Pope Michael and the Bicameral Mind

Discussion of Julian Jaynes's second hypothesis - the bicameral mind, specifically the subtopics of the implications of the bicameral mind theory for religion, neurotheology, and the origin of religion.
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Dustin
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Pope Michael and the Bicameral Mind

Post by Dustin »

In Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Book III, Chapter 6, p. 435, Jaynes stated "The changes in the Catholic Church since Vatican II can certainly be scanned in terms of this long retreat from the sacred which has followed the inception of consciousness into the human species."

However, since Jaynes wrote his book, now there is this other figure named Pope Michael (formerly David Bawden) (wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bawden) who got so angry at Vatican II, everything surrounding it, and frankly everything that Vatican II supposedly stands for, that he crowned himself pope (in 1990), and he says that he is the rightful pope, and that all popes during and since Vatican II have been "false popes". He seems to be very sincere and he has attracted a small following of people who also seem extremely angry at Vatican II and what they term "its modernist heresies".

Pope Michael speaks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi38dPhlh6c

Do you think that this has anything to do with the bicameral mind?
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Re: Pope Michael and the Bicameral Mind

Post by Moderator »

Well it could be said to be related insofar as all religion is a vestige of the bicameral mind, and obviously some people will want to preserve the structures, hierarchies, and formal teachings built up around the last utterances of the gods more so than others. The Catholic Church is now struggling to find it's place in an increasingly secular world. I've heard that it's now getting difficult for the church to recruit priests that are not from Latin American countries. On the other hand, we see Islamic fundamentalism is alive and well in the Middle East.
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