A Christian response to "The Amniotic Universe"

Carl Sagan wrote an article concerning the origins of religion entitled, "The Amniotic Universe." This highly speculative article has the potentual to severely damage the church. I suspect it has already caused many to leave the faith and follow New Age belief systems centered around the birth experience. Therefore, it's helpful to present a Christian perspective on the article, as guidance and a warning against this and similar philosophies.

The Theory

On pages 353-368 of Broca's Brain, Carl Sagan discussed the theories of Stanislav Grof*. Mr. Grof was a psychologist who studied the effects of LSD on various patients("psychedelic therapy"). His patients reported sensations of falling and flying, and going through tunnels, similar to out of body experiences(OBE's). Sagan theorized that those OBE's were actually recollections of the birth experience, in which it is said that similar sensations of flying and falling and going through tunnels could have occured(359, 356-7). The LSD is said to be a trigger for recalling such experiences, because the horomone, Oxytosin, is used to induce uterine contractions, it's said to be an ergot derivative of LSD, and Sagan argued that a similar chemical should be used by nature otherwise Oxytosin wouldn't work(359).
According to the article, there is a series of stages one goes through in both birth and the LSD experience:
1. The womb experience. The feeling of oneness with the universe(having "food, oxygen, warmth and waste disposal...satisfied before it was sensed...(358)" and having all physical needs fulfilled. Sagan argued that beliefs about heaven come from this experience, and our struggle to return to that experience(357-358).
2. The birthing experience. The violent turmoil one experiences when being ejected from the womb. Sagan argued that this is when our "paranoid" beliefs in assailant and victim, good and evil, persecutor and persecuted, in sort of a sadomasochistic or masochistic fashion(358). After all, the infant struggles against the womb. Sagan explained away the fall of Adam and Eve using this theory, as well as "catastrophic earthquakes and tidal waves(359)." He also said that our concepts of punishment, such as the expulsion from Eden, arose from it(361).
3. The head of the child penetrates the cervix. What Sagan describes as the dark tunnel leading to light and a "radiant epiphany(359)." Sagan said that this is what forms our ideas of there being an afterlife, and the idea of rebirth. He dismissed baptism in this fashion, as well as the belief in God or gods. "Might the description, in the Near Death Experience, of a fuzzy and glowing god without hard edges be a perfect recollection of an imperfect neonatal image(360)?" He theorized that the child emerging from the womb would naturally recognize that shape as "Father." The mother, he argued, would be the earth(367). The theory about God being the same as the father you see at birth comes from Freud's *The Future Of An Illusion."
4. The child is hugged, swaddled and nourished(359). A "tender simalacrum of the cosmic unity of stage 1(359)."

Sagan thought that OBE's were caused by "dissociative anaesthetics such as kamines(2-[0-Chlorophenyl]-2-[methylamino] cyclohexamones)," "atropine" and "other belladona alkaloids(356)." He speculated that the contrast between these stages was also what made religion(363). "A powerful influence on the child's later view of the world(359)," that it even influenced attitudes on birth, death, sex, childhood, purpose, ethics and causality(366). He also argued, "Religious doctrine is fundamentally clouded because not a single person has ever at birth had the skills of recollection and retelling necessary to deliver a coherent account of the event(363)," that "All successful religions seem at their nucleus to make an unstated and perhaps even unconscious resonance with the perinatal experience(363)." And that religion stems from our fear of death(364). And he theorized that there might be other `solutions.'

Objections

I. Credibility.

• The theory is in itself a belief system, a mild religion. The only thing you can go on is belief. There is no proof. Sagan believed that the womb experience motivated people to go into space, out of the `womb' of planet earth, and that we could possibly meet aliens there(368), how own personal "glowing god without hard edges."
• You can't prove that we can actually recall our birth experiences.
• In this article, Sagan cites from The Dragons Of Eden, a book which biographer Keay Davidson says was written under the influence of cannabis/marijuana. Davidson also states that Sagan shared pot with Dr. Lester Grinspoon, in return for an article Sagan wrote in Grinspoon's book, Marihuana Reconsidered, under the pseudonym, "Mr.X." (Source: 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know by Russ Kick). It is difficult to accept any theory offered by drug intoxicated individuals.
• We don't know for a fact that the chemical used in nature for uterine contractions is in fact similar enough to Oxytosin to cause a recollection of birth.
• The properties of LSD and Oxytosin are not identical. It is only conjecture to assume that there could be a connection.
• Drugs can fabricate experiences.
• Newborn babies have no sense of object permanence. If an object disappears, it would then be considered nonexistant.
• Newborn babies have no depth perception. God would have appeared as a 2D image, according to this philosophy. No one says anything about God being a cardboard cutout. Depth is for crawling, and newborns can't crawl. I think they'd notice a light difference, but not actually `see' the tunnel.
• Babies don't know any language at all. How could they receive anything intelligible, like knowledge, from what they experience? All they know how to say is `gaga.' From where would laws and prophecy occur? Even if the sounds heard during birth could be recalled, wouldn't they be subject to the same "hazy memory" problems as everything else?
• A drug induced vision produces sloppy, incoherent, hazy and incomprehensible writings.
• A drug induced vision would not be purposeful, or give directions of any sort.
• There is no evidence that patriarchs of the bible used drugs or psychedelic plants of any kind. More than likely, they did not use drugs.
• No birth experience would be adequate enough to produce the Mosaic commands. They hadn't been invented yet.
• The bible is not self contradictory. A drug induced vision would be inconsistent. It requires a great deal of time and effort for skeptics to come up with a specific passage that seems to contradict what the rest of the bible says. A drug induced writing would never have gotten even that far.
• The argument is only compelling if you believe current OBE documentation is the same as biblical OBE type accounts.
• It's possible that people have read religious material before using drugs or having an OBE, which would make the account resemble what they've read, not vice versa. The only mention of anything remotely like an OBE in the bible is in the epistles and in Job(describes a silver cord).
• It doesn't explain the eyewitness accounts of large groups of people, the accounts of miracles.
• You can't predict the future when you're on drugs.
• Drugs don't make you want to prepare for the afterlife.
• What happened? Did some crazy old man spout a bunch of moral codes at Moses as he was coming out of the womb? This seems highly unlikely.
• It is possible that we cannot recall our births.
• Mystic visions never mention dead relatives, not in the bible anyway. Never once does anyone mention seeing their relatives, friends, or kin, all which would have been present at birth. There is only one instance where anyone in the bible sees a dead acquaintance. 1 Samuel 28.
• Scientific details are still sketchy about how the unconscious mind works, and we don't know how the consciousness/soul works with the body yet. Since we supposedly can remember our births, perhaps we can also remember being both sperm and egg. Perhaps Sagan could have told us that this disassociative experience is similar to the `medicine head' experience we get when using over-the-counter cold medicines.
• Freudian thought can be applied to things that are not humanly made, like plants. Trees can take the shape of sexual appendages. So can bananas, nuts, watermelons, mangoes, melons, cucumbers, etc. The tree has no control over its shape. The universe may appear to have sexual forms, which resists Freudian analysis. Natural formations can appear to be wombs. Generally, I'd say yes to his question, "Can it really be possible that every possible mode of origin and evolution of the universe corresponds to a human prenatal experience(367)?"
• Physiology is not theology. Sagan says so himself(365).
• Perhaps there is not any "evolutionary value" at all to recalling the birth experience, so we do not recall it.
• The patients could have been unsuitable. "Are Grof's patients selected from the widest possible range of human beings or are these accounts restricted to an unrepresentitive subset of the human community(360)?"
• It's possible that even our subconscious has blocked out our births.
• Evolution by large jumps is impossible. There has to be evidence of intermediary species, and scientists don't have those `missing links.'
• You can't prove that LSD helps people to `accurately' recall the birth experience, such as it says on page 357.
• Sagan used words like "Edenic" to make the theory seem more plausible(358).
• Sagan didn't think the birth experience recollection was an accidental `wiring defect' or a random evolution. He called it a "desperate rationalist attempt to avoid a serious encounter with the mystical(356)." And "No one seems to die or fail to reproduce from a want of mystic fervor(356)."
• It's possible that drugs do not actually match or substitute brain chemicals, but are merely outside influences on them.
• It's possible that the spiritual instinct begins not in the womb, but in our very genetic codes. A baseless feeling that God exists.
• If an unborn child can see and feel everything going on in the womb, and make sense of it, why couldn't it also have rudimentary beliefs in God?

• The bible never says that we are or will be one with the universe. It promises that we will be one with God, but it also says we cannot belong to the world.
• If the immaculate conception is real, it follows that Christ's descriptions of heaven are not merely recollections of the womb.
• Psalm 139:13-16 says that God formed us in the womb. Regardless of how he assembled our genetic material, it's possible that this is the source of our fervent religious beliefs.
• 2. Ezekiel 13:1-7 says that the prophecies of God are not contrived by man. ""The word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are prophesying; say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: "Hear the word of the LORD!" Thus says the LORD GOD, Alas for the senseless prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing! Your prophets have been like jackals among ruins, O Israel. You have not gone up into the breaches, or repaired a wall for the house of Israel, so that it might stand in battle on the day of the LORD. They have envisioned falsehood and lying divination; they say, "Says the LORD," when the LORD has not sent them, and yet they wait for the fulfillment of their word! Have you not seen a false vision or uttered a lying divination, when you have said, "Says the LORD," even though I did not speak?" A false prophet is one who thinks he knows better than anyone what God is thinking and what He will do. A false prophet is one that doesn't listen or invite others to share their listening.
• The bible is not a human invention. "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses to his majesty(2 Peter 1:16 RSV)" Also, "No prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God(2 Peter 1:20-21 RSV)."
• 4. It's comparative mythology. Pioneered by Jung and Joseph Campbell, and that's not scriptural. Comparative mythology tries to convince us that we are gods, that we created God in our own image. According to the bible, "See that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of the world, rather than on Christ(Colossians 2:8 NIV)." Comparative mythology is a philosophy of studying world religions. It is spiritually empty/hollow, godless, and based wholly on human tradition, that which human beings pass down to one another. It is also deceptive. It has its own agenda. Whether you take it to say `basic principles' or `elemental spirits of the universe,' it's talking about science. Also, "Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions(Colossians 2:18 NIV)." Sagan took his stand on LSD induced visions. He was the king of idle notions, i.e. philosophy and scientific theory, and his mind was also unspiritual, or sensuous(RSV), because he was materialistic. He goes into great detail about OBE's and NDE's based on drug experiments by Grof, which are all about visions.
• Baptism is not a recreation of birth. It is a birth into a new realm. A spiritual one. In principle, by definition, it's based on birth, but it's a rebirth you have here in order to enter heaven. If you say that you have another birth following baptism, once you get there, you're talking about reincarnation, not Christianity.
• Freudian thought has no place in Christianity. When you dwell on the flesh, you are not in the spirit, and that is death(Romans 8:5-11).
• Knowledge and message are given to grown people, not babies. "`Whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from milk, those taken from the breast? For it is precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.' Nay, but by men of strange lips and with an alien tongue the Lord will speak to this people(Isaiah 28:9-11)."
• Mother and father were created by God. He's bigger than your biggest imagining or vision, the vision you had at birth. So that `father' (see how Jesus treats his father) is beneath the Father, creator of heaven and earth. If you accept Sagan's philosophy, you will never recognize Christ as the Son of God. You will see him only as a human, so he would not be a fulfillment of prophecy, etc.
• Sagan's argument boils down to materialism. Empiricism. The theory denies the existence of a spiritual plane. They can't imagine heavenly things, so they don't believe. "If you don't believe in earthly things, how can you believe when I tell you of heavenly things(John 3:12)?"
• The theory itself could be born of Satan, demons providing the `evidence.' Serious Christians consider a large amount of OBE literature to be occult, so it is not so much of a stretch. Also, 1 John 5 says that the world is under the power of the evil one. This also would point to Satan's involvement. Transcendental meditation relates to this, and it is also occult.
• The fact that in heaven we'll be praising God 24-7 is not womb-like.
• 13. James 1:17(NIV) says that God does not change like shifting shadows. If this is true, then God is not the father I saw when I was born, i.e. my biological father.
• Disanalogies: The womb is dark. We presume there's light in Eden. Babies take in food, perhaps share food. They don't tend a garden. People walked around in Eden. No one can walk around in a womb. God also walked around in Eden. How would your biological father even fit his foot in the womb? Adam and Eve left the garden of Eden clothed. Babies leave their `garden' naked. Animals and snakes appeared in the garden of Eden. No animals and snakes appear in wombs. The only snake is the umbilical cord, and it doesn't talk. Besides, it didn't slither on its belly, so it probably had arms and legs, unlike an umbilical cord. The location of Eden could be a real place. Some say it's near the Mediterranean. You can't name any animals in the womb because there aren't any. A womb has no trees. These things do not even seem close to a depiction of a womb.
• 15. The womb is a self centered environment. In religion we learn about being God centered.
• Adam could have chosen not to eat of the tree. What would happen to the theory then?
• In heaven, we don't have the same human needs. A spirit doesn't need food or sleep or water.
• God provided the mother who presented the child with the birth experience.

• It might be possible that the drug actually lets you experience the afterlife, hence the reason for the deadliness and the health problems associated with it. It kills brain cells. What if your soul is really trying to escape your body because of the perceived threat to the physical body?
• The phenomena of `bad trips' was not addressed.
• Perhaps stage 2 merely prepares us to face the evil existing in the world before we were born, and is part of the knowledge of good and evil we have received from Adam. Knowledge about what honors and displeases God.
• The enormous brain/head, that causes the mother suffering during childbirth(361), perhaps was not caused by evolution, but by the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Perhaps man was born with a severely limited cranial capacity, increased in size by the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
• Perhaps there was a time in which there was no turbulence in the womb of female human beings during childbirth.
• It's possible that we'll see strangers in heaven that we've never before seen anywhere, even out of the corner of our eyes, during our whole lifetime.
• Perhaps we're genetically predisposed to worship God, the genetic code put there by God.

*"Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered," Lester Grinspoon & James Bakalar, N.Y. Basic Books, 1979
*"Realms of Human Unconscious" S. Grof, N.Y., E.P. Dutton,1976
*"Human Encounter With Death" S. Grof & j. Halifax, N.Y. E.P. Dutton,1977