Friday, April 27, 2007

What happens in the mind of a non-believer?

Many psychologists believe that the human mind inherently behaves under the preconceived idea that there is an internal audience. Most people behave in private under the assumption that there are spirits or angels watching their every move, and every thought is believed by many to be spoken clearly in thought so as to be heard by God, angels, ancestral spirits, or aliens, in a private conversation called a prayer.

One can easily imagine yelling or whispering in thought, applying anthropomorphisms to their imagined self. Most people apply imaginary physical rules on their minds where none exist in reality, in effect, chaining themselves down to an imaginary floor, under intense imaginary gravity.

The internal audience that is widely accepted among psychologists is a product of generations of forced belief in omnipresent intelligent deities that eavesdrop on their lives. Most will take comfort in their government listening to their private conversations and exclaim “I have nothing to hide.”

What happens when one stops believing in such nonsense? The operational structure of thought changes entirely.

The thought processes that force internal decisions to be articulated in imaginary voices begins to fade and thinking becomes even faster than before. Symbols in the mind like so many roadblocks fade away. Soon you will be able to read without thinking of a voice speaking each word. I call it “losing the mental narrator.”

Some believe they never had a mental narrator in their head slowing down their reading skills. Once they start on the road to non-belief, they begin to realize it was there all along.

External behaviors change. The anthropomorphisms that are often attached to inanimate objects lose their luster. Aggression aimed at doors, walls, and objects underfoot soon fades away. Shaking one’s fists, while looking up at the ceiling, becomes pointless.

Cursing becomes useless as well, especially when there’s nobody around to empathize or be shocked. Energy that was once thought of as anger becomes proactive and productive.

The mind is released like birds to the sky. The internal psychological environment becomes flexible and more efficient. You begin to see things more clearly than ever before and you find that you can do more to change your world for the better.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Intelligent Design: The “Stargate” Hypothesis

Design requires intelligence. Intelligence requires life, therefore life designed can only be created by other life. Life denotes non-deity status. Therefore no gods exist.

The Stargate Hypothesis is based on the plot of the movie and the subsequent television series. Aliens enslaved early humans and kept them under control simply by bedazzling them with their technology.

This bedazzlement was easy enough to accomplish by the Spanish Conquistadors because the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, and Continental America were still using stone and bone tools. That, plus the Western European skin tone first impressed the natives because they revered whiteness with mysticism. Perhaps because of the clouds.

The simple association between colors that appear in the sky (rainbows, clouds, etc.) and the colors that clothed the Europeans was easily made at that time. One must consider that bright vivid colors could be seen or chipped from rock, but not actually created through chemistry. There may have been certain herbs that created some color, but nothing like that mastered by the Europeans who had access to the Silk Road trade.

The human mind was developing beyond the point at which nature allowed all other species to develop. The human mind was starving for new information and novel experiences. When a native first saw the sky reflected in a mirror he or she must have imagined that it was a hole instead of a reflection.

One wonders what the natives must have imagined when the Conquistadors used mirrors to direct the sunlight toward them. How often does the image appear in art, of a person holding a spherical object emanating rays of light? Or the image of an eye in the sky surrounded by rays of light?

I imagine that the tops of Egyptian pyramids were polished with gold-leaf, and that perhaps it worked to keep the population under control, at least for a little while. Someone should check to see where the sun’s light might have been reflected if indeed the tops of the pyramid in Giza were polished in such a way.

But to try to bring religion into intelligent design is just sheer stupidity.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Humanity's "Mulligan"

Humanity’s “Mulligan”

There is a significant date in our history when suddenly our brains were capable of articulating the third dimension of our visual perspective. But this is only the tip of the Iceberg. This is a leading indicator of a giant leap forward in our intelligence as a species, and a surge in scientific discovery and creativity that went unrecognized as a symptom of human evolution.

The Renaissance was fought at every turn by the religious elite whose personal enrichment relied on maintaining a dependent population through illiteracy and bearing too many children. As the religious elite lavished themselves with the tithes of the huddled masses, there finally arose out of Feudal Europe, a peasant war that brought about the reformation.

Then there was a sudden surge in creativity which gradually brought about revolutionary discoveries in engineering and science. (Some would say they were re-discoveries due to the destruction of the Ancient Royal Library of Alexandria, which is thought to have fallen victim to the decree of Theophilus in 391 .

The human mind at this point made enormous strides forward in Europe. The Chinese had long since invented the compass, paper and gun powder, but even then their art still depicted visual perspective using symbolic references as a means of distinguishing foreground and background objects.

"The laws and principles of perspective were first clearly described by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) in his Notebooks, where he outlined a suitable course of study for the artists including, as well as perspective, the arrangement of surface muscles, the structure of the eyes of man and animals, and botany. He called perspective 'the bridle and rudder of painting,’…" -- R. L Gregory Eye and Brain: The psychology of seeing. 1973 McGraw-Hill, New York, NY

It is at this point in history that men should have reevaluated the cognitive abilities of the ancient writers, because the ancient writings of divinity were made by men incapable of properly perceiving the world as we do today, and those that could were quickly tortured into submission or killed by the likes of the Spanish Inquisition.

The early Renaissance represents a sudden neurological development in humans that passed unrecognized by historians who only recently began to add Psychology to their equations.

This period also brought about revolutions in music. So sudden was the world introduced to amazing talent in such a brief period, it’s amazing how no one wondered how dim the human senses were for so many thousands of years before the Renaissance, or even the depth of that dimness through the progression backwards through history. Nobody had sense enough to build lenses before the 1500’s.

The ancient writings of basic history and the writings of how we should treat each other must be immediately called into question, because we are using documentation from inadequate primitive thought processes.

Religion was for a primitive species of man.

Using my favorite golf term as a metaphor, humanity does deserve a “Mulligan,” but not religion.