1.

According to William Irwin Thompson, the tale of Rapunzelis is the story

of sexuality. Explain.
The entire fairy tale can be seen through the comparative stability of the mother-daughter pair
compared to husband and wife pair; it basically is a story that is trying to resolve the
contradiction of the one and the two, thereby solving the contradicting nature of sexuality in
itself. The husband and wife pair, although not stable, are able to produce one from two, and
although the mother and daughter pair cannot produce, they are constantly stable because they
are a constant replication. So sexuality appears as a disruption of the stable and enduring
system of mother -daughter replication. There is a constant battle as shown in Rapunzel,
between the replication and the reproduction. Also the main character Rapunzel herself is also
age 12 in the story, and is at puberty; the age at which she will now enter the adult world where
sexuality is at play.

2. How can we derive an ought from an is, according to Sam Harris?

Harris believes that values that are subjective to human experience and science is merely an
illusion. He argues that values are a type of facts and what makes them so is because these facts
are classified to the wellbeing of conscious creatures. This line of reasoning is actually a naturalistic
fallacy, because Hume had stated in the past it is not possible to derive value from fact. To correct
this fallacy, Harris explains there are circumstances in which we feel we have moral obligations.
These moral obligations usually find themselves to all come from a common ground such as
suffering. He also denotes that these moral obligations are actually facts, because a fact can be
right or wrong and an example of this is: Do inanimate objects such as rocks, suffer? Now that he
has established his facts, he is able to derive an ought from an is.

3. How, according to Tuttle in The World Peace Diet, has religious repression
of the Feminine (of Sophia) assisted herder culture?

Herder culture attached exceptional importance to the concept of nationality and of patriotism. Both
these concept are found within, both science and religion, and with it their repression to the
Feminine. In regards to most world religions they describe that there is a semblance of evil that
exists in womens souls. Therefore they are dangerous and men should control them. They do this
through herder culture, and reducing women to essentially a doomed figure. Furthermore Tuttle
explains how in religious texts it becomes obvious that men should rule, while women should be
obedient thereby reducing men to dominators and women to submissive figures and providing the
herder culture with a justification for doing so. The following texts show how this is accomplished: In
Christianity the sexual drive is considered as evil. Women earn the grace of God by remaining

celibate. For women, lifelong virginity is the most desirable state so that they might devote
themselves totally to God. In Islam women earn Gods grace by obeying their husbands. All these
set of rules are established by someone else and people need to be conditioned in order to be
saved.

4. Explain the following passage, from The Exegesis, contextualizing it

within Dick's theophany: I choose; I discard; I perpetually arborize and
reticulate: I build. I am very happy. I sense and grasp and perceive the
no-yes dialectic that continually results in higher syntheses (which is
what Jacob Boehme understood); I understand God in process, God
perpetually choosing and rejecting: "not this but rather that:' so that he
surpasses himself in an act at each new stage. ("Nicht diese tone;
sondern ...:", as Beethoven wrote; the foundation of creation is to
choose, to reject, to choose again: Boehme's dialectic ceaselessly at
work, blinking off-on-off-on.)
5.Explain the following passage, from The Exegesis, contextualizing it within
Dick's theophany: At the center of psychosis I encountered her: beautiful and
kind and, most of all, wise, and through that wisdom, accompanying and
leading me through the underworld, through the Bardo Thodol journey to
rebirth -she, the embodiment of intelligence. . .

6. What is a synchronicity? How is it different from an objective miracle?

Synchronicity is first and foremost not a supernatural event. Objective miracles
are not only supernatural events, they are usually the cause of some divine
being doing a certain divine act. They are guided and have an intention.
Synchronicity is subjective, and therefore has to do with a connection inside
the said observer and connected through some sort of subjective meaning. It
seems to confuse many with destiny itself, as they are able to sense something
before it ends up happening. It also is likely that synchronicity is affected by
the perception of the viewer, by that it is meant that it has room for bias, and
even error. It is most commonly seen as the universe at a high degree of
organization, that has come to fruition.
7. What is pareidolia? What is the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? How do
they lead to pseudo-synchronicities?
Pareidolia is when the mind tries to find patterns within stimuli of an audio or
visual data, where actually there really is none. The Baader-Meinhof
phenomenon is synonymous with de-javu which is a realization that something
that had occurred had happened before in the past anyway. The pareidolia is a

pseudo-synchronicitiy because it shows how it takes the observers mind to

actually create something meaningful, or a pattern that seems concidential but
is actually not real. An example is six different people dropping spoons at
different time intervals. It might appear that there is a certain musical beat to
it, but its actually nothing other than six spoons dropping at six different
intervals. Dejavu, works in the same sense, that because an event is seen that
has occurred before, the observer feels that it is a rather meaningful event to
their life and that this repeat of a sense is nothing more than a coincidence,
something a synchronicity can also be seen as.

8. How are the gods "full-access agents, according to Dennett / Boyer?

The gods are full-access agents because they know all strategies that one
can know when it comes to figuring out how to go about making decisions.
They are full access due to being omniscient and all knowing. And because of
the way it is interpreted, in religion you must do certain rituals Providence to
gain this sort of knowledge from God, similar to how someone would help you
learn strategies for stocks/options if you take finance course, and help guide
you make better decisions. They are also fully accessible, because for most the
knowledge the ancestors have left, has been erased or edited as time went by,
therefore they are not fully accessible. But God is all knowing and because
accessibility to him comes from doing rituals, that anyone is free to do, Boyer
explains that these are full-access agents.
9. How is post-bicameral religion a bit like the Cargo Cult?

Cargo Cult, holds that if the proper ceremonies were done and the recreating of battlefields, and
technology to the best of their ability, they will achieve riches. To them it seemed as if this was a
natural process. In addition to ceremonies of recreating ships and airplanes in the jungle
Islanders would build a hut in and money was left in it in hopes that it would grow, when really
most of this was a mere coincidence. Post bicameral religions were similar to the cargo cult
because they had the necessary tools to become cults themselves. Concepts such as body vs
mind, humans vs nature, religious vs infidels were meant to exploit their people and keep them
in negative states such as guilt and anger. This would then lend itself naturally to a herder
mentality and justify it. The same way in Christianity how virgin birth is acceptable; the cargo
cult found that their recreating of these aircraft to get them wealth was valid in the same sense.
They both followed similar trends, in how things were conceived by their own observations and
the leader of both faiths, would do what they could to keep the religion ongoing.

10.What do memes, genes, and natural law all have in common, arguably?

A meme is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture".A
meme basically carries ideas of cultures their symbols and icluding practices that can be
transmitted from one mind to another through various forms of arts like rituals, writing and even
simple body communication such as gestures. Those who agree with the concept regard
memes as a cultural biological function similar to genes in that they can self-replicate, mutate,
and respond to selective pressures, instead of within a human body; to a social environment.
Natural law is a view that certain rights or values are inherent in or universally determined
through human nature. These three all have one thing in common. They spread and keep
spreading across any human culture that has been observed, especially to grow, and only get
stronger and have deeper roots.

11.Drawing from Dennett and/or Blackmore, explain the reproductive

success of any one religious meme.

Rituals are religious memes that have a high degree of reproductive value.
First off, rituals are connected with social life, and even help to bring people
together (such as religious events) and so they spread like wildfire. The actions
of the said rituals manifest whatever the religions goals are and are said to be
of use to the persons benefit. These include prayer, recitation etc. They are
exposed to a number of people, they are usually required to be recited, or at
least the actions are, and because it brings people together and the persons feel
they are gaining a benefit, the rituals continue to reproduce at a high success
rate, only getting stronger as more are drawn in.
12.By Ockhams razor (the Principle of Parsimony), which explanation of
cosmic order is better: the Multiverse hypothesis, or theism?
Occam's razor is a problem-solving principle that among competing hypotheses that predict
equally well, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Even though others
solutions with higher complexity maybe better predictions for arriving at an answer, the one with
least assumptions is better because it is less complex and has less room for error naturally.
through Occamz Razor it can be said that that theism is better for cosmic order. This is
because the multiverse is the hypothetical set of infinite or finite possible universe; the problem
is that we already know it happened once (since we exist in it now). Theism still talks about the
first cause that started everything, whereas the multiverse doesnt actually answer the question,
but leaves us with more such as :why are there multiple instead of one that we are currently in?

13.Why is Atomism (both ancient and modern) unable to account for the
One, according to Heisenberg?
Atomism tries to explain that human interaction can be reduced to biological, chemical and
physical relationships. In a sense, atoms are indestructible and eternal. They follow cause and
effect and are the only real things that exist. They dont really leave room for intuitive concepts
such as geometry and basically laws that are parts of the universe. Atoms is a materialistic way
to explain the phenomena of the universe, even though we know now that there are sub-atomic
particles such as electrons that not only cannot be traced accurately; they sometimes pop in
and out of existence. Because of these gaps and rather flaws in atomistic theory, atoms cannot
be subscribed to be the one principle that governs all of the universes interactions.

14.Why, according to Plantinga, is evolutionary naturalisma self-defeating

belief?
Plantinga's assumes that there are no supernatural entities or processes and so everything is
left non-objective. Now, under these assumptions, the probability that humans have reliable
cognitive faculties is low or inscrutable. Our unreliable cognitive or belief-producing faculties
cannot be trusted to produce more true beliefs than false beliefs. And that would extend to
believing in the evolutionary naturalism itself as well.

15. Explain one of Murchie's Superorganisms. How do Superorganisms

exemplify Transcendence?
16. Apart from so-called faith, and obedience to words of scripture and
prophets, what, in your view, is the strongest support for religious belief?