gentlesquid-blog1 - Tumblr blog

[gentlesquid-blog1]

I just founded a smart Religion, and so should you!

Part I: Why bother with religion at all?

I was raised by atheist parents. Ever since I can remember, religion was something dubious to me. Its teachings seemed so far off and far-fetched from an evidence-based, modern worldview. The fact that so many people in the world held religious believes with bizarre stories about humanoid animal-gods, omnipresent beings, creation myths and so on seemed odd - and, admittedly, a bit silly.

As I grew older, it started to make more sense to me why people would imagine stuff like that: religious believes clearly had something to offer beyond the strangeness. It provided them with easy answers for difficult questions, like how the earth was created or what happens after death. It awarded them with sense of importance, with concepts of people “build after the image of god” and earth as the center of the universe. And of course, it gave hope and something to hold on to for people unhappy in their live by promising rebirth, nirvana or life-after-death. So, while religion never made sense, I could make sense of why people would falsely belief in it. This is something called an Error Theory in Philosophy.

Based on this reasoning, one might assume that religion looked childish but harmless to me. But I was also told about the cruelties a zealous faith can cause. Over thousands of years, people all over the world were oppressed, tortured and murdered out of religion reasons. There were wars and terrorism, slavery and witch-hunts, forced marriages and female circumcision, all justified and supported by religious beliefs, communities and leaders. Religion was not a harmless game of make-belief, but a force of evil that not only stood in the way of reason and progress, but also brought out the worst in humanity and turned them into savages attacking each other in the name of this book or that prophet.

In my adult life, I finally matured into a more benevolent perspective. I still lack a true understanding of how a deeply religious mind perceives the world. It feels strange and alien to me to take religious stories and teachings at face value. And I still see the dangers of religious belief for a rational and humanitarian agenda. But I got to know more religious people and I started talking to them about their faith. It turns out to most of them, religion is something profoundly positive. It not only makes their own lives better with a profound feeling of being connected, loved, taking care of, but it also provides them with moral guidelines and motivates them to be friendly and helpful to other people. For them, their faith was a force of good and not of evil.

The factual claims of their faith still seemed dubious. Surprisingly, many of them agreed. It just didn’t matter that much to them. This got me thinking. How much does that really matter? Do people really have to base all their beliefs in evidence? By what authority? This is a question discussed in philosophy as the Ethics of Belief: what is the normative force to demand someone to believe one thing rather than another? It would take us too far astray to dive into the debate and all its nuances, but I invite everyone to read up on it as it is an utterly fascinating and very underappreciated subject.

Reading up on this subject, my conclusion was: No, they don’t. Evidence is not the only thing that matters. I’m not saying that people should belief anything arbitrarily and that there should be no discussion about competing beliefs. Far from it. I still think we should be able to justify what we believe in. I still require reasons. What I’m saying is that evidence is not the only way to justify a belief. Due to my background as a moral philosopher, I think every normative justification ultimately boils down to being good to yourself and others. So, the “best” belief is not equivalent with the most truthful belief.

However, in most cases, a truthful belief will turn out to be the best belief. Imagine a person asking you to use your smartphone for a quick call. The person could be either of two things: they could sincerely need you help or they might want to steal your phone. In this case, holding a true belief about their motives will lead to the best decision. But this is not necessarily always the case. Imagine knowing the exact time of your death. It may cause you immense distress for all your life, counting the years, days, hours, seconds until your inevitable demise. Not knowing or even having a wrong belief (that there is still plenty time while in fact there are only a few more days left) might be the better belief.

Another example more closely related to religion is the solace some people find in the notion that they will someday be reunited with their late loved ones or the unfounded hope that can provide strength to people in dire circumstance who would crumble in the face of the evidence-based chances for survival. Again, I must concede that this is an insufficient discussion of the complex relationship between evidence and other reasons for belief. We are just touching the surface here and many important things remain unsaid. And again, I must insist that evidence is a great reason for believing something and there are significant dangers straying from the path of truth.

Still, I stand by point. Truth is not all there is. And religion has something to offer that can’t be dismissed by pointing out a lack evidence. If a religion can offer something good for you and the world, it is worth believing. And I think there are good beliefs hidden in all religions I have read or heard about. Sadly, and to my utter distress, these faith-worthy beliefs are buried in a pile of garbage. The same religion that preaches to love your neighbor demands to smash his head in if he praises the wrong wooden idol. The same religion that preaches the sanctity of life defines another race as “less than human” and encourages abuse and slavery. And of course, almost all religions come with a baggage of empirical statements that are disproven and obsolete in the modern era, but can’t be dismissed or reformed because they are part of the canon – like every creation myth ever.

Part II: Criteria for a smart religion.

So, what if we had a religion that gets rid of all the bad beliefs and nonsensical historical baggage, but tries to keep and refine what is good and precious about religious faith? This is what I am proposing: to create a new religion, not based on any tradition, scripture, prophet, or relic, but with the clear and only goal of bettering the life of believers and the people they interact with. This is a constructed religion, but not a satirical one. It is serious, even though it doesn’t claim any evidence to support it. However, it doesn’t engage in any conflict with evidence and science, but makes sure to know its proper place in the overall system of believes.

I will make a proposal for such a religion in a moment – in acknowledgement that there is a plethora of other ways a smart religion could be constructed. I invite you to join me as fellow believers or make up your own religion and share it with the world. Too long was founding religions only something for people in the past or people with delusions of grandeur or ulterior motives. It’s time to reclaim religion as open-minded, creative and progressive people. But before we can dive into that, we need to clarify the criteria: what is the best a religion has to offer? And what is the worst it often carries along?

One of the main appeals of religion seems to be a feeling of connectiveness. Religious people often feel close to each other in light of their shared belief and tradition. But its more than just religious practice that unites them. Most religions promote an idea that people are in some sense spiritually connected to each other. This feeling can not only increase the quality of life of believers, it can also encourage them to be nicer to each other. I reject the notion that religion is the only (or even best) foundation for moral interaction. But I can’t dispute that for many people, kindness and decency towards each other is informed by religious beliefs and this is certainly something to appreciate.

Another important aspect is that faith can comfort people. It can give them meaning and purpose when they feel lost. It can help them surviving rough patches of life with the knowledge that some sort of happiness awaits them and that their suffering is not in vain. It can provide them with hope and encourage them to move on. And it can also give them a feeling of self-worth. Most religions stress the fact that people are more than “just” a collection of atoms, meaningless among all the other thing in the universe. Instead, people are unique by the fact that they have some sort of spirit, soul or essence that is immensely valuable – and so are they by possessing it.

Last but not least, religions often excel at telling wondrous stories about the universe and everything. This may sound condescending, but as a storyteller, I have the utmost respect for it. Sharing stories is a crucial part of being human. Religious narratives have a sense of grandeur that elevates them from down-to-earth literature. They explain the world in a way that is deeply relatable and convey this magnificent sense of wonder that makes people tell them over and over again. I consider this religious sense of wonder something very precious.

There are also bad habitats that a smart religion needs to avoid. Faith can not only unite, but also divide. It can make people turn on each other – on members of other religions or clans, as well as on members of their own religion or clan. A smart religion should not steer people in conflicts. It should accept the equal value of all people and not degrade some to elevate others. It should also refrain from pressuring people to act according to narrow, culturally-biased set of standards. It should encourage people to live the life they chose without any fear of spiritual repercussions or punishment. A smart religion should never make anyone afraid or question their own worth.

Part III: Faith of the Inquisitive Souls Collective

So, without further ado – and we certainly had enough ado by now – let me present to you a smart religion called the Faith of the Inquisitive Souls Collective.

There is a vast collective of souls floating in a semi-fluid space beyond the stars. Everyone who ever lived is part of that collective. It dwells in the accumulated experiences of all mankind in a state of eternal bliss and wonder. Being perfectly self-sufficient, it is still extremely curious and in a state of ongoing exploration of itself and its potential. So, from time to time a brave soul decides to manifest in the material world and sets forth on a Journey to gather new experiences to share. This is the Great Journey called life.

These valiant adventurers are prepared to face periods of great discomfort inherently to life and unnatural to their blissful natural state to return with marvelous new experiences. It might feel tiring and even senseless from time to time, but the great comfort is that they cannot fail. Whenever they return to the collective, they will bring something valuable to share. Just by starting the mission, they already accomplished its objective. But the longer they move on, the more joyful moments they experience and the more they learn about themselves, the more they will be able to contribute. Even stretches of suffering will be gladly taken once they return, as all experiences have a hidden value and meaning the collective will discover. And it grows bigger and wiser with each returning soul.

If the inquisitive souls experience too much pain in the material world, they might need more time in the warming bliss of gentle togetherness before they set forth on a new adventure. They have all the time and peace they need. If they feel they missed chances or that their life ended prematurely, they can set out again immediately. Or they can dwell in all the experiences every other soul has gathered. Trillions of lives, unimaginable joy and wonders, all waiting to be explored by the inquisitive souls.

All souls are distinct, but not separated. If they chose to, souls can merge into bigger and stronger units. For many adventuring souls, meeting other souls to reunite after the end of their journey is one of the greatest prices for visiting the material world and spend there a life or two. Imagine it like a lava lamp, always in a trance-like movement, seamlessly connecting in bigger groups and then splitting again into smaller units. People that created a particular strong bond in life will eternally merge in this collective and never part again.

There is still room for dissent within this framework. I link to imagine that there is still some sort of individuality and even privacy possible in the soul collective. Others might instead prefer to believe in the ultimate dissolution of self. Both can be possible in the same collective, though. Another open question would be the status of animals, plants or any other living being. Do they have a soul? I personally remain agnostic about this point, but feel free to imagine them all joining the collective. Imagine yourself being able to be reincarnated as any being that you consider a fit vessel for your soul.

There are a few religious practices – that are, of course, completely voluntary. For once, each year the 25th of august is sharing day. This day people that feel close to each other get together and share one of their most valuable experiences of the last year with each other. They describe it as vivid as possible to make the people excited about experiencing it itself one day.

A second practice comes into use when two souls get to know each other in life and plan to bond once they are back in the collective. As a symbol for that, they will mix two differently colored, non-soluble liquids in a glass container with water. At the anniversary, they will heat it and watch the liquids tenderly floating around, connecting and disconnecting. Of course, this bonding ceremony is not limited to any number of participants.

Part IV: What’s so smart about it?

For me, this religion has a lot to offer. I particularly enjoy the notion that all of us are heroes. Just by being born, by having decided to take the Great Journey, we risked all the perils life has to offer to inquire existence and gain new experiences to keep or share. And we are not just heroes, we are also already winners. Just by existing, we accomplished our biggest task. There is no pressure to compete with anyone or live up to artificial standards. On the other hand, there is still an incentive to do create the best possible live for us: so we can return with the possible experiences.

It also establishes a deep connection between all beings. We are not only infinitely valuable, immortal souls. We are also partners on the same mission. We all come from the same source and we will all return to the same place. Everything you experience, every joy you feel, is valuable to me too, because one day we might share them. On the other hand, I do not want you to die or suffer, because I want you to experience more and don’t be too traumatized when your Journey ends. I want you to return with the energy to go back and gather ever more magnificent lives.

Another aspect that is very important to me personally is how it solves the dreadful particularity of existence. My mind feels capable of so much more than living this particular life and this particular world in this particular body for this particular time. No more of that, I say! Now I will be able to experience everything ever experienced and will go forth and seek new experiences whenever I chose to. I can relive the best moments of my own life and the life of everybody else. I experience all ages of mankind or spend millennia in never ending orgasms or a trance-like like nirvana.

I am not saying that this religion is immune to abuse. Imagine a violent, masochistic psychopath that murders other people to experience the pain he inflicts first-hand once he returned to soul collective. What I am saying is that “how could a violent psychopath interpret a religion to justify inflicting pain” may not be the best test. Every theory can be spun to a certain agenda, no idea is immune to abuse. The more modest standard of a smart religion should be to not be inherently abuse. I consider the Faith of the Inquisitive Souls Collective sufficiently humanitarian in this respect.

However, the content of a religious belief is not all that matters. It is not only important what is taught, but also how it is taught. My firm belief is that people should not be born into religions. People must autonomously choose a religion, only then can it become an essential part of their being instead of a contingent part of their upbringing. Religious institutions, teaching and indoctrination is another subject, though, and shall be discussed another time.

Part V: Final plea.

I want to stress the point again that this is not the end, but the beginning. If you feel fine with any of the big religions, go for it. If you feel fine without any religion, go for that. But if you feel religion might have something to offer but don’t feel at home at any big religion, get creative and create your own.

Society loves to perpetuate the idea that religions require ancient traditions and millions of members to be taken seriously. They do not. History has repeatedly proven that millions of people are not smarter than a few. All religions are abstuse and you will not come up with anything weirder, sillier, more far-fetched than the things billions of people believed for thousands of years. So, don’t be intimidated, be inspired. There is no sanctity in the divine except that which you imbue in it.

Your faith is your own. You are free to believe in whatever you chose to. And you should always choose to belief what’s best for you.

[gentlesquid-blog1]

Are there Ghosts, is there an Afterlife, or is Angela Merkel an Orangutan in Disguise?

I want to start my blog with a question that, I assume, most readers have asked themselves in their life at least a few times, and in all probability the first time in a very early stage of their lives, though it is rarely the subject of a serious conversation: Are there any ghosts? Is there any kind consciousness devoid of a body, moving or floating around unseen and occasionally enacting its will in their world?

We’ve all heard ghost stories or watched a scary movie with ghosts in it, so I suppose we all share a basic, pop culturally inspired notion what we are talking about. I just watched the terrific TV adaption of the Enfield Haunting, claiming to be based on real events and, of course, depicting the ghosts as real entities that interfere with the world of the living, or, to be more precise, with the world of materialized consciousness. As a child, when I watched something like that, even though being a sceptic very early on, there was always some part of me wondering: could it be true? I mean, so many people have seen, heard or interacted with ghosts, have they not? So many stories are told about them and it was common knowledge they existed just a few centuries ago, was it not? Maybe just our religious devotion to modern science and a misguided scientific skepticism that proclaimed ghosts as childish notions and those who believe in them as fools, or a bit naïve in the least, turned us blind to the evidence, or at least the possibility, that something like ghosts could indeed exist.

Most people leave that notion behind when they grow older and accept scientific skepticism as a trustworthy companion over the years; and, if might say so, I hope you are one of them, as I consider it to be a fine companion overall and I fear that if you mistrust him too much, our perspectives might be too far away to engage in meaningful conversation. On the other hand, I suppose many of you still know those moments when you hear a sound or a voice you can’t rationally explain, when you watch a TV show or read about strange sightings, where you can’t help but wonder: could it be? And of course, there may even ardent believers amongst you who have experienced things that convinced them that ghosts are not merely possible, but undisputable reality.

I want to offer you an argument that explains why I rarely have these moments anymore. Why I do not believe in ghosts. It’s not a scientific argument, but a philosophical one, even though it incorporates scientific research. Andit’s not a new argument, mind you, but it’s rarely put forward in this discussion. This argument concerns the connection between mind and matter.

The mind body problem is one of the most fruitful areas for philosophical debate; that is, people have talked, written and argued extensively about it for hundreds of years. It’s one of the central topics of philosophy and may be considered the starting place of a whole field of study, the philosophy of mind. This said, I will be forgiven to not go into depth in anything of this subject matter as the books written about it could very well fill rooms and libraries. But I encourage everyone to just google the “mind body problem” to learn more about it, to check out the Wikipedia page or, even better, to read the excellent article, or articles, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Now that my philosophical integrity is sufficiently covered, let us proceed with a gross simplification.

The mind body problem explores the relationship between mind and matter. A position that is very popular in the modern age is called materialism. The position states that everything is ultimately matter, in a very broad sense of the word. It is popular among scientists and philosophers alike for various reasons, maybe the most important one being that it avoids a lot of questions that are very hard to answer. This might not sound like much, but this is actually a very good thing. If you have a theory that claims that it is raining, while you and everyone around you agrees that the sky is blue without a cloud, that none of you can see any rain and all your clothes are dry, than that theory would be hard pressed to provide an answer why and how we are all mislead. In the same vain, if we suppose mind and body are two completely separated modes of existence, than one would be hard pressed to explain how they can interact with each other, as they do when I will an action and my body enacts its (this is the reason why a position called Dualism ran out of favor a long time ago).

If we suppose materialism is right, we have an easy answer to why ghosts don’t exist. If everything that exists is matter, and ghosts are by definition a consciousness without matter, than ghosts cannot exist. There are lot of good reasons for materialism, but I believe there are great counter arguments as well, and again, I encourage you to dive deeper into the debate for it is utterly fascinating. For the argument I want to put forward, I don’t ask you to believe in materialism. I ask you to believe in a weaker claim, that is, a claim that is implied by materialism but not vice versa. The claim is this: for anything that is happening in a mind to take effect in the material world, it must be materialized.

This claim doesn’t require you to accept that everything is matter. It doesn’t even require you to accept that mind and matter are intrinsically linked (I will come to that later). Neither does it require the claim that all material effects must have a material causes, as plausible as this may sound. All it requires of you is to accept that if there is a will trying to influence the material world, this will must somehow be materialized. This claim, by itself, doesn’t preclude the existence of ghosts. If we hear a voice whispering our name, the sound itself as a material phenomenon might exactly be how the ghost materializes in the world. But I don’t think that’s how it works. To make that clear, I need to extend my original claim: that mind materializes not arbitrarily, but always in a specific manner.

I came upon this claim when I wrote my bachelor thesis about artificial consciousness. I inquired several theories regarding if and when we could expect computers to develop some sort of consciousness (you can find my full thesis on my website, though it is only available in German).One thing I concluded was that we know very little about consciousness from a scientific point of view. We have no conclusive theories about what it is, how it works and where it comes from. I compared it to theorizing about flying without having any notion of aerodynamics; but this is gross understatement of the complexity of the issue, as flying is an observable phenomenon but consciousness is, at its very core, something not externally, but only subjectively perceivable. And this, to say the least, makes it’s a tough subject matter for science or any form of systematic analysis.

I said we know little, but this also suggests that we do know, or have good reason to believe, a few things about consciousness. And one of the best supported notions we have is a basic relationship between mind and brain. I hope most readers will agree that it certainly feels like our mind is in our head resting above our shoulders. Our perception of the world, what we see and hear for example, seem to be transmitted through our respective organs from the outer world into our brain and thus affect consciousness. If something happens to our brain, if we bump our head for example, it directly affects our mind, as we may get dizzy.

This is naive common sense, but it is very well supported by science as well. Biology can provide an elaborate picture how information gets transmitted through our various organs into our brain and even, to some extent, how it is interpreted by the brain to result in something sensible to our mind. Particularly modern neurobiology made great achievements in exploring the relationship between mind and brain, connecting areas of the brain with aspects of the mind and detecting neurological events that correspond to specific states of the mind or even concrete thoughts or emotions.

And now we get to the crux of the argument. Allowing that we know very little about consciousness, all the evidence we have, be it from our own life experience or from scientific research, suggests that consciousness doesn’t manifest arbitrarily; i.e. that a thought we have could not simply manifest in our toenail instead of our brainand get disconnected from us once we clip it. That instead our mind manifests as a neurological state of our brain. This is not to say, mind you, that it originates from our brain. Neither does it say that it necessarily depends on our brain. All it says it that in order to become part of the material world and affect it in some sort of way, e.g. for the desire for ice cream to make our feet move to go get some, this desire must first be materialized in the brain and can only then be sent further to take effect in the rest of our bodies.This makes the idea of conscious beings without a brain affecting our world somewhat problematic.

It may well be that our consciousness is in the brain and our thoughts correspond to brain states, but why does every consciousness have to work like that?, you may ask. Isn’t the brain just a sophisticated network for information, and could similar information not be transmitted in a completely different kind of network, be it a computer or an invisible cluster of energy? Well, no. This is,at least, is the conclusion I arrived at by doing research for my aforementioned thesis. It’s not by chance that the brain is the way we do it, and nature could have done it any other way.

The human brain is the most complex structure known in the universe. It is designed, and I don’t claim intelligently, in a way that allows information to be processed and transmitted in a way that is absolutely unique compared to anything else. It is not just a fixed system of nodes that are activated and deactivated. It is a living thing that constantly changes, creating new nodes and structures on the fly. The organic brain tissue is not just one of many ways to do it. It is a unique, extremely sophisticated material based on carbon, which is the most flexible and most dynamic of all known elements. So no, it seems highly unlikely that anything but a brain could produce a material state in the world that even vaguely resembles what it does. Neither is there anything that is structurally comparable, nor is there anything that has the same processing power. Even if it all brain processes could be reduced to information or energy, there is no comparable container for them.

So here is the argument you’ve been waiting for: In order to interact with the material world, any form of consciousness needs to materialize. It cannot materialize arbitrarily, but it must materialize in an adequate form. The only known adequate form for a mind to materialize is inside a brain. Ghosts are devoid of bodies and thereby devoid of brains and thus cannot interact with the world. If they cannot interact with the world, they cannot exist in a way discernible to us: they cannot make sounds, move objects, change the temperature or reside at certain places.

I have talked about ghosts so far, but the title suggests I want to talk about something more. How does the afterlife relate to my previous points? Well, it differs in one important aspect. In order for there to be an afterlife, the consciousness must be somehow preserved beyond death, but it doesn’t need to materialize. If we accept that we may leave the material world after death, we don’t require the means to interact with it anymore. So we don’t need a brain, right? So could there be an afterlife?

According to materialism, there is no life after death. If everything is ultimately matter and the material substance of your mind, that is our brain, ceases to function and dissolves, our mind must cease to function and exist as well. As I said before, I think materialism is an intriguing but rightfully disputed position. But you don’t need to be a materialist to doubt a conscious existence beyond death. You just need to recognize that there is a deeper connection between mind and brain than that of the brain being a vehicle for the mind.

An afterlife would make sense if you suppose that our mind exists somewhere independently of our brain and only uses the brain tomaterialize. But this position strikes me at fairly implausible. First of all, it creates some very difficult questions: Where does the mind exist if not in our world and by what means does it influence the brain? More importantly, though, I think we have a fair amount of evidence that manipulating the brain will influence our mind. Bump your head and you will have a headache, take a painkiller and it might go away. So the relationship clearly seems to go both ways.

I propose to consider that mind and brain merely mirror each other. This position doesn’t claim that either is the cause of the other. What is says it that for each state of the mind, there is a corresponding state of the brain. It is impossible to have a thought that is not accompanied by certain brain activity. And if the exact same brain activity could somehow be reproduced, it would generate the exact same thought and vice versa. It is also not saying that the mind is fundamentally material, but that the mind is fundamentally linked to something material. Mind and brain, hand in hand, so to speak.

And this is why doubt the existence of an afterlife. Again, it’s the brain that gets in the way. If it stops working and starts disintegrating, the mind must disappear as well, as it cannot exist without it. As I argued before, even if we should consider the brain a mere container for information processing or energy transformation, there is no similar container that would enable the same processes. And even if there would be a sufficient alternative, it is hard to imagine by what means our brain activity could be transferred into a new container at the moment of our death.If we accept that there is a material world and it is governed by a set of rules (and I will revisit this condition in a future post), it ishighly implausible to propose the persistence of a consciousness that is vaguely similar to us, yet materializes in a fundamentally dissimilar way.

But implausible doesn’t mean impossible, right? Nothing I said proves that there are not ghosts or that there is no afterlife, right? True. But there seems to be a misconception about what plausibility means. While it is often considered as a weak claim that something is deemed implausible, it can be a very strong and forceful statement. The plausibility of a position is primarily evaluated by comparing it to other positions we hold. Simply put, the more in conflict a position is with the rest of our belief system, the less plausible it is.

Imagine a position that claims there is nothing like gravity, no force at all that pullseverything towards the earth. Practically everything we have seen in our lives confirms the existence of something like gravity. It is not only that we can clearly see that things don’t float around but stay on the ground. A vast range of other beliefs also incorporate gravity as a background condition, like how fast you can run and how long it takes you to get to work. Accepting a position that denies gravity would force you to abandon so many firm beliefs that make so much sense and work so well together, that it is absurdly implausible.

Let’s try with another example. Imagine the German Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel is not a regular human being, but in fact an orangutan in disguise. What would be required for that to be true? Well, it would have to be a very sophisticated orangutan. It must somehow have learned to imitate human language or at least move its mouth while the actual words are broadcasted from a hidden speaker. It must be very good at using make-up and probably use a high-tech mask like the ones in Mission Impossible. Even if she can trick the public, it is doubtful that her husband wouldn’t notice, so he’s probably in on it, as are some other high ranking ministers and party officials.

It’s a position that comes with a lot of baggage. It generates a lot of questions. It sheds doubt on a lot of things we took for granted. That an orangutan couldn’t possibly be that capable. That there are no masks that could deceive us that perfectly. That there couldn’t be a cover-up of this magnitude without anyone knowing. But maybe it manages to answer a question of two. Maybe Angela Merkel consumes a surprising amount of bananas. Maybe the bright colors she wears are the favorite colors of orangutans. Maybe her face is sometimes less responsive than you would a regular human face expect to be.

Nonetheless, it’s a silly notion. Whatever minor things it might explain, it would be incompatible with too many firmly held believes for too little explanative value. The idea that consciousness works independent from matter is on a whole different level of implausibility, because it is in much deeper conflict with the laws of nature as we commonly understand them and with how experience our body and mind interacting with each other, whichin turn provides the basis of manyeveryday beliefs we have formed over the course of our lives. It is not less silly, it is only less obviously silly.

So the next time you experience an inexplicable phenomenon that seems to originate from a ghost, remember that it is far more likely that it’s just Angela Merkel who ran out of bananas.