Words from God and Man

By Richard Hart, PhD, at http://residentialcarefortwo.blogspot.com 27 Nov 2017

Words from God and Man

When mankind evolved, or as your God created (these two views are only in opposition if you want to believe that way (and there is no problem believing that way), our bodies used the same basic cell structure as most of what we call living. In time the brain developed way beyond that of other living things, in relation to our body size. This was a long slow process in a slowly changing challenging environment.

Language evolved with the aid of speech and words. Words provided an environment in which the mind specialized: Left-brain continued with doing and acting (with the right hand); right-brain became the silent processor of the big picture (more later see earlier posts).

The bicameral mind functioned well, in this brain, for a time (Old Testament times). The words from the right brain were viewed by the left brain as commands from an invisible God.

If this assumption by Julian Jaynes, 1990, in “The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind”, 2^nd Edition, 491 pages, is correct then mankind’s experience with God was an inherent property of the creation of the bicameral human brain.

If your God did not miraculously create humans, then by evolution of the split brain, housing the bicameral mind, the “voices of God” were heard, as the right mind commanded the left mind to act. The “voices of God” created an awareness of God in humans. An awareness of God created God! Lots of Gods.

Jehovah was a jealous God. The Hebrews were restricted to one God in Old Testament times. At the other extreme is the current secular state of Israel where approaching half the younger Jewish people no longer feel the need for a God. 

Both Jaynes and Rabbi James Cohn, 2014, in “The Minds of the Bible: Speculations on the Cultural Evolution of Human Consciousness” use Books in the Old Testament to document this process. The introspective mind, that questions rather than blindly follows commands, evolved in this time period.

This story is dependent upon accurate dating of the books in the Bible.

The chart combines dates from both authors. Historical analysis makes a marked change in the sequence in which the books in the Old Testament were written. Three of the six books were backdated, a common practice I have learned.

Our brain has changed very little during this time period, but how it develops during childhood in each culture and how it is used has changed remarkably (see earlier posts).

The introspective King James translators took words with Hebrew root meanings and gave them introspective English words: to calculate, assess, plan and devise were translated into think; intention, plan and stubbornness into Imagination; and breath of life, breath, wind, and spirit into mind (Rabbi Cohn, location 482).

There are no Hebrew equivalents to any of the following words anywhere in the Old Testament: worry, brain, conscious, consciousness, conscience, anxious, anxiety, introspect and introspection (Rabbi Cohn. location 482).

The bicameral mind functioned on commands from God for about 500 years: “Thus says the Lord.” There was no questioning. Just do it. This worked until cities became too big to control in this way.

This inflexible mind left cities to collapse but did not eliminate bicameral people who responded to internal voices as words from God. However after a span of about 500 years they became rejected and outcasts.

If parents catch their children naba-ing or in dialogue with bicameral voices, they are to kill them on the spot (Zechariah 13, 3) (Jaynes, 1990. Page 312.)

And thus groups of one to two dozen early humans were controlled by a leader’s voice commands; then by words from an external leader. Then by internal voices involving words from the right brain to the left brain that were interpreted as voices from an invisible God.

And last, these people lamented the loss of their God. Prophets, seers and diviners in the Old Testament were outlawed. About 200 years later, Jesus was accepted as the voice of God. The word became flesh. Few Jews choose to believe this. Some 600 years later Muslims accept Christ as another prophet.

Salvation by belief in Christ was then preached to the world by Paul (Karen Armstrong, 1993, in A History of God), a Jewish zealous persecutor of the early Christians, after his spiritual encounter on the road to Damascus.

The most startling thing I stumbled onto was that both some Catholic and Jewish authors now share the belief, with some secular authors, that the Exodus is myth! (Karen Armstrong, 2006, The Great Transformation, page 46 and Rabi Cohn, 2014, location 699.)  How important is it to base current beliefs on the voices recorded in legends that are focused on a return to a past that may have never been? Isis!

Intolerant attempts to promote a meme yields divisive fundamentalism in a time we need to be looking forward with respect for each person’s spirituality (independently from race, religion, government and socioeconomic status). 

Are most of these people’s spirits in Heaven? Or is life after death much like life before conception? A butterfly or a milkweed? First asleep; then from dust to dust. Each religion has been valuable, in its time, to organize and support people through difficult times.

The best I can do is God created man (evolution if you will) up to a point of physical development. Then man created God (from the voices before and during the transition from bicameral to introspective mind).

Now mankind had better use that God given introspective mind to look out for the entire world, including being tolerant of the religious beliefs (memes) infecting each person (that were once helpful but can now be increasingly destructive and divisive if not updated).

 [Over Thanksgiving I ran into a nurse practitioner using the 54321meditation technique to calm the flow of words in students suffering a “meltdown”. Is this flood of distracting words a remnant of the flow of words in the bicameral mind?]

 Your comments are welcome.