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the middle of the night and looks at the digital clock, if the numbers are symmetric (for example 11:11, or 12:21), it means that one of her dead relatives is in the room. Here is her reasoning, as far as I understand it. The symmetric number display is so unlikely that, to her, it eliminates a purely physical or coincidental explanation. Therefore she resorts to an intentional explanation. A spirit or intentional agent must have woken her up at that moment with the goal of communicating its presence to her. At those times, she actually feels the ghost in the room with her. Sometimes it has a friendly feel (Grandma Margaret) and sometimes it has a dreadful, angry feel (Great Aunt Beth complaining about her bunions).

    As long as we are on the subject of hauntings—my sister Lisa told me a bizarre ghost story. Her pet rat died of old age one day. Later that night when Lisa was in bed, she heard the rat rustling about his cage in the dark and chewing seeds. The sound evoked in her a full-blown percept, a physical certainty that her rat’s spirit was haunting its erstwhile cage. She could feel it to be true. Yet at the same time she did not believe in ghosts of any kind, human or rodent, and hoped that a rational explanation would present itself in the morning. (It did. Some mice had gotten into the cage to eat the left-over food.)

    In a sense, the world as we perceive it truly is divisible into the physical world and the spirit world. Both worlds are constructs in the mind. Both are populated by models: models of objects, models of apples, models of chairs, models of people, models of dogs and cats and computers and rats and coffee cups. We experience the models, not the real things. But one class of model, computed by one set of brain circuits, is based on physical objects that obey simple cause and effect, whereas the other class of model, computed by social brain circuits, includes intentionality, awareness, agenda, emotion, and other mental properties. The duality of the human world—mind and brain, soul and clay—is directly traceable to a basic truth of the natural environment. The world contains both simple objects and other brains. We are therefore equipped with computational machinery to model both kinds of items. The duality of the experiential world reflects the duality of the natural environment to which the brain is adapted.

God

    Atheistic scientists tend to take a hostile view of God. Among those in the public eye at the moment are Richard Dawkins, who published the extremely well-written book The God Delusion , and Bill Maher, who made the insightful comic movie Religulous . Their view, and the view of many atheists, is that God is an anachronistic and benighted belief, a silly fable, both ignorant and dangerous. My view, the view expressed in this book, is utterly different. Here I am suggesting that a belief in God is a natural extension of the way the human brain is wired.

    What is God but the perception of intentionality on a global scale? It is the perception of a single, unified mind behind every otherwise inexplicable event.

    Indeed, calling God a belief is a misnomer. It is more than a belief; it is more than a theory; it is more than imagination; it is a perception. That is precisely why it feels real to people. It is one of the reasons why atheists and religious people talk at cross purposes. To the religious, God is not really about theories and deductions, reasons for and reasons against. It is not really a cognitive proposition. To those who have the perception, the pervasive universal consciousness feels like external reality. One experiences the love and the anger and the awareness of God. Is God real? In the view described here, God is as real as the color red, also a perceptual construct of the brain.

    The difference between the monotheistic Christian god and a ghost who bangs a drawer shut is only one of scale. The ubergod controls more, does more, decides more. They both fall into the