God's purpose

[Pup]

That wasn't what I had in mind. You know how you feel when your walking into an area and you suddenly get the feeling it's not safe? Your environment is feeding your subconscious information that affects your emotions and works as a survival mechanism. I'm thinking that as evolution proceeds we ought to develop a more integrated way of thinking so that it's not a matter of picking up on "feelings" without knowing the cause for those feelings. I guess I'm trying to imagine what heightened awareness might include and it might allow us to see more and experience more of reality than we do at the moment.

Well, we can check again in a few hundred thousand years and see how it turned out.

Sure, one can speculate that people who survive to reproduction age best, by avoiding dangers in unsafe environments, will have their genes passed on, as long as there isn't some other thing that causes more harm, either by using up too much brain power (they're so vigilant they don't spend enough time grooming themselves, paying attention at work, flirting after hours, or anything that makes them attractive and successful in our environment), or it makes them directly less attractive in other ways ("come on, just relax; what's the matter?")

What you say is true but any change will interact in incredible complex ways with other factors. The fact that we have an intuitive sense of danger has got us this far, and farther along that direction may not be better overall. Or may--hard to say.

If we have no idea what consciousness actually is but people continue to report what we consider to be delusions or hallucinations then I would think that warrants further research. Some of those delusions/hallucinations have clear cut causes like mental illness if they are repetitive. I'm not so certain that's the case with a one time occurrence.

Hallucinations/delusions/memories that dont match shared reality are a perfect example of something that needs explained.Isn't that a huge popular field of research right now, especially because better MRI is available? What studies do you think are being neglected?

One-time delusions/hallucinations would seem hard to replicate, but the gorilla-basketball experiment, where people distracted by counting basketball tosses typically failed to see a person in a gorilla costume, shows that the mind hiccups in surprisingly predictable ways.

Just googling to see what's up, I ran into

Faith or delusion? At the crossroads of religion and psychosis. ...recognition of social dynamics and the possibility of entire delusional subcultures is necessary in the assessment of group belief...

Psychological characteristics of religious delusions ...[not one-time, though] Religious delusions are common and are considered to be particularly difficult to treat. In this study we investigated what psychological processes may underlie the reported treatment resistance...

Understanding delusions [in India] ... Delusion is never a mere object which can be objectively detected and described, because it evolves and exists within subjective and interpersonal dimensions only, however “pathological” these dimensions may be... [Difficult reading, but looks like it might be worthwhile.]

Self-Deception, Delusion and the Boundaries of Folk Psychology ...in the general (non-clinical) population. Here is an example of self-deception. In spite of having at her disposal evidence to the contrary, Sylvia believes that she failed the driving test because the examiner was prejudiced against female drivers. Her belief responds to the need of preserving a positive image of herself as a competent driver... [may not be relevant but I'm thinking of delusions like "Grandma can't be dead because I saw her ghost last night."]

These are just papers I could pull up literally as quickly as I could touch-screen from the google search string delusions normal abstract inurl:nih Investing more time with a specific topic in mind would yield far better results. But I really do think there's been a lot of work lately seeking a definition of consciousness (which i didn't search for at all), and exploring the various ways it acts and reacts with delusions and hallucinations still within the range of normalcy, not to mention memory glitches. At a certain point, "I saw a ghost yesterday" becomes the same as "I remember seeing a ghost yesterday," even if it's just minutes rather than hours later.

All fascinating stuff, perfectly amenable to scientific investigation unless one wants to start or end with the conclusion that ghosts (or another common paranormal belief) are really real, mind closed. The first person who scientifically proves ghost are real will get a Nobel Prize just for starters, so there's no need to worry that scientists are holding back any secrets.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Regardless of whether it happened, it's the concepts embedded within it that really make it hard for me to see.

Nature gods - most First Nations, a fair bit of Shinto IIRC, and the first round of Greco-Roman gos (Titans) are the easiest from a conceptual perspective. They're the gods of "why". Why is there scary lightning? Because Thor is fighting someone. Nature gods are primitive man's explanation for all the things in the world that we had no explanation for.

Archetypal gods - the younger generations of the Greco-Roman pantheon, Hindu gods, even old testament Jehovah, also make sense to me. They're the gods of "should" they represent the variations of human emotion and ideals. They're representations of behavioral sets that we, as humans, should either aspire to emulate or seek to avoid. Prometheus is the representation of self-sacrifice in the pursuit of knowledge for the greater good, a very cohesive idea that is fundamental to a functional society.

Jesus is just something different. Something that doesn't fit well within my brain. It may be that he is a representation of a behavioral archetype as well, just not one that I can relate to. I mean, sure there's the whole "forgiveness" thing, but the mythos around Jesus is much more complex than would be merited by it. I think it's obscured by the fact that so much of the christian religion is a pretty strong amalgamation of many other deities.

Most of those views are oversimplifications. Theology back then was, if anything, more complicated than it is today. It was church and politics and reality TV all rolled into one package, without the benefit of a "nonreligious" option from which to assess it all objectively.

the google search string delusions normal abstract inurl:nih

Try scholar.google.com

 

[Thor 2]

That wasn't what I had in mind. You know how you feel when your walking into an area and you suddenly get the feeling it's not safe? Your environment is feeding your subconscious information that affects your emotions and works as a survival mechanism. I'm thinking that as evolution proceeds we ought to develop a more integrated way of thinking so that it's not a matter of picking up on "feelings" without knowing the cause for those feelings. I guess I'm trying to imagine what heightened awareness might include and it might allow us to see more and experience more of reality than we do at the moment.

Don't know if I go along with that. Could it be that your senses are feeding your conscious mind with information instead?

 

[Pup]

Try scholar.google.com

Thank you! I need to bookmark or just remember that url! On my tablet, I haven't found any way to click to scholar directly like I used to, where it says shopping, news, videos, maps, etc., and I had kinda forgotten about it or thought they'd done away with it. Much easier than workarounds like I've been doing.

 

[IanS]

That wasn't what I had in mind. You know how you feel when your walking into an area and you suddenly get the feeling it's not safe? Your environment is feeding your subconscious information that affects your emotions and works as a survival mechanism. I'm thinking that as evolution proceeds we ought to develop a more integrated way of thinking so that it's not a matter of picking up on "feelings" without knowing the cause for those feelings. I guess I'm trying to imagine what heightened awareness might include and it might allow us to see more and experience more of reality than we do at the moment.

I don't think it's "feeding your subconscious", is it? I suspect that in a situation like that, the information that you are talking about, is something of which you are very directly aware, ie directly "concious" of. That is - in the situation you described, there are all sorts of signs which you are directly aware of, by sight, sound, smell etc., which make you concerned about the safety of that situation.

Afaik, situations like that are not a mystery, as if to be inexplicable in perfectly logical, objective "scientific" terms. There is no reason to start invoking a belief that something inexplicable, mystical or spiritual is happening to make you aware of some danger in your surroundings.

 

[Thor 2]

I don't think it's "feeding your subconscious", is it? I suspect that in a situation like that, the information that you are talking about, is something of which you are very directly aware, ie directly "concious" of. That is - in the situation you described, there are all sorts of signs which you are directly aware of, by sight, sound, smell etc., which make you concerned about the safety of that situation.

Afaik, situations like that are not a mystery, as if to be inexplicable in perfectly logical, objective "scientific" terms. There is no reason to start invoking a belief that something inexplicable, mystical or spiritual is happening to make you aware of some danger in your surroundings.

Well, more or less the same as I said, although I used fewer words.

 

[Pup]

Don't know if I go along with that. Could it be that your senses are feeding your conscious mind with information instead?

I agree with that and what IanS said. The description didn't properly convey what's happening. I just wrote it off as a bit of common tongue tangledness, but it seems to me the idea is that the senses still take in factors from the environment that the brain may not consciously process logically like "That smell reminds me of the place where that creepy guy threatened me once," and unstead the senses feed them directly to the subconscious and one just feels an inexplicable sense of creepy dread, without even consciously noticing the smell.

Therefore, I could see why one might say the subconscious was processing the sensory input, even though there was nothing paranormal going on. Kinda like dousers not consciously noticing the land slopes down, the ground gets softer and the vegetation changes, but their subconscious directs them to indicate water.

 

[IanS]

Well, more or less the same as I said, although I used fewer words.

Maybe I'll explain one thing about the way I often make posts, e.g. in the replies I made above to Jodie - I deliberately do not look at any of the intervening replies from other posters. Reason is that I don't want to be unduly influenced by what anyone else may have said. Of course that has a downside too, because it means I may reply with the same points that someone else has just made in a clearer and more succinct way. So ; my apologies for when that happens .

It's probably a hang-over what I would often do in science - I did not want to read in too much detail what other experimentalists (or theoreticians) had detected in their experiments or calculations ... because if you do that, then there is a danger of what I later found was called "confirmation bias" ... ie, you may falsely convince yourself that your own data shows the effects that others had previously reported.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

You are right, I'm assuming it's related. Consciousness might be the superficial personality that we have while inhabiting our bodies.

Or it is a process, and activity, resulting from biological functioning. No inhabitants involved (no dualism wrt the mind-body problem).

 

[Hlafordlaes]

I don't think it's "feeding your subconscious", is it? I suspect that in a situation like that, the information that you are talking about, is something of which you are very directly aware, ie directly "concious" of. That is - in the situation you described, there are all sorts of signs which you are directly aware of, by sight, sound, smell etc., which make you concerned about the safety of that situation.

Afaik, situations like that are not a mystery, as if to be inexplicable in perfectly logical, objective "scientific" terms. There is no reason to start invoking a belief that something inexplicable, mystical or spiritual is happening to make you aware of some danger in your surroundings.

The amygdala reacts in real time. Unconscious. The conscious mind catches up later. This is how we survive surprises instead of going "Oooh, look, big cat! Do I run?" It is also why much of thought is an ex-post justification of emotional reactions rather than a purely rational postulate borne of deliberate contemplation.

 

[Jodie]

Well, we can check again in a few hundred thousand years and see how it turned out.

Sure, one can speculate that people who survive to reproduction age best, by avoiding dangers in unsafe environments, will have their genes passed on, as long as there isn't some other thing that causes more harm, either by using up too much brain power (they're so vigilant they don't spend enough time grooming themselves, paying attention at work, flirting after hours, or anything that makes them attractive and successful in our environment), or it makes them directly less attractive in other ways ("come on, just relax; what's the matter?")

What you say is true but any change will interact in incredible complex ways with other factors. The fact that we have an intuitive sense of danger has got us this far, and farther along that direction may not be better overall. Or may--hard to say.



Hallucinations/delusions/memories that dont match shared reality are a perfect example of something that needs explained.Isn't that a huge popular field of research right now, especially because better MRI is available? What studies do you think are being neglected?

One-time delusions/hallucinations would seem hard to replicate, but the gorilla-basketball experiment, where people distracted by counting basketball tosses typically failed to see a person in a gorilla costume, shows that the mind hiccups in surprisingly predictable ways.

Just googling to see what's up, I ran into

Faith or delusion? At the crossroads of religion and psychosis. ...recognition of social dynamics and the possibility of entire delusional subcultures is necessary in the assessment of group belief...

Psychological characteristics of religious delusions ...[not one-time, though] Religious delusions are common and are considered to be particularly difficult to treat. In this study we investigated what psychological processes may underlie the reported treatment resistance...

Understanding delusions [in India] ... Delusion is never a mere object which can be objectively detected and described, because it evolves and exists within subjective and interpersonal dimensions only, however “pathological” these dimensions may be... [Difficult reading, but looks like it might be worthwhile.]

Self-Deception, Delusion and the Boundaries of Folk Psychology ...in the general (non-clinical) population. Here is an example of self-deception. In spite of having at her disposal evidence to the contrary, Sylvia believes that she failed the driving test because the examiner was prejudiced against female drivers. Her belief responds to the need of preserving a positive image of herself as a competent driver... [may not be relevant but I'm thinking of delusions like "Grandma can't be dead because I saw her ghost last night."]

These are just papers I could pull up literally as quickly as I could touch-screen from the google search string delusions normal abstract inurl:nih Investing more time with a specific topic in mind would yield far better results. But I really do think there's been a lot of work lately seeking a definition of consciousness (which i didn't search for at all), and exploring the various ways it acts and reacts with delusions and hallucinations still within the range of normalcy, not to mention memory glitches. At a certain point, "I saw a ghost yesterday" becomes the same as "I remember seeing a ghost yesterday," even if it's just minutes rather than hours later.

All fascinating stuff, perfectly amenable to scientific investigation unless one wants to start or end with the conclusion that ghosts (or another common paranormal belief) are really real, mind closed. The first person who scientifically proves ghost are real will get a Nobel Prize just for starters, so there's no need to worry that scientists are holding back any secrets.

Hey thanks! So that leads me to the next "idea". The rapid increase in autism can't be totally accounted for because of the change in how the disease is diagnosed. Autism can vary in severity from those that can't function period to those that live many years before they are formally diagnosed. This is happening world wide, all cultures, no population is untouched.

Do you think its possible that this is a step in a cognitive evolutionary change for humans or are these people handicapped due to some environmental influence yet to be identified? They do process external stimuli differently but I'm not certain where that would fall on the delusional scale. If some version of autism survives affecting human perception as a whole in the future it will be interesting to see how it affects society for ill or good, more woo or more spock like behaviors....

 

[Pup]

The rapid increase in autism can't be totally accounted for because of the change in how the disease is diagnosed. Autism can vary in severity from those that can't function period to those that live many years before they are formally diagnosed..

What do you base the highlighted on? An autistic person who couldn't function at all today might have been misdiagnosed as an "idiot" in 1800, or might have been able to barely function with an isolated repetitive job that's now done by machinery, and nobody cared about their mental classification, as long as they got a bail of cotton picked or a cord of wood cut.

If enough people lived many years starting in the modern era before being diagnosed, that in itself would be enough to cause an increase in cases. But if the same number of people were always diagnosed at age 30, 40, or 50, mere longevity would cause an increase. Or in the past they might never have been diagnosed at all, other than as eccentric.

In other words, I think the first step is still to see if there's a true increase. And then to see if autistic people are having more children (I bet they're not), and if they're not, how natural selection could be selecting so dramatically for the trait that numbers are skyrocketing.

It would be cool to think that people with a trait for being "nerds," that might have handicapped them till now, is suddenly making them the most fit members of society as they punch out reams of highly sought computer code.

But I think there are still too many unanswered questions about whether the numbers have increased, to worry about why.

 

[Jodie]

Don't know if I go along with that. Could it be that your senses are feeding your conscious mind with information instead?

I'll look to see what the research says about it but just off the cuff, based on reading previous research for neuroscience, if cues are consciously recognized then you would have associative memories to base a decision for staying or leaving an area.

 

[Jodie]

What do you base the highlighted on? An autistic person who couldn't function at all today might have been misdiagnosed as an "idiot" in 1800, or might have been able to barely function with an isolated repetitive job that's now done by machinery, and nobody cared about their mental classification, as long as they got a bail of cotton picked or a cord of wood cut.

It depends on what research you read but in a matter of just 15 years the autism rate in the US has gone from 1/150 to 1/68 births. That increase can't be totally accounted for based on the change in diagnostic criteria. Rates are higher in developed countries as opposed to rates in non developed countries but they attribute that difference to a lack of infrastructure available for diagnosing and tracking this condition.

If enough people lived many years starting in the modern era before being diagnosed, that in itself would be enough to cause an increase in cases. But if the same number of people were always diagnosed at age 30, 40, or 50, mere longevity would cause an increase. Or in the past they might never have been diagnosed at all, other than as eccentric.

The stats I'm referring to would have to be referring to newly diagnosed cases if it's talking about an increase from 1/150 to 1/68 births in resulting in autism over the last decade.

In other words, I think the first step is still to see if there's a true increase. And then to see if autistic people are having more children (I bet they're not), and if they're not, how natural selection could be selecting so dramatically for the trait that numbers are skyrocketing.

If we have no major increase in the next 10-15 years then you are probably right. However, people who have a genetic predisposition for autism may not express that condition allowing for the trait or set of traits to be passed on.

IT would be cool to think that people with a trait for being "nerds," that might have handicapped them till now, is suddenly making them the most fit members of society as they punch out reams of highly sought computer code.

That's the general consensus for those with the milder versions of autism.

But I think there are still too many unanswered questions about whether the numbers have increased, to worry about why.

Even if the causes are ever known with any certainty they may not be anything that we can fix or change. Evolution will eventually fix it for us if autism is truly a pervasive genetic change in our species' cognitive functioning.

* Before someone starts belly aching about being off topic, this is directly related to "God's Purpose" since it's a discussion about autism as a potential genetic change in humans.

 

[Jodie]

Or it is a process, and activity, resulting from biological functioning. No inhabitants involved (no dualism wrt the mind-body problem).

That's also a possibility but I'm biased towards a mind/soul interface kind of existence similar to what you see in Avatar. However, in that movie the sense of self and distinct personality stayed intact through the transfer from body to body. If considering another woo topic like reincarnation that doesn't seem to be the case which makes sense if memories are specifically created in the brain.

 

[Pup]

It depends on what research you read but in a matter of just 15 years the autism rate in the US has gone from 1/150 to 1/68 births. That increase can't be totally accounted for based on the change in diagnostic criteria. Rates are higher in developed countries as opposed to rates in non developed countries but they attribute that difference to a lack of infrastructure available for diagnosing and tracking this condition.

There's a difference between "how the disease is diagnosed" and "change in diagnostic criteria."

The diagnostic criteria may not have been loosened up enough to include over twice as many people, but if one factors in the totality of how it's diagnosed, maybe. There may be a lot more doctors aware of it so a GP or pediatrician might be more apt to recommend a child to the appropriate doctor for a diagnosis, and a lot more parents aware of it to so they describe an appropriate symptom cluster, plus adults become aware of the condition and think, so that's what's wrong with me!

Maybe autism is contagious. "Using California data, this study shows that children living very close to a child previously diagnosed with autism are more likely to be diagnosed with autism."

I lean toward an explanation for autism that will involve social phenomena, among all but the most obvious serious cases, rather than genetics or even epigenetics. But I may be wrong. Epigenetics wouldn't surprise me either.

However, people who have a genetic predisposition for autism may not express that condition allowing for the trait or set of traits to be passed on.

Epigenetics seems more likely than genetics, just because it's happening so fast. But again, I don't know, and genetics isn't even close to my field, let alone epigenetics. Even experts don't seem to have a consensus at this point.

Even if the causes are ever known with any certainty they may not be anything that we can fix or change. Evolution will eventually fix it for us if autism is truly a pervasive genetic change in our species' cognitive functioning.

* Before someone starts belly aching about being off topic, this is directly related to "God's Purpose" since it's a discussion about autism as a potential genetic change in humans.

How do you see it as fitting with God's purpose? I can come up with some imaginitive stories:

"I think I'll go mess with those apes some more. Let's see what happens if I push this button."

"I see those people have finally invented computers. Glad I built a useful capability for that in their brains. Let me just get it turned on."

"Those humans think they're so smart, ever since they ate that apple. Well I'll teach them what it's like to be smart. What's it like to be an autistic savant, brain boy? Still want to be as smart as me now?"

"What's this note? The meek shall inherit the earth? Oh, I forgot I promised that. I'll create some really good accountants, patent lawyers, computer programmers, that no one else can equal, and make them indispensable to society."

And then of course there's the deist god: "Where'd I set that bowl of protein soup? Oh, it's almost cold. And eww, there are things growing in it. Yuck. What are those? Bleh."

Fun. But I think we know too little about either gods or the increase in autism to take it to that level yet.

 

[Jodie]

There's a difference between "how the disease is diagnosed" and "change in diagnostic criteria."

The diagnostic criteria may not have been loosened up enough to include over twice as many people, but if one factors in the totality of how it's diagnosed, maybe. There may be a lot more doctors aware of it so a GP or pediatrician might be more apt to recommend a child to the appropriate doctor for a diagnosis, and a lot more parents aware of it to so they describe an appropriate symptom cluster, plus adults become aware of the condition and think, so that's what's wrong with me!

Maybe autism is contagious. "Using California data, this study shows that children living very close to a child previously diagnosed with autism are more likely to be diagnosed with autism."

I lean toward an explanation for autism that will involve social phenomena, among all but the most obvious serious cases, rather than genetics or even epigenetics. But I may be wrong. Epigenetics wouldn't surprise me either.



Epigenetics seems more likely than genetics, just because it's happening so fast. But again, I don't know, and genetics isn't even close to my field, let alone epigenetics. Even experts don't seem to have a consensus at this point.



How do you see it as fitting with God's purpose? I can come up with some imaginitive stories:

"I think I'll go mess with those apes some more. Let's see what happens if I push this button."

"I see those people have finally invented computers. Glad I built a useful capability for that in their brains. Let me just get it turned on."

"Those humans think they're so smart, ever since they ate that apple. Well I'll teach them what it's like to be smart. What's it like to be an autistic savant, brain boy? Still want to be as smart as me now?"

"What's this note? The meek shall inherit the earth? Oh, I forgot I promised that. I'll create some really good accountants, patent lawyers, computer programmers, that no one else can equal, and make them indispensable to society."

And then of course there's the deist god: "Where'd I set that bowl of protein soup? Oh, it's almost cold. And eww, there are things growing in it. Yuck. What are those? Bleh."

Fun. But I think we know too little about either gods or the increase in autism to take it to that level yet.

I think I've got my threads confused. I thought this was the one where the original OP mentioned genetic diseases when opening up the thread and then we spiraled into evolution....the usual progression of a thread where you forget what the original example was about.

Yeah, we know so little but the genetic traits associated with schizophrenia, autism, and anorexia were all found in the DNA we inherited from Neanderthals even though the incidence for each of these diseases/conditions doesn't reflect that in the African population. The causes for expression of these conditions are obviously multifactorial.

 

[Thor 2]

Maybe I'll explain one thing about the way I often make posts, e.g. in the replies I made above to Jodie - I deliberately do not look at any of the intervening replies from other posters. Reason is that I don't want to be unduly influenced by what anyone else may have said. Of course that has a downside too, because it means I may reply with the same points that someone else has just made in a clearer and more succinct way. So ; my apologies for when that happens .

It's probably a hang-over what I would often do in science - I did not want to read in too much detail what other experimentalists (or theoreticians) had detected in their experiments or calculations ... because if you do that, then there is a danger of what I later found was called "confirmation bias" ... ie, you may falsely convince yourself that your own data shows the effects that others had previously reported.

Nothing to apologize about and I can see where your coming from.

 

[Thor 2]

How do you see it as fitting with God's purpose? I can come up with some imaginitive stories:

"I think I'll go mess with those apes some more. Let's see what happens if I push this button."

"I see those people have finally invented computers. Glad I built a useful capability for that in their brains. Let me just get it turned on."

"Those humans think they're so smart, ever since they ate that apple. Well I'll teach them what it's like to be smart. What's it like to be an autistic savant, brain boy? Still want to be as smart as me now?"

"What's this note? The meek shall inherit the earth? Oh, I forgot I promised that. I'll create some really good accountants, patent lawyers, computer programmers, that no one else can equal, and make them indispensable to society."

And then of course there's the deist god: "Where'd I set that bowl of protein soup? Oh, it's almost cold. And eww, there are things growing in it. Yuck. What are those? Bleh."

Fun. But I think we know too little about either gods or the increase in autism to take it to that level yet.

Thanks for that Pup. I see we are now right back on track about God's Purpose.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Most of those views are oversimplifications.

Ya think?

Theology back then was, if anything, more complicated than it is today. It was church and politics and reality TV all rolled into one package, without the benefit of a "nonreligious" option from which to assess it all objectively.

I'm not sure I'm following you. I'm not necessarily talking about theology, so much as ... need better words here... the social function served by those religions when they were at their height.

There's a lot of fluidity, and it's certainly not uniform. But in general, nature religions tend to be older, and they appear to serve the role of providing an answer to "why is X". They tend to address very physical aspects of the world - why is the sky blue, why does the moon change shape, why are there seasons, why is there thunder, etc.

The "archetypal" religions are a little more recent, and tend to address behavioral and moralistic questions "why should X" - why should I respect my parents, why should I not be proud or greedy or selfish, why should I follow these rules. They're more about social interactions than explanations of the world (although there's usually some of that in there too).

That's my very boiled-up view of it, and undoubtedly somewhat naive. Christianity has some of both, of course - plenty of parables and stories to teach morality, a good smattering of "god did it" explanations. It's just the Jesus, specifically, is not an embodiment of a natural force (Thor, Poseidon, Gaea, Demeter, etc.), nor is he the representation of a behavior or emotion (Venus, Athena, Saraswati, etc.).