Brown Symposium

I went to the first two presentations. The first covered the Baylor religious data, the second was devoted to neuroscience. I was mildly surprised to discover that my idea of God is fairly similar to most people despite some of the subtleties I have worked out in compiling my own views. I also learned that my approach to god is about the healthiest from a neurological point of view. I should (in theory) have less stress or anxiety about god and his intentions. I also found their explanations fascinating for why some people advocate such dogmatic views. This helped me come to terms with something that had been bothering me for years. As a libertarian, I have this idea that the world would be a better place if everyone would just do their own thing and let everyone else be. But this is precisely because I think human concerns must be petty and meaningless to an all-powerful being. I have always thought god would more or less leave us alone and (being all-powerful) if he wanted something done, he would do it himself. I differ from the more dogmatic in my sense of an individual relationship with god, and a disinterested one at that. This finally explains why some people can actually care about abortions, gay marriage, stem cell research and other religious-political issues. These people are much more likely to believe in a hands-on God with rules, punishment for failure, and excessive judgement. From this mind set, it is very reasonable to want to curtail other's political and personal freedoms. If god could potentially get so angry, he decided to flood the world and kill us all, I think I too would be concerned about what everyone else did. In fact, the only reasonable action with such a belief would be to obey the rigid rules god laid down lest he smite us all. Doing anything to jeopardize our salvation would be criminal. This also explains the level of contention in such religious concerns. Even accepting that there are personal disagreements, I kind of thought that religious zealots kind of cared too much about such things. It must be infuriating for them to have everyone else violate God's laws and endanger them under the argument that god doesn't exist or care anyway. That would just add further fuel to the (hell) fire and endanger us as recognizing god's power must be paramount. I'm sure in their eyes, they're being responsible and acting for the betterment of all us evil sinners. I connected most of these dots before, but this presentation did a great job of linking them with statistical data and exploring the causal mechanisms. As for the Neuroscience part, I loved the brain scans of meditation and the explanation that feelings of closeness to god could be a result of ignoring sensory information. I'm definitely sharing that with my mom. She meditates pretty regularly and has always tried to get me to do the same so that I too may experience god more directly. I loved this symposium. It was even better than last year. I would also like to hear everyone's opinions on what their god is like.