Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Will do sir!!

I like your attitude!

[Belinda]

There's truth in both our interpretations.

What is life-enhancing is to show how Judaism and Christianity are alike. And in important respects they are alike. Divisive interpretations are deathly.

In certain senses you can definitely say that Christianity and Judaism are “alike”. But it does not work across the board.

I am more interested in the separation of Christian outlook and Jewish outlook. In fact in many senses these are antithetical. But I do agree that this is a dangerous intellectual area.

The notion of an “avatar” who descends into the mire of the world can be taken in a Platonic sense (the divine guide out of the prison of the cave) and also in the sense that Vishnu is that aspect of God that “rescues” the lost soul by providing knowledge. It is a metaphysical concept. And if it is true in our world, the concept must be valid in all worlds.

To worship a Jew is absurd, and God as a Jewish father is also really absurd. The historical localization of both Judaism and Christianity is also absurd. In this sense these metaphysical concept must be extracted out of the picture so it can stand on its own two feet.

Furthermore, to the degree that Judaism and Christianity both reject, or really dismiss pagan concepts, is the degree which both are imperious. And this is also “deathly”.

It is certainly a tough area to work through, and one fraught with many perils, but I assure you it is not unfruitful and can be carried out with a balanced attitude.

In any case by their fruits you shall know them.

Yes! I am come. I am that ripe fruit . Delicious, life-giving, wonderful!

Start here

The historical localisation of Judaism is essential for the covenant of GOD with His chosen people. Jesus was a rabbi who preached Israel as the Chosen People.
The notion of Jesus as avatar from God to humanity was not what Jesus preached. True, he was a prophet who told forth what was the case about God but Jesus was preaching to his own Aramaic -speaking people.Jesus made it clear he was son of David.
The facts that in later years after Jesus died Diocletian was hellish to Christians, and Constantine was a cynical politician , don't alter the other fact that Jesus was a Jew. Get real, the Christianisation of Europe was a political matter at least as much as a mythical or moral matter.

And if it is true in our world, the concept must be valid in all worlds.

That would be convenient but all concepts are culturally relative. The enduring power of the iconic Jesus is probably due to his dual status as man and God. At such times as his status as man became temporarily less important the Virgin Mary took his place.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The historical localisation of Judaism is essential for the covenant of GOD with His chosen people.

I am unsure if you notice the degree to which you “rewrite” the Christian story. You seem to take seriously that God had a chosen people. Yet I suppose that if queried you’d say that view is “culturally specific” and “invented” (since “God” is not something real for you).

In my own case I can only accept as true what can be represented sensibly in metaphysical terms. I.e. as a “picture” that expresses intellectual ideas which, as I say, function in all conceptual worlds.

In this sense the notion of an avatar that descends from an intangible plane down into the plane we are familiar with can be said to “make sense”. And that is why, on that concept-plane, that the advent of Jesus is comparable formally with an incarnation of Vishnu.

The obsessive over-localization of this figure in a Judaic setting — for those operating conceptually on an abstract, metaphysical level — is a hinderance. In fact — and I know this is radical — the personalization of Jesus is, in my view, a mistake. The notion of a supernatural avatar is best understood abstractly. Once it becomes personalized, then it is mundanified (excuse the neologism) and reduced to all that is problematic in man’s world. Just another thing to fight over.

In my view, if one has achieved this conceptual distance one might then choose, for strategic reasons, to align with a “church” — inevitably localized, inevitably prejudiced — but the “distance” I refer to is necessary to actually believe in the concepts behind the symbols.

I certainly admit that what I am talking about is in most senses ultra-heretical but what can I do about that?

Jesus was a rabbi who preached Israel as the Chosen People.

I am uncertain if I can go along with this. Whatever Christianity is, is really what it became, and as such — as non-Judaic and radical — it is comprised of many trends, not the least being a “swerve” in Judaism’s understanding of universalism. The Greek spirit universalized the metaphysics to include all men who could grasp the concept. Selection by God took on a very different sense than in Judaism. And in many ways undermined the Jewish “supremacist” idea which is still fully active in traditional Judaism.

The notion of Jesus as avatar from God to humanity was not what Jesus preached.

Who knows? The Gospels themselves cannot be relied on. And in fact in the Gospels there are utterances by Jesus affirming his understanding that he was “sent by God” into our world.

Belindo, I am genuinely amazed by your tendency to rewrite Christian theological history to accord with your post-Anglican postwar revisionist post-Christian Marxism-tinged semi-socialism …

However I am impressed! I can do triple backward flips, hang in the air for 1.5 seconds, before I land sticking it while the multitudes cheer …

At such times as his status as man became temporarily less important the Virgin Mary took his place.

The concept of Divine Mother antecedes that of the masculine gods. The Virgin can the thought of as “taking his place” but really she is an eternal, foundational concept and something deeply felt.

Examined realistically — or is it poetically? — Jesus is perhaps similarly feminine as his mother. They are sufficiently unified (symbolically) and one could almost see them as if not quite the same then as giving expression to a radically different god-personality than that of Yahweh.

[Belinda]

The historical localisation of Judaism is essential for the covenant of GOD with His chosen people.

I am unsure if you notice the degree to which you “rewrite” the Christian story. You seem to take seriously that God had a chosen people. Yet I suppose that if queried you’d say that view is “culturally specific” and “invented” (since “God” is not something real for you).

In my own case I can only accept as true what can be represented sensibly in metaphysical terms. I.e. as a “picture” that expresses intellectual ideas which, as I say, function in all conceptual worlds.

In this sense the notion of an avatar that descends from an intangible plane down into the plane we are familiar with can be said to “make sense”. And that is why, on that concept-plane, that the advent of Jesus is comparable formally with an incarnation of Vishnu.

The obsessive over-localization of this figure in a Judaic setting — for those operating conceptually on an abstract, metaphysical level — is a hinderance. In fact — and I know this is radical — the personalization of Jesus is, in my view, a mistake. The notion of a supernatural avatar is best understood abstractly. Once it becomes personalized, then it is mundanified (excuse the neologism) and reduced to all that is problematic in man’s world. Just another thing to fight over.

In my view, if one has achieved this conceptual distance one might then choose, for strategic reasons, to align with a “church” — inevitably localized, inevitably prejudiced — but the “distance” I refer to is necessary to actually believe in the concepts behind the symbols.

I certainly admit that what I am talking about is in most senses ultra-heretical but what can I do about that?

Jesus was a rabbi who preached Israel as the Chosen People.

I am uncertain if I can go along with this. Whatever Christianity is, is really what it became, and as such — as non-Judaic and radical — it is comprised of many trends, not the least being a “swerve” in Judaism’s understanding of universalism. The Greek spirit universalized the metaphysics to include all men who could grasp the concept. Selection by God took on a very different sense than in Judaism. And in many ways undermined the Jewish “supremacist” idea which is still fully active in traditional Judaism.

The notion of Jesus as avatar from God to humanity was not what Jesus preached.

Who knows? The Gospels themselves cannot be relied on. And in fact in the Gospels there are utterances by Jesus affirming his understanding that he was “sent by God” into our world.

Belindo, I am genuinely amazed by your tendency to rewrite Christian theological history to accord with your post-Anglican postwar revisionist post-Christian Marxism-tinged semi-socialism …

However I am impressed! I can do triple backward flips, hang in the air for 1.5 seconds, before I land sticking it while the multitudes cheer …

At such times as his status as man became temporarily less important the Virgin Mary took his place.

The concept of Divine Mother antecedes that of the masculine gods. The Virgin can the thought of as “taking his place” but really she is an eternal, foundational concept and something deeply felt.

Examined realistically — or is it poetically? — Jesus is perhaps similarly feminine as his mother. They are sufficiently unified (symbolically) and one could almost see them as if not quite the same then as giving expression to a radically different god-personality than that of Yahweh.

That the Chosen People were the Israelites is Biblical without any doubt. He made His covenant with Israelites. Not with Romans, or Germans, or Aztecs, or Hittites, or Norwegians, or Samarians. With Israelites He made His covenant.

Jesus had a man's body. Mary had a woman's body . Mary was not a divine mother when she bore Jesus, she was entirely human and she remained human throughout her life. It's her very humanity that makes it easier sometimes to ask her ,not Christ, to intercede .

The Divine Mother as fertility symbol is not Judeo-Christian it's a pagan idea. The Holy Spirit is regarded as feminine, but this is not feminine like Mary whose significance is as the human source of Jesus Christ.
There is no harm in worshipping the pagan fertility symbol but it's simply wrong to conflate the fertility symbol with the mother of Christ.

I never claimed that Jesus as rabbi is the one and only image the iconic Jesus lends itself to. All appearances of the icon happened as a matter of history.

[henry quirk]

A tiny bit of cheese to lure the Big Mouse back...

-----

https://mindmatters.ai/2025/03/how-a-ne ... mmaterial/

HOW A NEUROSURGEON SHOWED THAT ABSTRACT THOUGHT IS IMMATERIAL

Robert J. Marks and I submitted a paper to a philosophy journal in which we made two key points: Christof Koch’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is not an adequate theory of consciousness. Secondly, the human intellect and will are immaterial. The paper is still under review and we have received a number of reviewer questions. What follows is the gist of a response to one of them. – Michael Egnor

A reader who has a background in neuroscience and philosophy has been critical of my citation of the research of neurosurgeon and neuroscientist Wilder Penfield (1891–1976). Penfield’s research demonstrates that the intellect and will are immaterial powers of the human soul and are not generated by the brain. He found that stimulation by an electrical probe of the brain cortex of awake patients undergoing brain surgery never elicits abstract thought or the illusion of free will.

The reader writes:

Every task involves activation in a network of multiple local brain areas. The idea that one could activate such networks through stimulation with a single electrode is little short of absurd, although the possible existence of specific local network trigger points is suggested by the fact that Penfield could stimulate complex memories in only about 5% of cases.

I reply:

The lasting importance of Penfield’s work is underestimated. I’ve performed awake brain surgery, and I understand the logistics of such procedures. Penfield performed 1100 awake brain operations, each lasting roughly 8 hours, consisting of roughly 2 stimulations per minute, which is almost 1000 stimulations per patient and 1,100,000 stimulations over his career.

Not a single one of his 1.1 million brain stimulations in awake patients evoked what he called “mind action”, by which he meant abstract thought. How many brain stimulations that do not evoke abstract thought are necessary before we can draw the scientific inference that abstract thought does not come from the brain?

What did Penfield find?

After 1.1 million individual brain stimulations in awake patients, he found that he could stimulate four and only four responses: movement, perception, emotion and memory. His vast experience with systematic direct stimulation of the brain in conscious subjects is unparalleled in neuroscience and is obviously of immeasurably greater scientific importance than a handful of fMRI studies with abysmal temporal and spatial resolution that do not directly image neuronal activation.

Penfield concluded as a result of his stimulation attempts that neither the intellect nor the will is generated by the brain. Such massive evidence generated by over a million stimulations of the living human brain in a controlled scientific setting is as close to decisive as it gets in neuroscience and cannot be dismissed.

The reader points out that Penfield was able to stimulate complex memories in 5% of cases, which — over his surgical career — is 55,000 brain stimulations that “activated complex networks with a single electrode.” Not one of these 55,000 brain stimulations generated abstract thought. So, even if brain stimulation fails to activate complex networks 95% of the time, the 5% that do activate them represent 55,000 individual activations without a single one that involved abstract thought.

How much more evidence is necessary to draw the scientific inference that activation of brain networks is insufficient to generate abstract thought?

[accelafine]

I hope he comes back to pull it apart.

[BigMike]

Huh? There cannot be a “moral effect” of determinism. Determinism is a doctrine and a perspective that undermines all that we have meant, or could mean, by this notion of morality.

However, I do understand what you are saying about taking into consideration the “extenuating circumstances”.

You fail to respond to Torba’s essential observation: the movement of the idea that man is a type of machine and not man as man has been understood to be: a being with a psyche/soul that is not body/mechanical. A being who can act morally and who has imperatives to do so.

Get stroppy?!? I am right on the point of showing you people what stroppy really means! (Hold on, I’m looking it up…)

strop•py (ˈstrɒp i)

adj.(-pi•er, -pi•est.)
Brit. Informal. bad-tempered or hostile.
[1950–55; perhaps (ob) strep (erous) + -y1]

Ok, yes, I am right on the verge of extreme obstreperousness of a sort that will roll LIKE THUNDER through this forum!

In the next 3-5 years the world we live in will be infused with AI technologies. It was strange that BigMike, let’s be truthful, came here as an amalgamation of man (this person) bolstered by an Agent AI.

Soon such Agents of AI technology will fully imitate persons. This is what on just one of the levels was so unsettling about this “BigMike”.

The Machine will begin to correct the human, and the human perspective and point-of-view. Consider what this will mean for those unlike you, Belinda, who did not grow up as you did with real people, with books and book-information, and in a human-run world!

Do you have any grasp of what this developing Brave New World will mean for those who have never been trained to reason!?

BigMike explained that he is a mathematical meat-machine. Do you understand the implications?!

[BigMike, you determined screwball, get your ass down here and let’s have it out! You are determined indeed and I am not determined. I will rewrite your overdetermined ass!]

Er-hum, allow me to continue:

(In BigMike) that Euclidean logic is harnessed to propose, explain and defend (and indoctrinate) that a man is a neuronal computing device and a “rolling rock”.

It’s happening again!!!

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

Alright, here we go.

Let’s talk about how memory and learning—both undeniably physical processes in the brain—can lead to different behavior “next time,” without appealing to anything metaphysical like an immaterial soul or some undefined notion of “will.”

When someone experiences something—say, the consequences of a bad choice, a powerful emotional moment, or the deep realization of harm caused—the brain physically changes. Synaptic connections are strengthened or weakened, new neural pathways form, chemical balances shift. These changes are learning and memory. They're not metaphorical—they are measurable, observable alterations in the structure and function of the brain.

Now, because our future behavior flows from the current state of our brain (and body, and environment), and because that state includes these new physical imprints of experience, it follows that we might behave differently “next time.” Not because of some internal “chooser” exerting free will, but because the system has changed. The causes are different, and thus the effects can be different.

Take a simple but powerful example: A person burns their hand on a hot stove. The pain, the smell, the fear—all those inputs are encoded in neural pathways. Next time their hand approaches heat, the brain triggers caution, even reflexive withdrawal. Was that “free will”? No. It was cause and effect. But it looks like learning, like choice, like morality in action—when really, it's the machine updating based on inputs.

Same thing when someone, say, lies and sees it devastate a loved one. That emotional response gets physically encoded. It may create enough dissonance and suffering that future opportunities to lie feel differently—they’re now connected to pain and guilt. Again, no magic soul needed. Just altered neural architecture.

So when I say that understanding determinism can still have a moral effect, I mean this: If a person learns that others’ actions arise from causes outside their control, they may feel less reactive, less vengeful. That shift in perspective—encoded in memory and emotion—can alter future behavior in a very real, very physical, and yes, moral way. Even morality, then, is a deterministic process—a consequence of causes acting on a human brain shaped by experience.

And as for Torba’s idea—that man is more than a machine—I get the romance of that idea, I do. But the facts don’t back it. There’s no evidence for a nonphysical psyche that steers the body like a ghost in the machine. Everything we’ve ever been able to observe, measure, and manipulate about behavior points back to physical substrates. Brain damage changes personality. Hormones affect decision-making. Tumors can shift moral impulses. None of that makes sense if we’re governed by some nonphysical “self.”

The soul is a poetic placeholder for what we don’t yet understand. But the more we understand, the less need we have for it.

And hey, I’m not here to rewrite anyone’s “ass”—overdetermined or not—but if you’re ready for the thunder, I’m here under the lightning rod.

Let’s go.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The soul is a poetic placeholder for what we don’t yet understand. But the more we understand, the less need we have for it.

Glad to know you are still skulking around.

I am not the man for the joust that you seek.

I really do accept that our being and consciousness depend on, arise in, the very physicality of matter.

I also think that language (about souls, heaven, and much else) are meaning-vestiges or “graveyards” of meanings no longer supported by the modern picture held now in the imagination.

But since it is not my field nor my interest to either become, like you, a strict materialist-atheist, nor to create a bridge between the Old View and the New View, I remain within a type of gnosis (no capital G) of my own subjective experience.

Pretty much I said this all along.

There is a divine spirit in the World of ours, and we can encounter it. Because I have this understanding, and because I use it, my knowledge is subjective.

A man knows what he knows. And there is a lot of mystery in all that.

See the McGilchrist interview I linked to in the Christianity thread. I think it will interest you. I thought of you when I watched his presentation.

[BigMike]

The soul is a poetic placeholder for what we don’t yet understand. But the more we understand, the less need we have for it.

Glad to know you are still skulking around.

I am not the man for the joust that you seek.

I really do accept that our being and consciousness depend on, arise in, the very physicality of matter.

I also think that language (about souls, heaven, and much else) are meaning-vestiges or “graveyards” of meanings no longer supported by the modern picture held now in the imagination.

But since it is not my field nor my interest to either become, like you, a strict materialist-atheist, nor to create a bridge between the Old View and the New View, I remain within a type of gnosis (no capital G) of my own subjective experience.

Pretty much I said this all along.

There is a divine spirit in the World of ours, and we can encounter it. Because I have this understanding, and because I use it, my knowledge is subjective.

A man knows what he knows. And there is a lot of mystery in all that.

See the McGilchrist interview I linked to in the Christianity thread. I think it will interest you. I thought of you when I watched his presentation.

Alright Alexis, enough with the poetic mist and velvet language. Let’s clear the table.

You say there’s a divine spirit in the world. Okay—define it. What exactly do you mean by “spirit”? Is it a force? A substance? A vibration? An invisible friend? Something that affects physical reality without being physical? If so, how? Show me one single mechanism. One measurable interaction. You can’t. Because you’re using a word—spirit—that has no grounded definition. It’s a ghost-word. A placeholder for what you feel but don’t actually know.

And then you toss out, “a man knows what he knows.” That’s not an argument, it’s a retreat. It’s what people say when they want to justify something they can’t explain. You “know” this divine spirit exists? Based on what? Neural spikes during awe? A sense of connectedness? Hallucinogenic clarity? That’s brain chemistry, Alexis. All of it. Nothing you’ve described—nothing—requires a divine anything. Just a brain doing what it’s wired to do.

And look, I respect the honesty when you say you’re not trying to build a bridge between the old view and the new. But don’t pretend that clinging to mystery is depth. Mystery is just a gap. Some people study it, dig into it, shrink it. Others build temples in it and call it sacred.

You’re in the second group. And that’s fine—until you start floating these foggy claims like “divine spirit” or “a man knows what he knows” and expect them to pass for wisdom. They’re not. They’re evasions. You're not wrestling with truth—you’re dodging it while dressing the dodge in poetic robes.

So no more sidestepping. What is spirit? What is knowing when it’s not grounded in evidence, causality, or the physical world?

Let’s see you pin that down. No mysticism. No metaphors. Just say what you mean in plain language, and then show why anyone should believe it. If you can't do that, then you're not engaging in philosophy—you're just comforting yourself with lyrical wallpaper.

Now—your move.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You say there’s a divine spirit in the world. Okay—define it. What exactly do you mean by “spirit”? Is it a force? A substance? A vibration? An invisible friend? Something that affects physical reality without being physical? If so, how? Show me one single mechanism. One measurable interaction. You can’t. Because you’re using a word—spirit—that has no grounded definition. It’s a ghost-word. A placeholder for what you feel but don’t actually know.

It is what you find impossible to conceive. And therefore inexplicable.

How is your “right hemisphere” today?

[BigMike]

You say there’s a divine spirit in the world. Okay—define it. What exactly do you mean by “spirit”? Is it a force? A substance? A vibration? An invisible friend? Something that affects physical reality without being physical? If so, how? Show me one single mechanism. One measurable interaction. You can’t. Because you’re using a word—spirit—that has no grounded definition. It’s a ghost-word. A placeholder for what you feel but don’t actually know.

It is what you find impossible to conceive. And therefore inexplicable.

How is your “right hemisphere” today?

Ah, there it is. The last refuge of the intellectually cornered: “It’s inexplicable.”

Alexis, that’s not wisdom. That’s a white flag.

You’re basically admitting you can’t explain what you just claimed exists. You invoke a “divine spirit,” but when asked what that even means, you say it’s beyond conception—even yours. So let’s be clear: you just described something you yourself can’t describe, and then passed that off as profound. That’s not depth. That’s dodging.

You want to sound like you’re operating on some enlightened plane, but what you’re actually doing is hiding behind the fog of vague mysticism. If your “divine spirit” can’t be defined, can’t be tested, can’t be distinguished from pure fantasy, then what’s the difference between your worldview and a child’s imaginary friend? Seriously. If it’s “inexplicable,” then it’s indistinguishable from made up.

And let’s not pretend that referencing the “right hemisphere” is some kind of mic drop. That’s just tossing neurobabble at a problem you’ve already abandoned explaining. If your only defense is that something is so deep it can’t be understood, then what the hell is the point of saying it at all? You may as well replace your whole argument with “magic,” because that’s what this is: vague, hand-wavy, poetic magic.

You’re not engaging with ideas—you’re retreating into language that no one, not even you, is meant to understand. And you’re doing it with a smug little emoji. That's not just cowardice—it's arrogant cowardice.

So here's your choice: define what you mean, or admit you’ve got nothing but fluff. If you’re going to keep babbling about the inexplicable, then maybe it’s time to step off the stage and let the grown-ups talk.

[Alexis Jacobi]

So let’s be clear: you just described something you yourself can’t describe, and then passed that off as profound. That’s not depth. That’s dodging.

To be more fair and precise you are 100% certain that “divinity” does not, cannot, exist. And you have an entire linguistic and scientistic armament to clearly demonstrate that any such idea is impossible — fantasy, projection.

I can offer — it would be easier to receptive minds, and yours is not — allusions that could aid you in discovery of things I am aware of.

I might also be able to describe that because you have a certain sort of mind that your mind itself is (allow me to put it this way) a big part of your “problem”.

But that would only excite your ire. The idea that there might be a deficiency in yourself is an intolerable one, isn’t it?

Leave me to my mystical transportations!

Go, go study a Euclidean proof!

Away, away irritating fly!

[Impenitent]

Leave me to my mystical transportations!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPE9a_epmWw

-Imp

[BigMike]

So let’s be clear: you just described something you yourself can’t describe, and then passed that off as profound. That’s not depth. That’s dodging.

To be more fair and precise you are 100% certain that “divinity” does not, cannot, exist. And you have an entire linguistic and scientistic armament to clearly demonstrate that any such idea is impossible — fantasy, projection.

I can offer — it would be easier to receptive minds, and yours is not — allusions that could aid you in discovery of things I am aware of.

I might also be able to describe that because you have a certain sort of mind that your mind itself is (allow me to put it this way) a big part of your “problem”.

But that would only excite your ire. The idea that there might be a deficiency in yourself is an intolerable one, isn’t it?

Leave me to my mystical transportations!

Go, go study a Euclidean proof!

Away, away irritating fly!

Oh Alexis… this is priceless.

You start by pretending you're being “fair and precise”, but then you immediately launch into some limp psychobabble about how my “sort of mind” is the problem. That’s not an argument, that’s a playground insult in a toga. What’s next—telling me my chakras are blocked because I use logic?

Let’s break this down. You're saying you can't explain your beliefs, you can't define your terms, you can't offer evidence, but it's my fault for not having the right kind of mystical “receptive” mind? That’s hilarious. That’s like a guy failing to solve a math problem and then blaming the calculator for not being “open-minded” enough.

“Allusions,” you say. Oh, how generous. If only I were worthy of your cryptic clues and vague hints! You don’t have a case, Alexis—you have a collection of dreamy metaphors you can’t even commit to. “Mystical transportation”? Please. If your ideas are so fragile they fall apart the second someone asks, “What does that mean?”, then maybe it’s not my mind that’s the problem.

And then—chef’s kiss—you flail into full-on theatrical retreat. “Away, away irritating fly!” You couldn’t be more of a caricature of a dodging mystic if you were sitting on a mountaintop in a bathrobe waving a stick at the clouds.

Let me spell it out: if your divine spirit is real, then define it. If your insight is valid, explain it. If your perspective is meaningful, make it make sense. If you can’t do any of that, then don’t act like condescension is a substitute for coherence. It’s not mysterious. It’s just empty.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Oh Alexis… this is priceless.

To be quite truthful I have a strong Yiddish streak and everything EVERYTHING costs.

I will accept the chef’s kiss in lieu of monetary payment just this once!