Thursday 21 September, 2006

Is there a God? Find the answer here. Or not.

I know you'll will think this is a lead in to a bad joke, but what is the difference between the brains of a Franciscan nun, a Tibetan monk, and a Pentacostalist (!?). Is there a God, or is it just more of that funky brain chemistry that makes us want to be alive and fall in love? If you subscribe to Salon, and are interested in things spiritual (that is, you are a spiritualist) check this article out:

'I think the brain is structured in such a way that we can very easily have religious beliefs and spiritual experiences. But the problem with the term "hard-wired" is that it implies that someone or something did the hard-wiring. And I'm not sure that I can say that. When we look at how the brain is set up to help us understand our reality, it's very easy to see how we have different types of spiritual experiences and feelings of transcendence. And ultimately, this spills over into our ability to form religious concepts. So our brain is always asking those questions, which often wind up resulting in a spiritual or religious quest.'

If you can quantify a transcendential experience in terms of chemistry, does that mean it does exist, or that it doesn't? As the article discusses, it may have been more radical to find there was no chemical responses to religous experiences - that such experiences really are out of body and mind exists separate to body. But you could also argue that physiological responses to thing spiritual are symptoms of the out-of-body experience.

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