We experience reality. We then seek to understand this experience. There is an element of social construction to human, interpersonal, reality. This involves the manner in which we make sense of our experiences. This can vary from individual to individual and from culture to culture. Of course individuals in a particular culture may train their perceptions to be more acute in particular areas but the socially constructed element of reality resides mainly our understanding rather than in our experience. This distinction between experience and understanding is, in an absolute sense, synthetic but not, in any sense, unreal.
The aim of eastern religious practice is to escape from the cycle of reincarnation. Some eastern religious philosophers regard the concept of reincarnation as metaphorical rather than literal rebirth. But the aim is to escape this cycle of rebirth. And when this is achieved one is in a state of heaven on Earth.
When some one enters the state of Nirvana within the context of Hindu culture this state is understood as being a state of union with God. Buddhism does not deal with the concept of 'God' but there are individuals called 'Buddhas' who are in this enlightened state. It is the achievement of this state that is of interest to Buddhists. Of course this is also the case for Hindus. It is just their understanding of the process that is different. Through the practice of yoga in its various forms Hindus seek to achieve union with God. Buddhist understanding of this process involves the purification or perfection of the mind without reference to gods or a God. It could be said that for Buddhists the 'God-aspect' of reality is the mind.
The early Christian Church borrowed much from Classical Greek thought. Many aspects of the Christian God resembles Plato's concept of the Good. Both schools of thought hold that the good soul is saved. The Greeks held that the immortality of the soul is due to its natural essence; it had the same sort of naturalistic status as matter. Christians hold that the immortality of the soul is a gift from God.
Most physicists would be of the opinion that awareness exists as part of the natural world, but atheistic philosophers tend to regard mind as a strange, puzzling but essentially material phenomenon. For these philosophers immortality would certainly require supernatural intervention. The term 'zombie' in philosophical parlance refers to a hypothetical being who is human-like in all respects, behavioural and such like, but is devoid of consciousness. The philosophy of mind revolves, at base, around the question as to how a material 'zombie' can become aware - the 'mind-body problem.' Many hold that awareness does not really exist but is an illusion masking a reality that is essentially neuro-biological. This reductionist view tends towards the view that all behaviour is determined in the same manner in which a falling domino will cause another and then another to fall. It is assumed here that there are some 'atom-like' basic building blocks which interact in deterministic ways like macroscopic objects do. The 'neuro-biological' is often regarded as a candidate here. Thus free will is thought to be an illusion and awareness is nothing but an epiphenomenon of the material brain. Richard Dawkins regards the gene as the atom-like unit and the behaviour of all human life, and animal and plant life, is purely a product of the deterministic behaviour of genes. Few within the broad scientific community would unequivocally endorse this sort of simplistic and naïve materialism.
But let us suppose this model is more or less true. Then while our awareness is still an obvious fact our understanding of this awareness is defective. We have no free will. We spend our entire lives 'falling about the place' like dominos knocking into one another. Awareness is a strange phenomenon. It simply observes the world around it but our sense of having any control over our actions is an illusion. And why we are not, in fact, zombies is a mystery. Many within this school of thought insist that we are zombies - a triumph of theory over observed fact.
One of our cats is particularly fond of me. She tends to pal around with me. Recently we rescued a cat who had fallen on hard times and put it up at our place while a good home was being found. 'My' cat was deeply offended. She felt and acted hurt and betrayed. Was this behaviour purely and simply her genes seeking to secure her food supply?
Pope John Paul referred to the concept of 'anti-human reductionism'. While in the East the soul is the central reality in the West a self-styled academic 'avant-garde' is propagandising the view that our humanity is an illusion. Even if this pseudo-science was in fact accurate, what would be the point of wallowing in the essential futility of existence when the so-called illusion, an integral part of the reality continuum, would give us the semblance of purpose, meaning and the possibility of the belief that life is worthwhile. That science as an entity unequivocally establishes anything vaguely resembling reductionism as a certainty is untrue. Reductionism is not an objective fact. Perhaps some people enjoy wallowing in nihilism and laughing at the gates of Hell.
A small point. An important milestone in the materialist project is Peter Strawson's Freedom and Resentment, 1962. Strawson argued that regardless as to whether or not we have free will the criminal justice system is valid. Even if all behaviour is completely determined mechanistically the victims of crime can and will validly resent the behaviour of criminals. This, of course, prevents a possible crisis in the legal system. Legality would remain even when morality had become a distant memory.
It seems there are some who would seek Hell on Earth… for all of us.

Brendan Burke MA(Phil)
Cork Unitarian Church 27th June 2009