The Role of Intelligence & Faith Part 2 - The purpose of intelligence under the cosmic consciousness hypothesis

The cosmic consciousness hypothesis in some ways represents a synthesis of the hypothesis that admits of a god or gods and the atheist hypothesis that denies the existence of any god. It does not require the existence of a god, which will probably make the devout believing Christian scoff. At the same time it allows that some of the anecdotal claims made by religion may have some basis in reality, which will probably make the convinced atheist scoff.

The idea of a cosmic consciousness appears in many earth-based religions, mystical societies like the Rosicrucians, and most eastern religions, such as Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism in one form or another.

The core idea with this hypothesis is that the effects of religious practice occur because of an external connection between the individual performing the religious ritual and some external aspect of nature. (The key terms are "external" and "natural." The external and supernatural defines the hypothesis of deity; where the internal and natural will be considered as the atheist hypothesis.)

The Analogy of Magnetism

In order to more fully explain the idea of an natural external effect of religious practice, I will present an analogy to the history of magnetism.

In the ancient world, some men were aware that certain stones - lodestone - would point to the north star when suspended from a string. Other stones that appeared almost identical to the lodestone would not. There was no obvious difference to the senses between those that did and those that did not, nor was there any thing detectable to the sense that could explain why the stones that pointed north did so.

As men tried to explain the phenomenon, which appeared to be magic to them, the invented mythologies and stories about the stones falling from Polaris, and so on. Surely it was the work of the gods that such stones could always find north, even in the day when the star wasn't visible.

If we were to go back in time to this age, and attempt, using only the tools and resources available to the ancients, and attempt to verify claims of magic stones that could always find north, even in a fog, we might be a bit skeptical. Since only 1-2% of the Earth's hematite is magnetic lodestone, conducting a scientific experiment in an attempt to verify that the stones actually did exist could very easily fail to produce a result that would support the idea that the stones existed.  Yet the anecdotal stories and mythologies of these magic stones would persist, because the stones really did exist.

Fast forward about 2500 years to today. Thanks to Gauss, Maxwell, Tesla, and others, we now have a rather complete theory of electro-magnetism. Not only do we know that magnetic hematite exists naturally as lodestone, but we are able to magnetize hematite that is not naturally magnetic. We can create many varieties of magnet, both permanent (using iron) and temporary (passing an electrical current through a coil of wire), we can measure the strength of a magnetic field, we can concentrate it through cores in a transformer, or dampen its effects by enclosing it in a metal box, and we can use a magnetic field to generate electricity in generators, or conversely, we can use electricity to generate magnetic fields that make motors turn . In fact, a very large portion of the technology we use everyday is in some way related to our knowledge of magnetism. Magnetism is no longer a magical, mythological anecdotal story, but a very solid reality.

Among the things we have learned about magnetism is that the Earth is magnetic. It is the Earth's magnetic field that the lodestone on a string aligned with - that just happened to align fairly closely to the direction of Polaris in Europe and western Asia.

While we humans may not be able to detect a magnetic field with our 5 senses, there is plenty of evidence that migratory birds and homing pigeons can. Science has found that some species of birds have special cells in their brains that map the Earth's magnetic field, some have magnetic sensors in the beaks, and some might even be able to "see" the Earth's magnetic field. These birds have ready access to a sense that we humans don't seem to have.

Perhaps we once had this sense and it atrophied from non-use because it wasn't very useful for human survival, or perhaps it developed to a far less accessible and obvious level in humans. Perhaps some of us have this magnetic sense more developed than others. Some people just seem to have a natural sense of direction where others don't.

The Theory of Everything

In the past few hundred years, since Galileo and Newton started it, science has discovered a lot about the universe we live in. But it hasn't yet discovered everything there is to discover. Along the way there have been some pretty interesting side trips.

In the tail end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the 20th, physicists were puzzled when they added up all of the atomic weights of the components of an atoms nucleus and discovered that the sum of the parts didn't equal the measured weight of the nucleus. Where, they asked, did the missing mass go? Enter Albert Einstein and the Special Theory or Relativity's e=mc^{2 -}  - The mass had been converted to energy being used to hold the nucleus together.

But the numbers still didn't add up perfectly. Physicists have been working ever since to track down one defect after another ever since. And I suspect they will be at it for a long time yet.

In the meantime, physicists like Fritjof Capra (The Tao of Physics) have started  to notice that physics is starting to look a lot like some of the concepts in Eastern religious traditions...

Is it possible that there is some force or energy that, like magnetism to the ancients, causes phenomenon for some people in a very limited way - enough to create the anecdotal stories and mythologies surrounding religious experience, that we are not able to detect with our five main senses or measure with our current instrumentation? A far reaching force that connects with perhaps the entire universe and which is able to subtly nudge the laws of probability? A form of energy that some people are more naturally sensitive to than others, like the sense of direction in some people?

The Role of Intelligence with Cosmic Consciousness

 Assuming that this is indeed the case, then the role of intelligence is the same as it was with magnetism. Our intellect is the primary tool we can use to explore the concept and discover whatr makes it work, just as the pioneers of electro-magnetic theory did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

And the first thing to consider is, "What questions should we be asking?"

Faith vs Intellect:The function of human intelligenceThe function of faith

Many religious practices are premised on the faith of the practitioner. The practitioner must believe unquestioningly that deity will respond to his efforts in a way that will ultimately benefit the practitioner. Yet we humans are somewhat of a curious lot. It is central to our nature to question and to reason; to ask "why?" Why does the effect follow the cause?

If faith is the predicate, what then is the purpose of intelligence?

Intelligence

Intelligence - the ability to reason, to use language, mathematics, to extrapolate from the general to the specific and from the specific to the general; to be aware of our own existence in the universe and our our effect on our environment and its effect on us, is a hallmark of what it is to be human. It may not be arrogance to say that this trait is uniquely human. We can remember the past. We can forecast future events from current circumstances. We can draw inferences and reach conclusions.

Thousands of years ago, humans observed the position of the sun within the constellations of the Zodiac and noticed that when the sun traveled in the constellation of Taurus*, that calves would be born to the cattle they tended and that the length of the day was the same as the length of the night; that when the sun traveled in Leo, the length of the day was at its longest, the sun was at it northern most, and summer was at its hottest; when the sun traveled in Virgo that the harvest time had arrived. The early Egyptians noticed that shortly after the helical rising of the star we now call Sirius that the Nile river would flood. As men discovered the predictive ability of observing the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars, the field of astrology was born. Stories were told, perhaps to help remember or to teach others, about how the seasons and the stars aligned. Perhaps these stories were believed at first; perhaps they were not, but eventually they developed into the mythologies of solar astrology.

Humans noticed that seed planted in the ground would return with plants that could be harvested, and realized that planting and cultivating crops produced a better food supply than hunting and gathering, and humans became farmers. Intelligence allowed humans to tame fire and invent the wheel; to build houses and cities, and all of the other things that humans have invented.

Through intelligence men and women can distinguish between the concepts of good and evil. We can see our own nakedness and that of others. Only through intelligence can there be a sense of morals and scruples. Only through intelligence can we conceive of owning or possessing a thing. Perhaps it is only because of our intelligence that we are able to conceive of gods or question the belief in them.

Why? And why does it appear that humans are the only species gifted with intelligence?

Faith

Faith, in some ways, appears to be the opposite of intelligence. An Evangelical Christian who believes the Christian Bible to be the inerrant word of God will take the contents of the book of Genesis as literal and indisputable truth, and will hold to the notion of creationism despite any evidence that may be presented to the contrary. Some put so much faith into a religious or even secular leader that they will follow such a leader without questioning where he or she leads, even to the point of ritual suicide. Some of the greatest atrocities in human history have arisen from such faith. 

Another aspect of faith is the belief an individual has in a ritual practice to produce a desired outcome despite the lack of any visible connection between the ritual practiced and the desired outcome. We need to distinguish this type of faith from that where there is a visible - no matter how tenuous - connection between the practice and the desired outcome, though it can be said that they may be related by the apparent consistency of result. Putting money in a bank is an act of faith in the bank's ability to protect and grow the money, which is different than making an investment decision based on a consultation of the I Ching or the Tarot, or choosing a mate based on the astrological alignment of stars, planets, sun and moon at the time they were born.  

Or is it? The decision to use a bank is based - in theory at least - on the inductive reasoning that the bank is a sound place to put money, but do the majority of bank customers actually do the due diligence of examining the probabilities of bank failures and weigh them against the potential return from other investments? This has not been my experience. Most people that I know simply believe that banks are good and safe without ever checking - or for that matter, even knowing what to check - to determine whether or not a bank is safe.

On the other hand, if a person, or a group of them, have found that there is a correlation between the alignment of the stars and other events, making an inductive conclusion that the alignment of the stars is likely to be indicative of the other event, then the reasoning may be sound. Others, who follow later, may not be aware of the correlation or the observation, they have simply inherited the conclusion, have faith in it and follow it. If the correlation is really there, then they will have the desired result and their faith is justified. 

We must also examine the rituals of faith. Things that faithful people do in the practice of their faith for which they expect some sort of result. Here we are examining activities such as prayer, healing blessings, tithes and offerings, and other such practices, Many of these practices are ubiquitous, present in almost all religions and faiths; some are even present in practices of the non-religious in some form. The anecdotes of miraculously answered prayers are legion, but the conventional wisdom among those of faith is that if a prayer is unanswered the fault lies in the lack faith, not in the lack of mechanism.

We must ask the question: are the probabilities of the desired outcome better for those of faith than for those who lack faith. And if they are, what is the mechanism that makes it so. We must also examine whether the necessity for unquestioning faith provides a breeding ground for false prophets and others seeking to take advantage of the faithful and of course, how to detect such fraud. These are questions for another day,  however. 

The role of intelligence

Lets look at intelligence and see if we can puzzle out a reason for it to exist in humans under each of the three hypotheses>

Intelligence and the existence of deity

I have not included the creation of humanity by deity in our hypothesis, but I will adopt it here. If intelligence evolved from some other source, irregardless of the existence of deity, it is best covered in the other two hypothesis. I will also make a few a priori assumptions about our deity: first, that we are dealing with a rational deity or group of them working toward a reasoned purpose. We do not know, and perhaps do not need to know, what that purpose is. We merely assume that there is an objective. If we are dealing with a mad god or a group of gods at cross purposes it is unlikely that we will divine anything but insanity in out quest, so I will ignore those scenarios. I am tempted here to include an assumption that there is an afterlife, but I don't think we can consider that axiomatic at this point. We must also consider that there may not be anything beyond this mortal coil. 

It seems rather obvious to conclude that, if there is a deity or group of deities that created the universe and that created us, that it or they included intelligence in man for a reason. It seems equally reasonable to conclude that it is intended to be used.

Yet as humans have explored our existence and developed the great philosophies and sciences, intelligence - the ability to reason - draws us farther and farther from a belief in deity. (At least this is the case when the intelligence leads to the a priori assumption of Realism. Intelligence and reason inform the skeptic, not the devoutly faithful. It is the intellect that intrudes on faith. It is intellect that is capable of finding the fraud, but it is also intellect that dampens the working of fatih, and thereby may miss the truth.

Why would a reasonable deity hardwire the human brain to believe in him/het/it/they and then give us intelligence that works the opposite direction?

Some possibilities:

• Ambivilence: our deity doesn't care if we believe in him/her/it/them; faith and intelligence exist for some purpose other than for us to believe or not believe.  
• Entertainment: our deity or deities enjoys watching us struggle with the seeming contradiction.
• Education: our deity wants us to learn something by resolving the paradox.

The first two possibilities are dead ends. The third provides us with a very interesting puzzle. What if the purpose of our intelligence is to discover the mechanism(s) that make faith work? What if our current state of knowledge is similar to what men knew about magnetism or how migratory birds navigate a few centuries ago, and our deity wants us to figure out how to invoke the effects of faith without having to be blind to it, and perhaps even to invoke those effects in a much stronger way that we can by simple faith alone, and in so doing, become closer to our deity?

In future posts, I will examine the purpose of intelligence using the assumptions of "cosmic consciousness" and the atheist hypothesis. For now however, I invite your comments. Using the a priori assumption that a god or gods exist, what do you think the purpose of human intelligence is?

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*The astute observer will note that I have placed the equinox and solstice one house later that they are currently. This is due to the precession of the equinox, or the tendency of the equinox to move through the zodiac on an approximately 24,000 year cycle. Existing astrological records date to classical Greece, about 400 BC. The equinox and solstice would have been in the houses noted at that time. it is possible, even likely, that Hindu astrology goes back even farther; perhaps as much as 8500 BC.

A Priori Assumptions

One of the principal questions of philosophy is the question "What is real?" This branch of philosophy is called Ontology or Metaphysics. A second branch of philosophy, Epistemology, is the question of "How do we know?" or "Where does knowledge come from?" The third branch of philosophy, Ethics, concerns the question of "What has value." Religion concerns itself with all three branches of philosophy.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804), in his treatise A Critique of Pure Reason attempted to establish a system of metaphysics based on what he called a priori knowledge. A Priori knowledge is knowledge available without the need for experience. Knowledge that develops based on experience he called a posteriori. Kant was able to identify only two concepts other than the self that could be called a priori, space and time. Kant reasoned that space could be known a priori because if we remove all things that we can experience from space, we cannot eliminate the idea of space. His reasoning for including time followed a similar logic. Time, he further reasoned was internal to the observer and could not be an illusion, whereas space, being external to the observer could be illusion. His predecessor Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) reduced what he could say was true was the Latin cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am.

These guys were a lot smarter than I am, so I'm not going to try to develop a system of Metaphysics or Epistemology of religion. But if that is all that we have as a priori knowledge, we have a problem. In order to function in the world, we need to be able to decide what is real and what is not real, what knowledge to trust and what to not trust. So each of us has to make assumptions. For example, a "Realist" assumes that the things he can see, taste, smell, hear, and touch, as well as those things that he can measure with instruments, or that cause an effect he can detect with his senses, are real. In general, we go through our lives without even thinking about what our assumptions are. since these assumptions are based on experience - generally - we can think of them as a posteriori.

But when it comes to the ideas of religion, things are not so easy. Our religions require us to make assumptions a priori - without an experience to ground them on, or at best, without a shared - or even share-able - experience. For example, for someone to believe in Jesus, there must be an a priori assumption that the Judeo-Christian god is real, that all the stories in the Christian Bible are true, and that the creeds that describe His divinity are correct. An atheist with an a priori assumption that there is no god cannot possibly accept Christianity. Thomas Jefferson, who was a deist had an a priori assumption that there was a god that created the universe, set the spheres to spinning, then sat back and watched without interacting with our world. To Jefferson, Jesus was a great philosopher, but not deity. The a priori assumptions of the Jew about what the Messiah will be like, and the a priori assumptions of the Muslim about the nature of Allah make it impossible for them to accept Jesus as God; they see him as a great rabbi (teacher) or prophet but cannot go beyond that. 

The great religious arguments all stem from differences in our a priori  assumptions: 

• Creationism vs Evolution - The Evangelical creationist assumes that the Bible is the inerrant, immutable, and literal word of God, and further assumes that anything that contradicts the Bible or conflicts with it is illusion. The realist makes the assumption that what he sees, touches, etc. is real and is unwilling to entertain the assumption that the Bible is inerrant. 
• Catholicism vs Protestantism - The Catholic assumes that the Bible is the word of God, but that it needs a priest to interpret it, and assumes that the Pope is God's representative on Earth, and is infallible with regard to faith and morals. The Protestant assumes that the Pope, and indeed all men, is fallible, but that the Bible is inerrant. 
• Islam vs Christianity - Islam assumes that Mohammed (p.b.o.h.) was the supreme prophet and that the Quran contains Allah's direct revelations to Mohammed, and that Allah has not been to Earth in a mortal state. Christianity assumes that the G-d of Israel is real, and that Jesus was his incarnation on Earth. 

The important thing to keep in mind is that these assumptions are exactly that, assumptions. Assumptions that we use to make our life decisions. Since, as Descartes tells us, the senses can be fooled, we can no more "prove" that what we perceive in the world is "real" than we can "prove" that there is a god or gods. Although a certain practice may work with a particular set of assumptions, we should not expect it to work the same way given a different set of assumptions. 

Having reached this conclusion, there are two more things I must do. The first is that I must apologize to anyone that I've offended because I tried to impose my a priori assumptions on their beliefs. 

The second is to identify a principle that I should follow in moving forward with this journey; that in evaluating any religious practice or philosophical/theological framework, I should try to identify the underlying assumptions as part of the process. In effect, I need to ask "what do I need to accept as real in order to accept this concept?" And to also ask, "What happens to this concept if I apply a different set of assumptions?"