David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and describes himself as a “possibilian”:
“It’s not being an agnostic, which I find to be a weak term,” explained Eagleman, 38, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “Agnosticism is not knowing whether the guy with the beard in the cloud is real or not. ‘Possibilianism’ is going out and making up a bunch of new stories, because we know so much more now than those people who came up with those stories thousands of years ago.”
Raised a secular Jew, Eagleman said he dabbled in atheism as a young scientist before concluding that claiming any kind of certainty about what happens after we die — whether based on faith or science — ultimately was illogical.
It sounds like he got his definition of atheism from a fundie. Who said anything about certainty? Atheism is not about certainty. It is a non-belief based on a lack of evidence for a supernatural being — no one is claiming absolute knowledge. Disproving god’s existence is impossible.
But I don’t really understand what Eagleman is getting at. Sure, we can make up stories, some of which are better than ones that have been written before. We’ve been doing that for a long time through plays, novels, and now movies. So what?
What do you think of possibilianism?
How do you “dabble” in atheism? You either believe or you don’t. Or you are not sure, in which case you are likely an agnostic (in some form). It sounds like “he dabbled in pottery” or “he dabbled in witchcraft”. How can you “dabble” in something which is not really a “something”, it is the “lack of belief in something”? I don’t like the language here….
When you aren’t sure, you don’t believe. Remember not believing in a concept is not the same as believing it is false. For instance, if I were to say I don’t believe that Big Foot exist, that doesn’t automatically mean that I believe he doesn’t exist. It could mean that I’m uncertain, doubtful or just skeptical.
So you were right in the beginning: either you believe or disbelieve. There is no third option.
Yoda had it right all along!
so he doesn’t believe the nonsense religion has made up because it cannot be proven, but he wants to make up some new stories of his own which also cannot be proven. And they would be better because of what?
The idea behind the stories isn’t to try to define any specific belief in any one of those possible stories, but rather to invite (and lead) people to realize that believing in any one story above all the other possibilities is erronous. The idea behind Possibilianism isn’t to provide firm possibilities, but rather to make you think about any possibility.
Any possibility a person can think of, is really, just as possible as any other possibility.
Yep, like U.F.Os, cryptozoology, homeopathy, new age woo, karma crap, etc. Just because we can invent some utter nonsense does not mean that we have to.
To answer your question directly: I think that ‘possibilianism’ is a huge pile of horse manure, since Eagleman apparently couldn’t be bothered to even properly define the term that he coined.
I don’t think Eagleman “couldn’t” be bothered to define the term, I think he didn’t need to be bothered to.
Possibilianism isn’t about defining, its about moving people towards wondering and pondering the possibilities that lay before us.
“What do you think of possibilianism?”
I consider it a way to wave a finger at agnostics and tell them that they’re “just as bad” as the atheists and religious people.
“Raised a secular Jew, Eagleman said he dabbled in atheism as a young scientist before concluding that claiming any kind of certainty about what happens after we die — whether based on faith or science — ultimately was illogical.”
Yes, and to think that something in fact “happens” after we die is perfectly logical.
Something happens after we die.
Yes what could be true, but the problem is what happens?
Maybe somone labcoat person shuts down the virtual machine and asks us how the experiance was?
Maybe someone in miletary outfit shuts down the training simulator and tells us that we have now completed out training to mass murder the infedels.
Maybe our soal gets transmitted back to the cylon body ship so we get a new body.
Maybe we wake up and our partner next to you in bed asks you what did you dream?
Tons of logical possibilities, but the possibility of the guy with the beard is very improbable.
Maybe we find ourselves face to face with Osiris while Anubis measures the weight of our soul against Ma’at while Thoth scribes down the procedure and the Devourer waits to eat said soul.
Maybe we are taken by a Swedish babe – a Valkyrie – to Valhalla where we join the gods in their feast. Or maybe, if we’ve been naughty and died a natural death, we’re taken to the frozen depths of Hel.
Maybe we encounter Hades in his kingdom and are judged accordingly.
Or maybe, just maybe, ‘nothing’ happens.
I just can’t get past the fact that the “soul” is really the brain. Our personality, memories, sense of humor, etc., – everything that makes us unique – is our brain. So once that dies, I don’t see how there can be consciousness of any kind like we had before. Because that died with our body. But I haven’t really researched this topic much – I guess it seemed to me too much like theology – it’s spending time studying things we can’t really know for sure anyway. However, I have to say that the only thing that makes sense to me is either “nothingness”, just like we had before we were conceived, or, if there is a “soul” apart from the body, some kind of reincarnation that does not require us to retain memories or personality.
Yeah, me too. I used to entertain reincarnation as a pipe dream for awhile (that’s what led me to Buddhism, plus friendships with Buddhists) but I really don’t see how consciousness – I wouldn’t call it a soul – can be separate from the electrical impulses in the brain (which is why I never believed reincarnation – I’d like it to exist, but that doesn’t make it true, mm?). It explains why sometimes brain damage alters someone’s personality quite dramatically; why we can simulate false memories and experiences; why people hallucinate; it’s all in there.
(To think, the Egyptians thought it was the heart – they preserved the heart but liquefied the brain for removal.)
Maybe we wake up and our partner next to you in bed asks you what did you dream?
Ha! Something like that goes through my mind all the time, “I’m going to wake up soon.”
Possibilianism, apophatic theology… I only see here the multiple faces of cowardice and the usual retreat to the trenches when defeat is on the horizon…
Just like women, God does not need to be logical. LOL
But this god is like homeopathy, it is so diltuted that it does not matter anymore if he exists or not. It would no make any difference if he existed or not. The only good purpose this god could have is a method from religious fanatic to let people live in fear of hell and then control them.
Maybe you just don’t understand women as well as you think. Don’t make sexist comments, please.
I’ve been married to the same brilliant and wonderful woman for 20 years. I would say that she is often not logical.
Of course, she would say the same about me.
It’s only sexist if the person claims that it is the exclusive property of one of the two sexes. I don’t think he did.
What do you mean with this BS “sexists comments”?
The women I know joke about it themselves, and it was not even my point, just a joke!
My point was that there is no need that the existance of a god would be logical.
I think some women are sensitive about these things because historically women were excluded from the public sphere because they were too “emotional” and not “logical” enough. Therefore it’s still a bit of a sore point with some of us! But I can tell it was not meant as a put-down, and humor is really important on this kind of site.
well in the U.S. many things happen after one dies, most people are embalmed within hours after their death.
as for possibilianism, i would have to agree with Ian,
he may like pointing the finger at agnostics but it sounds like he may be pointing the finger at himself
many fundies and catholics think atheists claim to be “certain” about what happens after death
but in texas… hes in the perfect place to sell his ideas
I think a big part of the problem is that fundies (or name it what it really is – the controlling population) reframes atheism to suit their agenda. They make it evil, hollow, sterile, immoral, fearful (ie running from god), and dogmatic. In order to keep a group down, it is important to reframe them first. This is how Hitler got so many people to go along with the atrocities of the Holocaust (ie jews are vermin, not human). If you put the group down and make them sound irrational, scary, etc., it is less likely that christians will want to listen. And above all, christians must protect their flock from anyone who might expose them to the truth.
I won’t argue with the idea that atheism is reframed to its detriment by opponents, but on the flip side, I have heard non-theists brand religion as “evil, hollow, sterile, immoral, fearful…, and dogmatic” (and don’t forget mental illness!) I don’t think its fair to say that this is only a problem with religious people. I’m pretty sure this is how people tend to characterize those they strongly disagree with. (example=Hitler, Jews, etc.) It is in part (like you said) to keep other ideas from gaining credence, to make one’s own group feel better about themselves, and it can also be used to created a conditioned dislike in order to facilitate conflict between one’s group and those outside it. This is pretty much how people in general work, regardless of what group they fall into.
TL;DR
everyone does this, not just the religious
If you’re going to base religion on modern fiction, become a scientologist. Retard.
Scieontology is copyrighted, so to become one costs a lot. By making up his own nonsense, he is at lease saving himself some money.
It seems to me that there’s a certain amount of over-reaction going on here. Eagleman’s book (Sum) is, I think, pretty good – a series of vignettes about possible afterlives. The stories are short (usually just a couple of pages) and generally witty and/or thought-provoking. I think he’s simply woken up to the value of marketing himself as an author with his statements on “Possibilianism”. Who knows, he may end up earning more as an author than he currently does as a neuroscientist.
I think a lot of you guys are taking yourselves and your atheism way too seriously, and did you even read the article? He didn’t make up A story to get people to follow him, his whole point is that we don’t have absolute answers and therefore there are myriad, fun-to-think-about possibilities about why we’re here and why the universe is here and what happens after we die, if not nothing, and that when it comes down to it, none of these possibilities are any less believable than the huge stories of the bigger religions. I don’t believe in any god that any religion or sect has come up with so far, but I agree with him that it’s fun to think of all the different possibilities (a la Men in Black, where are whole existence is really a little galaxy inside a marble, being played with by giant aliens on a giant planet). Lighten up.
So, basically… he wrote a book that consists of a lot of conversations I have when me and my friends used to smoke pot back in high school?
Those conversations created the universe.
Good Job!
We’re all brains in a vat!
As a kid of about the age of 12, I read a comic book in which a Godzilla type monster was destroying a city when a tsunami like flood rushed down on everything. The last frame of the story showed a boy eye-dropping water into a test tube.
I… don’t get it…!
Even though I never believed in god, I entertained the possibility of ghosts and also reincarnation.
I think a lot of times, I am still susceptible to fear of ghosts, should they appear, I will probably have a coronary. I don’t think they exist, but I still half-expect if I stare at the wall too long or turn around very late at night when it’s quiet, something might pop out and scare me if my mind wanders to the topic of ghosts or I “see the face” in a photograph on the internet someone who thinks they saw a ghost, or saw something that might be a ghost in the developed picture they didn’t notice when they took the picture. They are spooky to me, and I can’t shake that easily. Although even a nice ghost would scare me, I wish I could become one, if allowed to travel freely and not bound to my house like in Beetlejuice. Mostly to spy on people, travel, hang out, and not to jangle chains and turn on their appliances. Maybe rearrange their cupboards while they’re out. It would probably get boring, but it would be interesting at least for a while to see what people really say about you after you die. One particular reason I have never seriously considered suicide even at my darkest times.
Reincarnation is a good idea if your life is messed up, or you wonder what you might have done wrong in a past life, or get a chance to be someone else in the next life. I think that’s more a matter of starting over, getting a do-over, being young again, those kinds of wishes. The only thing to do is to pick it up and start over today if that’s the case and things have really gone wrong, you’re only as old as you feel, or, acceptance, to manage to be content, “life is not a dress rehearsal” kind of upbeat themes and sentiments.
Anyway, I don’t think any of these things is really real. That is what is so odd about the concept of souls, as a story it still sounds like something you might want to experiment with. I don’t think we’ll have a supernatural ending or science-fiction turns out to be fact. I think the term “possibilianism” is kind of blech. It reeks of a fashionable “movement,” I don’t know too much about the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Discordianism, etc., nor really any other established religions or mockeries/parodies.
I am sticking with atheism, even though I can be scared if I think my coat hanging on the wall might turn into a ghost if I turn to look at it at 3am. There’s no god, I know none of that is real. I cannot prove it to you, but I’m not going to get on the possibilian bus and take to a label that spends too much time considering that when you die, you might not just die; it’s a considerable folly to ponder your life away on these unknowns. I might even be thinking about atheism too much for my particular taste, even as we speak.
Actually this reincarnation exists but not the way you imagined it yet.
You know the atoms of your body? These protons have virtual unlimitted lifespan and were created in the big bang. You are almost as old as the universe itself and still no measurable lifetime of your proton’s, so you still might be here then next 1000 billion years.
The cool thing about this is that your atoms gets recycled onto new life forms, like plants, tree’s, human’s insects, rocket fuel, and be blasted off to deep space. The other cool thing is that all more complex atoms are forged in a super novea and those gasses created this solar system.
So reincarnation is real, one day your atoms are part of a human being, next time you could be part of a new born and next you are part of a star or a stone or even a black hole. The black hole state seems to be the end-ponit in your carreer so you could call this heaven. :-)
I once got into an argument with someone over how comforted I was to know that someday all of our possessions would be swallowed up by the sun someday and destroyed. Even if I’m not alive then, tens of thousands of years from now, that I find that a comforting thought, disturbed him.
I am a sentimental kind who likes material objects and gets sad when they are destroyed or lost in a move, or old houses are razed without any consideration for the interesting details, so that others can renovate with authentic period hardware instead of reproductions. Lighthouses should fall into the ocean, though. I think that’s apt. The records of life and history have to be condensed so that we don’t really know, we have to project what might have happened from shards and torn notes.. I think archaelogists have an interesting job, nonetheless.
My conclusion arose in an old message board discussion on mementos, and how to decide whether to keep things or which to toss out. Also, things like the Eiffel Tower, which I have yet to see, which I had feared would be destroyed by terrorists before I had a chance to get to Paris. This makes me a morbid person, I suppose. Part of it is 9/11, part of it is sentimentality to a strong degree since childhood, part of it is anthropomorphism, part of it is having been victim to a fire in 1997 and lost some things (possibly looted) but not other things, was able to bring some things and had to leave behind other things.
I am somewhat good now about sorting things and giving to charity if it’s something I have no attachment to, and weeding out, year by year, but for the things I didn’t mean to break or lose, for things I regret having to part with, I think when I am dead and nobody wants the junk I’ve saved, kept in good to fair condition, of possible value or interest to someone who will never get to find it, and they throw it on the pile, it comforts me that eventually everything will be in that pile, even a very distant future. The older I get, the less I do care, though. When I go to flea markets and garage sales, it is really a lot easier for me to feel that most of it is junk nobody wants, as opposed to grabbing stuff. I will be dead and not care if it happens 5 minutes later, or a billion years. Just “eventually.”
The stories of reincarnation usually amounts to no awareness of past lives (unless hypnotized), so the possibility remains unknowable. I had a dream once when I was a child or young teen, that I was a Jew in a concentration camp, it was quite vivid. My name was Helen, and I probably got this from watching some footage on tv of a mass grave. You can’t prove or disprove, movies like “Defending your Life” are fairly entertaining ways to remind you to recognize your life, habits, flaws, consequences, etc., inside of it instead of after.
I get no buzz from your proton story. I entertain the concept of getting another chance at sentience from the beginning and just time travel like “Back to the Future”, but it’s futile. I also get no buzz from the recurring theme of scientific possibility of the development of the ability to live forever. Don’t want to be me forever.
“part of it is anthropomorphism,”
Wow, that’s not what I thought I said. I meant misanthropy. Big difference. They both make sense, but I definitely didn’t mean I think things are alive! Which is worse, they are alive or I hate people?
Lol <3
I know what you mean about reincarnation. I've the same pipe dream sometimes, when I tell myself it'll start all over soon enough… except I *know* it's a pipe dream.
possibilianism sounds like a term for someone that thinks that there are many different possiblities. don’t most people think there are many possibilities?
It sounds like a lot of people on the list don’t know much about Eagleman’s book Sum, and are vastly underestimating the author as a result.
I’ve read Eagleman’s book, and it is literary fiction, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Jorge Luis Borges, or Italo Calvino. He’s not proposing a particular story, he’s proposing a non-story.
And in case you think the book would offend your athiesm, you should note that all the rave reviews on the book are written by outspoken athiests, such as Philip Pullman, Brian Greene, Alan Lightman, Brian Eno, and so on. I live in Sydney and recently heard Eagleman interviewed on radio by Philip Adams, head of the Australian Skeptics Society and a committed athiest. Adams couldn’t get over himself how much he loved the book (I just found the link here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2009/2588578.htm). And Brian Eno was on the show, too, and he said he thought the book was so powerful because many people in the athiest movement (say, Dawkins, Eno’s neighbor) are so humorless about everything. By being humorless they lose their reach for a wider audience.
So before you criticize Eagleman based on a 1000 word article in a Salt Lake city newspaper, think about whether he is worth bringing into your camp, since his book has usefully shaken up a stalemated dialogue and thereby won the accolades of the athiest and scientific community.
Fran
p.s. surfing around just now to find the Adams link, I see Sum received a stellar review in the journal Nature. And if you check out Eagleman’s webpage, you’ll see he’s an amazingly productive scientist (I count 11 papers published in 2009 so far).
Thanks for another perspective, maybe I’ll check it out on your recommendation.
Atheists tend to be humorless???? You wouldn’t know it by atheist blogs. Or by outspoken atheists in the media such as Bill Maher or Pat Condell. Sam Harris has a great sense of humor, as does Christopher Hitchens. Dawkins is quite intellectual, so his humor is quite subtle. I always found christians to be humorless, actually. Guess I was wrong.
Theists can be very humorous as well. At least, how else would you explain how someone came up with the ontological argument?
I find many atheists funny. I find humor that bashes religion to be not-particularly-funny, and unfortunately I see more religion-bashing than humor lately. Whatever happened to Douglas Adams? (Well, I mean, I know what happened to him…) I love humor, no matter who’s doing the humorizing! I just don’t think bashing religion (or anything else that is held so close to so many people’s hearts) is particularly funny.
(i’ll grant you, theists are not always the funniest bunch themselves…)
Also, I like the ontological argument. It is so unbelievably clever!
What do you class as bashing religion as almost all humour about ‘groups’ can in someway be seen to be bashing it. I suppose what I’m asking is where do you draw the line?
I don’t know, that’s a difficult line to draw for any group. Jokes about things, even jokes at the expense of things, these can all be funny. Bashing is something different, though. Comics who make fun of a race, for example, can certainly be funny at times. Even better are comics who make fun of race relations (Chris Rock, I’m looking at you!) But there is a line that you can step over into racism (race-bashing, so to speak.) Where this falls is occasionally open to interpretation, but it does happen, it isn’t particularly funny, and it gets people into trouble (Michael Richards, you made me so sad!)
I’m pretty sure this holds true for religion, atheism, sexual orientation, political stance and just about anything else I can think of. The stronger the feelings attached, the easier it is to fall into the tasteless category.
(My opinion only!)
I just decided that a bunch of people like making up names for something. Maybe tomorrow I’ll decide what I think their motives are. Getting attention? Too much mental masturbation about the semantics of existing words?
What was it on these blogs a while back: some guy called himself a christian atheist? A jewish christian? Possibilianists should throw in with the group “People who need to make shit up”.
I really hope this won’t go anywhere, but we have Mormonism and Scientology, both made up in the recent past. As ridiculous as they are, people still believe in them, even though we can easily trace the root of the “religion” and see that it all started in the mind of one person.
“Possibilianism” sounds like a way of just saying, “But I WANNA believe, and you can’t stop me!!!”.
Hi Lucienne — yours is the best disproof of cults, large and small. There are many other examples in Japan, Africa, the West Indies.
** of course you can disprove ‘God exists’ . . . sometimes **
1. When believers refer to god(s) to what (if anything) are they referring?
Sometimes the statement ‘the god X exists’ can be proven to be false. But first believers must specify just what concept of god they’re playing with. (Dealing with irrationalists or mystics requires different approaches not discussed here.)
Some concepts are simply inconsistent. For example is the concept of god X just like the concept of the round-square? “The” round-square does not exist because its (supposed) concept is incoherent.
In the Middle Ages an attempt was made to explicate “the” concept of God’s omnipresence by recourse to an analogy drawn from plane geometry. God is like . . . a circle whose circumference is nowhere and whose center is everywhere. Clever stuff.
But there can be no such circle. Among closed plane figures, the circle shares the property of always being finite. The analogy backfires — well if God’s omnipresence is like that; then, there can be no such God.
A different approach to showing conceptual limits of any concept of God also comes from the Middle Ages. “Can an omnipotent God create a stone too big for Him to lift?” To say either yes or no immediately implies that God is not omnipotent. And, consequently, not the god of the so-called monotheisms.
Language here is being misused. Adjectives are always relative to some context. A context free absolute adjective describes nothing. Stretching language past it limits is a commonplace in discourse about “the” God of the 4 monster-theisms. A related gambit is to claim that the word ‘good’ when applied to some alleged divinity does not mean the same thing as ‘good’ when applied to human acts.
2. most theists never offer up lucid concepts of god
Though the panto-divinity: all powerful, all knowing, all merciful, will often make its (her, his) appearance. This conjunction of attributes is easy to undermine. Epicurus did so 300 years BCE — long before the world became burdened by the suicidal cults of xianity and islam:
Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then where does evil come from?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him ‘god’?
Too bad Jesus and Paul didn’t get a decent training in philosophy. Xianity has spent so much time trying to shore up its failed pantocrator that there’s even a name for this branch of theological special pleading, theodicy.
Can the negation of an existential claim be proved. Sure. And in the very cases of the worst offenders planetwide. Ahura Mazda, Yaweh, God, and Allah simply do not exist because they cannot exist.
anti-supernaturalist
Glad to see so many people open to a new possibility! Very encouraging!
3 Points to consider.
Religious people believe in God/s. Atheists do not believe in god/s. Possibilians are open to any possibility.
Truth may be somewhere in between. May be god exist but we cannot even imagine how he/she is like. I cannot believe that entire universe is operating on its own.
I do not believe in any organized religion. This makes me Atheist. But, I do believe there is a higher power. For the lack of word I would call that power “god”. That makes me non Atheist. At the same time I am spiritual too. So what does that make me now.
I am open to any possibility. I guess that makes be a Possibilian.
The reason why I don’t believe in any religion is because starting point of any organized religion is to believe there is a problem ie hell after death or cycle of life and death. Solution is to follow the prescribed path to avoid hell or quit the cycle of life and death and be with the god for eternity.
Spirituality on the other hand does not invent any problem nor it provides any solution. Spirituality does not require following any prescribed path. In its purest form spirituality is a realization of oneness with the divine.
My conclusion is that I really am a “Spiritual Possibilian”.
I would be very interested to see if anyone else consider themselves to be a “Spiritual Possibilian”.
I consider myself to be a universal possibilian “panen-pantheist”. A mouthful sure, but it basically is the idea that the mystery commonly referred to as god is equivalent to an intelligent power or force found everywhere, both in the universe and throughout whatever may exist beyond it. It is not personal but can be interacted with (prayer, dreams, through entheogenic experiences, etc.). It most certainly is not THE story, but one among countless ideas people have about the universe and god, or lack thereof. Possibilianism doesn’t require a story, but it doesn’t mind if you entertain one for however long. Its as true as any other belief. But the concept and the story are separate things. The story is what you make up for your own benefit. The concept is the vehicle that allows for it.