Nothing New under the Sun: Another Failed Attempt to Explain God Away

For a long time now, secularists have been trying to come up with reasons why people believe in God. If you take a strictly naturalistic view of the world, after all, it can be pretty difficult to understand how anyone would put their faith in an invisible supernatural being. And yet, generation after generation continues to hold to do just that. It’s a question that has puzzled and fascinated some of the most prominent minds of our time.

Now there’s an intriguing new explanation for religious faith. Paul Bloom, a Yale professor of psychology and linguistics, argues in the Atlantic Monthly that belief in God is a biological accident.

Basically, Bloom’s theory goes like this: Human beings are naturally dualistic. Studies show that from a very young age, we can tell the difference between the physical world and the psychological world. That is, we understand that rocks and trees do not have thoughts and feelings, but that humans do. Our brains use one system to understand the physical world, and another to understand the psychological world.

As Bloom sees it, “Both these systems are biological adaptations that give human beings a badly needed head start in dealing with objects and people. But these systems go awry in two important ways that are the foundations of religion. First, we perceive the world of objects as essentially separate from the world of minds, making it possible for us to envision soulless bodies and bodiless souls.” And Bloom continues, “This helps explain why we believe in gods and an afterlife. Second, as we will see, our system of social understanding overshoots, inferring goals and desires where none exist. This makes us animists and creationists.”

In other words, we humans look at inanimate objects and tend to see evidence of design and purpose in them—evidence that Bloom says just isn’t there. Essentially, we are using the wrong part of our brain to interpret them. And we make the same mistake when we assume that human bodies have souls that live on after death. Because we have powers of reasoning, thinking, and feeling, we naturally tend to think of ourselves as something more than just bodies. But, Bloom says, it is all the result of a mistaken way of thinking—as I said, he calls it a biological accident.

Well, all this may impress some scholars, but I think there are a few big holes in his argument. For example, I would submit to Professor Bloom that even if human brains have a tendency to infer design, that is not evidence that design does not exist. Maybe we infer it because it is so. It would be a biological accident only if you accept Bloom’s premise that the universe is a closed system with no possibility of supernatural intervention. And Bloom, like many scientists, does not attempt to prove this very important point—he just takes it for granted, just like evolutionists do, which makes science hostage to their philosophy.

So Bloom’s scientific studies, carefully conducted as they seem to be, prove only what he wants them to prove if one starts from a materialist point of view—the same materialist point of view that has tried and failed to disprove religion for so many years. When it comes to tempting “new” theories to explain away religion, it looks like there really is nothing new under the sun after all.

Bloom is completely ignoring the evidence in four published, peer-reviewed, long-term hospital studies of death and near death experiences (the first of which was published in the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, in 2001), all of which corroborate, with practically identical results, that there apparently IS some sort of phenomenon of detachable consciousness which occurs in about 20% of people at death, and follows very predictable lines.

Does this "prove" God and the afterlife?
No.
But it does demonstrate that the concept of body and consciousness being separable is not merely a fantasy. It's empirical, peer-reviewed medical evidence that it appears to happen at the point of death in about a fifth of people (the others didn't remember anything).

Now, of course, people have been at the point of death and then revived since time immemorial. This is not a NEW experience to mankind. What is new is that modern medicine gives us about 20,000 cases of it, whereas only fortuitous happenstance (or divine intervention) allowed someone at the point of death, or perhaps even in cardiac arrest without breathing, etc., to miraculously recover in pre-medical days.

The detachable soul idea, he suggests, is an error of logic.
I would submit that, no, it is actually a rational concept based on empirical experience of human beings across the centuries. There was absolutely nothing surprising in those four Near-Death Experience studies, other than the fact that hard medical science could actually document the
reported "symptom", and that it would statistically be the same in four separate peer reviewed studies.

Detachable consciousness in extremis has good, peer-reviewed, medical scientific support which does not require any religious faith to read and observe. It's apparently a fact of nature. That it's not SUPRISING to religious people may demonstrate that those who inspired the religion experienced these things themselves, or it may just possibly be that this "God" that people go to in these experiences is, uh, actually GOD, and that the religious intuitions aren't just myths, but are actually based on true experiences that mankind has recorded and taken into account since the dawn of time.

Obviously that concept is unacceptable to someone who has dogmatically decided that there CAN'T be any truth in religion or concepts of the soul. But to the rest of us, who just want to know the truth wherever it may lie, there is no good reason to favor the speculation of a guy who is opposed to the very concept of a detachable consciousness over four peer-reviewed, controlled, long-term hospital studies of Near-Death Experiences which produce statistically very similar results and corroborate each other's findings.

The mechanism for this is baffling. It is not medically explicable at the present time. But denying that it happens at all: that is not science. Science is looking at the empirical data, verifying that it was prepared using proper standards and peer reviewed. These four hospital studies were. The BMJ/Lancet wouldn't have published something that controversial if the science were not adequate.

They wouldn't have published it either if the doctors had written: "This proves the soul" or any such non-scientific nonsense as that. The studies do not PROVE anything. But they provide empirical support, pretty good empirical support, for the notion of some sort of effect of detachable consciousness at death.
And the existence of these four studies, the oldest now 5 years old, means that this speculator on the nature of human psychology has not properly researched his work, because he did not take these studies into account.

Ignoring evidence because it does not support one's theory is not science.

Personally, these studies convince me that there probably is a soul, and probably is an afterlife. I will not state that they PROVE it, because they don't. But one can certainly infer it from them. They don't prove Christianity or any other religion, but they do indicate that religious belief in the afterlife is not made up out of wholecloth. People DO experience these things, and have. We have reports going back through history of exceptional cases, and they comport with what the thousands of modern NDE's show. Something is going on.
WHERE, precisely (in the head our outside) or HOW is not knowable at this point.
But one cannot say, as this fellow has, that people who believe in a separation of soul and body are in ERROR, or that they are CONFUSED. They may very well be RIGHT.
Science gives evidence that allows a colorable inference that something like that certainly SEEMS to happen, in 20% of people.

The fellow who is making the hypothesis states a case that is weakened by empirical medical science. He should check his facts before he pontificates.

>>Studies show that from a very young age, we can tell the difference between the physical world and the psychological world.<<

Apparently Dr. Bloom has not listened to Goerge Noory's Coast to Coast radio show. It seems that humans may be losing this ability.

But seriously, one usually only has to listen to these people for a short time to detect their obvious hatred of religion. Matthew Alper proposes a "God-part" of the brain as a reason humans have always sought a supreme being. Here is his premise. The problem here is that Mr. Alper allows his objectivity to be seriously questioned when he becomes angry in interviews when religious people oppose him. Secondly, he has no biological credentials to accompany his "biological" explanations.

The existence of God presents a problem for many people there is no doubt. The struggle to define God seems to permiate humans' recorded history as no other issue has. To some man's enduring search for God is sufficient evidence for His existence. To others only a physical audience with God will satiate their unbelief. I do not expect these attacks to ever subside as we are promised that few will find the strait and narrow gate.

Muleteam1

Now, of course, people have been at the point of death and then revived since time immemorial. This is not a NEW experience to mankind. What is new is that modern medicine gives us about 20,000 cases of it, whereas only fortuitous happenstance (or divine intervention) allowed someone at the point of death, or perhaps even in cardiac arrest without breathing, etc., to miraculously recover in pre-medical days.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a firm believer in God and firm believer in the afterlife.

However I read a treatise a few years ago by a doctor who studied Near-Death expereinces and he said that the people who experienced them were merely reliving the birth experience: going through the dark tunnel, coming out to a bright white light where people were waiting for them.

I hope and pray that he is wrong - but his premise sounded all too reasonable.

We'll all find out one day - but it will be too late to come back and tell anyone.

It happened to me when I was 17 and a nurse gave me a shot meant for the patient in the next room. All I saw was a heavy white fog rise up from the floor until it blocked my view. I could still hear, I felt myself fall and hit the floor (although it didn't hurt). I could hear my mother and the nurse screaming for the doctor and I was aware of him pounding on my chest - although again I couldn't really feel anything. I finally came to - the doctor told me that my heart had stopped for several minutes and they though I was a goner. Other than the white fog, I didn't see anything or anyone.

What REALLY scares me are people who experienced a near-death situation where they went somewhere NOT so pleasant.
I heard about a suicide case that said he went to a crowded room filled with other people walking around in circles talking to themselves and bumping into each other without noticing anyone but themselves. He figured that was the hell that suiciders go to - since they were so selfish as to kill themselves, then they spend an eternity with other people so selfish they don't pay any attention to anything around them.

Pretty scary.

That's why these NDE studies that are real science are so important. You've got lots of doctors out there speculating about this or that effect, but hard, controlled studies have been done.

Of particular note are the so-called "veridical experiences" that have occurred in patients undergoing "halting" or "stopping" operations for brain aneurysms. These patients are not just clinically dead. Their brain activity is stopped, they are at room temperature (50 degrees) and the blood is drained out of their heads. They are in that state for a half hour or more. There is NO activity in the cerebral cortex OR the brain stem. They are DEAD.
About half of them, when the damage is repaired, the blood pumped in, the body warmed up, and the heart and lungs restarted, come back to life, brain activity resumes, etc.

Now, some of THEM have not just reported experiences, but have reported ongoing narratives of what happened long after they entered Stage III brain death, reporting things they SAW the doctors and nurses say and do, with their eyes closed and no brain activity going on.
That's not "remembering" anything. Those are veridical references to things that they could NOT have known, because they could not see them and had no brain activity at all.

Further, if you think about it, the tunnel and the light is not a memory of birth. That's a nice analogy, but if you really think about it, it's ridiculous. A baby is not born with his eyes open and face pointed down the birth canal. He doesn't have eyes in the top of his head. He's born head-first, with his eyes closed and squashed flat against the wall of the birth canal. He doesn't see any light ahead of him. There is only PRESSURE, as the plates of the skull shift and squash against the brain and face.
Near death experiences do not recall anything like that, and going down a tunnel towards a light, in truth, cannot possibly be remotely related to a memory of birth, because nobody born looks down the birth tunnel. A memory of being born would be more like a memory of being squashed in a hot coal mine. Crushed and constricted in utter darkness, able to see nothing.

If we were born face first, maybe.
But we never are.

Scientific advances in "seeing" the subtle layers of creation have been made through the use of scanning electron microscopes, which enlarge up to 5,000x or more. Layers of creation invisible to the human eye or ordinary microscopes are shown to be extraordinarily "designed":

Lung tissue (photomicrograph courtesy Microangela):

Red blood cells(photomicrograph courtesy Microangela):

Insulin crystals (photomicrograph copyright Dennis Kunkel):

Vitamin "C" crystals (photomicrograph copyright Dennis Kunkel):

Caffeine crystals (photomicrograph copyright Dennis Kunkel):

Microplankton (photomicrograph by Dee Breger, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University)

Pacific Ocean sea salt crystal (photomicrograph by John McLane)

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