We've been waiting with The first author is Mario Beauregard, a scientist at the Université de Montréal (Canada). According to Denyse, Beauregard is one of the "One Hundred Pioneers of the Twenty-First Century" selected by World Media Net. What the heck is "World Media Net"? Canadian Cynic also wants to know The hilarity just never ends].
Beauregard (and O'Leary) have solved the mind-body problem. It turns out that there's more going on inside the brain than just the firing of neurons. Apparently, your brain is capable of contacting a different reality during intense religious experiences.
Beauregard uses the most sophisticated technology to peer inside the brains of Carmelite nuns during a profound spiritual state. His results and a variety of other lines of evidence lead him to the surprising conclusion that spiritual experiences are not a figment of the mind or a delusion produced by a dysfunctional brain.I'm not going the buy the book. If someone wants to read it I'd be happy to see a review from a real scientist.
* I actually knew that "baited" was wrong but I typed it anyway. For an explanation of what "bated" means see World Wide Words.
...baited breath...
ReplyDeleteBeen eating raw fish for lunch again, have we?
(Apologies... the homonym police were just passing by, saw someone in peril... nothing to see here, move along...)
As to the book, ah yes... fiction so needed a new genre. Call it 'We found our god in the CT scan'... Or has Reader's Digest already used that for a title?
There's more going on than just random firing of neurons -- that's an important qualifier O'Leary throws in there. It's comparable to the claim that there's nothing to evolution but random mutation, I guess.
ReplyDeleteShe's going to send me a review copy. I'll let you know how it turns out.
I suppose it's easier to write a pre-enlightenment book that to actually build a time machine so we can really go back to the middle ages.
ReplyDeleteAs to the book, ah yes... fiction so needed a new genre.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, my local Borders book store has a section for this genre: "Christian fiction."
You know I don’t think godologist have thought out fully the implications of their “theories” (actually just some unimaginative metaphysical intuitions that resist synthesis and don’t cohere with each other). Do they really want to demonstrate the existence of soul (or spirit or whatever) scientifically, i.e. in the realm of the material? ‘Cuz it’s not a soul no more if they do that. It’s just stuff, or else science couldn’t access it, and people who worship stuff, for example the bible qua bible, or scientific souls, well those people are idolaters, pure and simple, and I’m telling the Pope on them. I bet what O’Leary and Beauregard’s book does it establish that the substrate and/or mechanism of spiritual mental states does not matter (heh), in that knowing either or both does not diminish the spiritual experience, which is certainly “real”, of being in a spiritual state. So it’s going to be a philosophy book repeating arguments originally made by William James, is my bet, but updated with plausible-sounding but iffy scientific language, for that je ne sais pas quoi quality that appeals to scientific illiterates, and of course to idolaters.
ReplyDeleteI searched for "World Media Net." This page, which you posted less than eight hours ago, is now the number two link listed in Google for that phrase.
ReplyDelete... AND the top link is spurious.
ReplyDeleteLarry, whaddya mean you expect a scientist to review the book? You haven't really absorbed S. J. Gould's dictum about the NOMA sphere.
ReplyDeleteScience can't comment about religion.
Religion is a chosen discipline and special because it is part of the NON OVERLAPPING MAGISTERIUM.
This should settle everything.
No way I'll be buying the book, but I just read Beauregard's paper on fMRI imaging during mystical experiences in Carmelite nuns (Neuroscience Letters
ReplyDeleteVolume 405, Issue 3, 25 September 2006, Pages 186-190). Short version: some brain regions were activated during the experience. There was a hilarious caveat however: "The main limitation of this study was the fact that the subjects were asked to remember and relive a mystical experience rather than actually try to achieve one. Such a strategy was used because the subjects told us a priori that they were not capable of reaching a mystical state at will. In our view, this does not represent a major problem since the phenomenological data indicate that the subjects actually experienced genuine mystical experiences during the Mystical condition. These mystical experiences felt subjectively different than those used to self-induce a mystical state". I am left in a mystical state wondering how crap like this ever gets past peer review. Another triumph for the Templeton Foundation.
Well, that creationists thinks random thoughts doesn't come as a total surprise.
ReplyDeleteBtw, those updates are likely quantum woo, as I hear (RationalWiki) that Beauregard is another quantum kook.
baited bated* breath
I hope to avoid that mistake, since it often reminds me of many similar confusions in swedish, but especially:
We say "hårdra" (hår-dra/hår-draga, 'drag by the hair') - earlier "fight (with someone)", now "take the argument to far".
But for many years I have, along with the majority of swedes, used "hårddra" (hård-dra/hård-draga, 'drag hard') - with roughly the same interpretation.
I would be hard pressed to pull anyones hair, so I guess the original spelling looked too farfetched.