Margaret and I are facing the final question of who we are.
We know a lot about who we have been in the erratic passage of time. The future will soon be different.
I have been reading comparative histories of religion, and the origin of consciousness, as well as, attending a Tuesday morning university extension Osher Lifelong Learning Institute class on Faith in the Face of Tyranny by Larry Brown with another resident this semester. These make my understanding of theology and of believing very out of date.
Believing without knowledge and understanding limits us to the past when we, and our families, need to be preparing for the future. We analyze the past as a good basis for living now and in the future.
Fortunately we experienced the large community non-denominational praise singing churches in San Antonio and Chicago with our kid’s families. Martin Luther liberated congregations by translating the New Testament into German.
Community churches remove denominational flavors and hymns in what appears to be a way of returning to Old Testament music and praises. [Hymns have a very long life; hundreds of years. Praises go out of date in a couple of years; have a much higher market value.]
Who we are has very practical applications in justifying how we treat people with dementia, hospice, and the timing of selected end of life events.
[The son of a resident in the next apartment just stopped by as I am writing. He too is concerned where to put his mother on leaving the hospital after a second fall and second broken hip operation.]
The Axial Age, between 900 to 200 BCE (or about 600 BCE) sets the scene for the creation of the major religions. This is history. These faiths have been edited with every major crisis. They all profess love, peace, and helping the unfortunate.
The cultures into which we were born and raised were Methodist and Southern Baptist. Just about 15 years ago Southern Baptist split off the traditional faith into the Cooperative Baptist when the Southern Baptist demanded a signed creed oath. Theology maintains the church property. Spirituality follows theology. The believers practice the faith. Understand, know, and believe.
“Spirituality helped us survive. However, belief in a supernatural being wasn’t necessary and thus religion has taken many forms around the world ...” in An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman, 2004, p. 62.
Trade networks in the Middle East gave rise to wealth that was not distributed and evenly shared as in nomadic tribes and early agriculture. As an example, this gave rise to Islam in an attempt to end endless warring, to take resources, rather than to share resources.
It has been some 2000 years later that Europe came to this idea with the common euro currency now used in 19 nations. “The ultimate effect of the introduction of coinage was … an ideal division of spheres of human activity that endures to this day: on the one hand the market, on the other religion.” In Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber, 2011, p. 249.
“”Strange as it may seem, the idea of “God” developed in a market economy in a spirit of aggressive capitalism.”” In A History of God by Karen Armstrong, 1993, p. 27. Also see The Great Transformation, 2006, 365 pages.
This is history, as it is currently known. It does not supply the biology behind the Axial Age. How did we get from first man, traveling in groups of a dozen or two with a strong leader and who left their dead behind, to rational man living in cities of millions of residents who care for their dead?
The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind by Juian Jaynes, 1990, 2nd Edition, 491 pages, presents a novel idea based on the current understanding of ancient texts (including the Old Testament) and changes in the biology of the human brain during the Axial Age. The introspective brain (questioning) replaced the bicameral brain (doing) now only 2,500 years ago.
Conditions needed to develop both outside and inside our bodies for man to be able to hear God's words and then to no longer hear God’s words. The age of prophets is now closed in New Testament times. Rich oral tradition has been replaced by anemic written word. (See The Minds of the Bible Speculations on the Cultural Evolution of Human Consciousness by Rabbi James Cohn, 2014.)
Chapter 11, Two Origins of Consciousness by Bill Rowe in Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind edited by Marcel Kuijsten, 2016, p 153-174, compares evolution and education. The brain had to evolve, in general, but each person develops a brain related to the environment and to how the brain is used: just copy (memorize) or introspective.
This looks surprisingly like the change seen in underprepared college students after three experiences with knowledge and judgment scoring of multiple-choice tests.
Expected More than half mark and are mostly right.
Misconception More than half mark and are mostly wrong.
Discriminating Less than half mark and are mostly right.
Guessing Less than half mark and are mostly wrong
Strong beliefs lead to misconceptions that are difficult to manage: Ice is more dense than water; ice is hard. Yet, every grade school student knows that ice floats on water. It takes an introspective mind to be discriminating and to know what you have yet to learn.
Anyone can mark each question. Traditional multiple-choice requires it and thus promotes lower levels of thinking. Luck on test day even spikes the score with 25% right marks on four-option questions, on average.
Practiced self-judgment produces active, introspective, self-correcting scholars from passive pupils. Learning for your self by questioning and answering is a lot more fun than rote memorizing nonsense for a multiple-choice test.
As I study these thousands of pages, I am getting the impression that the chicken does not replace the egg. We need them both. Creation is not finished. Today we need both praises and hymns. I will post again as I learn more to understand what I know and what I just believe.
I have been reading comparative histories of religion, and the origin of consciousness, as well as, attending a Tuesday morning university extension Osher Lifelong Learning Institute class on Faith in the Face of Tyranny by Larry Brown with another resident this semester. These make my understanding of theology and of believing very out of date.
Believing without knowledge and understanding limits us to the past when we, and our families, need to be preparing for the future. We analyze the past as a good basis for living now and in the future.
Fortunately we experienced the large community non-denominational praise singing churches in San Antonio and Chicago with our kid’s families. Martin Luther liberated congregations by translating the New Testament into German.
Community churches remove denominational flavors and hymns in what appears to be a way of returning to Old Testament music and praises. [Hymns have a very long life; hundreds of years. Praises go out of date in a couple of years; have a much higher market value.]
Who we are has very practical applications in justifying how we treat people with dementia, hospice, and the timing of selected end of life events.
[The son of a resident in the next apartment just stopped by as I am writing. He too is concerned where to put his mother on leaving the hospital after a second fall and second broken hip operation.]
The Axial Age, between 900 to 200 BCE (or about 600 BCE) sets the scene for the creation of the major religions. This is history. These faiths have been edited with every major crisis. They all profess love, peace, and helping the unfortunate.
The cultures into which we were born and raised were Methodist and Southern Baptist. Just about 15 years ago Southern Baptist split off the traditional faith into the Cooperative Baptist when the Southern Baptist demanded a signed creed oath. Theology maintains the church property. Spirituality follows theology. The believers practice the faith. Understand, know, and believe.
“Spirituality helped us survive. However, belief in a supernatural being wasn’t necessary and thus religion has taken many forms around the world ...” in An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman, 2004, p. 62.
Trade networks in the Middle East gave rise to wealth that was not distributed and evenly shared as in nomadic tribes and early agriculture. As an example, this gave rise to Islam in an attempt to end endless warring, to take resources, rather than to share resources.
It has been some 2000 years later that Europe came to this idea with the common euro currency now used in 19 nations. “The ultimate effect of the introduction of coinage was … an ideal division of spheres of human activity that endures to this day: on the one hand the market, on the other religion.” In Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber, 2011, p. 249.
“”Strange as it may seem, the idea of “God” developed in a market economy in a spirit of aggressive capitalism.”” In A History of God by Karen Armstrong, 1993, p. 27. Also see The Great Transformation, 2006, 365 pages.
This is history, as it is currently known. It does not supply the biology behind the Axial Age. How did we get from first man, traveling in groups of a dozen or two with a strong leader and who left their dead behind, to rational man living in cities of millions of residents who care for their dead?
The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind by Juian Jaynes, 1990, 2nd Edition, 491 pages, presents a novel idea based on the current understanding of ancient texts (including the Old Testament) and changes in the biology of the human brain during the Axial Age. The introspective brain (questioning) replaced the bicameral brain (doing) now only 2,500 years ago.
Conditions needed to develop both outside and inside our bodies for man to be able to hear God's words and then to no longer hear God’s words. The age of prophets is now closed in New Testament times. Rich oral tradition has been replaced by anemic written word. (See The Minds of the Bible Speculations on the Cultural Evolution of Human Consciousness by Rabbi James Cohn, 2014.)
Chapter 11, Two Origins of Consciousness by Bill Rowe in Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind edited by Marcel Kuijsten, 2016, p 153-174, compares evolution and education. The brain had to evolve, in general, but each person develops a brain related to the environment and to how the brain is used: just copy (memorize) or introspective.
This looks surprisingly like the change seen in underprepared college students after three experiences with knowledge and judgment scoring of multiple-choice tests.
Expected More than half mark and are mostly right.
Misconception More than half mark and are mostly wrong.
Discriminating Less than half mark and are mostly right.
Guessing Less than half mark and are mostly wrong
Strong beliefs lead to misconceptions that are difficult to manage: Ice is more dense than water; ice is hard. Yet, every grade school student knows that ice floats on water. It takes an introspective mind to be discriminating and to know what you have yet to learn.
Anyone can mark each question. Traditional multiple-choice requires it and thus promotes lower levels of thinking. Luck on test day even spikes the score with 25% right marks on four-option questions, on average.
Practiced self-judgment produces active, introspective, self-correcting scholars from passive pupils. Learning for your self by questioning and answering is a lot more fun than rote memorizing nonsense for a multiple-choice test.
As I study these thousands of pages, I am getting the impression that the chicken does not replace the egg. We need them both. Creation is not finished. Today we need both praises and hymns. I will post again as I learn more to understand what I know and what I just believe.
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