Godless said:
A few things worth mentioning. First, thank you for the good read, I'm inclined to purchase the book for myself.
Next, concerning the content of the material, as I understand from the bit that's provided at those links, in light of your previous post (which I already responded to). Religion, then, is not "made-up." If I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, the best you can say is that it is all one big misunderstanding, or mistake. Also, as a side note, as clearly shown in the thesis of the material of your link, ideas of afterlife and 'gods' came much earlier than Egyptian religion, during the hunter-gatherer, nomadism of man.
In any case, monotheism came much later than the early hallucination-stage. In fact, as the consciousness of man evolved, monotheism came to be one of the logical results (consider Aristotle here). If the hallucination-model of the bicameral mind is correct, and things like idol-worship was exactly that, worship of the object itself, then we should consider Biblical warnings against idol-worship as somewhat enlightenend. Furthermore, an examination of the Adam and Eve story in Genesis under the consideration of this theory appears to yield a fair understanding of the shift from 'unconsciousness' to consciousness in that it was with "knowledge" that man became guilty, for guilt can only be had by an intelligent mind. As well, the Cane and Abel story, under this consideration, should also make a little more sense, as it appears that the author of Genesis favored the time before 'consciousness,' since God favored the offing of Abel, a lamb, over the offering of Cane, a pile of produce. Of course, the symbolism is now obvious, since the lamb is associated with the hunter-gatherer life-style, while the produce is associated with the settled life-style. Each of these life-styles can then be associated with the different stages of mental development (hunter-gatherer to hallucination - God's acceptance.... settled to conscoius - God's rejection). Cane, representing right-hemisphere "kills his brother" left-hemisphere, and who goes on to settle and build cities.
Of course, later religions (like Catholocism), consider the middle ground, uniting the two, Ratio et Fides. After all, we do have two hemispheres, that is our nature. Then, of course, Buddhism said the middle ground was nothingness, a cancellation of the opposing forces, that suffering was a result of this life, and to end the suffering was to break the cycle of life and death. Of course, in a sense they're right, but it's actually awareness of this life that is the cause of suffering. Or to be more specific, consciousness. Priorly, we could experience pain, but not suffering. We felt pain, but weren't conscious of it.
Anyway, I've said before, in other threads, what was once believed, religiously, or what was believed at the birth of certain religions, isn't what is believed now. That's the main key. Conscious minds have concluded that there is a single God, but the characteristics of this God are almost entirely alien to the characteristics of early gods. This is what is important.
As far as I'm concerned, and have always been concerned, there is truth in every human construct, because human constructs are models whereby we come to understand the world about us. Science is merely the product of the right-hemisphere, Religion, the left. Both come from the brain. Both pertain to reality. How we understand ancient texts and beliefs... and this is vitally important... is probably NOT how they understood them.
