Judgment/Evaluation

Over the decades of my life I have read many writings of scholarly persons, and have been friends of many who enjoy, with me, conversation relating to life on earth in either a humanistic or spiritual orientation.  It is interesting to discover that in both orientations there is something of theology.  Naturalists sometimes seem to argue theology even when affirming an atheistic context for life.  For my purpose on this page I will use the ideas and experiences of Dr. Oliver Sacks, an intrepid neurologist, who at eighty years of age continues his world studies of the functioning of the human mind.  The article from an interview by Ron Rosenbaum accents the issues of hallucination. (The SMITHSONIAN, December 2012, Pgs. 26ff.)

Sacks does not call himself an atheist, but a materialist acknowledging that he cannot grasp the reality of nature and space.  He has turned from the mystical to the ordinary.  It has become his way of thinking.  He has entered the mode of wonder, and relates it to the ordinary.  I was drawn to this review on my own concept of wonder at the ordinary.  For me, the ordinary is life, and that life is sufficiently marvelous that it deserves our wonder and enjoyment.  I perceive life as miraculous in origin and because it is possessed by conscious persons aware of life, it deserves constant interest.  I resonate with that position because of my belief that life is evidence of God.  Ordinary life, if not distorted (as it can be), is living out some meaning in relationship with God, or evasion of God.  Life is a miracle of God to a physical body.

It is interesting that some factors commonly thought of as theological fall together in the secular context for Sacks.  In discussing free will he believes that man does not have free will, but ought to act like he does.  (He seems like a Calvinist for the naturalists.)  Sacks covered other issues like hallucination (a major matter for him), evolution, God, justification, naturalism with other indications.  On the matter of free will, Rosenbaum writes: . . . . free will is a hot topic of debate between philosophers and a large school of neuroscientists who believe it doesn’t exist, that every choice we make is predetermined by the neurophysiology of the brain.  (Just for fun, put theologians in place of philosophers and God in place of the neurophysiology of the brain in this quotation.)  The issue here, as in many other quotations, provides a faith concept – natural or spiritual.  Sacks argued that to err in the direction of free will keeps us from saying: my neurons made me doit.  (Theologians, no matter how deterministic they are about God and mankind, generally proceed to argue for mankind’s responsibility.  We are responsible for self.)

Treatment of depravity in human nature becomes even more complex in the Sacks conversation.  He admits the good and bad, feeling that selection in the evolutionary model has led to deep problems which relate either to moral failing (which implies God), or are caused by physiochemical maladjustment (which implies chemical functioning).  Sacks observes our better natures: . . . are constantly threatened by the bad things.  He further discussed problems noted in the 18^th century as related to overpopulation.  He does not see the problem as those first theorists did in the failure of the food supply, but rather in the limits of space to manage waste – from plastics to radioactive materials.  From there the interview leaps over to what is termed religious fanaticism.  (He is interested in the religious hallucinations found often in epileptics – implying that religious experience may be an oddity related to illness.)  In this leap Sacks takes on a presence hallucination in his studies relating to fanaticism and ecstatic experience.  Sacks is skeptical of anything beyond the material.  Hallucination makes mystery permanent.  Hallucination may be like dreams in the daylight and consciousness or like dreams of our sleep and unconsciousness that reflect either truth or fiction.  Human doodling occurs in waking and sleeping hours with hands, twitching, dreaming, wishing, and other wonderings of the mind – even the minds of animals express the uninvited wandering.  We may make sense of them or not at all except for over-eating before bedtime.  Unable to control self in all matters we escape some troubles in searching God’s mysteries even in distortions – like dreams.