... What is this thing called religion? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
"It is surely relevant that there are such interesting correlations as those between dopamine levels in the brain and degree of religiosity - the more severe a person's Parkinson's disease, the less religious he or she tends to be ..." I seem to recall that the late Pope John Paul II had a pretty bad case of Parkinsonism. Why exactly would we "think that there is something in the brain or its function which specifically gives rise to 'religiosity'"? Monitoring brain activity simply tells you what's going in the brain at a given time. If you monitor my brain activity while I am listening to Bach's B-minor Mass, what exactly will you learn about me or the music? Will your monitoring demonstrate as illusory my feeling that the music is sublime? We have bodies whose biochemical reactions we can monitor. If someone comes running at you screaming with an ax in his hands, you will have an adrenalin reaction. That's what happens to you physically when you find yourself in danger. So your brain does something while you pray. Maybe because God is as real as the guy wielding the ax.
Yet another attempt by materialist-positivist biologists to explain everything physically. Because of course no other realms exist.
ReplyDeleteWhat constantly amuses me (and has been pointed out repeatedly by luminaries such as Rupert Sheldrake and others) is that 150 years ago the physicists were the hardcore materialists, while the biologists were more engaged with "magical" thinking. Now that has all been reversed.
A little knowledge of the history of science helps one keep from taking all this too seriously.