A close reading of Sam Harris on consciousness, the self, free will, and whether his naturalism treats consciousness as ‘just an illusion’.
Sam Harris on Consciousness, Illusion, and Materialism
How Did a Self-Aware Mind Evolve?
Meditations on mind, myth, and evolution. Cast the scales from your eyes!
TL;DR
- Symbolic thought emerged ~50,000 years ago, yet the universal human symbol, “I,” or the ego appears globally entrenched only in the Holocene ~10 kya.
- According to Eve Theory of Consciousness, women invented serpent-venom initiation rituals that reliably taught subject-object separation, producing powerful gene-culture evolution towards understanding “I am’” at a young age.
- The memory of this awakening is preserved worldwide in creation myths (cf. Lucifer, Nüwa, Quetzalcoatl) and was transmitted globally via bullroarer mystery cults (cf. the rites of Dionysus or Australian Dreamtime).
Topics
About
I’m Andrew Cutler, a Machine Learning engineer researching human origins. My work connects psychology, comparative mythology, and AI to trace how recursive self-awareness evolved. Snakecult.net is a place for me to put lightly-edited AI-generated essays that explore niche questions (usually produced with OpenAI’s Deep Research or latest reasoning model).
The Serpent Demands Your Judgment
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Templars at the Edge of the World: Esoteric Lineages and the Birth of Colonialism
How medieval military orders, hermetic prophecy, and proto-masonic currents quietly shaped the Iberian and English projects that colonized the Americas.
The Bearded Stranger From the East
A tour of Quetzalcoatl, Viracocha, Bochica, and other New World ‘white gods’, tracing primary sources, colonial chronicles, and later theories.
New Evidence Bolstering the Eve Theory of Consciousness
Fresh interdisciplinary evidence – from prehistoric rituals and myth to genes and neurochemistry – supports the Eve Theory of Consciousness, which posits women-led serpent venom rites ignited human self-awareness.
EToC as Mystic Answer: Consciousness and the God Within
Exploring how the Eve Theory of Consciousness connects to mystical traditions of the divine spark within humanity.
The God Within and the Eve Theory of Consciousness
Exploring mystical traditions of the divine spark within humanity and their connection to the Eve Theory of Consciousness.
Mid-Century Pre-Clovis Claims—and Why They Fell
A forensic tour of mid-20th-century pre-Clovis claims—what was alleged, how it unraveled, and what finally cracked the Clovis-first orthodoxy—for readers tracking the peopling of the Americas.
Spirit-Indwelling Initiation Rites and the Bullroarer
Across Australia, West Africa, Greece, and Amazonia, the bullroarer marks initiation as literal spirit indwelling—ritual death, rebirth, and presence of the god or ancestor.
Cobra Venom and Epilepsy: From 1910 Reports to Ion Channels
Tracing the journey from 1910s snake venom injections for epilepsy to today’s venom-derived ion channel modulators for treating seizures and pain.
Dragon‑Slayers and Flood‑Stoppers: A Shared Paleolithic Template?
Do dragon-slaying and flood-control myths encode a deep, Paleolithic schema about taming water? Comparative myth + paleoclimate with testable predictions.