Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (3485)	1/26/2001 3:26:55 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

Searching For the God Within The way our brains are wired may explain the origin and power of religious beliefs msnbc.com Somewhat on that topic, from Newsweek this week. The headline is maybe a bit of a reach, the story seems to be mostly about neurological study of meditative states. Somehow, I don't this is W's kind of science. This isn't exactly a proof of God's existence in the conventional sense. The tension between science and religion is about to get tenser, for some scientists have decided that religious experience is just too intriguing not to study. Neurologists jumped in first, finding a connection between temporal lobe epilepsy and a sudden interest in religion. As V. S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego, told a 1997 meeting, these patients, during seizures, “say they see God” or feel “a sudden sense of enlightenment.” Now researchers are looking at more-common varieties of religious experience. Newberg and the late Dr. Eugene d’Aquili, both of the University of Pennsylvania, have a name for this field: neuro-theology. In a book to be published in April, they conclude that spiritual experiences are the inevitable outcome of brain wiring: “The human brain has been genetically wired to encourage religious beliefs.” Even plain old praying affects the brain in distinctive ways. In SPECT scans of Franciscan nuns at prayer, the Penn team found a quieting of the orientation area, which gave the sisters a tangible sense of proximity to and merging with God. “The absorption of the self into something larger [is] not the result of emotional fabrication or wishful thinking,” Newberg and d’Aquili write in “Why God Won’t Go Away.” It springs, instead, from neurological events, as when the orientation area goes dark. Neuro-theology also explores how ritual behavior elicits brain states that bring on feelings ranging from mild community to deep spiritual unity. A 1997 study by Japanese researchers showed that repetitive rhythms can drive the brain’s hypothalamus, which can bring on either serenity or arousal. That may explain why incantatory hymns can trigger a sense of quietude that believers interpret as spiritual tranquillity and bliss. In contrast, the fast rapturous dancing of Sufi mystics causes hyperarousal, scientists find, which can make participants feel as if they are channeling the energy of the universe. Although the inventors of rituals surely didn’t know it at the time, these rites manage to tap into the precise brain mechanisms that tend to make believers interpret perceptions and feelings as evidence of God or, at least, transcendence. Rituals also tend to focus the mind, blocking out sensory perceptions—including those that the orientation area uses to figure out the boundaries of the self. That’s why even nonbelievers are often moved by religious ritual. “As long as our brain is wired as it is,” says Newberg, “God will not go away.” Cheers, Dan.