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Untold thinkers have written insights with varying clarity concerning the role and functionality of religion in people.
In my humble opinion all parties get stuck in ever repeating card houses of logic defending their particular conviction thereby completely ignoring the core of the matter. What is religion to more or less objective standards?
The following biological facts, simplified a lot, shed some light on the issue.
There was once a mammal. It needed a lot of little bits of operating systems in order to let all components of its body function properly. Over time they became so numerous that it needed a system to coordinate the other bits . That system became so complex that it was capable to reprogram itself in order to be able to assimilate the ever increasing flow of information. It called itself: conscience.
Objectively impossible to determine if it exists, since conscience itself determines what are the criteria defining conscience.
That conscience, in an attempt to preprogram future acts of the body, starts tell a tale to itself.
A continuous flowchart enabling it by correlating previous events and by means of extrapolation to arrive at a predefined future action.
The conscience calls that tale: reality. Again objectively impossible to determine if it exists, the conscience stipulates what is reality. The one conscience determines the tale in which a supernatural being must exist a reality, the other determines it to be unreal.
In this one can distinguish two different main categories of belief:
First. The true devout believer.
Given the biological fact that belief has a physical origin in a brain structure located somewhere in temple area one can make a good case that belief in its origin/intensity is directly related to a more or less developed structure of the brain.
Accepting this, asking for respect for a religion and it’s rituals is the same as to ask respect because someone can talk, run, eat, defecate.
Discussions involving religions, and their place in society is meaningless, the believer is forced by its brain to believe. Once could compare it with homosexuality . This also finds its origin in the structure of the brain and is therefore futile to try to impose the feeling on a heterosexual, or persuade another to become likewise.
The only difference would be, as the brain structure controlling belief has no preference over one supernatural being for another, that a believer can be made to accept another religion. Whereas a homosexual has not that many options.
Second: The social believer.
The characteristics of this believer are one of educational, peer formed belief. This form of belief is just a concept created by indoctrination and as such is not really ‘felt’ to be true.
This explains why people can become apogees or atheists. An option lacking in the previous category of believers.
We logically have an anthropocentric world view. We assume ourselves to be superior because we believe we are superior. A type of extreme ‘dubito, ergo cogito ergo sum’. Other animals doubt also, take decisions, deceive, tease, play, have feelings of love, hate, joy etc.
Their philosophy of life we do not understand just as little as they understand ours.
But by their standards they sure can feel superior over humans with good reason.
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A while back i wrote a post about the idiocy of the ongoing Fat is Bad craze. You can find it here, http://petrossa.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/the-disease-fat-does-not-exist/ it's too long to post here.
What's interesting are the latest findings from the Erasmus University in the Netherlands:
Genetic Study Shows That Low Body Fat May Not Lower Risk for Heart Disease and Diabetes
Having a lower percentage of body fat may not always lower your risk for heart disease and diabetes, according to a study by an international consortium of investigators, including two scientists from the Institute for Aging Research of Hebrew SeniorLife, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School (HMS).
The Institute researchers, Douglas P. Kiel, M.D., M.P.H., and David Karasik, Ph.D., who are working with the Framingham Heart Study, identified a gene that is linked with having less body fat, but also with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, examples of so-called "metabolic diseases."
"We've uncovered a truly fascinating genetic story and, when we found the effect of this gene, we were very intrigued by the unexpected finding," says Dr. Kiel, a senior scientist at the Institute for Aging Research and a professor of medicine at HMS. "People, particularly men, with a specific form of the gene are both more likely to have lower percent body fat, but also to develop heart disease and type 2 diabetes. In simple terms, it is not only overweight individuals who can be predisposed for these metabolic diseases."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110626145303.htm
Since i said as much in my article 2 years ago i'm mighty chuffed.
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Autism has become popular of late. The rate of diagnosed autism rises fast. If this is due to a better awareness or an actual increase is impossible to determine due to a lack of a baseline. It's unknown what autism rate was so one can't say if it increases in reality, the awareness causes more diagnosed cases or both.
Wholly based on my own speculation i go for the latter but that's immaterial.
What is important is that the description of Autism in the DSM, including DSM V, is incomplete. What it does is describing the symptoms of Autism not the whole thing.
As an High Functioning Autist(Aspergers) myself i can with certainty say that based on my own experiences and those of my peers that Autism is a different state of consciousness which presents the world some symptoms making communication difficult.
This different state of consciousness is obviously hard to describe to someone who doesn't have it. One can just make an effort similar like explaining a color to a born blind person.
It is a world where thought patterns are more linear, more straightforward. Events have no emotional compound obfuscating, complicating the interpretation.
An event gets analyzed on its face value, without interference. Whereas non Autists see the world through the limbic systems filter, coloring the event, Autists in general don't.
This frustrates the limbic system to no end. It wants to be heard. I know it’s there, screaming at me, but its in a soundproof room. Since this system still has functional control over your hormones it can make life pretty nasty for you. Anxiety/fear is one of the predominant expressions of this frustrated entity. This can in serious cases present itself as tantrums, rage. And thats what the world at large sees, an anxious person with no or hardly any emotional interaction.
To me my HFA/AS is a good thing. I see it works for me by freeing me from the shackles of the limbic system.
The medical profession however sees this different, not fully comprehending it, and offers ‘treatments’ designed to make you behave as if you are controlled by the limbic system. More like them.
But i don't want to be like them. I want to be me, i don't have a ‘disorder’. I am different. Not better, not worse. Different.
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We tend to think of ourselves as free autonomous conscious entities. We are human, and that makes us stand out. To my mind this is an oversimplistic view of reality.
As mammals evolved into primates the brain evolved too. But the principle of evolution being that existing systems are being extended, that caused additional brains to spring from the original basic brain, the brainstem, to take up the extra load.
All vertebrates have a brainstem like structure. It is the minimum needed to keep the body going. Nutrition, oxygenation, temperature, movement etc. are regulated by the brainstem.
With the evolution of the mammals a second outcrop started to develop. The limbic system.
The connection between the limbic system and the brainstem is a mostly one way system in the sense that both brains can interact with the body but not with each other. The two brains are fused together at the bottom of the brainstem into the spinal cord. This gives the limbic system corporal control,in conjunction with the more automated brainstem.
It is a much more advanced brain which handles various higher order processes, such as survival tactics. Survival depends on properly recognizing danger, food, procreation opportunities.
This takes advanced planning, decision making, fast responses to stimuli. This brain interacts with its environment, it must be aware of itself and its relation to its environment to do the job properly.
In other words it is conscious at a certain level.
As mammals further developed into social beings, a new outcrop started to form. The neocortex.
This third brain again has mostly one-way connections with the other two brains. It also fuses into the spinal cord giving it further control over corporal functions. The neocortex houses the most advanced processes,it refines all functions of the limbic system and adds the high order intellectual capacity, such grammatical language, self awareness.
In view of the very limited vertical connections between the neocortex and the underlying limbic system, and taken the fact that the limbic system has priority in determining danger/food/procreation in its environment one can see that the neocortex always by necessity reacts after the fact.
The limbic system perceives danger, it prepares the body for the fight/flight response and the neocortex takes this up afterwards due to a complicated interpretative analyses of facial expression (the limbic system has control over that), body stance, muscle tension, heart rate, respiration,hormone levels and lastly visual and auditory clues.
In most cases where immediate action is deemed necessary by the limbic system it performs the required action, leaving the neocortex to figure out why the body landed a blow in someones face.
This gives rise to the thesis that ‘our’ consciousness is just along for the ride. Although ‘we’ can plan and act accordingly, when it comes to real-time environmental interaction its our other consciousness which calls the shots.
This has far reaching consequences for the premise of ‘free will’. Who has the free will, which consciousness we hold accountable. Or do we just hold the one accountable which can make itself heard even though in reality that consciousness actually hasn’t a clue why his body did what it did and has to concoct an explanation itself.
It also places emotions. Emotions are not ‘our’ emotions but the expression of the state of the other consciousness which for lack of further interaction the neocortex also has to determine via interpretative analysis.
Which leaves ofcourse the facility to plan and (re)act based on cognitive functions. One still can decide to do X or Y. Still this decision making process is being manipulated.
To my mind this whole system is best explained with this analogue:
Imagine that our awareness is the flow across the Collector and Emitter of a Transistor. The Base in this analogue is the limbic system, tiny fluctuations can have a big effect on our storyteller.
Thi...
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