Anybody here have a fear of heights? Okay, all right. Those of you who had your hands up, and those who are afraid of heights but didn't hold up your hand, I want you to look at the following picture. And pay very close attention to what happens in your body. You ready? Anything happen in your body? Nothing happened. Nothing happened! Now I can't look at that but my feet are hurting. I get this tingling in my feet. I can't stand it, I cannot look at that, yeah >> My left leg started shaking >> Your left leg, good .Anything else? >> Yeah. >> My heart sped up. >> You're heart sped up? Okay, so that means, what frequently happens, it's very, very subtle. This is not subtle for me. Yes? >> My stomach churned. >> Your stomach churned? What do you mean, your stomach churned. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Okay, what? >> I guess it was. >> You're preparing for something. This gives at least a few of us a sense of what happens in just a picture, and how it effects our bodies. Instantaneous. There are some movies I go to and there's somebody's at the edge of a building. I'm like this. I can't watch it. Anybody in here have a fear of snakes? Okay, good. Okay, come on in with the snake. Oh, no, we're not going to do that today. Hey, ferry? Okay, all right. What happened to your body? For those are you who are afraid of snakes, don't like snake, don't like snakes. What happened to your body? There's another one. They're handling snakes. Good handling of snakes. There's a, that should scare people who, and we got that one, too. Now, people who have a fear of snakes, anybody have a physical reaction to this? Yes? [INAUDIBLE] >> You got shaky? Where? >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Your hands, okay. So your hands were indicating that. Yes? >> I just can't look at it. >> You can't look at it. Okay, that's my reaction to the height pictures. We're always looking to calm the internal milieu. I calm my internal milieu by not looking into the picture. You do the same thing with snakes. Okay, fine, you know? I'll just not look at it, and that will calm my internal milieu. So, we are reactive to the physical environment. But we can also think thoughts. We can think thoughts that disturb the internal milieu. Let's say you're driving along and you recall something that you did, that was embarrassing, or made you uncomfortable, and all of a sudden the music goes up in the car. Turn the music up. You want to not think about that, because it's disturbing the internal milieu of the body. That's a kind balance back and forth that I'm proposing. I told you about one of my daughters years ago when she was four. She came downstairs and she said, it's late, she should be asleep. I don't want to be a thing that dies. Talk about, I mean, her internal milieu was going nuts. Over what? A thought. We can have thoughts that are very disturbing to us. And when they're disturbing to us, and the thoughts won't go away, we want a solution. What she told me, I don't want to be a thing to die. That disturbed my internal milieu. because I want to alleviate disturbance in her internal milleu. That's when I told her to go to bed and get out of my sight. I didn't do that. But you know truly there was a temptation there see. Believe me I said, don't worry dear, God will take care of you. And, you know, when we're all dead, we're going to be up there, and we're going to have a backyard barbecue for all time! That would have done it. Oh, daddy, I can't wait to die! No. [LAUGH] [COUGH] But that's what a lot of people would say. Don't worry dear, God will take care of you. Now that's where Shelton Solomon comes in, and all the research that he's done, and Ernest Becker. Along with consciousness comes the problem of death. And we don't want to die. Life is too wonderful. I mean, even if your life is shitty, it's better than being dead, isn't it? You want to hang on to it. You're looking forward to the opportunity to go to the shore again. To get the breeze in your face and do all kinds of wonderful things with friends. Well you say I don't have it. You're going to get friends. You know. If we just don't want to give it up. So when somebody says, don't worry, dear, God will take care of you. As long as you take care of your soul, it's a challenge, but it calms the internal milieu. So, once that gets installed, once it becomes part of our system, in some instances, it's automatic. It comes about, you don't even need to think it. It's like that rat in an alleyway. Something happens, and instinctively, it does what it does. So learned beliefs can become instinctive, and they operate beneath, or beyond one's awareness. So, this is a diagram. You don't have to pay any attention to the diagram. I'm just trying to be cute and imitate my colleague Hamilton who's so good at this stuff. And we got internalized belief. It's unconscious. It's like a rock. Important and it's protected by feelings. It's protected by feelings and if those feelings are disturbed. It's disturbing the internal milieu of the body, and we don't want that to happen. It's uncomfortable. It makes us anxious. Protected by feelings, so attacking a person's beliefs, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, it's tantamount to attacking their feelings and disturbing their internal milieu. It bounces off. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, listen dear, these people are materialists. They'll tell you at the end of life, you die. We're telling you that's life after death. Who you going to believe? You're going to want to believe, hey, there's hope of life after death. But these clowns are saying, there's death after life. So when they say that, that information glances off. There's something called confirmation bias. You want your internalized beliefs, you actually want all your beliefs, to be confirmed. By the way. When you believe something, absolutely believe something, guess what? You stop thinking. You stop thinking. If you believe something. Oh, I'm not talking about the flat Earth and all that stuff. But when you believe something that is in a gray area, that you absolutely believe it, then you stop thinking. And that's not cool, that's not good. To stop thinking. One of the purposes of education is keep you thinking. And that's what we're up to in this course. Like a large boulder just beneath the surface of a stream that directs the flow of water around it, a solidly grounded internalized belief automatically and effortlessly determines the acceptability and unacceptability of ideas coming your way, in terms of whether it represents a threat to your feelings. A threat to continued existence of the self. The more we learn about God, and his will, and his prophecy, and traditions we must follow ,the rock gets bigger, and bigger, and fixed in place. It becomes automatic. Instinctual. So the new atheists are not only attacking religion, they are attacking the feelings that protect our beliefs and particularly in the context of this, our belief about the soul and its everlasting life. By promoting Darwin's ideas about evolution, the new atheists, the four horsemen and many many more, are promoting the idea that there is death after life, and that draws a strong dividing line between proponents of scientific atheism, and religions that promise life after death. So we can't talk much more about a psychological survival without bringing in the concept of the self. This is from The Onion, so this is not something you believe. In a surprising new study released Monday, blah blah blah blah blah blah, revealed that babies long though to b inquisitive, are actually extraordinarily stupid. The study 18-month battery of intelligence etc, etc, our big sample, 35,000 babies, they are so stupid you can't even believe it. We are back to these pictures, but there is one other thing about babies. That's somebody else's fish, I am holding it up. The guy was going to the bathroom. I said ,oh, hell, and somebody took my picture. You don't have to be very smart. I go out on a party boat, they're a lot of people out there, they're all better fisherman then I am. And the conversation is mostly, you can say anything and someone will say, you can say that again. Or you say something else. Boy, you can say that again. They're not even listening to what you're saying. But it's a common phrase, right? You'll hear at a party, you can say that again. But not only are they stupid, they're cute, adorable, lovable, cute, adorable, cute, lovable and adorable. Why is that? Because you want. They need to be taken care of. Right. You, you don't want to. Pick up a baby that looks like a werewolf would you. But you know that they're all cute in their own way. Have you heard. Women say, oh that baby's so cute, I could eat it >> [LAUGH]. >> I could just eat you up. I could eat you up. And I have this fantasy that there's, some babies disappearing. You go to this room, you go to this house and there's this woman. You know with bones all over the place that she's eating all these babies. It's a genuine feeling. Oh you're so cute, I could eat you up. Babies need to be taken care of, and this is one of nature's way of making sure that the babies are taken care. So just as some people remain stupid throughout, there are some people who remain cute, adorable, and lovable, and they evolve in a cute, adorable, lovable adults. And there's lots of examples, I've selected this one. >> [LAUGH] >> That's why I'm so proud to be his colleague. He's just so cute. I mean, couldn't you just eat him up. He looks particularly good. In his chipmunk suit. >> [LAUGH] >> All right. All right. Well that's our preparation for next time. Good bye. >> [APPLAUSE]
