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Religious studies is a secular, academic discipline. Your concern over words like 'sacred' is a function of living in a cuture where apologists and evangelists

by sago 11y ago

Religious studies is a secular, academic discipline. Your concern over words like 'sacred' is a function of living in a cuture where apologists and evangelists dominate such language. It isn't a necessary indicator that there's a problem when such language is used. Entheogen might mean 'generating god within' from a rather naive and reductionist translation of the greek, but in the field it has a more specific meaning relating to the use of a substance in a ritual context. Entheogens, and using them in not-ritual contexts to try to replicate experiences reported by ritual participants, is interesting and broadly scientific. Religions are and have been wildly popular structures for guiding and interpreting subjective experiences, and in many cases the framework for pre-scientific medicine and mental health care. It is interesting to ask what kind of mental states they are better at generating and what effects those have. To study that is not to admit that the religion has the right story of why those experiences arise and what they mean. We can ask what the religious experience of 'transcendence' is and how it is induced and what is happening in the brain without buying into the idea that it is an experience of oneness with the infinity of the divine consciousness (or whatever story any particular user wants to tell). Such an explanation might be significant, without being true. In the same way one can study the stories and language and behavior of a pyramid scheme without giving credit to its claims. If you've been bashed over the head with apologetics or evangelism, it can be hard to tune into the use of the language in a more rigorous context, but it has meaning and is not unscientific. Though there is, of course, room for an argument over how much any social science or field of psychology is 'real' science. "Sacred knowledge" is neither meaningless, oxymoronic, nor mystical. Any more than a discussion of "Erotic knowledge" in the context of sex-research would be. I'm reading this book at the moment, and so far it seems very good. Even the bit quoted about Jung is handled with more reasonableness than the article suggests (though I'm not sure I agree, yet).

mbrock 11y ago
Well, I'm very interested in religion, religious experiences, anthropology, and all this stuff. That's different from a psychologist, in his role within the scientific medical community, talking about "sacred medicine" and "sacred knowledge." I might read the book... but I'm still wary of scientists starting to use religious/mystical/visionary language.
- sago 11y ago
  > That's different from ... talking about "sacred medicine" You seem to be doubling down on interpreting 'sacred' in that context as the scholar saying 'something I believe is supernatural'. Social scientists studying religion should use religious language, and scientists studying experience are fine to use mystical and visionary language, if they are describing something emically: i.e. the subject reports mystic or visionary experience. Terms like that even have an etic use, to refer to the pattern of experiences that are described that way, where they often become specific terms of art. You didn't seem to engage with my point that you are misunderstanding the term: it is triggering your 'woo' detector, which is giving a false positive in this case. "Sacred medicine" is not a problematic term, if you are studying medicine practiced in a sacred context. I have a book on "Shamanic medicine" - that doesn't indicate the author is a true believing shaman, just that they are the subject of his study. "Sacred knowledge" is a very good title for this book, because it is an attempt to look at what knowledge of psychoactive drugs is embedded into sacred frameworks cross-culturally, that can be reframed in a modern scientific context. I think the misunderstanding is very understandable, because religious vested interests do a good job of preventing religious studies being widely known. Partly their concern is to keep sensible folks like you saying this kind of thing: words like 'sacred', 'mystic' and 'visionary' should not be used unless you are a believer.
  - mbrock 11y ago
    Firstly I apologize for making semi-snide remarks without having read the book. It does seem interesting and I appreciate your comments. But I think you misunderstand my concerns. I'm not really concerned with woo detectors. It's not that I think the word "sacred" implies some delusion or some new age nonsense. The concept of the sacred is indeed well established in theology and anthropology etc (I don't claim expertise in these subjects but I am somewhat familiar with what the word means). There's no way to sincerely apply the word "sacred" while remaining in the sphere of secular discourse, as far as I can see. Scientists can study the function of sacrality, but I don't think science can make claims of sacrality. Psychology is not religious studies... Maybe there is something about the framing I am missing here. I think science is divorced from claims grounded in mystical insights. I think it cannot involve itself with normative/aesthetic/spiritual stuff like saying something is sacred. And in any case, I do see problems with psychedelics and entheogebs related to all this. Namely how can we take the insights and thoughts and feelings that they tend to generate, and understand those things in a robustly secular way? I don't have an answer. I've looked around. Lots of the people decades ago who got into the stuff, as far as I can tell, went kinda nuts. Like professor Tim Leary. Huge amounts of people end up in the meditation scene and go onto Buddhism or Advaita monism. That's fine for them—and I'm personally very interested in Buddhism, and to some extent a practitioner of the religion (taken refuge vows; meditate; love the culture; etc), and but still I'm not satisfied, from a scientific and psychological standpoint, with saying we need to bring in concepts of sacredness or mysticism. That has to do with claims, arguments, reason, the public sphere, and the function of secular science. I'm probably not expressing this very well.

by sago 11y ago

mbrock 11y ago

Well, I'm very interested in religion, religious experiences, anthropology, and all this stuff. That's different from a psychologist, in his role within the scientific medical community, talking about "sacred medicine" and "sacred knowledge." I might read the book... but I'm still wary of scientists starting to use religious/mystical/visionary language.

sago 11y ago
> That's different from ... talking about "sacred medicine" You seem to be doubling down on interpreting 'sacred' in that context as the scholar saying 'something I believe is supernatural'. Social scientists studying religion should use religious language, and scientists studying experience are fine to use mystical and visionary language, if they are describing something emically: i.e. the subject reports mystic or visionary experience. Terms like that even have an etic use, to refer to the pattern of experiences that are described that way, where they often become specific terms of art. You didn't seem to engage with my point that you are misunderstanding the term: it is triggering your 'woo' detector, which is giving a false positive in this case. "Sacred medicine" is not a problematic term, if you are studying medicine practiced in a sacred context. I have a book on "Shamanic medicine" - that doesn't indicate the author is a true believing shaman, just that they are the subject of his study. "Sacred knowledge" is a very good title for this book, because it is an attempt to look at what knowledge of psychoactive drugs is embedded into sacred frameworks cross-culturally, that can be reframed in a modern scientific context. I think the misunderstanding is very understandable, because religious vested interests do a good job of preventing religious studies being widely known. Partly their concern is to keep sensible folks like you saying this kind of thing: words like 'sacred', 'mystic' and 'visionary' should not be used unless you are a believer.
- mbrock 11y ago
  Firstly I apologize for making semi-snide remarks without having read the book. It does seem interesting and I appreciate your comments. But I think you misunderstand my concerns. I'm not really concerned with woo detectors. It's not that I think the word "sacred" implies some delusion or some new age nonsense. The concept of the sacred is indeed well established in theology and anthropology etc (I don't claim expertise in these subjects but I am somewhat familiar with what the word means). There's no way to sincerely apply the word "sacred" while remaining in the sphere of secular discourse, as far as I can see. Scientists can study the function of sacrality, but I don't think science can make claims of sacrality. Psychology is not religious studies... Maybe there is something about the framing I am missing here. I think science is divorced from claims grounded in mystical insights. I think it cannot involve itself with normative/aesthetic/spiritual stuff like saying something is sacred. And in any case, I do see problems with psychedelics and entheogebs related to all this. Namely how can we take the insights and thoughts and feelings that they tend to generate, and understand those things in a robustly secular way? I don't have an answer. I've looked around. Lots of the people decades ago who got into the stuff, as far as I can tell, went kinda nuts. Like professor Tim Leary. Huge amounts of people end up in the meditation scene and go onto Buddhism or Advaita monism. That's fine for them—and I'm personally very interested in Buddhism, and to some extent a practitioner of the religion (taken refuge vows; meditate; love the culture; etc), and but still I'm not satisfied, from a scientific and psychological standpoint, with saying we need to bring in concepts of sacredness or mysticism. That has to do with claims, arguments, reason, the public sphere, and the function of secular science. I'm probably not expressing this very well.