Anton's Syndrome and Religion

I just learned of a new and interesting rare problem that a few people suffer from and think that it applies well to religious people and specifically how they prefer to answer one type of question. The idea to write this came from David Eagleman's book Incognito, so I'll just plug it for a second. It's a book that expands on the idea of how the mind constructs reality and the importance of the subconscious, so if I haven't jaded you from the subject it's worth a look at.

Anton's syndrome or Anton-Babinski syndrome is a problem that happens when there is damage to the occipital lobe. It causes a person to become completely blind, but the sufferers don't immediately report any problem at all. Not all that interesting so far. What is interesting is that this blindness is also coupled with two other symptoms, the lack of awareness of the blindness and the creation of the objects around them through the mind only.

All this means that the person will be completely blind, but will still think that they can see. Their condition is only exposed when someone else notices that what they say or how they act, turns out to be independent of the visual reality around them. A doctor will put up there hand and ask how many fingers they are holding up and the person will reply '3' when the doctor never lifted their hand in the first place, they will walk straight into walls and trip over anything put in front of them. What they are seeing is a complete fabrication generated by their mind and a fabrication that is independent of sensory information from the eyes. People with Anton's syndrome are living in completely in a visual world of their own creation.

This is what I feel like happens to an ultra-religious person and explains a nonsensical answer that is commonly given to a simple question. The questions of, 'Where is god?' or 'Where is the proof for god?' is commonly answered with the statement that "God is all around you." or "I see God in the leaves, the tide, and the stars....I see God in everything."

Now I have looked at many leafs and still have yet to find the God part of the leaf. These people are seeing what is an Anton's Syndrome like connection. There is something that makes it evident that God is a part of that thing that they are seeing, a part of the mind is coloring the view of what they are seeing. These people too are living in a world of there own creation that has no connection with reality, tripping over God and not noticing that the doctor's arm had never moved.

Now, it may be fair to criticize this view and say the people that are making these comments are making a metaphorical statement and surely some people are. It is always the charitable thing to take the strongest or most logical sense of what someone is saying. Yet, I don't think that the people making those kinds of blanket statements are always describing something metaphorically, they could be seeing the fingerprint of God on everything and must be taken literally when they say, "Yes, I see God in nature and not just his handiwork."

Perhaps, like in left temporal lobe epilepsy, there is a physiological mistake being made and people really are 'seeing something', but whether the connection is real or not Anton's syndrome provides an interesting way to interpret literally seeing God in the world.  

Then again they would probably use Anton's syndrome to deconstruct what I'm saying in the same way, I once was blind but now can see seems to imply exactly that.

The only problem with that is, I've never heard anyone say that they 'See evolution in the leaves' or 'The big bang in the rocks', although you could say that you hear evidence of the big bang in the cosmic background radiation.  You can't really see a process in a picture, in the same way you can apparently see God.

In one world I can point to the leafs and say "There are some leaves." and there can be an agreement, in the other you can look at leaves and say "I see God.", but you can't see it, and they tell you to look harder still, yet how hard must one look to see that emperor doesn't have any clothes?

Thanks for reading,
-the moral skeptic

The False Tag-line of the Last Exorcism

I've been looking into expanding my writing and subject matter, so for that reason this article was first published as The False Tag-line of the Last Exorcism on Technorati. The articles there are a little shorter, but I thought it was another good outlet to do a slightly different type of writing, while still maintaining an intellectual and skeptical subject matter. Thanks for putting up with that.

The new movie The Last Exorcism has the tag line, "The bible is filled with Demons, if you believe in God than you believe in the Devil." This is an interesting argument that a lot of people would make, but I disagree with.

As usual there are a few things I have to detail before I get into arguing why that isn't the case. For the sake of this discussion I'm going to use the strictly Christian biblical sense of God, the devil, demons and demonic possession. Now I think that there is enough contradiction within the biblical belief of these terms to really create the reasonable ability to say that belief in the bible doesn't mean belief in a Devil or in demonic possession.

It might have been noticed that I have linked the idea of the Devil to demons and demonic possession and it could seem like I am shifting the argument to a different meaning than the tag line of the movie intended, but that is not the case. The tag line is trying to create the premise to make an Exorcism believable, due to the biblical belief in God and the Devil, so that doesn't change the meaning of what is being argued.

The main point of contention I have is that God is omnipotent and can do whatever he likes. Job 1:6-2:10  demonstrates that standard and so does Matthew 19:26. In the book of Job it is God who is in control the whole time, and Satan does his bidding (aka follows God's plan), while in Matthew it is declared by Jesus that, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

This creates a situation where everything is subject to God's plan or mercy, so if a person was to think that God's plan didn't involve demons or Satan they wouldn't have to exist.  This opens up the existence of demons and Satan to be testable in empirical ways, to look for God's plan ourselves. So the existence of Satan and demons, while shown to exist in the past in different biblical texts, is still contingent on what you think God's plan is, because God, the all powerful, could have banished them from existence. To say that belief in God necessitates belief in the Devil or demons is to deny Gods omnipotence over the universe.  

The best way to see if Demons or Satan still exist is to look for solid evidence of their existence, and so far I haven't came across anything that could reasonably be referred to as real evidence. Through the lack of evidence and the unknown nature of the inter workings of Gods plan, the tag line for The Last Exorcism is false. A person can believe in God and still should be skeptical about the existence of demons and Satan.

Comparing God and Taste

First off let me apologize for my last post. It was something I felt compelled to write about, but I think it fell below the standard that I try to maintain. There are some redeeming qualities about the post and the comparison between denialism and skepticism will be a future full length post. Anyway, onwards and upwards.

I talked before how it is useless to make arguments about taste. No one ever changes their opinion, the forms of the argument are fallacy filled appeals with nothing real to appeal to, and despite what people think the matter really isn't important for the most part anyway. Now I was thinking of how the argument for God's existence is similar enough to provide a comparison about it. In this comparison I will forgo any claims of evidence of proof of God's existence (the design of the universe, the first cause and arguments like this) and limit the talk on the claims are unverifiable by their nature.

Arguments about taste and arguments about Gods existence can be categorized as the same through the types of appeals they make, appeals devoid scientific evidence. People can support why they like a certain movie like Crash, with an appeal to the awards it won and the critical acclaim that it received. They can also point to its popularity and appeal to people who have taste that I respect (i.e. Roger Ebert liked the movie you should too).

The problem is that despite all that I still think the movie was hallow and reduced the characters motivations to purely racial interactions. I was horrified when it won best picture, and further horrified when they showed it in a political science class I was taking. Taste just appeals to how one person feels or how many people feel about the subject and this is the same, for the most part, with the appeals claiming God's existence.

This similarity can be shown in the way people justify their belief in God.  Proponents of Gods existence note that 92% of Americans have a belief in God, and that respected scientists from Copernicus to Einstein believed in god. They are supporting their views in the same way that they support the issues of taste by using appeals to popularity or authority.

So, God is a matter of taste? Well no. The problem with putting belief in God in the realm of a taste decision is where taste and the belief in God differ. The difference is that in arguments of taste there are a few accepted points that necessitate the argument, the main one being that the there is something to like or dislike that is agreed upon by both parties.

When someone of inferior intelligence says that Crash was a good movie and I say that they are sorrily mistaken, and both us agree that Crash exists. Further we agree that the movie we are both taking about is the same movie. Of course I may be referring to the 1996 film Crash, but if I am then we really aren't arguing with each other, we are instead having a misunderstanding.


When someone says that they believe in God (whatever they think that is), there is a contention to be had  with the subject matter before any issue of support can be brought up. To talk about appeals is to skip the level of agreement about the existence of the subject.

So when someone says, "I believe in God and it is my choice." they are not saying anything like, "I like the band Primus." They are making a statement of belief, but that statement isn't akin personal taste. It is more like an appeal to the existence of extraterrestrials, bigfoot, or the Easter bunny, because the subjects existence isn't already agreed upon.

When someone says, "I like Crash" I dislike their taste, but really can't criticize them too much about it. They just enjoyed the film and that's fine, although  I think there are good reasons for not liking it as well. When someone says something that isn't built on any foundation and the subjects existence can't be shown then there is a real reason to say that the belief is unfounded. You are no longer questioning a persons taste, you are rather looking into their logic for believing in something and their ability to weight evidence. I think a good future post will be a comparison between ethical beliefs and beliefs in God done in this same sort of manner.

Thanks for reading,
-the moral skeptic