Hallucinated Gods

https://www.theseedsofscience.pub/p/hallucinated-gods

3•pablasso•1h ago

Comments

Marshferm•1h ago

The transition from episodic thought dominance to mythological thought dominance as literary theory posing as neuroscience. For a non pseudoscientific approach, see Aurbachs Mimesis which builds the same argument without pretext. We would never accuse humans of hallucinating false timescales in the time of Song of Roland, how can we do the same thing to ancient greece? The idea that narrative adoption ever stopped being a hallucination is Jaynes’s hand wave. Narrative is adopted in every child, it’s not innate though our prefrontal comes ready to use for it. The conundrum of an animal that can’t think straight.

jqpabc123•1h ago

But as long as everyone accepts the claim — Moses, his fellow tribesmen, the audience reading the Book of Exodus — then it has de facto social truth, which is the only truth this kind of claim ever really needs.

I have a slightly different take.

The only thing Moses really accepted was the need for law and order.

Jails and prisons don't really work for nomadic peoples so Moses invented a judicial systm run by an all powerful (but invisible) entity that can see and hear everything.

He sold this idea to his people for the most practical and mudane of reasons --- in order to help maintain some semblance of control and unity.

This made perfect sense at the time --- survival demanded it. What makes less sense is simple minded individuals looking toward the firmament (aka sky dome) for guidance thousands of years later when we now know that the only thing up there is air.