Jehovah cop out

I had a couple of Jehovah Witnesses at the door. My impression was that they were simple mindedly caught in a ‘story’ that had commandeered some brain circuits and set up road blocks to free-range thinking and feeling.

My impression is that my ‘story’ is superior in that it is open to new worldviews. For example the Big History worldview suggests that evolution increases the amount of choice available and works at three levels – cosmic, biological and cultural.

In the beginning, or at least not long after the beginning, there were chemicals. These begat simple living things which begat more complicated living things which interacted with their environment. Even more complicated living things appeared and they had culture which enabled even more complicated interactions with their environment. These show three patterns of responsiveness:

Most of my brain is given over to “thoughtless, mechanical, fast, reaction” to internal and external stimuli – thus I keep my body temperature steady and ride a bicycle without thinking about it.

Parts of my brain, largely the cortex, are given over to “thoughtful, organic, slow, response” to internal and external stimuli – this is where the executive system manages executive functions some of which are available to the self conscious attention centre.

...ooo… edited from Wikipedia  …ooo…

Executive functions  is an umbrella term for the management (regulation, control) of cognitive processes, including working memory, reasoning, task flexibility, and problem solving as well as planning and execution.

The executive system is a theorized cognitive system in psychology that controls and manages other cognitive processes, such as executive functions. The prefrontal areas of the frontal lobe are necessary but not solely sufficient for carrying out these functions.

The executive system is thought to be heavily involved in handling novel situations outside the domain of some of our 'automatic' psychological processes that could be explained by the reproduction of learned schemas or set behaviours. Five types of situations in which routine activation of behaviour would not be sufficient for optimal performance include:

1. Those that involve planning or decision making
2. Those that involve error correction or troubleshooting
3. Situations where responses are not well-rehearsed or contain novel sequences of actions
4. Dangerous or technically difficult situations
5. Situations that require the overcoming of a strong habitual response or resisting temptation.

…ooo… end Wikipedia …ooo…

The interaction with the Jehovahs would have ticked items 2 to 5 on that list. There was a rational response rooted in the historical evidence concerning the origins of the bible and the existence of JC. But I did not have the energy to open that memory box. And there was an emotional response in that I did not want to cause them to lose faith. They had opted for an existential cop out. Good luck to them and their simple minded and miraculous worldview.

Aha – existentialism - a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.

Put in the shortest form: Living without certainty and with personal responsibility is a nearly unbearable burden.
http://www2.webster.edu/~corbetre/philosophy/existentialism/whatis.html

BUT

Who is the ‘I’ with free will and what governs their choice?  Their worldview will be a result of conditioning due to nature, nurture and serendipity with some epigenetics thrown in. A stream of thinkers have gone before. Ancestral academics churning out stories based on myths and magic and setting up physical and conceptual boundaries.

But now we have science. It can lead us on a cosmic zoom so we know that we are stardust and part of fast churning biogeochemical cycles. The flow of matter and energy takes shape as human beings who have become conscious of their consciousness and thus of the fact that boundaries are mind made and can thus be endlessly redrawn.

I can write such things because I have sat on the shoulders of giants but I was not quick witted enough to speak them to the Jehovahs. But they did not have ears to hear – they were enculted to have faith in their well intentioned, miracle working, heavenly patriarch.

Jehovah’s cop out. Avoid conflict, let it be.