Genesis 1:1-25 Is An Amalgam of Near Eastern Creation Myths

This Article covers Genesis 1:1-25 and compares it to older pre-existing Near Eastern creation myths of the universe and earth.


Using the principle that the greater civilization influences the lesser, this series of articles intends to falsify the claim that the Torah was given to moses by God and to show how syncretism(1) blended folklore(2) in the Ancient Near East and South-Southwest Asia as a result of the interconnectedness of the Ancients which was discussed in the first article of this series Interconnectedness of the Ancients(3).

This article begins with some historical background information intended to show that key elements of Hebrew scripture existed in several areas of the Near East and Southwest Asia prior to being Incorporated into scripture. Once the background information has been presented, it uses Genesis 1:1-25 as its point of reference. Because the focus of this article is the book of Genesis, it overlooks many similarities between the Egyptian(4), Mesopotamian(5) and Hindu(6) religions that are not incorporated into Judaism(7), and it overlooks aspects of the other religions that share concepts with Christianity(8) which came much later. It is my assertion that the more popular religions in the Near East borrowed from each other.

BACKGROUND: SOME IMPORTANT CIVILIZATIONS AND EVENTS
A list of Important Civilizations and events follows. I could not list all of the most important ones (such as the city-states) because I wanted to keep the article as short as possible. I tried to make a "snapshot" estimation of the positions of the largest civilizations to each other on the map. I recommend you scroll down and open the map at the bottom of the article in another window so you can reference it as you follow along. The map is meant to represent "initial conditions" of the LARGEST civilizations at the start of the second millennium and ignore the smaller nomadic, mountain and Arabian tribes present in the area. For example, the Persians lived in the mountains of Iran as early as 3000 BCE but they weren't organized to any significance.

* 8000 - 500 BCE - Vedic Religion in the Indus Valley
* 5000 - 300 BCE - Mesopotamia
* 4000 BCE - Estimation of the creation of the world as calculated according to Hebrew Scripture.(39)
* 4300-3300 BCE - Southern Levant, Canaan. The Ghassulian period created the basis of the Mediterranean economy which has characterised the area ever since. This region was also the natural battleground for the great powers of the region and subject to domination by adjacent empires, beginning with Egypt in the late 3rd millennium (3000-2000) BCE. Although Neanderthals (from 200,000 BCE) and Homo Sapiens Sapiens (from as early as 75,000 BCE) occupied the same territory for thousands of years, it can't be classified as a civilization.(11)
* 3650 - 1100 BCE - Minoans (9)
* 3500 - 2000 BCE Sumer
* 3100 BCE Egyptian and Sumerian Languages develop.(18)
* 3150 - 31 BCE - Egypt and their Myths
* 3000 - 1500 BCE - Indus Valley (10)
* 2400 - 612 BCE - Assyria
* 2350 BCE - Traditional date for the global flood
* 2300 - 2100 BCE - Akkadian
* 2300 - 1000 BCE - Indo-Iranians, Andronovo (12)
* 2250 BCE - Traditional date for the tower of Babel and the catalyst for the differentiation of all the languages of the world.
* 1959 - 1659 BCE Babylonia
* 1920 BCE - Traditional date for when Abraham was approached by God.
* 1750 - 1180 BCE - Hittites (13)
* 1700 - Enuma Elish created
* 1550 - 1060 BCE - Mycenaean (14)
* 1550 - 1450 BCE - Moses traditionally thought to have lived
* 1500 - Exodus?
* 1150 - 1020 BCE David traditionally believed to have lived.
* 900 BCE - According to the Documentary Hypothesis, thought to be when the Jawist scriptures were written.
* 700 BCE to 1935 CE - Persia until it became Iran. (15)

- During the Second Millennium, when Abraham showed up, the Near East was a busy place. Here is a proposed map of 1300 BCE I presume done by a historian of sorts.(17). In The Second Millennium Indo-Aryans migrated into the the Indus valley(19). They brought with them the Sanskrit language and the Vedas. The Hindus up until the the Buddha (between 500-400 BCE) were very ethnocentric and concerned with ritual cleanliness. Only the priests knew the scriptures, they were called Brahmins, and were the source of this ethnocentrism. Their culture was more pastoral, less violent. I mention this because I notice many similarities between Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity and because to get to Mesopotamia from the Indus Valley, it would only take a little over a month of traveling along the coast on a raft. There has been discussion for over a century about the Hindu Origin of the Abrahamic religions(42).

OBVIOUS INCONSISTENCIES BETWEEN HISTORY AND THE BIBLE
- The Agricultural revolution was already underway in Mesopotamia when scripture says the world was created and human beings had already spread all over the world, even to the Polynesian Islands.
- Commerce and exploration by sea was already underway by the time of the Global Flood. Sea worthy ships capable of carrying cargo already existed and probably could have carried a crew with enough supplies to last a little over a month (or up to 40 days).
- There were already a multitude of languages by the time the Tower of Babel was destroyed.

BACKGROUND: TRAVEL TIME BY SEA VIA COAST OR OPEN SEA
Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer, set out to test his theory that South Americans had populated Polynesia using rafts(20). He was investigating reports from Spanish explorers to Peru that had been told legends about a "white race" that had been routed and escaped to the west on rafts. Heyerdahl theorized that they wound up in Polynesia and settled there. He made a raft to second millennium specifications which he named Kon-Tiki, set sail and after a 101 day, 4,300 mile (7,000 km) journey across the Pacific Ocean, Kon-Tiki smashed into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947. Using Kon-Tiki's voyage as a baseline, 43 miles a day or roughly two miles an hour, comes out to about 1.5 knots an hour. To get from Oman to the Indus Valley which is 439 miles at 1.5 knots would be 12.19 days open ocean (http://www.dataloy.com/).

It would take a little over a month or up to 40 days to go from the Indus Valley to Mesopotamia.
Persian Gulf properties(21)
* Max length - 989 km
* Max width - 56km
* Average depth - 50m
* Max depth - 90m

Gulf of Oman(22)
* Width: ~230 mi (370 km),
* Length: ~340 mi (545 km) long.
It connects with the Persian Gulf through the shallow Strait of Hormuz.

It would take a little over a month or up to 40 days to go from the lower Red Sea to the upper red sea.
Red Sea Properties(23)
* Length: ~2,250 km (1,398.1 mi) - 79% of the eastern Red Sea with numerous coastal inlets
* Maximum Width: ~ 306–355 km (190–220 mi)– Massawa (Eritrea)
* Minimum Width: ~ 26–29 km (16–18 mi)- Bab el Mandeb Strait (Yemen)
* Average Width: ~ 280 km (174.0 mi)
* Average Depth: ~ 490 m (1,607.6 ft)
* Maximum Depth: ~2,211 m (7,253.9 ft)

And using the length of the Red Sea as a standard, and a ruler, you can see for yourself that the distance from the coast of Africa to the Indus Valley would take a little over a month or up to 40 days.

And by the same standard, to get from Mycenea to Canaan, would be 15-20 days.

NEAR EASTERN CREATION MYTHS
A list of common themes in Near Eastern and South-Southwest Asian creation myths(24) follows.
1. Some Gods pre-exist, or self-create.

2. Creation is done by acting on some sort of primordial matter, in a state of chaos, which is often represented by the Sea. The Sea is big, uncertain, frightening, unmanageable, destructive and a source of chaos.

3. Creation is done through conflict, between god and chaos where chaos is represented as some sort of sea monster. The God kills the chaos monster uses the body of the monster to create the ordered cosmos. The God and the chaos monster exist before everything else. In the Old Testament in Job(25), a Leviathan(26) is discussed and it is a sea monster which God can and does overpower.

4. Creation is the result of a Sexual act. Gods in human form have sex and make other gods. Sometimes Gods have sex with Humans.This type of thing happens in Greek and Egyptian mythology. In the Enuma Elish(27,28), Gilgamesh was part God part human, and went on to be king. It turns out there was Historical Gilgamesh. Obviously the kings name was inserted in the story to Legitimate him. In the old testament we have mention of the Heroes of old (Nephilum)(29) that were the result of supernatural beings mating with human women.

5. Creation is the result of spoken word identifying and controlling the essence. It requires only a single god. In ancient languages, breath, wind and spirit were conveyed by single word. In Hebrew scriptures god spoke the universe into existence, breathing out a word giving it spirit, giving it life. In Greek, the Logos existed prior to all things and in Hindu, the God spoke the Universe into existence with the word AUM(33).

Egyptian Creation stories seem to be indigenous to a City or Region. They can be found in books about creation myths or online(41). Because of their age, they have been modified to fit the culture that used them and are frequently contradictory. The best known Mesopotamian creation story comes from the Enuma Elish(27,28) of which versions have been found in Canaan, and in modern day Iraq and was very well known in that area. Variations of portions have been found in many more places. Hindu Creation Stories come from the Vedas and were evidently a composite of pre-existing Indus Valley civilization and immigrant Central Asian people commonly known as the Aryans. Hindu scriptures (Vedas) are so old that they have been modified as they were used by groups and therefore are sometimes contradictory.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANT DATES IN NEAR EAST RELIGION
* 8000 - 500 BCE - Vedic Religion in the Indus Valley
* 3150 - 31 BCE - Egypt and their Myths
* 1700 - Enuma Elish created
* 1550 - 1450 BCE - Moses traditionally thought to have lived, creation of the the Torah.


GENESIS 1:1-25
* Egypt - Some Gods like Atum(30), Ptah(31), Amun(32) pre-existed.
-- Amun was believed to be not only king of the gods but also the divine essence found in all gods.
-- Amun is understood as “self-generated,” active in creation as the impulse of creative energy prompting the Ogdoad (a group of four pairs of gods and goddesses) into action.

* Hindu - The God Vishnu was pre-existant, grew a lotus flower from his belly and from that was born the God Brahma who created the other Gods.

* Mesopotamia - Enuma Elish begins with three uncreated Gods, the God Apsu, his consort Tiamat, and Mummu.

* Jewish - God pre-existed or was self-created

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

* The Universe and Earth were created by the Gods acting on some primordial matter, in a state of chaos. Common representations of Evil were the dark, chaos, and the sea because of its unmanageable nature, it potential for destruction, the fact that salt water wasn't drinkable and the Hebrews weren't sea faring people so they didn't understand the fundamental characteristics of the sea. Breath, wind and spirit were conveyed by a single word.

* Egyptian - Amun created the Ogdoad and they were the agents of creation. The Ogdoad existed initially as entities within the primordial sea.
-- Before creation Nun (Primordial chaotic waters) already existed as a principle of chaos.

* Hindu - The Golden Seed incubated on the waters of chaos

* Mesopotamian - Tiamat is a body of water, the bitter sea waters that support the earth.
-- Like the waters of the abyss, Tiamat is formless and exerts power without purpose.

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

* Egyptian- Ptah was worshiped from the early dynastic era, but his role as the patron of artisans (for example, carpenters, woodworkers) came later. Ptah creates by speaking a word, giving spirit to a divine idea and “breathing” it into being.

* Hindu - Some Hindus believe that the universe created from Sound. The sound was AUM(33). Each letter is the sound of a God. It is the sound of the three foundational gods, the Trimurti(40), ("The Great Trinity" Brahma(34), Shiva(35) and Vishnu(36)) as One. Three gods make up one which is similar to the Christian idea of the Trinity. In reading the Vedas, ancient Hindu scripture, it is customary to start with the word AUM and end with the world AUM. Similar to the Christian word and usage of Amen. Sound is very important to the Hindu gods. Similar to Logos, it regulates moral order, ritual, morality. Sound and Ritual ceremony was connected to the cosmic structure, morality and moral activity. The Vedas(37), were a collections of prayers, wisdom literature (but not stories like the Old Testament) that could only be handled by Brahmin(38) (Priests) and were thought to be lethal to non-priests. The ears of a non-priest would burn if they came in contact with their sounds. In the beginning, it was considered heresy to try to capture the Vedas in writing, however, the influx of outsiders and the potential for their corruption caused someone to write them down. The Vedas were not written down until around 600 BCE and not translated into English until the 18th or 19th centuries.

3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

And now we have the ordering and organization of things which follows closely the order or creation in the Enuma Elish.

4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.

5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

* Egyptian - A few myths cover this in different ways. Geb and Nut were separated to make the earth and the sky.

* Hindu - They have few myths that cover this it different ways. The golden egg separated and each have half made the the earth and the sky. Or one of the Gods bodies was sacrificed (concept similar to Mesopotamian god that was killed to make people and the Christ that was sacrificed for the benefit of humans) and divided up to make the earth, cosmos and people.

* Mesopotamian - Finally, Marduk smashes Tiamat’s (waters of Chaos) head and splits her body in two to form the heavens and earth.

6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water."

7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so.

8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

Egyptian - In the midst of Nun, Atum stood on the Benben, a primeval pyramidical hill that arose out of the waters

9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so.

10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

At this point (Genesis 11-25) God created the rest of the vegetation, animals, sun, moon, and Man. The Hebrew scriptures diverge with the Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods and their more violent, less nurturing natures. The Hebrew God is more like the Hindu gods in that he is more part of the creation, has created the cosmos for humans, however the Hebrew god is not as much a part of creation as the Hindu Gods.

Myths are a reflection of the culture they belong to. The remarkable thing about the Indus Valley Civilizations are the lack of weapons relative to Mesopotamia and Egypt. They seem to be a more peaceful people. In the Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths man is created as lowly, flawed, subservient and savage by design. The creation of Humans will be covered in the next article.

CREATION MYTHS OF CONFLICT EMBEDDED IN THE BIBLE
In Job, Isaiah and Psalms there are characteristic elements of the conflict type of Creation story embedded. Since there is evidence of water-borne trade starting around 4000 BCE, It seems that sailors saw whales and relayed information about them that made their way into creation myths. The description in Job is similar to characteristics of commercial whaling. The description in Isaiah and Psalm 74:14 is more similar to creation myths, and Psalm 104:26 seems to describe a whale.

* Book of Job 3:8 "May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan "; NIV

* Book of Job 41

* Isaiah 27:1: "In that day,
the LORD will punish with his sword,
his fierce, great and powerful sword,
Leviathan the gliding serpent,
Leviathan the coiling serpent;
he will slay the monster of the sea." NIV

* Psalms 74:14: It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan and gave him as food to the creatures of the desert. NIV

* Psalms 104:26: 26 There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there. NIV

This brings us to the creation of Man in Genesis 1:26.
To be continued......


"Snapshot" of Ancient Civilizations in the second millennium (2000 - 1000 BCE)


Land and Sea routes between the Civilizations

Quick Reference to material in the sources. For the Quick References, Wikipedia is used liberally because while academics don't consider Wikipedia definitive or acceptable as a source they do consider it generally good enough for quick reference. Please do not confuse quick references with the sources. The sources are where the majority of information came from.

1. Syncretism
2. Folklore
3. interconnectedness of the Ancients
4. Ancient Egypt
5. Mesopotamia

6. Hinduism
7. Judaism
8. Christianity
9. Minoans
10. Indus Valley Civilization

11. Southern Levant
12. Indo-Iranians
13. Hittites
14. Myceneans
15. Persia

16. Abraham
17. Eastern Hemisphere 1300BCE
18. List of Languages by first written accounts.
19. Indo-Aryan Migration
20. Thor Heyerdahl; Kon-Tiki

21. Persian Gulf
22. Gulf of Oman
23. Red Sea
24. Common Themes in Creation Myths
25. Job

26. Leviathan
27. Enuma Elish
28. Enuma Elish Text
29. Nephilum
30. Atum

31. Ptah
32. Amun
33. AUM
34. Brahma
35. Shiva

36. Vishnu
37. Vedas
38. Brahmin
39. Blue Letter Bible Chrono-Genealogical Table
40. Trimurti

41. Egyptian Myths
42. Hindu Origins of Abrahamic Religions


Sources
1. Human Prehistory and First Civilizations, The Teaching Company
2. Great World Religions: The Religions of India, The Teaching Company
3. Great World Religions: Hinduism (2nd Edition), The Teaching Company
4. Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World, The Teaching Company
5. Ancient Near Eastern Mythology, The Teaching Company

6. The Book of Genesis, The Teaching Company
7. Great Figures of the Old Testament, The Teaching Company.
8. History 4A_ The Ancient Mediterranean World - Fall 2007, University of Berkeley
8. The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
9. Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality, 2nd Edition, The Teaching Company


RELATED INFORMATION
Joseph Campbell books on Amazon
The Early History of God, Mark Smith

Ancient Ships
* Maritime history - Wikipedia, the free encyclop...
* ancient ships
* Archaeology team helps find oldest deep-sea shipwrecks HarvardScience
* Ancient Egypt: Ships and Boats
* Ancient Phoenician Ships, Boats and Sea Trade
* early ways of navigating sea

Whale information
* Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) - Office of Protected Resources - NOAA Fisheries

Monsoons
* Monsoon African Connections: An ... - Google Bo...
* 538bc monsoon

Ancient History
* Ancient history
* First dynasty of Egypt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ancient Prehistory
* archaeolink.com archaeology, anthropology, social studies, general knowledge
* Evolution of Modern Humans: Early Modern Homo sapiens
* Hominid Species

Behavior
* Novelty Seeking Study
* NOVELTY SEEKING e-Review of Tourism Research

Interconnectedness of the Ancients
* Early Modern Homo sapiens
* Prisoners Dilemma
* Sea Level
* Monsoon Winds
* Ancient Sea Exploration

* Second Millenium shipwreck
* Whales Arabian Gulf
* Whales Turkey and Greece
* Whales Coast of Oman
* Leviathan

* Syncretism
* Creation Myths


Foundational Study, recommended reading

Cognition
- Influence: Science and Practice (4th Edition) by Cialdini, Robert
- Persuasion: Theory and Research (Current Communication) by O'Keefe, Daniel J.
- How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn
- Innumeracy : Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Social Consequences by John Allen Paulos
- Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (Popular Science) by Martin Gardener
- Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer
- Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought by David H. Fischer
- Conquering Deception by Nance, Jef
- General Psychology course from Berkeley
- Self and Society by John P Hewitt
- How We Know What Isn't So by Gilovich, Thomas

Christianity
- Evidence that Demands a Verdict Vol. 1 by Josh McDowell
- Evidence that Demands a Verdict Vol. 2 by Josh McDowell
- More Than A Carpenter by Josh McDowell
- Biblical Errancy: A Reference Guide by C. Dennis McKinsey
- Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions & Healing Cures by Joe Nickell
- Mysterious Realms: Probing Paranormal, Historical, and Forensic Enigmas by Joe Nickell and John F. Fischer

Folklore
- Folklore in the Old Testament by Frazer by James George
- Gospel Fictions by Helms, Randel
- Holy Writ as Oral Lit : The Bible as Folklore by Dundes, Alan
- Old Testament Parallels (Fully Expanded and Revised) by Victor H. Matthews and Don C. Benjamin
- Don't Know Much About Mythology by Kenneth C. Davis

History
- The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin by Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein
- The Bible with Sources Revealed by Friedman, Richard E.
- The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel by Mark S. Smith
- The Historical Jesus & the Mythical Christ by Massey, Gerald
- The Secret Origins of the Bible by Tim Callahan

Interconnectedness Of The Ancients

This is the start of a series of articles intended to debunk Genesis 1-11 and Romans 5. They will be an overview that come from notes from several courses I have taken over the past months. I intend to provide links to starting points to enable those interested to pursue what I call a "Serious Bible Study". It will show the means, motive and opportunity for the development of Judaism and Christianity in the Ancient World.

I recommend scrolling to the bottom of the article and opening the image in a separate window so you can look at it as you read.

Migration of humans out of Africa starting after the last ice age from 130,000 to 90,000 BCE(1) ensured robust populations in the Near East and South Asia. The natural cognitive algorithms enabling self-preservation, pleasure and novelty seeking account for the survival of the individual. The natural algorithms that develop from self-preservation and fostering offspring provide a means for early humans to prefer to stay in groups. Over the course of thousands of years development of new albeit primitive technologies and the naturally occurring algorithm of mutual self-interest(2) fostered trade between these populations and primitive "economies" to develop. Of course there were battles over various things but people seek comfort more than uncertainty which ensured the mutual survival of groups.

Generally people traveled over land at the end of the last ice age, the sea levels were about 130 meters (400 feet)(3) lower that what they are now. This caused the distance between coasts to be significantly less and caused land bridges to appear. The gap in the Red Sea between present day Djibouti and Yemen was smaller as was the distance from the coast of present day Oman to Pakistan and more importantly, the Indus Valley. Along the coast from Djibouti and Somalia are the regularly occurring Monsoon winds which change direction twice a year(4). Not only could people travel from Ethiopia and Somalia across lower half of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula through present day Yemen and Oman, to get to the Indus Valley, once the sailboat was developed in the fourth millennium BCE (4000-3000 BCE)(5), they could travel by sailboat from port to port along the coast of present day Yemen and Oman to the Indus Valley, and down the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. It also facilitated easier travel along the Nile in Egypt and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. While it is not clear where the technology for the sail originated, it is clear that its use was common in the third Millennium BCE (3000 - 2000 BCE) in Mesopotamia, Egypt and in Asia Minor and facilitated a "World Economy"(6) between the regions. The self-esteem, greed and competition between kings ensured that technology changed hands and improved. Once the Ancients began traversing the oceans, they must have been shocked by the size, grace and water spouts of the Whales which are indigenous in those areas(7)(8)(9). The fear of the sea and the stories of those whales naturally led to the inclusion of them in their Creation Stories(10).

Just as technology is traded, so are ideas. Ideas lead to beliefs and beliefs lead to religion. The blending of ideas is common, it leads to similar characteristics between cultures and when the blending of ideas involves beliefs and faiths, it is called "Syncretism"(11). Evidence of the battles of the early Jews to resist syncretism appears in old testament scripture, and other forms of historical evidence are abundant. It is a fact of life that people trade everything, including ideas, and it is a means to more successful outcomes.

The civilizations affected by this technology and "world economy" are Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley the east coast of the Mediterranean, Asia Minor (Turkey) and Greece. It makes a triangle of interconnectedness along the waterways and land. Some of the founding Gods of those civilizations were, in Egypt Ptah and Atum, in the Indus Valley Hiranyagarbha or Prajapati, Brahma, Indra, Varuna and Vishnu, Purusha Sukta, In Mesopotamia Marduk, Asia Minor had El and Greece had Zeus(12). As one goes through reading the names of the Gods and stories, one notices striking similarities in the names that appear in the myths.

Canaan, Palestine, Israel and Judah were enclosed in this triangle of interconnectedness, and that brings us to Genesis 1.
To be continued.....



For the references, Wikipedia is used liberally because while academics don't consider wikipedia difinitive or acceptable as a source they do consider it generally good enough for quick reference.

Quick References

1. Early Modern Homo sapiens
2. Prisoners Dilemma
3. Sea Level
4. Monsoon Winds
5. Ancient Sea Exploration
6. Second Millenium shipwreck
7. Whales Arabian Gulf
8. Whales Turkey and Greece
9. Whales Coast of Oman
10. Leviathan
11. Syncretism
12. Creation Myths

Sources
1. Human Prehistory and First Civilizations, The Teaching Company
2. Great Religions: Hinduism (1st Edition), The Teaching Company
3. Great Religions: Hinduism (2nd Edition), The Teaching Company
4. Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World, The Teaching Company
5. Ancient Near Eastern Mythology, The Teaching Company
6. Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality, 2nd Edition, The Teaching Company


Related Information

Ancient Ships
* Maritime history - Wikipedia, the free encyclop...
* ancient ships
* Archaeology team helps find oldest deep-sea shipwrecks HarvardScience
* Ancient Egypt: Ships and Boats
* Ancient Phoenician Ships, Boats and Sea Trade
* early ways of navigating sea

Whale information
* Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus) - Office of Protected Resources - NOAA Fisheries

Monsoons
* Monsoon African Connections: An ... - Google Bo...
* 538bc monsoon

Ancient History
* Ancient history
* First dynasty of Egypt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ancient Prehistory
* archaeolink.com archaeology, anthropology, social studies, general knowledge
* Evolution of Modern Humans: Early Modern Homo sapiens
* Hominid Species

Behavior
* Novelty Seeking Study
* NOVELTY SEEKING e-Review of Tourism Research

Decision-making May Be Surprisingly Unconscious Activity

ScienceDaily.com
A team of scientists has unraveled how the brain actually unconsciously prepares our decisions. Even several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain. (Thanks to Scott.)

So what does this mean for passages such as Matthew 5:21?
"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.'
But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.

In light of this research, that seems extreme. How is one accountable for "Flash" Anger? How does one prevent "Flash" Anger? If a large percentage of your action or decision is prepared in the "background" how much of that are we in control of? I'll stipulate that we have the final choice, but how we feel about it is quite another thing. The brain is like a modular unit. Its made up of modular circuitry that have processes that run in background of which we are not aware. Any poor performance in any one of those circuits could cause us to do something or feel someway we wouldn't normally. For example lack of sleep and the resultant crabbiness that accompanies it. It seems extreme to put our fates in the hands of a three pound meatball that is so easily influenced to operate outside of "specifications"


Excerpts from the article.

This unprecedented prediction of a free decision was made possible by sophisticated computer programs that were trained to recognize typical brain activity patterns preceding each of the two choices. Micropatterns of activity in the frontopolar cortex were predictive of the choices even before participants knew which option they were going to choose. The decision could not be predicted perfectly, but prediction was clearly above chance. This suggests that the decision is unconsciously prepared ahead of time but the final decision might still be reversible.

More than 20 years ago the American brain scientist Benjamin Libet found a brain signal, the so-called "readiness-potential" that occurred a fraction of a second before a conscious decision. Libet’s experiments were highly controversial and sparked a huge debate. Many scientists argued that if our decisions are prepared unconsciously by the brain, then our feeling of "free will" must be an illusion. In this view, it is the brain that makes the decision, not a person’s conscious mind. Libet’s experiments were particularly controversial because he found only a brief time delay between brain activity and the conscious decision.

In contrast, Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts -- even up to 7 seconds ahead of time -- how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: "Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer ahead than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. We need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed."

Disqualifying Adam and Eve

(Revised: added a poll at the end just for fun) Since most people in the world (some of them Christians) don't believe in Adam and Eve based on the conclusions resulting from scientific disciplines such as Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology from now on I will disqualify it as a datum in any discussion I have on this site. That means that I will no longer accept the historicity of Adam and Eve as a premise supporting any conclusions, I will dismiss it out of hand and I encourage this viewpoint from others.
In my view, to entertain or even to discuss the historicity of Adam and Eve is irrelevant. They have already been shown to be infinitesimally unlikely by fields such as Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology. In my view it is a sensible position to commit to the view point that Adam and Eve are folklore until the introduction of new information warrants reconsideration. In my view to recognize the possibility of the existence of Adam and Eve as a premise in a discussion is to give it the appearance that it is a real consideration and worthy of discussion. I say that it is no more worthy of discussion than a flat earth or the existence of Leprechauns.

Logically, using the same criteria to support the existence of Adam and Eve, one could argue for the existence of Leprechauns. To concede that the existence of Adam and Eve is a possibility is to prevent the discussion from going forward toward a resolution because the insistence of the opponent to disregard the conclusion of the disciplines of Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology is counter to the most widely held viewpoint in the world and is irrational in the face of sound reasoning. If another Christian doesn't believe it why should I give it the benefit of doubt? Why should I allow it as a premise in any discussion?

Now an apologist may accuse me of appealing to authority and the bandwagon fallacy. However, those are labels for a fallacious reasoning scheme. To apply that label to my process of reasoning in this case necessitates showing that my presumption about the validity of the conclusions drawn from those disciplines is flawed and/or that the viewpoint of the majority is based on the underlying fallacy of the conclusions drawn from those disciplines. It necessitates discrediting the conclusions of those disciplines. That is an uphill battle if there ever was one. In both cases I am insulated from the charge of fallacy.

In my view, the persistence of groundless beliefs such as Adam and Eve is due to the tolerance of them in discussion by those that know they are groundless. We can still tolerate other viewpoints until those viewpoints begin to intrude or become harmful in the practical and pragmatic business of day to day life. Discussants need to make the same commitment to discourage and challenge the use of inaccurate information in their personal lives that they do in other areas of their lives.

PollPub.com Vote

Adam and Eve or Darwin's Theory (Evolution)

Adam and Eve
Darwin's Theory (Evolution)


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Problem of Other Minds, God and Us

I can sum it up in two words. Cat Herding.


Wikipedia describes "The Problem of Other Minds" as follows.
Given that I can only observe the behaviour of others, how can I know that others have minds?

Now how does this relate to Us and God? How do we know that God has a mind? How do I know that you have a mind? How do I know that I am not a brain in a vat? As interesting and as fun as all these questions are to think about I want to look at it more pragmatically.

That's cool.
I know what I mean, but do you?
What does that mean? It depends on context doesn't it? This is the problem of other minds. I don't know if you've understood what I mean. I would know if you've understood what I mean if I could put the thoughts in your head exactly the way they should be but I can't. I have to tell you.

So now I'm planning a project and I have to describe to these people what the specifications are going to be. I am going to try to use the principle of clarity and minimize as much uncertainty as I can. I use email but someone always misunderstands what I mean. They take their misunderstanding of what I mean and shoot off an email to some other people pretty soon, the project is off track. I draw a picture, scan it, and send it in the next email. This works better but there is always some information missing or some information that will get interpreted in a way that I didn't expect. It would be so much better if they could read my mind. It would be so much better if I could just download the electrochemical state in my head and pass it on to them to upload. But the problem is that they would still be missing information unless I passed onto them the whole configuration of my brain, because they don't have my memories or resultant heuristic algorithms that I have acquired over time.

The truth is, it is a 'miracle' if this project turns out as planned and on schedule and within budget because people can't read minds and, regardless of their best efforts, can only understand what they have a foundational knowledge about.

Since this is the case and is a source of my frustration, either I am the only one this happens to, or it is a symptom of human cognition.

Since this is the case, it is silly for me to expect that generating text is going to keep this project on track. It is silly for me to use terms and examples that my associates don't have a foundational knowledge of. It would be better if I could just impart this knowledge into them with no chance of mistake or misinterpretation.

The only way I could do that is to be God. But we know that Gods don't work that way. But I bet they would if they were real.

The Devil Is In The Details

This is a kind of commentary and overview of my observations after participating here for a year.

Reasoning is a discipline. There are several heuristics you can use for reasoning that speed up the process, but the process depends on the quality of detail and evidence you introduce into the process. I solve problems for a living. My bread and butter depends on how well I provide solutions to other peoples problems. I became an atheist after I started using the tools that contribute to my success to my personal philosophy. My religion.

Stephen Toulmin, Richard D. Rieke and G. Thomas Goodnight all talk about spheres of influence or reasoning. The concept goes that there are schemes of reasoning that are more successful depending on the field they are applied in. For example you don't use the same reasoning schemes in critiquing art that you use to convict criminals or determine a drug is safe for use. However, there have been plenty of artists and writers that have discovered and investigated, in their own way, concepts that have been incorporated into science. The most notable ones are that Natural Philosophy has a relationship to Science, the exploration in literature of Human Behavior and Psychology has a relationship to modern day Cognitive Sciences. Artists discovered the Golden Ratio as a perspective that just "looked good" and it was later described in mathematical terms and has a relationship to Architecture.

Religion is and always has been a philosophy about life. A way of thinking about life. This is what it has in common with art, music, law, medicine and science. Dealing with the questions of life. Since all these disciplines share this commonality, and since we know there is overlap, the principle of science can be used to investigate religion.

Christianity depends on the Bible. What is the bible? It is scripture. Where did this scripture come from? That is the question. It says it came from God. But applying the principles of Science, Law and Medicine to this question necessitates another form of validation, or another form of ID. Something to verify that it is what it says it is.

This is where looking at the details comes in. Looking at where these scriptures came from. Tracing the source. Doing this will take you from textual criticism, to sociology, to psychology, to biology, to paleontology, to archeology, to philosophy and not in that order.

Most of the arguments that Christian use here are some kind misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the world. They are referred to commonly as "straw man" arguments. Their philosophy is outdated, needs an upgrade, it doesn't represent an accurate picture of the world. They need new information. Decision making depends on new information. People should change their minds according to assessment of new information. It shouldn't be discouraged or looked at as being indecisive or wishy-washy, it should be demanded! It should be a virtue!

Solving peoples problems requires looking at the details and following the evidence. It requires suspending the tendency to follow authority, tradition and personal bias and instead use logic and inference. We should depend less on authority, consensus and tradition and more on principle, inference and strong criteria for evidence.

In my mind, to Debunk Christianity, or Break the Spell, requires people to follow George Santanaya's advice and don't forget the lessons of the past. Learn about the past, learn about where we came from, find out where those Virtues first appeared, find out where that "let your light shine" came from, find out which god was the first to die and go to hell and come back and have a son, how most of the kings in antiquity were sons of gods or gods incarnate or somehow related to gods.

People need to take the principles they use in the practical application of living their lives and apply it to their religion. When this is done, it brings to light how silly eternal punishment is compared to rehabilitation or just scrapping everything and starting over. How silly it is punish other people for the 'sins' of another group. How silly a human sacrifice is, or just a sacrifice to appease a god is. How silly it is to depend on premises that have no precedent and then create a philosophy of life around it. Just try to plan and execute a project using premises without precedent, and see how successful you are.

Here are some hints to Debunk Christianity. Apply your practical principles to your religion. And do your homework. Find your heritage.

Look up syncretism, sumeria, mesopotamia, ancient egypt, indus valley, harrapas, the axial age, greece, minoans, phoenicians, canaanites, hittites, fertile crescent, hellenism, Byzantium, trade between the indus valley, sumeria and mesopotamia, and follow the water, and pay attention to ancient peoples whos culture and religion idealize life as a journey. Key word "Journey" as in spiritual and economic and trade. Learn about World History between 40,000 bce and 500 ce. Learn about what was important to those people. Learn about their religions.

You will find, the Devil is in the Details, but so is your solution.

Video, Stroke Induced Spirituality

Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor had a stroke which allowed her to study the brain from the inside out. In this 20 min talk she describes how she was able to call for help and the feelings of spirituality that came over her as the left side of her brain was malfunctioning.


More links of interest:
from epilepsy.com
Famous religious figures with symptoms of epilepsy.
They include St. Paul, Joan of Arc and Soren Kierkegaard

From ScienceDaily
Out of body experience induced in the lab

From Debunking Christianity
Reasonable Doubt About The Soul

Know What and Why You Believe

"The unexamined life is not worth living." Quote attributed to Socrates. Continuing education is very important to understanding who we are, the world around us, avoiding fraud and improving successful outcomes in life. Here are a list of relevant University and Teaching Company Audio courses suitable for your personal MP3 player that I recommend in the categories of Pre-history, History, Psychology, and Philosophy.

This is not an exhaustive list, but its a start in the right direction to examining what and why we believe. The list contains links to commercial sites, Free university lectures from Berkeley, and the rest are to Torrent sites. Downloading from torrent sites involves some risk from malicious programs and legal concerns. Use your best judgement. Purchase what you can.

First one needs to know who they are.

* Psychology 1: General Psychology UC Berkeley, Free, UC Berkeley
* TTC - Biology and Behavior, under $50.00
* TTC - John Searle Philosophy of Mind, Torrent archive available
* TTC - Consciousness and Its Implications, under $20.00

Then, one should know where they came from.

* TTC - Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations, audio under 200.00, books under 50.00
* History 4A The Ancient Mediterranean World, UC Berkeley, Free UC Berkeley
* TTC - Ancient Near Eastern Mythology Torrent, Archive Torrent available for Download

Then one should examine the origins of their belief from both sides of the fence.

* TTC - The Historical Jesus, under 130.00, book in the panel on the right
* TTC - Christianity, audio under 90.00, book under $20.00

Then one should comapare Secular and Religious Values to see how they match up.

* TTC - The Quest for Meaning, audio $130.00

Reasonable Doubt About Sin, Biological Bases For Behavior

This article expresses doubt about sin. It challenges the concept of Sin and Eternal Reward and Punishment. Human behavior is too complex to be handled by a dichotomy of "reward and punishment".

It is a very long article, and i apologize but it is so long exactly because it gets to the heart of Christianity and shows how ignorant of human behavior the authors were. It argues that if God created us, that since we have biological bases for behavior that heavily influence our freewill, the dichotomy of reward and punishment rather than remediation is unjust because he designed us with a high potential to fail. The article is divided into two sections. The first section is a general overview of the argument, and the second part is more technical with links to data.

Even as a Christian, I have always thought the policy that people were more bad than good was odd. I just took it on faith that it was true. Then I just took it on faith that all the little tiny sins amounted to something that was relatively disgusting to a god, however much I couldn't understand it. But since I lost my faith, I now believe that Christianity follows in the footsteps of all the other religions before it that correlate blood with fertility, Gods with kings and heroes who struggle with death. Humans have a special part as subjects and should constantly strive to behave better. Basically, religion creates a problem by exaggerating the bad then sells the solution. Its a tried and true technique, that many different organizations (including marketing) practice today. People are bad and they need God or a King to keep them in line. In fact, I just heard about how nasty people were from my co-worker, then I challenged him to walk around the building with me and point to "nasty people". "Nasty People" are a minority. If they weren't there would be no civilization. Its The Blame Game. The claim goes "People are Evil, Lazy, Unmotivated and Stupid because they choose to be, but don't despair, there is a solution!"

Human behavior is and has typically been viewed as good or Bad/Evil. Supposedly Jesus cast out demons, and this practice continues today. But this idea of spirits causing bad behavior was left behind by science. Science has taken a slow track to the point it is today because until recently fruitful "non-destructive" brain research has been impossible. Science has exposed the good/evil false dichotomy and shows that Christianity ignores a lot of very important qualifiers about human behavior. Even in the cases of ordinary behavior of the people you work with, their behavior doesn't stem from them being a "bad" or "good" person. Human behavior is influenced by the following inter-dependent factors and the human is more or less unaware of them.
- Population and Species attributes
- Natural selection
- Genetic Makeup
- Fetal Development
- Perinatal Biology
- Development
- Acute Hormones
- Environmental Triggers
- Neurobiology

What you will notice is that Freewill is missing. That is because freewill itself is made up of those components. We don't have as much "freewill" as we imagine we do. Where do you draw the line between normal behavior and a disorder? Where do you draw the line of culpability?

Additionally as I discussed in Reasonable Doubt About The Problem of Evil/Needless Suffering As A Test there is a negative feedback loop between stress and our behavior. The influence that environmental and biological factors have on the function of the brain limits options and performance without the person even realizing it. These factors are an inseparable part of the decision making process.

When we see behavior exhibited by a person, it is a result of these factors. Whether or not the behavior meets our expectations or that of God, it originated out of the frail bodily organ that is the brain. It may be that these factors cannot really be appreciated until they are put under stress or do not work properly. Many times the result is behavior that is outside the norm and/or doesn't meet our expectations. How much culpability does a person have when the tools they are given are not adequate for the task at hand? In the context of having our behavior judged by God, there is only eternal reward or eternal damnation. Curiously there is no facility for treatment except for the bible, church, prayer and repentance. But living in a constant state of repentance causes stress, poor self-esteem and approaches depression. With the advances in biological sciences in the last few decades, Western Judicial Systems have been forced to re-evaluate policies to determine if treatment rather than punishment is the better decision, because everyday secular science gets one step closer to easing a previously mysterious malady.

I argue that if we were put here as a test, then we should have been designed exactly opposite. As it is now, resisting temptation and denying our nature causes frustration and stress. It seems to be a backward system where following the rules results in angst, frustration, poor health and ultimately unhappiness. It seems to be a system designed to demotivate. It seems to be a system designed to foster failure.

If god made us, then obviously he is responsible for our architecture. The bible says we prefer sin, and using the definition of sin in the bible, it seems to be true. But what is sin? Who decides what sin is? Is sin being promiscuous or overeating? Human beings would have never survived if they did not act this way. It is necessary behavior in the survival of organisms to procreate as much as they can and eat when they can find food. Natural Selection has filtered this behavior to prominence because those organisms that behaved that way, passed on more copies of themselves, their genes.

How do we stay motivated to do things that promote our survival? We have to have some internal 'detector' that makes us want to do something that promotes our survival. Sex feels good doesn't it? Eating when you are hungry feels good doesn't it? Dopamine receptors in the brain receive Dopamine that gets released into the blood stream by the endocrine system that provides some of that positive feedback. But a malfunctioning dopamine system or the introduction of foreign bodies that are similar to dopamine can cause addictions. It is a flawed process that can be easily fooled by things such as food, alcohol and cocaine into malfunctioning. Not the high quality I would expect out of the workshop of a God.

Do people choose who they are sexually aroused by? I didn't choose my sexual preference, and by the way most people talk, they didn't either, but to hear a Christian denounce homosexuality as abhorrent behavior you'd think they are attracted to both sexes but choose to be heterosexual. I don't buy it because I know that pheromones or at least something that is given off by an individual has an effect on arousal. I know that 1 in 6000 humans are born with both genitalia and I know that some people are pseudohermaphrodites (they have the normal genitalia but with opposite gender ovaries or testicles partially developed in the lower torso). I also know that scientists can biologically manipulate the sexuality of Mice and Fruit-flies in the lab and that there are over 1500 species of animals that are know to exhibit homosexual behavior.

I challenge the whole concept of sin. I think it is a misunderstanding of evolutionarily developed behaviors and human biology that were not understood at the time the scripture was written. I say we are at least as 'good' as we are 'sinful' and in reality the lines of 'good' and 'sin' are blurred by context. The act of lying is a good example of that. Organisms use a mixture of strategies such as Individual Selection, Kin Selection and variations of "Tit-for-Tat" to survive. Game theory mathematics predicts some behaviors such as cooperation and selecting for cooperative mates. "Tit-for-Tat" is a logical strategy not specific to humans that naturally evolves out of situations as demonstrated in nature and between armies in World War 1 and 2.

Christians say this 'death' came after Adam disobeyed god, but I say that the evidence is reasonably conclusive that there never was an Adam and Eve. The only evidence for Adam and Eve come from the bible, the Egyptian myth of the potter that makes humans out of clay, and the Sumerian myth of the god that was killed and his blood was mixed with the earth to make humans. Experts on the bible, Christians and scientists discount the Egyptian and Sumerian accounts so all that is left is the Bible as the sole source. If Adam and Eve did exist then for them to have conceived of choosing to disobey god, the mechanism to do that would have had to already existed. They would have already had to have the architecture in place to allow that to happen. If not, then God would have had to make a "Great Overhaul" of human and animal physiology to 'curse us'. Alternately to say that Adam and Eve are just Metaphors for mans sinful nature is to admit that we were made from the beginning to "prefer sin" or somewhere along the line, we were perfect and then decided to sin and the "Great Overhaul" occurred, but anthropology does not support that conclusion in any measure.

If God made us this way then we are sabotaged to prefer to sin (survival strategies), and to resist it causes stress which adversely affects our happiness and sometimes our health. Some of our biological features had evolutionary advantages that don't make sense anymore. Such as overeating and sexual promiscuity. Addictions are evolutionary processes running amok that never had the ability or time to compensate for error. To say that God sabotaged us to prefer sin is obviously a ridiculous charge against the Christian God, therefore the alternative is that he didn't have anything to do with our creation.

WHAT IS BEHAVIOR?
It is the result of a feedback loop between the environment and a biological system of feedback loops that all influence each other circularly. As research progresses, it is removing the mystery and supernatural aspects of who we and how we behave. There are biological factors involved in who we vote for, what we believe in, what we like, what we think about, what we experience, what makes us an "I", what makes up our essence.

POPULATION AND SPECIES ATTRIBUTES, NATURAL SELECTION
Through a strategy of reproducing, eating when food is available, selecting for things that 'feel good' and/or selecting for things that support its well being organisms naturally survive. There is a point when their behavior prevents them from dying, and another point when it causes them to thrive, and another point when their behavior is not appropriate in the environment anymore. The more of these organisms that survive, the more they reproduce and the more copies they make of themselves. Over time, survival strategies evolved naturally. Some of these were discovered after that "Beautiful Mind" John Nash created a mathematical model of economic behavior. This model was expanded into what is now known as "Game Theory". In Game theory a strategy known as "Tit-for-Tat" was discovered, where participant A trusts participant B till B does something that violates it, then A will do something against B until B's behavior conforms, and vice versa. The most famous example of this spontaneous non-violent behavior is in the "Christmas Truce" of World War One in 1914 which was an instance of the "Live and Let Live" spontaneous cooperation behavior. Not only are these cooperative behaviors selected for because they result in the survival of the organism, the organism selects partners that it sees will cooperate. These naturally arising survival strategies ensured early humans could pass on copies of themselves. Generally speaking, our behavior has evolved to ensure the successful copying of our genes.

GENES, GENETIC MAKEUP
Genes are the foundation for biological systems including the brain. They are a hereditary unit consisting of a sequence that occupies a specific location on a chromosome and determines a particular characteristic in an organism. DNA is a nucleic acid that carries the genetic information in the cell and is capable of self-replication and synthesis of RNA. DNA consists of two long chains of nucleotides twisted into a double helix and joined by hydrogen bonds between the complementary bases adenine and thymine or cytosine and guanine. The sequence of nucleotides determines individual hereditary characteristics. Genes undergo mutation when their DNA sequence changes by suboptimal process execution. They result in differences in eye color, body style, "quality" of blood, bones, teeth, cells, TEMPERAMENT, etc.

There are genetic factors that promote or detract from survival. Those genetic factors that promote survival will get more copies made. Organisms that survive will pass them on. A famous genetic mutation is Sickle Cell anemia. It evidently created an evolutionary advantage against malaria, but over time the need has diminished and now it is a disease because the context changed. Additionally, sometimes genes get distorted and a mutation occurs. Most of the time these mutations don't have much affect but sometimes they do. A striking behavioral example of this is Frontotemporal dementia. It is a neurological disorder (most often due to a specific mutation) in which disintegration of the frontal cortex occurs. This one genetic variant affects two people with opposite temperaments in opposite ways, turning a meek person into a wild one and a wild one into a meek one. Temperament is defined as the part of the personality that is genetically defined. Patterns of behavioral traits run in families. Another example is how Genital Arousal Disorder Adversely Impacts Women's Lives. Its challenging for us to make sense of 'who's the them inside there that's doing that'.

Genes code for the architecture of the neuron. The neuron is made up of a cell body (Soma) a dendritic tree and an axon . The axon is covered by a myelin sheath made of glial cells that provide support in the form of nutrition and insulation. Multiple sclerosis is a disease that attacks the myelin sheath. When the neurons are working properly, they communicate via electrochemical mechanisms. This results in the release of neurotransmitters such as Dopamine and Serotonin. Dopamine and Serotonin levels affect the brain and are used by a mechanism of recycling. When the levels of Dopamine and Serotonin are incorrect or interrupted, it results in diseases such as depression, bi-polar disease, schizophrenia, and others including addiction and possibly Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. For example, categorically speaking, serial killers have reduced levels of Serotonin. Additionally, cocaine is a type of drug that causes premature release of Dopamine transmitters and makes the drug highly addictive. Once a person is accustomed to the feeling created by the release of dopamine, when they don't have it, they miss it and will try to regain it. This is an effective evolutionary survival strategy. This is one reason why addiction is so powerful. It works on the central processing unit of the body. Manipulating neurotransmitters in the brain are a powerful way to manipulate moods and behavior in humans. Diseases such as schizophrenia are a result of poor neurotransmitter performance and are passed genetically. A less debilitating version is called Schizotypy. It has negative dimensions to it such as reduced social behavior but in some cases it results in higher incidences of creativity in individuals. Statistically, artists and authors have a higher incidence of schizophrenia in their families. Schizophrenia not only affects behavior, it also affects perception.

FETAL DEVELOPMENT, PERINATAL BIOLOGY, DEVELOPMENT
Another important factor in the development of this architecture of behavior is fetal development. We all know that mothers that smoke and drink alcohol increase the risk of harm to the baby, but we don't think about the mothers environment. Excessive stress is known to be harmful to the baby and mother. For example, excessive stress in the third trimester is known to correlate to a smaller head size. Poor nutrition is another factor that negatively impacts the fetus. Over successive pregnancies the womb compensates and modifies itself to account for what has been going on inside of it. It compensates for hormones, and correlates to fetus sexual development. I'm not saying that homosexuals are made in the mothers womb, but I am saying that Congenital adrenal hyperplasia is a pathology which makes a biological base for homosexuality very plausible. Additionally, factors that negatively impact the brain, nervous system, or endocrine system put the organism at a disadvantage before it leaves the womb. These factors play a part in developing the architecture that will produce behavior. The brain is made up of around 100 billion neurons each with connections to between 1000 - 10,000 other neurons, it uses a combination of electrical, chemical, analog and digital "state change" signaling to accomplish communication between them. There is a lot that could go wrong in a system like that. For example people under 16 years of age can't be given death penalty because it is recognized that the frontal lobe is not fully developed yet. This article from sciencedaily.com discusses Why Teens Are Such Impulsive Risk-takers. Biological factors reduce reasoning in one area while wildly enhancing it in others (Autism) reduce inhibitions, and leads to thinking about things that were previously unthinkable as evidenced in the following section.
Reasonable Doubt About The Atonement, Psychopathy
Reasonable Doubt About The Soul

BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES, ENDOCRINE SYSTEM, REGULATION OF THE BRAIN BY HORMONES, REGULATION OF THE HORMONES BY BRAIN, ACUTE HORMONES
This section shows the loop-back between the body and the brain.
Once the organism is born, in the early stages, its behavior will be mostly a result of reacting to its environment and the quality of the processes that result from the architecture that was formed in the womb. Babies that don't feel good, cry. Crying babies cause stress in the care provider. Crying babies will naturally motivate other babies to cry. Stress releases hormones from the organs (endocrine system) of both organisms. These hormones affect the frontal cortex and the limbic system, two systems that play a large role in behavior. But like all systems, organisms burn energy and use resources. There is never an endless supply of resources so the organism or system must reduce its activity to replenish resources or risk degraded performance. For example Sugar Affects Our Ability To Resist Temptation. A person that is chronically aggressive must spend more energy than those that are not resisting that feeling of aggression. Aggression is so basic that it can manifest itself through a genetic predisposition (MAOA), a tumor in the frontal cortex as in the famous case of Charles Whitman and the famous case of a recurrent tumor that caused recurrent pedophilia in a man, or testosterone and estrogen. Additionally, other ways hormones affect behavior is in the affect that male sweat has on females, female hormones have on each other (Menstrual syncronicity) , and how Subliminal Smells Bias Perception About A Person's Likability

ENVIRONMENT, CULTURE, ENVIRONMENTAL TRIGGERS, NEUROBIOLOGY
As organisms interact in their environment, they behave according to internal factors, according to things they have learned and according to things they have stored in memory. They have the function of their internal processes influenced and shaped as time goes on. While it can be shown that a kind of xenophobia naturally results in the brain and the evolutionary advantage is apparent, people can reduce its impact by learning about the stranger and creating positive feelings about them. A practical example of this is Racism, and the fact that racism can be diminished through learning to trust one another. Xenophobia is a neurological reaction, an automatic dislike of strangers, and likewise there are some factors that make us feel the opposite automatically. A pleasing view or sound, or sensation on the skin is an example. The Biological clock has been shown to be regulated by light, and blue light at the wavelength of 480nm supports alertness and cognitive tasks. Sound at subsonic wavelengths from 17hz to 0.001 (aka infrasound) has been known to cause feelings of awe or fear in humans. Some reactions are automatic and set off reactions in the endocrine system that regulates the brain. Some stimuli gets that dopamine released and headed for those receptors. But what if something we like naturally is harmful? What if watching an organism experience fear causes dopamine to get released? Or what if we don't get the feedback we need to help shape our behavior one way or another? What if those paths between portions of the brain don't work efficiently because of a "Silent Stroke" or some natural defect? Sociopathy and Psychopathy are results of poor performance in emotional responses, and speaking less pathologically Schizotypy can result in a "wall flower", science fiction and fantasy enthusiast (like me) that can be amplified or reduced by the home environment.

REASONING, INFLUENCE
People are very easy to influence. For example, the more in sync we are with the people around us, the more we like a movie. Reasoning properly is not something we are born with. There are many books related to sales that teach you tricks for how to influence people in a positive way to a sales pitch. Robert Cialdini is probably the most famous doctor to popularize principles of influence. In business we have to overcome many counter-intuitive biases to come up with a sound successful business strategy. We have to gather data in a certain way and use learned principles of interpreting that data to come to sound conclusions of what 'truth' it represents. We have to overcome the tendency to confuse correlation with cause, etc. We have to be trained to think properly to overcome biases that are either learned or 'hardwired' in us. One bias is the famous "Pascals Wager". It is a simple heuristic that is analogous to the survival instinct. It says "minimize risk". While this is a sound principle, how one goes about is the hard part. We have to teach children to "reason away" the fear of something under the bed, in the closet or noises in the house. This is where the discipline in thinking comes into play, the inference from statistics, and learning the difference between correlation and cause and effect.

FREEWILL, DECISION MAKING
How much freewill is left in the pie chart of decision making? It is said among Christians that God gave us freewill as a gift and we are supposed to use it to choose to love and obey him. They say that he won't influence our freewill. If god will not influence our freewill, then it doesn't follow that he made us. If he made us, he built in all kinds of factors that influence our freewill.

So how does this figure in when we have to love god, or love our neighbor in the middle of living in this "evil" world? Stress reduces our ability to behave as we would like. It doesn't make it easy and your prayers may or may not get answered, and we may even find ourselves having to decide to jump to our death or burn to death when its all over.

Alternately, Biological Bases for Behavior make it plausible that atheists have no real choice but to be atheists in the same sense that creative thinkers have no choice in thinking creative thoughts or paranoids believe that people are out to harm them. It is likely that some are "wired" to be less susceptible to belief not supported by a certain level of criteria for evidence. Biological Bases for Behavior makes it plausible that 85% of the world are ABLE to believe, but 15% aren't. The Christian would be in that 85% and the Atheist would be in that 15%.

THE FLAWED PRINCIPLE OF REPENTANCE
If we are to be judged according to our thoughts, actions and decisions, and our thoughts, actions and decisions are influenced and or created by physiological factors, then we cannot be judged according to any standard since all people are physiologically unique and some behave in ways that they otherwise would not in different circumstances. How can we be judged for disobeying god when we cannot completely control our thoughts? To say, for example, that we are guilty of adultery for thinking about it (as Jesus did) is to say that there is no hope for redemption unless we are in a constant state of repentance. I should be repentant for something that I cannot control? For an aspect of my physiological makeup? Should I be sorry because I am ugly? I will be sent to eternal punishment because I am what I am? I am not able to live up to an unreachable standard so I am to be punished? If we are all supposed to do as well as we can and be repentant for the rest, what is the point at all? And how long can we stay repentant for something that never goes away? If our ability to avoid temptation is reduced as the amount of glucose is reduced, isn't it likely that as brain resources in general are reduced so are the associated processes? Are people to blame if they get tired of being repentant? Can someone be blamed for not being repentant about not being repentant? How can what we learn on the physical earth possibly transfer into our 'final reward' which is completely different? How is the ethereal 'soul' linked in any way to these physical processes? Is it affected as my glucose depletes?

Since the brain is a biological device. It can be influenced by physiological factors, and physiological factors induce desire and motivation. Since we cannot get outside of our thoughts and feelings, they make up our personality our "essence". This renders any judgment by an external supernatural creator meaningless because it would know that we are helpless to feel any other way than our physiological make up will support at the time, and that our behavior and desire will follow that. We are helpless to think any thoughts that are not supported by our physiological make up at the time. The physiological factors would have to be eliminated to make any judgment meaningful.

There is a theory that the brain is wired to do what it thinks and that it is because of an 'inhibitory circuit' in the brain that we can control our actions. When this is damaged, then we do things that we would ordinarily not do and in some cases do not realize it is wrong. I know bigots, and self-important arrogant people that don't even realize when they are being condescending and judgmental and don't even realize that what they are doing is wrong or unpleasant to be around. Any mention of it and I am the one that is in error because I am too sensitive or "exaggerated" or "self-righteous". Since our thoughts are determined by what state our brain is in at any given time, then so is our freewill and our moral compass. Our will, or motivation and desire is determined by what state our brain is in at any given time. This is not to say that we absolutely cannot control our behavior, it is just to say, that behavior outside the norm should be remediated, analyzed and assessed rather than judged.

None of this is laid out for understanding in the Bible. It was all misunderstood. Western Judicial Systems are on the edge of a cognitive science wind of change about why we behave the way we do and thinking about our culpability. At an AAAS Conference, Judges Explored the Impact of Neuroscience on the Justice system. They realize, as we all should, that the line between the essence of who we are and the biological factors tossing that essence about is getting shown be blurred.

Below are some links and notes I collected doing this research that support the article further.

* Time magazine,
- Ape with a conscience, pg. 54. vol 170, no. 23. Dec. 3, 2007
- The Science of Addiction, pg. 42. vol 170, no. 3. July 16, 2007
- The Science of Appetite, pg 32. Canadian Edition vol 169, no. 24. June 11, 2007.
* Biology and Human Behavior: The Neurological Origins of Individuality, 2nd Edition
* University of Berkeley webcast courses: Psych 1 General Psychology
* Norman Geschwind can be considered the father of modern behavioral neurology in America.
* Pseudohermaphrodites
* Search for Craving Response on ScienceDaily.com. Research on addiction
* Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
* Epilepsy, religious figures
* Twin Studies
* Phineas Gage
* Tourette Syndrome
* Bipolar Disorder
* Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
* Borderline Personality Disorder
* Nymphomania
* Kleptomania
* Neophobia
* Depression
* The Role of Persuasion In The Question Of The Holy Spirit

A Rejoinder To "Atheism is not rational"

Brian asked me to comment on a link that asserts that Atheism is not Rational. My rejoinder follows. This started as an email and I hastily posted it to get it on the table.
I cannot afford the time to defend this as well as I should, but if any one wants to take me to task on it, there will be ample time in the future. I'm hoping that it is coherent enough that it won't need much defending.

My rejoinder to "atheism is not rational".
First lets look at what is considered rational.
Rationality is a process that uses logic and logic makes inferences from data. Inferences are correlations and experiences between objects or things whatever you want to call them. The more correlations and dependencies in a relationship between two objects the more inferences we can make about them until we can get to a point of some 'understanding' where we can make accurate predictions about it.

A large part of that process is the criteria we use for data and evidence.

As I see it, the whole debate between Christians and atheists calling each other irrational boils down to the criteria for evidence.

So now lets look at Atheism. Atheism is not subscribing to the authority of a god.
Show me what is irrational about this viewpoint.
I do not know if there is a god,
therefore I do not act like there is one
therefore I am an Atheist.

Now what is the definition of atheist? I think some want to include anti-christian or anti-religious activity in the definition but that is unwarranted.

I do not know if some crystals have healing power,
therefore I do not act as if they do,
therefore I am not a person that 'uses' crystals.

What is irrational about that?

Lets look at Christians.

- Christians assume god inspired the bible. Christians don't agree on how much inspiration that means, but some of them think it was so much that he helped write the bible in some fashion. Indeed I argue, that if a Christian does not take this position to attribute some "quality assurance" then there is no warrant to giving the bible any more authority than the Hindu Upanishads or Bagavadgita, or Islamic Quran.

Here are four assumptions that Christians must make to get Christianity off the ground.

1. Assume god exists to get him into position to help write the bible.

2. Assume that all other scripture purported to come from a god is false.

3. Assume God is the first cause when there is no precedent for any 'first cause' or "spontaneous existence"

4. And assume that the soul correlates to consciousness but does not use the brain and is not affected by any consciousness altering brain trauma. At that point why infer any correlation to consciousness at all?

Now to make these the result of a rational process, they need to follow the rational process. They are a conclusion, based on using the principles of logical inference about the relationships of data/evidence. How many correlations do the data have outside the sphere of Christianity? Not as many as the data that atheists have for their world view. How is a conclusion sound if it is based on an assumption? It is not.

There is an alternate hypothesis to how the universe got here that is based on empirical observation and inference that is consistent with the laws of physics as we understand them. Thats a lot of correlation. We can see that larger more complex things depend on smaller simpler things. This principle spans every category you can think of. It is a sound principle with many correlating examples in unrelated fields. That is its strength. Correlations across categories. It is used to make accurate non-supernatural or non-metaphysical predictions about things.

Atheists do not ascribe to any of those assumptions, and we have more strict criteria for our evidence. Our strict criteria for evidence are comparable to the strict criteria used in science and law. If you use the Christian criteria for evidence in science and law, it wouldn't work very well. Just look at how much regard the four gospels are given by Christians, and then think about how you would feel if you were convicted on testimony as uncorroborated as that.

Atheists do not make any of those assumptions. One can assert that atheists do make all kinds of assumptions till they are blue, but those are PRESUMPTIONS. They depend on Evidence in some way. And once again our criteria for evidence is different than Christians. So if the Christian wants to say that Atheism is irrational, they are saying that it is derived outside a rational process. This argument can just as easily be turned around on the Christian.

So obviously a Christian can say anything she wants to about Atheism, but she cannot say it is irrational without convicting herself.