences we have seen

• Psychologists discussing the way God can be
  used to deal with problems of self integration
  and depth psychology.
• Sociologists saying God is society writ large.
• Anthropologists saying God is a protected
  concept because it is used to support culture of
  which it is a part.
• I am saying God (as the horizon of being) is that
  with which we deal in these sciences.

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God as Kinsman, Father, Spouse (I.e.
Significant Other) 4

• Lev. 2525, Num. 58, Ruth, Psa. 19, Isa.43, 49,
  etc.
• There are certain responsibilities that kinsmen
  have and God assumes these responsibilities and
  demands them of us.
• Hosea
• God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute as a
  metaphor of His relation to Israel.
• In the New Testament we are the Bride of Christ.
• Also common in Christian mystics.
• Common in Bhakti poetry, Islamic
  mysticism.p.130f

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God seems to have changed his mind about the
Vietnam war nowadays you hardly talk to anyone
who favors it.

• This quote (attributed to a lay preacher in
  California) is from Time or Newsweek from the
  late 1960s commenting on the growing opposition
  to the war.
• It is a beautiful example of Biblical parallelism
  in which the same thing is said twice with
  different words.
• The implication is that for the preacher, God
  the people that he is talking to, i.e. his
  significant others.

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How far is it from seeing God as a father, a
spouse, or a kinsman to seeing our significant
others as part of God?
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God within us 1
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Karen Armstrong writes that after the Romans
destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, the Rabbis
produced a major insight (In Mishnah and two
Talmuds).

• God had, as it were, adapted himself to each
  person according to the comprehension of each.
  As one Rabbi put it, God does not come to man
  oppressively but commensurately with a mans
  power of receiving him. This very important
  rabbinic insight meant that God could not be
  described in a formula as though he were the same
  for everybody he was essentially a subjective
  experience. Each individual would experience the
  reality of God in a different way to answer the
  needs of his or her own particular temperament.
  Each one of the prophets had experienced God
  differently, the rabbis insisted, because his
  personality had influenced his conception of the
  divine. We shall see that other monotheists
  would develop a very similar notion. To this
  day, theological ideas about God are very private
  matters in Judaism and are not enforced by the
  establishment. p. 74

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In mainline Christianity

• The Christian Gnostic tradition was effectively
  banned during the time of Constantine. But
  Christian mysticism survived.
• Augustine found God by looking within his own
  psyche. He even found models of the trinity in
  his mental capacities which he took to be part of
  the image of God within himself. Now we might
  say that Augustine psychoanalyzed himself in his
  autobiography.
• In reaction to the Protestant Reformation,
  Ignatius Loyola(1491-1556) developed his
  spiritual exercises which are a crash course in
  mysticism and are still used by some Catholics
  and Anglicans as an alternative to
  psychotherapy. p. 284

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Islamic Sufism

• Sufism is the internal aspect of Islam.
  (mystical)
• Many are quoted saying things like I am God!,
  The Father and I are one!, I am the Truth!
• Al-Junayd (d.910) taught a Muslim could be
  reunited with his creator. It would be the end
  of separation and sadness, a reunion with a
  deeper self that was also the self that he or she
  was meant to be. God was not a separate external
  reality and judge but somehow one with the ground
  of each persons being.p.227

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Islamic Sufism (continued)

• For the mystic the revelation is an event that
  happens within his own soul. We have seen,
  however, that during the eleventh century, Muslim
  philosophers such as Ibn Sina and al-Ghazali
  himself had found that objective accounts of God
  were unsatisfactory and had turned toward
  mysticism. Al-Ghazali had made Sufism acceptable
  to the establishment and had shown that it was
  the most authentic form of Muslim spirituality.
  During the twelfth century the Iranian
  philosopher Yahya Suhrawardi and the Spanish-born
  Muid ad-Din ibn al-Arabi linked Islamic Falsafah
  indissolubly with mysticism and made the God
  experienced by the Sufis normative in many parts
  of the Islamic empire. p.229f
• Several Islamic mystics developed techniques
  similar to modern psychoanalytic techniques.

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How far is it from saying that each man
experiences God differently depending on the
inner workings of his own mind to saying that
part of what one experiences in experiencing God
is the deep and inner workings of his own mind?
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God is immanent in the Community 3

• After the destruction of the temple, the
  Israelites were encouraged by their Rabbis to see
  themselves as a united community with one body
  and one soul. The community was the new Temple,
  enshrining the immanent God thus when they
  entered the synagogue and recited the Schema in
  perfect unison with devotion, with one voice,
  one mind and one tone, God was present among
  them. The higher union of God and Israel could
  only exist when the lower union of Israelite with
  Israelite was complete constantly, the Rabbis
  told them that when a group of Jews studied the
  Torah together, the Shekinah sat among them. p.
  76

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The mystical Body of Christ

• Christians also understood that wherever two or
  three are gathered together in my name, there am
  I.
• Augustine said "Let us rejoice then and give
  thanks that we have become not only Christians,
  but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp,
  brethren, God's grace toward us? Marvel and
  rejoice we have become Christ.
• Both Catholics and Protestants have understood
  the Church to be the Body of Christ.

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How far is it from saying that God is immanent in
the community to saying that a part of the
perception of God is the perception of the
community or society?
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God and our environment 2

• God is understood to have created and sustained
  all that is. All that is, comes from Him and is
  therefore good.
• The stoics (The universe itself is God.)
  Neo-Platonists and Pythagoreans all understood
  the world to be some sort of emanation from the
  divine.
• The logos is present in all that is.

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God and our environment

• Al-Ghazali (d.1111) said that everything we see
  or experience is the Face of God. Nothing else
  truly exists. p.190
• Isaac Newton suggested that we exist in Gods
  sensorium along with everything we experience.
• Spinoza and Leibniz were pantheists.
• Tillich said God is the ground of being (of
  everything).

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How far is it from saying that all that we can
see is God or the Face of God to saying God (at
least in part) is all that we can see? I.e.
Our physical and biological environment is part
of God.
67
God and Culture are linked 5

• Moses, Jesus, Muhammad split our calendars and
  inaugurated cultures.
• Armstrong points out that as the Western Roman
  empire began to fall, the Christian concept of
  God became darker and more defensive.p.123
• At the fall of Constantinople and the start of
  the Renaissance all the major monotheisms were
  experiencing change. By the end of the sixteenth
  century, the West was about to create an entirely
  different type of culture. It was, therefore, a
  time of transition and, as such, characterized by
  anxiety as well as achievement. This was evident
  in the Western conception of God at this time.
  p. 257
• This is even more evident in Calvinism then in
  Lutheranism. cf. pp. 279f cf. Max Weber, The
  Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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Muhammad and Islamic Culture

• Before Muhammad Arabic culture was tribal,
  polytheistic, individualistic, brutal, and
  valuing wealth, power, and fame.
• Muhammad knew that monotheism was inimical to
  tribalism a single deity would integrate
  society as well as the individual. p. 149
• Armstrong points out that the pillars of Islam
  consciously create a new culture. In practical
  terms, islam meant that Muslims had a duty to
  create a just, equitable society where the poor
  and vulnerable are treated decently. The early
  message of the Koran is simple it is wrong to
  stockpile wealth and to build a private fortune,
  and good to share the wealth of society fairly by
  giving a regular proportion of ones wealth to the
  poor. pp.142ff

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How far is it from saying that a new vision of
God produces a new culture to saying that culture
is part of the vision of God.
70
Aeschylus (525-456 BC) quote

• He who learns must sufferAnd even in our
  sleep pain that cannot forgetFalls drop by drop
  upon the heart,And in our own despite, against
  our will,Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace
  of God.

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How far is it from saying that the prophet or
mystic has a direct, intuitive knowledge of God,
which is derived more from the imagination than
from the intellect, to saying that the prophet
imagines a construment of God or imaginatively
utilizes the God symbol?