A Martian anthropologist goes to church

Today I was day-dreaming about taking another field trip to a fundamentalist evangelical church.   In my dream, though, I wasn’t going to church to simply observe all the folks getting terrified over getting barbecued in hell.  Nor was I there to promote my new and improved version of the Ten Commandments. 

No, in this dream I was a Martian anthropologist starting my field studies on Earth.  Out of raw luck, I landed my saucer on the parking lot of a fundamentalist church and walked in to begin studying the animals that I found inside.  Here are the field notes from my dream:

I walked in church and noticed lots of animals.  In impeccable English (I studied English a bit in Martian high school) I asked, “Where do the animals sit?”

One of the “men” in charge told me that “animals are not allowed in the church, only people.”   As he said “people,” he pointed to some of the animals.

I inquired, “But aren’t those people animals?”  

This brought on a half-dazed squirmy look.  He looked at me like I was from Mars, which I was, of course.  He protested that he didn’t think of people as “animals.” 

Because I was confused, I pulled out my textbook on Animal Behavior, 7th Edition, by John Alcock (2001).  I glanced at the table of contents, which contained a long list of attributes pertaining to “animals.” I then quickly read further.

Chapter 8 covered “feeding behaviors,” indicating that animals ate food.  I happened to …

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Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train

This acclaimed film looks at the amazing life of the renowned historian, activist and author. Following his early days as a shipyard labor organizer and bombardier in World War II, Zinn became an academic rebel and leader of civil disobedience in a time of institutionalized racism and war. His influential…

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Darwin, the roots of words, etc

I have had the opportunity to exchange email and links with a man named Josh, who I invited to visit this blog.   Josh’s initial comment was: “Thanks for the Invite! But I must say… you and I are in for many future debates!” I could also tell that Josh and I were different by looking at the homepage of his blog, where he writes: “I enjoy apologetics, studying the Bible, and reading various amounts of other important literature. My passion in life is to please Christ.”

Recently, Josh referred me to an article he wrote last year, an article entitled “The Scientific Truth” published on his blog: http://defendtruth.blogspot.com/.   Below is my reaction to his article. 

Josh:

Thank you for bringing my attention to your article:  I’m truly glad we can have this conversation.  We certainly come from different perspectives.  Different perspectives, but not necessarily different backgrounds.  When I was young, I was told to fear God and to read the Bible. I was told that my questions were “just a phase” and that I would learn to simply love God and stop asking impertinent questions.  I was sent to Christian (Catholic) schools for 15 of my years of education.

I don’t pretend to know all the answers.  I am now an agnostic regarding many things.  I believe that the evidence only goes so far and we need to be brave enough to repeatedly say “I don’t know.”  I struggle to find explanations that make the most sense …

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Pump up your tires to save Alaska

"HOW ALASKA CAN HELP MEET AMERICA'S ENERGY NEEDS" is an article to which Republican Senator Jim Talent of Missouri refers his constituents.  That article argues that we need to start drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) of Alaska, because it holds 10 billion barrels of economically…

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The Two Paths: No Self versus extended Self

Sometimes we can get to the same place taking opposite paths.

One path is the Buddhist belief that “self” is a delusion.

The objects with which people identify themselves—fortune, social position, family, body, and even mind—are not their true selves. There is nothing permanent, and, if only the permanent deserved to be called the self, or atman, then nothing is self. 

Buddhists set forth the theory of the five aggregates or constituents (khandhas) of human existence: (1) corporeality or physical forms (rupa), (2) feelings or sensations (vedana), (3) ideations (sañña), (4) mental formations or dispositions (sankhara), and (5) consciousness (viññana). Human existence is only a composite of the five aggregates, none of which is the self or soul. A person is in a process of continuous change, with no fixed underlying entity.

Compare this central tenet of Buddhism with a broader definition of “mind.”  In a book called Being There:  Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again (1997), philosopher Andy Clark makes the case that there is no basis for conceiving of the mind as bounded by skin and skull.  Clark cites Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism . . . it forms with it a system.

Admittedly, we do many of our basic activities—e.g., walking, reaching and looking—as individuals.   But what about activities involving advanced cognition, such as “voting, consumer choice, planning a vacation or running a country? 

To accomplish these higher order activities, we

create and maintain

…
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