Let me clarify that. If I thought that the popular notion of heaven (clouds, harps, streets of gold, eternal happiness) were truly awaiting me after death, I’d be pretty eager to get there. I’ve always wanted wings. It sounds lovely. Well, actually, it sounds a little boring, but if you’re eternally happy, that must not matter. I would love to see my dead friends and relatives again. I wouldn’t miss the living ones too much because I’d know they would show up sooner or later. I might even still be able to see them on Earth. Yep, I’d be ready to go.

Most Christians believe that suicide isn’t allowed (although the Bible is vague on this point), so I might have to wait a while. It this case, I would refuse all medical treatment. I’d probably volunteer to work with infectious patients at a hospital. I don’t think it would take to long to catch something that would kill me if I won’t take antibiotics. Also, I’d move to California. There are more interesting ways to be killed by nature in California than nearly anywhere else I can think of. I’d take up extreme sports, too. I would spend my weekends skydiving, bungee jumping and swimming with sharks.

I would leave it in god’s hands.

If the Bible is to be believed on the subject of heaven, I’d be pretty disappointed when I got there. First of all, I would be a servant.

Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. (REV 7:15 KJV)

It’s a nice neighborhood…

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if [it were] not [so], I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. (JOH 14:2 KJV)

…but all the nice houses probably belong to these guys:

And round about the throne [were] four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold. (REV 4:4 KJV)

I would soon discover that the people in charge are kinda lame.

Blessed [are] the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (MAT 5:3 KJV)

Then I would find out about the crime problem.

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. (MAT 11:12 KJV)

I’d be especially unhappy when the war broke out.

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, (REV 12:7 KJV)

There’s even a rumor going around that heaven isn’t actually eternal.

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. (MAT 24:35 KJV)

All things considered, I agree with Nietzsche.

If it depended on my choice,
I think it would be great
To have a place in Paradise;
Better yet – outside the gate.
       -Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

~I AM~

Here are some good quotes to keep you amused until Sunday.

“A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.”
      -James Feibleman

“The Jews, the Muslims and the Christians, They’ve all got it wrong. The people of the world only divide into two kinds, One sort with brains who hold no religion, The other with religion and no brain.”
      -Abu-al-Ala al-Marri, 10th century Syrian poet

“I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true, for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.”
      -Charles Darwin

“For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways of reason.”
      -Friedrich Nietzsche

“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.”
      -Napoleon Bonaparte

“It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”
      -Mark Twain

“Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.”
      -Thomas Jefferson

~I AM~

October 4, 1993 – Black Hawk Down Incident (Somalia)
         18 dead

June 25, 1996 – US Base in Saudi Arabia
         19 dead

August 7, 1998 – East African Embassies
         220 dead

October 12, 2000 – U.S.S. Cole
         17 dead

September 11, 2001 – World Trade Center
         3,000 dead

December 22, 2001 – Richard Reid (the Shoe Bomber) Captured
         disaster averted

April 11, 2002 – Tunisian Synagogue
         19 dead

October 12, 2002 – Bali Nightclubs
         202 dead

November 28, 2002 – Israeli-Owned Hotel in Kenya
         16 dead

May 12, 2003 – Riyadh Compound
         at least 34 dead

May 16, 2003 – Casablanca (three targets)
         45 dead

December 15, 2003 – Istanbul Synagogues
         at least 23 dead, more than 300 injured

December 20, 2003 – British Consulate and HSBC Bank in Istanbul
         27 dead, over 450 wounded

March 11, 2004 – Madrid Trains
         191 dead, at least 1,800 injured

May 29-30, 2004 – Khobar Siege
         22 dead

Summer 2004 – Beheadings in Iraq
         at least 10 dead

July 7, 2005 – London Transit System
         52 dead, 700 injured

July 21 2005 – London Transit System
         no fatalities

This list is just attacks that have been attributed to Al Qaeda (at least in part). It does not include the independent work of the Abu Nidal Organization, Abu Sayyaf Group, Al-Gama’at al-Islamiya, Armed Islamic Group, Asbat Al-Ansar, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Harakat Mujahideen, Hezbollah, Islamic Army of Aden, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Jamah Islamiyah, Lashkar e Tayyaba, Mujaheddin e Khalq, Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Salafist Group for Call and Combat.

“…slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare to ambush them.” (Quran 9:5)

~I AM~

“OK. I moved — well after. I really can’t remember, judge, whether I had her tie him up or she tie him up. Anyway, I moved — basically I moved her to another bedroom, and he was already secure there by the bed. I tied his feet to the bedpost so he couldn’t run. I tied her in the other bedroom, and I came back to strangle him. And at that time we had a fight.”

“I went back to finish the job on Kathryn. And she was fighting. And at that point in time, I’d been fighting her and I just — and then I heard some — I don’t know whether I was basically losing control. The strangulation wasn’t working on her and I used a knife on her.”

“I told Mrs. Vian that I had a problem with sexual fantasies and I was going to tie her up and may that I might have to tie the kids up. And if she would cooperate with us — cooperate with me at that time. We went back. She was extremely nervous. I think she even smoked a cigarette. And we went back to one of the back areas of the porch, explained that I had done this before. ”

“So anyway, we went back to her bedroom. And I proceeded to tie the kids up and they started crying and got real upset, so I said, oh, this is not going work. So we moved them to the bathroom. She helped me. And then I tied the door shut. We put toys and blankets and odds and ends in there for the kids, to make them as comfortable as we could. We tied the — we tied one of the bathroom doors shut so they couldn’t open it, and we shoved — she went back to help me shove a bed up against the other bathroom door. And then I proceeded to tie her up. She got sick and threw up. I got her a glass of water, comforted her a little bit and then I went ahead and tied her up and put a bag over her head and strangled her.”

        -Dennis Rader
               BTK Killer
               plead guilty to 1o counts of 1st degree murder
               elected president of Christ Lutheran Church council after 30 years in church leadership

I can’t add anything to this.

~I AM~

Jaynes starts out with a discussion of what exactly consciousness is. At first glance, that seems like a ridiculous and simplistic question, but try to answer it, and you’ll quickly see that it’s not. He uses evidence from psychological experiments to show that consciousness is not required for concepts, learning, thinking or reason. “Preposterous!”, you say. Well, read the book. He then goes on to tie consciousness to language and, specifically, to metaphor. Consciousness is a metaphorical construct that allows for spatialization of thought, narratization of our lives, and explanation of our actions. The last two sentences summarize all of Chapter 2, so I’m sorry if it’s unclear, but I’m not writing a book report here. I want to get directly to the good stuff.

Chapter 3 is where the book becomes applicable to our subject matter on this blog. Jaynes begins by trying to figure out when consciousness first arose. By this point, he has established that consciousness is predated by language, so we’re looking for a time after the origin of language. To have evidence, we need written records, so we’re looking after 3,000 BCE. Furthermore, we need a language we completely understand. Cuneiform, Egyptian Hieroglyphics and the like go out the window, and we arrive at ancient Greek as the earliest written language that is totally understood by modern man. Jaynes then uses The Iliad to show that Greeks around the time of the Trojan War, still had not developed consciousness. I know. I was floored by that, too. Jaynes himself calls this conclusion “disturbingly interesting.”

He takes passages from the text and clearly illustrates the fact that at no point in the epic do the characters exhibit will or volition. At every turn, they are told what to do by the gods, at least aurally, and sometimes in person. He gives examples of ancient Greek words used in the text that later came to have meanings related to consciousness via the process of the metaphorical development of language (discussed in a prior chapter), but which had no such significance at the time. He coins the phrase bicameral mind.

In distinction to our own subjective conscious minds, we can call the mentality of the Myceneans a bicameral mind. Volition, planning, initiative is organized with no consciousness whatever and then ‘told’ to the individual in his familiar language, sometimes with the visual aura of a familiar friend or authority figure or ‘god’, or sometimes as a voice alone. The individual obeyed these hallucinated voices because he could not ’see’ what to do by himself.

These are the same voices heard today by schizophrenics, and others with mental disabilities. In fact, Jaynes points to evidence that MANY of us experience these voices. We just know better than to actually attribute them to an outside source.

One afternoon I lay down in intellectual despair on a couch. Suddenly, out of an absolute quiet, there came a firm, distinct loud voice from my upper right which said, “Include the knower in the known!” It lugged me to my feed absurdly exclaiming, “Hello?” looking for whoever was in the room.

One young biologist’s wife said that almost every morning as she made the beds and did the housework, she had long, informative, and pleasant conversations with the voice of her dead grandmother in which the grandmother’s voice was actually heard. This came as something of a shock to her alarmed husband, for she had never previously mentioned it, since “hearing voices” is generally supposed to be a sign of insanity.

A study done in England in the 19th century indicated that 7.8% of men and 12% of women had this type of hallucination. All of this leads me to some questions. Have any of you experienced this? Do religious fundamentalists who claim that god has spoken to them mean it literally because they are misunderstanding this phenomenon? Is there any excuse for religion in a conscious world?

“In a sense, we have become our own gods.”
        -Julian Jaynes

~I AM~