BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 10:58 AM

What you say is clearly taken from a different edition of Merriam-Webster.

I meant to type "looks like an example."

But the complete entry still entails that democracies can be either direct or representative.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 11:04 AM

Hi Joe,

Myths are able to teach us something but they are not necessarily true in the way science establishes truth. People can read all kinds of things into myths and disagree as to what they mean. Take the bible, for example.

Creation stories seem like bad comic books to me. Not only are they unbelievable but they present an agenda, an attempt at teaching something that has erroneous meanings.

Lincoln was a politician so that he would say and do what needed to be done to get and stay elected. Biblical rhetoric was the common grammar of the day because FreeThought was impossible during that period and the tyranny of the language of the church dominated the conversation at that time.

As you have pointed out, Lincoln was ambivalent about slavery and wouldn't have used the passage in the bible that condones it as a political device. Lincoln evolved in office as we hope other future presidents will do to embrace humanist ideals such as abolition and women's rights.

Obama seems to be a throw-back to earlier modes of thinking whereby he pushes faith-based tax supported organizations.

Even the Constitution contains language that was commonly accepted in its day without regard to the implications of its meaning, which is being fortunately challenged today.

Amos,

There is a lot of junk science out there and these "stories" are part of those memes.
Insufficient data will always be with us but should not be given a special credence.

Stories that are bad science are not useful but obscurant. There can be mythical stories that are compatible with good science, (that which has been verified and accepted by the scientific community as immutable theorums or scientific laws. The fixed ideas often come from bad science, that which is unsubstantiated and used as an agenda-driven manipulative tool.

The stories of the future will enhance rather than oppose the scientific method and show that science when practiced through discipline, rigor, intelligence and enthusiasm
can open the floodgates to an appreciation of the world in which we live and knock into a cocked hat these speculative posturing ideas that dominate the religious world.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Musket
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 11:07 AM

"And God saw that it was good."

Sorry Joe, that for me has always knocked the idea that he is omnipotent. Either he is or he isn't. Either he made the sunset beautiful and the starving African baby wretched, or he didn't.

I love to see things that are good too, and I like anybody else can push the bad things to the back of my mind, but if the god character has such human emotions, then I suggest those who interpret and dictate his will come to an understanding as to what the hell he is, because if he can be so human, why put him on a pedestal?

Or put another way, if he is capable of emotion, he is capable of making the nasty people go away...

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 11:47 AM

"And God saw that it was good."

Ian, I am pretty sure that Joe just made the point that if you read the bible as stories that illuminate us then the reason God said that was to help us appreciate beauty.

This is and article on the psychology of negativism
Some people are predisposed to be alarmed by the negative aspects of a phenomenon. Some are more encouraged by the positive aspects.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 12:55 PM

...and in classic equivocation, when you ask many negative people if they are FOR anything, rather than just AGAINST stuff, they will answer.. "Sure, I am for lots of things!" ...and then give you a list of things which, when analyzed, involve denying various rights & freedom to others.

"I am 'for' acknowleging the Christian God, and 'for' the Right to Life, and 'for' the rights of a businessman to choose who he must serve, and 'for' the rights of a business to regulate itself, and 'for' parents right to discipline their own children...." etc.

I'm sure everyone could add many more examples of superficial descriptions of 'positive' attitudes which are barely disguised restrictions and indicate a basic negativity and desire to reject ideas & rights which they deem unacceptable.
   In some cases, it takes some careful sorting and extraction to see what is really being said.
   All that is yet to be worked out is how much of this attitude is, as Jack suggests, 'predisposed', and how much is culturally inculcated by family, school, church...etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 01:03 PM

I didn't predisposed from birth, I meant from before they see the stimulus at hand.

And it works both ways. There are a lot of people much more alarmed by the negative aspects of religion in some others than inclined to enjoy the beauty it provides.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 01:21 PM

And to anticipate the reply that: "You are as negative as I am! You are in favor of big government and regulation and restriction on business and against churches being able to preach the Gospel!"
   I reply: "Gee...you can't really see the difference between 'regulations' that essentially ARE restrictions on the freedom of others and regulations that help prevent such restrictions.

The Constutution says that we shall not favor any religion. It does not say that 'freedom to practice your religion' means you are allowed any & all means to proselytize and integrate your religion into all daily life and institutions.
   It's a complex, multi-layered argument to get across, and I wish I had done it better...but it is crucial.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 02:03 PM

One thing is certain, it sells TV and books... and causes zealotry in the hearts of otherwise fine people.

VISA LA DIFFERENCE

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 14 Aug 11 - 02:24 PM

I'm really not looking for an argument for any particular point of view here. That has been done plenty of times on the Cat. I am simply interested in exploring the neurochemical aspects of religion.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 11:19 PM

Well... see this MIT study

""These results underscore the importance of determining whether, as in the C. elegans nervous system, a diversity of biogenic amine-gated chloride channels function in the human brain," said H. Robert Horvitz of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and senior author of the study. "If so, such channels might define novel therapeutic targets for neuropsychiatric disorders, such as depression and schizophrenia."

If there are analogous channels to us in various test animals, and various psychiatric disorders can be treated by altering neurochemicals, it is kinda reasonable that many negative behaviors and attitudes ARE a result of imbalances.
   Of course, some will argue that selfishness, aggressiveness and drive to control & dominate are simply survival adaptations and perfectly 'normal'. *I* know why that's a bad argument, but obviously, a brain thus constituted will, by definition, NOT agree with me.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 11:39 PM

more info on chemicals and mood

and more... as relates to sexual orientation

There are dozens...if not hundreds... of pages found with a search on "neurochemicals in the brain", most of which indicate that we ARE in many ways at least 'inclined' towards various attitudes. What is special about humans with our large, complex brain, is that we can reflect and study and moderate our own behavior....including our inclination towards religious impulses. But we can also refuse to try to understand, and THAT 'refusal' may also be partially controlled by neurochemicals!

Who was it said "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma."?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 12:15 AM

I hope I'm never mean, Joe!

So, Mrr, where do people fit in who accept and treasure myth *as* myth, and not as scientific fact - people who see myth as pointing to a deeper truth that cannot be contained by words?

Unclear what you mean, sorry - but if you mean people who believe in their particular deity but nonetheless live in the real world and do not hide their children away from knowledge, then, I just wonder why they believe in their particular deity but I have no problem with them as human beings.

I think that the dogma-or-else style of deniers (that is people who deny, not people who help with corpses - denyers, maybe) are causing undeniable harm to their children if they keep them from sources of learning, as well as failing their own humanity, and thus humanity, by their steadfast refusal to question.

And, Joe, I did rephrase something a lot more barbed!

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 12:34 AM

I consider the brain more of antenna and shock absorber than a computational center--yes, it is a neurological servomechanism with a lot of nodes of control as far as body mechanics is concerned, but the only impact it has directly on what passes for thought in some circles is in modulating the refried thoughts of the past. I think some psychedelic compounds open up pathways that make for wider band reception, which can be very interesting or very chaotic and disruptive, as with any receiver.

I believe it was Neal Stephenson's definition that cyberspace was "where you are when you are on the telephone". I think this notion intersects with poor old Robert Pirsig's life-long wrestling match with "qualitas", the zone of the non-innumerable whatness of things perceived. Some novels bring this out most elegantly--the permeating container within the thing contained. These are not easy notions in a culture whose vocabulary has evolved from millenia of struggling with material form and force and measure, and striving to survive in what is still a pretty dangerous sort of universe overall.

Kick-start reactions to signals from the material environment are what the brain does best, but they are not the best and highest product of the mind.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 02:07 PM

"... the only impact it has directly on what passes for thought in some circles is in modulating the refried thoughts of the past."

Umm.... "only"? Isn't that enough? And I do wonder which 'circles' you refer to....and what thoughts there are which don't pass for thought.

I am somehow reminded of an old line...and allow a slight modification of it: "I know you believe you understand what you think you said, but I'm not sure that what you meant is anything I can ummm..."    *mumble, mumble* does not compute

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 02:50 PM

Refried thoughts are stimulus-response displays, Bill.

They involve creativity only at the lowest quality and to a minimal degree.

ANd your objecting to your own reparsing of what I said, which is inaccurate, is a strawman AND a paper tiger both. L:D

There are thoughts that occur on automatic, and there are original thoughts born of looking without reacting. An instinctive dislike of certain kinds of people, for example, is based on reacting to triggers which are associated with things usually not part of the present but refried from past events. People are capable of much greater kinds of thought--analytical and creative--than that.

Your hard-core materialist perspective has the amusing component of including creative thought dedicated to the idea that thought is mechanistic. I am reminded of a teaching from someone that ran along ther line of "You experience what you reallly believe. If you believe this is not so, you will experience it as being not so."

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 06:19 PM

ummm... I was not 'reparsing', I was parodying in order to indicate fuzziness of clarity....so 'strawman' is not relevant.

I agree with your clarification of different types of thoughts and that there are 'greater' sorts. I simply (as you well know) don't accept¹ that the greater ones somehow participate in some ethereal realm apart from the neuro-chemical interactions.

   I think it is perfectly possible that we will ultimately be able to explain our 'ideas' of God and other metaphysical concepts by deeper understanding of them boring physio-chemical interactions ☺. It even seems to me like a way out of a dilemma.



1. ("don't accept" is not the same thing as 'deny'. You keep accusing me of being a "hard core materialist" when I merely require more evidence than interesting phrasing.)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 07:23 PM

In certain cases don't accept is the same as deny - say, if you don't accept that the holocaust is factual history then you are a deny-er, no?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Aug 11 - 10:08 PM

Hmm.. I see your point, Mrrzy....but that is mostly a linguistic distinction. One might be reluctant to 'accept' because one didn't know enough facts about history to be sure.
'Deny' is generally a statement that one thinks they DO have enough evidence to positively reject a theory....so "in certain cases"...maybe.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Musket
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 04:45 AM

Jack the Sailor wrote ;Ian, I am pretty sure that Joe just made the point that if you read the bible as stories that illuminate us then the reason God said that was to help us appreciate beauty.

Yes, but that's my point. If he is omnipotent then he would want us to appreciate ugly too. If he did the lot, who are we to distinguish between the view from the top of a hill in The Lake District and the image of a baby in a transit camp in Mogadishu breathing his last breath?

So, I reckon we must be hard wired because there are many people who will thank him for the good bits and push the bad bits to the back of their mind. I too am hard wired, by faithful allegiance to a football team who have started the season as appallingly as ever....

As an aside, the faithful seem to realise the God argument must be getting a bit thin. I was at a christening in a church a few weeks ago. A church that sang modern hymns with electric guitar and drums. The words were all repetitive "He is Great!" and variations on that theme with a liberal dose of "So praise him unconditionally" and other such twaddle.

Two points there;

1. Charles Wesley must be spinning in his grave.

2. Having to repeat such things so much in a song sounds like desperate measures to keep people brainwashed from where I was sitting.

3. There isn't a 3.

4. But if there was, it would be that the smiles were all a bit forced too.

It appeared to me to be negotiating the path from omnipotent to impotent.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Sally Brown
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 06:53 AM

I am having trouble here sorting the linguistics from the feelings (and whatever else). Perhaps tomorrow will be better.

My thoughts:
1. Lincoln was a Marfan. It influenced his thinking, his brain, and his religion. (So was Amenhotep IV - check out his religion some time.) He was known at times to speak truth as he saw it, and to see it differently than some others.
2. Primate behavior studies are surely important to this discussion. Humans seem to be hardwired to small communities, and to us-them thinking. This is ideally useful for a politician or religion that wishes to create a following just by separating us-good from them-bad.    I am not sure we can outgrow it.
3. An introduction to Carolyn Myss would be good as well. She began by studying how humans used their available energy, and explaining it very well. Then she (a Catholic) tried to bring religion on board, but was lost studying the difference in Catholics who used all their energy in belief, and those who gave it over as something for their God to worry about rather than themselves, and allowed something else to take over.
4. There are, IMHOP, clearly defined inner-directed and outer-directed individuals who will never be able (perhaps) to understand each other. It seems to be built in. You can put an inner-directed person in an outer-directed fundamentalist family, and the person will just grow up and walk away. The reverse is also true. If someone is looking for an external guide, he or she will find it.
5. Religion can mean too many things. Either experience or belief in many categories. I can speak for hours here, and perhaps will.
6. Some people choose politics for power/prestige/money -outer directed goals, some for what they see as human betterment - inner directed goals, or self-delusion. Choosing to appear to support a particular religion that many are already trained in is an ideal door for those who wish to profit from already trained followers.
Am I staying on subject?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Sally Brown
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 08:31 AM

Regarding Lincoln: I realized I was not clear. There are lots of places I can point to regarding Lincoln and Marfan Syndrome, but none that have been able to define the unique thought pattern, and only a few that mention it. Marfan involves connective tissue, which is everywhere. The best I can tell you about thought patterns is that the usual thought system uses feelings to make decisions quite rapidly, and logic to justify the decision later. Marfan people usually don't have good access to feelings, and are more apt to make slower decisions beginning with logic. Some suggest it is a form of autism, related to Aspergers syndrome. As autism can run the gamut of how severely one is affected, so can Marfan. It is a very hard thing to judge.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 18 Aug 11 - 11:47 AM

Lincoln's condition, we are advised by a Wikipedia article, may not have been Marfan; "according to a 2007 theory, it is perhaps more likely that he had a different disorder, multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B, that caused skeletal features almost identical to Marfan syndrome."

In any case, Marfan is diagnosed by physiological symptoms rather than autistic behaviors, as far as I can tell.

An interesting side-topic. Thanks for bringing it up!

Bill's skepticism is chronic, and although he may not be a hard-over materialist he is certainly among those who subsume their own knowing within their datasets, which leads to a very similar place. The knower is not a container within the thing contained, to use Thurber's humorous phrase for it. I recommend, dear friend Bill, that you closely parse Robert Pirsig's second book, Lila yclept, for a more philosophic exposition on this troublesome duality.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 09:22 AM

We all believe in causes and effects.

I blame the Big Bang for the chains of causation that lead straight to what we're thinking now.

It seems to us that our thoughts are creative only because that's part of how Big-Bang neurochemistry works.

Of course, you could "decide" to believe differently. But that's how Big-Bang neurochemistry works too. It wouldn't make your belief true.

Maybe Big-Bang neurochemistry fools us into believing in causation when in reality causation itself is an illusion. Maybe belief in the Big Bang itself is the neurochemical result of some other influence.

If you believe in God, can you tell whether it's because of God "programming you," or the Big Bang? If you don't, is your answer any different?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 01:37 PM

It's significant that neuroscientists can induce religious feelings by stimulating different areas of the brain.

Science can reveal much about the nature of religion especially the new research that is being done on the brain. The more religion is tested, the more freedom we can have from its prison.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 01:55 PM

There is no scientific evidence to support a dichotomy between the brain and the so-called "mind", even if philosophers jump up and down to support the latter.

Every idea is subject to interpretation and as semanticists have argued, there are often no conclusive agreements as to definitions of words or the meaning of sentences although that there are is often taken for granted.

This is why there is such warfare over religious ideas. Who can agree on something untestable and unproven?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 02:05 PM

Yes, I have a friend with right-temporal lobe epilepsy from a car crash, and he loves having seizures.

Marfan would not have made Lincoln *think* differently. It's a body thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 02:12 PM

Stringsinger says: Creation stories seem like bad comic books to me. Not only are they unbelievable but they present an agenda, an attempt at teaching something that has erroneous meanings.

I dunno, Frank. I think the agendas and the erroneous meanings were superimposed on the creation stories long after the stories came into being. I think that in some ways, our modern, "scientific" society has lost the ability to understand a story. Were Native American creation stories meant to tell the "facts," or were they meant to express the wonder and mystery of the world that surrounded the storytellers?

Somehow, in the midst of all our scientific knowledge, we need to maintain a sense of appreciation and wonder. I think that myth can help us do that. In the first century of the Industrial Age, that sense of wonder and appreciation was lost, and humankind wreaked ecological havoc. Both religious and non-religious people developed rationalizations that allowed them to destroy so much. Luckily, we've largely returned to an attitude of respect for Mother Nature (another myth, but a useful one).

As fro the difference between "brain" and "mind," I have to say that our definition of "brain" is inadequate. The idea of firing synapses does not do justice to the wonders of the cognitive ability of a human being.

I think many atheists have the same shortcoming as do fundamentalist religious people - they think that they can fully know something, to the point that there is no mystery left. I think there's always something more, something deeper that we can learn.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 04:56 PM

Joe, science is a way, the more you study it, to develop that sense of wonder and appreciation.

Mythology has its place as a story to teach. Joe Campbell made this very clear.


I don't see any return to a respect for nature (Mythical Mother or otherwise), but a disregard for scientists who agree that global warming is man made and a serious catastrophe ahead.

I disagree that the study of firing synapses and the intricacies of the working of the brain
don't do justice to wonder. The brain is a marvelous entity and the more we study it,
the more marvelous it becomes. The "mind" however is undefinable and there is no legitimate location for it.

I think there is something more that can be learned that is deeper than we know now and modern science is helping us to do that.

I don't think you can paint all atheists or FreeThinkers (I prefer the latter term) with the same brush. I don't think that there is any claim by any atheist that I know that they fully know something whereas religion deals in absolute "knowledge" and allows for no deviation or new information; the beauty of science over religion is that there is always new information to be made available.

If by fully knowing something, you mean the rejection of religion, this is not a matter of the acquisition of pertinent knowledge but a rejection of an ideology that can't be proven and is so mystical that there is no agreement about what it is. This is not useful mystery.

Cosmology, quantum mechanics, neurobiology, physics. biology, evolution, archaeology, genetics and ethology.............these are the realms of mystery and wonder to be
explored and offer lifetimes of useful learning.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 05:03 PM

whereas religion deals in absolute "knowledge" and allows for no deviation or new information

Ah, but Frank, that is not universally so - and never has been. Only fundamentalist religion deals in absolutes.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 19 Aug 11 - 05:50 PM

Frank, it must somehow have occurred to you, even with your dedication to science-as-way, that all science is within the mind(s) of its practitioners. The capacity for creative thought, however, does not seem to appear within science. This is simple set theory at work. The endless generation and parsing and swimming back and forth of and exchanges of data--mental constructions of maps of presumed "reality" do not seem to explain themselves very well by referring to a subset of that data. (Or, for that matter, even the whole set!).

This is by no means a closed and fixed subject, I am pretty sure. :D

Warmest regards,


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Sally Brown
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 04:44 AM

I am a nidiot and an ucklehead. I was afraid I had killed a perfectly good thread. There is very little more enjoyable than a (useless) argument. need a new word (Here)
I will not interfere further, except to correct impressions regarding marfan. It is a body and mind thing. The researchers primarily look at the physical stuff, because it is easier to measure, and more deadly. There is still a major argument going on about how to diagnose it, and research is primarily being done with mice and sheep.
The IQ bell for marfan is higher than the bell for non-msrfan, and you will find, in your reading, many references to "different" thinking. Only recently have some tried to move it into the aspergers spectrum The very small and very early research will not be published I would guess for years.
Methinks it unproductive duality thinking to try to separate the body and the mind.
All the early "spiritual" teachings are about the breath. (inspire, respiration) Yoga and Tai Chi and Chigong still start with the breath. Meditation is about breathing and focus. It takes Western dualistic thought to try to separate out body mind and spirit, and affect one without the other. That sort of thing is about power, not religion. Mostly, I think, about male dominance of the military sort.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 01:50 PM

No, you're fine, guestSB.

What do you mean the bell is higher - are they more intelligent, ona verge?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Sally Brown
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 07:30 PM

Not necessarily more intelligent, just place higher on IQ tests. There is still a bell curve, but the average scores are higher. No one has looked at why. There are numerous genetic issues where a lower IQ is common. I have not seen much on why there, either. The mind is a mysterious and wonderous thing.



If Humankind created God, or vice versa (or both)in their own image, surely it follows that God is a part of Humanity, and the idea of externalizing this supreme being is more unnecessary dualistic thinking. If the supreme being is part of the human, then all answers must be correct in some way, and only my poor flawed thinking makes some answers more right than others. Thus my pleasure in public debate.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 20 Aug 11 - 10:11 PM

The original linked article is exceedingly vague, but apparently alludes to a fairly significant area of research that has been somewhat popular with certain people.

The premise of such tests, where the testing has been actually documented is that:

1. You wire someone up to see where activity is present in the brain.

2. You have the someone "think something mysterious" and see if different parts of the brain show activity.

3. You observe activity where it's otherwise unusual.

4. You conclude that there's a "god part" of the brain.

A difficulty is that about 3 decades ago, people were doing the same kinds of studies of brain activities. The measurement of activity, and isolation to a particular part of the brain was more difficult, and in some cases "invasive," whereas now it can be done by purportedly "non-invasive" things like CAT scans, but there has been little real progress in the ability to isolate and identify site-specific activity, other than "fewer deaths in the test subjects," perhaps.

In earlier tests, it was fairly conclusively shown that "meditative practitioners" diverted activity from the usual active foci, and "other parts" increased activity.

In the earlier tests, they also found that bored assembly line workers frequently "zoned" into a trance-like state, in which the heard voices of unknown people, "remembered" things they apparently never knew, and had a much more pleasant experience than when unnecessarily confining attention to "pick up bolt, screw in hole, pick up next bolt" - with changes in the foci of activity identical to the ones who meditated. With the "bored" there generally was no "mystical" connotation that they associated with the wanderings of their "hallucinations." The suppression of the normal conscious thinking - that wasn't really necessary - allowed activity in brain parts normally suppressed when a "more deliberate" thinking was needed. There was nothing particularly abnormal or amazing about the processes involved, and no connection to specific "kinds of thoughts" in the "zoned" (or entranced?) brain.

Singing hymns, and "chanting" (or participating in recitations) produced the same results. It's not at all an unpleasant thing, and it works at making people more receptive to "directed thinking" so it's very common in virtually all religions and philosophies. I would expect similar results with those who claim to "zone in the mood" at rock concerts, but that wasn't as common when the earlier testing was reported.

There may have been some, but I haven't seen a documented test recently in which other than "mysterious" stimuli were applied to invoke the "mysterious" brain activity. Those tests cannot "prove" that the mystery even exists. Until such comparisons are presented, the basic methodology is fatally flawed.

An additional factor is that nearly all such recent testing that I've seen reported (even incompetently) has been done exclusively by people looking for and expecting to find a specific "god effect." Nothing has been proved.

The rest of the discussion here is in places vaguely interesting, but is mostly just rehashing the SOSO.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Aug 11 - 09:53 AM

Lots of people (but hardly all) who've dropped acid or ingested mescaline are sure they've had a mystical experience, seen God, or the like, and say it changed their lives.

What do we make of that? Some possibilities:

1. It doesn't take much to light up the "god part" of the brain.

2. God operates through the "god part," but people can't tell the difference between God's influence and a chemical reaction in the brain.

3. Since God set the brain up that way, that's how He wants it.

4. Some people have religious experiences on drugs that they can't have ordinarily. Since God set the brain up that way, that's how he wants it.

5. It's impossible for people to distinguish between an experience of God and the chemical effect of a drug - except that people who experience God without having taken a drug know that they haven't taken one.

6. Perhaps all experiences of God are illusions generated by random neurochemical activity that is much the same as what can be induced by drugs.

7. Perhaps experiences of God are genuine, whether induced by drugs or not. If so, God must want some people to have those experiences, even when they're artificially induced, but doesn't want others to have them under any circimstances.

There may be further possibilities as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 21 Aug 11 - 01:05 PM

Creative thought plays an important role in the advancement of science, in fact the only way significant breakthroughs have ever occurred. Thinking otherwise is a gross misunderstanding of the scientific process.

Delusion is easily induced by doctrine and dogma. Scientific proof is need to debunk
this. Newest tests in psychiatry have shown that the notion of a god is man made.
Check out the studies of John Bowlby and expanded by Mary Ainsworth in the 1940's.
Brain-imaging studies at the National Institutes of Health determines that morality is an adaptive mechanism handed down by natural selection that has been hijacked by religion.
We have tribal or groupish tendencies found in our DNA that create enmities between
religious factions such as Protestant vrs. Catholic or Sunni vrs. Shiite.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Aug 11 - 01:16 PM

>We have tribal or groupish tendencies found in our DNA that create enmities between religious factions such as Protestant vrs. Catholic or Sunni vrs. Shiite.

DNA implies genes, and there are no genes for enmity. AFAIK.

If there were, there'd be even more of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 21 Aug 11 - 02:51 PM

The capacity for knowing is used by all individuals to various degrees. When groups are formed predicated on agreement about what to know and how to know it, you get sects, cults, camps and schools and so on. All of these have collections of data which they acvcept and sometimes assert as what should be known.

Very few of them, though, consider their own capacity for knowing as one of the things that might be looked at. If their agreed-upon data includes arbitraries and authoritarian data points (as most of them do) it becomes difficult to maintain the "rightness" of such datapoints when you include your own viewing and knowing in your understanding. Data gets a lot more relative, and illogical inclusions get a lot more obvious.

Brain imaging, for example, is worthy proof if you assume that thought is born in the brain. I have seen nothing to prove that this is so. It is, I think, what we would have to call a convenient assumption, or a comfotable fiction, or at best a working postulate. I think there is a lot of thinking going on in the universe well outside the skull casings of living humans. But it is a safe retreat to limit one's investigations to the material and the neurological. Asserting such as "truth", however, is far-fetched and presumptuous, IMNSHO.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Aug 11 - 09:16 PM

What evidence is there that thought could possibly come from anywhere else?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 21 Aug 11 - 10:46 PM

Well, for one thing, sheer bits of information are of a completely different order. Most theories duck this issue on the basis of unspecified "complexity" but I find that unsatisfactory. When you have exhausted the limits of your imagination, which can generate terabytes of information in microseconds at will, you will have gone so far past the imaginable storage capacity of the human nervous system as to boggle the mind.


There are other reasons, as well. Experience itself, for one thing. The ability to intend. Understanding in a deeper sense. The capacity to "be there".

I have yet to see any sign that these things can be attained through neurochemical signal processing.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 09:43 AM

I have yet to see any sign that these things can be attained through neurochemical signal processing.

Either you're not looking very hard, or you're insisting that everything has to be in the preconceived "language" that you perceive is the only way to explain anything.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 10:48 AM

Consciousness certainly "seems" to be radically different from a result of chemical activity, but the sun, moon, and stars certainly "seem" to circle the earth.

Every bit of confirmed new evidence that is discovered supports material explanations over spiritual ones. It's been going on, uninterrupted, since Galileo.

That's just the way it is.

What are the chances, then, that there'll be a huge uncovering of new, coherent evidence that not only runs the other way, but actually discredits what we already know?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Stringsinger
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 11:18 AM

Amos, why should your thoughts and experience be any more realistic or true than anyone else's? What you deem as true for you might be false for someone else. And yet, if you were to subject yourself to neurological manipulation, I would bet you that you could change your tune.

There are so many today who rely on their own conscious experience as being some kind of unassailable truth, many in mental institutions though I'm not saying Amos is crazy, but many of these personalized experiences are hearsay and not supported by concrete evidence, not allowed, for example, in a court of law which requires evidential testing.

Personal experience is not a legitimate argument to substantiate a real event. There have been instances when eye-witnesses to a crime have been wrong, inconsistent and have not agreed as to what they saw. This is why genetic testing, physical evidence and scientific expertise is used in courtrooms.

There is no legitimate scientific argument for the separation of "mind" and the brain.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 11:54 AM

Personal experience is not a legitimate argument to substantiate a real event.

Please; I am not trying to push personal experience of mine down anyone's throat. I am making a point that experiencing as such is qualitatively different from transmission and receipt of signal. As for "real event", you seem to be insisting on the objective stage as the only acceptable locale for a "real" event. THis despite the fact that when you start looking into what people refer to as "spiritual" (granted, a very loose term) phenomenology, the very premise of objectivity is left in the wake. Yet the amount of individual awareness, data and imagery in the subjective field far outstrips the content and scope of individual "objective" awareness, a point you yourself make in stressing the inaccuracy of eye-witness testimony.

Believe me, I quite understand that in phsyical science and engineering, the subjective is a highly suspect source for reliable data.

And brain science, of course, MUST bind itself to this tradition, or risk being thrown out with astrology, and dowsing, and other marginal interactions between the subjective and the physical.

But I think you are a little too hasty in your conflation of scientific with this sense of objectivism. The mind is far richer in its dimensions and capabilities than can be wholly described by entropic systems of signal transfer, it seems to me.

Your bald assertion about what constitutes scientific argument about the mind side of the brain-mind complex is premature, IMHO.

Sorry I can't extrapolate and pontificate further just now.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Paul G.
Date: 22 Aug 11 - 08:41 PM

Oh my god (please excuse the hyperbole) -- but this is a wonderful thread! I am non-religious but intensely interested in the neuroscience of belief and thought processes (though a neophyte at best among this sage community of discussants). The mere civility of the discussion here, relative to others I have encountered, deserves visualization via fMRI. So having just now read through from top to bottom, I come out of lurk mode to simply say thank you. I shall continue to read, and learn, and perhaps follow that thought around the next corner...........

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 11:06 AM

The earlier remarks on mescaline and other psychedelic chemicals bring up a point worth making.

It would be foolish for me or anyone to try and assert that human thought does not involve the brain. As has been said here and elsewhere the annals of experimentation are legion showing that brain stimuli occur in various patterns of thinking.

I would make an important distinction between originating thought and acting as a bandpass filter of some kind.

A cellphone does not originate hundreds of different conversations, but it would be easy to fall into that belief without taking into account the invisible waves of high-frequency energy coming from cell towers. Old hat to us, of course. But to a semi-superstitious clan of unindoctrinated hooligans, it would be an easy mistake.

I think absolute materialism is a comparable error.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 01:20 PM

I have yet to see any sign that these things can be attained through neurochemical signal processing.

Like I asked, is there ANY evidence that it could have come from anything else?

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 01:51 PM

All the cell-phone analogy shows is that it's possible to imagine that some mental activity is really transmitted from elsewhere.

But we already knew that was possible to imagine: that's why we're having this conversation.

What's more, we know from experience that phone calls *don't* originate within the phone. We don't know that about any kind of brain activity. In fact experience (all experiments in this case) suggests just the opposite. Belief in transmission from elsewhere was more justifiable, merely as a hypothesis, before brain experiments were possible.

The only "evidence" so far that any mental activity originates from some non-material source outside the body is the brain's proven, ancient ability to imagine that that's the case. But the brain can imagine lots of untrue things. And has. Mine does it every day.

Mrrzy's question is crucial. The material evidence is not only evidence *for* a material explanation, it's also evidence *against* non-material explanations. Where is the non-material evidence - other than feelings - to counterbalance and contradict it?

I'm not saying that a non-material influence is logically impossible, only that there's no objective reason to believe in one. If believing in one makes a person feel better, that's a good thing. If it makes a person do objectionable or dangerous things, like hating people or blowing himself up, that's different.

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 02:42 PM

(What about feeling better about blowing people up?)

Subject: RE: BS: Your Brain, Your Brain on God
From: Amos
Date: 23 Aug 11 - 02:43 PM

Lighter:

I think it would be as logically sound to assert that the only evidence that thought rises from matter in the brain is the spirit's ability to imagine that is the case.

As for there being no objective reason to consider non-material sources, that's tautological, obviously.

Furthermore the annals of borderline non-material experiences collected by a wide array of authors (e.g., V. Zammit, Melvin Morse, M.D, KEnneth Ring, Moody, Dr. Robert Crockall , Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, etc.) is ignored on the grounds that it is non-objective. A Gallup poll in 1992 found that 5% of US adults had had a NDE. That's a lot of purely circumstantial non-evidence, if you work the numbers out. Here are a collection oftheir tales. If you can get over the instinctive repulsion toward anecdote, you'll find some interesting common denominators. See also Michael B. Sabom's 1982 "Recollections of Death". Here are some more such tales. I am not going to do anymore homework for you, though.

The value of these anecdotal collections is not in their empirical proof of anything, but in the distribution across the species of certain kinds of experience not readily accounted for by existing models. They are anomolies, from the perspective of a hard-core material paradigm and they are extremely uncomfortable because of thenumber of questions that would be raised if the primary agreed-on paradigm were to be invalidated, or its limits recognized.

Of course you can resort to whole-cloth rebuttal of all these people by saying it just ain't so. That way lies intellectual redneckery of the first order. It would make sense to me to allow the unknown to exist.

I am reminded of Dylan singing "Something is happening here but...".