My Father's God: And where Plato is wrong

By Bruce Goanna Yap

Five generations of mostly believers were created after the author's family became Christian in China in 1890. Family history, his relationship with his father, his own illness, and neuroscience, are woven into a philosophical yarn. His Father's God, offers the view that like many systems of belief, Christianity has been led astray by Plato's invention of the Perfect. Even though it does not exist, Perfection is irresistible to the human brain that has evolved to want perfection in all its forms. Freedom from discomfort, a perfect world, and even immortality, are pursued into magical realms. This has splintered humanity into tribes spawned by their own ideas of the Perfect. A world that requires global thinking is being trumped by tribalism. Worship is an instinct so powerfully expressed that little in existence escapes its attention. Even so, much worship is of entities that exist only in the imagination to fulfil an emotional need that is intertwined with rational thinking. Neuroscience has shown that emotions and thinking are inseparable. As a result, clear thinking rarely happens. We are easily mesmerized by the supernatural with its infinite promises, and our minds default naturally to group-think, superstition, and magic. Believers who realise they cannot attain Perfection in this life hope for it in the afterlife, and physical reality that does not fit this belief is ignored. To complicate matters, reality is not what it seems.Even as science advances and superstitions retreat, the parallel world of magical thinking flourishes in the brain. It is this thinking that creates the spiritual world. Looking into the brain, we find the soul and God. Those who dare to know more about the brain may find that to worship God is to worship the brain.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 198103580X
• ISBN13: 9781981035809
• Release Date: May 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 291 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"