baywax said:
If brain activity is part of nature, the thought of god is part of nature.
I don't think I agree, although I could agree to the point where we say that the experience of there being a God, or some kind of religious or mythical experience, is indeed something which comes out of our brains and has a materialistic (and for that reason perhapsd also an evolutionary) reason to exist.
A brain sensation (religious or mystical experience) is beyond all doubt true, and there is nothing which I disagree on that as an established (scientific) fact that one can have that experience.
I would however not conclude from this well established fact that there is (objectively) a God, since that is something quite different and altogether impossible.
This is because the only thing we experience about is a state of our brain, it is as though we look through a different mind - the mind of God somehow - on reality, in which our self is dissolved into a united reality (no differentiation between self and not-self, or subjectivity and objectivity), but then we do realize that this is just our own self experiencing that (the brain experiencing itself it's own undivided brain state).
I can tell you a little trick how to mentally experience such a state. It will take perhaps some 10-20 minutes.
All you have to do is sit back and think about anything in reality that exists and/or that could exists, and then try to think in your mind that that didn't exist. This in order to establish a state in our own mind which has 'got rid' of anything outside itself, any connection or concept of a real existing world.
You will probably experience first some difficulty of getting rid of anything that either exists or could exist, so you have to take a stepwise approach first, and anything that digs up in your mind that is existent or could exist, and try to get rid of that in your mind.
So when your for example think of elephants as existing, then think of the world without elephants, and so on.
Since this will go quite slow (because there are so many things that exist, or could exist), try to increase your steps by thinking about a broader category, for instance animals, that either exist or could exist (on all different planets, and all different universes, etc.).
Just continue to think about anything that exists or can exist, and then what comes on in your mind, try to get rid of that in your mind, in order to 'empty' your mind. It takes some concentrated devotion to do this, and sometimes, even after you have 'removed' some existing things from thought, they can come back. Like for example, after having get rid of all animals or animal alike species, on any planet in any galaxy in any universe, but then you realize for example that you didn't get rid of for example dogs or frogs, or insects, or whatever. In that case perhaps your steps are too big at once, and you should take some smaller steps. Take your steps as you seem fit, but be sure that in last instance, you need to get rid of everything that either exists or can exist, whatever it may be.
After having get rid of all the people you know of, all of humanity, all living things, and all living things everywhere else, all stars, planets and other celestial bodies, and all dust and matter that exists in the universe or other universes, or anything that is physically there, ultimately you will arrive at some point in which your mind is almost completely free of anything existent, and all you can imagine in mind is just total blackness and emptiness. So the only thing which still exists in your mind then is the existence of space (and or time) extending infinitely. Try to take the next step and get rid of that from mind.
What is still there? Well you have arrived then at a state in which the only thing you still experiencing is - you thinking that. So that is the only thing that then still exists, your experiencing this, your thinking and imagining this.
Then the ultimate step: try to get rid of this.
What you will experience then is that, while every other step you took was succesfull, you can in no way get rid of this, your (self)experience persists to exist, and there is no possible way in which you could get rid of this (and neither would you want to).
(the reason for that is of course, although you removed everything in thought that reflects on the outside world, you are still experiencing - that is your brain will still keep functioning, which is, you will still think something -, and the only experience you still have is your self-experience - you thinking that).
This experience can come with some fundamental insights, for example that you experience that you care about yourself, and that you feel some intimate connection with the rest of the cosmos, unlimited in time and space. And also this is the experience that in no possible way the cosmos, the world, could not be there, cause ultimately that would also mean that you would not be there, which, for obvious reasons, you would not want to be the case. And perhaps you could feel like you were (united with) some kind of 'worldspirit' looking out over the cosmos through all space and time and extending infinitly. In some ways it feels like our own mind dissolved itself and resolves itself as some general idea of mind or 'worldspirit' looking out over reality : we are no longer an individual mind with a body, but have some spiritial form.
The conclusion of this is that we could in no possible way think of a nonexistent world (since no matter how much of the world we could get rid of in mind, in the ultimate sense our own thinking persists to exist). We can in no way imagine within our mind the complete nonexistence of the world.
This is altogether something different as thinking about a world as it exists, but without ourselves existing in it, for example if we try to form a picture in imagination of the world at a time before we were born, or of a time after we died. A world in which we would not be there, we could imagine, it just would entail looking at the world from some(one's) other perspective. It would just be like imagining we would be born as someone else.
Although we can think about this experience in many different ways, I think it just shows us some basic facts about reality and about our minds, in which we experience some unified reality in which the distinction between self and the world around oneself have been completely dissolved.
This kind of experience is different then our normal daily life experience, in which we see ourselves as an individual in a human form with a human body, and in which we differentiate between ourselves and the rest of our world, or formulated differently, in which the world divides between our inner experience and the experience of the outside world itself, which exists indepent of ourself.
What to conclude from this? Are we experiencing something like the mind of God, or does it proof the existence of God? Or should we conclude more basically that this is just some inner experience, and for whatever (evolutionary) reason, our brains are wired in a way that enables us to experience this?
To me, although I can certainly think that some people would reflect on this in that way, this would not be some ultimate proof of the 'objective existence' of God, since we are just experiencing some mindly state, and not experience some ultimately different mind, but only experience our own mind.
Although, in the experience itself, our own individual state completely dissolves itself into the general idea of mind. There is no distinction in this state between our mind and any other mind, we just feel like one mind experiencing this, or perhaps even more, we completely unite with the whole infinite cosmos.
The feeling/experience itself only resides inside our own mind, so this means, it is an inner feeling/experience and therefore a subjective experience or feeling. It doesn't come with sensory perception of something outside our own brain or anything like that. And perhaps, when our brain is being monitored, it can be shown which part of our brain is actively involved in this experience.
