Jude Iam
04-03-2010, 10:56 AM
personally, my world view includes 'both and' but this may be of interest to discussion board members. judith
Saturday 03 April 2010
Listen Now - 2010-04-03 (https://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/allinthemind&d=rn/allinthemind/audio&r=aim-2010-04-03.ram&w=aim-2010-04-03.asx&t=Saturday%2003%20April%202010&p=1) | <!-- long-tail: 'true' looking for: '\\ynnas02\mpegmedia\rn\podcast\2010\04\aim_20100403.mp3' -->Download Audio - 03042010 (https://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2010/04/aim_20100403.mp3)
A matter of mind-sets? Religion and science - Part 2 of 2 (https://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2010/2860173.htm)
In an Easter special with a difference, renowned philosopher AC Grayling asks: Do science and religion represent fundamentally different mind-sets—different ways of thinking about the world? From the stage of the recent Global Atheist Convention, he makes the provocative case that popular efforts to reconcile the two are misguided. Read Transcript (https://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2010/2860173.htm#transcript)
bigbillygoatgruff
04-03-2010, 04:09 PM
Not at all. Science comes from the spirit.
LenInSebastopol
04-03-2010, 05:33 PM
British Empiricism comes from dead stuff, so it don't matter much.
This is not the newest article...
But, still interesting...And we'll see what these kinds of experiments will bring...
God Is in the Dendrites
Can "neurotheology" bridge the gap between religion and science?
..."Reductive as these studies are—that is the whole point of neuroscience—there has been no loud objection from religious believers. They just take the results as evidence that the gods designed brains to be efficient spiritual resonators. Hence the eagerness of Tibetan monks, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to participate in brain-wave experiments at Richard Davidson's lab at the University of Wisconsin. Donning chain-mail hoods of electrodes (https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.02/dalai.html) and contemplating universal peace and love, the monks show EEG patterns that appeared to be laced with higher than normal levels of gamma waves—even after they stopped meditating. These higher-frequency vibrations have been proposed as a mechanism for synchronizing separate brain modules—auditory, visual, etc.—to produce a unified perception of the world. How the brain does this is what philosophers call "the binding problem." Maybe the monks can bind these parts so tightly that everything seems like one—a mystical short circuit."...
..."For those not prone to seizures, Michael Persinger of Laurentian University promises to induce similar symptoms by scrambling the brain (https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/persinger_pr.html) with magnetic fields. After donning a helmet wired with electromagnets, some subjects reported experiences they described as mystical, or at least misty. When Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, put on the hood, it only made him a little dizzy. Persinger was quick to note that Dawkins had scored way below average on a psychological questionnaire measuring temporal lobe sensitivity—hints of a neurobiological correlate for atheism. (Click here (https://www.slate.com/id/2165004/) for a Slate writer's first-hand account of Persinger's "God machine" and other mystical neurotechnologies.)
Persinger hypothesizes that the electromagnetic disruption causes one hemisphere of the brain to cut loose from the other and sense it as a separate presence, your invisible friend.
Those who remember Julian Jaynes' 1976 book (https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072), The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, may read this with a sense of déjà vu (possibly another temporal lobe disorder). Jaynes, who taught psychology at Princeton, proposed that as recently as 3,000 years ago, the left and right hemispheres were like two separate beings.
Signals from the right brain were interpreted by the left as the voice of God. It was a merger between these cranial cohabitants that formed the self with its inner voice of reason. Maybe a spontaneous reversal of this great leap forward gives us holy men. Then again, maybe the gods created the right hemisphere for use as a spiritual transceiver."...
https://www.slate.com/id/2165026/