Top-down or bottom-up?

By Mukul Sharma
The editor-in-chief of the magazine Skeptic— which is about what its name implies, scepticism — has an interesting theory.

He first asks if we know someone who’s had a mind-altering experience, say, like a hallucination.

Because if we do, then we also know how compelling it can be. For instance, people who’ve had a near-death experience almost invariably have a complete change in their outlook on life thereafter. They become more accommodating and, in many ways, better persons. Almost spiritual.

Shermer writes that phenomenon such as these, along with seeing visions or hearing voices, are so powerful that throughout history, seekers of knowledge have sought to induce them. “They are one of the foundations of widespread belief in the paranormal.

But as sceptics are well aware, accepting them as reality can be more than a waste of time and energy. It can be dangerous for both the individual and larger society.” So powerful in fact, he avers, that not only a life can be changed but an entire religion founded on the basis of a single hallucination.

From this, however, one gets the feeling that, interesting as the theory might be, it’s limited in scope since Shermer is actually talking about the theist top-down Abrahamic faiths that could seem to have such beginnings that were later construed as divine in origin.

The non-theist Eastern belief systems, on the other hand — which are not true religions in the same sense as they are understood in the West — are bottom-up beliefs. The former are essentially examples of received wisdom; the latter, developed knowledge.