Hell is Other People; Heaven is Other Dogs

Dan,

You can have H2O but not H8O because H and O have the capacity for one arrangement and not the other, but they also have the capacity for arrangement as H2 and O2. Matter has the capacity for arrangement, and its capacity for arrangement is limited by properties of the matter; but the particular arrangements are not determined by the matter itself, so I find it hard to see how the arrangement can be in the matter, or a property of the matter. Rather, a capacity for this or that arrangement, or for multiple arrangements, is in the matter.

I don't think we are disagreeing over *just* terminology here, though terminology differences aren't helping us to understand where our real differences lie.

Plato has the notion that (what we are calling) arrangements (but what he called forms or ideas) exist independently of matter, and in fact, prior to matter, and are more real than matter. He and those who agree with him (from Plotinus to Augustine) believe these forms to exist in some transcendent way: in an alternate universe, in the mind of God... they disagree about that based on other conceptions upon which they also disagreed.

That's not the notion of form I was trying to articulate, although I probably was not as clear as possible. Aristotle's view is an almost exact reversal of Plato's. In this (and my) view, the form does not transcend the thing (at least not necessarily, and not as a first concern). Rather the form "inheres" in the thing. So, the form (arrangement) of a table is not found in the molecules that make up the wooden parts; nor is it found (firstly, at least) in another universe of transcendent forms. Rather, it is found in the table itself, in the arrangement of its parts. But the form is NOT material because it is not a property of the wood - the wood might just as easily have been made into a door or a boat or a bunch of tongue depressors.

Over the weekend on NPR I heard about that study, I think - with the people who would do the utilitarian thing if it weren't too in-your-face, but who would hesitate if they had to do the dirty work themselves. Fascinating and telling, I think. Your point, I take it, is that the person's consciousness (mind) is somehow anchored in their body (brain). Too true! I wouldn't deny it for the world. But to say that the two things are tightly connected with each other in an organic way (how else can an organic thing be connected to anything?!) is quite a different thing than to say that the two things are actually the same, or that either one suffices to explain the other.

Are we on the same page about what form/arrangement is?

Have a great day!

Ryan, I'm now completely bewildered, and am wondering if we're just disagreeing over terminology. I was all set to start yammering about that (seemingly unsupported) leap to the idea that consciousness must come from something outside of matter, but then hit your last two paragraphs, where you're saying that this something most likely is the _arrangement_ of matter - which is entirely what I think. My only disagreement there is the idea that arrangement/form is immaterial - it would seem to be both present in the world of matter and energy, and inherently derived from the properties of matter (ie, how atomic structure determines in what ways elements can combine - why H20 exists and not H80, how chemistry and ultimately physics explains the physical properties of various compounds, etc.).

"That is the experience that science has to (but by its nature is unable to) explain if it is going to explain everything about the human condition. In short, how is it that humans can overcome ourselves, for better or for worse?"

One fascinating thing here is that we are increasingly able to see (part of) what's going on with at least some sorts of internal struggles. For example, there's some interesting research involving scanning people's brains as they wrestle with some classical ethics 101 hypotheticals (for example: would you pull a switch and save 5 men from being run over by a train if it meant that the train would swing onto another track, killing one man? (Many people would). Ok, would you push one man standing next to you onto the tracks, halting the train and saving the five men? (Many people struggle with this; ultimately, a good number wouldn't.) It appears that one can literally see this conflict in the brain, as different areas become activated, with - amazingly - the answer (iirc) being correlated to the relative 'strength' of that activity. In line with this, damage to a very specific part of the brain (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) seems to kick out turn people into (relatively) unconflicted utilitarians, who - at least when replying to hypothetical questions - quickly choose the 'rational' answer (however, at least some can recognize - and are disturbed at - the change in their thinking.)

All animals that roam the earth, and all birds that fly through the air, form communities like your own. 'We have left out nothing from our book.' All animals and all birds will be gathered before their Lord.

'Those men and women who deny our revelations, are deaf and dumb; they wander about in utter darkness.'

-Qur'an, Al-An'am, Surah 6:38-39

Cleve,

Sorry - I don't have internet at home, and was off for the 4th. It was a nice holiday - I hope yours was too.

Let me try to start from the beginning, because maybe I have overly complicated things. I experience the rest of reality. As far as I know, rocks do not experience reality – things just happen to them. When I am injured, I not only feel pain, but reflect upon it. Rocks, when chipped at, don’t seem to feel pain. Animals, when injured, don’t seem to reflect on their pain, but only to feel it. I know that I reflect on my pain because I have that experience, and I know others reflect on their pain because they communicate as much to me. I ask questions like, “Why did I let myself get into that situation, when I knew it would be no good?” This, in addition to the basic animal instinct that allows pavlovian conditioning. Humans can overcome our condition.

That is the experience that science has to (but by its nature is unable to) explain if it is going to explain everything about the human condition. In short, how is it that humans can overcome ourselves, for better or for worse? Do you follow? Science can’t explain this because science deals with the objective, and objectively one cannot know that another person has overcome his conditioning, because it is always possible that the person only ‘overcame’ the condition because of a deeper conditioning. But in point of fact we all have, and share with each other, our experience of deciding, rather than simply acting on instinct. Many of us have the experience of deciding to act in opposition to our instinct, to our conditioning. Such is the experience of those who break addictions.

This moment seems an opportune one to remind ourselves of what we learned back somewhere in high school but forget in our practical day-to-day dealings: SCIENCE CANNOT PROVE ANYTHING. Proof is outside of the scientific method. Science can only disprove things, weed out theories that don’t account for new data, etc, and thereby reduce the number of reasonable options. This is why new data constantly requires discarding of old theories, many of which are popularly taken as proven.

What’s left over, beyond the realm of the experimental disproof, then, is not necessarily unknowable – it is only nondisprovable by the scientific method. That’s an important distinction because it reduces science from the position of an absolute standard for knowing (that it cannot really occupy) to the position of a useful tool that helps us to interact with the world more effectively (which is what it is).

Science cannot prove I have a consciousness; but nor can it disprove it. I might only act as though self-aware, when in fact I am a very clever machine. But in point of fact I experience myself as conscious, and to dispute that fact crosses into the realm of the asinine. And everyone else has the experience of consciousness as well. If they deny that they are aware of themselves, then let them explain why they act differently than a rock or a tree or an animal. Ask them to ask those things why they act differently than a man. Comparing the responses might be illuminating.

I am not yet speaking of a soul – only of consciousness. The question, then, is where does this consciousness come from? If it is not present in matter as such (as shown by the lack of consciousness of rocks, trees, and maybe animals to varying degrees), then it must come from something outside of the matter itself.

The best answer I have ever encountered comes from Aristotle. What he called a thing’s form, though we might call it an arrangement, is at one moment part of the thing, but distinct from its matter. I am not speaking of Platonic forms or ideas in some alternate universe. I am speaking simply of the arrangement of the matter and the arrangement of the matter could have been arranged in another way.

In chemistry, take the example of 2 (H2O) and H2 + O2. Both are comprised of the same matter, but yet are very, very different things. I needn’t go into their contrasting properties. The arrangement (or form, to use the frequently redefined term), then, is distinct from the matter; yet the two combined make the thing what it is. The arrangement/form makes the matter what it is, and the matter makes the arrangement/form be (not just an idea on a blackboard or a schematic diagram but) a material thing in the material world. Note that the form is every bit as real as the matter, because without it the matter is just that, unformed matter. Only, the form is not material. It is a real mistake, right at the beginning, to think that the form is not real because it is not material. If it is not real, then there is no explanation for the difference between 2 (H2O) and H2 + O2, because all the same material is present in each, but yet there is a difference that has very different material effects. These arrangements/forms, then, though immaterial themselves, affect material by their arrangement of the material.

Does all this check with you so far?

. . . now, if for example, as far as anyone could tell (and with extensive research on the subject, and a sophisticated understanding of how chimps work) we *were* chimps - physically identical to them, yet freakily different, or something along those lines, then the idea that we need some special extra non-material ingredient to explain these differences would seem much more convincing. But given that this isn't the case . . .

"Of course, if matter is all that exists, in whatever arrangements, then there is nothing to distinguish a chicken from a child but some matter and how it is arranged. We can't just slip past that point."

Um - ok? I don't have a problem with that (for somewhat generous definition of "matter" and "arranged", at least), as long as we're including the differing forms, capacities, and subjectivities *caused* by the differences. Why would this be a problem? There's nothing to distinguish hydrogen peroxide from water but some matter and how it's arranged, as well (although this is a far, far, far simpler case).

"Also, I notice you are sort of doubling back on your own logic, unless I misunderstand you. At one point you speak of all the close similarities between us and chimps; at another point you say that we are not made of the exact same sort of stuff, except on a very primitive level. But being made of the exact same stuff is the materialist basis for denying a difference in kind between men and monkeys. Precisely because we and our primate cousins are made of the same sort of stuff but see that we are not the same sort of things, we begin to wonder what makes us different."

Hmm. I'm expressing myself very poorly. There seems to be some issue of definitions or level of analysis or something messing stuff up. If I understand correctly (and it's very possible I don't), you seem to be arguing that humans are *especially* special, different not just in degree, but in kind from other creatures - a difference perhaps? not explainable by evolution alone (not certain you're saying that), one that can best be explained by an immaterial/non-natural element, the soul.

I think you're underemphasizing - for all the genuine uniqueness of our species' abilities - how we can find far less developed versions of many traits in our close relatives - things that appear to involve some level of self-awareness, theory of mind, problem-solving, communication, tool use, etc. Yes, there's a great distance between chimps and us, but it's almost certainly less of a distance between, say, chimps and crocodiles.

The statement: "Precisely because we and our primate cousins are made of the same sort of stuff but see that we are not the same sort of things, we begin to wonder what makes us different." - I find this very confusing. It doesn't really match up at all with the way I look at things, so I'm having a hard time talking about it. Hmm. Well, we're made of the same sort of stuff, as are orangutans, oak trees, obsidian, etc. We're also rather similar in many ways, exactly because we're cousins - after all, we share a common ancestor with chimps perhaps around 6 million years ago - they're more closely related to us, as far as we can tell, than to gorillas. At the same time, there are real biological differences between chimps and people (see, for example, the wikipedia entries for: "chimpanzee genome project" and "human evolutionary genetics" - I'd put in the links, but that seems to trap my comments in moderation, sorry). Among other things, chimp brains and human brains have some rather important-seeming differences. For starters, our brains are way bigger - on average, about 1400 cubic centimeters compared to the chimp's 400cc , an impressive difference even adjusting for body mass (a chimp brain is still way up there compared to almost everyone else - but is only slightly bigger than the brain of a newborn human *baby*!), To get a real and rather jawdropping sense of this, go on youtube and look for "Chimp - Human Brain Morph". (Seriously (assuming this is accurate), wow). But we don't just have a giant chimp brain - there are other differences: some are obvious - a proportionately larger angular gyrus, for example - while others are coming to light as we take the first steps into the human (and also the chimp) genome. For example, just about a year ago it was reported that one of the fastest evolving genes in our lineage is one linked to brain development:

"In a computer-based search for pieces of DNA that have undergone the most change since the ancestors of humans and chimps diverged, "Human Accelerated Region 1" or HAR1, was a clear standout, said lead author Katie Pollard, assistant professor at the UC Davis Genome Center and the Department of Statistics.

"It's evolving incredibly rapidly," Pollard said. "It's really an extreme case."

. . . HAR1 has only two changes in its 118 letters of DNA code between chimpanzees and chickens. But in the roughly five million years since we shared an ancestor with the chimpanzees, 18 of the 118 letters that make up HAR1 in the human genome have changed.

. . . The proteins of humans and chimps are very similar to each other, but are put together in different ways, Pollard said. [Sound familiar?] Differences in how, when and where genes are turned on likely give rise to many of the physical differences between humans and other primates.

Researchers at UC Santa Cruz, the University of Brussels, Belgium and University Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, showed that HAR1F is active during a critical stage in development of the cerebral cortex, a much more complicated structure in humans than in apes and monkeys . . . "
[search for "Brain gene shows dramatic difference from chimp to human" - is there any way to put real links in without getting dumped into moderation?}

A few months later a team of UCLA researchers
"identified not just individual genes, but entire networks of interconnected genes whose expression patterns within the brains of humans varied from those in the chimpanzee.

. . . The scientists identified networks of genes that correspond to specific brain regions. When they compared these networks between humans and chimps, they found that the gene networks differed the most widely in the cerebral cortex - the brain's most highly evolved region, which is three times larger in humans than chimps . . .

. . . Many of the human-specific gene networks identified by the scientists related to learning, brain cell activity and energy metabolism.

"If you view the brain as the body's engine, our findings suggest that the human brain fires like a 12-cylinder engine, while the chimp brain works more like a 6-cylinder engine," explained Geschwind. "

[Vrooom, vrooom. Oh, and search "Unraveling Where Chimp And Human Brains Diverge" for link.]

A month earlier, in another study " comparing the genomes of humans, chimpanzees, mice and other vertebrates, researchers . . . found a strikingly high degree of genetic differences in DNA sequences that appear to regulate genes involved in nerve cell adhesion molecules. Cell adhesion controls many aspects of brain development including growth and structure, and enables neurons to connect with other neurons and supportive proteins. Differences in the molecular connections of human neurons compared to the neurons of chimps, mice and other animals, could help explain why the human brain is capable of far more complex cognitive functions." [search "Neuron cell stickiness may hold key to evolution of the human brain"]

And etc., etc., etc. (that's just a sampling from Aug-Dec 2006, for example).

While you argue that "There is something that distinguishes us from chimps very really, . . . And that distinction is not material," research increasingly suggests that material - natural, biological, etc. - differences may well be sufficient to explain the difference between chimps and people. Now, that won't 'prove' that souls don't exist or that these changes weren't the natural, material expression of some supernatural and immaterial process - but one could quite reasonably think that such additional explanations weren't *necessary*. But after all, while I like my cheeks and chin fuzzy (my wife disagrees. however, so . . .), I prefer my ideas clean-shaven, so I'm a big fan of Occam's razor. Others may come to different conclusions. You're certainly free to say that we are different from chimps because we have a soul, but at the same time, there doesn't appear to be any actual evidence for a soul in the strict sense - a supernatural and immaterial thing linked somehow to human consciousness, action, etc. which survives after death, etc. - while there is evidence that supports the idea that we're different from chimps because (among other things) our brain has evolved differently, in a very specialized direction. One can add on other stuff to this - I just don't see the need to do so (but then again, mileage will vary).

Previous post dropped the quote: Ryan inscribed:
"If you will not at least let me proceed by saying, “See we are different than chimps because we have a soul,” you will have made us beg the question presuming there is no real, substantial, categorical difference between us and chimps, and by presuming that there is no soul."

Ryan inscribed:

>

My dear fellow traveler;

I am afraid that I can not agree with/understand the flow of the logic. To say that our ‘soul’ defines us, well that’s fine. There lies the nut of our disagreement, the definition of ‘soul’. I agree completely that our self awareness, or sensing of mortality, consequence, imagination, etc. are apparently, but not necessarily unique in the known animal kingdom. ( Do trees have a soul, but merely the inability to communicate?) Whether it is a difference in degree, or kind, I will leave to the academic arena.
The logical problem I have, and I’ve never studied philosophy, so bear with me, is that you, et al, are apparently starting from an axiom of an immortal soul, then backfilling all else into it. From that perspective, of course it seems natural and logical : since we have an immortal soul, we MUST be vastly superior/different than all other creatures’ and of course the other pieces start sliding together just fine.
However if you go the other way; slime to sponge, to snail, to snake, to gopher, to ape, to man… each taking similar, yet different paths, evolving, splitting off to the occasional dead end, all of that gets you, logically, to man, ape, gopher, etc…. The leap after that, the ‘immortality’ aspect of human consciousness is the severe metaphysical departure, eternity, not present anywhere else, at any time, in any form, even rocks are born, exist, then crumble to dust. Nor is there any evidence, or indication aside from ‘belief’ that eternity exists at all. The immortal souls of the departed do not seem to want us to know they exist. Are they among us? If they can not, or will not communicate with us, do they also have the afterlife version of ESP, (lacking, or dismally immature in the mortal form), so they can at least sense each other?
If the soul is immortal then where is my sense, knowledge, memories from prior to my birth? Will they be restored once I die? How does that work, and why? Or, if mine is a new soul, then it has a beginning, but no end? And if it has a beginning, from whence did it come? Are there more souls in the universe now then there were four hundred million years ago? Another question, what about the souls of ‘idiots’; are there idiot souls? At what point does a soul infest the human form, conception? If so, why? I mean if the soul is immortal, existed before and will exist after, what is the purpose of an incredibly short physical manifestation? If there is indeed a ‘purpose’ then I suppose that implies a creator, and that spirals around that slippery slope again, there is a god-like-thing, and it shoves our eternal soul into a fragile temporary vessel, for reasons unknown to us, then, what? Either judges or not our immortal soul based on it’s behavior in this silly physical form, as… an experiment? As a cosmic ant farm?
I suppose the eventual answer to all those questions will be, at some inevitable point, ‘We do not know or are not to know’, which gets me back, believe it or not, to my earlier questions, if the things required to support the explanation and existence of a ‘soul’ are not knowable, or merely unknown, then how are we to have any certainty at all that the soul itself, as you describe it, actually exists?
Are souls self-determining? Do they choose a vessel, or are they shoved inexplicably, unfairly into various bodies? If they are self determining, why not a dog, or mule, or cockroach? Is this it? Does our soul remain in the physical, limited in it’s consciousness, then go back to a metaphysical state forever or as some believe, leap into another life form?
That all seems like a huge amount of explaining, a HUGE amount, and also the points at which the various religions start ripping each other… so all is unknown, unknowable, EXCEPT the awareness of an eternal soul that is for some reason completely unaware of it’s previous eternal existence? Do souls themselves learn, evolve?

Thanks Ryan, I look forward to hearing back.

I suppose everyone here knows about the Rainbow Bridge where all pets wait for their masters before they cross over to Heaven together? Right? Most everyone with a pet does.

Science can say nothing about what created the laws of physics that govern the universe. Whatever did remains locked in mystery. Let us leave it at that--mystery.

Why is the Professor working in a School of Religion since she apparently thinks of it only as a dead artifact? Did Eliade and Culianu share this view?

There is no heaven, nor is there a hell. All so-called creation, animate or inanimate will eventually reunite with the universal force (boundless energy) of which we all are. The God of the so-called holy books does not exist.

Everthing, human and non-human, will reunite with Force One, to be reborn over and over again.

No nirvana, not punishment, no if you don't do as I say you will burn in everlasting hell.

Anyone naive enough to believe they will enter a heaven where they will see old grandma, grandpa, and live their lives by waiting for their loved ones to join them, has to be delusional (or indoctrinated into irrational fear of dying). No offense to anyone, just personal observation.

Any Christian who wants to tell me they go to church to celebrate the life here on earth without giving a thought to afterlife is lying. They go to church to sing the hallelujahs and praise the lord for one thing only. Eternal life.

Or maybe because they have nothing better to do on Sundays. Who knows?

In any event, all I am trying to tell you is that you will never die, nor will your dogs, cats, fish, gerbils, or ant farms, etc. Everything has energy, and all energy will go back to source one, to be reborn again and again!

Ryan -
the nighttime cold meds are starting to drag my eyelids down, but just let me say, yay! rational discourse. Maybe we did drown it out . . .or I, dunno, perhaps it's the weather? (in enough places, at least . . ) I'm certainly not going to say regular blog comments are free from content-free yelling and such, but newspaper/magazine comments have a really bad reputation for whatever reasons. Whatever is it, go it!

And . . . yeah that's about all I can manage right now . . . tomorrow, I hope.
Take care -

Dan S.,

I really appreciate your thoughtful responses. On a large number of WP.com boards I have made comments toward some point or another, and my comments are usually swallowed up in a barrage of near obscenity. I also appreciate your idea of a brief comment - we are birds of a feather that way, it seems. In any event it seems we (or something else?) have drowned out the obscenity. Maybe rational discourse can prevail in an open forum after all!

I'm not sure you're punching about your weight class. I have a love of hyperbole and paradox and other forms of literary cleverness that... well, I get myself confused sometimes. Lol.

Some things I note, though. A couple times you make a statement like, "vitalism... has fallen on hard times of late," which you are doubtless aware does not disprove the idea, any more than the fact that many physicists or whomever have stopped believing it. I am not sure what vitalism is, exactly.

Another note: being cruel to a chicken and being cruel to a child is very similar, if a chicken and a child are very similar. Of course, if matter is all that exists, in whatever arrangements, then there is nothing to distinguish a chicken from a child but some matter and how it is arranged. We can't just slip past that point.

Also, I notice you are sort of doubling back on your own logic, unless I misunderstand you. At one point you speak of all the close similarities between us and chimps; at another point you say that we are not made of the exact same sort of stuff, except on a very primitive level. But being made of the exact same stuff is the materialist basis for denying a difference in kind between men and monkeys. Precisely because we and our primate cousins are made of the same sort of stuff but see that we are not the same sort of things, we begin to wonder what makes us different.

Ok, I have 500 things jumpled in my head. It's late - more tomorrow. In case they take this board down feel free to email me instead: my email is the same as my WP.com login, @gmail.com.

God bless.

Ryan - just saw your 11:36 comment - will have to think on it a while : ) A few short things -
Thanks!

And I'm not especially offended, and sure you didn't intend such - anything more complicated might have to wait a bit . . .

The idea that folks are searching for a single and specific (and unfound) missing link is generally considered rather obsolete. If anything, we're dealing with an minor embarrassment of riches (although nobody's going to complain about even more!) where the difficulty is figuring out the exact relationships - rather like a large family reunion where one might try to figure out exactly how briefly or distantly glimpsed people fit on the family tree (2nd cousin three times removed . . . ) Nor is it primarily a -in a professional sense, anyway, " the search for a middle ground between rational self-consciousness and instinct-driven unreflectiveness," but rather on ongoing inquiry into how our species evolved. [I'd toss off some links, but they seem to land my posts in moderation - try the wikipedia entry on human evolution, and the smithsonian's hall of human ancestors' page (linked from there, I think) for starters.]

The misnomer claim, which closely resembles a certain creationist gambit (it's *either* a human or an ape), though more sophisticated - well, chimps (along with several other apes, elephants, perhaps doplphins, etc.) *seem* to have something like self-awareness (see wikipedia entry on "mirror test" - ie, the individual appears to understand that its reflection in a mirror *is* it, although obviously this is an interpretation - capuchin monkeys react in a truly fascinating way, as if they have some faint intimation that there is something strange and awesome here). Rational self-awareness, perhaps not - although I'm not entirely convinced *people* really have that, most times! - but anyway, not sure why this *has* to be an all or nothing proposition, but rather one of degrees (and again, not sure, even if so, that it supports the point you're burdening it with. You're entirely correct that recognizing self-awareness in a femur fragment isn't going to happen (unless we get a much better understanding of the genetic basis of self-awareness, and manage to extract some DNA from said fragment, and even then we're just working off likelihood and anyway, I'm not holding my breath). However, we can examine things like fossil brain size - and to a *very* limited and literally superficial extent, sometimes how those fossil brains were organized - along with studying those fossil behaviors - in artifacts and patterns - that have been preserved. It has been suggested that the development of modern humans may have been (in geological terms) a bit of a jump, caused by some specific biological or environmental factor, but that's a whole 'nother debate, and based on the evidence, pre-modern folks, whatever they were like, certainly don't seem to have been blind machines of instinct.

"
And that is the very heart of my point: we are a different sort of thing than a chimp not because we are made of different stuff, but because we are different though we are made of the same exact stuff"

We're *not* though, except on a somewhat trivial level (lots of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, like the rest of living things here on earth, chimps and us have many, many more detailed similarities due to being close relatives). Or more specifically, chimps and humans are made of the exact same stuff (matter) but in some very small, exact, but significant ways, organized a bit differently. I think the answer to this question of differences lies in the difference between the human and chimp genomes (etc.), not some strange non-material things. Chimps are a very different thing from cucumbers, too, despite being made of the exact same stuff. (And cucumbers are very different from computers, despite being made of the same stuff, but vitalism - the idea, to crudely simplify and distort, that the difference between living and non-living matter is due to some vital spark inexplicable by the laws of physics, etc. - has fallen upon rather hard times.)

." There is something that distinguishes us from chimps very really, whether we admit it or not, in the sort of thing we are."

Well, yes.

"And that distinction is not material, and therefore not biological – at least, not primarily, though it may very well have a connection to biology – in fact, it rather seems to."

Here is where we really part company - although I do appreciate the "rather seems to". On what grounds do you believe that the distinction is not material? Granted, we cannot say with 100% certainty that it isn't (or really say *anything*, arguably), but what would make us think that there are grounds to say that it is, or that the other isn't a more parsimonious explanation? 'You can't touch a thought' (or the updated version, via a certain fellow name of Egnor, 'altruism has no location' (google Egnor altruism pharyngula aren't really very convincing responses, especially these last few decades.

"Utility doesn’t mean the thing corresponds to reality"

Indeed - for example, even if belief in a soul, heaven, etc. produces more desirable results, it doesn't mean this belief has (or doesn't have) any correspondence with reality (although it's not clear that such a claim is actually correct - that we've treated each other notably worse lately (although we've certainly become much more efficient at it - or even if it is, if we're talking correlation here.) I find the whole "just animals" thing rather sad - animals are awesome, and we're certainly one amazing kind of animal - and indeed, one, unllike all the others, where we can be as certain as we possibly can that our fellows dream, hope, strive and suffer. One might argue that, say, a chicken being raised under horrific conditions has no awareness of suffering, or a drastically reduced one (rightly or wrongly): to claim the same for a human child is another thing entirely. Etc.

But anyway, I'm going to ignore the big philosophical sinkhole under my feet, and simply state that the kind of knowledge (such as it is) produced by methodological naturalism (science, etc.) is very different - in kind? - from that produced by other methods, and seems to be the most useful in trying to understand the natural world. (Other methods may be better for other things - felt social and psychological experiences and arrangements, at least.)

Sadly, this *is* my idea of a few short things. Many words, though I can't really vouch for the idea density.

Hang on
"t is rather odd that of all the sorts of intelligence found among all the sorts of animals in the natural world, ours is the only that doesn’t seem natural, that doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of nature."

This is hard to pin down, and seems perhaps . . . mythical, in a way - concerned rather with certain ways of thinking about how we relate to 'nature". I mean, I see where you're going, and it's rather clever, but . . .

On apples and oranges - I definitely agree that "apples" and "oranges" refers to natural differences - or rather accurately reflects, as far as we can tell, some things in reality, which corresponds to certain other things. I'm not so sure that we can say the same of "appleness" and "oranginess," -only in terms of the specific natural differences - but I'm punching well above my weight class here, so to speak, so I'm just going to trail off into confused silence for now . . . . (no need for apologies, though).

[below posted without links, which stuck the linked version in moderation - easily found by googling, though]

Is the difference between dogs' olfactory abilities and ours a matter of kind or degree? After all, according to wikipedia they have "early 220 million smell-sensitive cells over an area about the size of a pocket handkerchief (compared to 5 million over an area the size of a postage stamp for humans)" and apparently can distinguish between 'air scents' and 'scents' - indeed, the distance between what a dog can do with its nose and we can do with ours seems not unlike the gap between chimp and human communication. And whether one judges it a matter of kind or degree, does this tell us anything about some mystical canine essence or doggy spiritual reality? (Sci-fi scenarios about genetically-engineered intelligent dogs joining - naturally - the Dominican order aside . . .)

"As an aside, if humans haven't a soul, then we aren't different than animals except by degree; there is nothing distinct about us, only more evolved, perhaps. Advocates of such an idea have a great deal to explain in that case: why bears care for their young, and communicate with their young, but do not tell their young stories about little girls sleeping in their beds; they have to explain why English and Chinese can learn to communicate spontaneously about ideas, but why we can only talk about food and belly-scratching with our dogs; and so on...)

Well, it's not entirely clear why we can't be both evolved, lacking a supernatural soul *and* distinct from other creatures, just as they are distinct from us and each other. (Of course, some would argue we might be both evolved +and+ in possession of a supernatural soul - the Catholic position). Clearly we're not chimps, just as chimps aren't cats or cauliflowers. And you do a good job of sketching out some of the ways we are distinct - it's just not at all clear a) why we have to start dragging souls in, and b) why you believe the things listed above for advocates to explain are particularly problematic - English and Chinese-speakers/'ethnic groups', for example, can learn to communicate spontaneously about ideas because they're the same species, with the same capacities; dogs aren't: they have brains that are much smaller and wired rather differently. For example, they have many more cells dedicated to processing scents, and the region in the brain that deals with this is about four times larger than ours (while our neocortex is way bigger, and there are many other more subtle differences). On a very, very basic level, these facts have already started working on this supposed conundrum.

"Another view of the universe, acknowledging that material things are all made up of the same sort of thing, matter, also notices that some things are very different than other things, and different in a way that doesn’t come around just by mixing the ingredients differently. What they mean is that there are different kinds of things, different types of things, and that these different patterns are present in the universe whether we notice them or not. In this view, a thing is not just what it is made of, but also the sort of thing that it is. A horse is not just a big and more fertile mule, though they have much in common, but a different sort of thing, too. "

Of course, the idea that materialism holds that the only difference is a slightly different mixture of ingredients is a strawman argument, akin to insisting that the materialist cannot distinguish between a heap of straw with some old clothes and sticks piled in top, and a strawman. A horse *isn't* just a bigger and more fertile mule (nor is anyone saying it is - rather, a mule is an individual resulting from a cross between a male horse and a female donkey). The most promising way towards understanding such differences does seem to involve grasping the idea that we are made of the same basic kind of things, but with important differences in exact composition, combinations, and (very important) interactions - not leaving the natural world for *truly* non-material (say, supernatural) 'explanations. If you genuinely want to understand the difference between a horse and a donkey (or a cat and a dog), you might be better off going with 21st century science (genetics, development, evolutionary bio, etc.) than ancient Greek philosophy (although a bit of philosophy can come in very handy to understand what kind of questions we're asking, how to frame them, etc.) Wikipedia defines hylomorphism thusly: " a philosophical concept that highlights the significance of matter in the composition of being . . . In laymen's terms, hylomorphism is the view that a substance is defined by a combination of the matter from which it is made and the form which that matter takes." Not much to argue with there - esp. given a bit of wiggling about definitions - modern 'materialists' have no trouble with this. You're arguing against a strawman centuries gone.

"None of us acts as if a wooden dining table and a wooden bridge we the same sort of thing, and try to have our friends over to eat on the bridge; it wouldn’t work, because they are different sorts of things."

But is this a difference of degree or kind (what does that even mean?) and from what places do whatever differences spring? And are there not circumstances in which a wooden table *could* be used as a bridge, and a wooden bridge used as a table? And really, how does this have any relevance whatsoever to the questions of magical human uniqueness/ the existence of heaven/hell/life after death/ etc.?

Let me give an example -a very tentative and limited one, not to be taken on faith - to back up the assertion at the end of my last post. There is a gene, FOXP2, that was identified through studying a family with certain speech&language disorders (among other problems); affected family members turned out to share a specific (inherited) mutation in this gene, while an unrelated individual with almost the same problems also turned out to have a messed up version of the gene. Possession of this mutated gene has been found to correspond to (very specific) measurable differences in brain structure and function. Versions of this gene have been found in many other animals, from crocs to birds to mice to chimps. Fascinatingly, this gene appears to be involved in (among other things) song-learning in some birds, and social communication in baby mice.

It also turns out that the versions of the gene in mice, monkeys and chimps (don't know about the non-mammals) are very, very similar. However, the human version of FOXP2 is different (by two amino acids) from the other primate versions (and three from the mouse one, although this ) - more change in that gene than has occurred in all the evolution, on both sides, of mice and chimps - indeed that one mouse-to-chimp change may be essentially meaningless. Additionally, it's been estimated that the two mutations in our lineage occurred somewhere in the period between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago, a period where we start finding more evidence of an even more complex human culture (how this should be interpreted is another issue).

Have we discovered the 'language gene', the key to how human language works, and how it originally arose? Not at all (and see the above link for a sensible clarification) - but it seems we have grabbed one small piece of that puzzle. We may, of course, have misunderstood where in the big puzzle it actually goes, which is science for you.

Does this mean that souls/life after death/heaven&hell/etc. have been disproved? Again, not at all - as you point out, this isn't, in the end, a scientific question. However, (along with many other things) it does seem to suggest that the differences between humans and other animals is not necessarily a good reason to assume the existence of heaven. (At least, I understand that to be part of what you're arguing, but it's quite possible I'm just confused). In fact, you seem to be saying that reasonable grounds to believe that heaven exists are mostly belief in God and belief in a soul - something which is not unreasonable on its own terms, but doesn't seem particularly helpful. I'd agree that h&h are weighty matters, but don't see any reasonable grounds to assume they're likely to actually exist outside the worlds we create for ourselves (although belief in such things may well be a very deep part of human nature.)

Incidentally, Wendy's words "The unquenchable human thirst for life and for justice is what creates heaven." sums up my thinking on the subject, even if her desire to people it with *dogs* (rather than, of course, cats) is completely absurd . . . . :)

And I should say, while I rather disagree with you, this is a very intellectually bouncy conversation, and your comments are quite interesting - some of the other comments on this site, well . . . somewhat less so, let's say. Though they're probably quite meaningful in their own way . . .

Cleve, Dan, thank you for your very thoughtful comments. I’d like to address them together because they share a common theme. First though, Cleve, thank you for the compliment. You also come across very well, as do you, Dan. At first I thought, “Hey, he must think I’m very smart, or polite, or something.” On second thought, it occurs to me that so many people take the opportunity of an anonymous forum to vent; so many other people fly off the handle without having thought a thing through. People who simply pause to think, and then formulate a clear and courteous response – well, such people really shine in contexts like this one (really, like much of our culture these days, really). As for myself, I have some graduate level philosophical and theological training, which I hope to pursue. The philosophical education I’ve received has been especially helpful to me. Cleve, I have taught professionally, but only Spanish – never formally the Holy Catholic Faith.

Cleve, of course you are right that a Lexus is better in some ways than a tricycle and inferior in others. If we want to speak of perfection or completion, the classic Platonic terminology for things, then we might say that a tricycle is a more perfect tricycle than a Lexus is; and a Lexus is a more perfect Lexus than a tricycle is. The fact that they share certain functions and traits, yet are clearly not the same sort of thing is kind of the point I was getting at. I’m not sure I said they were completely different sorts of things (I may have – I tend toward hyperbole). Let me try to be precise (for my own sake). They are not COMPLETELY different sorts of things: they are both made of matter; they both have wheels; they both are modes of transportation; they both might be painted tan. But the fact remains that they are still different sorts of things. A Lexus is not just a big, automotive tricycle. Closer to the point, a Lexus and a tricycle are rather close to each other relative to their distance from another thing that is made of matter, gets around, and might be tan: humans. That there are these points of contact between the things only emphasizes how dissimilar they are. If they were really similar, even the same sort of thing, we would expect tricycles to require fuel to get around, just perhaps less; instead, they require humans to get around. We would expect humans to require a driver, just perhaps a smaller and savvier one; instead, we find that humans drive themselves around. It is these types of differences that distinguish the things from each other as not just bigger and smaller, redder or tanner, but as COMPLETELY different in SOME WAY.

Your Coke-Pepsi comment is clever too, and comes close to my point. The two are, you might say, different species of the same genus: Cola Products. My point is that these sorts of distinctions, species from each other, one genus from another, one family from another, one phylum from another, and so on, are NOT artificial (manmade) distinctions, but that these categories (whether we have completely accurately mapped them or not) are present in the things themselves, whether we see them or not. Whether Darwin had ever noticed it, monkeys and men are more closely related than monkeys and mollusks. That Aristotle means when he speaks of form, or kind: not that there is no similarity between different things, but that there are varying kinds that make similar things different, and that these kinds aren’t just manmade abstractions (which is the Enlightenment’s way, especially via John Locke, of thinking about it).

Cleve, you astutely point out that chimps are superior in that they more easily fit into the natural, material world better and more harmoniously. You are, in my mind, entirely correct. Our awareness of death is certainly of tremendous impact on how we live. I never thought of it before, but perhaps that is why we sometimes say of people who live with no such awareness that they “live like animals,” only eating, drinking, and copulating as if nothing else mattered. Your reasoning for why humans fit in more poorly seems to be that we have become too smart for our own good. That might be so, and it gets to the heart of my point about the difference between humans and chimps: we are not merely more intelligent, but have a different sort of intelligence. It is rather odd that of all the sorts of intelligence found among all the sorts of animals in the natural world, ours is the only that doesn’t seem natural, that doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of nature.

Dan, I hadn’t really meant to offend anybody. Of course people who do not believe in God, or are not sure what they believe about God can still have and make sense out of all sorts of things. The one thing I cannot imagine though, is how such a person makes sense out of everything without ignoring anything. How does he find a meaning in life without understanding everything? I mean, for example, a Marxist says that social class makes the world go ‘round, and a Capitalist says that self-interest makes the world go ‘round. They both agree that exchange and labor and the basis by which we understand everything; but they both leave out picking flowers for fun and loving our children even when it costs us dearly. When such systems try to explain such things, their explanations usually sound very hollow to people who actually pick flowers for fun and love their children through long-lasting hardship. Where those sorts of systems really flounder is trying to explain things like Hitler and Mother Teresa. All the other –isms that I know of flounder at some point. Such –isms attempt to make sense out of the universe. If there is no God, though, to have an intention in making the universe, then the universe just happens; in which case there is no intention, no meaning in it, except whatever meaning we impose upon it. But such meanings are ring false and are unsatisfying, precisely because we know they came from us.

The “missing link,” when we find it, between ourselves and the chimps (so to speak) will not be mysterious as much as a misnomer. The missing link will either have been rationally self-conscious or not; if it was not, then it is still the same sort of thing as a chimp, a least with respect to what separates us from chimpanzees. If it was rationally self-conscious, then it will have been the same sort of thing as a human, at least with that respect, as perhaps Homo Neanderthalis or Cro-Magnon appear to have been. The search for a missing link is really the search for a middle ground between rational self-consciousness and instinct-driven unreflectiveness. What the middle ground might be, I cannot imagine. How a paleontologist can detect either self-consciousness or unreflectiveness in a fragment of a femur I have never heard a convincing explanation, though I have never sought one. Though clearly, a missing biological link there must be.

And that is the very heart of my point: we are a different sort of thing than a chimp not because we are made of different stuff, but because we are different though we are made of the same exact stuff. There is something that distinguishes us from chimps very really, whether we admit it or not, in the sort of thing we are. And that distinction is not material, and therefore not biological – at least, not primarily, though it may very well have a connection to biology – in fact, it rather seems to. And as I said before, us having this sort of conversation is evidence of the distinction, because as far as we can tell, chimps do not have them, and the distinction of which this conversation is evidence is a very big distinction indeed. It is the distinction between rational self-consciousness and instinct-driven unreflectiveness.

Dan, I used printing houses, etc., as a hyperbolic way of expressing the distinction to make clear what is obvious. I may have, by my exaggeration, made it seem stupid or artificial. Accept my apologies. There aren’t metrics to measure kind; you would have to measure things along a shared variable, but things are separated into different kinds based on what they do not have in common. You can measure an apple and an orange based on their extension in space (height, width, length) because they are both objects extended in space. But you can’t measure an apple’s oranginess because is has none, which is why it is not an orange. To deny therefore that there is a difference between them is like denying the nose on one’s face.

Cleve, I would LOVE to go into the basis for thinking there might be a soul transcending biology, and why we might suppose that soul is immortal, and why we might then suppose there is a heaven or hell for that soul to rest in. But I can’t do that without building on this concept – the natural reality of the distinction of things in some ways alike into kinds which are dislike each other in other ways; that those kinds are real and not invented. If you will not at least let me proceed by saying, “See we are different than chimps because we have a soul,” you will have made us beg the question presuming there is no real, substantial, categorical difference between us and chimps, and by presuming that there is no soul. How then can I proceed to discuss a human soul?

Dan, you wrote something to the effect that presumption of a material-only reality is all that can be proved, or demonstrated effectively; by this I take it you mean scientifically. That is because science only deals with the material. You have said that this assumption or conviction (as opposed to mine, that there is also such a thing as kind, or type, that is not scientifically measurable because kinds are different from each other, which is why they are different kinds) is more useful than mine. Utility doesn’t mean the thing corresponds to reality. And I am afraid that as far as I can see what you have said to the point is not true. As people get more and more used to thinking of ourselves as “just” animals, rather than in some way fundamentally different than other kinds of animals, we treat each other more and more like animals. Worse, we treat each other brutally but aided with our minds, precisely what separates us from other sorts of animals, and precisely what empowers the brutality to be so much worse than the brutality animals are capable of. What else should we expect?

Ryan -

many, many issues here - the assertion that "If one doesn't believe in God . . . not much else makes sense either" is particularly annoying, and perhaps a little uninformed - but let me point out that we simply don't have any living creatures "in-between" chimps and humans to examine. ("In-between" in terms of capacities, that is - we didn't evolve from chimps; rather, we share a common ancestor with them, just like people don't give birth to their siblings, but share common parents. Nevertheless, this common ancestor would have seemed a lot more chimplike than humanlike to us).

However, we know that such organisms existed. While there is still a ton we don't know about them (and some stuff is probably forever unknowable, grrr), what evidence we do have - both bones and artifacts - make it pretty clear that in at least some things, they do seem to have differed by degrees.

Indeed, the whole degree/kind distinction is a bit odd and inexact here. Chimps certainly don't "draft prose, proofread each other’s work, set up publishing houses, and transmit essays on communication to other chimps," but such practices are composed of numerous innovations, not only biological (which they unquestionably are) but social and economical, including written language, proofreading, and publishing houses, something entire (modern) human societies have been known to lack (although they all have had spoken language used in ways that fundamentally underlie these practices, and do differ wildly from chimp communication, cognition, and society.)

But even if we can, by some obscure metric, describe certain differences as being in "kind" (which one arguably can), it's a very, very long jump from there to identifying these differences as being non/super-natural in origin. There doesn't appear to be any evidence for that (though how could there be?), but the opposite, through by no means "proved", seems increasingly persuasive and useful.

Ryan Haber:
And peace to you as well comrade!

May I assume that you are titled within your faith, pastor, teacher? There is a style to your posts that very much indicates certain academic training. I mean nothing by that negative or positive, just a curiosity. And I think we may have sparred before, perhaps under other names.
Your various analogies use subjective judgment and argument as to superior/inferior/ more different/less different. I am afraid we do not agree on the scales with which we measure.
I do not posit that we are merely one notch above a chimp, or even two, that is entirely too linear and does not represent anything accurate. Chimps and we share common ancestors and a significant amount of DNA encoding. We are to chimps as a Lexus is to a tricycle. Similar in function, sharing a common theme, but as to whether a tricycle is completely different from a Lexus really depends on the context of the question. Which is better, which is superior, are incomplete and flawed questions.

A chimp, mule, dog, in my mind can easily be considered superior to human. Their brains are more perfectly adapted to their functions. Dogs, for example (certain assumptions here) are not burdened with dignity, morality, music, art, love, hate. Their concept of time and place is limited to the here and now, and they spend their lives concerned only with food, water, reproduction, and safety. They do not plot wars against other dogs and will generally only engage other dogs if territories have been challenged. Dogs a continent away are none of their concern, not even a part of their awareness. I ask you then which of us, dogs or humans, are in the context of harmony with nature, superior?
Humans, on the other hand may in fact be too smart for their own good. We have the ‘blessings’ of self-awareness and creativity. By being aware of our mortality we spend life staring down a long dark barrel. This frightens us. So we, once again with our superior blessings, create things to distance ourselves from that dark eternity. Medicines, narcotics, alcohol, television, reset buttons on video games, palaces with razor wire and cameras, and religions.
It is this one element of humanity, that we know that we will die, that drives nearly everything else we do, think and believe.

All we need do is open our eyes and we would see the obvious: Coca Cola is without a doubt more refreshing than Pepsi !

Your arguments in my mind are exactly like this. Merely semantic and not evidentiary.
I was really hoping you’d tie that gap between tricycle, Lexus, and immortality though, ‘cause in this debate the transcendent and immortal soul is exactly the topic, not a sidebar.

Ah, Cleve, my brother! Now, our mental capacities may or may not in fact be vastly superior to that of other animals; but it is only “rather egotistical” to say so, if in fact it is not true. But it is true – our capacities are vastly superior than those of other animals: not just by a matter of degrees, but by being of a vastly superior kind.

I did not say that one cannot prove the human brain superior to that of other animals; if I said anything about its provability specifically, I would have said that it is not provable using scientific methods, because it is not a scientific question. But it is provable nonetheless with other methods. In fact, we are proving it now. If our brain were “just a little better than a chimp’s,” different by degrees and not in kind, then we might expect a chimp to do the same sorts of things that we do, just not quite as well. While we do some of the same things as chimps, and some of those things not as well as a chimp, we do other things, particularly mental things, that are not only vastly superior to the mental things done by a chimp, but of a whole different kind. Chimps communicate, but they do not draft prose, proofread each other’s work, set up publishing houses, and transmit essays on communication to other chimps. In fact, they do nothing like it. Chimps might make sounds, but they do not – as far as well can tell – compose melodies, select from harmonic accompaniments, train orchestras, and travel from Moscow to Boston to display their choral capacities; in fact, they don’t even seem to travel from Brazzaville to Kinshasa for the express purpose of comparing grunts. If chimps, our next nearest cousins, are different than us by degrees; and dogs, more distant than chimps; we should expect to see chimps composing music that is just not quite as good as Bach, and dogs composing music that was just not up to Haydn – say, only at the level of Wagner. But in fact, we see nothing of the sort. And, as far as we can tell, neither do the chimps or the dogs. If these animals thought their music as good as humans’, as Chinese believe their music as good as Germans’, then we should expect to see the animals pointing that out to us, as Chinese point it out to Germans on occasion. But we see nothing of the sort.

Here’s the heart of the matter. A certain view of the universe says basically that there is only one sort of thing: matter, stuff. It follows that everything is basically like everything else, except by degrees and amounts. A man is just the same as a tree, only he has more or less carbon, more or less oxygen, and these things are in more or less similar arrangements. But we are, this view contends, more or less the same sort of thing.

Another view of the universe, acknowledging that material things are all made up of the same sort of thing, matter, also notices that some things are very different than other things, and different in a way that doesn’t come around just by mixing the ingredients differently. What they mean is that there are different kinds of things, different types of things, and that these different patterns are present in the universe whether we notice them or not. In this view, a thing is not just what it is made of, but also the sort of thing that it is. A horse is not just a big and more fertile mule, though they have much in common, but a different sort of thing, too. A man is not just a highly evolved amoeba, but a different sort of thing, too.

You will notice that so far I have said nothing religious, and nothing susceptible to scientific experimentation. What I have done is shown how two views are mutually exclusive, each intending to give a way of seeing the universe. The first view we’ll call materialism since that is all they see when its proponents look around. The second view we’ll call hylomorphism, what the ancient Greek philosophers (I am thinking Plato and Aristotle here) called it, because hylo- means matter, and –morph means something like shape, but more along the lines of “category” or “kind” for our purposes. So if the two views are mutually exclusive, and neither is provable by scientific experiment, but must be the basis upon which we think about our experiments, how are we to know which to chose?

I suggest that to decide which is the more accurate, we simply open our eyes and look at what is obvious. None of us acts as if a wooden dining table and a wooden bridge we the same sort of thing, and try to have our friends over to eat on the bridge; it wouldn’t work, because they are different sorts of things. It would not be egotistical for a wooden table to say to the wooden bridge, “I’m better for being eaten on than you are,” it would simply be true. And because the dining table and the bridge have a great deal in common does not mean that we could as easily put the bridge in our dining room as we could put a wrought iron dining table. When we open our eyes and look around, we see that there are different sorts of things and that those difference in kind make a difference. To think of our brother-in-law as little better than a chimp is one thing – he might be a monkey’s uncle! But to serious imagine that there is no difference in kind between a chimp and a brother-in-law, only that the brother-in-law is a bit smarter or better dressed… well, that is nothing but a wild imagination, a fantasy that does not ennoble the chimp, but only degrade the brother-in-law, and with him, all of his kind.

When somebody’s dog contributes to this conversation even a very incoherent essay with very awkward grammar, and with jokes and puns just somewhat worse than mine, then I will immediately (and publicly) reconsider my views.

As for the immortality of the soul, you are right. It is a second question, which I tried to address previously as such, and will not again right now. I've probably given anyone interested (myself included) enough to digest for now. Maybe after the weekend. God bless.

While believing in the existence of heaven, I firmly see the earth with its raptured o-zone layer is slowly transforming into hell.
Lianpu Xikul

I agree with Shankar. I was brought up by devout Hindu parents and heaven and hell were not themes we were taught. I was taught the concept of moksha or liberation that is achieved by leading a sinless life. Heaven and hell may be concepts among the many concepts of Hinduism but they are not the over-riding concept that torment Christians and Muhammadans. The concept of the man-god Jesus and the man-made god Allah are inseperable from Christian and Islamic schools of mythology and superstition. One cannot be a Christian or a Muhammadan without buying to everlasting punishment. One can be a Hindu without buying into the concepts of hell and/or heaven.

Heaven is the complete absence of attachment to things of any world (our world, the world of dogs, the world of ghosts, the world of angels, etc...). If you want really want your dog to go with you, then sorry to say, you still have attachments! Back you go to once again become a sentient being.

Shankar:

Hmm...looks like you may have to do a bit more homework. Postulating, describing and cultivating the notions of heaven/hell is one of the facets or levels of Hinduism you are talking about.

CPW: I thought dalits find salvation thru buddhism, but now christianity is a better option? Interesting. Death is a grand normalizer, lest be assured. It is the same Rte. 1 for all.

To the author: what is supposed to go h or h or even have a rebirth? the body? invisible or yet-to-be-proven soul? If so, does the soul go with the same personality as in its human form? If it is reborn as a dog (as you advocate), do you want the 'soul' of that 'dog' to keep in reserve all its memories?

Dear Professor Doniger,

A provocative article! Considering all that has already been said about heaven, hell, dogs and other animals I will refrain from offering my view of all these. I just have a question about Hinduism's version of heaven/hell.

I was raised a Hindu in India in a fairly religious family. I knew most of the sacred texts and had even memorized the Gita at some point. This is not to show off my knowledge, just to ask my question: not once did I hear about heaven or hell. There were lots of lectures on doing the right thing and being good etc etc., but there was never any reference to an eternal afterlife. Perhaps it is my ignorance of my own religion, but where do you find heaven and hell in Hinduism? As far as I know, the only "hell" is the current cycle of birth and re-birth into this world; a chain our spirit is forced to undergo until one achieves niravana, i.e., enlightenment, which is one-ness with the superconsciousness. This much is already explained in the Gita by Krishna to Arjuna. So if there is a new source about heaven/hell in any of the ancient texts, then I would very much like to know.

I should add that I am no longer religious but I still place great value on my upbringing and my traditions. In particular, I am still greatly interested in the origin of myths and practices in all religions, most especially Hinduism.

A large number of persons are happy in believing
in afterlife with a Heaven. Why take away form them this belief?
I personally don't believe in afterlife, but I never tell anyone (hoops ! I just did it but most believers don't surf the Net)

So sorry about the doubling up. I thought I caught the first one before it downloaded.

As a child, I loved animals, and I remember asking my mother if animals went to heaven. I was very unhappy when she said they did not.

Then I read a book about a horse that made me realize I wasn't the only one who felt this injustice. The author ended the eulogy with a rhyme:

"Underneath this sod lies a great bucking hoss,
There never lived a cowboy he couldn't toss.
His name was Midnight, his coat black as coal.
If there's a hoss heaven, please god rest his soul."

I don't know if the story was true or fictional, but I never forgot it. It was one of those learning experiences, where you realize adults are not infallible. And there are things more important than believing everything your parents say.

As a child, I loved animals, and I remember asking my mother if animals went to heaven. I was very unhappy when she said they did not.

Then I read a book about a horse that made me realize I wasn't the only one who felt this injustice. The author ended the eulogy with a rhyme:

"Underneath this sod lies a great bucking hoss,
There never lived a cowboy he couldn't toss.
His name was Midnight, his coat black as coal.
If there's a hoss heaven, please god rest his soul."

I don't know if the story was true or fictional, but I never forgot it. It was one of those learning experiences, where you realize adults are not infallible.

GEORGE KS:

It's not necessary or mentally healthy to imagine a world without us in it. We can expect that through the long evolutionary period people like critter with self awareness did just that, imagined worlds without them and became extinct as a result, this world became without them. The survival of a specie depends on it seeing it's path in a forever world. To do otherwise is to give up hope that invariably leads to disaster.

Religion takes advantage of that part of the evolved psyche, the ability to see ourselves alive, young and healthy in a new world post our stay here. The threat of unending death is used to control the victims of religion, (you like faithful better than victim?).

For the past 5,000 years it has been acceptable to install the demon on the nebol bridge in the interest of group control. That demon is a threat of eternal death, extinction. The ancient Egyptians were far from alone in conjuring demons to control people. They do seem to be first and set the pace that goes on today.

Governments now live in fear of the disintegration of world religions. Why? Fear is the control the shepherd uses to keep the sheep herded up. Shepherds fear the flocks will disburse, some or all the sheep get away. Who wins if they do, the sheep that get away or the shepherd?

Woof. :)

Ryan Haber: " As an aside, if humans haven't a soul, then we aren't different "
Specious argument. You use the word 'soul' earlier to indicate a transcendent state, one that outlasts the body's physical existence. That is a two skip leap..
We do not deny that the human brain is quite the wonderful thing indeed, and apparently, (but using your logic, un-provable ) vastly superior to that of other beasts... (a rather egotistical position) But to apply to the uniqueness, it's wondrous abilities, it’s amazing capacity to imagine talking bears and flying horses.. to apply to THAT, an additional unprecedented, and mystical attribute of immortality is a HUGE leap… Why can’t our brain be just a little better than a chimp’s? Why must we make it ‘magic’

The comment by CPW is quite strange. Where does caste come in with respect to heaven/hell/moksha. Ray summarized the Hindu point of view well.

GEORGE KS:
Frankly, I have given this a whole bunch of thought… for several years… I really can, quite easily imagine places, times in which I do not exist and am quite comfortable with that, in fact it’s quite liberating realizing that the universe does NOT spin around anchored only on my tenuous perspective…. And since I really don’t consider myself so clever or special, it seems rather odd to me that many, most others can do so as well…
I am fascinated, baffled by what could possibly be unsettling about it. I recall the first time it occurred to me, looking out the grade school window, at the large cemetery all the headstones with dates much older than me…. A few years later I would ride my bicycle through that very place and sit and watch the headstones…. Nothing… no voices, haunts, or messages.. nothing… these people had entire lives, there were entire families, meals, parties, picnics, diseases, accidents, wars…. All before even my father was born… As the world was before me, I accept that it will be afterward…
But to need to invent eternal reward or punishment, and then have to build up an entire priesthood, and philosophy and rituals and traditions to support it to make it believable… Man I’m just too lazy for all that…

Professor Doniger says that heaven is created (she presumably means something closer to fabricated, or made up) by our yearning for justice, at one moment; at another she says it is a concept through which we fantasize our own desires for earthly happiness. Perhaps her belief is only projection or fantasy as well: she disbelieves in heaven because she disbelieves in justice; if she gets to have heaven after all, she’d like to have dogs there. That’s very nice.

The professor comments that as nobody has been to the here-after and back again, there is no evidence that it exists. It depends what sort of evidence one wants. If she wants scientific evidence, she is right – there is none. That’s not a surprising discovery, but sensible presupposition. Whether the here-after exists is no more a scientific question (one of repeatable experimentation) than whether Italy exists. All sorts of people could come to me and tell me about Italy, and to each I might respond that they have no proof. They might insist that they have been there, seen it, wax about the virtues of chianti or the tilt of the Tower of Pisa; they might even claim to be FROM there. To each I can reasonably say, “You have no scientific evidence.” If they show me spaghetti, I might reply that the noodles look Chinese to me. But eventually, to anyone who knows the matter at all, or even one who doesn’t, but has a bit of common sense, I will begin to look foolish, all the while rightly claiming that there is (and can be) no scientific evidence for Italy. That is because Italy is not the sort of thing that is reproduced in a lab, but experienced in travel. Having been there, I can quite rightly say there is no other reasonable explanation for my experiences of aquaducts, spaghetti, and piazza street fairs than the explanation a geographer calls Italy.

Just so with other things. There is no scientific evidence that 2+2=4. It is not a scientific question, but a mathematical one. There is no scientific evidence that intentional and unjustified homicide is wicked, because it is not a scientific question, but a moral one. There is no scientific evidence that the grocery store will open in the morning, because it is not a scientific question but one of habits and customs.

If the professor means that she does not believe in heaven because there is no scientific evidence for its existence, then she is not incorrect or correct; she is on the wrong track, asking the wrong sort of question altogether. Heaven, if it exists as anyone conceives it (something experienced somehow primarily after death in some sense), is not a scientific question. If it exists, heaven would not be susceptible to scientific experimentation.

But that does not mean there is no reason – no other sort of reason – to believe that heaven exists.

If one doesn't believe in God, well, believing in heaven and hell makes no sense. Of course, not much else makes sense either, in that case. If one does believe in God, then one necessarily believes that there are spiritual realities, beings that are not dependent on corporeal matter for their existence. If human beings have a spiritual reality, then such a reality is not subject to decomposition; decomposition is a function of materiality. That is: trees decompose, boats rot, the worms crawl in and so on. But ideas and intentions, in themselves, they do not change. Of course, the ones we have might change, but the things themselves don't. If we have a soul, then the soul must persevere beyond our bodily death, or else it is not what is commonly meant by "soul".

(As an aside, if humans haven't a soul, then we aren't different than animals except by degree; there is nothing distinct about us, only more evolved, perhaps. Advocates of such an idea have a great deal to explain in that case: why bears care for their young, and communicate with their young, but do not tell their young stories about little girls sleeping in their beds; they have to explain why English and Chinese can learn to communicate spontaneously about ideas, but why we can only talk about food and belly-scratching with our dogs; and so on...)

Our soul is a spiritual reality that, while not strictly dependent on our body for its existence, interacts with the body and does depend upon it for proper functioning. Our souls, inherently capable of understanding visual stimuli, cannot ever come to know anything about such stimuli without our bodies, our eyes. Our souls, capable of affectionate feelings, cannot express those feelings in communication without our bodies, and nor can they even perceive anything about which to feel affection, without our bodies. And so on. Our souls are capable of change, but only by union with our changeable bodies. Disembodied after death, one's soul will only be able to exist in some sort of stasis, or perhaps continue on a trajectory set before death.

In my own heart, I have experienced self-pity, depression, hatred even of my best friends and family. This sort of misery is bad enough, but to imagine it magnified (especially to imagine it magnified continuously for ever) makes me shudder to think what hell (after death) might be like. By contrast, I have also experienced self-forgetfulness in exhiliration, the elation of knowing and loving and being known and loved, the joy of doing good without doing it for myself. Imagining what that might be like, intensified for ever, gives me an idea what heaven (after death) might be like.

If there is a hell, we must be very clear: we don't go there because we are fun, or don't like rules, or whatever. If there is a hell, it is not only Hitler and Stalin who go there. They had more power than most, but we all of us have the makings of hell inside us: jealousy, anger, greed, arrogance, the desire to use others for our gratification, and so on. To suffer from those traits in others is not fun, and even to have those traits in ourselves is not particularly fun for particularly long. Hell is not a fun place, if hell exists.

Likewise, if the good things that God has made for us are any indication of what he plans for those who love and seek him, if the beach and the mountains, friendship, clear autumn days, sexual love, quiet reading on the porch, cognac, if these things came from the same mind that thought up heaven: who could be bored with those things?

Probably only the sort of people who go to hell.

Does any of this scientifically prove that heaven and hell exist? Not at all. Again, the question is not the of the sort science is intended to examine. Nonetheless, these are reasonable grounds to suspect that there are such things. And if heaven and hell do exist, then it seems a very serious matter. What hopes the professor might choose to cherish, not out of reasons but out of desires (what she calls hope), well, those somehow seem a bit less weighty.

The comment about only Brahmins able to go to heaven for hindus is false.. The basic premise of my Hindu religion is quite simple: Karma, dharma and punarjanma: karma is what I am in this life based on accumulated balance of good and bad deeds in all my previous lives; dharma is how do I lead this life so my next life would be better than this life (rebirth: punarjanma).. This philosophy has no dependence on a son of god, accepting Jesus or Mohamed as my savior.. It all depends on my actions and consequences.. The ultimate goal is to reach Nirvana so that we do not have continue in the endless cycles of birth/pain/suffering/periods of joy and happynes followed by death

There's no use arguing about heaven and hell. If only death can prove afterlife by experience, then we the living will never know if it exists because we will be dead...quite dead.

I, myself, won't argue about it, but in my opinion heaven is actually a place for people to believe in, not to experience. I'm trying to imagine myself living in a heaven crowded with candy-laminated, bright-eyed, harp-tongued goody-goodies, looking for something, anything, to do good about?

I can tell you one thing: they better not let me in this heaven because I will tax their abilities to do good. I won't leave all my earthly passions, lusts and vices behind; and that's fair warning to those who run that place.

How sad for those of you that hate dogs. Hell must be on Earth for you, mingling with all of God's creatures. How nice it will be for you when you die and join all (and only) those other dog haters.

Hey Possum:

"..we cannot imagine a world without us in it.."

Your response is interesting. But if you think for a minute from the view point/memory/awareness of the said Moscow residents, you DON'T EXIST for them! Or just imagine that you died, and after some suitable time elapsed, nobody remembers you - almost as if you never EXISTED and never COUNTED! That thought is so unsettling, very disturbing, and unbearable to live with- for the vast majority of the people anyway -as to make imagining such world is virtually impossible and making the invention of Heaven/Hell very logical and natural.

Apologies for the mix up...
I think God's trying to
embarrass me today.

to ANONYMOUS.(why the mask?)

Re your comment on my comment;
With due respect...I can't buy that people
attend church just to give thanks.
The ulterior motive is clear,
to get in good with God:
thus avoiding the grim reality of death,
to live happily ever after in Paradise,
with a big cuddly TeddyBear called God.
Because this is so absurd,you need to have
Faith that it is not absurd.
I would go as far as to say that death
is what religion is all about.
If we never died,but lived forever,
we wouldn't need religion,and we wouldn't need
God,and we wouldn't need Heaven.
We would prefer to continue living here,
on earth,just the way we are,thank you.

Only me - if your dislike of dogs extends to all pets - you are a genius!

Well written article. Good work of a thoughtful mind. Keep it up. Refreshing and up lifting.

Well written article. Good work of a thoughtful mind. Keep it up. Refreshing and up lifting.

Hi ANONYMOUS.why the mask?

Just a note to your comment above;
I don't buy your claim that believers
attend Church just to give thanks.
the ulterior motive is clear.
They don't want to die.
They want to go to heaven.
If there was no death.If we never died...
we wouldn't need God.
We wouldn't need Heaven.
And churches would be empty.
We'd all prefer to keep on living
down here on the only world that we know
actually exists.

Yeah YO-YO, Christians pack the churches to sing and dance. There may be no God but there's certainly a Devil else they have no one or no thing to buy their souls. Souls are so cheap they have to pay Devil's representatives to let them into hell. I guess you'll have to go somewhere else. Only people who believe in Devil are allowed into the kingdom of the being Moses made the deal with.

I just wanted to note that Hells in the Far East are not considered eternal. In that way they are more like the Catholic concept of Purgatory.

I felt that needed to be emphasized for the benefit of those who saw the link about Far Eastern Hells and clicked on it.

YO YO, most Christians don't pack churches for fear of death. Christians go to church to give thanks for the life they are living.

I give thanks everyday for the wonderful life I have and I only hope it will continue.

And I hope your life and happiness will continue as well.

I hope there is a heaven so I can spend enternity loving my wife and children. There's not enough time in this world to give all the love that's in my heart! It would be ashame for life to end so soon!

I hate dogs. They bite people, poop all over the place, shed their hair, and are loud. I can't even walk outside without looking at some dog pissing somewhere. What's the deal people? Get rid of your dog and join civilized society. One where you do not allow a wild beast to share your bed with it.

The ultimate goal of mankind according to Hinduism is achieving Nirvana - going beyond the bounds of karma. Hinduism holds karma to be responsible for heaven or hell - good deeds send one to heaven - but only temporarily. The soul is reincarnated after it expends its good deeds in heaven, and is sent back. But Nirvana or mokshya is when the soul becomes one with god and does not have to suffer through reincarnations or the chains of karma.

Excuse the misspelling of appraisal,above.

Now you tell us!
You mean its ok for christians not
to believe in heaven and hell?
Why didn't you tell us this before?
Most christians pack the churches
to avoid death by going to heaven.
And now you tell us the aint no heaven???
While I do indeed appreciate your frankness,
and your 21st century reappraisel of
silly old religious nonsense,I would
expect your flock to raise their eyebrows
at this latest small step towards sanity.
If there's no heaven and no hell,
then there's probably no God
and no devil either.
So who needs Religion?

Well professor, "All dogs go to heaven" IF they operate casinos and have hearts with magic blasters.

What do you teach as the history of ancient Egyptian religion? Do you mention that they were Christians, savior required to get past the demon on the nebol bridge? Do you mention the nebol bridge or even know what it is, it's whereabouts and source? The nebol bridge allows one to locate both heaven and hell on the ancient maps of the universe.

Modern religion can be summed as the avoidance of hell, saved; "you must accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior or you're going to hell." So can the ancient Egyptian religion. Pharaoh was their Christ.

There's this researcher who says Jesus, the real historical figure on whom Jesus of the Gospels is based was actually a Pharaoh, Amenophis IV. That's complicated by his contention that Amen was never actually Pharaoh, only a would-be son of God because she was neither male nor the child of God. Odd since we are all God's children, don't you think?

Maybe you could critique http://www.hoax-buster.org It's content and not it's literary greatness? It's a little hard to follow but so is the Bible and I know you're skilled in reading it.

Believing in heaven, actually just more of the same life we now have is one thing but an eternity of burning? Who's bright, mind on fire idea was that? Dante? I'm sure you want what you teach to be absolutely so or at least as close as possible to the real history.

Thank you.

"..we cannot imagine a world without us in it.."

I can.. all that stuff that happend before I was born... . . I can't see it in my memory, but all around us there is nothing but evidence, remnants and artifacts from life without ME in it...
Take Moscow.. Never been there, never will go, don't know anyone there.. I am sure it is there and that people move around, make babies, eat and drink, try to stay warm..... I really don't think it's any harder to imagine a world without little old me in it than it is to imagine a city...
perhaps we need to get over ourselves just a bit..?

Prof. Doniger: As long as I have been aware of his work, I have admired Mircea Eliade; so you are already important to me.

Of course there is no justice in this world "else what's a heaven for..." In the Christian tradition there is a filtering process called the Last Judgement. Of course, as long as we insist on reading the Bible as if it were written by Washington Post reporters in the 21st Century, it will be very hard for us to approach concepts such as heaven and hell metaphorically. There is also a Christian tradition that, after death, all souls are transformed and enter into the afterlife, not the awful people they have been on earth, but as transformed souls. Perhaps hell would be having to deal with the awful guilt that comes from enlightenment. In any case, I can believe much more easily in heaven than hell.

Parenthetically, if I should be reincarnated, and,
if I have accumulated enough good karma, I should like to come back as a sea otter.

Hi Hon

You say "The unquenchable human thirst for life and for justice is what creates heaven."
Gee.I always thought it was fear of death.

Norrie, LOL

Stefan:

I agree with you. I understand why she feels the way she does, but if we're going to fix the problems, we've got to stop arguing about truly unimportant things and get started-- and everyone should get involved. No exceptions.

"Hell is Other People"

And here's the story of one hell-hound who made it into heaven:

Bush At The Pearly Gates

Albert Einstein dies and goes to heaven.

At the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter tells him, "You look like Einstein, but
you have no idea the lengths some people will go to sneak into Heaven.
Can you prove you're Albert Einstein?"

Einstein ponders for a few seconds and then asks,
"Can I have a blackboard and some chalk?"

Saint Peter snaps his fingers and a blackboard and chalk instantly
appear. Einstein proceeds to describe, in arcane mathematics and
symbols, his theory of relativity.

Saint Peter is suitably impressed. "You really ARE Einstein!" he says.
"Welcome to heaven!"

The next to arrive is Picasso. Once again, Saint Peter asks for
credentials.

Picasso asks, "Mind if I use that blackboard and chalk?"

Saint Peter says, "Go ahead."

Picasso erases Einstein's equations and sketches a truly stunning mural
with just a few strokes of chalk.

Saint Peter claps. "You are definitely the great artist you claim to
be!" he says. "Come on in!"

Then Saint Peter looks up and sees George W. Bush.

Saint Peter scratches his head and says, "Einstein and Picasso both
managed to prove their identity. How can you prove yours?"

Dubya looks bewildered and says, "Who are Einstein and Picasso?"

Saint Peter sighs and says, "Come on in, George."

Cats! Cats will be in heaven, not dogs....or at very least canines will be quarantined in a special holy place where their owners may endlessly scoop their poop and stick it in small plastic bags and apologize throughout eternity to those whose gardens their dogs have wrecked.

Seriously, I don't understand the passivity here. Instead of sighing about the lack of eternal justice, be just yourself. Instead of decrying suffering, help alleviate it. Instead of being so darn disappointed with the arrangement of the universe and the crumminess of the human species, don't be a disappointment or a crumb yourself. If we could stop indulging our angst and get to work, we just might find heaven isn't so far away or so theoretical after all.

This notion of reincarnational bliss expressed in the last paragraph sounds a lot like a Westernized version of a Brahmin world. Would Dalits get in, too? Or would they be included in "all the wrong people" that get to go to the (Christian) heaven?

Granted, casts are more culturally than theologically tied to Hinduism, and the reality of most Christian-influenced societies is also far from the ideal of its moral imperatives (love God and love your neighbor). But at least it offers an alternative of unconditional salvation to everyone.

How bleak is her view of the world!