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The article containing the quote from Richard Dawkins can be found here: https://uktech.wordpress.com/2006/09/25/dawkins-on-theology/ https://uktech.wordpress.

by jmts 8y ago

The article containing the quote from Richard Dawkins can be found here: https://uktech.wordpress.com/2006/09/25/dawkins-on-theology/ https://uktech.wordpress.com/2006/09/25/dawkins-on-theology/ To paraphrase, he's arguing that very little beyond the obvious has come from religious teachings, and much of the rest can be proved false with science. The article posted suggests that science may have more to learn from religion, given that science has shown there is some benefit to practices like meditation and ritual. This reads a little bit like a justification for all of religion after science was able to pick some of the interesting parts out and show they have use beyond a religious context. I'm not sure I buy the argument. A seized engine doesn't become workable simply by showing the bolts are still in good condition.

dTal 8y ago
But would science have ever come up with the concept of meditation in the first place? How long did it take for it to be accepted in the western scientific tradition as something possibly worth investigating, something with value beyond mystical yogi hocus pocus? Almost any historical practice with social or psychological meaning would have been understood at least partially within the context of a "spiritual tradition". If you write off anything that smells of religion you throw away an awful lot.
- naveen99 8y ago
  Science doesn’t tell you what to investigate only how to do it with intellectual honesty and carefully.
  - dTal 8y ago
    Are you disagreeing? Because, well, that's kind of the point. Not that I entirely agree - science lets you pull on threads to see where they lead, and sometimes they're tangled up with other threads, and you pull those, and you end up with a great massive ball - but it's also nice to have a fresh end to pull, and that can come from anywhere.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Yes. The original similar concept is called TENS. Oldest, uses electric current simulation. The other concept was using sound interaction with brainwave monitoring - monaural and binaural beats. There are also light based variants. Yet other used magnetic fields and another is called tDCS. There is also hypnosis, pretty old. These have nothing in common with religion yet are similar to meditation when measured... not exactly identical of course. I'm quite sure someone would figure out a link between specific thought patterns and physiology in a specialized field like neuroscience...
  - DanBC 8y ago
    TENS and tDCS are nothing like meditation and have nothing in common.
- jmts 8y ago
  I think it is a bit strange to ask "could science 'discover' meditation completely independently of a religious context?". Given that meditation is so common in eastern practices it seems unlikely that science would ever be needed to discover it - someone else is likely to stumble upon it first. If it were rarer than that, however, I'm reasonably confident that science could discover it. Given that science is all about discovering how things work, learning the quirks of the brain and consciousness is high on the list of things to do. To flip that question on its head however, perhaps we should ask "could religion discover gravitational waves independently of a scientific context?". I would be very hard pressed to answer anything other than an emphatic "no". Indeed only a few hundred years ago you were probably likely to be imprisoned or killed for suggesting much less. In terms of how long it took science to find meditation worthwhile - not long at all. Science is new. It wasn't until recently that we had the tools to be able to study the brain and study meditation. Any delay in attention toward meditation from then on may well be due to a bias against religion among scientists - but then so much of religion can be explained away leaving the signal to noise ratio so low it's unlikely to be of any interest to many scientists anyway. You don't go shopping for motorcycles in the grocery store. No doubt western religion itself would have contributed to delays though anti-eastern religious bias as well. Of the people that are interested in religion - psychologists, neuroscientists, social scientists, historians - I have no doubt that they are already interested in it for all the reasons mentioned in the article. It's not as if religion is such a small part of our lives and we need to go digging to uncover it's secrets. I very much doubt that there is any scientist out there whose area of expertise abuts religion that is inclined to disregard the entirety of religion as irrelevant. Richard Dawkins himself - quoted in the article - recommends that everybody should read the King James version of the Bible as a piece of literature and an important text culturally [1]. There just happens to be very little reason to bring along the hocus pocus with it. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/may/19/richard-dawkins-king-james-bible https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/may/19/richard-dawk...

by jmts 8y ago

dTal 8y ago

But would science have ever come up with the concept of meditation in the first place? How long did it take for it to be accepted in the western scientific tradition as something possibly worth investigating, something with value beyond mystical yogi hocus pocus? Almost any historical practice with social or psychological meaning would have been understood at least partially within the context of a "spiritual tradition". If you write off anything that smells of religion you throw away an awful lot.

naveen99 8y ago
Science doesn’t tell you what to investigate only how to do it with intellectual honesty and carefully.
- dTal 8y ago
  Are you disagreeing? Because, well, that's kind of the point. Not that I entirely agree - science lets you pull on threads to see where they lead, and sometimes they're tangled up with other threads, and you pull those, and you end up with a great massive ball - but it's also nice to have a fresh end to pull, and that can come from anywhere.
AstralStorm 8y ago
Yes. The original similar concept is called TENS. Oldest, uses electric current simulation. The other concept was using sound interaction with brainwave monitoring - monaural and binaural beats. There are also light based variants. Yet other used magnetic fields and another is called tDCS. There is also hypnosis, pretty old. These have nothing in common with religion yet are similar to meditation when measured... not exactly identical of course. I'm quite sure someone would figure out a link between specific thought patterns and physiology in a specialized field like neuroscience...
- DanBC 8y ago
  TENS and tDCS are nothing like meditation and have nothing in common.
jmts 8y ago
I think it is a bit strange to ask "could science 'discover' meditation completely independently of a religious context?". Given that meditation is so common in eastern practices it seems unlikely that science would ever be needed to discover it - someone else is likely to stumble upon it first. If it were rarer than that, however, I'm reasonably confident that science could discover it. Given that science is all about discovering how things work, learning the quirks of the brain and consciousness is high on the list of things to do. To flip that question on its head however, perhaps we should ask "could religion discover gravitational waves independently of a scientific context?". I would be very hard pressed to answer anything other than an emphatic "no". Indeed only a few hundred years ago you were probably likely to be imprisoned or killed for suggesting much less. In terms of how long it took science to find meditation worthwhile - not long at all. Science is new. It wasn't until recently that we had the tools to be able to study the brain and study meditation. Any delay in attention toward meditation from then on may well be due to a bias against religion among scientists - but then so much of religion can be explained away leaving the signal to noise ratio so low it's unlikely to be of any interest to many scientists anyway. You don't go shopping for motorcycles in the grocery store. No doubt western religion itself would have contributed to delays though anti-eastern religious bias as well. Of the people that are interested in religion - psychologists, neuroscientists, social scientists, historians - I have no doubt that they are already interested in it for all the reasons mentioned in the article. It's not as if religion is such a small part of our lives and we need to go digging to uncover it's secrets. I very much doubt that there is any scientist out there whose area of expertise abuts religion that is inclined to disregard the entirety of religion as irrelevant. Richard Dawkins himself - quoted in the article - recommends that everybody should read the King James version of the Bible as a piece of literature and an important text culturally [1]. There just happens to be very little reason to bring along the hocus pocus with it. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/may/19/richard-dawkins-king-james-bible https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/may/19/richard-dawk...