3 ms·

Neurotheology: This Is Your Brain On Religion

11 points by kqr2 16y ago

hugh3 16y ago
Surely the obvious thing to do would be to compare the brains of religious meditators to atheist meditators? Isn't the main result they appear to have acquired so far the fact that meditation increases blood flow to the part of the brain responsible for concentrating on things? Also I'm deeply skeptical due to quotes like this: "One could try to conclude one way or the other that maybe it’s the biology or maybe God's really in the room, but the scan itself doesn't really show that," Newberg says. "For neurotheology to really work as a field it needs to be very respectful and open to both perspectives." which leads me to suspect that this is just a way of bilking religious institutions out of money to fund fMRI scans and pay researchers' salaries. Nice work if you can get it! Meanwhile, I should head back to the lab to continue my experiments. Maybe it's gravity which causes the rocks to fall when I release them. Maybe it's the hand of God pushing down on them. We need to be open to both perspectives!
- tjr 16y ago
  Does it not stand to reason that if your field is "neurotheology", you need to be "open to both perspectives"?
  - KiwiNige 16y ago
    I'd tip that being open to the hand of God being involved helps to get some of the participants to engage in the project.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      What legitimate scientific questions can this field answer anyway? What falsifiable hypotheses can it disprove? Different areas of your brain light up in the FMRI when you're thinking about different things; we've known this for decades, but it hasn't proved much in particular.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    I've often wanted to start up a research institute devoted to scientifically answering the question of whether one or more gods actually exists via experiment. We may not be able to completely disprove the hypothesis, but we can certainly narrow down the range of gods which might exist. For instance, some folks reckon that God will smite you if you burn a Koran, so we could burn a Koran and see what happens. Also, who knows, we might experimentally prove that there is one or more gods. That would be interesting!
zby 16y ago
Last week I just finished 'Religion Explained' by Pascal Boyer - and it is indeed quite good explanation - I recommend that book. In short the theory presented there is about religion as a kind of side effect of having brains trained for what was needed to live. It is quite convincing, maybe a bit falling into the false dichotomy path by trying to present itself as the sole and only theory - while the reasoning there does not in fact eliminate other mechanism adding to the trend of evolving a religious attitude.

11 points by kqr2 16y ago

hugh3 16y ago

Surely the obvious thing to do would be to compare the brains of religious meditators to atheist meditators? Isn't the main result they appear to have acquired so far the fact that meditation increases blood flow to the part of the brain responsible for concentrating on things? Also I'm deeply skeptical due to quotes like this: "One could try to conclude one way or the other that maybe it’s the biology or maybe God's really in the room, but the scan itself doesn't really show that," Newberg says. "For neurotheology to really work as a field it needs to be very respectful and open to both perspectives." which leads me to suspect that this is just a way of bilking religious institutions out of money to fund fMRI scans and pay researchers' salaries. Nice work if you can get it! Meanwhile, I should head back to the lab to continue my experiments. Maybe it's gravity which causes the rocks to fall when I release them. Maybe it's the hand of God pushing down on them. We need to be open to both perspectives!

tjr 16y ago
Does it not stand to reason that if your field is "neurotheology", you need to be "open to both perspectives"?
- KiwiNige 16y ago
  I'd tip that being open to the hand of God being involved helps to get some of the participants to engage in the project.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    What legitimate scientific questions can this field answer anyway? What falsifiable hypotheses can it disprove? Different areas of your brain light up in the FMRI when you're thinking about different things; we've known this for decades, but it hasn't proved much in particular.
- hugh3 16y ago
  I've often wanted to start up a research institute devoted to scientifically answering the question of whether one or more gods actually exists via experiment. We may not be able to completely disprove the hypothesis, but we can certainly narrow down the range of gods which might exist. For instance, some folks reckon that God will smite you if you burn a Koran, so we could burn a Koran and see what happens. Also, who knows, we might experimentally prove that there is one or more gods. That would be interesting!

zby 16y ago

Last week I just finished 'Religion Explained' by Pascal Boyer - and it is indeed quite good explanation - I recommend that book. In short the theory presented there is about religion as a kind of side effect of having brains trained for what was needed to live. It is quite convincing, maybe a bit falling into the false dichotomy path by trying to present itself as the sole and only theory - while the reasoning there does not in fact eliminate other mechanism adding to the trend of evolving a religious attitude.