About This Blog

Huxley "Man's Place in Nature" Wikipedia Commons

I believe that all of humanity's ideas, beliefs and principles are ultimately just products of the human mind; and that they have no existence in and of themselves. We have no direct experience of such profound concepts as God, Justice, or Truth, yet we often refer to them in our conversation as if they have a demonstrable existence in and of themselves. I believe in scientific truth, which can never be absolute and which was founded on the idea of direct experience, is the most truth that we humans can ever achieve. I see no value in studying any symbols. I see everything as a  creation of the mind. Consequently, I believe that it is imperative that science study all the influences that can distort our perception of reality.

For that reason my primary interest throughout my academic career has been the psychology of religion. In my first book I explored the evolution of the human nervous system in order to discover how religion came to exist in the first place. In my second book I applied my ideas about the functions of the mind specifically to religious experience. One of my most important conclusions from that research has been the idea that human cultures, which are themselves a product of evolution and which always began with some form of religion, has always been and still is vastly more influential in shaping human behavior than our reasoning ability. Consequently, in this blog I want to show my readers that most of the problems of modern civilization proceed from our individual cultural programming and so the resulting conflicts can only be resolved by a deeper understanding of the role that our own culture plays on our own thinking and behavior.