The Problem of the Mind

March 9, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

In the February 4th issue of New Scientist Michael Brook puts forth an article entitled, “Born believers: How your brain creates God.” The article presents numerous evidences that belief in the supernatural is innate for humans. Examples of research with children and adults indicate that we are not taught this view; it’s just there. It’s the way our minds work, and without the “default” capacity to picture and relate to a supernatural we would also cease to have most other capacities that make us uniquely human.
Various theories are set forth to explain why this occurs, but there is a definite bias among all theories presented. Though the author makes the effort in a later paragraph to wash his hands with, “All the researchers involved stress that none of this says anything about the existence or otherwise of gods: as Barratt points out, whether or not a belief is true is independent of why people believe it.” This statement gives it away: If whether or not a belief is true is independent of why people believe it, then the true or untrue thing is presumed to have no impact on the belief. Stated as less of a mind twister, even though the author boasts a variety of viewpoints, the one never considered is that the capacity to believe in a god just might be put there by a god. If “why people believe” is because a god put the capacity there, then obviously it DOES make a difference “whether or not [the] belief is true.” If that possibility were allowed, then the whole “problem,” as he calls it, makes perfect sense. Barratt only considers whether what we believe affects what is true. It doesn’t. What he doesn’t consider is whether what is true can affect what we believe. If what is true is God, and He chooses to cause humankind to believe, then yes, there IS a cause-and-affect relation between what is true and what is believed.
I find it most interesting that the author and some scientists confess that “disbelief requires effort.” Elsewhere he states it requires “education and experience.” Even those who profess to be agnostics or atheists never “completely exorcise the ghost of god—they just muzzle it.” The author is a case in point. Even though the author uses such phrases as “how does the brain conjure up gods?” he tips his hand by summarizing one scientist with, “religion is an inescapable artifact of the wiring in our brain.” The word “artifact” has the same root as art and artificial, and means “made,” not randomly occurring.
All in all there is a huge irony in the article: Early on the article bemoans that people have a capacity to conceptualize distinctly between mind and matter. These two “autonomous” systems allow us to distinguish between physical processes, such as eating, and mind processes, such as conceptualizing what is not seen. Alas, the latter is what leads us astray into conceptualizing and attributing to an unseen Something. Here is the irony: The author and all the scientists alluded to must utilize their “minds” in order to conceptualize that what the mind conceptualizes isn’t there. If they reject what they agree is the most fundamental and innate conceptualization of the mind, then how can they trust their minds to reject it?

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