"You Can't Disprove Religion": Three Counter-Examples

"You can't disprove religion."

I'm seeing this trope a lot these days. "You can't disprove religion. At least -- not my religion."

"Well, of course," the trope continues, "many outdated religious beliefs -- young-earth creationism, the universe revolving around the earth, the sun being drawn across the sky by Apollo's chariot -- have been shown by science to be mistaken. But modern progressive and moderate beliefs -- these, you can't disprove with science. These are simply matters of faith: things people reasonably choose to believe, based on their personal life experience."

Then there's the corollary to this trope: "Therefore, atheism is just as much a matter of faith as religion. And atheists who think atheism is better supported by evidence are just as dogmatic and close-minded as religious believers."

The usual atheist reply to this is to cry, "That's the God of the Gaps! Whatever phenomenon isn't currently explained by science, that's where you stick your God! What kind of sense does that make? Why should any given unexplained phenomenon be best explained by religion? Has there ever been a gap in our knowledge that's eventually been shown to be filled by God?"

Which is a pretty good reply, and one I make a lot myself. But today, I want to say something else.

Today, I want to point out that this is simply not the case.

The fact is that many modern progressive and moderate religions do make claims about the observable world. And many of those claims are unsupported by science... and, in fact, are in direct contradiction of it.

I want to talk today about three specific religious beliefs. Not obscure cults or rigid fundamentalist dogmas; not young-earth creationism, or the doctrine that communion wafers literally and physically transform into the human flesh of Christ somewhere in the digestive tract, or the belief that the human mind has been taken over by space aliens. I want to talk about three widely held beliefs of modern progressive and moderate believers: beliefs held by intelligent and educated believers who respect science and don't think religion should contradict it.

And I want to point out that even these beliefs are in direct contradiction of the vast preponderance of available evidence... almost as much as the obscure cults and the rigid fundamentalist dogma.

So let's go! Today's beliefs on the chopping block are:

1: Evolution guided by God.

Also known as "theistic evolution." Among progressive and moderate believers, this is an extremely common position on evolution. They readily (and rightly) dismiss the claims of young-earth creationists that humanity and all the universe were created in one swell foop 6,000 years ago. They dismiss these claims as utterly contradicted by the evidence. Instead, they say that evolution proceeds exactly as the biologists say it does... but this process is guided by God, to bring humanity and the vast variety of life into being.

A belief that is almost as thoroughly contradicted by the evidence as young-earth creationism is.

Nowhere in anatomy, nowhere in genetics, nowhere in the fossil record or the geological record or any of the physical records of evolution, is there even the slightest piece of evidence for divine intervention.

Quite the contrary. If there had been a divine hand tinkering with the process, we would expect evolution to have proceeded radically differently than it has. We would expect to see, among the changes in anatomy from generation to generation, at least an occasional instance of the structure being tweaked in non-gradual ways. We would expect to see -- oh, say, just for a random example -- human knees and backs better designed for bipedal animals than quadrupeds. (She said bitterly, putting an ice pack on her bad knee.) We would expect to see the blind spot in the human eye done away with, perhaps replaced with the octopus design that doesn't have a blind spot. We would expect to see the vagus nerve re-routed so it doesn't wander all over hell and gone before getting where it's going. We would expect to see a major shift in the risk-benefit analysis that's wired into our brains, one that better suits a 70-year life expectancy than a 35-year one. We would expect to see... I could go on, and on, and on.

And it's not just humans. We'd expect to see whales with gills, pandas with real thumbs, ostriches without those stupid useless wings.

We don't see any of this.

What we see instead is exactly what we would expect to see if evolution proceeded entirely as a natural, physical process. We see "designs" of living things that are flawed and inefficient and just plain goofy: "designs" that exist for no earthly reason except the slow incrementalism that's an inherent part of the physical process of evolution. We see anatomical adaptations severely constrained by the fact that each generation can only be a slight modification on the previous generation, with no sudden jumps to a different basic version. We see anatomical adaptations severely constrained by the fact that each new version has to be an improvement on the previous version (or at least, not a deterioration from it). We see a vast preponderance of evidence showing that evolution proceeds very slowly, very gradually, with the anatomy of each generation being only slightly altered (if at all) from that of the previous generation.

And that isn't how things designed by a conscious designer, or even things tinkered with by a conscious designer, work.

Even when a designer is stuck with the outlines of a previous design, they can still make significant, non-incremental changes. They can tear out the cabinets and replace them with windows, and move the stove to the other side of the room where the fridge is now. They're not stuck with moving the stove one inch at a time, once every week or year or twenty years. And they're not stuck with a system in which every inch that the stove moves has to be an improvement on the previous inch. They're not stuck with a system where, if the stove has been moving across the floor in a series of incremental improvements, it's going to have to stop if it starts blocking the door... because blocking the door is a serious disadvantage.

And if a designer is omnipotent, they're not even stuck with the outlines of a previous design. They're not stuck with anything at all. Why on earth would an all-powerful and benevolent god, a god who's capable of magically altering DNA, bring life into being by the slow, cruel, violent, inefficient, tacked- together- with- duct- tape process of evolution in the first place?

Now, it's true that we do see some evidence for what are sometimes called "jumps" in the fossil record: evidence that evolutionary changes sometimes happen very slowly, and sometimes happen more rapidly. (It's a controversial position, but it is one held by some respected evolutionary biologists.) And some believers in theistic evolution leap onto this hypothesis and hang on like it's the last helicopter out of Saigon.

But the "rapid jumps" thing is very misleading. "Rapid," in evolutionary terms, means "taking place over a few hundred years instead of a few thousand" (or "a few thousand years instead of a few hundred thousand.") And as recent research has repeatedly shown, evolution can take place surprisingly rapidly, in a matter of decades... and still be an entirely natural process of small changes, incremental alterations in each generation from the previous one. Exactly as we would expect if evolution were an entirely natural, physical process of descent with modification. So even if this "rapid jumps" (or "punctuated equilibrium") hypothesis is true, it still doesn't point to theistic evolution. Not even a little bit.

Again: There is not the slightest bit of evidence supporting the idea of evolution guided by God. And there is a significant body of evidence that strongly suggests the contrary.

More:
Stupid Design: Rube Goldberg Brains and the Argument for Evolution

2: An immaterial soul that animates human consciousness.

I will acknowledge freely: We don't yet understand consciousness very well. The sciences of neurology and neuropsychology are very much in their infancy, and the basic questions of what exactly consciousness is, and where exactly it comes from, and how exactly it works, are, as of yet, largely unanswered.

But research is happening. The foundations for our understanding of consciousness are beginning to be laid. There are a few things that we do know about consciousness.

And among the things we know is that, whatever consciousness is, it seems to be an entirely biological process. A massive body of evidence points to this conclusion.

When we make physical changes to the brain, it changes consciousness. Drugs, injury, surgery, sensory deprivation, electrical current, magnetic fields, medication, illness, exercise -- all these things change our consciousness. Sometimes drastically. Sometimes rendering an entire personality unrecognizable. Even very small changes to the brain can result in massive changes to consciousness... both temporary and permanent.

This works vice versa as well. Magnetic resonance imagery has shown that, when people think different thoughts, different parts of their brains light up with activity. Changes in thought show up as changes in the brain.... just as changes in the brain show up as changes in thought.

And, of course, we have the drastic change in consciousness created by the very drastic change in the physical brain known as "death."

All the available evidence points to the conclusion that, when the brain dies, consciousness disappears. (And by "when the brain dies," I don't mean, "when the brain is temporarily deprived of oxygen for a short time," a.k.a. "near death experiences." I mean when the brain dies, permanently.) The belief that consciousness survives death has probably been researched more than any other supernatural hypothesis -- nobody, not even scientists, wants death to be permanent -- and it has never, ever been substantiated. Reports of it abound... but when carefully examined, using good, rigorous scientific methodology, these reports fall apart like a house of cards.

Everything we understand about consciousness points to it being a physical, biological process. Physical changes cause observable effects. When we see that in any other phenomenon, we assume that what's going on is physical cause and effect. We have no reason to think that anything else is going on with the phenomenon of consciousness.

And there is not a single scrap of good evidence supporting the hypothesis that consciousness is even partly a supernatural phenomenon. There are many gaps in our understanding of consciousness -- that's a massive understatement -- but there is not one piece of solid, rigorously gathered evidence suggesting that any of those gaps can and should be filled with the hypothesis of an immaterial soul. There's not even a good, testable theory explaining how this immaterial soul is supposed to interact with the physical brain. All there is to support this belief is a personal intuitive feeling on the part of believers that the soul has to be non-physical because, well, it just seems like that... plus thousands of years of other believers with a similar intuitive feeling, who have told it to one another, and taught it to their followers, and made up elaborate rationalizations for it, and written it into their holy texts.

Again: There is not the slightest bit of evidence supporting the idea of an immaterial soul that animates human consciousness. And there is a significant body of evidence that strongly suggests the contrary.

More:
Why I Don't Believe in the Soul

3: A sentient universe.

You might ask why I'm including this particular belief in my Big Three Targets. You might wonder why, among all the widely held religious beliefs in the world today, I'm aiming my sights at this New Age/ Neo-Pagan/ Wiccan belief in a World-Soul.

My answer: I live in Northern California. 'Nuff said.

So that's why I want to debunk this belief. And I'm pretty much going to repeat what I said in #2 above:

We don't yet understand what consciousness is. But we do know that, whatever it is, it seems to be a biological product of the brain.

And the universe does not have a brain.

The universe does not have a physical structure capable of supporting consciousness. The universe does not have neurons, dendrites, ganglia. The universe has stars, and planets, and other astronomical bodies, separated by unimaginably vast regions of empty space.

And stars and planets and so on do not behave like neurons and dendrites and so on. They behave like stars and planets. They behave like objects that, as nifty as they are, are not alive, by any useful definition of the word "life."

If consciousness is a biological process -- as an overwhelming body of evidence suggests, see #2 above -- then the universe, not being a biological entity, cannot possibly be conscious. To say that it is would mean radically redefining what we mean by "conscious." And we have no reason to do so... other than a wishful desire to think of the universe as sentient.

Consciousness has, for a long time, been a mysterious and utterly ineffable phenomenon. So, before Darwin, was the tremendous variety and mind-boggling complexity of life. And like the variety and complexity of life, consciousness is no longer ineffable. It is being effed. The unexplainable is being explained. And it is being explained as a biological phenomenon -- as physical cause and effect.

Again: There is not the slightest bit of evidence supporting the idea of a sentient universe. And there is a significant body of evidence that strongly suggests the contrary.

More:
Why I Don't Believe in the Soul (again)

***

Now. I can hear the chorus already. "How can you prove that? You don't know that with absolute certainty! God could be intervening in evolution -- just in ways that are indistinguishable from natural selection! There could be some sort of immaterial soul interacting with the biological process of consciousness, in ways we don't yet perceive! There could be some weird form of consciousness that we don't understand, one that's generated by stars and planets and lifeless astronomical bodies! You can't prove with absolute certainty that there isn't! Your non-belief is just an article of faith!"

My answer:

No. We can't prove that with 100% certainty.

But neither can we prove with 100% certainty that the universe wasn't created 6,000 years ago, by a god who deliberately planted the fossil record and the genetic record and the geological record and the laws of atomic decay, all to test our faith. (Or all of which was planted by Satan, to trick us and tempt us into disbelief.) We can't prove with 100% certainty that communion wafers don't turn into Christ's physical body on contact with the human digestive system. Hell, we can't prove with 100% certainty that the earth goes around the sun, and that all our senses and logical abilities haven't been fooled by some trickster god into thinking that it does.

And it doesn't matter. As I've said many times: 100% unshakeable certainty is not the objective here. Reasonable plausibility, supported by carefully gathered and rigorously tested positive evidence, is the objective. And there is no reason to apply the "Reasonable plausibility supported by evidence" standard to the belief in young-earth creationism... and still apply the "If you can't disprove it with 100% certainty, then it's still reasonable for me to believe it" standard to the beliefs in theistic evolution, and an immaterial soul, and a sentient universe.

If you're going to accept that young-earth creationism has been conclusively disproven by a mountain of scientific evidence, even though we acknowledge a .00001% hypothetical possibility that it might be true... then, if you're going to be consistent, you have to apply that same standard, that same willingness to accept the reasonable conclusions of science about which ideas are and are not plausible, to all religious beliefs.

Including your own.

Especially your own.

Not everything is a matter of opinion or perspective. Not everything can turn into something completely different if you just look at it differently. Some things are either true or not true. It is not true that the universe was created 6,000 years ago. It is not true that the sun goes around the earth. And it is not true that evolution is shaped by the hand of God, or that consciousness is animated by an immaterial soul, or that the universe is sentient.

These things aren't true for exactly the same reason that young-earth creationism isn't true. They aren't true because the evidence simply doesn't support them. They aren't true because the evidence actively contradicts them.

If you're going to be a moderate or progressive religious believer; if you're going to be a religious believer who respects and supports science instead of treating it as the enemy; if you're going to be a religious believer who wants their beliefs to at least not be directly contradictory with the available scientific evidence... then you need to be willing to consider the possibility that your own beliefs are every bit as contradicted by that evidence as the beliefs of the fundamentalist crazies.

And if the answer is "yup, that belief seems to be contradicted by the evidence"... then you need to be willing to let go of that belief.

Comments

[Maria]

What utter BS!

[DSimon]

Ben, when we're talking about consciousness, we are referring both to the capacity for awareness and to the capacity for perception. Both of them are thoroughly dependent upon the proper functioning of the brain, according to every piece of good evidence we've got.

What is the energy that makes a tiny seed grow into a big tree?

The Sun (though perhaps indirectly).

What is the force that perfectly organises the growth of a few cells from an egg and sperm into a vast human organism?

It's not a force, it's a process called ontogeny.

Do you really think that you will ever be able to understand that force, that energy, by thinking about it?!

Yes, if that thinking is supplemented by evidence and experimentation. Do you think you'll be able to understand them by unquestioningly following vaguely defined feelings?

[Bruce Gorton]

What is the energy that makes a tiny seed grow into a big tree?

Photosynthesis. I learned about it when I was about ten.

And I am from a third world country.

You can feel embarrassed now.

[Bruce Gorton]

Do you really think that you will ever be able to understand that force, that energy, by thinking about it?!

Well it sure as heck beats spouting deepities and associated bullshit about how mysterious it all is.

Trying to figure things out put a man on the moon, wiped out polio and gave you the ability to type tripe online.

Sitting around spouting deepities and associated bullshit gave us the dark ages.

The more I look at it, the more I can't tell if Ben's post is a parody or real - Poe anyone?

[Greta Christina]

The emotional mind is not in the brain, it's in the heart.

Um...

You do understand that the heart is a muscle, don't you? That it pumps blood? That it is not capable of supporting or experiencing emotion or consciousness?

The only mind that is in the brain is the neo-cortex mind, which deals with language, analysis, and judgement.

This is simply and flatly not true. There is an OVERWHELMING body of evidence showing that emotional and creative experiences and such are generated in the brain. Changes in the brain affect people's emotional and creative lives -- often drastically. (Read some Oliver Sacks to find out more about this.) Changes to the brain can make people unable to emotionally connect with the people they once loved; it can make people more musically creative essentially overnight; etc. Using magnetic resonance imagery, we can see that brain functioning looks different when people are (for instance) listening to music or thinking about someone they love than when they're listening to something other than music or thinking about logical puzzles. (Brain functions even look different depending on which music people are listening to.)

What is the energy that makes a tiny seed grow into a big tree? What is the force that perfectly organises the growth of a few cells from an egg and sperm into a vast human organism? Do you really think that you will ever be able to understand that force, that energy, by thinking about it?!

Other people have handled this one beautifully, so I'm not going to, except to reiterate: Actually, we do understand these forces pretty well. We're understanding them more and more every day. And we are understanding them, not by making up stories that we find pleasant, but by rigorously testing our ideas to see if they correspond with reality.

Consciousness may USE the brain, but it certainly does not depend on the brain.

And I ask yet again: What evidence do you have for this?

There is, as I keep saying, an overwhelming body of good, solid, carefully- gathered, rigorously tested, replicated, peer-reviewed evidence to support the hypothesis that consciousness is a biological product of the brain. Do you have any solid evidence at all supporting your view that consciousness is not material? Or are you just going to keep asserting this belief over and over again, without any evidence to back it up?

You've written on your blog that you think truth is entirely subjective and that truth is only what you experience. You are certainly entitled to that opinion. But it is intellectually dishonest to conclude that truth is entirely subjective... and then accuse other people of not understanding it correctly. If you don't care whether the things you believe are true; if you're more interested in your personal experience of reality than you are in the vastness of reality itself -- and if you're not willing to discard your beliefs when an overwhelming body of evidence contradicts them -- then on what basis are you accusing atheists of "missing out" and being closed off to reality?

[Harold]

Greta
You say
“An overwhelming body of evidence from the fields of neurology and neuropsychology strongly suggest that, whatever consciousness is, it is a biological product of the brain.”

Once again I would distinguish between conscious awareness and the brain functions of thought perception personality etc. These references you cite are not describing consciousness or the cause of awareness, but the effects of consciousness within the brain.
In my first post I described the case of a young lady whos heart stopped in the operating theatre after an horrific car accident. Her consciousness left her body and floated out of the operating theatre. Eventually she saw her relatives in the waiting room in another area of the Hospital. She was able to describe a conversation which took place between her Mother and Grandnother, in which the Grandmother who was a non smoker, asked the Mother for a cigarette. The Mother confirmed this conversation did in fact take place just as her daughter described. She went on to say there was no way her daughter could have known this unless she was actually there . This was reported in an episode of the program “I Survived” called “Death and Back” which aired on the Biography channel. The reason I repeat this anecdote is because it shows that consciousness may exist independently of the brain. This story cannot be explained away by an hallucination caused by lack of oxygen. If you watch this episode you may judge for yourself. There are numerous other documented examples where consciousness existed independently of the physical body http://www.victorzammit.com/book/chapter07.html These stories cannot be refuted on the grounds that there is no scientifically acceptable explanation for them. I include a short extract from the website for your convenience. There is also a detailed Bibliography provided.

The consistency of OBEs

Dr Dean Sheils analyzed over a thousand studies of OBEs in seventy non-Western cultures. His conclusive results showed that whereas it was expected that there would be significant variation in the experience there was absolute consistency. Dr Sheils claimed that the results were so universal that the phenomenon had to be genuine (Lazarus 1993: 167).

Many of the literary giants of this century publicly stated that they had an OBE: Ernest Hemingway; Tolstoy; Dostoevsky; Tennyson; Edgar Alan Poe; D H Lawrence; Virginia Woolf (Lazarus 1993:166).

Seven hundred cases

A most highly credible scientist, Dr Robert Crookall, analyzed over seven hundred reports of OBEs. He found that 81% of those who had experienced them had a firm conviction of life after death owing to their personal experience. What astounded Crookall, a meticulous scientist, was the consistency of the reports of OBEs coming from all over the world with near death experiences and with the communications coming from high level mediums (Crookall 1970).

[Greta Christina]

Her consciousness left her body and floated out of the operating theatre.

Sigh.

No, it didn't. She had an altered state of consciousness, in which it seemed as if her consciousness left her body and floated out of the operating theatre.

And the fact that the mother thought there was no way her daughter could have known about this supposed conversation with the dead grandmother unless she was actually there, doesn't mean this was actually the case. People are often not good at judging how probable events are -- especially when they're highly biased to believe something (as a person certainly would be biased towards thinking her mother's soul was still alive). It's entirely possible that the mother told her daughter about this conversation and forgot about it, or that her memory was otherwise faulty. Human memory is highly unreliable.

I am not disputing that many people have unusual states of altered consciousness when they're near death. I am simply disputing the interpretation that these experiences provide any sort of evidence of an immaterial consciousness. You can say all you want to that material explanations can't explain these phenomena... but the fact is that they can and do. Every single time supposedly supernatural experiences (such as NDEs and OBEs) have been subjected to careful, rigorous, double-blind, placebo- controlled testing to screen out bias and wishful thinking, they have fallen apart. Check out the Center for Skeptical Inquiry and the Skeptical Inquirer websites for more information.

[DSimon]

Harold, a belief in an afterlife is a common theme among many cultures. A consistency of OBEs to reflect that common theme isn't an indication that an afterlife actually exists, any more than the fact that UFO sightings became more popular at around the time science fiction started getting popular indicates that aliens started visiting at around that time.

[DSimon]

Greta, isn't it a little odd (and somewhat depressing) that this exact same discussion appears to be happening on Facebook, at the same time? I notice that you've even cut & pasted some of your response text; I don't blame you, when the questions are almost exactly the same.

[themann1086]

DSimon,

I really enjoyed the comparison between modern day reports of UFO abductions and ancient reports of late-night demonic visits that, iirc Carl Sagan explored at some length in Demon Haunted World.

Anyone actually interested in learning about consciousness should check out Dennett's works on the subject: Consciousness Explained, Elbow Room, and Freedom Evolves. The latter is the most recent and so has the most up-to-date, but is technically more about "free will" and "determinism" and so on than it is about consciousness, but it still does an excellent job explaining the massive problems with dualism.

[llewelly]

Ben Ralston | June 01, 2010 at 04:46 AM:

First of all, let's differentiate between two separate meanings of the one word: 'consciousness' - one is our own sense of consciousness (like being 'awake') and the other is consciousness as the underlying fabric of existence.

Re-defining "consciousness" to be "the underlying fabric of existence" is just disingenuous Humpty-Dumptyism. It may make you feel smart, but it damages your ability to communicate with others, and it damages your ability to analyze your own ideas. It's not good for you.

What is the energy that makes a tiny seed grow into a big tree?

WTF?? Have you never been outside? Get out, during the daytime, when it's not overcast, and look up, and tell me what you see in the sky. Eighty-seven thousand trillion - that's 87,000,000,000,000,000 watts, or 117,000,000,000,000 horsepower of solar power reaches the Earth's surface (not including what is reflected or absorbed by th atmosphere). That's a huge amount of power. Multiply that by time and you have energy. That's where the energy to turn a tiny seed into a big tree comes from.

What sort of horrible cube-farm slavery are you subject to that you do not know this?

What is the force that perfectly organises the growth of a few cells from an egg and sperm into a vast human organism?

It's not a force. It's the result of billions of years of evolution. And it's a long, long way from perfect. In the first place, many sperm are so flawed they cannot possibly form a healthy zygote when combined with a healthy egg. In the next place, close to 80% of zygotes are aborted and flushed out during the first month of gestation, usually due to developmental defects. Finally - most living people have a few minor developmental defects, and a minority have serious developmental defects.

Please get a good book on evolutionary development - say, Sean Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful, or Freaks by Mark S. Blumberg, and read it.

Consciousness may USE the brain, but it certainly does not depend on the brain.

Stroke, brain trauma, toxins, and other sources of damge to brain tissue are known to alter (or even eliminate) consciousness. Therefor, consciousness does depend on the brain.

The emotional mind is not in the brain, it's in the heart. The sexual mind is not in the brain, it's in the pelvis. The body-mind is not in the brain, it's in the abdomen

Take out the brain and all those other minds stop working. Everyone one of them depends on the brain. (And, of course, the brain depends on other organs.)

Consciousness is the fuel that drives all of them, and it is UNIVERSAL.

There's no evidence that a rock is conscious.

[themann1086]

What is the energy that makes a tiny seed grow into a big tree?

Hah, this reminded me of this FSTDT classic:

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.

[Maria]

*LOL*, themann :-D

Not to mention the classic from Atheist Experience. Why don't people die when the sun go down...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcOgTVwjzkc

[Locutus7]

Great blog and thread.

[Locutus7]

New-agers seem awfully fond of the trope "The Wisdom of the Ancients." That millenia ago, tribal primitives in loincloths were more knowledgeable than us about consciousness, cosmology, and the human condition.

And that precious wisdom is lost to all but a very few today, and those few usually appear on Oprah to hawk their books.

It is almost like new-agers believe that human knowledge works backwards; that we were really smart and over the milenia have become less wise, less knowledgeable.

Okay, after watching Fox news, I'm thinking maybe they are on to something.

[DA]

Locutus, I know exactly what you mean. I think the reason might be a little less crazy though; first, it's a very common idea, across cultures, to believe in degeneration of society. You read stuff from like, any historical period in any civilization, and you are always bombarded with crap about how good things USED to be. The Greco-Roman civilizations and ancient Chinese were both particularly bad about it. Also, conversely, the true men (and women, but unfortunately we mostly know the men) of genius in antquity were really incredible. We simply don't have anyone today who can make the profound leaps of intuitition and world-shaking discoveries that occured in the ancient world, or people with really advanced moral vision that become household names. Anyone with a three digit IQ and a High School Education understands the world better than Epicurus ever could have, but holy shit, what an amazing mind!

[Locutus7]

I agree, DA. My point would be that, Yes, there were some geniuses such as Aristotle and Epicurus, etc., but we know about them and their thinking, AND it has been incorporated into our corpus of knowledge (unfortunately, even the flawed parts).

The thrust of the new age movement, however, seems to be that there are ancients with knowledge that is both profound and unknown to society, and for rather large sums of money you, too, can join the Rosicrucians or mind-meld with the Atlanteans and gain this secret wisdom.

[Gaffster]

Hmmm... interesting. I guess I see things a little different, as a person of faith. I'm a Christian, maybe even a progressive one, but:

1: Evolution guided by God.
I don't believe this.

2: An immaterial soul that animates human consciousness.
I don't believe this.

3: A sentient universe.
I don't believe this.

I realize I'm a minority of sorts: a non-theistic Christian. But, with 2.1 billion Christians, it's too easy to reduce them all to a set list of propositions.

[Nathanael]

"if it wasn't reasonable of me to insist that I was right if someone else claimed that 2 + 2 = 5 and I know it's 4? She thought it would be wrong of me to do that, because no matter how right I am (and she admitted I was) it's TRUE FOR THEM!"

Heh. My response to THAT one would be "I'd sure be able to get a lot of money out of them if they believed that. If I cared about them wouldn't I want them to stop being a sucker?"

That often sidetracks the conversation into whether insane religious beliefs make you a sucker, which I never was any good at, but Greta Christina has an entire post about how they *do*.

[Caitlin]

Great post, Greta! It was a pleasure to read.