WHY HITLER?

"The eight-year-old Hitler sang in the church choir, and entertained thoughts of becoming a priest." (Adolf Hitler - Wikipedia)

1. What makes one person turn into Adolf Hitler, and another person turn into Mother Teresa?

People answering this question start off with certain 'premises' or assumptions, which may be wrong.

For example:

A. the atheist starts off with the premise that life is an accident and that no one has a spirit or soul.

But,"the first scientific study of 'near-death' experiences has found new evidence to suggest that consciousness or the 'soul' can continue to exist after the brain has ceased to function."
(Soul-searching doctors find life after death - Telegraph/FREE WILL?)

"The best that neuroscience can do is to show that behavior X is neurally correlated with activity in brain structure Y.

"This has precisely nothing to do with determinism because non-deterministic effects could be present at much more physically fundamental levels than those dealt with by neuroscience and never show up on the neuroscientist’s radar." (http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/free-will-roundtable.html)

B. The believer in God may start off with the premise that at some point in the past 'God' decided to create various spiritual creatures.

But some people believe that spiritual creatures have always existed.

The Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyah claimed that 'created things have always existed'. Mormons believe that we have always existed.

"The death of his younger brother, Edmund, from measles on 2 February 1900 deeply affected Hitler. He changed from being confident and outgoing and an excellent student, to a morose, detached, and sullen boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.... After his father's sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's behaviour at the technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to leave in 1904."

C. Westerners tend to think of people as individuals.

But, according to the Taoists, everything in the universe is single, whole, but composed of opposites.

According to the scientists, "under certain circumstances subatomic particles are in some form of intimate connection with one another no matter how far apart they may be." (Quantum interconnectedness - Economic Times)

D. Some people do not believe in 'acts of God'.

Life magazine reported (The Mystery of Chance):

On 1 March 1950, all the fifteen members of a church choir in Beatrice, Nebraska, due at practice at 7:20, were late.

For example, one couldn't start her car; and one mother and daughter were late because the mother had to call the daughter twice to wake her from a nap.

At 7:25 the church building was destroyed in an explosion. The members of the choir, Life reported, wondered if their delay was "an act of God."

"The Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna rejected Hitler twice, in 1907 and 1908, because of his 'unfitness for painting'... After being rejected a second time by the Academy of Arts, Hitler ran out of money. In 1909 he lived in a homeless shelter, and by 1910, he had settled into a house for poor working men... He was a frequent dinner guest in a wealthy Jewish home; he interacted well with Jewish merchants and sold his paintings almost exclusively to Jewish dealers."

2. One could argue that neither Hitler nor Mother Teresa had achieved full 'enlightenment' (Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith)

To Carl Jung, God may be an evolving being.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875 - 1961) said in Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

"Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions of years of devouring and being devoured...

"But the history of the mind offers a different picture. Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes."

French theologian and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) also sees God as an evolving thing. De Chardin argues that all things are evolving and the unity of the universe is grounded not in matter or energy but spirit.

"Hitler became fixated on warfare after finding a picture book about the Franco-Prussian War among his father's belongings."

3. If we do have 'free will', it could be seen as a burden. (Existential Primer: Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Dostoevsky points to characters who do bad things, knowing that they are bad, in order to assert their uniquness and independence.

Some might say that God does not have this burden, as, presumably, he is incapable of choosing evil?

Dostoevsky, and others, seem to suggest that all creatures go through a long learning process, which can involve suffering, in order to achieve enlightenment.

Hitler was 'lucky' enough to survive a number of assassination plots.

4. Eastern thinking often has less of a problem with the question of 'free will' and 'good and evil'.

"When you are aware of the Tao and feel it, you can flow with it, and the right action appears for itself, spontaneously."

Henry C K Liu wrote in the Asia Times about Taoism. Where does evil come from? There can be no ‘good’ without ‘evil’.

"Controlled quantities of the bad can be good. Excessive amounts of the good can be bad. Poison kills. But when handled properly, it can cure diseases. Without poison, there can be no medicine. To employ poison to attack poison is a Taoist principle, which is validated in modern medical the practice of vaccination, the use of antibiotics and chemotherapy treatments." - (Consider the lilies)


5. Is there a bit of God within Hitler?

According to The Upanishads, the Hindu New Testament (Life And Death Explained?):

God is within all the created world (immanent) and outside all the created world (transcendent).

God becomes immanent (within all) until the end of evolution when the immanent has all again become transcendent (outside the created world). The created world evolves into the transcendent God.

Why? For the joy of creation.

Why is there evil? For the joy of good arising from it.

Why darkness? That the light may shine more.

Why suffering? For the instruction of the soul and the joy of sacrifice.

Why the infinite play of creation and evolution? For pure joy.

The more the lower self is forgotten in good works, and in the realisation of the beautiful and the true, the quicker becomes the process of evolution.

6. Timothy Conway has written of (3 Levels of Reality) "the old, largely forgotten Christian idea of ... universal salvation taught by Origen and Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa: God's love is so powerful that no creature can exile itself from this Love forever."

"Chhotu is an intelligent boy who belongs to a poor family in Rajasthan. Born into poverty, he is forced to find work at a roadside food stall."

7. If we do not have 'free will', and everything is determined by such things as our genes, is that going to lead to the elite 'choosing' fascism?

According to Professor Philip Adey of King’s College London, a child's IQ can be raised by the right stimulation

"If general intelligence was indeed largely in the gift of the genes .... then we would be driven towards the deterministic and racist scenario of eugenics.

"Fortunately, all of the recent evidence points to the plasticity of general intelligence, the fact that a child’s IQ can be raised by the right kind of stimulation."

"The best that neuroscience can do is to show that behavior X is neurally correlated with activity in brain structure Y. This has precisely nothing to do with determinism because non-deterministic effects could be present at much more physically fundamental levels than those dealt with by neuroscience and never show up on the neuroscientist’s radar." (http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/free-will-roundtable.html)

8. The following makes use of an article entitled 'Free Will' at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

Most of us think that we have free will.

But, what is free will?

According to philosopher David Hume, the 'nature of free will' is the big question.

1. We can talk about 'Free Action', 'Free Will' and 'Moral Responsibility'.

If Hitler had been kept in jail, he would not have been free to invade Poland.

While in jail, Hitler may have felt that he still had 'free will'.

Hitler, once in power, was free to invade Poland.

If, as some scientists and philosophers suggest, there is no such thing as 'free will', then Hitler may not be 'morally responsible' for invading Poland.

2. Plato and Aristotle believed that if we have an intellect or brain, then we have free will.

Hitler used his intelect and decided that invading Poland was 'good'.

He had the 'free will' to invade Poland?

We use our 'free will' to do what we consider is 'good'?

3. 'Determinism' is the opposite of 'free will'.

A determinist would say that Hitler's actions were the result of such things as 'being beaten by his father', 'having inherited a disturbed character', 'having, met certain people'...

Website for this image

4. Discoveries in 'Quantum Physics' suggest that 'determinism' may be wrong.

The movement of 'particles' cannot always be predicted.

And every particle, every thing, may be connected.

We may all be part of God or linked to God?

And the concreteness of reality may be an illusion.

Consciousness may create the brain, the body and everything we interpret as physical. (Life And Death Explained?)

5. Some people, called 'compatibilists', believe that people can have free will, even if determinism is true.

Hitler may have been affected by his past and by his nature, but, over the question of Poland, he still had a range of options and it was not innevitable that he would choose to invade when he did?

6. When we use words such as 'gratitude', 'resentment', 'forgiveness' and 'love', we tend to assume that people are responsible for their actions.

7. Some religious people claim that God is ultimately responsible for everything that happens.

But, this suggests that people have no free will and are not responsible for their actions.

If 'theological determinism' is true, then whether or not people repent is ultimately up to God, not to the people themselves.

Why does God not will that everyone is saved?

We might conclude that 'God' may not necessarily be as described by certain fundamentalists.

So, what about free willy?

9. "Do you believe that you have control over your destiny?

"If you do not, then you are more prone to bad behavior."

This is according to findings from studies by experimental philosophers and psychologists, reported by John Tierney in the Times." (If You Don't Believe In Free Will, You Are Likely to Be a Cheater ... / Changing belief in free will can cause students to cheat.)

FREE WILL?

Michael Gazzaniga studies brains.



He's a neuroscientist at the University of California.



He has written a book entitled Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain



Gazzaniga reports that various physical forces influence our actions and moods.



So, do we have free will?



Gazzaniga refers to a 2011 study which found that, when people were persuaded that they did not have free will, they became less compassionate and less peaceful.



However, Gazzaniga believes that "there is no scientific reason not to hold people accountable and responsible."



Gazzaniga points out that there is a difference between the MIND and the BRAIN.





In Germany, three year old Paul fell into a pond and died.



On 18th April 2010, we read in The Mail how Paul apparently then came to a gate and met Emmi, his great grandma.



Paul said: "There was a lot of light and I was floating.



"I came to a gate and I saw Grandma Emmi on the other side.



"She said to me, 'What are you doing here Paul? You must go back to mummy and daddy. I will wait for you here.'



"I knew I was in heaven. But grandma said I had to come home. She said that I should go back very quickly.



"Heaven looked nice. But I am glad I am back with mummy and daddy now."



How do we know?



Paul came back to life more than three hours after he had died.



Professor Lothar Schweigerer, director of the clinic where the dead Paul Eicke had been taken, said: "I have never experienced anything like it.



"When children have been underwater for a few minutes they mostly don't make it. This is a most extraordinary case.



"My doctors were close to saying 'we can do no more' after two hours of thorax compression.



"This was because the chances of survival had gone and the little lad must have been brain dead.



"But then suddenly his heart started to beat again ... it was a fantastic miracle."







One in ten people claim to have had an out-of-body experience at some time in their lives.



At Out-of-body - near-death experiences, we read:



In Dr. Raymond Moody's documentary entitled, Life After Life, he interviewed a Russian scientist named Dr. George Rodonaia, who had a near-death out of body experience.



While 'dead' George visited an infant crying in a nearby room.



"George observed that no one could figure out why the infant was crying so persistently.



"But George learned while out of his body that the infant had a broken arm.



"When George returned to life, he told the infant's parents about the broken arm.



"An x-ray revealed that the infant's arm was indeed broken."





There is a question about whether or not consciousness exists outside the body.



Believers in Reincarnation would suggest that consciousness survives death.



From: paraps.l/ we learn the following:



Brain specialists, Prof. J.C.Eccles, Dr.Wilder Penfield and Prof.W.H.Thorpe have stated that the brain appears to be an organism to register and channel consciousness rather than produce it.



"The brain is messenger to consciousness", Eccles said.



David J.Chalmers Ph.D. writes in the Scientific American (1997):



Consciousness, the subjective experience of an inner self, could be a phenomenon forever beyond the reach of neuroscience. Even a detailed knowledge of the brain's workings and the neural correlates of consciousness may fail to explain how or why human beings have self-aware minds.



The Lancet of 15th December 2001 published an extensive Near Death Experience (NDE) study by Pim van Lommel, MD, cardiologist at Rijnstate Hospital in Arnhem, Netherlands.



He relates:



A patient saw during a NDE, besides his deceased grandmother, another man who looked at him full of love. Yet he did not know him.



More than ten years later he learned that he was born out of wedlock with a Jewish man during WW2.



This man was deported and killed.



When he was shown a photo of his biological father he recognised him as the man he had seen ten years before during his NDE





According to the Telegraph, 22 October 2000, (http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/l):



1. "THE first scientific study of 'near-death' experiences has found new evidence to suggest that consciousness or the 'soul' can continue to exist after the brain has ceased to function."



2. Two eminent doctors carried out a year-long study of heart attack survivors.



3. Their study concludes that a number of people have almost certainly had 'experiences' after they were pronounced clinically dead.



4. This suggests that the mind or consciousness can survive the death of the brain.



5. The study was based on interviews with survivors of heart attacks at Southampton General Hospital's cardiac unit.



It was published in the respected medical journal Resuscitation.



The study's authors are Dr Peter Fenwick, a consultant neuropsychiatrist at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, and Dr Sam Parnia, a clinical research fellow and registrar at Southampton hospital.





Dr Parnia said: "These people were having these experiences when we wouldn't expect them to happen, when the brain shouldn't be able to sustain lucid processes or allow them to form memories that would last.



"So it might hold an answer to the question of whether mind or consciousness is actually produced by the brain or whether the brain is a kind of intermediary for the mind, which exists independently."



Dr Fenwick said: "If the mind and brain can be independent, then that raises questions about the continuation of consciousness after death. It also raises the question about a spiritual component to humans and about a meaningful universe with a purpose rather than a random universe."



Four patients recounted feelings of peace and joy, heightened senses, lost awareness of body, and entering another world.





Dr Parnia, who was trained at the Guys and St Thomas' medical school, University of London, said: "I started off as a sceptic but, having weighed up all the evidence, I now think that there is something going on...



"If ... the brain is like an intermediary which manifests the mind, like a television will act as an intermediary to manifest waves in the air into a picture or a sound, we can show that the mind is still there after the brain is dead. And that is what I think these near-death experiences indicate."





Psychic & Spirit Magazine had an article on 'Divination The Tarot And Quantum Physics', by Cilla Conway, on Mar 16, 2005. (http://www.psychicsahar.com/l )



Conway points out that in the world of Quantum Physics we find: "There is an underlying unity: an energy or ‘field’ that exists throughout the universe....



"All matter in the universe can now be seen as interconnected by waves of energy. Matter itself is part of the same energy field – in other words there is no division between the material and the immaterial...



The 'field' "implies information exchange, as well as energy exchange, and could therefore provide instantaneous communication.



"The phenomena we call ... paranormal, such as telepathy, telekinesis,... and other oracular devices, foresight, intuition, and dreams, would just be part of this exchange, as we are part of The Field.



"As mystics have said for millennia, there is no separation. Equally important, this also corroborates the metaphysical tenet – that we create our own reality...



"Physics and mysticism are beginning to talk the same language: no longer are we considered to be a separate part of existence, nor is mind seen as separate from body. Some physicists even say that the cosmos is not only affected by consciousness, but is consciousness.



"As Lynne Taggart says, the physicists’ ‘work suggested a decentralized but unified intelligence that was far grander and more exquisite than Darwin or Newton had imagined, a process that was not random or chaotic, but intelligent and purposeful.’



~~



aferrismoon comments:



Regarding 'free will' - We do seem to have a minimum amount of restrictions, a result of existing in time and space while in bodies.



I imagine that practical free-will is a state free of the unnecessary restrictions put on us by those who would like to have us 'go such and such a direction'.



Life may be the fine balance twixt minimum restrictions and maximum interconnectedness.



Do we create our own reality?



If the idea is that we can just create a 'reality' I doubt it - but we do 'create' it I guess by consenting to it with others.



REality seems to be a consented upon experience that is shared.