Higher Brain Function...Proof of God?

When we look around at the streets, sidewalks, monuments, or at a beautiful painting, or when we listen to an inspiring piece of music, we often, think "a dog has never done these things, something else must have singled us out as masters of reality"...

In short, culture and the ability to reason are frequently looked at as proofs of a creator, or at least an over-seer of some sort to which we are all either subordinate to, or to whom we can invoke or make pleas before, since many religions assert that the reason for our position at the top of the food chain is a direct result of being "created in His image", or something to the effect.

I believe this stems from either an inability, or an unwillingness, to properly understand the world around us, or at the very least, to attempt to understand it differently than what first pops into our heads, which are wired to advance our empire over our environment however possible.

I, of course, do not blame people for believing what they do...generally speaking. However, if there is a reason for this blog's existence, its to make people aware of different perspectives, namely my own, godless ones. It goes without saying that I do not believe that "higher awareness" or "consciousness", what have you, is any more indicative of a God or cosmic supernatural order than green grass is, and here's why:

Let's just say there's a deer grazing in a meadow; suddenly it senses a predator, it instinctively bolts away and runs for a few minutes. When it senses the threat has passed, it returns to grazing.

Now let's take a human and put it in the same situation. A human being is doing something in a meadow, when they sense a predator: they bolt away as fast as their legs can carry them. When he or she senses the threat has passed, instead of immediately returning to what they were doing, the human engages those faculties the deer does not have, he or she asks "What was that thing? Why was it after me? How can I make sure this never happens again?"...

It's these questions that have placed us at the top of the food chain, these questions that constitute the line separating humans from other animals. Subjectively speaking, the human mind is perhaps the greatest entity evolution has produced.

As humans, we are consummately curious creatures, always asking questions. It's in our nature to ask where things come from, how they work, what  they are. Other animals divine how to obtain only the most basic of needs, and even then, only on a very instinctive--short sighted by comparison--way.

If a monkey wants fruit, it will naturally climb the tree to get some, due to a combination of genetic proclivities and experience. If there is a food shortage in the jungle, and the monkey has discovered that his usual trees yield few or no fruit, he will continue to climb new trees throughout the jungle in search of food, because that is the pattern that he has followed since birth, and it is the one that has always gotten results.

If a human wants fruit, on the other hand, they will first ascertain the easiest way to obtain fruit by tracing it to it's source. The human is not yet done; next, they will find a way to further simplify the situation (e.g. What kind of tree is this? What do it's seeds look like? How can I get some of these seeds? What kind of care do trees like this need? Will it grow in other soils?) . Once the situation has been sufficiently simplified, and the same problem the monkey faced reaches the human, the human will easily surmount the obstacle due to the resulting answers they obtained from the experiments they performed inspired by their myriad questions regarding this simple aspect of nature. Something no other primate can do.

But for all this added awareness, for all this foresight, it comes with price: since humans are the only rational creatures, they are, therefore, the only species capable of being irrational.

All sentient species on this planet possess some form of survival instinct, but for most creatures, this instinct is only capable of standing against the challenges of a direct attack. The human survival instinct, on the other hand, can anticipate what it's enemy is going to do, can plan ahead, and plan ahead of that.

The refined nature of this instinct is dependent on our ability to comprehend the relationship of cause and effect. In our myriad meanderings on this earth, we quickly became aware that things do not happen without something causing it...at least in what might be called our "sphere" of reality. In the process of determining where the meat was, where the shelter was, when the predators were around, most of us came to the conclusion that the universe must have "come from somewhere".

And that, in short (though it's too late for that), is why we have religion. It is a bi-product of our reasoning evolution. A coping mechanism to accommodate our incessantly questioning minds.

People ask the question "how can someone not believe this is all part of some kind of plan?", to which I respond "could it be that there is no plan, and that our nature simply cannot understand that, so it creates a plan for itself?".

But even this sophisticated brain work is not enough to make us more than animal. Look at the phenomenon of succubi, or, as the knowledgeable or discerning know them "Sleep Paralysis"...

When a person falls captive to sleep paralysis, freezing all bodily functions save those autonomic ones that sustain our lives, but leaving our conscious mind to wander before waking or drifting of to sleep, the person begins to hallucinate: the most common hallucination is that of  "shadow men" or demons, but another is that of succubi--folkloric demons who descend on sleeping men to sexually abuse them--or their male counterpart, incubi, in the case of women (or whatever sex the individual is most disposed toward).

These are, of course, fabrications of a mind in less than optimum cognitive conditions; however, what is it that we hallucinate when in this state? Sex, violence, or a combination of both. Procreation and survival, respectively. It would seem that, for all our culture, all our reason, we are still animals.

Is Higher brain function proof of God? Of course not.