The Creation of Adam and Eve: The Dust-and-Rib Hypothesis

Where did we, the modern human species, come from? Science has a very convincing case that we evolved via Darwinian natural selection from primate ancestors over the past eight or so million years. New Agers suggest we are the product from those same primate ancestors, only by artificial selection via genetic engineering on the part of ancient aliens. Then there’s God’s religious claptrap, one of various mythological creation tales to account for mankind, starting with Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve are the names that we can use as an overall generality for the first humans, the first Homo sapiens, a species which had to come from somewhere. Biologists of course will argue the case for natural selection; evolution from older ancestral primates, especially the chimpanzee. New Agers might opt for an artificial selection or genetic engineering explanation on the part of flesh-and-blood ‘ancient astronauts’ under the clever disguise as deities, or perhaps incorrectly interpreted as deities by primitive man, but still an evolution from older primate ancestral stock. Then there’s a variation on that New Age theme that someone or something created a simulated universe via a computer program that ultimately created us as virtual beings. Finally, there are the creationists – God did it on the sixth day according to the Book of Genesis and no correspondence will be entertained on the matter. The Bible is literally God’s final word on life, the Universe and everything, including how we came to be.

If there were no other viable explanation for our existence apart from God creating mankind, that’s one thing, and there probably wasn’t any alternatives back in Bible times, so the Book of Genesis is understandable from that perspective or point of view, even if wrong. Alternative theories do abound now, with Darwinian evolution by natural selection the clear and preferred leader. One could almost say that evolutionists are really using the brains that God gave them to actually think with – one could almost say that except that implies a total contradiction in logic.

According to the Book of Genesis, Chapter One and Chapter Two, God created mankind, or at least one male (Adam) and one female (Eve) – Adam and Eve actually created the rest of humanity, well at least three sons worth of humanity. Humanity should have then gone extinct since no other women were apparently created to serve as possible mates, yet they (well one anyway for Abel) appear as if by magic. But back to Adam and Eve: were they really created by a supernatural deity, or perhaps genetically engineered by flesh-and-blood ancient astronauts or did they evolve naturally from more primitive ancestors? What do you think? I think we can eliminate God from Creation’s Big Picture.

Here are the relevant quotes:

Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Later on down the track we get more details.

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Genesis 2:21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

Genesis 2:22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

Genesis 2:23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

That’s God’s story and no doubt He’s sticking to it!

We can debate the Darwinian and the New Age concepts as viable alternative scenarios some other time, but first creationism as related above has to be dumped into the rubbish bin and incinerated and thus eliminated from all logical consideration as a viable rival scenario.

Reason numero one states the obvious that there is no supernatural God or Allah or Jehovah or any other supernatural deity. If there was overwhelming evidence for such a supernatural deity then there would be no atheists. You don’t find people who deny the existence of gravity since there is so much evidence for it, yet you can’t see it or hear it or taste it or smell it or touch it. There are no gravity atheists. Evidence is everything – faith counts for nothing in any court of law, science or logic. 

Reason numero two is that the dust-and-rib (and variations thereof) scenario is absolutely ridiculous to even the most biologically ignorant, which is probably why it’s not taught in Biology 101. And how could a male rib shape-shift into a fully developed adult female (blonde, brunette, redhead?), minus navel no doubt, but ready equipped with intelligence, vocalization and language? A male rib in any event would contain male genetic information for maleness, but you couldn’t have expected the author(s) of this imaginary (bordering on sci-fi) Genesis tale to have known that. As to Adam’s creation from dust, perhaps all those bored housewives who are dissatisfied with their hubbies might want to save up all that household dust that they deal with daily with the intention of creating some sort of youthful stud rival for hubby’s affections and bedroom favours. I mean if a mere male deity can create a man from dust, imagine what a human female can accomplish with that same ingredient!

Reason numero three is that if God created Eve directly from Adam’s rib, then Adam and Eve are more closely related than any brother-sister pair ever were, and therefore when they did God’s ‘be fruitful and multiply’ thing, well that was incest! And God, by design, promoted that. Wow! Now what God should have done was take a pile of dust from the planet Mars and create Adam; take another pile of dust from the planet Venus and create Eve, and that way you’d really have men are from Mars and women are from Venus and no incest need be entered into (as it were). Further, humans would have had an extraterrestrial heritage and therefore been separate and apart from the rest of the terrestrial animal kingdom (see the following paragraph for that nitty-gritty).

Reason numero four is that if God et al. really wanted to make humans a unique creation, really separate and apart from all else, He would not have moulded us with the same basic body plan and biochemistry as the rest of the animal kingdom. We might have been created with a silicon-based biochemistry and we certainly wouldn’t share any DNA with anything else like chimpanzees, since that just confuses the creation picture. God was not thinking logically, just begging for a Darwin and genetics to come along and give Him a black eye.

Reason numero five is that a perfect God wouldn’t have created so many design flaws or imperfections in the alleged pinnacle of His creationist endeavours, the human species, what with their easily breakable bones, a way too narrow birth canal, bad backs, poor eyesight, and impacted wisdom teeth, as well as those non-functional body parts like an appendix, earlobes and toenails. One does not tend to manufacture something with faulty and non-essential parts. God might have created us a tad more resistant to arthritis, the common cold, as well as a seeming zillion other common afflictions from infections to cavities to the measles to numerous cancers. Then too there are all those nasty God-created personality flaws part and parcel of the human being we’d be better off without. If God created us, God created the automotive equivalent of the Edsel.

Reason numero six suggests a further anomaly that proves just about beyond any doubt that Genesis is the literary work of man and not of God; we note the endless repetition of “And God said.” My question: prior to Adam, just who was around back then to copy down anything that God said? And if the answer to that is “nobody”, then presumably God is just talking to Himself! Or, more likely as not, the entirety of the Book of Genesis, creation and all, is just an early example of what would later become first known as mythology and even later on down the track as science fiction or science fantasy.

Reason numero seven is that remains of Homo sapiens have been dated via various accepted and verified scientific methods to way before any possible Biblical date that’s accepted by creationists. Human remains can be dated to way in excess of an order of magnitude (a factor of ten times) in fact, in fact closer numerically to two orders of magnitude (a factor of one hundred times) vis-à-vis what a literal Bible demands.

Reason numero eight is that if God wanted His Chosen People (starting with Adam and Eve) to occupy what’s today the Land of Israel and surrounds, why create them in mankind’s Cradle of Africa? Africa is apparently mankind’s point-of-origin home turf on the grounds that hominid fossils have been uncovered there while nobody has yet conclusively pinpointed and proved the geographical location of the Garden of Eden, far less found human remains close by.

Reason numero nine asks why a Chosen People at all? If God created Adam and Eve, then they were His Chosen People and then all of their descendents would be God’s Chosen People, not just a select few further on down the line. It’s akin to parents singling out one child of many for special love and attention – it’s not the done thing.

Now another question arises, why would God want to create humans in the first place? The Almighty already had a nice garden for His R&R and a petting zoo created for His pleasure and what with His staff of angels, etc. He surely didn’t need any additional intellectual company – did God create Adam to play a game of chess with? Well the obvious reason is that God wanted someone, actually many some ones, was to lick His boots and kiss His posterior which presumably the fish and birds and beasts refused to do (and who said animals were dumb). Well, if that’s why God created us, beings to worship Him, then it’s high time to cease kissing His posterior but to kick it instead, hard, and often! 

In summary, if you want to come to terms with where you came from, as a subset question of where humans originated from, you should look elsewhere for answers rather than to the Bible, to the Book of Genesis, to God, or to any religion or deity for that matter. A supernatural explanation for creation is no answer at all, well at least until that bored housewife creates her male stud ‘boy toy’ from the innards of her vacuum cleaner! Till that happens then, I’ll file the Bible under fiction.

The Creationist’s Bible, Literally: Part Two

It’s one thing to hold extremely religious right-wing fundamentalist views, but quite another to bring them to the fore in a personal manner when holding not only an elected position as a Congressman but also holding a position on a Committee that by its very nature must be the antithesis of that worldview. Such has been the sad case that recently surfaced in the United States. Unfortunately, it’s not a one-off, and the implications are considerable.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

I do agree with Congressman Broun in that we, humanity, if it needs anything at all it needs a saviour because collectively the human race has within, if you believe the Bible, just a few thousand years, screwed up Planet Earth, from top to bottom, so badly as to endanger God’s supreme creation, mankind’s very existence. Of course I pin the blame for that on God as related in Genesis 1: 28. You should look it up and check it out.

Another basic philosophy here is that if whatever the Bible says is true, and is OK or sanction or performed by God, then you can vote for the following as public policy and for the good of society as a whole with a totally clear conscience.

* Slavery is OK.

* Beating children, even killing them is OK.

* Genocide is OK.

* Mass murder is OK.

* Invading other countries and making warfare is OK. 

* Rape is OK.

* Women’s rights are not OK.

* Animal welfare is not OK.

* Equal rights for same-sex couples are not OK.

* Any ethnic group not of the Chosen People variety are second class citizens.

Belief in a literal Bible, the literal absolute word of God, requires not just faith in a deity, but presumably you have to put your faith in the humans who penned the Bible to have gotten it right, and that’s a whole lot of absolute faith to trust in the human species right there.

Belief in a literal Bible suggests that all those bits and pieces that were arbitrarily excluded from the Bible, then included, and then excluded again, the missing books, the Apocrypha, are irrelevant, which then invites the question, why do they exist at all.

That the Bible alone is the “manufacturer’s handbook” is bound to spark some opposition from Muslims, Hindus, supporters of Buddha, and all others who have their own versions of, and beliefs in, a ‘manufacturer’s handbook’.

Belief in a literal Bible, the literal absolute word of God means that you believe that every other religion and religious text must be false, including presumably all but one version of the Bible (since there are many differing versions) and that one true version would not be in English as the Bible wasn’t originally conceived and written in English.

In any event, there’s not the slightest shred of hardcore evidence that God, or Allah or any deity for that matter exists outside of whatever religious text supports that existence, but then again anyone can write words and make a book. There’s a book that supports the existence of Moby Dick, and numerous texts that verify the existence of Tarzan and Harry Potter. Shall we have faith therefore in the existence of and worship Moby Dick, Tarzan and Harry Potter too?

There’s a more fundamental question here. What if every elected member of any congress or any parliament or any assembly or whatever elected body you might call it voted according to their religious beliefs? That’s not why they were elected. They were elected to represent their constituents, to carry forth their political party’s platform (which presumably they agree in general or in overall terms with) but not themselves. Repeat, they are not elected to represent their personal worldview, religious or otherwise.

Further, it is incomprehensible that anyone who proposes an anti-science, pro creationism, worldview, like Congressman Broun (but there are numerous others as well), could or should hold a position of responsibility on a Congressional committee that should advocate or promote a pro-science point-of-view for the advancement or betterment of the nation. 

It would appear that the Dark Ages are encroaching back upon us. Congressman Broun joins the ranks of all things whacko when it comes to having unquestioned and blind belief in God and Company. It’s bad enough that 1.5 billion whacko Islamic fanatics in the world are seeking the ultimate goal of a single global Fundamentalist Islamic state where the Koran is absolute law, without people like radical Christian creationists also muddying the waters, fanatics who no doubt would like to see a unified and fundamentalist Christian global state where the Bible is absolute law. Is history doomed to repeat itself – The Crusades Mark II but this time with 21^st Century weaponry?

The Creationist’s Bible, Literally: Part One

It’s one thing to hold extremely religious right-wing fundamentalist views, but quite another to bring them to the fore in a personal manner when holding not only an elected position as a Congressman but also holding a position on a Committee that by its very nature must be the antithesis of that worldview. Such has been the sad case that recently surfaced in the United States. Unfortunately, it’s not a one-off, and the implications are considerable.

On 27 September 2012, and widely reported in the media around 6-7 October 2012, an American congressman, Paul Broun (R-Georgia), caused a bit of a stir when advocating that the Holy Bible was not only to be taken literally, but that it was the pinnacle authority on how he has and would vote in Congress. He said that he believed that God’s creation took place in just six literal days and that the Earth was only literally 9000 years old. The controversy stemmed from the fact that he holds qualifications in chemistry and is a MD and that he holds a senior position on the Congressional H of R Science, Space and Technology Committee. He’s also courted controversy previously by introducing a bill that would have made 2010 the “Year of the Bible” (in which case I suggest 2011 should then have been the year of “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins just to even the score and balance the ‘books’ as it were). Fortunately, not all of Broun’s colleagues are as wacky-doodle religious nutters or as ignorant a twit (both an appropriate synonym for Chris Rodda’s phrase “Bible-believing-batshitterist”) as he is, and the “Year of the Bible” bid failed to pass muster. 

Here are his September 2012 remarks:

“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually. How to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all our public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason, as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.”

But once you stick your neck in the literal Biblical noose, you have got to accept that a literal Bible, a literal word of God (as related in whatever particular Biblical version Congressman Broun has tucked away)…

* Means all of creation (life the universe and everything) took place in literally six (24 hour) days.

* Means that Heaven and Hell both must exist, though nobody has ever pinpointed the celestial coordinates where Heaven resides up there, neither has anyone stumbled across the geographical location of Hell somewhere down here.

* Means the Planet Earth is literally less than 10,000 years old, perhaps even a lot less like roughly 6000 years old if you accept that the Genesis Creation was fixed during the year 4004 BCE.

* Means that all fossils must be fakes, the work of the devil, scientific hoaxes and that palaeontology is a fraud. Sorry kids, no dinosaurs and therefore no possibility of there ever being a “Jurassic Park” reality.

* Means that Adam was literally created from dust.

* Means that Eve was created literally from a rib.

* Means that the two originally created humans, Adam and Eve, bore but three male children, Cain, Abel, and Seth, which would, if logic has any significance, suggest that the human race should not exist, and that means Congressman Broun and all fellow Creationists should not exist.. What do we want – women; when do we want them – now. But where did they come from? The Bible is mute on the issue, so something’s screwy somewhere.

* Means that Satan (or the Devil) exists and is really evil, though you never get the chance to hear (or read) his side of the story.

* Means that God is in charge of a group of sex maniacs, the Sons of God, who lusted after and bred with the Daughters of Men.

* Means that a pair of flightless kiwi birds of New Zealand and a pair of kangaroos from Australia (among thousands of possible examples) somehow swam the oceans and made it all the way to Noah’s Ark in time to avoid being drowned.

* Means that Methuselah really lived for well over 900 years, and had some stiff competition to boot in the longevity stakes from numerous others.

* Means that Sodom and Gomorrah were really destroyed, yet no trace whatever can be found of the ruins.

* Means that Lot’s wife really turned into a pillar of salt. Neat trick that one! I bet Congressman Broun (the chemist) has this bit of alchemy all figured out and should be able to explain this with ease.

* Means that a bush really burned without being consumed. That’s another really neat trick!

* Means that the Hebrew’s (i.e. – the Chosen People) were really slaves in Ancient Egypt, though there seems to be no historical record of this ‘fact’ recorded in Egypt.

* Means that God murdered thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands and more of Egyptian firstborns, (another historical event unrecorded in Ancient Egyptian texts), but then again what else would you expect from an all-loving, compassionate, merciful, forgiving, deity.

* Means that pharaoh’s army really got done in via the parting and un-parting of the Red Sea even though there are no records to that effect in Ancient Egypt either.

* Means that the Chosen People headed towards the Promised Land to their northeast by heading south, but then maybe that was before the compass had been invented.

* Means that it took the Chosen People really took forty years of wandering around in the wilderness before stumbling onto the Promised Land – oops, I forgot, that’s an era that’s not only pre-compass, but pre-Boy Scouts. They weren’t prepared.

* Means the walls of Jericho tumbled down long after Jericho was, according to archaeologists, already in ruins.

* Means that Planet Earth instantaneously stopped its axis rotation to allow the Moon and the Sun to stand still in the sky, and then just as instantaneously started rotating again, in total violation of known physics, the same physics that Creationists like Congressman Broun take as gospel whenever they board an aircraft, drive a car or play a round of golf. 

* Means that a human being (Jonah) was able to survive inside a fish (or whale) for three days, none the worse for wear. Of course there are fishy tales and then there are fishy tall tales.

* Means those loaves and fishes multiplied, a housewife’s dream and a supermarket’s nightmare.

* Means that water turned into wine, though wowsers and Prohibitionists would have wanted that the other way around.

* Means Jesus really had the ability to walk on water, though that might be understandable if the water was really icy cold and he didn’t want to get his privates wet.

* Means that all those medical anomalies like a virgin birth and resurrections from the dead and elderly women over-the-hill-and-off-the-pill were able to conceive and give birth, among a host of others, really came to pass. Again, no doubt Congressman Broun (the MD) can lay his hands on medical texts that explain all. I hope he does.

* Means that Armageddon, the Apocalypse, the Second Coming, the End of Days, whatever you wish to call it, as forecast in the Book of Revelation, should have happened by about 100 CE. Oops, someone forgot to set the alarm clock!

In other words, literal belief in the Bible means you have got to literally believe in way more than just six impossible things before breakfast, and I kid you not, the above list could be extended by dozens more impossible things all contained in the Congressman’s Creationist Bible.

To be continued…

Created in Man’s Image: God’s Virtual Reality: Part Three

Reality isn’t all that complicated. It resides 100% within that brain-thingy of yours. The Big Question is, is that (your brain) the sum total of reality or are their other realities outside of your own that reside as both an outside reality and in other brain-thingies? And where does the reality of a god (or any supernatural deity) fit into that Big Mental Picture? Perhaps God was created in man’s image.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

NO TWO GODS ARE THE SAME BECAUSE NO TWO BRAINS ARE IDENTICAL

I read recently that “… nothing precise can be said about God, because God is that which is beyond the scope of human thought or experience”. That’s wrong. At least I was under the impression that a whole potful of Biblical characters experienced God, like Moses. Anyway, God is totally within the scope of human thought since God’s our mental creation (recall all those human traits God has), and even if by chance God has some sort of independent existence, as per all else in life, the universe and everything, that existence is shovelled into and contemplated within something that’s human, the human mind. The human mind absorbs and reduces God down to understandably human terms. How many zillions upon zillions of words have been written and spoken about the concept of God (or Allah or whoever). 100% of those words have been generated via the human mind, so we’ve certainly spared no mental expense in dealing with the Almighty! Even if God is the sound of one hand clapping, well we can contemplate that. That contemplation might be wrong, and again every person will have his or her own personal contemplations that will all be different, but everyone comes to terms with the concept, so God (or the lack of a god if you’re an atheist) is not beyond the scope of the human mind.

Even if there is an external reality (your brain isn’t the sum total of all things), no two individuals, or rather their brains, will perceive that external reality down to the last and infinite decimal place. I believe in a god; you believe in a god, but when we compare notes, subtle shades of grey appear. How can there be such a thing as absolute reality when no two people will ever agree on what that reality is, even if it takes going down to the quantum level to find the split in the perception of that reality.

So there are as many versions of God’s (or equivalent) existence and nature as there are human minds. Quite apart from the formal definitions and distinctions between the thousands of formal religions that have been in the past and that are now in the present as to ‘who and what is god’ (all formally presented by the human mind), or even restricting things to God-of-the-Bible (the Bible by the way is the product of the human mind, as is the Koran, as are all religious texts), each individual human member of each religious sect or cult (like Christianity) has his or her own variation on the God theme, courtesy of their unique brain chemistry. So considering God apart from the thousands upon thousands of polytheistic deities (and who’s to deny their validity), there isn’t one God, but billions of Gods, each a unique God in the mind of that beholder. No two insides (minds) are identical.

GOD ON THE BRAIN

To illustrate all of the above with a specific concept near and dear to the hearts and minds of many a human, we shall further consider the lone ranger we call “God” or in more general terms the concept of a supernatural god or deity.

That God exists in one form or another is in no dispute since there are zillions of references to Him in all manner of formats, from the printed word like the Bible to what resides inside your wetware. That existence however can be akin to that of say Allan Quatermain, the creation of H. Rider Haggard. That Allan Quatermain exists is in no dispute either since there are millions of references to his existence too. But, Allan Quatermain is virtual reality – perhaps God is too.

That God is near and dear to the hearts and minds of humans is also because that’s probably what’s been taught or otherwise rammed down our collective throats by parents, teachers, church and sometimes state. Or, perhaps you have self learned about this godly concept off your own bat. Or you may have had what you perceive as having had a direct experience – a eureka moment – when God talked to you, or the angels paid you a visit, or you had some sort of defining rapturous moment that you identified with the supernatural, like your prayers were answered or you experienced a miracle.

Why would the human mind, the human imagination invent a god, or the human mind accept as given the concept of a god? Well probably because the human mind, of all the animal kingdom’s minds, is the one unique mind to have foreknowledge about personal death. Humans, like all animals who battle for survival, don’t want to die. Humans know that they will die and that they are powerless to prevent their death. But what if (a variation of the phrase let’s ‘make believe’), there was someone or something that could rescue one from this pending unfortunate state of affairs of kicking the bucket and give one a second (after) life? To do so, the imagination has to go beyond the natural to the supernatural (why not) and to a local inhabitant of that supernatural world, a god or a deity, who can make it so. 

The key word here seems to me to be ‘supernatural’ not God, since God is a small subset of alleged deities inhabiting the realm of the supernatural. It doesn’t really matter if you substitute Odin or Zeus or even the Rainbow Serpent for God – same general concept.

Perhaps because of that concept of impending finality, death, our brains seem to be hardwired or conditioned to accept the general nature of the supernatural – things which are ‘above and beyond’ the natural or normal bits and pieces we associate with the concept of a Mother Nature. For comparison, it would be interesting to have conservations with, or read the mind of, your cat or dog or an elephant or chimpanzee (our ultimate primate ancestral species) and find out what beliefs or worldviews they have in all things supernatural, like in a deity or life after death. My guess is that only humans ponder over the possibilities of deities which maybe extra evidence that someone or something impersonating a deity (i.e. - ‘ancient astronauts’) has mucked about with our wetware to ensure this.

So somehow or other, the human mind, brain, and all associated electromagnetic energy and biochemical bits that collective make up our brain’s neural networks, are quasi-hardwired to invent and contemplate and in general put faith in the reality of the supernatural and a supernatural deity, albeit, if I’m right, it’s really just virtual reality since it all stems from within the mind contemplated by the mind and not from an external outside to the mind via the five senses.  

THE END

When your wetware dries out; when your neurons cease firing; when the microbes attack and the rot sets in and the chemistry stops, then your inner reality ceases too. Whether you take life, the universe and everything with you or not is irrelevant. Your reality is just as kaput as kaput can be. 

CONCLUSION

Assuming a really real reality, an external reality (and that’s probably the way to bet) coming to terms with life, the universe and everything is a job performed by your brain chemistry. The concept of God (or equivalent) is part of life, the universe and everything, so coming to terms with the nature of God is also a function of and a task performed by your wetware. I suggest that ‘coming to terms’ with God is entirely an internal mental affair; God was created in our image.

Created in Man’s Image: God’s Virtual Reality: Part Two

Reality isn’t all that complicated. It resides 100% within that brain-thingy of yours. The Big Question is, is that (your brain) the sum total of reality or are their other realities outside of your own that reside as both an outside reality and in other brain-thingies? And where does the reality of a god (or any supernatural deity) fit into that Big Mental Picture? Perhaps God was created in man’s image.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

GOD AND THE INSIDE LOOKING OUTSIDE: IS THERE AN OUTSIDE AT ALL?

In theory there are two forms of existence – reality and virtual reality. You, or at least your brain, have reality. If someone, even yourself, dreams about you or writes a story about you, that particular version of you is a virtual reality you.

For all you know there is no external outside reality. All that is ‘outside’ is a figment of your imagination, of your mind, of your brain chemistry in the exact same way as your dreams (inside looking inside) are imaginary and not literally a part of external reality. Your dreams (while asleep) might be a dream within a daydream (your so-called external reality – life is but a dream), which is a variation on the standard simulated universe (virtual reality) scenario only substituting wetware for software. The only thing that is really real is your wetware, but that is subject to various outside forces, as noted above, assuming of course there are outside forces.

Even the body to which the brain is attached might be illusionary. There’s the famous tale of the two philosophers, one of whom said that a large rock was but an illusion and had no reality (Philosopher-I) and the other (Philosopher-R) who refuted that theory by giving the rock a really swift and violent kick, and in intense pain noted that he had indeed refuted the claim of Philosopher-I. But did he? Philosopher-I could argue that Philosopher-R was as imaginary as the rock; his kick was an illusion, and the pain therefore nonexistent. Philosopher-I could further argue that since he hadn’t kicked the rock not a thing about the reality of the rock was proved to his satisfaction. Even if Philosopher-I had kicked the rock and ended up with a black-and-blue big toe for his trouble, he could still argue that the pain was just his imagination, it resided only within his brain, and existed independently of his unreal illusory bruised big toe. All that was apparently outside of Philosopher-I’s brain, Philosopher-I’s body, Philosopher-R, the rock, the kick, etc., was just all make believe done via Philosopher-I’s brain chemistry.

So there may not be an ‘outside’ at all – your brain is the universe. But if there is an outside it could be drastically different than what you perceive it to be, as in the case of someone seeing sounds. Your brain chemistry has taken an outside reality and turned it into an alternative and inner reality, a personal reality, a reality unique to you and only you because your brain and brain chemistry is uniquely yours.

Contrast that when I’m asleep and dreaming ‘reality’ with your wide awake ‘reality’. Both can seem equally real, as anyone who has had nightmares can testify to.

Contrast your wide awake ‘reality’ to that when you are ill or exhausted or under the influence or after taking LSD or marijuana. Your ‘reality’ changes as circumstances change. Further, someone who is ill or tired or under the influence, etc. or is otherwise hallucinating, isn’t witnessing the same reality that you are.

Reality is a rather nebulous concept!

But either there is an external reality, or there is not. If there is not and you accept the validity of a god or a deity then that god or deity is a creation of your imagination and part of your fantasy world. If there is an external reality, then either a god (or gods) exists within that external life, the universe and everything or does not exist. In other words, either there is, or is not, a real supernatural deity who creates, controls and destroys, a deity that has an existence independent from your own. Regardless, let’s call this ‘is’ or ‘is not’ supernatural entity “God”. There can be no wriggle room between the two possibilities*.

Even in an external reality, Superman has no reality, only virtual reality. Superman was conceived in the human mind. In contrast, does God have reality, or just a virtual reality? If it’s the latter, then God was conceived and born in the human mind, where God resides to this very day. God is a figment of our imagination. In short, God didn’t make us in His image; we made God in our image since God was our creation. Of course if God was created in our image then it’s not surprising that what we like God likes and what we don’t like, well there’s God’s wrath we conjured up to deal with that. God’s virtual reality actions and reactions, as related in the Bible at least, are totally comprehensible to us. God is depicted as often violent, prone to temper tantrums, authoritarian, cruel, demanding, jealous, vindictive, vain, in sort, God’s human. But God’s not unique in that capacity. Zeus ain’t any better – he’s a downright sex maniac, even rapist. In fact if you examine any deity from any mythology you’ll find very, very human qualities exhibited. Hera (Mrs. Zeus) is a jealous scheming bitch; Zeus’s brother Poseidon is vindictive and bad tempered; his other brother Hades was a kidnapper. I’d better stop there; otherwise an essay turns into a full-length book!

How do we know for absolute certain that God didn’t create mankind in His image and not the other way around, as I believe? We don’t! But if God really wanted to make His humans a unique creation, really separate and apart from all else, He would not have moulded us with the same basic body plan and biochemistry as the rest of the animal kingdom. We might have been created instead with a silicon-based biochemistry and we certainly wouldn’t share any DNA with anything else, since that just confuses the creation picture. Further, the dust-and-rib scenario of Genesis is pretty ludicrous even to the relatively uneducated. Even Frankenstein’s monster is a more plausible account or act of creation than Genesis.

To be continued…

*There might be a third possibility. Something or someone masquerading as a deity, say ‘ancient astronauts’, who by artificial selection, starting with primitive primates through to the hominids and eventually to us, genetically engineered our wetware such that the concept of ‘god’ was hardwired into our brains, such that we would accept the external reality of a god(s) (with themselves in the starring role), all the better with which to control the great unwashed masses. ‘God’ carries a bigger more awe-inspiring stick than mere flesh-and-blood aliens.

Created in Man’s Image: God’s Virtual Reality: Part One

Reality isn’t all that complicated. It resides 100% within that brain-thingy of yours. The Big Question is, is that (your brain) the sum total of reality or are their other realities outside of your own that reside as both an outside reality and in other brain-thingies? And where does the reality of a god (or any supernatural deity) fit into that Big Mental Picture? Perhaps God was created in man’s image.

INTRODUCTION

God (or any supernatural equivalent deity) is a figment of your imagination and a creation of that same imagination, probably aided, abetted and reinforced by your peers, your culture and your society. God therefore has a virtual reality but not a really real reality not that of necessity there even has to be a really real reality of anything, apart from your very own mind and mind’s imagination, imagination that has its ultimate foundations and is rooted in brain chemistry.

INSIDE: THE BRAIN RULES THE ROOST

You are defined by your brain. You are not defined by your big toe or your set of lungs or your good looking facial features or how much you weigh or how old you are. What makes you, you is all that which is contained within those cubic centimetres of grey matter, wetware, the brain, the mind (a subpart of the anatomical organ), whatever you wish to call it.

Your brain, or more to the point your brain chemistry, defines you. Everything that you are resides in your brain under the control of wetware chemistry. Consider the following list of things that are you and that are part and parcel of holding residence in your wetware: Awe, wonder and a sense of mystery; spirituality; a sense of purpose; all learning; all memory; all your emotions; all your likes and dislikes; all that you see, hear, taste, touch and smell; all of your thoughts; all pleasure and pain; all of your creativity; all your questions (but not always the answers); art appreciation; your sense of right and wrong or of morality and ethics; your values, beliefs or faiths; your all encompassing worldviews; all of your behaviour; your sense of self; your ego; your intelligence; your choice of spouse or partner or for that matter, choice or decision making – full stop; your ability or affinity to learn languages; your degree of numeracy; and of course and finally your perception and acceptance or rejection of the supernatural, including supernatural beings like deities, like God (for example). All this and more in such a limited space, but it’s true.

All this and more comes to the fore via your five senses, perhaps starting even before birth (a sense of warmth, wetness, body sounds like a mother’s heartbeat) but certainly the moment you pop out of the womb. Throughout your life, all of this input via your five senses, brought to you courtesy of life, the universe and everything, all of this data, is filtered and refiltered and mixed and matched and contemplated and broken down and constructed and deconstructed and reconstructed again and manipulated into one you, one personality, one mind, one unique worldview albeit forever changing, until the day you are finally declared brain dead.

But all of the above traits and abilities of the human brain says bugger-all about the reality of a deity, which is a bit of an abstract concept in its own right.

Brain chemistry ensures that humans (probably uniquely so) can try, but not succeed, in coming to terms with other abstract questions like what’s the maximum number of leprechauns that can hold a picnic using a dime for a blanket; what is the sound of one hand clapping; what’s south of the South Pole; what’s the nature and extent of infinity; and what transpired before the Big Bang?

One has to be careful of not reading too much into abstractions. We often see messages or meanings where there is none to be found, like seeing ‘pictures’ in clouds or the face of Jesus on a piece of toast or, for example, people who listened to Aaron Copland’s musical composition “Appalachian Spring” would comment to the composer how that music so perfectly described an Appalachian spring day. But Copland said the composition had nothing to do with the Appalachians or with spring and the title was chosen to please his benefactor or sponsor. It was all wishful thinking on the part of the listener.

Images are all in the mind, perhaps aided by the power of suggestion as in the case of the title “Appalachian Spring”. Now not every listener in the audience would have had identical mental images when hearing the music. Even the same listener could have had a slightly differing mental image upon a later hearing. Does the “Grand Canyon Suite” really conjure up a picture of the Grand Canyon (if say you heard the piece without knowing the title) or might it suggest a different place or a lot of different places or maybe it’s just a nice piece of music full-stop, just as a god or God can be a nice abstract concept, full-stop.

Humans can mentally conjure up an image of the Appalachians or the Grand Canyon from a piece of music (with a suggestive title) just like they can conjure up and contemplate the existence of a god or a deity (from something equally suggestive like the Bible or from a sermon), but that doesn’t mean any god or deity actually exists in any shape manner or form, any more so than “Appalachian Spring” or the “Grand Canyon Suite” of necessity requires the actual existence of a mountain range or a time of year or a hole in the ground in Arizona. 

More to the point of the imaginary, and musical compositions stem from the imagination, actual objects like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon exists in our culture, like God, though there’s way more evidence for those space heroes vis-à-vis God, as kids who routinely attended the Saturday matinees in the pre-Sputnik era would (if still alive) testify to. 

And that’s another concept we have that animals probably don’t; the ability to conjure up the imaginary. Animals probably don’t have a world of make believe or fiction. There are human fans, even fanatics, of all manner of make believe human characters like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, James Bond, Batman, Captain Kirk, to Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes, even down to those who follow Greek mythology, the life and times of the Olympians, demigoddesses like Helen (of Troy), and demigods like Hercules. Even aliens like those in Star Trek or say Superman are still human otherwise we couldn’t easily relate to them. All of these and a whole lot more besides were created in man’s (and woman’s) image as the product of the human imagination. So let’s just add God to the list of imaginary beings created in the image of God’s collective creator. Why? Because it is not surprising or beyond the realm of possibility that God et al. also fits into that category of make believe, especially since there’s not any trace of any evidence that any supernatural deity, God included, has ever existed.

But is brain chemistry, the ultimate cause of all things mental, really all that important? We’ve all seen the unfortunate results of what can happen when brain chemistry malfunctions or misfires due to disease, genetics, physical damage or injury, drug use and abuse, so there is no doubting the importance of brain chemistry and the relationship between it and what makes you, you. It can produce all kinds of oddities as well like mathematical wizards who can do mentally in seconds what it would take you minutes to do using pen and paper. Then too there are the strange cases of people who can hear colours or taste sounds, etc. 

GOD AND THE INSIDE LOOKING INSIDE: OUR FANTASY WORLDS

Your mind can examine the intricacies of your mind. Your wetware has an existence independent of anything else. Your brain could be the be-all-and-end-all of life, the universe and everything. If nothing else, you can only come to terms with life, the universe and everything after it has been tucked away into one of those recesses within your mind. In other words, you exist inside the universe, but the universe in all its entirety has to exist inside of you, or your mind. Life, the universe and everything can only be dealt with after it has found a home within your brain and can thus be contemplated via your brain chemistry.

“I think, therefore I am” is a widely bandied about quote, but it’s a case of your inside wetware contemplating itself. Even if you are removed from external stimuli, say in an isolation tank, you can still think, imagine, compose, invent, daydream, and if you fall asleep, dream. I think of things, therefore they are too. Your mind creates internal fantasy worlds full of things. For example, children often have imaginary friends and playmates. As an adult, we sort-of outgrow that, but we still create every day in every way internal fantasy worlds as part of our worldviews.

As such, your creative mind is akin to being a god, an inventive mind which creates and controls and perhaps destroys all sorts of mental fantasy worlds. Haven’t you often pictured the sorts of things you’d really like to do to Person X or Country Y if only you could get away with it?

While ‘day-dreaming’, you will often hold imaginary conversations with others in imaginary scenarios as rehearsals for dealing with all those possible scenarios that the real outside reality of life, the universe and everything could throw at you: which leads itself to the next section…

To be continued…