Wow.
If you don’t read another book for the whole year, make sure you DO read this one.
I stumbled across this book on Amazon and the idea of a Rabbi theologian and a team of neuroscientists discussing the basis of Religion from a scientific perspective, I could not pass it by.
This book did more than deliver and it was extremely well founded and insightful. It is a relatively short book at 160ish pages (on the kindle) but it’s hardly a light piece of writing. It took me a week to read and succeeded in providing me with days upon days of deep thought and practical insight into human existence and it’s purpose. The writing style is wonderful, its clear and concise, straight to the point with excellent examples that give life to the topics discussed in it.
If there was ever a book to shatter your perceptual understanding of reality, religion and your actions and reactions to the world around you, this is a great place to start. R Mecklenburger initially talks about our brains and how they strive to create order of the world around us so that we don’t become overwhelmed. The method of brain created order ultimately gives rise to a somewhat ordered and manageable world to live in based on our perceptions both chemically, sensory, humanistically, biologically, evolutionary and so on. He uses this to lead into a discussion of how we, as human, order our perspective of God and religion.
The book discusses in depth the difference and overlap of mysticism, spirituality, neurology and theology and how all of this ties into our religious experiences. There are two whole chapters on the soul, spirit and free will which are fascinating and really explore our beliefs (and sometimes unconscious beliefs) that play out in daily life.
Lastly the final three chapters are on understanding organized religion and faith.
Overall I give this book a 12/10 - Which is absurd because it’s not possible but I do so in order to highlight my point that it’s a fantastic, essential even, read.
PS:
Ive included eleven quotes from the book that I found interesting (in no particular order), so here they are:
1) As the different brain regions operate and communicate with one another (relatively) simultaneously, we have the subjective experience of being selves in a world.
2) Our brain is adapted for extreme efficiency; for that reason it distorts incoming information to fit in with our current beliefs about the world.
3) Because just as we would be overwhelmed at lower levels of our consciousness without an ability to screen, so too would we be overwhelmed without a set of overarching ideas, a structure of meaning in which to situate our life’s journey. We crave the answers that religions offer. The values that they inculcate give us guidance and direction.
4) We study hard and ace the test, or discover gold in the backyard, and jump to the conclusion that “Somebody up there likes me.” There is no proving or disproving that. The more likely explanation, however, is that the grade is primarily a result of our own effort and the gold discovery a matter of blind luck.
5) A non-mystic is someone who believes that when truth is explained to him in words, he should understand that truth. The mystic is someone who believes that real truth, meaningful truth, can never be fully expressed in words.
6) Furthermore, as many have lamented for years, “spirituality” is such a fuzzy term that few are quite sure what it means. We tend to regard spirituality as the sense of being in the presence of God, though that may leave out those who claim to be spiritual without being religious. Even as we remain vague about the meaning of the term, a chorus of voices announces a growing modern “hunger for spirituality”.
7) The primary experience is of physical things (sunset, wine, prayer, story); the religious content is inferred. An inferred God or other inferred sense of holiness is a secondary manifestation of primary experience. The brain conditioned to do so interprets certain primary experiences as religious.
8) When we occupy ourselves with specifically religious occupations, however different religious traditions and individuals may define that (most offer prayers, do loving deeds, study inherited texts, while only some offer sacrifices or sit for hours in silence), we call that, in the simplest sense, religious experience. To a greater or lesser extent we may intellectualize about it, noting special procedures and symbolic meanings. This is also religious experience. But at some point we sense something more, a shift in subjective feeling, a breakthrough, spirituality. At that point some would say, and some would not, that we are sensing God.
9) African Americans or, by extension, other ethnic groups speak of “soul food,” what is meant is food so suggestive of a people’s historical roots that it enhances self-awareness and identity. Soul in such cases is metaphorical, pointing to something important in people’s consciousness.
10) If free will, then, is the ability to make a decision not at all based on instinct or preconditioning, conscious free will is an illusion, because decisions are made before we are conscious of them and will is an added feeling. But decision making as a complex process is very often, though not absolutely always, free. A conditioned process is not a predetermined process when the conditioning includes having learned to reject options our brains produce that do not fit our values and the paradigms from which they emerge and to search for more options.
11) Adolf Hitler was elected to office and set about limiting the rights of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others, eventually exterminating them. The majority of the populace, at the very least, acquiesced. By what standard can we say what he did was wrong? Societal consensus is important, but scarcely a guarantee of morality.
