Re: Religion: definition of

Gerold Firl (geroldf@sdd.hp.com)
26 Apr 1995 13:25:03 -0700

In article <Z46+504.ushtabis@delphi.com> frank acton <ushtabis@delphi.com> writes:

>Someday I need to learn how one quotes portions of a thread one
>responds to.

Yes. On "rn", typing "F" will follow-up an article, including the previous
with a ">" at the beginning of each line.

>I always wanted
>to read "The origins of consciousness in the breakdown of the
>bicameral mind" to see just how that fits in with my personal
>biases.

I read it back around 1980; it was a very interesting idea, but less than
completely convincing. One could come up with all manner of hypotheses to
account for the preponderance of spirit-voices reported in the ancient
literature; Jaynes jumped on the bicameral mind idea because of the cachet
of left-brain/right-brain research in the late 70's.

I liked his use of linguistics to examine the origin of concepts. For
instance, the word "spirit" is derived from a term which originally meant
simply "breath". Tracing the family tree of our ideas using etymology is an
interesting approach.

>I can't understand how most people are so afraid of
>the idea that some of our most concrete behaviors, and so also
>the more core beliefs arising from them, are a result of
>hard-wired thinking.

Right. The idea of human instinct troubles people. Unfortunate. It is
impossible to understand human nature without understanding human instinct.
Many will deny that they even exist. Poor fools don't know what they're
missing. %^)

-- 
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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=---- Gerold Firl @ ..hplabs!hp-sdd!geroldf